Unnatural Selection

FOUR

He had no trouble sticking to them during Kozlov’s presentation, a witty, charmingly accented, and unobjectionable condemnation of the existence of close-mindedness in scientific inquiry, followed by an introduction of the five Fellows, who then described the subjects of their papers. The Fellows had known this was coming, so it went smoothly, if dully, each one standing in his or her place and reading a brief, dry abstract in AcademicSpeak.

Julie was first, soberly explaining the importance of “fire management polices that replicate as closely as possible the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of natural fire regimes, taking into account the importance and reality of anthropogenic fires in woodland subsystems and thereby achieving the maintenance of biodiversity in a form adhering as closely as possible to its natural facets and fluxes.”

Damn, he thought with pride, she’s almost as good at that stuff as I am. When she took her seat again and glanced furtively in his direction he gave her a vigorous thumbs-up.

The others followed with equally turgid descriptions of their work, and although he took mental issue with a few things that were said, it wasn’t too hard to keep his peace through most of them, including even Victor Waldo’s rattling on inscrutably and at length about holistic and naturalistic paradigms that would reconstruct the nature-human dynamic of the postindustrial world.

But Donald Pinckney, speaking last, broke through his self-restraint when he dipped a toe into the treacherous waters of Darwinian theory.

“… and therefore demonstrate that hunting, properly regulated, positively impacts wildlife populations by preventing game from exceeding the carrying capacity of their habitat areas, thus serving as a valuable adjunct to the mechanisms of natural selection and the survival of the fittest.”

“Nggkk,” Gideon said.

To his dismay, this strangled, inadvertent squawk, wholly unintentional, dropped smack into a dead spot in the presentation and was heard clear around the room. Donald, with the faintest of frowns, glanced questioningly at him and prepared to continue reading, but Kozlov interceded.

“Mr. Skeleton Detective wants say something?”

No, Gideon didn’t want to say anything, but by now his professorly instincts were beyond his control. “Well, it’s only that Donald may have made a small… a very small but nonetheless important, um, misinterpretation of the way that natural selection works.”

Donald’s pale eyes glittered behind his glasses. “Oh?”

“The thing is,” Gideon said, as delicately as he could, “in nature, natural selection works by selectively eliminating the more vulnerable-those animals that are least ‘fit’ to survive in their current environment. By removing them from the gene pool, the stronger-or I guess I should say the better-adapted-animals are more likely to reproduce, to contribute their genes, and to thus keep the species genetically strong; that is, genetically well-adapted to their environment…”

Unnoticed by Gideon, a pursed-mouthed Donald slid silently back into his seat.

“Hunting by natural predators has the same result,” Gideon went on, well-launched now. “They’re most likely to catch and kill the weak, the old, the slow, the sick, and so on. But modern human hunters, with their intelligence and technology, are a kind of super-predator that’s never been seen on earth before. They kill the strongest and ablest animals, which of course means that the less ‘fit’ animals have a relatively greater opportunity to reproduce and pass on their genes.”

“Ha-ha, that’s exactly right,” a delighted Joey Dillard cried. From the looks of him, he had had more to drink than was good for him. “What it is, is, it’s evolution in reverse.”

“Well, no, I wouldn’t exactly say that. The idea that evolution can reverse itself, while it has a certain poetic appeal…”

“I tried, I really did,” Gideon told Julie afterward, when they had come back outside to take a few turns around the ramparts, watching dusk turn to night as the sun dropped toward the sea beyond the Western Rocks, a jumble of offshore boulders that had been the end of many a seagoing vessel during winter storms, but in summer served mainly as a picturesque backdrop for the sunset-watchers who picnicked on Garrison Hill as the evening came on. Julie and Gideon could see several groups of them on the bluffs below the castle walls.

“Actually, I thought what you said was quite interesting,” Julie told him loyally. “I think everybody did. Honestly.”

“Not Pinckney.”

“No, not Donald,” Julie agreed. “But then he does tend to be a little touchy, a wee bit sensitive.”

With a predatory wife like Cheryl, Gideon thought, who wouldn’t be?

“So, what did you think of his wife?” Julie asked.

“Um… his wife?”

“Cheryl? The person sitting next to you? Certain parts of whom were more or less on top of you there for a while?”

“Oh, that Cheryl,” Gideon said, laughing. “I didn’t think you noticed.”

“I bet you noticed.”

“I did, but I hope you also observed that she didn’t get to first base with me. Why would she? I can do a whole lot better than Cheryl Pinckney.” He swung an arm around her shoulder, pulled her to him, and kissed her warmly. “Have I mentioned to you today that I’m in love with you?”

A gruff “Hey, you two, knock it off there” came from a nearby niche in the walls, where Liz was having a postprandial cigarette, its end glowing red in the dark. “We’re running a G-rated consortium here. This time, anyway.”

“Hey, yourself,” Gideon growled back, leaving his arms where they were, “go find your own parapet.”

But after another lingering moment with their arms wrapped around one another they separated and resumed their slow tour of the ramparts, their fingers entwined.

“ This time?” Gideon said. “Meaning, ‘As opposed to last time’?”

Julie nodded. “It got pretty torrid around here a couple of years ago.”

“Rats,” Gideon said. “I was hoping it was just something about me that brought out the beast in Cheryl.”

“’Fraid not, the beast in Cheryl is pretty easy to bring out. But it wasn’t just Cheryl-well, it was, but the hanky-panky was really pretty general. I mean, I know this stuff happens at conferences, but that was the first time I’d ever experienced anything quite like that.”

“Not first hand, I hope.”

She squeezed his fingers. “Not a chance. Edgar was at the center of it all, and I guess I wasn’t his type. He made only one move on me that could be construed as a pass-about as subtle as Cheryl’s move on you-and then quit.” She smiled. “I suppose I should have been insulted, because I was the only one he didn’t keep after. He managed to have affairs-well, to have sex with-all three of the other women. Not that he had to try too hard.”

“In one week?”

“Well, you know, the man was brilliant, famous, moody, edgy, good-looking in a dangerous sort of way… the kind that appeals to a lot of women.”

“But not to you, I take it.”

“Ugh, no!” He was absurdly pleased by her enthusiastic shudder. “Not that I have any objection to brilliant, famous, and good-looking, but I like my men a lot bigger, and sunnier, and friendlier… and I already have me one of those.”

You sure do, Gideon thought. And just you try and get rid of him. “But I thought Villarreal was supposed to be some kind of loner, a recluse-preferred living with the bears and the wolves to being around people. Was that all hype?”

“No, as far as I know it was true. He spent a lot of the year in the wilds. When he left here he was heading straight out to the Alaskan wilderness to spend the summer all by himself, keeping tabs on a cluster of bear families-you know, tracking their eating, and mating, and migration activities. All alone with the bears, that’s what he loved.” She shook her head. “But when he was around people-women, anyway-he got very, um, shall we say, social.”

“Yeah. Well, who knows, maybe I would too, if I spent my summers all alone, watching bears have sex.”

They walked on a few steps, still hand-in-hand. “You said all three of the women,” he said. “That means Cheryl, which is not exactly a huge surprise, and Liz-which is a surprise, because I wouldn’t have pictured her going for a one-night stand-but who else was there?”

“Victor Waldo’s wife, Kathie, was here with him too, and she-”

“Ah, that’s right. You asked after her when we met him on the boat and he said they were separated, and you and Liz gave each other a couple of ‘aha’ glances.”

“Really? Was it that obvious?”

“Hey, don’t forget you’re talking to the Skeleton Detective here. Not too much gets by me. So you think they broke up on account of what went on between her and Villarreal?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. She and Victor had a real wingding when it came out. It was pretty bad. I’m surprised you didn’t hear them back in Port Angeles.”

They had taken four turns around the ramparts now, and had them all to themselves, with Liz having gone back inside, and they stopped to lean their elbows on the parapet, overlooking the lights that were beginning to twinkle on in Hugh Town.

“It started right on the first night,” Julie mused, “the night of the opening reception.”

You’d have to have been out to lunch, she told him, not to notice that Cheryl and Villarreal had begun circling each other like storks doing a mating dance, about five minutes after they’d set eyes on one another. An hour into the reception, both had disappeared for a while, not even bothering to disguise the fact that they’d left together and returned together. Afterward, their little shared giggles and glances at dinner, and even at breakfast the next day, had left little doubt about what was going on. At first Julie had been embarrassed at their behaving that way in front of Donald, but it was soon obvious that he was used to it, and it wasn’t long before Julie was used to it too.

Villarreal’s affair with Cheryl lasted all of two days, Sunday and most of Monday, after which it cooled perceptibly. By Monday evening, he and Liz were a pair, a relationship that continued for most of the week, to Liz’s transparent delight.

“She really thought he was in love with her,” Julie said, shaking her head. “She thought she’d found the man of her dreams. Liz and I were pretty close, and I could see what was going on even if she couldn’t… anybody could, really… and so I tried to calm her down a little, get her to take the long view, but, you know, when somebody is like that…” She shrugged. “And anyway, I didn’t want to rain on her parade.”

“No, of course not. Poor Liz. She’s a smart lady, but she’s honest herself, and so she can be a little gullible when it comes to other people.”

“More than a little, I’m afraid. Edgar was like some kind of predator, as if he thought we were all his private harem. She was the only one who couldn’t see it.” Another shake of her head. “She couldn’t stop talking about him.”

Until that Friday, at any rate, when it somehow came out-Julie didn’t remember how-that in addition to romancing Liz, he had been grabbing the occasional hour in the sack with Victor’s wife Kathie on the side. There had been an extremely uncomfortable scene at dinner that evening, and then later everyone had heard Victor and Kathie screaming at each other in their room. As for Liz, she’d pretty much laughed it off, keeping a stiff upper lip in public, but there had been a couple of long crying sessions with Julie, filled with guilt and self-recrimination.

“Poor kid,” Gideon said. “Edgar was really a piece of work, wasn’t he? I knew I didn’t like him just from looking at him. Now I know why. I also understand why Liz was being so nasty about him on the ship. I wondered at the time. It didn’t seem like her.”

“Well, now you know. The whole steamy, sordid story. Come on, let’s go back to the other side. I want to see the last of the sunset.”

They were too late for that. The sun was gone, and the last of the sunset-watchers were plodding home with their blankets and picnic baskets. But the darkening western sky still showed faint layers of orange and rose at the horizon, and the Western Rocks, now jagged, black silhouettes, looked like the menacing maritime-disasters-waiting-to-happen that they were.

“And what did Kozlov think of all the hanky-panky behind the scenes?” Gideon asked. “He couldn’t have been too pleased.”

“I have no idea. I know he didn’t take to Edgar; you could see it on his face. There was always a kind of negative electricity between them, but I think it was what you get when you have a couple of rival superstars. Edgar was a born prima donna, and I’m sure Vasily didn’t take kindly to playing second fiddle. I doubt if he was too awfully upset when Edgar decided not to come back.”

“So far, I haven’t met anybody who was.” He turned to look at her. “Julie, how come you never told me about any of this before? The sexcapades stuff?”

“Would you have wanted me to?”

“No!” he said with feeling. “I hate hearing this kind of stuff, you know that.”

“Well, that’s how come.”

“So why tell me now?”

“You asked me a question.”

“I did? I don’t remember-”

“You said ‘This time, as opposed to last time?’ That’s a question.”

“I guess it was. My mistake.”

“Anyway, now you know.”

“So I do,” he sighed, taking her hand again as they turned from the parapet to go back inside. “Now If only I could figure out a way to un-know.”