‘Three?’ said Dr Hamiska.
‘Fred, me, Vinny.’
‘You’re not proposing to bring her out here?’ said Dr Hamiska.
His attitude had changed completely. A moment before he’d been easy, genial, friendly. Now he looked thoroughly put out, but couldn’t at once think of an objection.
‘It’s all right,’ said Vinny. ‘I love camping. I won’t get in the way.’
‘Vinny’s here to see her father, don’t forget,’ said May Anna.
‘And Sam’s here to get this other little lady out of the hill,’ said Dr Hamiska, holding the broken fossil out to show what he meant. ‘It’s a long way from civilization, Sam.’
‘We’ll make a civilized fly-camp,’ said Vinny.
Dr Hamiska realized he wasn’t going to win, and bellowed with laughter to show he didn’t mind, but somehow it wasn’t quite convincing. Dad and May Anna started to make a list of what he’d need, but when they roped Dr Wessler in to join the discussion he refused to come to the fly-camp. He said he’d got work at the main camp which he had to finish by Thursday. He’d do that this evening and come out with some of the others tomorrow to start the second trench. Dr Hamiska accepted this without fuss.
It was mid-afternoon before they’d finished collecting everything that was needed for the fly-camp. Vinny was tired, but feeling better. They made tea and drank it in the shade of a tree with feathery leaves and long black dangling beans. Below them stretched the plain. The dusty air was tinged with orange and the westering sun cast sidelong shadows, so that the flat-topped trees that dotted the plain were joined to their own shape in reverse – branches, trunk, shadow-trunk, shadow-branches – a single dark shape like a letter in a peculiar alphabet.
‘Why wasn’t Joe cross with Fred for not coming on the fly-camp?’ asked Vinny.
May Anna sighed.
‘Well, I guess it was true what Fred said. He’s got his classification model to get drawn out for the Craig people on Thursday. But then again Joe wouldn’t get any satisfaction out of needling Fred. Fred’s kind of slippery. He’s like a fly you’re trying to swat. Wham, but it’s somewhere else already, you know? He just shrugs and smiles and doesn’t react.’
‘Why don’t you come?’
‘I’ve got work too – my skull. Did I tell you I found another piece fitted this morning? And I hate camping, too. This place is plenty primitive for me. I’m Minneapolis born and bred. I like streets. I say phooey to all that.’
She gestured derisively at the plain, but Vinny knew she was joking. The plain was wonderful. In England you’re doing well if you can see twenty miles, but here it could have been hundreds. The sky seemed huge. Far out across the tawny grassland something was moving, invisible itself but raising a haze of brown-gold dust. Not a car – it was too wide for that. A group of something, a whole herd, running, pounding up that dust with their hooves. Something must be hunting them. Lions? Wild dogs? Africa was incredibly old, Vinny thought. Animals had run from each other, hunted each other for millions of years. But even Africa changed. Once the plain had been sea and the badlands a sea-channel and then a marsh. She tried to imagine it then. What sort of an island, what sort of a marsh? What creatures then? Pigs, crocodiles, small deer, all under the fierce African sun? And what sort of people? But her imagination wouldn’t take hold. There was too much she didn’t know.
May Anna laughed in the silence. Vinny looked at her.
‘Just the way things pan out, I guess,’ said May Anna. ‘Were you nervous about coming?’
‘A bit, I suppose. Mainly I was just excited.’
‘It was the other way round with Sam. He doesn’t show he’s excited, but, boy, was he nervous! How d’you think you’re making out with him?’
‘I don’t know. It’s difficult with Joe trying to take me over. We were doing all right, I thought, only this morning, well, I suppose I got a bit too interested in a book I was telling him about and he didn’t approve of, and he started to go silent on me, and then, well, he sort of gave himself a shake and stopped. He told me to remember I’m my mother’s daughter.’
‘Tell me about your mom. Sam won’t. He says he doesn’t know how to be fair to her, and he refuses to be unfair. That’s typical of him, by the way. What’s she like, Vinny?’
‘Do you know any old English sheepdogs?’
‘Sure. Like that?’
‘Not to look at. Outside she’s small and neat, but inside she’s sort of all-overish and shaggy and always bouncing and wanting to play and take part and involve everyone.’
‘That figures. What was the book?’
‘It’s by somebody called Elaine Morgan and . . .’
May Anna crowed with laughter.
‘Have you read it?’ said Vinny.
‘Don’t tell anyone, but yes, I took it on vacation, where no-one would know who I was and I put a plain wrapper on it so no-one would ask me about it . . .’
‘Do you think it’s nonsense?’
‘No, not really. But I don’t go round talking about it. I think she’s wrong, but not crazy wrong. She deserves an answer.’
‘Why was Dad so upset?’
‘Because you got excited and reminded him of your mom?’
‘It wasn’t just that. It was something to do with the book.’
‘That too. Sam’s a real expert. He’s spent, oh, twenty years getting his expertise. Bones are his thing. Mine too, though I’m not as good as he is. Yet. Just think what it’s like having an amateur coming along and getting a lot of publicity saying the bones aren’t that important and the experts are all wrong. Who’s going to pay our salaries, who’s going to fund expeditions like this, who’s going to give us the respect and prestige we think we deserve, if people start taking her seriously? Those aren’t our conscious motives. Consciously all we’re interested in is the scientific truth, and we are – we really are! But by golly those other motives are there!’
‘So I’d better not talk about it again? I really want to, but . . .’
May Anna didn’t answer at once. Then she sighed.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t figured Sam out. But if you want my advice I’d say be what you are and talk about what you want to talk about. Sam wants his daughter. You want your dad. The real people, not imaginary ones. You’ve got to get used to each other. Now we’d better be moving. I don’t want to have to find my way back in the dark. Dark in Africa is real dark.’
THEN
THE SUN WAS high by the time Greb’s challenge ended, so the tribe rested in the shallows of the bay, re-forming their family groups, fussing over anyone who’d been hurt in the mêlée, unsure and unhappy. The seniors visited Presh where he lay at the edge of the wave-lap, conscious now, but with his eyes shut and moaning at the slightest movement of his leg. Ma-ma and Hooa were with him, stroking his body beneath the water, and wetting his face often.
The visitors peered at him, muttering mournfully. The tribe needed a leader, but not one with a broken leg. They grieved because they liked Presh, but also because they felt things wouldn’t be right until a new leader established himself. Meanwhile Presh’s authority remained strong. When Ma-ma and Hooa tried to begin to tow him to calmer shallows at the end of the beach he barked at them to stop and they obeyed.
There was a further worry. These shingle beaches swarmed at night with savage little crabs which scavenged for flesh, living or dead. They would pick a stranded fish, however large, down to its skeleton by morning. They would do the same with Presh. As the sun moved on and the tribe began to think about foraging again before the night, Ma-ma and Hooa became increasingly fretful, and when Tong visited he stayed, sharing their anxiety. He took Presh’s arm as if to tow him elsewhere, but then like the females obeyed the order to stop. Despairing he looked around, saw Li close by and grunted What to do?