CRO-MAGNON (38 page)

“
I doubt it.” Calder glanced down at the latest photos from the cave, arrayed next to Blaine’s laptop, and peered at her computer screen. “Any progress?”

“
I set the sniffer to comparing the lateralization genes of all three people.”

Ayni, cleaning the rifle, said, “Lateral . . .”

Calder shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

Blaine watched him peer at the four photos. “I hope you’re getting a good handle on Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal lifestyles,” she said. “Particularly in this one family. I need some idea of the boy’s abilities.”

She felt his breath stir her hair as his head gave a small shake. “I can’t tell too much until we uncover more pictures. The springtime tents and winter longhouses of the Cro-Magnons suggest they migrated seasonally, while the messy but settled Neanderthal cave is what one would expect if they stayed in one place.”

“
You’re saying the Cro-Magnons were semi-nomadic hunters who followed the animals seasonally, while the Neanderthals stayed put and squeezed their home ground?”

“
As far as I can tell. Also, the Cro-Magnon settlement is larger than the Neanderthal camp and looks more efficient. This lends credence to the idea that Cro-Magnons simply outpopulated and outcompeted Neanderthals.”

Blaine glanced at Ayni, who was listening attentively as he tended the outmoded rifle. She marveled that the two men’s friendship had progressed to where the ranger had agreed to aid their effort. If Murzo had been a woman, would she have had the same success?

“
That’s what we geneticists have been saying all along—that anatomically modern people from Africa drove indigenous people extinct, worldwide, with no significant mixing.”

Calder was still perusing the four paintings. “That remains to be seen.”

Blaine felt a flash of . . . what? Certainly not the outright anger she would have experienced a few days ago.

“
But you just said—”

“
That Cro-Magnons did replace the Neanderthals. That’s obvious. But it looks as if it was more of a cultural phenomenon, growing out of larger groups, than one of brains or weaponry. The Cro-Magnons’ larger population increased the chance that an innovation would be discovered and passed on, while the Neanderthals’ territoriality, a result of their longtime occupation of a cold land, made them less versatile. Although, to be fair, they don’t seem to have had the same talent for invention.”

“
That’s exactly what we—”

Calder jabbed at a photo of the last of the four new paintings, showing the Neanderthal taking leave of the ?Cro-Magnon woman. “Note that our Neanderthal man was able to visit a Cro-Magnon camp and depart peacefully, even after being the focus of a brawl. This suggests that, in some places at least, the takeover by the newcomers was relatively nonviolent. And this woman’s experience, chronicled in the paintings, implies a degree of interbreeding.”

“
That could be an isolated case.”

Calder shook his head. “We see this same pattern today when one primitive group triumphs over another.”

“
Let me get this straight. You’re using what we’ve discovered to bolster your claim that we all carry significant numbers of genes from indigenous archaic peoples in addition to those from anatomically modern humans?”

Calder nodded.

“
But we haven’t found genes in any such amount!” she said.

Calder glanced at Ayni, still listening while he reamed the rifle barrel, and back at her. “Have you looked, in depth?”

“
We haven’t had much chance to. We’ve only recovered short segments of Neanderthal DNA.”

“
Up till now.”

“
Yes.” Blaine peered at her computer screen, nodded to herself, and minimized the gene-sniffing program. It would run all night. “All right, you’ve convinced me I need to do more work.”

Calder looked at her guardedly. “What does that mean?”

Now!
she thought.

“
I don’t know if I dare tell you.”

He crossed his arms, then unfolded them as if to banish any negative body language.

“
Try me.”

Blaine took a breath. “It means that I want to bring out all three human heads. I want to analyze their individual brain patterns, along with their genomes, and see if I can correlate anything.”

He stared. “You sandbagged me.”

Blaine watched her gene-sniffer begin to sort base pairs. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Calder suppress a smile. Now was the time to nail him down.

She caught his eye. “Well?”

“
Maybe we could conceal one head among our equipment or something. But how would we smuggle three?”

Blaine tapped her foot on the plank floor. “Smuggling is a male activity. You tell me.”

#

Later, in her sleeping bag, Blaine thought about Calder’s theory that Cro-Magnons had outcompeted Neanderthals rather than exterminating them, and that at least limited interbreeding had occurred. There was something almost unbearably poignant about the last of the four new paintings, the one that depicted the parting of the Cro-Magnon woman and her Neanderthal protector. She sensed that the young woman had felt relieved to see her mother again, but wondered if she had really believed she could live among her tribe with a half-breed child.

And she marveled at the Neanderthal’s sang-froid in accompanying his self-designated charge and her baby into the Cro-Magnon settlement. But most of all, she wondered whether the two people from disparate branches of humanity were aware of their feelings for each other.

Feelings that were subtly but clearly revealed in the series of paintings . . .

Chapter 16

Looking beyond the approaching delegation, Leya could see a group of women gazing at the pass from between the two longhouses. She spotted Nola with Vonn, who she saw was now walking. A figure taller than herself joined them and shaded her eyes. Not wanting to distract the approaching men, Leya limited herself to a brief wave to her
mator
. Alys, hopping excitedly, waved back and blew a kiss.

The six men halted a few paces short of Leya and Gar. Gar held Fel’s ruff, and Leya made no attempt to hide Brann. She was glad the young wolf made no overtures. She saw at once that the men recognized the
baban
as half-Flathead. It was hard to read the expression in Ronan’s sunken eyes, but Sugn’s austere face wore a mantle of haughty contempt.

Not a good beginning, Leya thought, clutching Brann to her breast.

Mungo flicked a hostile glance at Gar and then stared at Leya, a scowl further twisting his scarred face, and she knew that part of his anger stemmed from her having given him his scar.

While you tried to force me,
she thought.

His half-
brator
Hodr looked indifferent. Jarv seemed thoughtful beneath his habitual dour expression, and Leya imagined she saw compassion in Drem’s long-jawed face.

Ronan spoke first. “Life to you, Leya.”

“
And to you, Chief Ronan.”

“
So you survived the river.”

A ploy to force Leya to make the first overture, she knew. She noticed that the chief avoided looking at Gar. She decided to match his noncommittal manner and put the onus back on him. Ignoring the scowling Mungo, she looked Ronan in the eye.

“
With this man’s help.”

Sugn’s aged but still sonorous voice said, “I see your child is of mixed blood.”

Already!

Leya raised her chin. “Yes, Brann is of both worlds.”

Mungo spoke up. “You will sleep in my tent. You will not bring the Flathead child into camp.”

So that was how it would be, Leya thought. Beside her, Gar widened his stance. She sensed that he understood the gist of Mungo’s statement and did not like it.

Best to make a stand, she decided. She raised her chin.

“
I will stay with Alys, as before.” She hefted the child so they could all see his sandy hair, shelving brows, and sharp chin. Brann will live with us.”

Mungo started to speak, but Ronan gestured him to silence. Still ignoring Gar, the chief looked at Fel.

“
What do you propose for the young wolf?”

Leya drew a breath. At least the chief had not overruled her on the spot, but she sensed that the situation was pivotal for Fel. She glanced at the wolf sitting by Gar’s side. She considered him part of her family, and throughout the trek from the clan’s camp, she had worried about his acceptance.

Now the moment was at hand. The tribe sometimes employed partially tame wolves to help funnel hoofed animals into brush traps. They were allowed to feed on the butchered carcasses but not to enter camp. Establishing one in Alys’s tent would set a precedent, Leya knew. And even among the forward-looking Tribe of the Twin Rivers, new practices were slow to win acceptance.

She met the chief’s gaze. “Fel is family. He hunts his own food. He will live with Alys and me and Brann.”

Sugn stepped forward, stooped, and ran his gnarled hand over Fel’s ruff. The young wolf tensed but held still. Sugn straightened and stepped back.

“
What if he challenges someone?” he said. “Particularly a child?”

“
I promise he will not,” Leya said. She hefted Brann. “I have a child of my own.”

The shaman looked doubtful. “What of the wounded-prey instinct?”

Leya knew that wolves were not normally dangerous to people. But a lame person, a child running, or worse, a toddler, could evoke their instinct to finish off a wounded or fleeing animal.

If she had thought Fel was a danger in that respect, she would long since have sent him back to the wild. But he had not exhibited such a tendency, and she intuited that, having grown up among people, he never would.

“
Fel likes children,” she said. “He will be good protection.”

Sugn looked concerned but said no more. As the tribe’s spiritual leader, charged with insuring a successful hunt, the elderly man had amassed much lore about animals, Leya knew. He almost seemed to communicate subliminally with them.

As a surreptitious student of his rituals, she had long suspected that much of Sugn’s success in ensuring favorable hunts stemmed from his knowledge of the animals’ habits rather than from the spiritual value of the pictures he drew on cave walls.

Of course, to say so would have ruined any chance she might have had of becoming a shaman, a dream now as withered as last summer’s cattail blossoms. If Sugn deferred in Fel’s case, Leya thought, it was because he had communed with the young animal on some level and sensed that Leya’s promise was valid.

Mungo stepped forward, his face flushed, with Hodr following. The rangy man glanced at Gar and back to Leya.

“
You will bear my children,” he said, turning the discussion back to his own concerns.

Leya faced him triumphantly. “When Brann was born, I was torn and scarred. The clan’s midwife told me that henceforth I will bear no man’s child.”

Mungo’s face tightened, the jagged scar on his left cheek drawing up the corner of his mouth. Hodr mirrored the scowl, though with less intensity. Drem’s and Jarv’s faces remained noncommittal.

Ronan finally turned his attention to Gar.

“
And what of this Flathead?”

“
Gar is my friend,” Leya said, and saw revulsion grip the men’s faces at the thought of giving a Flathead a name. To the People, Flatheads were savages at best, animals at worst, to be ignored or driven away.

“
He pulled me from the river,” Leya said. “And he has protected me ever since.”

“
Did you lie with him?” Mungo said, his dark eyes hot. “Is he the
fator
of the Flathead child?”

“
No, I—”

Mungo’s natural sneer deepened. “You just happened to birth a child one day? He just happened to be a Flathead?”

Leya surveyed the group, meeting the eyes of each man in turn. “The clan’s leader assigned me to Caw, the most eligible hunter. I nearly died bearing Brann.”

“
Why have you returned to the tribe?” Sugn said, cutting to the primary issue.

Tell the truth.

“
The clan is not as advanced as the tribe. Some were intolerant of me and Brann. The leader decided I must go.” She glanced at Gar. “My friend was kind to escort me.”

“
What do you plan for him?” Ronan said.

“
Nothing. Gar wants to stay long enough to see that I am in good hands.”

There was a round of dubious looks, as though none of the men could believe that a Flathead would be capable of any purpose beside killing something and eating it. Gar must have sensed their unease, Leya thought, because he edged toward his spear. She shot him a warning glance and he halted.

Finally, Ronan said, “The Tribe of the Twin Rivers does not turn away travelers. Your friend may stay the night. Then he must be on his way.”

“
And what of me and my family?” Leya said, almost afraid to evoke a decision.