Darwin's children

Kaye turned away and refused to listen.

Mitch spotted Eileen Ripper walking along the trail from the big new shelter. He would have recognized her slow, deliberate saunter even had she worn a mask. She did not like this any more than he did, but it was indeed a triumph. A federal circuit court judge had ruled just three months before, after almost twenty years of litigation, that the Five Tribes had no standing—could claim no legitimate relationship to the remains of peoples physically and temporally so far from their own. The Department of the Interior would no longer halt these digs or return any remains found to the complaining tribes.

Thus had ended a long nightmare for North American archaeology.

Strange that Mitch did not feel any sense of victory.

The bones he had found, goaded on by Eileen's challenge, had been just part of the story. He had not, after all, completely understood the motives of the ghosts flitting over the landscape.

Perhaps ghosts also lied to get their own way.

Eileen pushed through the photographers and past Bloch's entourage with hardly a nod. She came straight to Mitch and Kaye, and her eyes lingered for a moment on the girls as she held out her hand to Kaye.

“Welcome,” she said with a broad, nervous smile. “And welcome back. Glad you could bring the family.”

She set about introducing the others, all moving forward with varying degrees of shyness or confidence or diffidence in front of the cameras.

Mitch was sure this was going to turn out badly.

At the airport, LaShawna and Celia had been glad to see Stella again. Breaking from John Hamilton's protection, LaShawna had grabbed Celia and then Stella and they had all gone off together to the closest women's restroom—a frightening place for them all, even more than the airplane, with the smells of so many humans.

LaShawna had dragged Stella into a stall and whispered fiercely at her, “What are you doing, girl, going wasp and getting yourself puffed! Was it that boy Will?”

Celia had called through the closed door, “She'll explain later. Let's go! I don't like it in here.”

But there had been little time for talk, much less clouding and conveying the full story. The ride in the truck had made them all a little quiet, even with Kaye and Mitch and John along. LaShawna had whispered in Stella's ear, “Your mother looks good.”

Stella had pulled back and looked LaShawna full in the face.

“Momma has it,” LaShawna had said sadly, dropping her chin to her chest and pulling up her knees, propping them against the seat back. “She's in a wheelchair.”

Stella brushed the short hair from her eyes as the wind blew in her face. She stepped down from the truck and blinked at the cameras. Celia and LaShawna seemed to fall in place behind her like ducklings. Being pregnant gave her seniority, she wondered why; it was stupid the way it had happened, stupid losing Will. She had left Oldstock to come here in part to get perspective; she wondered how much longer she would live at the compound.

Without Will, she doubted she would ever find the childish freedom that had once seemed so important. As she smelled and felt the baby inside her, she thought of responsibility and getting things done.

Meeting with a senator and with all these other folks was a start.

The landscape around the dry river bed was somewhere between bleak and pretty and it smelled much like Oldstock though cooler; the trees knew less sun than the trees around Lake Sta

There was something going on between the woman archaeologist, Eileen, and her father. They were old friends. Something had happened between them along ago; Stella was sure of it. She watched her mother, but Kaye did not seem bothered. In fact, Kaye and Eileen seemed to walk alike and to look around with the same dignified curiosity.

That pleased Stella.

Mitch put an arm around her shoulder. Stella leaned into his embrace and cameras whirred and flashed all around.

“They're affectionate,” said a male newscaster to unseen eyes. “Isn't that wonderful?”

Mitch gently squeezed Stella. “Never mind,” he said in a low voice. “We're going to visit the bones.” He sounded as if that would be like entering a church.

And it was. They walked down into the big shelter, following long plywood sheets, and reporters were instructed to turn off their bright lights. A large sunburned man, about thirty years old, in muddy jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, with dirty forearms and a banda

Eileen broke from a small group of reporters and introduced him. “This is Carlton Fierro,” she said. “Carlton the Doorman. We call him that because he can hardly fit through most doors. He's in charge of this dig now.”

Stella smiled at Carlton.

“Glad you could make it,” he told the girls.

Co

Stella did not understand any of this. She focused on Carlton, who was shaking hands with Mitch. “We've got the biggest grouping over here,” Carlton said, and led them all along the boards and through a co

“Eight at a time,” Carlton instructed, “and that includes me.” The reporters pushed around him, trying to keep the girls and Kaye in direct view.

He made a path through the crowd for the people Eileen pointed out, holding her hand over their heads and nodding.

“Coming through,” Carlton said, and they climbed the aluminum steps. He was the last.

Stella looked down on the excavation. At first, all she saw was a large jumble of dark bones on hard planed dirt, mud, and what looked like old ash. She could smell the dust. Nothing more.

Mitch and Kaye stood across from her, Celia and LaShawna beside her; John Hamilton and Senator Bloch, both very quiet, were catercorner on the scaffold beside Carlton. Oliver Merton was staying out of the way, standing alone in one corner with arms crossed.

Eileen and Co

“There are eight adult females and two children, one male and one female, in this grouping,” Carlton said. “A lahar of volcanic gas and mud and water came roaring down this river bed about twenty thousand years ago. They died together, covered with hot mud. One of them dropped a woven grass basket. Its mold is still in that cube of unexcavated mudstone to the right. The woman on top of the group—she's marked with a red plastic square, and her outline is made more clear by the thin strip of blue tape—is taller and more robust; she's Homo erectus, a late stage variety similar to heidelbergensisbut as yet without a scientific designation. She appears to be in her forties, well past child bearing and very old for the time. A grandma type. We think she was protecting the children, and perhaps two other women. The female child and the other females are all Homo sapiens, virtually indistinguishable from you and me. The male child is another Homo erectus.

“At first, we thought—Co