The Neanderthal Parallax, Book One - Hominids Read online

  [130] Mary closed her laptop and looked out the window. Northern Ontario spread out below her, with Canadian Shield rocks exposed in many places and aspen and birch dotting the landscape. The plane was beginning its descent.

  Reuben Montego had no idea what Mary Vaughan looked like, but since there were no other passengers aboard the Inco jet, he didn’t have any trouble spotting her. She turned out to be white, in her late thirties, with honey-blond hair showing darker roots. She was perhaps ten pounds overweight, and, as she came closer, Reuben could see that she clearly hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before.

  “Professor Vaughan,” Reuben said, offering his hand. “I’m Reuben Montego, the M.D. at the Creighton Mine. Thank you so very much for coming up.” He indicated the young woman he’d picked up on the way to the Sudbury airport. “This is Gillian Ricci, the press officer for Inco; she’s going to look after you.”

  Reuben thought Mary looked inordinately pleased to see the attractive young woman who was accompanying him; maybe the professor was a lesbian. He reached out to take the suitcase Mary was holding. “Here, let me help you.”

  Mary relinquished the bag, but she fell in beside Gillian, rather than Reuben, as they walked across the tarmac, the summer sun beating down. Reuben and Gillian were both wearing sunglasses; Mary was squinting against the brightness, evidently having forgotten to bring a pair.

  [131] When they arrived at Reuben’s wine-colored Ford Explorer, Gillian politely began to get in the backseat, but Mary spoke up. “No, I’ll sit there,” she said. “I—ah—I want to stretch out.”

  Her odd statement hung between them for a second, and then Reuben saw Gillian shrug a little and move up to the front passenger’s seat.

  They drove directly to St. Joseph’s Health Centre, on Paris Street, just past the snowflake-shaped museum Science North. Along the way, Reuben briefed Mary about the accident at SNO and the strange man who had been found.

  As they pulled into the hospital parking lot, Reuben saw three vans from local TV stations. Surely hospital security was keeping reporters away from Ponter, but, just as surely, the journalists would be following this story closely.

  When they arrived at Room 3-G, Ponter was standing up, looking out the window, his broad back to them. He was waving—and Reuben realized that TV cameras must be trained up at his window. A cooperative celebrity, thought Reuben. The media are going to love this guy.

  Reuben coughed politely, and Ponter turned around. He was backlit by the window and still hard to make out. But as he stepped forward, the doctor enjoyed watching Mary’s jaw drop when she got her first good look at the Neanderthal. She’d briefly seen Ponter on TV, she’d said, but that seemingly hadn’t prepared her for the reality.

  “So much for Carleton Coon,” Mary said, after apparently recovering her wits.

  “Say what?” said Reuben sharply.

  Mary looked puzzled, then flustered. “Oh, my, no. [132] Carleton Coon. He was an American anthropologist. He’s the guy who said if you dressed a Neanderthal up in a Brooks Brothers suit, he’d have no trouble passing for a regular human.”

  Reuben nodded. “Ah,” he said. Then: “Professor Mary Vaughan, I’d like you to meet Ponter.”

  “Hello,” said the female voice from Ponter’s implant.

  Reuben saw Mary’s eyes go wide. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “That thing on his wrist is talking.”

  “What is it?” asked Mary. “A talking watch?”

  “Much more.”

  Mary leaned in for a look. “I don’t recognize those numerals, if that’s what they are,” she said. “And—say—aren’t they changing too fast for seconds?”

  “You’ve got a good eye,” said Reuben. “Yeah, they are. The display uses ten distinct numerals, although none of them look like any I’ve ever seen. And I timed it: it increments every 0.86 seconds, which, if you work it out, is exactly one one-hundred-thousandth of a day. In other words, it’s a decimal-counting Earth-based time display. And, as you can see, it’s a very sophisticated device. That’s not an LCD; I don’t know what it is, but it’s readable no matter what angle you look at it or how much light is falling on it.”

  “My name is Hak,” said the implant on the strange man’s left wrist. “I am Ponter’s Companion.”

  “Ah,” said Mary, straightening up. “Um, glad to know you.”

  Ponter made a series of deep sounds that Mary couldn’t understand. Hak said, “Ponter is glad to know you, too.”

  [133] “We spent the morning having a language lesson,” said Reuben, looking now at Mary. “As you can see, we’ve made some real progress.”

  “Apparently,” said Mary, astonished.

  “Hak, Ponter,” said Reuben. “This is Gillian.”

  “Hello,” said Hak. Ponter nodded in agreement.

  “Hello,” said Gillian, trying, Reuben thought, to remain composed.

  “Hak is—well, I guess ‘computer’ is the right term. A talking, portable computer.” Reuben smiled. “Beats all hell out of my Palm Pilot.”

  “Does—does anyone make a device like that?” asked Gillian.

  “Not as far as I know,” said Reuben. “But she—Hak—has an apparently perfect memory. Tell her a word once, and she’s got it for good.”

  “And this man, this Ponter, he really doesn’t speak English?” asked Mary.

  “No,” said Reuben.

  “Incredible,” said Mary. “Incredible.”

  Ponter’s implant bleeped.

  “Incredible,” repeated Reuben, turning to Ponter. “It means not believable”—another bleep—“not true.” He faced Mary again. “We worked out the concepts of true and false using some simple math, but, as you can see, we’ve still got a ways to go. For one thing, although it clearly seems easier for Hak, with her perfect memory, to learn English, than for us to learn her language, neither she nor Ponter can make the ee sound, and—”

  “Really?” said Mary. She looked quite earnest, Reuben thought. He nodded.

  [134] “Your name is Mare,” said Hak, demonstrating the point. “Her name is Gillian.”

  “That’s—that’s amazing,” said Mary.

  “Is it?” said Reuben. “Why?”

  Mary took a deep breath. “There’s been a lot of debate over the years about whether Neanderthals could speak, and, if they could, what range of sounds they could have made.”

  “And?” said Reuben.

  “Some linguists think they couldn’t have made the ee phoneme, because their mouths would have been much longer than ours.”

  “So he is a Neanderthal!” declared Reuben.

  Mary took another breath, then let it slowly out. “Well, that’s what I’m here to find out, isn’t it?” She set down the small bag she’d been carrying and opened it up. She then pulled out a pair of latex gloves and snapped them on. Next, she removed a plastic jar full of cotton swabs and extracted one.

  “I need you to get him to open his mouth,” said Mary.

  Reuben nodded. “That one’s easy.” He turned to Ponter. “Ponter, open mouth.”

  There was a second’s lag—Hak, Reuben had learned, could convey the translation to Ponter without the others hearing it. Ponter rolled his continuous blond eyebrow up his browridge—quite a startling sight—as if surprised by the request, but did as he was asked.

  Reuben was astonished. He’d had a friend in high school who could stuff his own fist all the way into his mouth. But Ponter’s mouth went back so far and was so [135] capacious, he probably could have stuffed in not just his fist but a third of his forearm as well.

  Mary moved in tentatively and reached her swab into Ponter’s mouth, swiping it across the inside of his long, angled cheek. “Cells in the mouth slough off easily,” she said, by way of explanation, apparently noting Gillian’s quizzical expression. “It’s the simplest way to take a DNA specimen.” She pulled out the swab, immediately transferred it to a sterile container, sealed, then labeled the container, and said, “Okay, that’s all I n
eed.”

  Reuben smiled at Gillian, then at Mary. “Great,” he said. “When will we know for sure?”

  “Well, I’ve got to get back to Toronto, and—”

  “Of course, if you want,” said Reuben, “but, well, I called a friend of mine in Laurentian’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Laurentian’s a tiny university, but they’ve got a great lab that does contract DNA forensics work for the RCMP and the OPP. You could do your work there.”

  “Inco will certainly put you up at the Ramada,” added Gillian.

  Mary was clearly taken aback. “I ...” But then she seemed to reconsider. “Sure,” she said. “Sure, why not?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Now that Jasmel had agreed to speak on Adikor’s behalf, the next step should have been for him to take her out to the Rim and show her the scene of the so-called crime. But Adikor begged Jasmel’s indulgence for a daytenth or so, saying there was one more errand he had to run here in the Center.

  Ponter, of course, had had Klast as his woman-mate; Adikor remembered her fondly, and had been very sad when she’d died. But Adikor had a woman of his own, and she, wonderfully, was still very much alive. Adikor had known the lovely Lurt Fradlo as long as he’d known Ponter, and he and Lurt had one son, Dab, a 148. Still, despite knowing her that long, Adikor had only occasionally been to Lurt’s chemistry lab; after all, when Two became One, it was a holiday and nobody went to work. Fortunately, his Companion knew the way, and it directed him there.

  Lurt’s lab was made entirely of stone; although there was only a small chance of an explosion in any chemistry lab, safety dictated making the structure out of something that could contain blasts and fires.

  The front door to the lab building was open. Adikor walked in.

  [138] “Healthy day,” said a woman, doing, Adikor thought, an admirable job of hiding her surprise at seeing a man here at this time of month.

  “Healthy day,” replied Adikor. “I’m looking for Lurt Fradlo,”

  “She’s down that hall.”

  Adikor smiled and headed along the corridor. “Healthy day,” he called, as he stuck his head in the door to Lurt’s lab.

  Lurt turned around, a big grin on her lovely face. “Adikor!” She closed the distance between them and gave him a hug. “What a pleasant surprise!”

  Adikor couldn’t remember ever seeing Lurt during Last Five before. She seemed perfectly sane and rational—and so had Jasmel, for that matter. Maybe this whole Last Five thing was overblown in men’s minds ...

  “Hello, beautiful,” said Adikor, squeezing her again. “It’s good to see you.”

  But Lurt knew her man well. “Something’s wrong,” she said, releasing him. “What is it?”

  Adikor looked back over his shoulder, making sure they were alone. He then took Lurt’s hand and led her across the room to a couple of lab chairs next to a chart of the periodic table; the only other animate entities in the lab were a pair of spindly robots, one pouring liquid between beakers; another assembling a structure out of pipes and glassware. Adikor sat down, and Lurt took the seat next to him.

  “I’ve been accused of murdering Ponter,” he said.

  Lurt’s eyes went wide. “Ponter is dead?”

  [139] “I don’t know. He’s been missing since yesterday afternoon.”

  “I was at a flensing party last night,” said Lurt. “I hadn’t heard.”

  He told her the whole story. She was sympathetic, and never expressed disbelief in Adikor’s innocence; Lurt’s trust in him was something Adikor could always count on.

  “Would you like me to speak for you?” asked Lurt.

  Adikor looked away. “Well, that’s the thing. You see, I’ve already asked Jasmel.”

  Lurt nodded. “Ponter’s daughter. Yes, that would impress an adjudicator, I should think.”

  “That was my thought. I hope you don’t feel slighted.”

  She smiled. “No, no, of course not. But, look, if there’s anything else I can do to help ...”

  “Well, there is one thing,” said Adikor. He pulled a small vial out of his hip pouch. “This is a sample of a liquid I collected at the site of Ponter’s disappearance; there were buckets of it on the floor. Could you do an assay on it for me?”

  Lurt took the vial and held it up to the light. “Sure,” she said. “And if there’s anything else I can do, just ask.”

  Ponter’s daughter Jasmel accompanied Adikor back to the Rim. They went straight to the nickel mine; Adikor wanted to show Jasmel exactly where her father had disappeared. But when they got to the mineshaft-elevator station, Jasmel looked hesitant.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Adikor.

  [140] “I—um, I’ve got claustrophobia.”

  Adikor shook his head, confused. “No, you don’t. Ponter told me how when you were little, you liked to hide inside dobalak cubes. And he took you caving last tenmonth.”

  “Well, um ...” Jasmel trailed off.

  “Oh,” said Adikor, nodding his head, getting it. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “It’s just that ... well, my father was the last person to go down there with you. And he never came back up.”

  Adikor sighed, but he could see her point. Somebody—some private citizen—had to accuse Adikor of the crime, or the legal proceedings could not continue. Why, if he now got rid of Jasmel and Megameg and Bolbay, perhaps there would be no one left to press the accusation ...

  “We can get someone to go down with us,” said Adikor.

  Jasmel considered, but she, too, must have been thinking about how everything took on new significance during a time like this. Yes, she could ask for an escort—someone she really knew, someone she trusted implicitly. But that person might be called for questioning, too, if this went to a full tribunal. “Yes, adjudicators, I know that Jasmel is speaking on behalf of Adikor, but even she was too frightened of him to go down into the mine alone with him. And can you blame her? After what he did to her father?”

  Finally, though, she managed a small smile—a smile that reminded Adikor a bit of Ponter’s own. “No,” she said. “No, of course not. I’m just edgy, I guess.” She smiled more, making light of it. “It is that time of month, after all.”

  But as they approached the elevator station, a [141] particularly burly man emerged from behind it. “Stop right there, Scholar Huld,” he said.

  Adikor felt sure he’d never seen the man before in his life. “Yes?”

  “You’re thinking of going down to your lab?”

  “I am, yes. Who are you?”

  “Gaskdol Dut,” said the man. “My contribution is enforcement.”

  “Enforcement? Of what?”

  “Of your judicial scrutiny. I can’t let you go underground.”

  “Judicial scrutiny?” said Jasmel. “What’s that?”

  “It means,” said Dut, “that the transmissions from Scholar Huld’s Companion are being monitored directly by a living, breathing human being as they are received at the alibi-archive pavilion—and they will be so, ten tenths a day, twenty-nine days a month, until if and when his innocence is proven.”

  “I didn’t know you were allowed to do that,” said Adikor, shocked.

  “Oh, yes, indeed,” said Dut. “The moment Daklar Bolbay lodged her complaint against you, an adjudicator ordered you placed under judicial scrutiny.”

  “Why?” said Adikor, trying to control his anger.

  “Didn’t Bolbay transfer a document to you explaining this?” asked Dut. “An oversight, if she didn’t. Anyway, judicial scrutiny ensures that you don’t attempt to leave this jurisdiction, tamper with potential evidence, and so forth.”

  “But I’m not trying to do any of those things,” said Adikor. “Why won’t you let me go down to my lab?”

  Dut looked at Adikor as if he couldn’t believe the [142] question. “Why not? Because your Companion’s signals won’t be detectable from down there; we wouldn’t be able to keep you under scrutiny.”

  “Ma
rrowless bone,” said Adikor, softly.

  Jasmel crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I’m Jasmel Ket, and—”

  “I know who you are,” said the enforcer.

  “Well, then, you know that Ponter Boddit was my father.”

  The enforcer nodded.

  “This man is trying to rescue him. You have to let him go down to his lab.”

  Dut shook his head in astonishment. “This man is accused of killing your father.”

  “But it’s possible he didn’t,” said Jasmel. “My father might still be alive. The only way to find out is to repeat the quantum-computing experiment.”

  “I don’t know anything about quantum experiments,” said Dut.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” said Adikor.

  “My, you are a mouthy one, aren’t you?” said Dut, looking Adikor up and down. “Anyway, my orders are simple. Keep you from leaving Saldak, and keep you from going to your lab. And I received a call from the alibi-archive pavilion saying you were heading off to do precisely that.”

  “I have to go down there,” said Adikor.

  “Sorry,” said Dut, crossing his own massive arms in front of his massive chest. “Not only can’t you be monitored from down there, but you might try to get rid of evidence that hasn’t yet been found.”

  Jasmel did indeed have her father’s quickness of mind. [143] “There’s nothing preventing me from going down to the lab, is there? I’m not under judicial scrutiny.”

  Dut considered this. “No, I suppose not.”

  “All right,” said Jasmel, turning now to Adikor. “Tell me what to do to try to bring my father back.”

  Adikor shook his head. “It’s not that easy. The equipment is very complex, and, since Ponter and I assembled it ourselves, half the control buds aren’t even labeled.”

  Jasmel was clearly frustrated. She looked at the big man. “Well, what if you went down with us? You’d be able to see what Adikor was doing.”

  “Go down there?” Dut laughed. “You want me to go to the one place my Companion can’t be monitored—and to do so with a person who may well have committed murder there previously? You’re ruffling my back hair.”