Evolution

And everyone was impressed when Honorius gently lifted his osteoid treasure from the dirt. Athalaric could immediately see that it was the skeleton of a human — but this must have been a particularly stocky human, he thought, with heavy limb bones and long fingers — and that the skull was distorted. In fact, it appeared to have been broken from behind, perhaps by a blow. Beneath the bones was a litter of shells and flint flakes.

Honorius pointed to features of his find. “Look here. You can see where he has eaten mussels. The shells are scorched; perhaps he threw them on a fire to make them open. And I believe these flint chips are waste from a tool he made. He was clearly human, but not as we are. Consider that skull, sir Scythian! Those massive brows, the cheekbones like ledges — have you ever seen its like?” He glanced at Athalaric, his rheumy eyes shining. “It is as if we have been transported back to another day, lost unknown centuries in the past.”

The Scythian bent down to scrutinize the skull.

That was when it happened.

The young Roman behind Honorius took one step forward. Athalaric saw his flashing arm, heard a soft crunch. Blood splashed. Honorius fell forward over the bones.

The people, startled, scrambled out of the way. Papak squealed like a frightened pig. But the Scythian caught Honorius as he fell and lowered him to the ground.

Athalaric could see that the back of Honorius’s head had been smashed. He lunged at the young man who had stood behind Honorius, and grabbed his tunic. “It was you. I saw it. It was you. Why? He was a Roman like you, one of your own—”

“It was an accident,” the young man said levelly.

“Liar!” Athalaric slapped his face, drawing blood. “Who put you up to this? Galla?” Athalaric made to strike the man again, but strong arms wrapped around his waist and pulled him away. Struggling, Athalaric gazed around at the others. “Help me. You saw what happened. The man is a murderer!”

But only blank stares met his entreaties.

It was then that Athalaric understood.

It had all been pla

Athalaric struggled free and hurried to Honorius. The old man, his ruined head still cradled in the Scythian’s bloodstained arms, was still breathing, but his eyes were closed.

“Teacher? Can you hear me?”

Remarkably Honorius’s eyes fluttered open. “Athalaric?” The eyes wandered vaguely in their sockets. “I could hear it, an immense crunch, as if my head were an apple bit into by a willful child…”

“Don’t talk—”

“Did you see the bones?”

“Yes, I saw.”

“It was another man of the dawn, wasn’t it?”

To Athalaric’s shock, the Scythian spoke in comprehensible but heavily accented Latin. “Man of the dawn.”

“Ah,” Honorius sighed. Then he gripped Athalaric’s hand so hard it was painful.

Athalaric was aware of the silent circle around him, the men from the east, the Goths, the Romans, all save the Scythian and the Persian complicit in this murder. The grip slackened. With a last shudder, Honorius was gone.

The Scythian carefully laid Honorius’s body over the bones he had discovered — Neandertal bones, the bones of a creature who had thought of himself as the Old Man — and the pooling blood soaked slowly into the chalky ground.

The wind changed. A breeze off the sea wafted into the cave, laden with salt.

CHAPTER 16

An Entangled Bank

Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. CE 2031.

I

At Rabaul, the sequence of events followed an inevitable logic, as if the great volcanic mountain and its pocket of magma beneath were some vast geological machine.

The first crack opened up in the ground. A vast cloud of ash towered into the smog-laden sky, and red-hot molten rock soared like a fountain. With the bulk of the rising plume of magma still some five kilometers underground, the stress on Rabaul’s thin upper carapace had proved too great.

In Darwin, the quakes worsened.

It was the end of the first day of the conference. The attendees, returning from their disparate dining arrangements, filed into the hotel bar. Sitting on a sofa with her feet up on a low stool, Joan watched as people got their drinks and reefers and pills and gathered in little clusters, chattering excitedly.

The delegates were typical academics, Joan thought with exasperated fondness. They were dressed every which way, from the bright orange jackets and green trousers that seemed to be favored by Europeans from Benelux and Germany, to the open sandals, T-shirts, and shorts of the small Californian contingent, to even a few ostentatiously worn ethnic costumes. Academics tended to joke about how they never pla

The bar itself was a typical slice of modern consumerist-corporate culture, Joan thought, with every wall smart and pumping out logos, ads, news, and sports images, and everybody talking as loud as they could. Even the coasters on the table in front of her cycled through one animated beer commercial after another. It was as if she had been plunged into a clamorous bath of noise. It was the environment she’d grown up in all her life, save for the remote stillness of her mother’s field digs. But after that eerie interval on the airport apron — the whining of the jets, the distant popping of guns, grim mechanical reality — she felt oddly dislocated. This continuous dull roar was comforting in its way, but it had the lethal ability to drown out thought.

But now the images of the worsening eruption at Rabaul filled the bar’s smart walls, crowding out the sports and news cha

Alyce Sigurdardottir handed Joan a soda. “That young Aussie barman is a dish,” she said. “Hair and teeth to die for. If I was forty years younger I’d do something about it.”

Sipping her soda, Joan asked Alyce, “You think people are scared?”

“Of what, the eruption, the terrorists?… Excited-scared right now. That could change.”

“Yeah. Alyce, listen.” Joan leaned closer. “The Rabaul curfew the police imposed on us” — officially the line was that the ash from Rabaul, mixed with forest fire debris from further away, was mildly toxic — “it’s not the full story.”

Alyce nodded, her lined face hard. “Let me guess. The Fourth Worlders.”

“They have planted smallpox bombs around the hotel. So they claim.”

Alyce’s face showed exquisite disgust. “Oh, Jesus. It’s 2001 all over again.” She sensed Joan’s hesitant mood. “Listen to me. We can’t give up because of those assholes. We have to go on with the meeting.”

Joan glanced around the room. “We’re already under pressure. It took an act of courage for most of the participants to come here at all. We were under attack even at the airport. If the attendees get wind of this smallpox scare… Maybe the mood is too flaky for, you know, the Bull Session to start tonight.”

Alyce covered Joan’s hand with her own; her palm was dry and callused. “It’s never going to get any easier. And your Bull Session is the whole point, remember.” She reached out and took Joan’s soda away from her. “Get up. Do it now.”