“I’ll be right over,” Artie said and hung up. Connie was staring at him, puzzled, and Artie shook his head, annoyed. He had no idea what was going on, but somebody had passed himself off as him and apparently they had been damned convincing. He’d have the Grub print out two more copies, one for him and another one for Hall.
Jerry glanced up when he entered the computer cubbyhole, his expression sour. “Last time I do you any favors, Banks. You and your fucking mystery diskette …”
Artie felt the first chill of premonition. “What’s wrong?”
“Virus, fella. I loaded it into the computer and opened the file to start cleaning it up and everything blew up in my face. It wiped my hard drive plus the main memory and then erased itself. Suicide virus. Nobody was ever supposed to look at it—your friend probably thought anybody wanting to snoop would not only check it on-screen, they would also print it out directly. What you got yesterday is all you’re gonna get.” He took a diskette off the worktable and flipped it at Artie. “Here you go, a Frisbee for midgets.” He took a breath. “You have any idea what management’s going to do to me? Only it’s not going to be my ass, Banks—it’s going to be yours.”
Hall wasn’t very friendly
. As soon as Artie showed up, he rang for the guard. “Fred, you know Mr. Banks, right? He was the one you let into my office yesterday.”
The pudgy guard glanced at Artie, started to answer, then leaned closer. “I … don’t think I know this gentleman, Dr. Hall. But I checked the man’s ID yesterday—”
“Thanks, Fred.”
Hall steered Artie back to his office.
“My apologies—to be honest, I don’t know what the hell is going on.” He wasn’t the type actually to wring his hands, Artie thought, but he was doing a good job of it verbally. Hall managed a weak smile and tried to make a joke of it. “Maybe it was somebody from the
Journal of Forensic Pathology
—they would have had a field day with Dr. Shea’s notes.”
He closed his office door, settled himself in his chair, and motioned Artie to the other one.
“I’m sorry, I really am.” Then, tentatively, “You understand that the Academy of Sciences can’t be held responsible—”
Artie waved it aside. “Not your fault.”
“You still have the original computer diskette, right?”
“Not anymore. A technician at work tried to print out two more copies and a virus on the diskette erased everything in the computer, including itself. He called it a suicide virus.”
“There are no other copies?”
“I don’t know of any.”
Hall looked worried. “That doesn’t make any sense—why would anybody want to erase the diskette? Or steal the printout?”
It made perfect sense to Artie. “Because of the information. Either they wanted it or they didn’t want other people to have it.”
Hall shook his head. “You steal facts; you don’t steal speculation. Speculation is cheap.”
“Maybe they thought they
were
stealing facts,” Artie suggested.
The anthropologist studied him for a long moment. “You believe Dr. Shea, don’t you? You think descendants of his Old People exist—right now, today.”
“That’s right.”
Artie was mildly surprised at his own answer. Hall had put into words what he had been mulling over in the back of his mind ever since his first meeting with Paschelke. Since then, he had come very close to suicide and—probably—almost been poisoned. If a modern version of the Old People existed, then they were doing exactly what Hall had predicted: their very best to keep any knowledge of their existence secret. Any skepticism
he
had had about their existence had vanished after his hour with the Tribe.
Except you’d think they’d be trying to make him more skeptical, not less. The only explanation that made any sense was that the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing.
Hall looked disappointed. “Then you’re withholding information. You’ve made your decision based on something other than Dr. Shea’s notes.”
“You must have an opinion,” Artie said stiffly.
“There’s absolutely no proof that Dr. Shea’s Old People ever existed, Mr. Banks. I told you that yesterday. Anything other than that is fantasy.”
“If their descendants
did
exist,” Artie persisted, “how would they differ from us today?”
Hall obviously didn’t know whether to humor him or throw him out, then decided he owed Artie something for the loss of the printout.
“I couldn’t tell you. All I can do is speculate about a species that never existed.” He looked sour. “Since
we
exist, I suppose it’s fair to speculate on any differences that there might have been.”
“Yesterday you told me they might have been better than
Homo sapiens
in some respects,” Artie said.
“Different, not better. ‘Better’ implies judgment, and we don’t know enough to make one. They might have been humane, they might have taken care of their injured and their sick. They might have had ritual burials—or, as you suggested, cremations—indicating some sort of religion. They might have been good toolmakers, though toward the end they probably copied the tools and weapons that
sapiens
had. Again, a lot of might-have-beens.”
“But they couldn’t talk, right?”
Hall frowned. “How the hell would we know that? Admitted that most of my colleagues think it was language that enabled
sapiens
to make their big leap forward, culturally speaking. Your Old People might have had language too, but if they did, I doubt they could use it nearly as well.”
“Then they probably couldn’t sing,” Artie mused, surprised at how wistful he sounded. “They had no music.”
Hall looked intrigued in spite of himself. “Modern man is the only one of the hominids that makes music. I don’t know of any chimps or gorillas that even come close. My guess is that if your Old People had music at all, it was a simple, percussive variety.”
“Language would have been the key difference, then?”
“It would have been back then.” Hall leaned toward him across the desk. “What we’re doing right now—talking to each other—is an amazingly complex process. Language is much more than just naming things or passing along information. With it we can deal in concepts, things that have happened in the past, things that might happen in the future. We can talk about things that we can’t see, that we can’t touch. Consider the complexities of modern physics and then consider that we deal with all of them through language, either spoken or written. And all of it comes down to our ability to say
ay, eee, eye
,
oh,
and
you
. Pretty remarkable when you think about it. Then listen to opera sometime—say some tenor with the range of a Tagliavini—and think of all those sounds coming from that tube of flesh called a larynx, a simple voice box.”
“Then language is one way the Old People could have been different from
sapiens,”
Artie said slowly. “There might have been others.”
Hall smiled; he was on a roll.
“Let me count the ways … . The most obvious one is art. We can trace cave art back more than twenty thousand years. Fantastic images of animals drawn in charcoal, yellow ocher, and red hematite on cave walls in France. Many of the drawings would do credit to any modern artist. My guess is your Old People wouldn’t have had art, Mr. Banks. Maybe they had body ornamentation, but there’s no way of knowing. I don’t think they would have been able to draw pictures, or decorate their tools or weapons. Maybe they strung beads or made necklaces, though it’s more likely they would have traded for them. We know for sure that Cro-Magnons—archaic
Homo sapiens
—made necklaces.”
Art and language, Artie thought. They were probably joined at the hip, anthropologically speaking, though he wasn’t sure how. And there was always the possibility that the Old People didn’t have language and art because they had something else as good … or better.
“And then something happened thirty-five thousand years ago.”
“That’s right. A tremendous explosion of creativity by
Homo sapiens.
For a hundred thousand years or more, nothing. Then, all of a sudden, language, art, and prodigious advances in tool and weapon making, everything from needles to spears. They made outdoor habitations of hide and wood, even huts of mammoth tusks and bones—they probably hunted the mammoth to extinction to get them.”
Artie could believe that. “No wars, no conflict between
Homo sapiens
and any other group?”
Hall shrugged. “There’s no indication of that; there aren’t enough bones showing battle wounds or anything like it. Sure, there might have been some skirmishes.
Sapiens
probably penetrated into northern Europe from the Levant, following the migratory paths of the reindeer. Undoubtedly any other group would have hunted them as well. There could have been some localized conflicts, but nothing approaching war or genocide. That’s tabloid thinking.”
“The Old People disappeared, just like that?” Artie said.
Hall looked exasperated. “Mr. Banks, I’m debating with you as if the species existed. It didn’t. But if it did, ‘just like that’ might have been over a period of at least several thousand years.
Homo sapiens
would have been more successful as a hunter, more innovative in making tools and weapons. If they hunted the same prey,
sapiens
would have won out. Your Old People would have been forced to shift their hunting grounds into areas that were relatively barren.”
“Where they probably starved to death.”
“Whatever.”
“Lions and hyenas hunt the same prey,” Artie said thoughtfully. “Neither one has disappeared.”
“Apples and oranges.” Hall’s smile was the one Artie guessed he reserved for amateurs. “But we haven’t considered breeding itself. If your Old People lived in a cold, inhospitable climate, then their gestation period might have been closer to twelve months than nine to give the baby a better chance of survival. With his shorter gestation period,
sapiens
could have simply outbred them.”
“By producing babies not as well equipped to survive?” Artie shook his head in disbelief. “You’re implying that if
sapiens
produced more children, then the Old People necessarily had to produce fewer, that the countryside could only support so many. But that would have depended on population, and I don’t think anybody knows what population pressures were back then.”
Hall suddenly smiled.
“You’re picking on me, Banks. I’m only telling you what the theories are. Ask me again five years from now and I’ll probably have a whole different set of them. But one thing for sure: When
Homo sapiens
invented agriculture ten thousand years ago, that was the name of the game. They settled down into villages, farmed for their food, domesticated cattle and pigs, organized trade routes, the whole bit. Once they could raise all the food they needed on the back forty instead of having to forage for nuts and berries, then there really was a population explosion.”
Artie glanced at his watch. “Look, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I appreciate it.”
“It’s been fun. Buy you lunch—?” Hall looked at him questioningly.
Artie grinned. “Just ‘Artie.’ My car or yours?”
Hall shook his head. “Let’s try the de Young Cafe, the other side of the music concourse—it’s one of the best-kept secrets in town. Strictly high-class—cream of carrot soup and chocolate mousse if you want it, real San Francisco.”
Artie promptly forgot his nostalgia for the hot dogs and hamburgers downstairs. He hadn’t known the art museum had an upscale cafeteria.
They were almost to the front doors when a guard. tapped Artie on the arm. “You Arthur Banks?” Artie nodded and he said, “Phone call for you at the Information Desk.”
“Ask a docent for directions to the café,” Hall called over his shoulder. He disappeared into the drizzle outside. Artie went back to the Information Desk and picked up the phone. “Hello, this is Banks.” There was a click and then a dial tone.
He was still holding the phone, puzzled, when he heard a
pop-pop-pop
out front. A moment later, a woman started to scream. Artie stood frozen for a moment, then dashed for the doors.
Hall lay facedown on the concrete, his blood running slowly down the steps. The back of his head was a matted mixture of black, gray, and red. Artie felt numb with shock. ’Nam suddenly seemed very close—he remembered all too clearly friends who had been shot in the face, shattering their features and turning the back of their head into a muddy no-man’s-land of blood and brains and hair.
He wished he’d gotten to know Hall better. He seemed a nice enough guy.
And that made it like ’Nam in still another way. People you’d grown close to over the months and then suddenly they were gone. They became just names on a casualty list or, worse, you stumbled across their mangled bodies half buried in the mud. After a while you grew numb; you couldn’t cry anymore, you couldn’t even grieve. You just walled off your memories of them in your mind. Larry Shea had been one of his best friends, Paschelke a friendly family doctor, the old man at the skating rink for whom he’d felt a brief burst of pity a stranger. Now Hall, and the only obit he could think of was: Nice Enough Guy.