CRO-MAGNON (65 page)

“
You’ve force-grown the boy and tried to upload his memories,” he said. Merely uttering the words frightened him. Of course, the wolf had turned out all right as far as they could tell, although Mathiessen’s worldwide responsibilities had kept him from visiting the animal. It lived with Murzo and his wife and baby, and apparently was healthy. But no one knew whether it remembered its previous life of thirty thousand years ago.

“
We didn’t ‘try’ to upload. Caitlin’s blue eyes danced. “We uploaded. The algorithms show full brain function. It’s going to work, Rolf.”

“
How do you know? The wolf . . .”

She nodded at Ayni, who gave a low whistle. Mathiessen heard toenails clicking beyond a doorway. He turned and watched a full-grown gray wolf burst through the entrance, trot into the lab, and sit by Ayni’s side with its long tongue lolling.

Mathiessen peered at the animal, with its unusual yellowish ruff. “He looks younger than the wolf in the cave photos.”

“
He was getting on,” Caitlin said. “So we cheated a bit. We grew him to young adulthood, then brain-loaded and energized him.”

“
That didn’t cause a mismatch?”

“
Didn’t seem to. We tried it mice first, and it worked.

Mathiessen sighed.
One departure after another.

“
The idea wasn’t entirely altruistic,” Henrik Volker said from his work table. “We didn’t want him so old we’d have to keep re-cloning.”

“
I’m surprised the ruff replicated.” Mathiessen peered at the animal. “Isn’t the phenotype partially a product of environment as well as genotype?”

“‘
Partially’ is the operative word,” Blaine said. “In this case, the genes prevailed.”

Ayni said, “Come, wolf.” He glanced around. “Farrin and I have not named him. We are waiting for the boy.”

Stepping to the covered form on the gurney, he whipped back the sheet and plucked off the face mask to reveal a young man clad in white shorts, twin wires taped to his temples. Mathiessen saw that he possessed unusually robust bones and muscles, a large nose and prominent chin, and a pronounced brow ridge under a high forehead.

He could also see the barrel chest rising and falling. “You said he was in his early teens?” he said, all thought of professional ridicule and financial ruin forgotten.

“
That’s what we assumed, judging from his size, cranial and dental development, and muscularity,” Blaine said. “But the length of his chromosomal telomeres placed him at about twelve, so that’s the age we grew him to.”

Gazing at the mixed Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal features, Mathiessen was gripped by awe tinged with fright. The boy seemed a superlative physical specimen, with a large braincase and the muscularity of a champion weightlifter. But exactly what did Caitlin’s allusion to ‘full brain function’ signify? Had the synaptic signals comprising his memories been correctly quantified, digitalized, and stored? Had they been uploaded faithfully, and had the brain correctly synthesized them?

The wolf had become agitated. He reared up, placed his paws on the gurney, and sniffed the boy’s face, all the while whining anxiously, his bushy tail twitching in frantic mini-wags. A long tongue flicked out and lapped the boy’s face.

“
Tell me he doesn’t remember,” Caitlin said.

Mathiessen stared at the intimate drama. “My God,” he said. “It actually worked.” He glanced up, his earlier anger at Caitlin jumping the gun fading away

“
You may invoke God if you wish,” Volker said without looking up from his printout. “But please give some credit to neuroscience.”

“
And programing,” Peter Golub said from his console. “Plus the miracle of modern scientific instruments.”

“
Enough chitchat,” Caitlin said. “Now for the proof.” She indicated the boy’s motionless figure. “We loaded the memories over the past few weeks, one bit at a time, and I’ve raised the body temperature to thirty-seven degrees Celsius. Physically, he is fully functional. We have only to administer a mild shock to the brain.”

Reaching up, she twisted a knob on the overhead console, her gaze flicking from a digital readout to the boy’s anachronistic face. At first there was no response, and Mathiessen held his breath. Then the sturdy arms and legs began to twitch, and he could sense eyeballs moving rapidly beneath deep-set lids.

“
Rapid-eye-movement sleep,” Caitlin said, “indicating the subject is dreaming.”

Mathiessen leaned closer. “It looks out of control. Are you sure that’s not the brain firing the kind of distress signals that make people see a white light just before clinical death?”

“
We were afraid of that too, when the wolf did it,” Caitlin said. “But apparently, the growling and snarling and the twitching of his legs and jaws indicated he was re-living his final experience in compressed time, as in any dream. Since his REM lasted considerably longer than a mouse’s, we can probably expect an even more extensive re-living by the boy, before he wakes.”

#

The flat-nose fish, primitive-looking and as long as a man, thrashed inside the weir of braided birch branches. Brann thought the bottom-feeder, with its toothless mouth and snake-like tail, was about the ugliest creature he had seen in his half-score-plus-two seasons. It must be almost as heavy as he was, and looked as if it should live in a swampier place than a fast-flowing river in mountain country.

But as repulsive as it looked, he knew its flesh would be tasty. Particularly after they smoked it the way his
mator
had learned at the Tribe of the Twin Rivers. The thought brought a pleasant thrill. The family was planning a trip next summer to visit both the clan and the tribe so that he might begin to meet some young women, and he wondered what both peoples would be like.

“
On my command,” Gar said, and Brann positioned his bare feet on the muddy bottom opposite the bony plates that commenced forward of the whipping tail, while Gar slid his hands under the flattened snout.

“
Now.”

They scooped the creature out of the water, waded to the bank with the wriggling burden, and deposited it on the dock that he and Gar had built of river rocks the previous year to fish from on their occasional trips from the cave. Brann scrambled out of the cold water and reached for his deerskin shirt, fox-fur leggings, and argal parka. The squirming flat-nose found purchase on a block of white crystal that Gar had inset to mark the dock from a distance, and almost flopped back into the water before Brann flipped him farther onto the shore. Starting to don his grass-filled mukluks, he glanced at Gar, who did not seem to mind the cold and was ignoring his bearskin parka.

“
Shall we fillet it here?” he said. The mountain containing their cave was a long day’s journey, even without a burden. They had come to the river the previous day to hunt pigs, but had not found any. However, while spearing river trout for breakfast, they had noticed flat-noses in water too deep for spearing but not too far out to build a trap, and Gar had decided to construct a weir off the end of the dock.

This had proved a good idea. Now, since fish did not keep as well as pig meat, they needed to open the weir and start home.

Gar shook his head. “Ice start melt. Dress fish take time.”

Brann knew he was worried about the spring melt cascading blocks of ice onto the trail.

Unslinging his oak club, Gar whacked the fish between its small eyes, ending its struggles. “Gut here. Ice at pass.”

Their family of three normally conversed in the language of Leya’s tribe, but Gar had stubbornly retained his clan’s abbreviated and gesture-heavy way of speaking, plus a few of their guttural words. Brann knew that his
fator
meant they would freeze the fish when they reached the ice-river that clogged the pass year-round, and fillet it at home.

Finished lacing his footgear, he stood and reached for his antler-and-flint hunting knife, then his bone-tipped javelin, longer and slimmer than Gar’s spear. He knew they would use the javelin to spit the flat-nose for easy transport, reserving Gar’s stone-tipped weapon to fend any attacks by large animals.

#

As Gar had predicted, the return trip proved arduous due to ice-falls that blocked the trail. Despite a forced march, they failed to reach home before the moon set that night. They camped in a low cave, reached via a rocky ridge by a crouching-leopard rock, that Gar sometimes used when hunting argal. Brann had dulled his knife gutting the flat-nose, and he rummaged among the implements on a rock shelf at the rear and selected a blunt-edged knapper. Gar used his sparking-stones to start a small fire and they cooked a chunk of fish before flopping down exhausted.

Late the following morning, they reached their valley.
Fel, having been left behind to guard Leya, met them before they came within sight of the elevated tunnel leading from the steep mountainside to their cave.

Seeing the wolf’s rheumy eyes, Brann thought that he would not live many more seasons. He vowed to make them happy ones.

They tramped on, skirted a spine of rock, and found Leya digging for roots by the stream.
At sight of the gutted flat-nose, she grinned.

“
I was digging carrots to cook with the meat. But that’s a strange-looking pig.”

Gar smiled, and Brann said, “One takes what comes,
Ma.
”

After negotiating the ascending tunnel that insulated the cave from the region’s harsh weather, Brann lit the lamp with a coal, laid an extra wick of twisted cattail fiber in the burning fat, and set to work. He used a wood paddle to transfer live coals from the hearth to the fire pit, took rock salt from a niche under the nearest panel of Leya’s life-paintings, and rummaged in a split-willow basket for a comb of honey.

Leya used her obsidian kitchen knife to remove the head, tail, fins, and bony plates from the flat-nose, then began to fillet thin strips while Gar used his unhafted flint knife to shave chips from a birch log. He had never taken to using a wood or bone handle, seeming to prefer his people’s broad blade with flattened back.

Brann rubbed each strip of flesh with honey and salt before laying it on the smoldering coals. When smoke from the birch chips began to mingle with that of the grilling fish, he thought that life didn’t get better than this.

Strangely, he was unable to smell the aroma, which he knew to be rich and pungent. Perhaps he had caught a cold in the river, he thought, although his nose was not plugged.

No matter. He rubbed another strip with salt, coated it with honey, and laid it on the coals. Yes, life was good.

Fel, sleeping by the hearth, opened his eyes and raised his grizzled head. Brann peered into the dim tunnel, which admitted only a hint of daylight because of two jogs part way in. At first he saw nothing. Then a dark shape rose from the floor, its shadowy form unmistakable. Fel’s growl echoed through the cave, and Brann’s heart leaped.

“
Lion,” he shouted, and heard Leya gasp. The aroma of the cooking fish had attracted the cave lion, he realized, while preventing Fel from smelling the animal. He drew a breath to shout again, but Gar was already at his side, his heavy spear braced in both hands.

“
Guard Leya,” he said. “Leya scoop coals.”

They had never encountered a dangerous animal, let alone a cave lion, in quarters too close for maneuvering, and Brann knew they were in trouble. As the lion’s roar shook the cave, he crouched beside Leya, javelin in hand, while his
mator
balanced a paddleful of coals.

Gar shouted, “Go away lion!” in the guttural tongue of the clan, and Brann watched the powerful man brandish his heavy-duty spear
.
The lion roared again, the lower registers rattling Brann’s bones and disorienting his thoughts.

Gar shook his spear, and shouted, “Now Leya.”

A paddleful of coals showered the lion’s face, but he only blinked and shook his muzzle. The next roar ended in a throaty cough, and the animal sprang.

Brann saw Gar lunge forward and ram his spear at the tawny beast’s throat as Fel leaped for the same spot. With a double motion too quick to follow, the big cat batted the man’s shaft aside, swiped at the wolf, and continued its lunge.

As Gar jumped back, the lion swiped again. As massive as Gar’s neck was, it proved no match for the lion’s curved claws, and Brann saw his
fator
pitch backward, a bloody mess of muscle, flesh, and tendons gaping where his throat had been.

The animal padded forward, Fel hanging from its neck, and Brann could see that the wolf’s ribs were crushed. Still, Fel held his grip, trying to shut off the animal’s air.

Leya scooped again with the paddle, and another cloud of glowing coals bounced off the lion’s snout. It vented its rage and lunged at her. Brann tried to shield her and jab at the same time but the lion snapped at him and he felt his left jaw being crushed before he was flung aside. He saw the intruder slap Leya back as easily as he would have batted her little ivory earth-
mator.
Skidding along the cave floor, she lay still. He watched blood gush over her tunic and saw a ragged crater where her chest had been, one breast torn away. In the next instant her blood stopped pulsing.