Prophet of Bones A Novel Page 8

  * * *

  They drank deep into the night. The wine put a nice buzz in Paul’s head. One by one the researchers wandered back to their tents. Paul stood, enjoying the slight wobble to his legs.

  Margaret stood, too. She grabbed his hand. “I want to show you something.”

  He let himself be pulled along, away from the tents, away from the cave, toward the river, to a place with tall grass and an overhang of trees. Crickets chirped loudly in the brush.

  “What did you want to show me?” he asked.

  “This, of course,” she said, and then she kissed him.

  He kissed her back, feeling her body move against him.

  “Can you keep a secret?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?” She kissed him again.

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  “Because people talk.”

  “What people?”

  “All people.”

  “Not all people.”

  “Well, most people,” she said, then kissed him again. “So this is our secret, just between us?”

  He nodded. “Top secret.”

  “A girl could get a reputation,” she said.

  “Not from me.”

  “You’re very convincing.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “Then just this once, okay?” She unhooked her overalls and let them fall to the grass. “Just this one time.” Her bare breasts swayed in the moonlight, full and heavy. He touched her. She moved against him, skin on skin, and then her mouth found his, and they sank onto the grass.

  * * *

  Paul skipped the manual labor the next day. The sun blazed down and his head throbbed a dull hangover, reminding him that last night hadn’t all been a dream. He kept an eye out for Margaret, but she hadn’t emerged from her tent yet. Instead of heading to the sieves, he made his way up to the cave and stepped into the shadows. The sudden coolness was almost analgesic. He moved to the back, to the place where a bamboo ladder jutted from the ground.

  He looked down at the men working thirty feet below. There were three of them. They’d excavated most of the bones that Paul had samples for and would soon be digging deeper, looking for more. The men at the bottom of the pit wore hard hats. Flashlights lit the base of the hole. The sound of the generator rumbled in the distance.

  Paul tried to imagine the weight of all that dirt pressing down. He tried to imagine the processes that could have painted the bones with soil, layer after layer, year after year, until thirty feet of the world stood atop them. The floods, and the mud, and thousands of years.

  James found him standing there. “A Catholic priest was first to dig here,” he said, leaning over to glance down into the hole.

  “When was that?”

  “Oh, it was a long time ago—middle of the last century, after the Dutch first started trying to convert the island’s heathen population into good, God-fearing folk.”

  “A priest archaeologist in the 1800s?”

  James scratched his copper-wire beard. “Well, he wasn’t called an archaeologist, mind, but he did do a wholly inordinate amount of digging for a fella with eyes turned skyward.”

  “Did he find anything interesting?”

  “Stone tools, charcoal, a few bones. Father Theodor Verhoeven. He’s been dead now a long time, and his work has been mostly ignored.”

  “He found bones? Like these?”

  “Not like these. He didn’t go that deep. The bones he found were more normal. His work probably would have been completely forgotten if not for the attention the cave is getting now.”

  “What about his other work?” Paul asked. “Did that go better than his digs?”

  “Converting the heathens, you mean? Marginally better, I suppose.”

  Paul watched the men dig. Flashlights wavered at the bottom of darkness.

  “Indonesia is one big mosaic now,” James said. “Part Muslim, part Christian. All of it layered over the older ancestor worship and various other animist traditions. In some remote villages, they sacrifice pigs on Christian holidays.”

  “One religion absorbs the traditions of another.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” James said.

  “And how would you put it?”

  “I’d say one religion eats another. Means about the same thing but has a slightly different inflection. It’s like one of the origin stories you still hear in the highlands—the first man having come from the ashes of burned bamboo. They still tell that story, though after the missionaries, they were kind enough to change his name to Adam. Flores is one of the religious borders. Always has been. There’s been fighting in the Moluccas and Sulawesi. Bloody business. Maybe Gavin told you.”

  “He told me there was some trouble.”

  “And more coming, likely. And that was all happening before they even dug here,” James said. “Lately it’s been worse.”

  “It’s just a research dig,” Paul said.

  “No such thing, these days. Between you and me, the sooner we’re done, the better.”

  “Do digs like this end?” Paul asked.

  “There’s bedrock down there somewhere.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “So these samples,” James said, gesturing toward the pit. “You’re sure you can make ’em talk?”

  “They’ll sing. And it’s more than just the DNA. There’s also stable isotope analysis of bone matrix collagen.”

  “And this tells you what?”

  Paul shrugged. “Lots of things. Ancient diet, trophic level, variation by latitude.”

  James nodded, taking this in. After a long pause, he asked, “Did Gavin ever tell you what this place was before?”

  “Before it was a cave, you mean?”

  James smiled indulgently. “After it was a cave, before it was a dig.”

  “No.”

  “They used it as a school.”

  “This place?”

  James nodded. “Father Theodor, before he starting digging, taught school here for the local village children.”

  Paul looked down into the pit. “A place of learning, still.”

  * * *

  The next morning started with a downpour. The dig team huddled in tents or under the tarped lean-to near the fire pit. Only James braved the rain, stomping off into the jungle. Paul watched him disappear into the undergrowth.

  Gray clouds obscured the mountainside. The sieving crew made strong coffee and chewed betel nuts.

  Gavin found Paul in his tent. He stuck his shaggy head under the tent flap. “I have to go back up to Ruteng.”

  “Again?”

  “There’s been an issue,” Gavin said. “I’ve received some troubling news. You want me to take the samples with me?”

  Paul shook his head. “Can’t. There are stringent protocols for chain of possession.”

  “Where are they now?”

  Paul patted the cargo pocket of his pant leg.

  Gavin seemed to consider this for a moment. “So when you get those samples back, what happens next?”

  “I’ll hand them over to an evaluation team.”

  “You don’t test them yourself?”

  Paul shook his head. “I’m the sampler. I can assist in actual testing, but there are rules. I test animal DNA all the time, and the equipment is the same, but genus Homo requires a license and oversight.”

  “All right, mate, then I’ll be back tomorrow.” Paul followed Gavin to the jeep. There, Gavin surprised him by handing him the satellite phone. “In case anything happens while I’m gone.”

  “Do you think something will?”

  “No,” Gavin said. Then: “I don’t know.”

  Paul fingered the sat phone, a dark block of plastic the size of a shoe. Something had changed. He could see it in the older man’s face. He considered asking more but didn’t.

  Gavin climbed into the jeep and pulled away. Paul watched the vehicle struggle up the muddy track heading to town.

&nb
sp; An hour later the rain had stopped and James was back from his excursion in the dripping jungle, smiling ear to ear. He returned to camp covered in mud but otherwise none the worse for the wear.

  “Well, will you look at that,” James said, holding something out for Paul to see.

  “What is it?”

  “Partially eaten monitor.” His face practically beamed. “A species only found here.”

  “Partially eaten? You know, I would have shared my lunch.”

  The smile grew wider. “I’d have to be pretty hungry to take a chomp of this bit of jerky. A few bites, and it would likely be my last meal. Lots of nasty bacteria in these things, starting with their mouths. That’s how they kill their prey, you know. They bite and then follow. For days, sometimes. Eventually, the bacteria does the job, and they move in for the kill.”

  Paul saw now that it was a clawed foot that James held in his freckled hand. It was the size of a St. Bernard’s paw.

  “That’s one big lizard.”

  “Oh, no.” He shook his head emphatically. “This was just a juvenile. They get a lot bigger.”

  “How big?”

  “Big enough to worry about. Mother Nature is odd this side of the Wallace line.”

  “So it would appear.”

  “Not only are most of the species this side of the line not found anywhere else, a lot of them aren’t even vaguely related to anything else. It’s like God started from scratch to fill all the niches.”

  James reared his arm back and flung the rotting paw into the jungle. “I’d save it for my collection, but I don’t have a way to preserve the tissue until we leave. Shame, really.”

  “This a big collection of rotting lizard parts you have?”

  “Oh, you have no idea.”

  “How’d you get started in herpetology?”

  “The bush, when I was a kid, was right out the back door. I was never any good at sports, so I used to play out there with my older brother, collecting lizards. It turned into a thing.” He shrugged. “That thing turned into this thing, and here I am.”

  “Ah, so you have your brother to blame.”

  “To thank, you mean. I have him to thank for this lucrative and highly fulfilling career path. Also, it’s a magnet for the ladies, in case you couldn’t guess.”

  “A few days ago, McMaster mentioned a dwarf elephant.”

  “Yeah, stegodons.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They’ve been extinct for a long time now. This island was one of their last strongholds.”

  “What killed them off?”

  “Same thing that killed off a lot of the ancient fauna on the island. The classic case, a volcanic eruption. We found the ash layer just above the youngest bones.”

  “Cataclysm,” Paul whispered.

  * * *

  Once, lying in bed with a woman, Paul had watched the moon through the window. The woman had traced his scars with her finger.

  “Your father was brutal.”

  “No,” Paul had said. “He was broken, that’s all.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “He was always sorry afterward.”

  “That mattered?”

  “Every single time.”

  11

  A: Incidences of local adaptation have occurred, sure. Populations adapt to changing conditions all the time.

  Q: Through what process?

  A: Differential reproductive success. Given genetic variability, it almost has to happen. It’s just math and genes. Fifty-eight hundred years is a long time.

  Q: Can you give an example?

  A: Most dogs would fall into this category, having been bred by man to suit his needs. While physically different from each other, when you study their genes, they’re all one species—though, admittedly, divided into several distinct clades.

  Q: So you’re saying God created the original dog but man bred the different varieties?

  A: You called it God, not me. And for the record, honey, God created the gray wolf. Man created dogs.

  —Excerpted from the trial of the geneticist Mathew Poole

  It came the next morning in the guise of police action. It came in shiny new Daihatsus with roll bars and off-road tires. It came with guns. Mostly, it came with guns.

  Paul heard them before he saw them, men shouting in a language he couldn’t understand. He was with James at the cave’s entrance. When Paul saw the first assault rifle, he sprinted for the tents. He slid the DNA lozenges into a pouch in his belt and punched numbers on the sat phone. Gavin picked up on the second ring. “The police are here,” Paul said.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I just spoke to the officials today,” Gavin said. Outside the tents there were shouts—angry shouts. “They assured me that nothing like this would happen.”

  “They lied.”

  Behind him, James said, “This is bad.”

  “Where are you?” Paul spoke into the phone.

  “I’m still in Ruteng,” Gavin said.

  “Then this will be over by the time you can get here.”

  “Paul, it’s not safe for you th—”

  Paul hung up. Tell me something I don’t know.

  He took his knife from his sample kit and slit the back of the tent open. He slid through, James following close behind. They crouched in the mud. Paul saw Margaret standing uncertain at the edge of the jungle. She was frozen in place, watching the men with guns, caught somewhere between running into the camp and running away from it. Paul moved his hand, a subtle gesture to catch her attention. Their eyes met, and Paul motioned toward the jeeps.

  She nodded.

  They all ran for it.

  A dozen yards across the mud, moving quickly. They climbed into a jeep and shut the doors. The soldiers—for that’s what Paul knew they were now—the soldiers didn’t notice them until Paul started the engine. Malay faces swung around, mouths open in shouts of outrage. A gun came up, more shouting, and the message was clear.

  Here was the choice, to comply or not. It always came down to a choice.

  “You’ll probably want your seat belts for this,” Paul said. Then he gunned it, spitting dirt.

  * * *

  “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” James whispered softly in the backseat, eyes closed in prayer.

  “What?” Paul said.

  “If they shoot, they’re not police.”

  A round smashed through the rear window and blew out a chunk of the front windshield, spidering the safety glass.

  “Shit!” Margaret screamed.

  A quick glance in the rearview, and Paul saw soldiers climbing into one of the Daihatsus. He yanked the wheel to the right.

  “Not that way!” Margaret shouted. Paul ignored her and floored the accelerator.

  Jungle whipped past, close enough to touch. Ruts threatened to buck them from the cratered roadway. The Daihatsu whipped into view behind them. Shots rang out, a sound like Chinese firecrackers, the ding of metal. The land sloped downward, and for a moment the road dropped away from jeep’s wheels, maxing out the suspension. The jeep landed and slid and bounced through the mud. Paul fought for control, spinning the wheel in the direction of the slide. The jeep fishtailed, and Paul spun the wheel in the other direction, gunning the engine. Mud sprayed the windows, and they accelerated through another deep rut, going airborne again.

  James braced his hand against the roof of the jeep to keep from slamming his head. Margaret screamed in the passenger seat.

  More shots rang out, but none struck the jeep. Their pursuers were having the same problem with the road. Still, Paul knew it was only a matter of time. There was no way they’d outrun them.

  They rounded the bend, and the river came into view—wide and dumb as the sky itself. The road sloped down to the water’s edge. Paul hit the accelerator.

  “We’re not going to make it across!” James shouted.

 
“We only need to get halfway.”

  Another shot slammed into the back of the jeep—a loud crack, the sound of hammer on metal.

  They hit the river in a slow-speed crash, water roaring up and over and through the broken windshield, pouring inside in a single muddy glut, soaking the interior of the jeep, the smell of muck overpowering.

  Paul stomped his foot to the floor.

  The jeep chugged, drifted, caught gravel. The wheels churned across stone. They got about halfway across before Paul yanked the steering wheel to the left. The world came unstuck and started to shift. The right front fender rose up, rocking with the current. The engine died. Sudden silence.

  They were floating.

  Paul looked back. The pursuing vehicle skidded to a halt at the shoreline and men jumped out. The jeep heaved, one wheel pivoting around a submerged rock.

  “Can you swim?” Paul asked.

  “Now you ask us?”

  “I’d unbuckle if I were you.”

  The jeep hit another rock, metal grinding on stone. Then the sky traded places with water and everything went dark.

  * * *

  Water surged through shattered windows. Paul caught half a breath before the river knocked him into the backseat.

  His head slammed into something jagged, and he was suddenly upside down, underwater, face crushed into the jeep’s roof. The river was a cold fist on his back, holding him down. The sound was deafening—rending metal and breaking glass, the scrape of stone on steel just beneath his cheek as the vehicle dredged the stony river bottom. Then the jeep rolled again, a violent movement, and the rear door flew open, twisted from its hinges—and he was suddenly out, flailing in the water.

  He sucked in a lungful of air, trying to stay at the surface.

  Gunshots came from behind them, bullets zinging across the water, and Paul ducked beneath the surface. He went deep, letting the cold river carry him. His shoulder slammed into a submerged boulder, knocking the air from his lungs. He surfaced again, gasping. More shots, farther away this time. Somewhere behind him, he heard the jeep slam into a rock. The cold fist of the river carried him forward.

  Paul saw James paddling a dozen feet ahead of him.

  “James!”

  “Here!” came the answer. James coughed and splashed.