Prophet of Bones A Novel Page 6

  Paul threw himself into his schoolwork, taking independent study in the osteochronology of ancient anthropoid remains.

  In the world of archaeology, the line between man and un-man could be fuzzy, but it was never unimportant. To some scientists, Homo erectus was a race of man long dead, a withered branch on the tree of humanity. To those more conservative, he wasn’t man at all; he was other, a hiccup of the creator, an independent creation made from the same toolbox. But that was an extreme viewpoint.

  Mainstream science, of course, accepted the use of stone tools as the litmus test. Men made stone tools. Soulless beasts didn’t. Of course there were still arguments, even in the mainstream. The fossil KNM-ER 1470, found in Kenya, appeared so perfectly balanced between man and un-man that an additional category had to be invented: near man. The arguments could get quite heated, with both sides claiming anthropometric statistics to prove their case.

  Like a benevolent teacher swooping in to stop a playground fight, the science of genetics arrived on the scene. Occupying the exact point of intersection between the slopes of Paul’s two passions in life—genetics and anthropology—the field of paleometagenomics was born.

  And here he found his calling.

  He received a bachelor’s degree in May and started a graduate program in September. A year later, there came a letter and an airline ticket, and a company called Westing flew him to the East Coast for a job interview.

  They sat in a conference room. The company logo was a DNA double helix.

  “I won’t finish my master’s for another six months,” he told them, confused by the offer.

  “We’re more interested in ability than academic credentials,” the chief interviewer said. “The schools can’t keep up. Field techniques are obsolete by the time the textbooks are printed. If you want to see the curriculum three years early, sign our employment contract.”

  “This is all moving so fast.”

  The interviewer smiled. “Like the field itself.”

  They shook hands over a glossy table.

  Three weeks after that, he was in the field in Tanzania, sweating under an equatorial sun, collecting samples for later laboratory analysis. He drank quinine water by the gallon and dodged malaria.

  They flew him back and forth between labs and dig sites.

  All the while, he worked closely with his team, learning the proprietary techniques for extracting DNA from bones that were fifty-eight hundred years old.

  Bones from the very dawn of the world.

  9

  The flight to Bali was seventeen hours, and another two to Flores by chartered plane—then four hours by jeep over the steep mountains and into the heart of the jungle. To Paul, it might have been another world. Rain fell, then stopped, then fell again, turning the road into a thing which had to be reasoned with.

  “Is it always like this?” Paul asked.

  “No,” Gavin said. “In the rainy season, it’s much worse.”

  The jeep slalomed along the rutted track, throwing rooster tails of black mud as it negotiated the pitched landscape.

  Paul gripped the jeep’s roll bar to steady himself and stared out into the thick growth that slid past on both sides of the road.

  Flores, isle of flowers. From the air it had looked like a green ribbon of jungle thrust out of blue water, a single bead in the rosary of islands that stretched between Australia and Java. Sulawesi lay to the north, New Guinea to the northeast. The Wallace line—a line more real than any border scrawled across a map—lay miles to the west, toward Asia and the empire of placental mammals. But here a stranger emperor ruled.

  Paul was exhausted by the time they pulled into Ruteng. He rubbed his eyes. Children ran alongside the jeep, their faces some compromise between Malay and Papuan: brown skin, strong white teeth like a dentist’s dream. The town crouched with one foot in the jungle, one on the mountain. A valley flung itself from the edge of the settlement, a drop of kilometers.

  The jeep wound its way through the crowded streets, past shops, and houses, and thronging tent bazaars, past smaller clapboard structures whose function Paul could only guess at. Small vans and motorbikes shouldered each other for space at intersections, horns blaring. If there were driving laws, Paul couldn’t deduce them from the available data.

  Rail-thin pariah dogs lurked in the gaps between buildings. Paul noted their colors with a geneticist’s eye, reading their genes as they picked through the garbage, tails curved upward over their bony hips. The yellow one was Ay; the black-and-tan, at/at. And others: E/m, bb, s/i. He saw no solid blacks. That color variety hadn’t been among the first dogs carried across the Wallace line in bamboo rafts. That kind didn’t exist here.

  The jeep pulled to a stop in front of a small two-story structure.

  The men checked into their hotel, handing over 170,000 rupiah apiece. Paul had no idea if that was expensive or not, but he found his room basic and clean. He slept like the dead.

  The next morning he woke, showered, and shaved. Gavin met him in the lobby.

  “It’s a bit rustic, I admit,” Gavin said. His hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, keeping it clear of his face.

  “No, it’s fine,” Paul said. “There was a bed and a shower. That’s all I needed.”

  “We use Ruteng as a kind of base camp for the dig. Our future accommodations won’t be quite so luxurious.”

  Back at the jeep, Paul checked his gear. It wasn’t until he climbed into the passenger seat that he noticed the gun, its black leather holster duct-taped to the driver’s door. It hadn’t been there the day before.

  Gavin caught him staring. “These are crazy times we live in, mate.”

  “And the times require researchers to carry guns?”

  “This is a place history has forgotten. Recent events have made it remember.”

  “Which recent events are those?”

  “Religious events, to some folks’ view. Political to others’.” Gavin waved his hand. “More than just scientific egos are at stake with this find.”

  They drove north, descending into the valley and sloughing off the last pretense of civilization. “You’re afraid somebody will kidnap the bones?” Paul asked.

  “That’s one of the things I’m afraid of.”

  “One?”

  “It’s easy to pretend that it’s just theories we’re playing with—ideas dreamed up in some ivory tower between warring factions of scientists like it’s all some intellectual exercise.” Gavin looked at him, his dark eyes grave. “But then you see the actual bones; you feel their weight in your hands, the sheer factual irrefutability of their existence…” Gavin stared at the road ahead. Finally, he said, “Sometimes theories die between your fingers.”

  The track down to the valley floor was all broken zigzags and occasional rounding turns. Gavin leaned into the horn as they approached blind curves, though they never came across another vehicle. The temperature rose as they descended. For long stretches, overhanging branches made a tunnel of the roadway, the jungle a damp cloth slapping at the windshield. But here and there that damp cloth was yanked aside, and out over the edge of the drop you could see a valley Hollywood would love, an archetype to represent all valleys, jungle floor visible through jungle haze. On those stretches of muddy road, a sharp left pull on the steering wheel would have gotten them there quicker, deader.

  “Liang Bua,” Gavin called their destination. “The Cold Cave.” And Gavin explained that this was how they thought it happened, the scenario: this steamy jungle all around, so two or three of them went inside to get cool, to sleep. Or maybe it was raining, and they went into the cave to get dry—only the rain didn’t stop, and the river flooded, as the local rivers often did, and they were trapped inside the cave by the rising waters, their drowned bodies settling to the bottom to be buried by mud, and sediment, and millennia.

  The men rode in silence for a while before Gavin said it, a third option, Paul felt coming: “Or they were eaten there.”

  “Eat
en by what?”

  “Homo homini lupus est,” Gavin said. “Man is wolf to man.”

  They forded a swollen river, water rising to the bottom of the doors. Paul felt the current grab the jeep, pull, and it was a close thing, Gavin cursing and white-knuckled on the wheel, trying to keep them to the shallows while the water seeped onto the floorboards. When they were past it he said, “You’ve got to stay to the north when you cross; if you slide a few feet off straight, the whole bugger’ll go tumbling downriver.”

  Paul didn’t ask him how he knew.

  Beyond the river was the camp. Researchers in wide-brimmed hats or bandannas. Young and old. Two or three shirtless. Men with buckets, trowels, and bamboo stakes. A dark-haired woman in a white shirt sat on a log outside her tent. The sole commonality between them all: a kind of war weariness in their eyes. They’d been here long enough to have been worn down by the place.

  That was when it occurred to Paul that some of these people had probably been digging here, in this same camp, for years.

  Every face followed the jeep, and when it pulled to a stop, a small crowd gathered to help them unpack. Gavin introduced Paul around. Eight researchers, plus two laborers still in the cave and another two still working the sieves. Australian mostly. Indonesian. One American.

  “Herpetology, mate,” one of them said when he shook Paul’s hand. Small, stocky, red-headed; he couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. He wore a shaggy, coppery beard. Paul forgot his name the moment he heard it, but the introduction, “Herpetology, mate,” stuck with him. “That’s my specialty,” the small man continued. “I got mixed up in this because of Professor McMaster here. University of New England—the Australian one.” His smile was two feet wide under a sharp nose that pointed at his own chin. Paul liked him instantly.

  When they’d finished unpacking the jeep, Gavin turned to Paul. “So are you ready for the tour?”

  Paul nodded.

  The operation was larger than he’d expected. There were two different sieving setups, one dry, one wet, and a dozen tables and tents and benches, all spread out in a small clearing just beyond the mouth of the cave. A generator rumbled in the background, providing all the electricity for their lights and equipment. Construction-helmeted laborers shuffled to and from the cave, bent under their work, local villagers who spoke a language Paul couldn’t understand.

  “We used to sleep in the village of Terus during the dig season,” Gavin said. “It’s just up the road. But you’ll be staying here.” Gavin gestured toward a white canvass tent.

  Paul lifted the heavy tent flap and stuck his head inside. The space was clean and functional, like the room in Ruteng.

  “Why don’t you stay in Terus anymore?”

  “Safety issues.”

  “So Terus isn’t a friendly place, I take it?”

  “No, Terus is wonderful. It’s their safety we’re worried about.”

  Gavin’s face produced a smile. “Now I think it’s time we made the most important introductions.”

  It was a short walk to the cave. Jag-toothed limestone jutted from the jungle, an overhang of vine, and, beneath that, a dark mouth. The stone was the brown-white of old ivory. Cool air enveloped Paul, and entering Liang Bua was a distinct process of stepping down. Inside, it took Paul’s eyes a moment to adjust. The chamber was thirty yards wide, open to the jungle in a wide crescent—mud floor, high-domed ceiling. The overall impression was one of expanse, like the interior of an ancient church. He followed Gavin deeper. There was not much to see at first. In the far corner, two sticks angled from the mud, and when he looked closer Paul saw the hole.

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Paul took off his backpack and stripped the white paper suit out of its plastic wrapper. He peered down into the dig. “Who else has touched it?”

  “Talford, Margaret, me.”

  Paul pulled a light from his backpack and shined it into the hole. It was then that he realized just how deep it went. A system of bamboo ladders led down to the bottom, thirty feet below. He was staring into a pit. “I’ll need blood samples from everybody for comparison assays.”

  “DNA contamination?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We stopped the dig when we realized the significance.”

  “Still. I’ll need blood samples from anybody who’s dug here, anybody who came anywhere near the bones. I’ll take the samples myself tomorrow.”

  “I understand. Is there anything else you require?”

  “Solitude.” Paul smiled. “I don’t want anybody in the cave for this part.”

  Gavin nodded and left. Paul broke out his tarps and hooks. It was best if the sampler was the person who dug the fossils out of the ground—or, better yet, if the DNA samples were taken when the bones were still in the ground. Less contamination that way. And there was sure to be contamination. Always. No matter what precautions were taken, no matter how many tarps or how few people worked at the site, there was still always contamination.

  Paul staked the tarps down at one end and slid into the hole, a flashlight strapped to his forehead, his white paper suit slick on the moist earth. He gripped the ladder as he descended into the dark cold, the bamboo rungs flexing under his weight like thin ice. He wondered how much heavier he was than the average worker on the site. When his feet finally touched down on damp clay, he turned and squatted. The working floor was two meters by two meters.

  From his perspective, he couldn’t tell what the bones were—only that they were bones, in situ, half-buried in earth. But that was all that mattered. The material was soft, unfossilized; he’d have to be careful. It was commonly accepted that bones needed at least a few thousand years to fossilize. These were younger than a lot of archaeological finds.

  The procedure took nearly seven hours. He coated the bone surface with sodium hyperchlorate, then used a Dremel tool to access the unexposed interior matrix. He snapped two dozen photographs, careful to record the stratigraphic context. Later it would be important to keep track of which samples came from which specimens. Whoever these things were, they were small. He sealed the DNA samples into small, sterile lozenges for transport.

  It was night when he climbed from under the tarp.

  Outside the cave, Gavin was the first to find him in the firelight. “Are you finished?”

  “For tonight. I have six different samples from at least two different individuals.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we thought, two individuals. So far.”

  “So far?”

  “We’re not sure how far down the cache goes. When we remove those bones, there could be more underneath.”

  “Is that common here?”

  Gavin shrugged. “It’s unpredictable. The deposits will go shy on you sometimes. You’ll have a dozen feet of nothing, just sterile soil, and then you’ll brush away the next centimeter and the dig will go active for another dozen feet: rat bones, and bird, and charcoal, and stone tools. Even Stegodon, a kind of pygmy elephant. Sometimes more interesting things.”

  “I’d say those bones were interesting,” Paul said.

  “So that means you’ll stay on with us?”

  “Yeah,” Paul said. “I’ll stay.”

  * * *

  Gavin handed him a bottle of whiskey.

  “Isn’t it a little early to celebrate?”

  “Celebrate? You’ve been working in a grave all day. Don’t they drink at wakes in America?”

  That night, around the campfire, Paul listened to the jungle sounds and to the voices of scientists, feeling history congeal around him.

  “Suppose it isn’t,” Jack was saying. Jack was thin and American and very drunk. “Suppose it isn’t in the same lineage with us, then what would that mean?”

  The red-bearded herpetologist groaned. His name was James. “Not more of that dogma-of-descent bullshit,” he said.

  “Then what is it?” someone asked.

  They passed the bottle around, eyes occasionally drift
ing to Paul like he was a priest come to grant absolution, his sample kit just an artifact of priestcraft. Paul swigged from the bottle when it came his way. They’d finished off the whiskey long ago; this was some local brew distilled from rice. Paul swallowed fire.

  Yellow-haired man saying, “It’s the truth,” but Paul had missed part of the conversation, and for the first time he realized how drunk they all were; James laughed at something, and the woman with the white shirt turned and said, “Some people have nicknamed it the hobbit.”

  “What?”

  “Flores man—the hobbit. You know, little people three feet tall.”

  “Tolkien would be proud,” a voice contributed.

  “A mandible, a complete cranium, segments of a radius, and left inominate.”

  “But what is it?”

  “It is what it is.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hey, are you staying on?”

  The question was out there for three seconds before Paul realized it was aimed at him. The woman’s brown eyes were searching across the fire. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m staying.”

  Then the voice again, “But what is it?”

  “That is the question, isn’t it?”

  Paul took another swallow—thinking of the bones and trying to cool the voice of disquiet in his head.

  * * *

  Paul learned about her during the next couple of days, the woman with the white shirt. Her name was Margaret. She was twenty-eight. Australian. Some fraction aborigine on her mother’s side, but you could only see it for sure in her mouth. The rest of her could have been Dutch, English, whatever. But that full mouth: teeth like Ruteng children’s, teeth like dentists might dream.

  She tied her brown hair back from her face, so it didn’t hang in her eyes while she worked in the hole. This was her sixth dig, she told him. “This is the one.” She sat on the stool while Paul took her blood, a delicate index finger extended, red pearl rising to spill her secrets.

  “Most archaeologists go a whole lifetime without a big find,” she said. “Maybe you get one. Probably none. But this is the one I get to be a part of.”