Galapagos Regained (57 page)

“Newly escaped from Lucifer's zoo,” declared Clarence the usurer.

“The epochs roll by,” intoned Chloe as the cleavewives displayed the iguanas to the jurymen. “In time the animals we now call reptiles emerge from some amphibian stock or other. More epochs roll by. On the Galápagos archipelago, two distinct sorts of terrestrial iguana appear. A question springs to mind. What manner of capricious and possibly unhinged God would make a bright yellow, flat-spined iguana for most of these islands and a sallow gray, high-spined kind for Barrington alone? Rather than appealing to a fanciful deity, I believe we should instead trace
both
varieties back to a common ancestor. Allow me to posit a colony of Ecuadorian or Peruvian lizards who, millions of years ago, were blown into the sea by a storm, subsequently traveling to the Encantadas on uprooted trees or mats of floating vegetation.”

“I'm told such natural barges have been observed riding the Humboldt Current,” said Mr. Chadwick.

“Although most of the immigrant lizards transmuted into the pervasive flat-spined type,” said Chloe, “their isolated cousins on Barrington became a species unto themselves.” Once more she clapped. “Marine iguanas!”

Three pairs of aquatic lizards came creeping into the tabernacle, connected by leather leashes to Constance, Charity, and the pregnant Ruth. The cleavewives perambulated the creatures before the jury box as a servant might walk his master's dogs through Kensington Gardens. The multicoloreds, the blacks, and the local reds all looked equally miserable, a symptom no doubt of their being so far from their beloved surf.

“Why would the Almighty place a gaudy species of marine iguana on Narborough Isle”—Chloe pointed to the exemplar in question—“a dark species on Tower”—again she pointed—“and crimson ones here on Charles, even as He whimsically decided against installing aquatic iguanas anywhere else on planet Earth? The answer is that God had no hand in the matter. Go fossil hunting in South America, and you'll find evidence of a land-bound reptile whose evolutionary descendants would ultimately include
every
type of Encantadas iguana, aquatic as well as terrestrial.”

Suddenly all eight lizards grew obstreperous, hissing and snorting with reptilian discontent. The jurors engaged in a synchronous cringe. The iguanas' respective keepers hustled them out of the tabernacle. Rebecca and Hagar retrieved the puffer-fish and likewise exited.

“Miss Bathurst—since that is apparently your real name—Miss Bathurst, I gotta put a question to you,” said Eggwort. “How in the world could so many sorts of bird and beast spring from a process of such blind and arbitrary randomness?”

“I was coming to that.”

“You're not an easy gal to stump, but I'm a-tryin',” said Eggwort.

“I bid Your Honor consider how our forefathers turned a single species, the wolf, into dozens of dog breeds,” said Chloe. “Or consider the many sorts of modified pigeon thriving everywhere in Christendom. Or consider the livestock your subjects brought with them here to Charles Isle. Through the application of selective breeding principles, a Duntopian could in time create a woollier sheep or a more fecund goat or a fatter pig. Of course, unlike dog breeders, pigeon fanciers, and pig farmers, Nature does not traffic in intention—and there's the rub, Your Honor: she doesn't need to.”

“If Nature was here in this courtroom,” said Eggwort, “she wouldn't like the way you're presumin' to speak fer her.”

Rolling the essay into a tube, Chloe thrust it towards the jury box. “Instead of a conscious will, Nature boasts a workshop filled with the tools of transmutation—not only the erotic urges exploited by breeders but also incalculable quantities of death, countless episodes of extinction, myriad modes of isolation, and vast tracts of time. By incessantly wielding these five implements, Nature has unwittingly sculpted what Mr. Caedmon calls ‘endless forms most beautiful.'” She whistled sharply. “Tortoises!”

For the first time since it was built, or so Chloe assumed, three giant tortoises entered the tabernacle. Eyes fixed on the jury box, Rebecca, Constance, and Sarah shuffled across the room carrying the saddleback male. Per the instructions on his bestiary page, the tortoise bore a prickly-pear cactus, the earthenware pot balanced atop his carapace like Miss Annie riding about the Down House vivarium. To Miriam, Hagar, and Charity had fallen the task of transporting the massive domeshelled female, the women gasping and groaning as they set the creature before the twelve. Finally, the Huancabamba tortoise team—Ascumiche, Yitogua, Rapra—appeared hauling the slopeback male, having evidently crossed to Charles in one of their outrigger canoes so they could spare Naomi and the other two pregnant cleavewives the effort of moving the beast.

Invited by Mr. Chadwick to talk about the tortoises, Chloe argued that they were descended from a small, vanished, domeshelled species that had long ago arrived from the mainland on seaweed rafts. Thus far, the crude carapace of the James Isle specimen had not hindered her, food being plentiful on her native formation. Here on Charles, however, her igloo-shaped shell would prove maladaptive.

“Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the island on which we stand was lush,” she elaborated. “But then, like all environments, it began to change, nutritious vegetation becoming increasingly rare. Even as many of the domeshelled tortoises on Charles starved and went extinct, the descendants of the surviving descendants of
their
surviving descendants evolved the type of flared carapace you see before you.”

Extending her right hand, Chloe snapped her fingers and pointed to the saddleback exhibit. Léourier removed the potted cactus from atop the tortoise and set it on the floor. As if responding to a theatre director's cue, the animal stretched out his serpentine neck and began feasting on the higher pads. Sodden clots of green mash dribbled from his jaws.

“Thanks to the arch in his shell, our saddleback friend can elevate his head and reach the upper fruits,” said Chloe.

“And what of the third type of tortoise?” asked Mr. Chadwick.

“If his homeland loses its flora,” said Chloe, “this Indefatigable slopeback and his immediate kin will probably disappear, though perhaps his descendants' descendants' descendants will transmute into saddlebacks.” Again she whistled. “Birds!”

Leaving the tortoises in place, the Indians exited the courtroom, as did Rebecca and the other cleavewives. Eggwort's entire harem appeared in a trice with a dozen bamboo birdcages, stacking them before the jury box in a chirping, tweeting, trilling pyramid. Chloe proceeded to discourse on the feathered exhibits, making the same points she'd overheard during the momentous Down House luncheon. How the four distinct species found within the mockingbird group bespoke a common ancestor, a principle that also applied to the three species of flycatcher and the half-dozen species of finch. How individual birds accidentally gifted with advantageous tails and wings enjoyed procreative success, likewise those favored with felicitous bills (certain forms being well suited to penetrating cactus fruit, others to cracking seeds, still others to tweezing insects), whilst the poorly endowed went extinct. How the progenitor of
all
the world's birds had not arrived full-blown upon the face of the Earth but had itself descended from a beaked, egg-laying, featherless, wingless creature of reptilian pedigree.

“The jury is eager to learn whether the theory of natural selection applies to our own species,” said Mr. Chadwick.

“No, we're not,” said Nathan the pickpocket.

“Mr. Caedmon is hardly the first scientist to remark on a physical resemblance between apes and humans,” said Chloe. “Squint, and a marmoset looks remarkably like a marquis. According to evolutionary theory, if we follow certain particular limbs on the Tree of Life back far enough in time we'll encounter an extinct, hairy, four-legged, forest-dwelling, tail-sporting beast whose offspring's offspring's offspring will one day find themselves walking the Earth not only as apes and monkeys but also as the animal called
Homo sapiens
.” Once more she whistled. “Bones!”

Pregnant Naomi marched into the tabernacle bearing Chloe's requested skull and the collateral spinal-column segment. Like a relic monger exhibiting bits of saints to prospective customers, Naomi paraded the bones before the jurymen, then deposited them on the defense table.

“Mr. Caedmon contends that our skeletons reveal signs of an extinct ancestor held in common by today's apes and men.” Brandishing the spinal-column segment like Pirate Anne wielding a cutlass, Chloe indicated the nethermost vertebra: a narrow, tapered, dagger-like vestige. “Behold the human coccyx, a small but graphic reminder of our descent from creatures that had tails.”

“I never had a tail,” protested Clarence the usurer.

“My uncle did,” said George the train robber.

“Now consider those implements with which we chew our food.” Chloe slipped her index finger beneath her upper lip, sliding it back and forth. “Run a finger along your top gum, and you'll encounter two enormous canine roots. Go ahead, gentlemen. Try it yourselves.”

The jurors probed their gums, as did everyone else in the tabernacle.

“Why are these teeth so elaborately anchored?” With the aid of the bayonet Chloe prised both upper canines free of the skull, fat roots included. She passed them to Léourier, who straightaway presented the evidence to the jury. “As you can see, the usable parts of a modern man's cuspids are not a whit more impressive than his incisors or molars. Ah, but the canine teeth of our simian ancestors were in fact
weapons,
long and sharp like those of a baboon.”

As the aeronaut returned the teeth to Chloe, she found herself recalling
The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
In both the play and Mr. Poe's original tale, the killer had proved to be an escaped orang-utang. The ape did it.
Duntopia versus Cabot and Quinn
had the same plot, she realized. On this sweltering tropical morn, here in the White Horse Prophecy Tabernacle, a deicide had occurred, for when a simian shambles free of the jungle and enters the savannah, where her posterity will over the course of innumerable generations discover fire, make tools, plant gardens, build bridges, write poetry, and name the stars, then God has in effect been murdered. The ape did it.

“Miss Bathurst, will you please summarize your case against the Almighty's alleged factuality?” asked Mr. Chadwick.

Rising in as regal a fashion as she could contrive, Chloe glided away from the witness chair and approached the jury box, locking eyes with each of the twelve in turn. “If our essential written testament to God's
modus operandi
is naught but a myth, then that is a reason to doubt His reality. If there was no first man called Adam, merely tribes of apes being buffeted about by time and chance, then no divine Galilean rabbi was needed to redeem that nonexistent first man's fall, the lapse having never occurred. If the pageant of life on this planet, from worms to wolves to we ourselves, has drawn its energy solely from the Earth, then Heaven and its denizens may very well be fictitious.”

She returned to the witness chair at a stately pace, pausing in a shaft of sunlight (so that she briefly became an English mystic again), then stepping abruptly away as the curtain descended on
The Ashes of Eden
.

“No further questions,” said Mr. Chadwick.

“Miss Bathurst, you have exceeded my expectations,” said Eggwort. “Mr. Tappert, when you cross-examine the witness, please try to elicit more such outlandish bellywash.”

“I'll do my best, Your Honor,” said the chief prosecutor.

Taking up his mallet, Eggwort struck the bench and declared a midday recess. Straightaway his harem appeared with wooden bowls and steaming copper tureens filled with the day's chowder. The noises that subsequently resounded through the tabernacle recalled for Chloe her first day on Galápagos: the Charles Isle saddlebacks slurping mossy water from their pool.

As Chloe and Mr. Chadwick returned to the defense table, the vicar told her, “You were brilliant.”

“
Magnifique!
” Léourier declared.

“My fair philosopher,” said Ralph, “you were born to play the part of Derrick Caedmon's zookeeper.”

“The part of his fellow transmutationist,” Chloe corrected him.

“Mr. Caedmon sounds like a remarkable man.”

“The most remarkable I've ever known,” said Chloe.

“I'm grateful to have my she-devil back, but they're going to hang me anyway,” said Solange.

“I won't let them do that,” said Chloe.

“We need more marmosets in this courtroom,” said Ralph, “and fewer kangaroos.”

*   *   *

Despite the turbulence in her guts, Chloe forced herself to consume her entire portion of chowder, lest she grow weak during her battle with the chief prosecutor. It was thus with a full stomach, though not a settled mind, that she returned to the witness chair, sandalwood box in hand, and made ready to endure Jethro Tappert's assault. He approached her with the confident swagger of a royal headsman applying for the job of village butcher.

At first the chief prosecutor offered only the most conventional objections to Derrick Caedmon's theory. The Earth was too young, the fossil record too spotty, for a rational man to favor a secular Tree of Life over a divinely seeded Garden of Eden. Although advantageous novelties might appear from time to time, each such trait would be diluted long before it could guarantee its beneficiaries' evolutionary success.

Flourishing the transmutation sketch, Chloe articulated the ripostes that lay therein. No, the Earth was
not
too young. Read Charles Lyell or any other competent geologist. Of
course
the fossil record was spotty. The search for such evidence had barely begun. As for the alleged dilution problem, the persistence of hemophilia from generation to generation ruled out blending as the primary mechanism of heredity.