Hominids (7 page)

Reuben looked at the stranger. Who the hell could he be? He babbled in some strange tongue, and he’d had extensive reconstructive surgery. Could he be a member of some bizarre cult? Was that why he’d broken into the neutrino observatory? It made a certain amount of sense, but—

But Singh
was
right; except for the mandibular restoration, what they were seeing in the x-ray was a natural skull. Reuben Montego crossed the room slowly, warily, as if—Reuben realized within a few moments what he was doing: he was approaching the stranger not as one would approach another human being, but rather as one might come near a wild animal. And yet there had been nothing in his manner so far to suggest anything except civility.

The man clearly heard Reuben approaching. He took his attention away from the x-rays he’d been captivated by and turned to face the doctor.

Reuben stared at the man. He had noted earlier that his face was strange. The browridge, arching above each eye, was obvious. His hair was parted precisely in the middle, not at either side, and it looked like that was the natural part, not some affectation. And the nose: the nose was huge—but it wasn’t the least bit aquiline. In fact, it wasn’t quite like any other nose Reuben had ever seen before; it completely lacked a bridge.

Reuben lifted his right hand slowly, fingers gently spread, making sure the gesture looked tentative, not threatening. “May I?” he said, moving his hand closer to the stranger’s face.

The man might not have understood the words, but the intent of the gesture was obvious. He tilted his head forward, inviting the touch. Reuben ran his fingers along the browridge, over his forehead, along the length of the skull from front to back, feeling the—what had Singh called it?—the occipital bun at the rear, a hard dome of bone beneath the skin. There was no doubt at all: the skull shown in the x-rays belonged to this person.

“Reuben,” said Dr. Montego, touching his own chest. “Roo-ben.” He then gestured at the stranger with an upturned palm.

“Ponter,” said the stranger, in a deep, sonorous voice.

Of course, the stranger might be taking “Reuben” to be the term for Montego’s kind of humanity, and “Ponter” might be the stranger’s word for Neanderthal.

Singh moved over to join them. “Naonihal,” he said—revealing what the
N
stood for on his nametag. “My name is Naonihal.”

“Ponter,” repeated the stranger. Other interpretations were still possible, thought Reuben, but it did seem likely that was the man’s name.

Reuben nodded at the Sikh. “Thank you for your help.” He then turned to Ponter and motioned for him to follow. “Come on.”

The man moved toward the wheelchair.

“No,” said Reuben. “No, you’re fine.”

He gestured again for him to follow, and the man did so, on foot. Singh undipped the x-rays, put them in a large envelope, and walked out with them, heading back to Emergency Admitting.

Frosted glass doors blocked the way ahead. As Singh stepped on the rubber mat in front of the doors, they slid aside, and—

Electronic flashes exploded in their faces.

“Is this the guy who blew up SNO?” called a male voice.

“What charges are Inco going to lay?” asked a female one.

“Is he injured?” called another male.

It took a few moments for Reuben to digest the scene. He recognized one man as a correspondent for the local CBC station, and another was the mining-affairs reporter for the
Sudbury Star
. The dozen other people crowding around he didn’t know, but they were shoving microphones forward that bore the logos of Global Television, CTV, and Newsworld, and the call letters of local radio stations. Reuben looked at Singh and sighed, but he supposed this had been inevitable.

“What’s the suspect’s name?” shouted another reporter.

“Does he have any prior record?”

The reporters continued to snap pictures of Ponter, who was making no effort to hide his face. At that moment, two RCMP officers entered from outside, wearing dark blue police uniforms. “Is this the terrorist?”

“Terrorist?” said Reuben. “There’s no evidence of that.”

“You’re the mine-site doctor, aren’t you?” said one of the cops.

Reuben nodded. “Reuben Montego. But I don’t believe this man is a terrorist.”

“But he blew up the neutrino observatory!” declared a reporter.

“The observatory was damaged, yes,” said Reuben, “and he was there when it happened, but I don’t believe he intended it. After all, he almost drowned himself.”

“Irregardless,” said the cop, causing Montego to immediately lower his opinion of him, “he will have to come with us.”

Reuben looked at Ponter, at the reporters, then back at Singh. “You know what happens in cases like this,” he said softly to the Sikh. “If the authorities take Ponter away, no one will ever see him again.”

Singh nodded slowly. “So one might assume.”

Reuben chewed his lower lip, thinking. Then he took a deep breath and spoke loudly. “I don’t know where he came from,” said Reuben, putting an arm now around Ponter’s massive shoulders, “and I’m not sure how he got here, but this man’s name is Ponter, and—”

Reuben stopped. Singh looked at him. Reuben knew he could conclude with that; yes, the man’s name was known. He didn’t have to say anything more. He could stop now, and no one would think him crazy. But if he went on—

If he went on, all hell would break loose.

“Can you spell that?” called a reporter.

Reuben closed his eyes, summoning strength from within. “Only phonetically,” he said, now looking at the journalist. “P-O-N-T-E-R. But whichever of you jotted that down the fastest is, I’m sure, the first person ever to render that name in the English alphabet.” He paused again, looked once more at Singh for encouragement, then pressed on. “This gentleman here, we are beginning to suspect, is not
Homo sapiens
. He may be—well, I think anthropologists are still arguing about what the proper designation for this kind of hominid is, aren’t they? He seems to be what they call either
Homo neanderthalensis
or
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
—at any rate, he’s apparently a Neanderthal.”

“What?” said one of the reporters.

Another just snorted derisively.

And a third—the mining reporter from the
Sudbury Star
—pursed his lips. Reuben knew that reporter had a bachelor’s in geology; doubtless he’d taken a paleo course or two as part of his studies. “What makes you say that?” he asked skeptically.

“I’ve seen x-rays of his skull. Dr. Singh here was quite sure of the identification.”

“What does a Neanderthal have to do with the destruction of SNO?” asked a reporter.

Reuben shrugged, acknowledging that that was a very good question. “We don’t know.”

“This has got to be a hoax,” said the mining reporter. “It’s
got
to be.”

“If it is, I’ve been hoodwinked, and so has Dr. Singh.”

“Dr. Singh,” called a reporter, “is this—this person here—is he a caveman?”

“I’m sorry,” said Singh, “but I cannot discuss a patient except with other involved physicians.”

Reuben looked at Singh, agog. “Dr. Singh, please …”

“No,” said Singh. “There are rules …”

Reuben looked down for a moment, thinking. He then turned to Ponter with pleading eyes. “It’s up to you,” he said.

Ponter surely didn’t understand the words, but apparently he grasped the significance of the situation. Indeed, it occurred to Reuben that Ponter might have a good shot at making a run for it, if he were so inclined; although not particularly tall, he was burlier by far than either of the cops. But Ponter’s eyes soon swung in the direction of Singh—and, as Reuben followed the Neanderthal’s line of sight, he realized that Ponter was actually looking at the manila envelope Singh was clutching tightly.

Ponter strode over to Singh. Reuben saw one of the cops put his hand on his holster; he evidently assumed Ponter was going to attack the doctor. But Ponter stopped short, right in front of Singh, and held out a beefy hand, palm up, in a gesture that transcended cultures.

Singh seemed to hesitate for a second, then he relinquished the envelope. There was no illuminated viewing plate in the room, and it was now well after dark. But there was a large window, with light from a lamp in the parking lot streaming in. Ponter moved to the window; he perhaps knew that the cops would have tried to restrain him if he’d gone instead for the glass doors leading outside. He then held one of the x-rays, the side view, up against the glass so that everyone could see it. Camcorders were instantly trained on it, and more still pictures were taken. Ponter then gestured for Singh to come over. The Sikh did so, and Reuben followed. Ponter tapped on the x-ray, then pointed at Singh. He repeated the sequence two or three times, and then opened and closed his left hand with fingers held straight, the—apparently universal—gesture for “talk.”

Dr. Singh cleared his throat, looked around the lobby surveying the faces, then shrugged a little. “It, ah, it seems I have my patient’s permission to discuss his x-rays.” He pulled a pen out of his lab coat’s breast pocket and used it as a pointer. “Do you all see this rounded protrusion at the back of the skull? Paleoanthropologists call that the occipital bun …”

Mary Vaughan had slowly driven the ten kilometers to her apartment in Richmond Hill. She lived on Observatory Lane, near the David Dunlap Observatory, once—briefly, and a long time ago—home of the world’s largest optical telescope, now reduced to little more than a teaching facility because of the lights from Toronto.

Mary had bought the condominium here in part because of its security. As she drove up the driveway, the guard in the gatehouse waved at her, although Mary couldn’t meet his—or anyone’s—eyes yet. She drove along, past the manicured lawn and large pines, around back, and down into the underground garage. Her parking spot was a long walk from the elevators, but she’d never felt unsafe doing it, no matter how late it was. Cameras hung from the ceiling, between the sewer and water pipes and the sprinklers poking down like the snouts of star-nosed moles. She was watched every step of the way to the elevators, although tonight—this one hellish night—she wished that no one could see her.

Was she betraying anything by how she walked? By the quickness of her step? By her bowed head, by the way she clutched the front of her jacket as though the buttons were somehow failing to provide enough security, enough closure?

Closure. No, there was surely no way she could ever have that.

She entered the P2 elevator lobby, pushing first one door then the other open in front of her. She then pressed the single call button—there was nowhere to go from here but up—and waited for one of the three cars to come. Normally, when she waited, she looked at the various notices put up by management or other residents. But tonight Mary kept her eyes firmly on the floor, on the scuffed, stippled tiles. There were no floor-number indicators to watch above the closed doors, as there were two levels up in the main lobby, and although the up button would go dark a few seconds before one of the doors would rumble open, she chose not to watch for that, either. Oh, she was eager to be home, but after one initial glance, she couldn’t bring herself to look at the glowing upward-pointing arrow …

Finally, the farthest of the doors yawned. She entered and pushed the button for the fourteenth floor—really the thirteenth, of course, but that designation was considered unlucky. Above the panel of numbers was a glass frame that contained a laser-printed notice saying, “Have a Nice Day—From Your Board of Directors.”

The elevator made its ascent. When it stopped, the door shuddered to one side, and Mary headed down the corridor—recently recarpeted by order of the same Board of Directors in a hideous cream-of-tomato-soup shade—and came to her apartment door. She fished in her purse for her keys, found them, pulled them out, and—

—and stared at them, tears welling in her eyes, vision blurring, her heart pounding again.

She had a small key chain, and on its end, a gift a dozen years ago from her ever-practical then-mother-in-law, was a yellow plastic rape whistle.

There had never been a chance to use it—not until it was too late. Oh, she could have blown it after the attack, but …

… but rape was a crime of violence, and she had survived it. A knife had been held to her throat, been pressed against her cheek, and yet she hadn’t been cut, hadn’t been disfigured. But if she’d sounded the alarm, he might have come back, might have killed her.

There was a gentle chime; another elevator had arrived. One of her neighbors would be in the corridor within a second. Mary fumbled the key into the lock, the whistle dangling, and quickly entered her dark apartment.

She hit the switch, the lights came on, and she turned around and closed the door, cranking over the lever that caused the deadbolt to clunk into place.

Mary removed her shoes and passed through the living room, with its peach-colored walls, noting, but not caring, that the red eye on the answering machine was winking at her. She entered her bedroom and took off her clothes—clothes that she knew she would throw out, clothes that she could never wear again, clothes that could never come clean no matter how many times they were washed. She then entered the
en suite
bathroom, but didn’t turn on the light in there; she made do with the illumination spilling in from the Tiffany lamps on her night tables. She climbed into the shower and, in the semidarkness, she scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin felt raw, and then she got out her heavy flannel pajamas—the ones she saved for the coldest winter nights, the ones that covered her most completely—and she put them on, and she crawled into bed, hugging herself and shivering and crying some more and finally, finally, finally, after hours of trying, falling into a fitful sleep punctuated by dreams of being chased and dreams of fighting and dreams of being cut with knives.