Orphan of Creation (15 page)

Michael was twenty-nine, a year or two younger than Barbara. He was a dark-skinned, lightly built man with a thin face and moody, brown, deep-set eyes. The lines of his face fell most naturally into sad expressions, or hurt ones, or fearful ones. Perhaps because of that, his unexpected sunburst smiles were all the more winning, all the more charming. He was a surgeon—or, more accurately, a surgical resident—at Howard University Hospital on the other side of the city, and he had the long, graceful hands surgeons were supposed to have.

He caught a look at himself in the mirror behind the bar, and, as always, was baffled at what he saw there. Michael Marchando was as much a mystery to himself as he was to everyone else. He
knew
how much he had accomplished, how far the poor kid from the tumbledown public housing project had come. He
knew
how far he was likely to go yet. He
knew
he had nothing left to prove.

He might know it, but he did not believe it.

<>

Barbara hurried up the escalator from the subway entrance, and checked her watch as she reached the top. She would be just in time, barely. She bit her lip took a deep breath, and hurried across the street to the restaurant. Damn him for making this date, damn herself for agreeing to it, chasing this marriage long after it had already failed. She stopped for a minute, got her anger under control, and then walked down the block at a far more deliberate pace. Here was the restaurant. Down the stairs and into the lower-level bar. Scan the room and search for—

And there he was. Such a beautiful man.

And all of it melted away again, dammit. All the anger, all the frustration, all the infuriating arguments dissolved into nothingness as she felt her face forming into an unbidden, unwelcome smile, a joyous grin as warm as any summer.

She had known this would happen to her. Dammit. But then he saw her, and came to her across the crowded floor, and their arms were about each other.

She knew it couldn’t last.

She stepped back, still smiling, still warm inside, and looked at him. “Hello, Michael. How you been keeping?”

He smiled back, an uncertain, nervous expression. “Pretty good, Barb. Pretty good.”

The waiter led them to their table. They ordered quickly and then sat there, staring at each other, almost afraid to speak. Finally, Barbara broke the silence. “So how was your Thanksgiving?” she asked, for want of a better way to begin.

“Good, good,” Michael said with a trifle too much enthusiasm, as if he were grateful for something to talk about. “Momma had a lot of the family in. She did some fine cooking. I had to share my room over the weekend with Billy and Gordon. We had a full house.”

Barbara shook her head and made a noncommittal noise. Twenty-nine years old, a full-grown man, a respected doctor making good money—more than Barbara would ever make—and the best he could do when his marriage broke up was to move back in with his mother in her half-slum neighborhood. Back to the room he had occupied as a child and a wild teenager. The McKinley Tech High School pennant was still hanging over the narrow single bed, the under-sized desk still waiting in the corner, the gouges carved in it aging evidence of his model-building days. The model airplanes themselves still hung from the ceiling, floating in dusty flight, suspended on faded threads of the past. And who of all the visiting relatives did he choose to spend the weekend with? Billy and Gordon, two no-account drinking buddies. She could just imagine the three of them tiptoeing out after the house was asleep, in search of every bar that was open, pointless foolishness and debauchery.

Michael Marchando could cure the sick, diagnose a thousand diseases, ease the pain of endless hurts, and yet he seemed wholly incapable of cooking for himself, or doing the wash, or caring for himself. He had always depended on the women in his life for that, expected their care and attention as obviously, unquestionably
his
, the pampered male’s unquestioned and unspoken birthright. It was as if he was incapable of fending for himself, and such incompetence was some strange evidence of his rights as a man.

The old mystery of it all clambered for her attention once again.
Why?
Barbara had walked out on
him
, left him in possession of their apartment. He hadn’t even needed to move—all he needed to do in order to have his own place was remain where he was. But back to Momma he had gone, and his mother had welcomed him back as unquestioningly as he had gone to her. There could be no other place for him.

She was starting to remember, as she knew she would, why, exactly, she had left. Why couldn’t Michael be like her cousin Livingston—adventurous, independent, unafraid of taking a few knocks now and again? Then she looked into Michael’s eyes, and remembered why she had longed to stay. There was so much good there, even so.

She discovered that the two of them were holding hands across the table. She almost jerked her hand back, but then made herself leave it where it was. No sense upsetting him, rejecting him, hurting him that way. She always felt she had to walk on eggshells around him. She spoke again, launching her voice across the deep silence between them.

“I had quite a weekend myself,” Barbara said lamely. “Good to see the family.”
This must be closely held,
she told herself in Grossington’s words, knowing full well that it was a ridiculous excuse for keeping the story from Michael. But there was some very clear part of her that didn’t want to tell him. It was
hers
, not some piece of community property they’d have to sort out some day. “How’s work going?” she asked, wondering how long she could keep the small talk going.

“Barb, it’s time we talked about getting back together.”

She had known that was coming, but still it hurt. Always, it came to this. Would it keep happening forever? Would she spend the rest of her life trying to force this man-child out of the nest, out into the world where he could become a whole person, instead of a dependent little boy? She lowered her eyes and did not speak.

Thankfully, their food arrived, and the two of them ate, in silence at first, until Michael managed to say something, anything else, and they could talk about inconsequential things.

And Barbara never noticed how often she touched his hand all through the meal.

<>

How, why, she could not say, but he ended up at her place that night. She had known, they had both known, he would. His presence was so comforting, warm and safe the night before she set off again in the adventure of that impossible skull.

Why, after what purpose, she did not understand, but they made love that night, with great urgency. Afterwards, Barbara slept, slept more deeply than she had in weeks, as if her body and soul were finally willing to admit she was emotionally drained, physically exhausted.

But Michael was restless at night, a wanderer. He got up, wandered about the still only half-furnished apartment, raided the refrigerator for a glass of milk, sat down at the kitchen table, and happened to notice her voluminous briefcase, lying half-open on the table. Idly curious, he opened one of the folders, and began to read.

<>

He was still there when Barbara awoke in the morning and shuffled her way into the kitchen. “This is great news, very exciting stuff, Barb,” he said cheerfully. “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

She looked down at the papers spread out on the table. A flicker of anger went through her, but then she shrugged her shoulders and sat down next to him. “I don’t know why, Mike. Maybe it was just too complicated, mixed up with seeing you again. Maybe I just wanted it kept private, to myself. I don’t know. Besides, Grossington wants it all kept very quiet for now.

“Hell, maybe I left the papers out on purpose, knowing you’d read them. Maybe force of habit. We always let each other see our professional papers when we were married.” She hesitated for a long moment, and looked straight into his beautiful eyes. “But I guess we’re not really married any more,” she said sadly. “I wish you hadn’t looked.”

Michael took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’m still glad for you, but I wish you had told me face to face.”

She smiled unhappily and stood up to start making coffee and breakfast. “Sorry about that, Michael. I guess you’re right. I’m glad you know about it—but I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”

He looked surprised, as if he was expecting some whoop of joy from her, now that he knew the great news. She sighed and turned toward the coffee maker on the counter.

He hesitated, then stood up and kissed the back of her neck. “It’s okay, sweetie. But just the same, it’s great news. Listen, maybe we can celebrate with a nice dinner tonight, okay?” he asked, a bit distantly. He gave her an affectionate little hug from behind, then went off to retrieve the newspaper from the front door without waiting for an answer. He came back a minute later, sat back down, tidied up her work papers, put them back in her briefcase, and started reading the newspaper. Magically, the old silence had descended, the affection of a few moments ago vanished into a studied remoteness.

Damn him! He snoops in her private papers, and here
she
was apologizing it
him
for it. And here she was, unquestioningly cooking him yet another breakfast while he sat there and read the paper.

She remembered why she had left, all right. Now she was trying to remember why she had stayed so long. It didn’t matter. In a few days, they’d meet up with Liv in Gowrie again.

<>

Livingston Jones woke up, opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling, and sighed. All those neat stacks of old papers were waiting for him downstairs on the dining room table. Time to face another day of reading century-old, overly precise handwriting on the subject of everything else under the sun but what he was interested in. It was truly astonishing how many bits of paper they had cranked out back then—and how many had survived. It had taken him most of the previous day to get them into some semblance of order.

He got out of bed and began his morning calisthenics. He could still smell the musty smell of the old paper and ink on his hands from yesterday, and was not looking forward to more of the same.

He
knew
, with the sharp, clean certainty of an unproved hunch, that there were no further clues to the origins of the australopithecines in the plantation papers. He had no logical reason for so believing, but he knew. Of course, Barbara would tell him that wasn’t good enough. He’d have to dig through all the papers and
prove
there was nothing—and keep careful enough notes to demonstrate that he had searched thoroughly. And then what? Nothing. A dead end.

Amazing, he thought as he began his sit-ups, just how boring science could be.

He headed through the empty house toward his shower, his breakfast, and a very dull day of work.

December

Chapter Nine

Josephine Jones stepped out onto the porch and looked out across her yard toward the excavation. She shook her head and smiled, annoyed and delighted by it all at the same time.

They had been back at it for over a week now, a whole swarm of them: Barbara, this Rupert fellow, that funny old walrus Dr. Grossington, and an indeterminate number of younger ones who never stood still long enough for her to count them, or get their names exactly straight. They all seemed interchangeably bright, eager, polite, and industrious.

However many of them there were, they certainly knew how to dig a hole. It was huge, and getting bigger and deeper all the time—and the pile of dug-up dirt wasn’t exactly shrinking, either. Every now and again, another bit of bone would be discovered, cleared of dirt, and ceremoniously removed from the still earth. Wrapped in cloth like a babe in swaddling clothes, laid carefully in a padded box as if it were the most precious jewel, each load of bones was carried from the excavation to the “laboratory” in the basement. There were three nearly complete skeletons down there now, and the diggers had found a few bones that were probably another one of these new creatures, though it was hard to say if these bones were another ape-man or just some poor human soul who had gotten buried in the same spot. Even so, the bones from number four went down into the lab.

Josephine still thought “laboratory” was a pretty grand name for a bunch of trestle tables covered with boxes of bones, but she had to admit her visitors worked tirelessly at their mysterious tasks down there. She did not claim to understand all they did, but even so, some of the excitement over this inexplicable find had spread to her. She knew, in a vague way, that the scientists said that people had descended from creatures that were somewhat ape-like. She was proud of her great-niece, and at least flipped through
National Geographic
articles on fossils, so as to keep up on Barbara’s field a bit. She even knew that these particular skeletons didn’t belong where they had been found.

But what a fuss they made over some musty old bones! Brrr. She didn’t
like
bones one bit, and it troubled her a bit at nights to think of the skulls in the basement, being worked over. Still, it did a body good to see so much busyness about the old place again. Shaking her head and smiling, she went back inside to get another look at the basement bones. She always believed in getting a good hard look at what scared her.

<>

With a sense of resigned frustration, Livingston closed the cover on the last musty bound volume of the Gowrie
Gazette
. His hands were covered with the powdery dust of old books, and he wished not for the first time that the Gowrie Library had heard of microfilm. He had been through every page of every extant issue of the
Gazette
from 1850 to 1860. Nothing. He had been through every period letter, memoir and diary in the Gowrie library’s surprisingly extensive local history section. Nothing. He had contacted the local folklore society and asked about “creature” stories and got nothing better than Aunt Jo’s vague recollections of stories she had once heard as a child.

On the bright side, he was getting to be an expert on Gowrie history. That and a quarter would get him a cup of coffee most places. But he had no doubt that there wasn’t a single shred of documentary proof for Zebulon’s tales of strange creatures. If the bones hadn’t still been coming out of the ground, Livingston would have long ago concluded that there was no basis in fact for the stories at all.

There was one last card left to play. A few runs of the newspaper were missing from the library collection—scarcely surprising after one hundred and thirty years. It was just possible his missing clue could be found in those runs.

The flaw was that the only place likely to have the editions in question were the present-day offices of the Gowrie
Gazette
. Which meant dealing with the proprietor. Just as in Zebulon’s day, the paper was run by a man named Teems, a descendant of the man who had helped Zeb buy the plantation. Unfortunately, this Teems was as much of a throwback as Stephen Teems had been ahead of his time. Joe Teems was about seventy years old and an unabashed racist and segregationist, who would stand in Livingston’s way as much as possible, out of sheer cussedness. Liv had worked one summer as a paperboy for Teems, and remembered him in sheer hatred and terror.

But it couldn’t be helped. Livingston got up, replaced the book in its shelf, collected his notes, and went in search of a place to clean the dust off before dealing with Teems. Liv did not have much hope for a successful outcome.

<>

Dr. Rupert Maxwell, on the other hand, was deriving the most satisfactory results from his researches. Under the baleful glare and angry hum of the basement’s harsh fluorescent lighting, Rupert was busily working over Ambrose’s molars, carefully measuring a dozen features of each tooth. He was logging the values into a portable computer that sat in a shadowy corner of the workbench, its high-contrast screen a glowering blood-amber against the background of the relentless whitewashed walls. Every number he fed to that brooding screen was a tiny victory, a minute piece of the proof he was searching for. He set down his calipers for a moment and sipped noisily at his tea, a thick herbal brew made from a special blend he had brought along with him to the wilds of Mississippi.

He heard the slow, careful
clump-clump, clump-clump
of an elderly person’s tread on the steep cellar stairs and looked up. It was Mrs. Jones, Barbara’s Great-aunt Jo, wandering down for a visit. “Good morning, Mrs. Jones,” Rupert said. “Welcome to our dungeon away from home.”

“We missed you at breakfast, Dr. Maxwell,” she said in a gently accusing tone as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Weren’t you feeling well this morning?”

Rupert grinned weakly, shifted in his seat, and set his tea down guiltily, like a small boy caught sampling his father’s beer. “Ah, well, no, I felt fine. Just sleeping in a bit, that’s all. Worked late last night,” he offered lamely. “Again.”

“Again,” Aunt Jo repeated, her severe horn-rimmed glasses and formidable bulk making her seem positively unnerving to Rupert. “What is it exactly you’re doing down here, anyway?” she asked suddenly. “I see you people measuring and measuring these old bones and skulls down here in the basement, day after day, night after night. The whole thing gives me the creepies, I tell you. What’re you
doing
it for?”

Rupert shrugged awkwardly. “Jeez, Mrs. Jones. It’s so complicated to explain.”

“I’ve got the time, child. You just do your best and I’ll make sense of it.”

Rupert picked up his calipers, fiddled with them for a second and sighed. “Maybe I’d better start at the beginning, then. Okay, you’ve heard a lot of talk about australopithecines from us around here, right? That’s sort of a generic term that refers to a whole family of species—
Australopithecus robustus
,
Australopithecus boisei
,
Australopithecus africanus
,
Australopithecus afarensis
. And then there’s WT-17000.”

“W-T what?” Aunt Jo asked.

“WT-17000. Sounds like a miracle ingredient in toothpaste, doesn’t it? It’s the collection number of a weird australopithecine skull. It happens to be dark-colored, so they call it ‘the Black Skull’—which sounds like something out of Robert Louis Stevenson.” He dropped his voice and scrunched his shoulder over into a pirate imitation. “‘Kiss the Black Skull, Jim, harr, harr, harr.’” He looked up and caught the look Aunt Jo was giving him. “Sorry,” he muttered, slightly embarrassed. “Anyway, WT-17000 doesn’t fit in
anywhere
. It’s possible that it represents a new species,
Australopithecus aethiopicus
, which is just what we need. I don’t really believe in
aethiopicus
myself. The Black Skull is early
boisei
. But, back to the main point, all ‘australopithecus’ means is ‘southern ape,’ and each of the southern apes has a second name to distinguish it from the others, sort of like a Christian name and given name.

“Except. Australopithecines aren’t just apes, of course. They are hominids, very closely related to mankind, to us, to
Homo sapiens sapiens
. Maybe some of them are ancestors to us, maybe some one of these australopithecines gave rise to the various species of
Homo
that led to us. Or maybe all any australopithecine is to us is a sort of evolutionary cousin, and we haven’t found the common ancestor that our kind
and
theirs sprang from. We don’t exactly know, for certain, what our relation is to these creatures, or even which australopithecine descends from the others, in all cases.”

“But even if I buy this evolution and take it home, how could they be our ancestors if they were still around when Granpa Zeb was alive?” Aunt Josephine asked.

“Just because someone has children doesn’t mean they’re dead,” Rupert said. “There are plenty of cases of an ancestral species existing, living and breeding, right alongside a descendant species. Obviously, Ambrose here,” he said, patting the skull, “had to have a mother and a father, and he might even have fathered some pups of his own. Just as obviously, he isn’t my ancestor.” He was going to add “or yours,” but decided that would be impolitic. “
But
it’s absolutely certain that he and I did have a common ancestor, somewhere back a zillion years or so. My arm bones and leg bones and toe bones and general headshape and so on are very much like his. The family resemblance is very strong,” he said cheerfully.

“What worries me is that when this comes out, someone is going to say Ambrose himself being alive when he was proves that neither his
species
nor any related species could be an ancestor to ours, and so all of human evolution is a crock, and therefore the creationists are right.

“Which brings me back to what I’m doing. Remember I rattled off the names of the australopithecine species? The differences between those species are actually pretty small—and we have so little fossil evidence that it’s hard to say for sure which differences are important. According to some people, the differences are so small that there weren’t four species, just one or two that survived a long time, with some of the creatures in those species bigger than others, or with somewhat different teeth. Just based on size, if you saw the bones of a jockey and a basketball player you might say that each represented a separate species of
Homo
. We might be doing that with the australopithecines. Now, as far as the various alleged species of australopithecine are concerned, we have remains representing maybe a hundred or so individuals, and most of them have been very carefully measured in all sorts of ways. What I hope to find out with Ambrose and his friends here is that there are a whole range of small but significant differences between them and the other australopithecine specimens. Wide enough that I should be able to establish a series of diagnostics for a new species based on these bones here.”

“Diagnostics? What does that mean, you can tell what it died of?”

“Huh? Oh, no. To a paleoanthropologist, a diagnostic is a set of tests you can run to see if a given specimen is a member of a given species. One diagnostic might be, say, the angle between the point where the spinal cord enters the skull and a given feature on the cranium. That sort of thing.”

“So you can just look at one little tooth and say what kind of— of australopithecine it’s from?”

“Nope,” Rupert said cheerfully. “Can’t be done. Sometimes we can’t even tell for sure if it’s australopithecine or
Homo
. Remember our jockey and our basketball player? The sizes and proportions between those two extremes will contain most, though not all, of the range of human variance. Now suppose we had just dug up, say, this.” He carefully picked up one of Ambrose’s leg bones and turned it over in his hands. “A little odd in some respects, but this bone falls well within that human range. But one look at Ambrose’s head and you
know
he ain’t human. There can be ambiguities if you only have part of the skeleton.

“But what makes it even worse is that we have never found a complete australopithecine skeleton until now, and rarely have we found much more than a partially complete cranium and mandible—that is the main part of the skull and the jaw—and it’s rarer still that we’ve found a complete and
undamaged
skull. Some of the ones that have been found we dug up were shattered into a hundred pieces. They were put together all right, but you can’t ever be exactly sure that the angles
between
the pieces were right, or that you’ve guessed the size of the missing pieces correctly.

“The point is that our sample base of data for the entire genus
Australopithecus
is so scrappy that it’s almost impossible to get any hard comparative figures out of it. There are guesses piled on guesses piled on estimates based on probable reconstructions based on what might as well be tossing a coin. Which in turn means my proof that these australopithecines aren’t the same as one of the known species will be shot down by someone who interprets the figures differently, and we’ll all be arguing about it for years to come. That’s the thing about paleo—you’re never quite
sure
about anything.”