CRO-MAGNON (67 page)

Strapped to the wheeled stretchers were two sleeping figures dressed in leather clothes—a tall brunette and a super-muscular blond man. The prehistoric garments were Brann’s idea, Mathiessen knew, to make his parents feel more natural upon waking from their thirty-thousand-year slumber.

Blaine nodded at the youth, who wore the mien of a vigorous and intelligent adult. “When you’re ready.”

Brann began to twist the overhead rheostat wired to the woman’s forehead, his compelling green eyes flicking between a readout and the recumbent figure. After an initial stillness, the woman’s arms and legs began to twitch and, as previously with the boy, Mathiessen could sense the eyes jittering behind their lids.

“
Now we wait,” Brann said in accentless English. He glanced around the room under shelving brows. “When she completes REM, please let me do the talking.”

#

Leya awoke with a start.

The lion! She made to open her eyes, but nothing happened. She tried to raise her arms, but they refused to move. Then she felt something shift inside her, and her eyes opened.

The first sight that met her gaze was Brann’s face, which struck her as bigger and older. And unscathed, though she had seen the lion crush his jaw!

This cannot be.

She blinked, but his features stayed the same.

“
How . . .”

“
It’s all right,
Mator,
” Brann said in the People’s tongue. Reaching out, he peeled something from her temples.

She attempted to sit up, but something restrained her. Her heart pounding, she eyed the strangers behind her
butro.
They were of the People, but wearing garments of some strange material. What could be happening?

Her senses reeled, but Brann’s calm manner soothed her. She looked around in puzzlement.

“
The lion . . .”

He reached to smooth her brow, tears flooding his outlander green eyes. “Gone,
Mator.
Many seasons ago.”

Glancing down, she saw that she was dressed in newly tailored skins and strapped to an elevated sleeping pad. Both breasts looked whole and she felt no pain.

How can that be?

Looking around, she saw another pad holding a sleeping Gar with his throat intact, but with bound limbs twitching.

“
Gar . . .”

“
Will be joining us,” Brann said.

She let her gaze wander over the otherworldly longhouse with its straight walls and strange objects.

“
Is this the Land of Shadows? It’s so bright.”

“
No,
Mator.
We are not in the spirit world. If we were, this would not have substance, would it?”

He leaned and put something round and smooth into her hand, and she instantly identified it.

“
Ki!” She felt her eyes water. “You brought my earth-
mator
from the cave.”

“
Someone else brought it,” he said, reaching to undo the straps.

She sat up, feeling shaky as she peered at her
butro
. Somehow, the man-eater was gone, and she sensed that it would not return. Something whined and pawed at her, and a wet tongue licked her face.

“
Fell.” Through tears she saw that the old wolf was young again, perhaps about the same age as when he had helped her and Gar battle Mungo atop the frozen pass.

Brann must be mistaken. They had to be in some spirit place. She looked around the strange enclosure.

“
Where are we, Brann?”

He supported her trembling shoulders. “We are far into the time of the morrow,
Mator.
I will show you wondrous things. Weirs the size of marinka traps that give off moving pictures, rhino-sized baskets that glide over the ground and move your body fast and far, tall longhouses that shelter scores of people who are never cold or hungry.”

Carefully, he helped her to climb down and stand on wobbly legs. Fel, seeming to understand that she was disoriented, sat by her feet.

“
Come,” Brann said. “Let us wake
Fator.
”

#

Consternation surged through Gar.

Leya and Brann!

If either still lived, he must make certain the cave lion was dead before his torn-out throat put him down for good. He tried to withdraw the spear from the lion’s head, but he could not move or see. He felt himself falling backward, his life-force winking out.

Immediately, something shifted within, and with a great effort he broke death’s hold and opened his eyes.

Ghub!

In place of the lion was Leya’s face. And beneath her tunic her body looked whole. But he had seen the lion tear away her breast.

He peered into her face. “Lion . . .”

“
Brann tells me the lion is gone,” she said in her people’s tongue. “And I believe him, Gar. We are in a safe place, a place of wonders.” She reached out, and he felt a tug at his temples.

He glanced around the bright space and saw straps encircling his body, and puny-looking Shortfaces in strange garb.

“
Many wonders,
Fator,
” Brann’s voice said. “Safe, I’m not so sure. Hatred, plagues, weapons of great destruction . . .”

Leya stepped aside and Gar saw his
butro
, his jaw whole again. He fingered his throat and felt his windpipe, impossibly undamaged.

He caught Leya’s eye. “Lion go?”

“
Yes, husband. Don’t ask me more. Brann will explain
.
”

Gar looked at his son. “Free me,
Butro.
”

Brann held his gaze. “Remember,
Fator,
these people be our friends.”

At Gar’s nod, he unfastened the straps and Gar swung his legs and stood swaying. He gazed at Leya and Brann as Fel pawed his chest and snorted.

How be alive? How Leya and Brann?

But he could see that they were. A sudden fear gripped him. If he lived, then the lion must also. If it returned . . .

He glanced around and saw a straight-walled longhouse with many strange objects, but not his spear. Was it still in the animal?

He looked at Brann. “Spear?”

Brann stooped. “Here,
Fator.
” He handed him the weapon and Gar, inspecting the now-unbloodied stone point, finally accepted that somehow his family was whole, and the lion gone.

#

Brann gazed at the journalists and scientists seated in folding chairs on the seventh-floor lawn of the Nauru Tower recreation area. Like several others in Honolulu, the condominium complex had been commissioned by the Republic of Nauru and paid for by royalties from the now-defunct phosphate mines.

Rolf Mathiessen had arranged through his Institute of Human Evolution to hold the press conference in this open area overlooking Ala Moana Beach Park. The barbecue pits had been done up to resemble Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal hearths, and the refreshments included bison-burgers flown from the mainland, specially brewed mead, and various herb teas for those who preferred not to wake in the morning with a hangover. To one side, a row of easels held an array of stunning landscapes and candid portraits rendered with bold strokes in primitive colors.

Brann’s glance slid sideways toward Leya and Gar who, like himself, stood in knee length jerkins, though underneath they all sported comfortable underwear from Ross. He thought how his
mator
and
fator
had risked their lives daily to provide for him in their world, and how he must now guide them to a good life in his. In a sense, at the age of sixteen, he had become their parent.

He reached down to stroke Fel’s ruff, and let his gaze widen to encompass his friends Murzo, Rolf, Ian, and Caitlin.

Life was good.

At a nod from Rolf, Murzo strode to a lectern and tapped the microphone. “Good afternoon. My name is Murzo Ayni. I’m administrator of the Resurrection Project. I know that some of you have heard mysterious rumors about our work on Nauru. Our boss, Rolf Mathiessen of the Institute of Human Evolution, will give you an overview.”

Brann heard a restless murmur run through the aloha-attired crowd.

Rolf waited for the buzz to subside. “With me today are my chief paleoanthropologist, Dr. Ian Calder, and the Institute’s geneticist, Dr. Caitlin Blaine. The people in funny clothes”—he waited for the chuckles to subside—“are Leya Magnon, Gar Neander, and Brann Magnon-Neander.”

More murmurs.

“
With them is their wolf, Fel, whom the good State of Hawaii after testing has allowed onto the island. But although these people hold Nauruan citizenship, they are not from Nauru. Nor are they from anywhere in our world.”

Ever the showman, the IHE director let the crowd hang for a beat. Brann heard more rustling, accompanied by skeptical murmurs. He watched Rolf hold up his hand.

“
No, they’re not space aliens. But they are time travelers.”

Before the crowd could react, he swept his arm to include the deerskin-cad figures. “As Dr. Calder will explain, Leya, Gar, Brann, and Fel were born and spent the first parts of their lives thirty thousand years ago near what are now the Amu Darya and Panj rivers in Central Asia.”

Brann saw the audience register disbelief as Rolf motioned for Ian to take over.

A reporter from the
New York Times
spoke up: “The only people alive today with ties to prehistoric life are found in remote rain forests.”

“
True,” Ian said. “But when I met Leya, Gar, and Brann, they were not ‘alive.
’
”

More skepticism issued from the crowd, almost amounting to hoots. Brann watched the anthropologist hurry on before someone could accuse him of pandering to the tabloids.

“
Some time ago, Dr. Blaine and I were persuaded—dragooned would be a better word—into traveling to the Pamir in Tajikistan, specifically to a remote mountain lake where a diver for a hydrologic survey had discovered three human bodies in a cave, which could be reached only through a natural underwater tunnel.”

Ian sipped tea from a paper cup, and Brann knew he was letting these facts complement Rolf’s provocative introduction.

“
In that respect, the cave was similar to Cosquer Cave in France. Like Cosquer, it was water-locked but dry, and contained prehistoric art. However, this cave was permafrosted, and contained the flesh-and-blood bodies”—here the paleoanthropologist swung to face Leya, Gar, and Brann—“of a Cro-Magnon woman, a Neanderthal man, and a hybrid twelve-year-old boy, as well as the family wolf. Plus a cave lion, with which they had fought a mortal battle.”

From some of the audience came indignant voices, disbelieving murmurs, and a few scornful sniggers. From others, a stony silence. A hand shot up. From magazine photos, Brann recognized a prominent paleoanthropologist.

“
Assuming for the moment that what you say is true, Ian, how do you get from there to here?”

“
Because of external constraints, Dr. Blaine and I could spend only a limited time in the cave. After I took measurements and photographed some autobiographical wall paintings, and Caitlin excised and analyzed genetic samples, events forced us to flee Tajikistan.”

Brann listened to the crowd go quiet again. But not for long, he knew.

“
So, recognizing a probably never-to-be-repeated opportunity to benefit the human race, we did the only thing we could with these people.” Ian turned up his hands. “We cut off their heads.”

Ian glanced at Brann and his parents. “Sorry, guys.”

The disbelieving silence continued while he turned the mike over to Caitlin. Presently, a communal grumble started, gathering force as listeners began gripe, some vacating their seats.

Brann, trying to gauge the crowd’s temper—had Ian laid it on too thick?—spotted a flicker of black by one of the pruned shrubs that dotted the recreation area. Focusing, he saw a smallish figure in a hooded cloak maneuvering a wheelchair. Curious, he jockeyed for a clearer view and glimpsed an oval of scar tissue, an irregular slash of a mouth, and two sunken beads for eyes before the figure turned sideways.

While the audience fidgeted or milled in confusion over Ian’s outrageous claim, Brann’s right-brained insight flared, overriding what his left hemisphere thought it knew. He stepped forward for a better angle, but the invalid’s conveyance glided behind a landscape bush.

Brann’s s decorum prevented him from going closer. If the person desired privacy . . .

Caitlin smiled took over the lectern. “Order,” she called, tapping the mike with a ballpoint pen. “Order, or I’ll be forced to clear the courtroom.”

When she had the crowd’s dubious attention, she said, “Of course, there was method to our madness. Some of you probably know that Salomon Industries has demonstrated they can scan the brains of mice, and lately rats, digitalize the synaptic signals, and upload them to cloned replicas, which then remember how to navigate mazes memorized by the original creatures.”