by Fritz Galt
“Does richter.net sound good?”
Richter shook his head. “Make it something more descriptive, like ‘Ameri-sapiens.net,’ or ‘humanus-originus.com.’”
The makeup artist dipped a thin brush into her kit and carefully traced black eyeliner around his eyes.
“Don’t touch the hair, darling.”
The warm fuzz of her cashmere sweater swung back and forth, embedding his nose between her breasts.
“Yeah, I like the figures you’re throwing at me,” he said, careful not to sound overeager. “My agent thought it was a good move, and I’m behind him one hundred percent.”
The voice on the other end was obscured by the beep of call waiting.
“Gotta go now.” He clicked over to the other call from a number he didn’t recognize. “Who’s this? This is a private number.”
There was an ominous pause, then, “This is Liang.”
A wry smile came over Richter’s lips. “You’re in town?”
“I am. And I have the seed money for your campaign. I see you’ll be appearing on CNN.”
“Yes. Make sure you watch.”
“Will you announce your candidacy tonight?”
“Of course. This is excellent exposure. Contact my agent per usual tomorrow to arrange for the transfer.” He clicked off and inhaled one last whiff of the woman’s scent.
Behind her, a camera swung into position and student grips adjusted several studio lights. Thirty or more graduate students, mostly co-eds, pressed into the tiny studio for a glimpse of him.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” the floor director told him. “But these people demanded to be here during taping.”
“Don’t worry about them, young man.” He shifted to hook his phone to his belt. “They’re just here for the spectacle.”
“I’ll have to ask you to turn your cell phone off,” the young man apologized.
Richter smiled. “Of course. I understand.”
Just then the floor director turned away to concentrate on what was coming in on his headset.
“We’ve got our satellite feed direct to CNN,” he shouted.
An excited cheer erupted from those gathered.
“Professor, please take your seat.”
The young man approached his crew and addressed them. “In one minute, about a billion people will be watching us. And please, kids, back away from the set. I’m seeing someone’s mohawk on Camera Two.”
The hefty scientist moved onto the set and took his designated seat. Behind him, a panoramic backdrop depicted the lights of Tucson at night. A nervous pair of hands reached around his neck and placed a wireless earphone in his right ear and attached a microphone to his lapel.
The floor director counted down, and Richter straightened his bowtie.
“Five, four, three…”
He pointed to Richter while a production assistant yanked one of the fawning girls off the set.
Richter’s earpiece filled with dramatic CNN intro music and the voice of Paula Kramer. “We’re joined this evening by a familiar face for many viewers, Discover Magazine’s Scientist of the Year. Professor Richter, welcome. We’re hearing rumors that you’re being considered for a Nobel Prize.”
“Yes, I started those rumors myself.”
In a television monitor facing him, Richter saw Paula blush, but not laugh. She went on with her next question. “The Reverse Land Bridge Theory, or the notion that humankind originated in North America, has taken this country by storm.”
“Yes, it is an excellent theory that fortunately is supported by my finds in the Dakotas,” he said. “I think this discovery has served to raise the stature of all Americans as well.”
“There is opposition to your theories in some quarters,” Paula parried.
Richter frowned. She was deviating from the script. “Those who oppose my theory really have no leg to stand on.”
“But some in the academic community challenge whether America could have been hospitable to Homo sapiens, as it was largely under water,” she countered.
“Personally, I think it’s just a case of professional jealousy.”
If she only knew the trouble that America was in, how desperately the country needed to bolster its self-confidence, and how he was the only man in America who could lift them out of their slide into the quicksand of a global marketplace, she and all those other academics would just shut up and let him talk.
“Notoriety is both a blessing and a curse,” he said, looking at her pointedly. “Oftentimes it’s easier to achieve fame through ridiculing the achievements of others than accomplishing something on one’s own.”
She blanched and the audience broke out in a howl of laughter. The crew rushed to muffle the reaction.
But she persisted. “Some experts claim that your evidence, carbonized bone fragments, is actually quite weak. Although critics admit that Africa may not be the cradle of humanity, North America most certainly could not be.”
It was time to terminate the discussion before it deteriorated any further. It certainly wasn’t the right moment to announce his creation of a presidential exploratory committee. “Listen, honey, is this an interview or are you attempting to score points?”
“I just…these are just some counter—” Paula stammered.
“Young lady, don’t try to appear informed when you’re simply reading from a script of prepared questions. The Nobel Prize committee recognizes a paradigm-shifting achievement when it sees one, even if you don’t.”
“Well, I only—”
Richter could anticipate good press resulting from the altercation, perhaps on a par with the Senior Bush swearing at Dan Rather. “You only want to promote your career at the expense of the American public. Face it, you’re just another pretty face. How could you possibly understand the merits of my theory or the gravity of my discoveries for the scientific understanding of mankind? As an American, you should be proud of this research. I don’t need this.”
Then with calculated anger, he whipped off his earpiece and microphone and stomped off the set. The students broke into wild applause. They parted in deference to him as he passed through and then followed him out the double doors and into the hallway.
Just before the building’s exit, he encountered a familiar figure standing motionless, blocking his way. He and his entourage came to a halt.
“What are you doing here?” the professor hissed loudly.
“I-I meant to see you this afternoon after I got your message,” the lone student faltered.
“Brad, do you see all these fine graduate students standing around me? They respect me and the things I stand for. They’re all well on their way to completing their dissertations on the most exciting development in anthropology since Darwin. What have you accomplished? For the past seven years, all I’ve seen is you bad-mouthing everything and everyone around here, especially me. I’m disappointed in you, and I’m pulling the plug. I’ve informed the administration that your affiliation with this institution is terminated forthwith. It’s too bad. I thought you might have at least absorbed some good sense in that thick skull of yours.”
“But Dad!”
“I’m done with you. Now step aside.”
“What are you doing here?” May whispered to Liang, who was leaning against the doorframe at their ground-level room at the women’s barracks.
Behind him, the airbase was quiet except for the nighttime sound of crickets.
“You could get us both kicked off base.” She looked back to see if her roommate was aware of his presence. May had grown up in a world of informants and couldn’t even trust a longtime friend and colleague like Jade.
Jade didn’t take her eyes off the porn channel on the base cable system.
May slipped out the door. Her feet bare, her baggy pajama pants and T-shirt from Beijing’s Hard Rock Café were hardly regulation attire.
Her feet brushed over the top of neatly trimmed grass. The small but well-tended lawn felt like the finest silk carpe
t.
“I came to check on my little butterfly,” Liang explained in sugarcoated Mandarin. “You seemed in a bad mood when the colonel and I dropped you off.”
“Bad mood? How about eternally depressed? Besides, you’re the cause, not the cure.”
Liang sat in the grass. She dropped down beside him, but avoided contact with him. He studied the stars for a moment. “Do you really want to go up there?”
She had never seen the sky as bright as in America. It seemed to make her future so much clearer. Air pollution had kept a lid on her people’s aspirations for far too long. In America, people could see farther and thus have grander dreams.
“I’d go tonight if I could get into the program,” she said at last.
Liang chuckled. “You know what you need to do for that.”
She nodded. She would have to marry him. That was her ticket to becoming a space program cadet.
At least weddings in China could be simple civil affairs. She could avoid circling the city in a limousine with trailing black cars decked out with bouquets. She wanted no elaborate ceremony at the auspicious hour of 10:00 in the morning, no photographer, no banquet.
Weddings could be simple. But could marriage be that easy?
Her eyes roved over her lover with a degree of approval. He was movie star handsome with high cheekbones, light skin, thick black eyebrows, keen eyes, and a classic profile accentuated by his military bearing. Furthermore, he was a talented airman and devoted patriot. He saw the Party as his duty, not his privilege. He was an uncomplicated man, not difficult to understand, but hard to satisfy.
Liang’s grandfather, of course, was the ruler of all China. A veteran of the legendary Long March, Grandfather Qian had had all the credentials needed to ascend to the Party’s chairmanship.
And Liang’s father was also a national hero. Adopted as a young man by Qian, old Liang had blazed his own trail to success. The major achievement of his life was to design and embark upon building a great dam in Hubei Province that would provide electricity to China’s southern and coastal regions. And old Liang was right. Electricity didn’t denote progress; it created progress. Liang’s father oversaw all but the final stage of development of the dam until his untimely death from lung cancer two years before. At that time, the Three Gorges Dam was unofficially dubbed “Liang’s Dam” in Chinese.
The heavy responsibility of maintaining momentum to complete the dam had fallen on Liang’s shoulders, and May admired him for pursuing the great socialist project with skill and determination. It would be a defining achievement and eventually line him up for the chairmanship and thus the presidency itself.
She looked into his glittering eyes. “Do you actually aspire to be president one day?”
“Of course,” he said without hesitation. “Does that turn you on?” He attempted to nuzzle her neck with his chin.
She pushed him away gently. “Are you crazy? If they catch us, the colonel will be shipping us home in disgrace.”
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The freshly cut grass invigorated her senses. The distant roar of traffic, of humanity circling the airbase, called out to her.
“You can take me back to my room now,” she said in the sweetest voice possible.
He raised her by the elbow, and she felt her heart begin to beat more rapidly.
Just as he was attempting another kiss, a set of boots approached on the sidewalk. She pulled back and waited for the soldier to pass. She felt like a truant, like a schoolgirl out on a forbidden date.
She hated the feeling, but from the smile on Liang’s face, he was soaking it up.
The boots kept walking and were soon out of range.
“All clear,” she said.
The intimate mood had been broken. Liang reluctantly led her back to her room. But his glowing eyes followed her every move. Was he grinning at her?
She opened the door and stepped inside. This was as far as Liang was going that night. She turned to bid him good night.
Behind her, the television speakers produced a rising series of ecstatic grunts, one male and the other female.
Liang looked momentarily confused.
“Channel 43,” she told him, and shut the door in his face.
She slid the lock firmly into position and leaned her back against the door.
Jade was still lying on the carpet, her chin resting on her fists.
“Too bad we don’t get this at home,” she said. Her eyes followed May as she began to tidy up the room.
May glanced at the television. The pair was coupling on a large coffee table with synthesized music beating faster and faster. It certainly looked uncomfortable, especially for the woman.
She closed her eyes and tried to steady herself.
“Jade, let’s get out of here.”
Brad looked blankly at Professor Richter as the celebrated scientist and his attentive flock filed past him and headed out into the darkness.
Back down the hall, someone kicked the studio door open. “Hey, thanks for the interview,” the young man cried sarcastically, and bent his headset out of shape.
Brad shrugged. The poor guy was one more piece of wreckage left in his stepfather’s wake.
But Brad was going to take it like a man. His senses rebelled against Richter’s musky cologne, his unctuous voice and his polished veneer that blinded others. He knew the dark side that lay beneath the charm and the artificial hairpiece. Richter’s dark side seemed so obvious to him, but so hidden to the world.
He had seen the man isolate his mother from the rest of her family when he was a small child. She had resorted to abandoning her artistic aspirations in order to make a living as a dental hygienist, always enabling him to further his own ambitions. Brad had watched silently as his stepfather sidetracked or destroyed other scholars’ academic careers in order to advance his own reputation.
And he had felt first-hand the man’s cold rejection. He remembered the time Richter refused to steady his bicycle after taking off his training wheels, how he ignored him when Brad fell and bruised his knee, how he completely forgot about his tenth birthday and how he always handed him the cheaper Karo syrup for his pancakes while keeping the real maple syrup for himself. Still, it was not simply the malice within Richter or the callousness, but his absolute unwillingness to ever notice or praise him that had made him feel so small.
Brad wandered into the evening air toward the Anthropology Building. Why had he even bothered to study the origins of man, when the human race could assume such an ignoble form?
It was because Richter was an anthropologist. Brad remembered sitting outside his academic advisor’s office his freshman year trying to answer the inevitable question: what degree to pursue.
The solution had come suddenly, like a flash-forward to his future. Glancing through a course listing, his gaze had been drawn to the course named Anthropology 101.
He didn’t know much, but he did know anthropology. Since childhood, he had listened to houseguests, great minds discussing Darwin and Leakey over supper with his stepfather. He had accompanied the struggling young professor on digs in southern Mexico, Africa and even Easter Island in the middle of the Pacific. He knew the lingo, the personalities, the theories and the timelines as well as he knew the speech patterns, moods, pet theories and family history of his girlfriend at the time.
When his advisor had called him into his office, Brad had been prepared. He would become an anthropologist.
Only in graduate school, years later as his stepfather’s discoveries had made the front page of the New York Times, did he begin to wonder about his real reason for wishing to become an anthropologist. Was it to have an impact on the world or merely to prove something to that indifferent man?
He reached the Anthropology Building and opened the ornery front door with a practiced yank.
He wandered down the stone-cold hallway of a building that was part classrooms, part laboratory, part museum and part offices. He inhaled the scents of his prev
ious life. Everything about the place was a part of him. He couldn’t believe that he had to empty out his office.
In the gloom, he flipped on the switch to his computer terminal.
While he waited for it to boot, he grabbed the few books that he would need for the rest of his life: Higgins’ Collection of Artifacts, London Edition, Disputes and Counterviews in the Origins of Man by Trousseau, the revised Dictionary of Chemical Formulas and a geographical dictionary. With these tools, he could head somewhere else, chart a new course for his life.
He left behind the textbooks that he had annotated extensively for teaching classes. Nor did he need the phone directory, class schedules or the latest issue of the campus newspaper. They were all part of his past.
He cleaned his pens and pencils out of his drawer and stuffed all that he could into his scruffy forest-green backpack.
At last the computer screen came alive. He sat before the keyboard, blew on his fingers and typed in his access code:
Username: bwest
Password: anthr0man
The computer blinked and displayed a message.
Your user account has been deactivated. If you have any questions, please contact your department office.
No, he had no questions. The message was crystal clear.
He picked up the office phone and got hold of Earl.
“How did it go?” Earl said on his cell.
“Extremely bad. Meet me at the Grill in ten minutes.”
He pushed his chair back and whirled out of the office. The sound of his hiking boots reached every corner of the building and echoed back emptily. The field of anthropology had rejected him as emphatically as the message on his computer screen.
His former computer screen.
He leaned his full weight against the obstinate exit, but the door gave way easily, and he spilled out into the night.
Tom Chenoweth, a post-doctoral student in cultural anthropology, rushed out of the campus television station. When he was far enough away from other students, he pulled out his cell phone and called a number in Virginia. A moment later, a man he knew only as Sullivan picked up the line.
