58

Beresford, New York

Mitch stepped out under the soaring white tent pavilion that covered the antique train station of the small town of Beresford. He shaded his eyes against the morning sun and glanced at a planter loud with yellow daffodils, near a bright red garbage can. He was the only one getting off the train.

The air smelled of hot grease and pavement and fresh-cut grass. He looked for someone to meet him, expecting Merton. The town, visible across the tracks, accessible by a pedestrian bridge, was little more than a row of shops and the Amtrak parking lot.

A black Lexus pulled into the parking lot, and Mitch saw a redheaded man step out, look through the chicken-wire fencing at the station, and wave.

“His name is William Daney. He owns most of Beresford— his family does, that is. They have an estate about ten minutes from here that rivals Buckingham Palace. I was nai’ve enough to forget what kind of royalty America cherishes—old money spent in strange ways.”

Mitch listened to Merton as the journalist drove him down a winding two-lane road between splendid hardwood trees, maple and oak, new leaves so intensely green he felt as if he were in a movie. The sun threw dazzles of gold across the road. They hadn’t seen another car in five minutes.

“Daney used to be a yachtsman. Spent millions perfecting a graceful big boat, lost a few races. That was more than twenty years ago. Then he discovered anthropology. Problem is, he hates dirt. Loves water, hates dirt, hates to dig. I love driving in America. But this is almost like driving in England. I could even”—Merton swerved briefly over the center line into the left lane—”Follow my instincts.” He quickly corrected, smiled at Mitch. “Pity about the riots. England’s still relatively calm, but I’m expecting a change of government any minute. Dear old PM doesn’t get it yet. Still thinks switching to the Euro is his biggest worry. Hates the gynecological aspect of this whole mess. How’s Mr. Dicken? Ms. Lang?”

“They’re fine,” Mitch said, unwilling to talk much until he saw what he was being dragged into. He liked Merton well enough, found him interesting, but did not trust him one bit. He resented that the man seemed to know so much about his private life.

Daney’s mansion made a three-story, gray stone curve at the end of a redbrick drive flanked by beautifully manicured lawns, perfect as a putting green. A few gardeners were out trimming hedges, and an elderly woman in jodhpurs and a broad and ragged straw hat waved at them as Merton drove past. “Mrs. Daney, our host’s mum,” Merton said, waving out the window. “Lives in the housekeeper’s cottage. Nice old woman. Doesn’t go into her son’s rooms very often.”

Merton parked in front of the brownstone steps leading to the huge, double-door entrance.

“Everybody’s here,” he said. “You, me, Daney, and Herr Professor Friedrich Brock, formerly of the University of Innsbruck.”

“Brock?”

“Yes.” Merton smiled. “He says he met you once.”

“He did,” Mitch said. “Once.”

The entry way of the Daney mansion was shadowy, a huge hall paneled with dark wood. Three parallel beams of sun dropped through a skylight onto the age-darkened limestone floor, cutting over a huge Chinese silk rug, in the middle of which rose a round table covered with a hemisphere of flowers. Just to one side of the table, in shadow, stood a man.

“William, this is Mitch Rafelson,” Merton said, taking Mitch’s elbow and leading him forward.

The man in shadow stuck out his hand into one of the shafts of sun, and three gold rings gleamed on thick, strong fingers. Mitch shook the hand firmly. Daney was in his early fifties, tanned, with yellow-white hair receding from a Wag-nerian forehead. He had small, perfect lips quick to smile, dark brown eyes, baby-smooth cheeks. His shoulders were broadened by a padded gray blazer, but his arms looked well-muscled.

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Daney said. “I’d have bought them from your friends if they had been offered, you know. And then I would have turned them over to Innsbruck. I’ve told this to Herr Professor Brock, and he has given me absolution.”

Mitch smiled to be polite. He was here to meet Brock.

“Actually, William doesn’t own any human remains,” Merton said.

“I’m happy with duplicates, casts, sculptures,” Daney said. “I’m not a scientist, merely a hobbyist, but I hope I honor the past by trying to understand it.”

“Into the Hall of Humanity,” Merton said with a flourish of his hand. Daney tossed his head proudly and led the way.

The hall filled a former ballroom in the eastern curve of the mansion. Mitch had seen nothing like it outside of a museum: dozens of glass cases arranged in rows, with carpeted aisles in between, each case containing casts and replicas of every major specimen of anthropology. Australopithecus afarensis and robustus; Homo habilis and erectus. Mitch counted sixteen different Neandertal skeletons, all professionally mounted, and six of them had waxwork reconstructions of how the individuals might have looked in life. There was no attempt to avoid offending modesty: All the models were nude and hairless, avoiding any speculation on clothing or hair patterns.

Row upon row of hairless apes, illuminated by elegant and respectfully softened spotlights, stared blankly at Mitch as he walked past.

“Incredible,” Mitch said, despite himself. “Why have I never heard of you before, Mr. Daney?”

“I only talk to a few people. The Leakey family, Bjorn Kurten, a few others. My close friends. I’m eccentric, I know, but I don’t like to flaunt it.”

“You’re among the elect now,” Merton said to Mitch.

“Professor Brock is in the library.” Daney pointed the way. Mitch would have enjoyed spending more time in the hall. The wax sculptures were superb and the reproductions of the specimens first rate, almost indistinguishable from the specimens themselves.

“No, actually, I am here. I couldn’t wait.” Brock stepped around a case and advanced. “I feel as if I know you, Dr. Rafelson. And we do have mutual acquaintances, do we not?”

Mitch shook hands with Brock, under Daney’s beaming and approving inspection. They walked several dozen yards to an adjacent library, furnished in the epitome of Edwardian elegance, three levels with railed walkways connected by two wrought-iron bridges. Huge paintings of Yosemite and the Alps in dramatic moods flanked the single high north-facing window.

They took seats around a large, low round table in the middle of the room. “My first question,” Brock said, “is, do you dream of them, Dr. Rafelson? Because I do, and frequently.”

Daney served the coffee himself, after it was rolled into the library by a stout, somber young woman in a black suit. He poured each of them a cup in Flora Danica china, botanical patterns in this series displaying the microscopic plants native to Denmark, based on nineteenth-century scientific art. Mitch examined his saucer, adorned with three beautifully rendered dinoflagellates, and wondered what he would do if he had all the money he could ever hope to spend.

“I myself do not believe these dreams,” Brock picked up the conversation. “But these individuals do haunt me.”

Mitch looked around the group, completely unsure what was expected of him. It seemed distinctly possible that associating with Daney, Brock, and even Merton, could somehow be turned to his disadvantage. Perhaps he had been battered once too often in this arena.

Merton sensed his unease. “This meeting is completely private, and will be kept secret,” he said. “I don’t plan to report anything said here.”

“At my request,” Daney said, lifting his brows emphatically.

“I wanted to tell you that you must be correct in your judgments, the judgments you have shown by seeking out certain people, and learning certain things about our own researches,” Brock said. “But I have just been released from my responsibilities with regard to the Alpine mummies. The arguments have become personal, and more than a little dangerous to all our careers.”

“Dr. Brock believes the mummies represent the first clear evidence of a human speciation event,” Merton said, hoping to move things along.

“Subspeciation, actually,” Brock said. “But the idea of a species has become so fluid in past decades, has it not? The presence of SHEVA in their tissues is most evocative, don’t you think?”

Daney leaned forward in his chair, cheeks and forehead pink with the intensity of his interest.

Mitch decided he could not be reticent among such fellow travelers. “We’ve found other instances,” he said.

“Yes, so I hear, from Oliver and from Maria Konig at the University of Washington.”

“Not me, actually, but people I’ve talked to. I’ve been ineffectual, to say the least. Compromised by my own actions.”

Brock dismissed this. “When I called your apartment in Innsbruck, I had forgiven you your lapse. I could sympathize, and your story rang true.”

“Thank you,” Mitch said, and found himself genuinely affected.

“I apologize for not revealing myself at the time, but you understand, I hope.”

“I do,” Mitch said.

“Tell me what’s going to happen,” Daney said. “Are they going to release their findings about the mummies?”

“They are,” Brock said. “They are going to claim contamination, that the mummies are in fact not related. The Nean-dertals are going to be labeled Homo sapiens alpinensis, and the infant is going to be sent to Italy for study by other specialists.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mitch said.

“Yes, and they will not get away with this pretense forever, but for the next few years, the conservatives, the hardliners, will rule. They will mete out information at will, to those they trust not to rock the boat, to agree with them, like zealous scholars defending the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are hoping to see their careers through without having to deal with a revolution that would topple both them and their views.”

“Incredible,” Daney said.

“No, human, and we all study the human, no? Was not our female injured by someone who didn’t want her baby to be born?”

“We don’t know that,” Mitch said.

“I know that,” Brock said. “I reserve my own irrational domains of belief, if only to defend myself against the zealots. Is this not the sequence that you dream, in some form or another, as if we have these events buried in our very blood?”

Mitch nodded.

“Perhaps this was the original sin of our kind, that our Neandertal ancestors wished to stop progress, hold on to their unique position...By killing the new children.

 Those who would become us. Now we do the same thing, perhaps?”

Daney shook his head, quietly growling. Mitch observed this with some interest, then turned to Brock. “You must have examined the DNA results,” he said. “It must be available for criticism by others.”

Brock reached down by his seat and brought up a briefcase. He tapped it meaningfully. “I have all the material here, on DVD-ROM, massive graphics files, tabulations, the results from different labs around the world. Oliver and I are going to make it available on the Web, announce the coverup, and let the chips fall where they may.”

“What we’d really like to do is make this relevant in the broadest way imaginable,” Merton added. “We’d like to present conclusive evidence that evolution is knocking on our door again.”

Mitch bit his lip, thinking this over. “Have you talked with Christopher Dicken?”

“He told me he can’t help me,” Merton said.

This shook Mitch. “Last time I spoke with him, he seemed enthusiastic, even gung ho,” Mitch said.

“He’s had a change of heart,” Merton said. “We need to bring Dr. Lang onboard. I think I can convince some of the University of Washington people, certainly Dr. Konig and Dr. Packer, perhaps even an evolutionary biologist or two.”

Daney nodded enthusiastically.

Merton turned to Mitch. His lips straightened, and he cleared his throat. “Your look says you don’t approve?”

“We can’t exactly go at this like we were college freshmen in a debating society.”

“I thought you were a rough-and-tumble fellow,” Merton said archly.

“Wrong,” Mitch said. “I love it smooth and by the book. It’s life that’s rough-and-tumble.”

Daney grinned. “Well put. Myself, I love to be on the ground floor.”

“How’s that?” Merton asked.

 “This is a marvelous opportunity,” Daney said. “I’d like to find a willing woman and bring one of these new people into my family.”

For a long moment, neither Merton, Brock, nor Mitch could find the right words to reply.

“Interesting idea,” Merton said quietly, and glanced quickly at Mitch, eyebrow raised.

“If we try to kick up a storm outside the castle, we might close more doors than we open,” Brock admitted.

“Mitch,” Merton said, subdued, “tell us, then, how should we go about this...more by the book?”

“We put together a group of true experts,” Mitch said, and thought intently for a moment. “Packer and Maria Konig make a fine start. We recruit from their colleagues and contacts—the geneticists and molecular biologists at the University of Washington, NIH, and half a dozen other universities, research centers. Oliver, you probably know whom I’m referring to...maybe better than I do.”

“The more progressive evolutionary biologists,” Merton said, and then frowned, as if that might be an oxymoron. “Right now, that’s pretty well limited to molecular biologists and a select few paleontologists, like Jay Niles.”

“I know only conservatives,” Brock said. “I have been drinking coffee with the wrong crowd in Innsbruck.”

“We need a scientific foundation,” Mitch said. “An overwhelming quorum of respected scientists.”

“That’ll take weeks, even months,” Merton said. “Everyone has careers to protect.”

“What if we fund more research in the private sector?” Daney said.

“That’s where Mr. Daney could be helpful,” Merton said, looking from beneath shaggy red eyebrows at their host. “You have the resources to put together a first-class conference, and that’s just what we need now. Counter the public pronouncements from the Taskforce.”

Daney’s expression dimmed. “How much would that cost? Hundreds of thousands, or millions?”

“The former rather than the latter, I suspect,” Merton said with a chuckle.

Daney gave them a troubled glance. “That much money, and I’ll have to ask Mother,” he said.