The machine’s voice: “Friday, 9:33 P.M.”
Christ, thought Mary. Good Christ. That would have been precisely when … when …
She closed her eyes.
And then the next message played: “Professor Vaughan?” said a voice with a Jamaican accent. “Is this the home of Professor Mary Vaughan, the geneticist? I’m sorry if it isn’t—and I hate to be calling so late; I tried the York campus, on the off chance that you were still there, but only got your voice mail. I had directory assistance give me the numbers for every M. Vaughan in Richmond Hill—that’s where an article I found about you on the Web said you live.” Mary’s outgoing message said only, “This is Mary,” but the caller had presumably been buoyed by that. “Anyway—God, I hope I don’t get cut off here—look, my name is Reuben Montego, and I’m an M.D.; the camp doctor up at Inco’s Creighton Mine in Sudbury. I don’t know if you’ve seen the news reports on this yet, but we’ve found a …” He paused, and Mary wondered why; he’d been burbling to this point. “Well, look, if you haven’t seen the reports, let’s just say we’ve found what we believe to be a Neanderthal specimen in, ah, remarkable condition.”
Mary shook her head. There were no Neanderthal fossils from anywhere in North America; the guy must have some old Native Canadian material …
“Anyway, I did a Web search on ‘Neanderthal’ and ‘DNA,’ and your name kept coming up. Can you—”
Beep. The guy had indeed exceeded the maximum message length.
“Friday, 10:20 P.M.,” reported the robotic voice.
“Damn, I hate these things,” said Dr. Montego, coming on again. “Look, what I was saying was, we’d really like you to authenticate what we’ve got here. Give me a call—anytime, day or night, on my cell phone at …”
She didn’t have time for this. Not today, not anytime soon. Still, Neanderthals weren’t her only interest; if it was a well-preserved ancient Native bone, that would be intriguing, too—but the preservation would have to be remarkable indeed for the DNA to have not deteriorated, and—
Sudbury. That was in Northern Ontario. Could they have—?
That would be fabulous. Another ice man, frozen solid, maybe found buried deep in a mine.
But, sweet Jesus, she didn’t want to think about that right now; she didn’t want to think about anything.
Mary went back into the kitchen and filled a mug with the now-ready coffee, which she poured a little chocolate milk into from a half-liter carton—she didn’t know anyone else who did that, and she had given up trying to get it in restaurants. She then returned to the living room and put on the TV, a fourteen-inch set that normally didn’t get much use; Mary preferred to curl up with a John Grisham novel, or, occasionally, a Harlequin romance, when she was home in the evenings.
She used the remote to select CablePulse 24, a twenty-four-hour news channel that devoted only part of its screen to the newscast; the right-hand side showed weather and financial information, and the bottom flashed headlines from The National Post. Mary wanted to see what today’s high would be, and if it was going to finally rain, taking some of the awful humidity out of the air, and—
“—the destruction of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory yesterday,” said the Skunk Woman; Mary could never remember her name, but she had an incongruous white streak in her otherwise dark hair. “Few details are yet known, but the facility, buried more than two kilometers underground, apparently suffered a major accident at about 3:30 P.M. No one was hurt, but the 73-million-dollar lab is currently shut down. The detector, which made headlines around the world last year by solving the so-called Solar Neutrino Problem, probes the mysteries of the universe. It opened with great fanfare in 1998, with a visit by renowned physicist Stephen Hawking.” File footage of Hawking in his wheelchair going down a mineshaft elevator ran behind the Skunk Woman’s words.
“And speaking of mysteries, there are claims from a hospital in Sudbury that a living Neanderthal was found inside the mine. We have a report from Don Wright. Don?”
Mary watched, absolutely stunned, as a Native Canadian journalist gave a brief report. The guy they were showing on screen did indeed have browridges, and—
–God, the skull, glimpsed briefly in an x-ray that someone was holding up against a window …
It did look Neanderthal, but …
But how could that be? How could that possibly be? For Pete’s sake, the guy was clearly not a wild man, and he had a funky haircut. Mary watched CablePulse 24 often enough; she knew they weren’t above occasionally airing stories that amounted to little more than thinly disguised promos for current movies, but …
But Mary subscribed to the hominid listserv; there was enough idle chatter on it that there was no way she could have failed to have heard if a movie about Neanderthals was going to be made here in Ontario.
Sudbury … She’d never been to Sudbury, and—
And, Christ, yes, it would do her some good to just get the hell away for a while. She pushed the backward-review button on her phone’s caller-ID display; a number with a 705 area code was the first to appear. She hit the dial button, and settled back into her Morticia seat, a high-backed wicker chair that was her favorite. After three rings, the voice she’d already heard answered. “Montego.”
“Dr. Montego, this is Mary Vaughan.”
“Professor Vaughan! Thank you for calling back. We’ve got …”
“Dr. Montego, look—you have no idea how … how … swamped I am right now. If this is a joke, or—”
“It’s no joke, Professor, but we don’t want to take Ponter anywhere yet. Can you come up here to Sudbury?”
“You’re absolutely sure you’ve got something real?”
“I don’t know; that’s what we want you to tell us. Look, we’re also trying to reach Norman Thierry at UCLA, but it’s not even 8:00 A.M. there yet, and—”
Jesus, she didn’t want Thierry to get this; if this was for real—although, God, how could it be?—it would be absolutely huge.
“Why do you need me to come up there?” asked Mary.
“I want you to take the DNA specimens directly; I want there to be no question about their authenticity or where they came from.”
“It would take—God, I don’t know, maybe four hours to drive to Sudbury from here.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Montego. “We’ve had a corporate jet standing by at Pearson since last night, in case you did call. Grab a cab, get over to the airport, and we can have you up here before noon. Don’t worry; Inco will reimburse all your expenses.”
Mary looked around her apartment, with its white bookcases and wicker furniture, her collection of Royal Doulton figurines, the framed Renoir prints. She could drop by York University to pick up the appropriate primers, but …
No. No, she didn’t want to go back there. Not yet, not today—maybe not until September, when she had to start teaching again.
But she would need the primers. And it was day now, and she could park over in Lot DD, approaching the Farquharson Building from a completely different direction, not going anywhere near where …
Where …
She closed her eyes. “I’ll have to go by York to get some things, but … yes, all right, I’ll do it.”