Prophet of Bones (17 page)

Gavin stared at him. “The plan? What do you mean you…” But Gavin couldn’t finish, a suspicion freezing the words on his tongue.

“I mean nothing but exactly what I said,” Martial responded. “More than that, you’ll understand in good time.” The old man looked directly at him. “But for now, there is something
I
don’t understand.”

“What is that?”

“Paul.”

Gavin studied Martial’s face, but it gave away nothing. Behind him, up the trail, Gavin again noticed the three men in suits.

“You told me to pick the best team, so that’s what I did,” Gavin said. “You said I could pick whoever I wanted.”

“And you picked him, of all the samplers?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“He came highly recommended. He had the right credentials.”

“Do you think I’m a fool?”

Gavin thought of the pacing cat. “Because I was curious,” he said. “And I felt he was owed something.”

“Owed something.” The cracked and failing voice became steel. “What was owed?”

Gavin met the old man’s eye and said nothing.

Martial nodded. “Do you feel the debt is paid?”

“I wish I’d never involved him. I regret it. If I’d known it would happen like that, I never would have brought him to the island.”

In the distance, the strange sound came a third time. The distorted cry. The skin tightened at the back of Gavin’s neck.

He looked into the old man’s face and found the usual confidence had vanished, replaced by the expression of a man who didn’t have all the answers. The cry continued, rising higher, a strange mewling like nothing Gavin had ever heard before.

“I was told that he crushed a man’s throat,” the old man said.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“If true, it was an unusual response to the circumstances. An unexpected response.”

“What would have been the expected response?”

“To those circumstances? To die, of course.” The old man rubbed his palm over his sweating head. “You brought him into this.” The old man’s eyes burned. “You are responsible for what happens.”

“I understand.”

Martial nodded to himself. “You’ve put me in a very difficult situation.”

“No more difficult than if it had been somebody else on the team.”

“Again, you call me a fool.”

“If not him, it would have been somebody.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No.”

The old man turned to look at the crouching chimps.

After a moment, he spoke: “So then tell me this. Is he his father’s son?”

“In some ways.”

“Is he going to let this go? The deaths. The things he’s seen.”

“He might.”

The old man shielded his eyes from the sun, still blazing even as it set. He wiped his cracked lips with the back of his hand and coughed into his handkerchief again. Then he asked the question that had drawn Gavin across thousands of miles of ocean, inexorable and inevitable from the first moment: “Can we trust him?”

Gavin watched the big chimp in its cage. He considered lying for a moment, but he knew the old man would see it on his face.

“No, we cannot.”

18

The glass wall formed a single, seamless barrier unless you knew where to look.

The doors had no handles, no smudges, glass on glass, and it all unfolded on invisible hinges, swinging inward as Paul approached. Behind him, across the short stretch of marble flooring, the elevator doors closed with a soft ding.

The fifth floor.

Heaven.

Paul stepped from the elevator entryway and onto the soft carpet of the administration level. He’d been here only once before, on the day he’d been hired. He remembered being very impressed with the lighting. The ceilings were beveled at complicated angles, hidden lights reflecting off recessed ceiling panels. The effect produced a well-lit room that nonetheless lacked windows or any visible means of illumination. That first day, waiting for his interview, he’d sat in the comfortable reception area and looked for a shadow, any shadow. There were none. The light was just everywhere, all at once. Like the inside of a video game.

Across the room, a beautiful woman sat behind a large, curved structure that was intermediate between a desk and a high, elegant countertop. This was the receptionist. She was not just beautiful, Paul decided as he approached. She was stunning. Her blond hair was cut in a short bob that framed the perfect oval of her face.

Soft music played in the background. A soothing jazz. The carpet was plush, deep red; it yielded underfoot. The room smelled of flowers.

It was the kind of room you’d choose to die in, if you had to choose a room.

“Can I help you?” The woman parted her lips. Her eyes were liquid blue pools.

“I’m here for Mr. Belshaw.”

“Certainly. He’s expecting you, Mr. Carlsson.” Her hands moved behind the counter, hidden from view. Like the lights. “You can go right in.”

There was a click, and across the room a door opened—the first in a series of doors that extended down a long hall. This door was heavy and wooden.

Paul crossed a league of carpet. Belshaw was sitting when Paul entered his office. “Please,” Belshaw said, gesturing to one of the leather chairs near his desk.

The office had the same lighting as the reception area, the same recessed ceilings. The floor, though, was polished hardwood. Near the door Paul noticed a light switch and felt a pang of jealousy.

“You requested this meeting, Paul. What can I do for you?” Belshaw leaned back in his chair, his wide hands interlocked behind his head.

He was in his fifties, a large man, tan and fit. His broad face was relaxed and confident, the face of a man in charge. Farther down the hall, Paul knew, were other offices with light switches and hardwood floors, other administrators in five-thousand-dollar suits—men Paul would recognize on sight, though he’d never been introduced: the big bosses, their names and faces picked up over time the way employees always pick up that kind of information. By osmosis. And if you kept walking down that hall, passing door after door, you’d eventually reach the end, Paul knew, and there would be a final doorway and a final big boss, who was not there most of the time yet maintained an office still, and a private secretary even more beautiful, somehow, than the stunning receptionist.

“I’d like a transfer,” Paul said.

The broad face changed. The brows furrowed. “You aren’t happy in sampling anymore?”

“I’m happy, but I feel I need to move on.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“The fourth floor,” Paul said. “Testing.”

Belshaw stared at him. He was trying to understand what Paul was really asking.

“You feel you deserve a raise,” Belshaw said. “I think we can address that to your satisfaction.”

“That’s not it.” Paul did not offer anything further.

“Paul,” and here the man paused, gathering his objections. “You do good work. We usually keep field techs in sampling for several years before promoting—”

“It doesn’t have to be a promotion. You can pay me the same—I don’t care.”

Again the brows furrowed. This new detail really seemed to confuse him.

“Are you not happy in bones?”

“I need a change, that’s all.”

Finally, leaning forward: “Perhaps there are other adjustments that can be made.”

“No other adjustment would be adequate.”

“If it is an issue with travel, I can assure you that we have no intention of sending you out on field assignment until you feel ready. We’re not interested in rushing anything.”

“I don’t ever want to go into the field again.”

“I understand that you’ve been through … an ordeal. But I think you’re making a rash decision.”

“I’m not.”

“We’d be promoting you above several senior samplers.”

“You keep calling it that.”

“It would be a promotion,” Belshaw snapped. Belshaw was used to getting his way. There was a brusqueness in him. Brusqueness was an asset whose value was not to be underestimated in an administrator’s career. Paul had often thought that managers failed or succeeded more on the basis of their temperaments than due to any other factor. But here was a man both smart and brusque. The kind of man for whom “no-nonsense” would doubtless appear no fewer than three times in any quarterly evaluation. The highest possible praise.

“How much longer were you planning on keeping me in sampling?” Paul asked.

“How long have you been with the company?”

“Four years.”

“Then another three at least.”

“So your plan was to move me eventually. I’d simply like you to bump that date forward. Keep my pay where it is now.”

Belshaw leaned back in his chair again, considering Paul across the broad surface of his desk. “Have you talked to your direct supervisor about this?”

“No.”

“Why come to me?”

“Because you can make it happen.”

“There is an established system in place. Why should we disregard the system and move you ahead of other samplers who’ve put in their time? Why move you to the front of the line?”

“Because I gave an eye.”

Belshaw closed his mouth. He looked at Paul for a long time. Paul had said it: the thing, of course, that was always under the surface. Obvious as a black leather eye patch. It was a betrayal; Paul saw that clearly in Belshaw’s eyes. It was a betrayal to mention his eye, to play that card. But Paul knew in that moment that he had won. He knew that Belshaw would give in. He could see it in the man’s face. He would give in, but he would not forget. Men like Belshaw didn’t appreciate being backed into corners. The silence drew out between them. “I will get back to you by the end of the week,” Belshaw said. He rose to his feet and extended his hand. The meeting was over.

Paul shook the proferred hand. He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t say anything. He simply nodded and left.

*   *   *

Later, Hongbin sat in Paul’s office. He leaned back, flinging his yo-yo. Down, up. Down, up. The string broke.

Hongbin was philosophical about it. “Now it is just a yo,” he said.

Paul thought of telling him. He thought of explaining everything. He thought of telling him about what had really happened on Flores, and about the sample he’d hidden and what he planned to do. But he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to Hongbin. It wouldn’t be right to expose him to the risk.

“So you are leaving bones,” Hongbin said.

“No,” Paul said. “I’m never leaving bones.”

19

Evidence of Expansive Introgression

[Translated from Russian.]

The geographical distribution of the 25-microsatellite Y-chromosome haplogroup C3c was educed from the analysis of 4,600 blood samples taken from phyletic populations across Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Analysis shows that the highest frequency of the 25-microsatellite sequence is found in southern Mongolia, with significant recurrence presenting across most of China, as well as among the Altaian Kazakhs of Russia and the Hazara of the Bolan Pass area of Pakistan. The limited variation of the 25-microsatellite marker demonstrates an anomalously young age for this group relative to other local haplogroup distributions, suggesting that this distribution resulted not from normal population expansion but from a series of “introgression events” into a preexisting population matrix. The current geographic range of the 25-microsatellite sequence is proximally bounded by the expansive limit of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century. This unusual distribution can best be explained as the genetic artifact of a massive reproductive advantage conferred on a single paternal lineage of that time period. The origin of this lineage likely traces to southern steppe tribes of Mongolia, and to Genghis Khan.

Paul received word on a Friday. There was no fanfare. The news arrived in his in-box; he was being transferred to testing the following Monday. A 7 percent pay raise. The paperwork called it a promotion.

Mr. Lyons came by and congratulated him and shook his hand. “Sorry to see you go,” he said. And Paul could tell that the man meant it. Paul’s own emotions were more conflicted on the matter.

On Saturday, he got blindingly, stupefyingly drunk for the first time since Flores. He took Sunday to recuperate, puking only once, his face resting on the cool white porcelain.

On Monday he left for work early, taking the scenic route. He wanted to see the water from the road. He crossed the bridge as the sun came up along the far side of the bay.

He got to the parking lot early and carded himself inside. The guard nodded to him as he crossed the lobby. Paul took the elevator to the fourth floor, where he was supposed to meet Janus, his new supervisor. The fourth-floor lobby was similar to the fifth, only instead of an elegant folding wall of glass origami, here the wall was smooth steel, with a single steel door on which the words
GENE FREQ LAB
was stenciled in bold block letters.

Home of the gene freqs. Gene freaks.

There was no bone-freq lab, but the third-floor workers were still called bone freaks. Paul figured it was like rhinos. The first rhinos discovered were called white rhinos in anglicized bastardization of the local dialect. It had nothing to do with color. Still, when a second species was discovered, there was never much doubt about what to call them: black rhinos. Defined by opposition. And never mind that both species were gray.

Paul tried the door. It was locked. A card swipe glowed red from the wall.

Paul had been trained in school to test DNA, isolating base-pair sequences from bones and junk and contaminants. The index was what mattered, though. The comparison assays. Without the index, there was nothing to compare the sequences to. It was just noise, raw code. Meaningless pattern.

You had to have the index to know what you were looking at.

That was what they did on the fourth floor, on the other side of this door he couldn’t open.

A little after nine o’clock, Janus finally arrived. He was lanky and ruddy, with florid, pockmarked skin and a down-turned mouth. His thick, strawberry hair paid for his face. Although he was well into his sixties, his hair was nothing short of luxuriant. The first time Paul had seen him walking the halls, he’d assumed it was a hairpiece, but it wasn’t. Janus combed it straight back from his forehead, as if to accentuate the fact that his hairline hadn’t crept back a millimeter since grade school. His eyes were small and sharp and hazel.