Iterations Read online

  I was amazed by the results. If I hadn’t cheated, I might never have figured it out—it was a damn-near perfect crime.

  But it all fit, after seeing what was in the male DNA.

  The fact that of the surviving Hissocks, only Rodger apparently had free access to Skye’s inner office.

  The fact that Rodger’s blaster was the murder weapon.

  The fact that there were apparently only two people using the bathroom.

  The fact that Skye hated confrontation.

  The fact that the Hissock-Connolly family had a lot of money they wanted to pass on to the next generation.

  The fact that young Glen looked just like his dad, but was subdued and reserved.

  The fact that Glen had gone to a different soothsayer.

  The fact that Rodger’s taste in receptionists was…unusual.

  The pieces all fit—that part of my sooth, at least, must have been read correctly; I was good at puzzling things out. But I was still amazed by how elegant it was.

  Ray Chen would sort out the legalities; he was an expert at that kind of thing. He’d find a way to smooth over my unauthorized soothsaying before we brought this to trial.

  I got in a cab and headed off to Wheel Three to confront the killer.

  “Hold it right there,” I said, coming down the long, gently curving corridor at Francis Crick. “You’re under arrest.”

  Glen Hissock stopped dead in his tracks. “What for?”

  I looked around, then drew Glen into an empty classroom. “For the murder of your uncle, Skye Hissock. Or should I say, for the murder of your brother? The semantics are a bit tricky.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Glen, in that subdued, nervous voice of his.

  I shook my head. Soothsayer Skye had deserved punishment, and his brother Rodger was guilty of a heinous crime—in fact, a crime Mendelian society considered every bit as bad as murder. But I couldn’t let Glen get away with it. “I’m sorry for what happened to you,” I said. The mental scars no doubt explained his sullen, withdrawn manner.

  He glared at me. “Like that makes it better.”

  “When did it start?”

  He was quiet for a time, then gave a little shrug, as if realizing there was no point in pretending any longer. “When I was twelve—as soon as I entered puberty. Not every night, you understand. But often enough.” He paused, then: “How’d you figure it out?”

  I decided to tell him the truth. “There are only two different sets of DNA in your house—one female, as you’d expect, and just one male.”

  Glen said nothing.

  “I had the male DNA read. I was looking for a trait that might have provided a motive for your father. You know what I found.”

  Glen was still silent.

  “When your dad’s sooth was read just after birth, maybe his parents were told that he was sterile. Certainly the proof is there, in his DNA: an inability to produce viable sperm.” I paused, remembering the details Rundstedt had explained to me. “But the soothsayer back then couldn’t have known the effect of having the variant form of gene ABL-419d, with over a hundred T-A-T repeats. That variation’s function hadn’t been identified that long ago. But it was known by the time Rodger turned eighteen, by the time he went to see his big brother Skye, by the time Skye gave him his adult soothsaying.” I paused. “But Uncle Skye hated confrontation, didn’t he?”

  Glen was motionless, a statue.

  “And so Skye lied to your dad. Oh, he told him about his sterility, all right, but he figured there was no point in getting into an argument about what that variant gene meant.”

  Glen looked at the ground. When at last he did speak, his voice was bitter. “I had thought Dad knew. I confronted him—Christ sakes, Dad, if you knew you had a gene for incestuous pedophilia, why the hell didn’t you seek counseling? Why the hell did you have kids?”

  “But your father didn’t know, did he?”

  Glen shook his head. “That bastard Uncle Skye hadn’t told him.”

  “In fairness,” I said, “Skye probably figured that since your father couldn’t have kids, the problem would never come up. But your dad made a lot of money, and wanted it to pass to an heir. And since he couldn’t have an heir the normal way…”

  Glen’s voice was full of disgust. “Since he couldn’t have an heir the normal way, he had one made.”

  I looked the boy up and down. I’d never met a clone before. Glen really was the spitting image of the old man—a chip off the old block. But like any dynasty, the Hissock-Connolly clan wanted not just an heir, but an heir and a spare. Little Billy, ten years younger than Glen, was likewise an exact genetic duplicate of Rodger Hissock, produced from Rodger’s DNA placed into one of Rebecca’s eggs. All three Hissock males had indeed left DNA in that bathroom—exactly identical DNA.

  “Have you always known you were a clone?” I asked.

  Glen shook his head. “I only just found out. Before I went for my adult soothsaying, I wanted to see the report my parents had gotten when I was born. But none existed—my dad had decided to save some money. He didn’t need a new report done, he figured; my sooth would be identical to his, after all. When I went to get my sooth read and found that I was sterile, well, it all fell into place in my mind.”

  “And so you took your father’s blaster, and, since your DNA is the same as his…”

  Glen nodded slowly. His voice was low and bitter. “Dad never knew in advance what was wrong with him—never had a chance to get help. Uncle Skye never told him. Even after Dad had himself cloned, Skye never spoke up.” He looked at me, fury in his cold gray eyes. “It doesn’t work, dammit—our whole way of life doesn’t work if a soothsayer doesn’t tell the truth. You can’t play the hand you’re dealt if you don’t know what cards you’ve got. Skye deserved to die.”

  “And you framed your dad for it. You wanted to punish him, too.”

  Glen shook his head. “You don’t understand, man. You can’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “I didn’t want to punish Dad—I wanted to protect Billy. Dad can afford the best damn lawyer in Mendelia. Oh, he’ll be found guilty, sure, but he won’t get life. His lawyer will cut it down to the minimum mandatory sentence for murder, which is—”

  “Ten years,” I said, realization dawning. “In ten years, Billy will be an adult—and out of danger from Rodger.”

  Glen nodded once.

  “But Rodger could have told the truth at any time—revealed that you were a clone of him. If he’d done that, he would have gotten off, and suspicion would have fallen on you. How did you know he wasn’t going to speak up?”

  Glen sounded a lot older than his eighteen years. “If Dad exposed me, I’d expose him—and the penalty for child molestation is also a minimum ten years, so he’d be doing the time anyway.” He looked directly at me. “Except being a murderer gets you left alone in jail, and being a pedophile gets you wrecked up.”

  I nodded, led him outside, and hailed a robocab.

  Mendelia is a great place to live, honest.

  And, hell, I did solve the crime, didn’t I? Meaning I am a good detective. So I guess my soothsayer didn’t lie to me.

  At least—at least I hope not…

  I had a sudden cold feeling that the SG would stop footing the bill long before this case could come to public trial.

  Peking Man

  Winner of the Aurora Award

  for Best Short Story of the Year

  Author’s Introduction

  Ed Kramer wanted to do an anthology in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of a particular literary character. That character wasn’t one I was fascinated with, but I did have a lifelong interest in paleoanthropology, although at this point, I’d never written any fiction on that theme (later, I went on to write a trilogy about Neanderthals). But having recently looked at a picture of a Chinese Homo erectus skull, and having thought, gee, those perfect, square teeth must be fake, an idea occurred to me that
I thought might be right for Ed’s book.

  To my delight, Ed used this story as the lead piece in his anthology (editors usually put what they consider to be the best stories in the first and last slots). I occasionally think about expanding the premise of this story into a novel; perhaps someday I will.

  Peking Man

  The lid was attached to the wooden crate with eighteen nails. The return address, in blue ink on the blond wood, said, “Sender: Dept. of Anatomy, P.U.M.C., Peking, China.” The destination address, in larger letters, was:

  Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews

  The American Museum of Natural History

  Central Park West at 79th Street

  New York, N.Y. U.S.A.

  The case was marked “Fragile!” and “REGISTERED” and “Par Avion.” A brand had burned the words “Via Hongkong and by U.S. Air Service” into the wood.

  Andrews had waited anxiously for this arrival. Between 1922 and 1930, he himself had led the now-famous Gobi Desert expeditions, searching for the Asian cradle of humanity. Although he’d brought back untold scientific riches—including the first-ever dinosaur eggs—Andrews had failed to discover a single ancient human remain.

  But now a German scientist, Franz Weidenreich, had shipped to him a treasure trove from the Orient: the complete fossil remains of Sinanthropus pekinensis. In this very crate were the bones of Peking Man.

  Andrews was actually salivating as he used a crowbar to pry off the lid. He’d waited so long for these, terrified that they wouldn’t survive the journey, desperate to see what humanity’s forefathers had looked like, anxious—

  The lid came off. The contents were carefully packed in smaller cardboard boxes. He picked one up and moved over to his cluttered desk. He swept the books and papers to the floor, laid down the box, and opened it. Inside was a ball of rice paper, wrapped around a large object. Andrews carefully unwrapped the sheets, and—

  White.

  White?

  No—no, it couldn’t be.

  But it was. It was a skull, certainly—but not a fossil skull. The material was bright white.

  And it didn’t weigh nearly enough.

  A plaster cast. Not the original at all.

  Andrews opened every box inside the wooden crate, his heart sinking as each new one yielded its contents. In total, there were fourteen skulls and eleven jawbones. The skulls were subhuman, with low foreheads, prominent brow ridges, flat faces, and the most unlikely looking perfect square teeth. Amazingly, each of the skull casts also showed clear artificial damage to the foramen magnum.

  Oh, some work could indeed be done on these casts, no doubt. But where were the original fossils? With the Japanese having invaded China, surely they were too precious to be left in the Far East. What was Weidenreich up to?

  Fire.

  It was like a piece of the sun, brought down to earth. It kept the tribe warm at night, kept the saber-toothed cats away—and it did something wonderful to meat, making it softer and easier to chew; while at the same time restoring the warmth the flesh had had when still part of the prey.

  Fire was the most precious thing the tribe owned. They’d had it for eleven summers now, ever since Bok the brave had brought out a burning stick from the burning forest. The glowing coals were always fanned, always kept alive.

  And then, one night, the Stranger came—tall, thin, pale, with red-rimmed eyes that somehow seemed to glow from beneath his brow ridge.

  The Stranger did the unthinkable, the unforgivable.

  He doused the flames, throwing a gourd full of water on to the fire. The logs hissed, and steam rose up into the blackness. The children of the tribe began to cry; the adults quaked with fury. The Stranger turned and walked into the darkness. Two of the strongest hunters ran after him, but his long legs had apparently carried him quickly away.

  The sounds of the forest grew closer—the chirps of insects, the rustling of small animals in the vegetation, and—

  A flapping sound.

  The Stranger was gone.

  And the silhouette of a bat fluttered briefly in front of the waning moon.

  Franz Weidenreich had been born in Germany in 1873. A completely bald, thickset man, he had made a name for himself as an expert in hematology and osteology. He was currently Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago, but that was coming to an end, and now he was faced with the uncomfortable prospect of having to return to Nazi Germany—something, as a Jew, he desperately wanted to avoid.

  And then word came of the sudden death of the Canadian paleontologist Davidson Black. Black had been at the Peking Union Medical College, studying the fragmentary remains of early man being recovered from the limestone quarry at Chou Kou Tien. Weidenreich, who once made a study of Neanderthal bones found in Germany, had read Black’s papers in Nature and Science describing Sinanthropus.

  But now, at fifty, Black was as dead as his fossil charges—an unexpected heart attack. And, to Weidenreich’s delight, the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation wanted him to fill Black’s post. China was a strange, foreboding place—and tensions between the Chinese and the Japanese were high—but it beat all hell out of returning to Hitler’s Germany…

  At night, most of the tribe huddled under the rocky overhang or crawled into the damp, smelly recesses of the limestone cave. Without the fire to keep animals away, someone had to stand watch each night, armed with a large branch and a pile of rocks for throwing. Last night, it had been Kart’s turn. Everyone had slept welly for Kart was the strongest member of the tribe. They knew they were safe from whatever lurked in the darkness.

  When daybreak came, the members of the tribe were astounded. Kart had fallen asleep. They found him lying in the dirty next to the cold, black pit where their fire had once been. And on Kart’s neck there were two small red-rimmed holes, staring up at them like the eyes of the Stranger…

  During his work on hematology, Weidenreich had met a remarkable man named Brancusi—gaunt, pale, with disconcertingly sharp canine teeth. Brancusi suffered from a peculiar anemia, which Weidenreich had been unable to cure, and an almost pathological photophobia. Still, the gentleman was cultured and widely read, and Weidenreich had ever since maintained a correspondence with him.

  When Weidenreich arrived in Peking, work was still continuing at the quarry. So far, only teeth and fragments of skull had been found. Davidson Black had done a good job of cataloging and describing some of the material, but as Weidenreich went through the specimens he was surprised to discover a small collection of sharp, pointed fossil teeth.

  Black had evidently assumed they weren’t part of the Sinanthropus material, as he hadn’t included them in his descriptions. And, at first glance, Black’s assessment seemed correct—they were far longer than normal human canines, and much more sharply pointed. But, to Weidenreich’s eye, the root pattern was possibly hominid. He dropped a letter to his friend Brancusi, half-joking that he’d found Brancusi’s great-to-the-nth grandfather in China.

  To Weidenreich’s infinite surprise, within weeks Brancusi had arrived in Peking.

  Each night, another member of the tribe stood watch—and each morning, that member was found unconscious, with a pair of tiny wounds to his neck.

  The tribe members were terrified. Soon multiple guards were posted each night, and, for a time, the happenings ceased.

  But then something even more unusual happened…

  They were hunting deer. It would not be the same, not without fire to cook the meat, but, still, the tribe needed to eat. Four men, Kart included, led the assault. They moved stealthily amongst the tall grasses, tracking a large buck with a giant rack of antlers. The hunters communicated by sign language, carefully coordinating their movements, closing in on the animal from both sides.

  Kart raised his right arm, preparing to signal the final attack, when—

  —a streak of light brown, slicing through the grass—

  —fangs flashing, the roar of the giant cat, the stag bolting away, and then�
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  —Kart’s own scream as the saber-tooth grabbed hold of his thigh and shook him viciously.

  The other three hunters ran as fast as they could, desperate to get away. They didn’t stop to look back, even when the cat let out the strangest yelp…

  That night, the tribe huddled together and sang songs urging Kart’s soul a safe trip to heaven.

  One of the Chinese laborers found the first skull. Weidenreich was summoned at once. Brancusi still suffered from his photophobia, and apparently had never adjusted to the shift in time zones—he slept during the day. Weidenreich thought about waking him to see this great discovery, but decided against it.

  The skull was still partially encased in the limestone muck at the bottom of the cave. It had a thick cranial wall and a beetle brow—definitely a more primitive creature than Neanderthal, probably akin to Solo Man or Java Man…

  It took careful work to remove the skull from the ground, but, when it did come free, two astonishing things became apparent.

  The loose teeth Davidson Black had set aside had indeed come from the hominids here: this skull still had all its upper teeth intact, and the canines were long and pointed.

  Second, and even more astonishing, was the foramen magnum—the large opening in the base of the skull through which the spinal cord passes. It was clear from its chipped, frayed margin that this individual’s foramen magnum had been artificially widened—

  —meaning he’d been decapitated, and then had something shoved up into his brain through the bottom of his skull.

  Five hunters stood guard that night. The moon had set, and the great sky river arched high over head. The Stranger returned—but this time, he was not alone. The tribesmen couldn’t believe their eyes. In the darkness, it looked like—

  It was. Kart.

  But—but Kart was dead. They’d seen the saber-tooth take him.

  The Stranger came closer. One of the men lifted a rock, as if to throw it at him, but soon he let the rock drop from his hand. It fell to the ground with a dull thud.