Humans

Chapter Four

Mary Vaughan’s lab at York University was much as she had left it—not surprisingly, since, despite all the things that had happened to her, it had only been twenty-three days since she’d last been here.

Daria Klein—one of Mary’s grad students—had clearly been in repeatedly during Mary’s absence, though. Her work area had been rearranged, and the chart on the wall showing her sequencing of the ancient Egyptian Y chromosome she was working on had many more spaces filled in.

Arne Eggebrecht of the Pelizaeus Museum in Hildersheim, Germany, had recently suggested that an Egyptian body purchased from an old Niagara Falls tourist attraction might in fact have been Ramses I, founder of the line that contained Seti I, Ramses II (the one portrayed by Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments ), Ramses III, and Queen Nefertari. The specimen was now housed in Atlanta’s Emory University, but DNA samples had been sent to Toronto for analysis; Mary’s lab was world-renowned for its success in recovering ancient DNA, a fact that had led directly to her involvement with Ponter Boddit. Daria had made considerable progress on the putative Ramses in Mary’s absence, and Mary nodded approvingly.

“Professor Vaughan.”

Mary’s heart jumped. She turned around. Atall, thin man in his midsixties was standing in the lab’s doorway. His voice was deep and rough, and he had a Ronald Reagan pompadour.

“Yes?” said Mary. She felt her stomach knotting; the man was blocking the only way out of the room. He was wearing a dark gray business suit, with a gray silk tie, its knot loosened. After a moment, he stepped forward, pulled out a thin silver business-card case, and proffered a card to Mary.

She took it, embarrassed to see that her hand was shaking as she did so. It said:

SYNERGY GROUP

J. K. (Jock) Krieger, Ph.D.

Director

There was a logo: a picture of the Earth, divided neatly in half. On the left half, the oceans were black and the landmasses white, and on the right half the opposite color scheme was used. The street address given was in Rochester, New York, and the e-mail address ended in “.gov,” signifying a U.S.-government operation.

“What can I do for you, Dr. Krieger?” asked Mary.

“I’m the director of the Synergy Group,” he said.

“So I see. I’ve never heard of it.”

“No one has yet, and few will, ever. Synergy is a U.S. government think tank that I’ve been putting together over the last couple of weeks. We’re modeled more or less on the RAND Corporation, although on a much smaller scale—at least at this stage.”

Mary had heard of RAND, but really didn’t know anything about it. Still, she nodded.

“One of our principal sources of funding is the INS,” said Krieger. Mary lifted her eyebrows, and Krieger explained: “The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.”

“Ah,” said Mary.

“As you know, the Neanderthal incident caught us—caught everybody—with their pants down. The whole thing was over practically before it had even begun, and for the first few days we’d just dismissed it as another crazy tabloid story—like finding Mother Teresa’s face in a prune Danish, or a Bigfoot sighting.”

Mary nodded. She hadn’t believed it herself at the outset.

“Of course,” continued Krieger, “it may be that the portal between our universe and the Neanderthal one might never reopen. But, in case it ever does, we want to be ready.”

“We?”

“The United States government.”

Mary felt her back stiffen slightly. “The portal opened on Canadian soil, and—”

“Actually, ma’am, it opened a mile and a quarter beneath Canadian soil, at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, which is a joint project of Canadian, British, and American institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, and the Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkeley, and Brookhaven National Laboratories.”

“Oh,” said Mary. She hadn’t known that. “But the Creighton Mine, where SNO is located, belongs to Canada.”

“More precisely, it belongs to a Canadian publicly traded corporation, Inco. But, look, I’m not here to argue sovereignty issues with you. I just want you to understand that the United States has a legitimate interest in this matter.”

Mary’s tone was frosty. “All right.”

Krieger paused; he clearly felt he’d gotten off on the wrong foot. “If the portal between our world and the Neanderthal world ever reopens, we want to be ready. Defending the portal doesn’t seem too difficult. As you may know, the Twenty-second Wing Command of the Canadian Forces, based at North Bay, has been charged with securing the portal against invasion or terrorist attacks.”

“You’re kidding,” said Mary, although she suspected he wasn’t.

“No, I’m not, Professor Vaughan. Both your government and mine are taking all this very seriously.”

“Well, what’s this got to do with me?” asked Mary.

“You were able to identify Ponter Boddit as a Neanderthal based on his DNA, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Would the test you did be able to identify every Neanderthal? Could it reliably tell if any given person was a Neanderthal or a human?”

“Neanderthals are human,” said Mary. “We’re congeners; we all belong to the genus Homo. Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo antecessor—if you believe that’s a legitimate species—Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens. We’re all humans.”

“I concede the point,” said Krieger, with a nod. “What should we call ourselves to distinguish us from them?”

“Homo sapiens sapiens,” said Mary.

“Not very catchy, is it?” replied Krieger. “Didn’t I hear someone call us Cro-Magnons? That’s got a pleasant ring to it.”

“Technically, that term refers to a specific population of anatomically modern humans from the Upper Paleolithic of southern France.”

“Then I ask again: what should we call ourselves to distinguish us from the Neanderthals?”

“Well, Ponter’s people had a term for fossil humans from their world that looked like us. They called them Gliksins. It would be an appropriate parity: we call them by a name that really refers to their fossil ancestors, and they call us by a name that really refers to our fossil ancestors.”

“Gliksins? Is that what you said?” Krieger frowned. “All right, I guess that will do. Can your DNA technique reliably distinguish between any Neanderthal and any Gliksin?”

Mary frowned. “I doubt it. There’s a lot of variation within species, and—”

“But if Neanderthals and we Gliksins are different species, surely there are genes that only they have, or only we have. The genes that give them those browridges, for instance.”

“Oh, lots of us Gliksins have browridges. They’re very common among males from Eastern Europe, for instance. Of course, the doubly arched Neanderthal one is quite distinctive, but…”

“Well, what about those triangular projections into their nasal cavities?” asked Krieger. “I’ve heard that they are truly diagnostic of a Neanderthal.”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Mary. “I suppose if you wanted to look up each person’s nose…”

Krieger did not sound amused. “I was thinking you might be able to find the gene responsible for that.”

“Oh, possibly, although they themselves may already know. Ponter implied that they long ago undertook the equivalent of our Human Genome Project. But, sure, I suppose I could search for a diagnostic marker.”

“Can you do it? How fast can you do it?”

“Take it easy,” said Mary. “We only have DNA from four prehistoric Neanderthals and one contemporary one. I’d really rather have a much larger sample base.”

“But can you do it?”

“Possibly, but why?”

“How long would it take?”

“With my current facilities? And if I did nothing else? A few months, perhaps.”

“What if we gave you all the equipment and all the support staff you could possibly need? What then? Money is no object, Professor Vaughan.”

Mary felt her heart pounding. As a Canadian academic, she had never heard those words before. She’d had friends at university who had gone on to do postgraduate work in the States; they’d often reported back about big five-and six-figure research grants and state-of-the-art equipment. Mary’s own first research grant had been for a paltry $3,200—and Canadian dollars, at that.

“Well, with, ah, with unlimited resources, I suppose I could do it fairly quickly. A matter of weeks, if we’re lucky.”

“Good. Good. Do so.”

“Umm, with all due respect, Dr. Krieger, I’m a Canadian citizen; you can’t tell me what to do.”

Krieger was immediately contrite. “Of course not, Professor Vaughan. My apologies. My enthusiasm for the project got the better of me. What I meant to say was, would you please undertake this project? As I said, we will provide whatever equipment and staff you need, and a sizable consultancy fee.”

Mary’s head was swimming. “But why? Why is this so important?”

“If the gateway between the two worlds ever opens again,” Krieger said, “we may have many Neanderthals coming into our world.”

Mary narrowed her eyes. “And you want to be able to discriminate against them?”

Krieger shook his head. “Nothing like that, I assure you. But we’ll need to know for immigration reasons, for providing appropriate health care, and so on. You don’t want an unconscious person being given the wrong medicine because doctors couldn’t tell if he was Neanderthal or Gliksin.”

“Surely you can simply look to see if he has a Companion implant. Ponter says all his people have them.”

“Without disparaging your friend in the least, Professor Vaughan, we have only his word for that. For all we know, he was in fact a parolee in his universe, and that thingamajig was some sort of tracking device worn only by him and other criminals.”

“Ponter is not a criminal,” said Mary.

“Nonetheless, you can surely appreciate that we prefer to have our own methods for determining which species a person belongs to, rather than having to rely on something we’ve heard anecdotally.”

Mary nodded slowly. It did, sort of, make sense. And, after all, there was benign precedent: the Canadian government already put a lot of work into defining who is and who isn’t a Status Indian, so that social programs and entitlements could properly be administered. Still…“There’s no reason to think the portal might open again, is there? I mean, there haven’t been any signs, have there?” She’d love to see Ponter again, but…

Krieger shook his head. “No. But we believe in being prepared. And I’ll be honest: I grant that your Mr. Boddit looked, shall we say, distinctive. But it’s possible that another Neanderthal might have less pronounced features, and be able to slip into a population of our kind of humans.”

Mary smiled. “You’ve been talking to Milford Wolpoff.”

“Indeed. As well as Ian Tattersall and just about every other Neanderthal expert you can name. There seems to be no consensus among them about how much Neanderthals differed from us.”

Mary nodded; that much was certainly true. Some, like Wolpoff, held that Neanderthals were just another variety of Homo sapiens—at best a race, if that term had any validity, and certainly members of the same species as modern humans. Others, including Tattersall, felt the opposite: that Neanderthals were a species in their own right, Homo neanderthalensis. To date, all DNA studies seemed to support the latter view—but Wolpoff and company felt the few Neanderthal DNA samples available, including the 379 nucleotides of mitochondrial DNA that Mary herself had extracted from the Neanderthal type specimen at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, were either aberrant or misinterpreted. It wasn’t too much to say that this was the most hotly contested issue in all of paleoanthropology.

“We still only have complete genetic material from one Neanderthal,” said Mary, “namely Ponter Boddit. It might be impossible to find anything diagnostic in that one sample.”

“I understand that. But we won’t know for sure until you try.”

Mary looked around the lab. “I have duties here, at York. Classes to teach. Grad students.”

“I understand that, too,” said Krieger. “But I’m sure arrangements can be made to cover your responsibilities. I’ve already had a word with the university’s president.”

“You’re talking about a full-time research project?”

“We’ll certainly compensate you for the entire academic year, yes.”

“Where would I work? Here?”

Krieger shook his head. “No, we’d want you to come to our secure facility.”

“In Rochester, right?”

“Rochester, New York, yes.”

“That’s not that far from here, is it?”

“I flew in today,” said Krieger, “and that takes no time at all. I understand it’s about three and a half hours by car.”

Mary considered. She would still be able to come up and see her mother and friends. And she had to admit that nothing interested her more right now than studying Ponter’s DNA; her class load would just be an inconvenience.

“What, ah, terms did you have in mind?”

“I can offer you a one-year consulting contract at $150,000 U.S., starting immediately, with full medical benefits.” He smiled. “I know that’s a key point with you Canadians.”

Mary frowned. She’d more or less prepared herself for returning to York University, to the site of the rape, but…

But no. No, that wasn’t true. She’d hoped she could stand being here, but, if this morning had been any indication, she was still jumpy as hell.

“I have an apartment here,” said Mary. “Acondo.”

“We’ll take care of the mortgage payments, taxes, and maintenance fees for you while you’re away; your home will be waiting for you when this job is done.”

“Really?”

Krieger nodded. “Yes. This is the biggest thing that’s happened to this planet since—well, ever. What we’re looking at here, Professor Vaughan, is the end of the Cenozoic, and the beginning of the next era. There haven’t been two versions of humanity on this planet for thirty-five thousand years or so—but, if that portal reopens, there are going to be two versions again, and we want to make sure it goes right this time.”

“You make it sound very tempting, Dr. Krieger.”

“Jock. Call me Jock.” A pause. “Look, I used to be with the RAND Corporation. I’m a mathematician; back when I graduated from Princeton, seventy percent of all math grads from major universities applied for jobs at RAND. That was where you got the money and resources to do pure research. In fact, the joke was that RAND actually stood for ‘Research And No Development’—it’s a think tank in the purest sense.”

“What does it stand for?”

“Just ‘Research and Development,’ supposedly. But the fact is its funding came from the U.S. Air Force, and it existed for a fundamentally unpleasant reason: to study nuclear conflict. I’m a game theorist; that’s my specialty, and that’s why I was there—doing simulations of nuclear brinksmanship.” He paused. “You ever see Dr. Strangelove?”

Mary nodded. “Years ago.”

“Old George C. Scott, he’s clutching a ‘BLAND’ corporation study there in the War Room. Freeze-frame it next time you’re watching the DVD. The study is labeled World Targets in Megadeaths. That’s about right for what we had to do. But the Cold War is over, Professor Vaughan, and now we’re looking at something incredibly positive.” He paused. “You know, despite its military roots, RAND did lots of far-out thinking. One of our studies was called Habitable Planets for Man, and it was all about the likelihood of finding earthlike planets elsewhere in the galaxy. Stephen Dole put that one together in 1964, just when I started at RAND. But, even then, back in the glory days of the space program, very few of us seriously thought we’d have access to another earthlike world in our lifetime. But if that portal reopens, we will. And we want contact to go as positively as possible. When the first Neanderthal embassy opens up—”

“A Neanderthal embassy!” exclaimed Mary.

“We’re thinking ahead, Professor Vaughan. That’s what Synergy is all about—not just the best of both worlds, but making something that’s more than the sum of its parts. It’s going to be wild. And we want you along for the ride.”