How? How are you going to keep me from going down there?
By whatever means necessary, said Dut, his tone even.
All right, then, said Adikor. He stood motionlessly for a moment, as if thinking about whether he really wanted to try this. All right, then, he said again, and started walking purposefully toward the entrance to the elevator.
Stop, said Dut, with no particular force to the word.
Or what? said Adikor, without looking back. He tried to sound fearless, but his voice cracked, which didnt really give the effect he wanted. Are you going to stave in my skull? Despite himself, his neck muscles contracted, already preparing for the blow.
Hardly, said Dut. Ill just put you to sleep with a tranquilizer dart.
Adikor stopped walking and turned around. Oh. Well, hed never run up against the law beforenor had he known anyone who ever had. He supposed it made sense that they had a way to stop people without actually hurting them.
Jasmel interposed herself between Duts dart launcher, which was now in his hand, and Adikor. Youll have to shoot me first, she said. Hes going down there.
If you like. But I should warn you: youll wake up with an awful headache.
Please! said Jasmel. Hes trying to save my fatherdont you understand?
For once Duts voice had some warmth in it. Youre clutching at smoke. I know it must be very hard to deal with, but you have to face reality. He gestured with his launcher for the two of them to start walking away from the mine. Im sorry, but your father is dead.
Chapter 17
The genetics lab at Laurentian didnt have the special equipment for extracting degraded DNA from old specimens that Marys lab at York did. But none of that would be needed. It was a straightforward matter to take the cells from Ponters mouth and extract DNA from one of the mitochondria; any genetics facility in the world could have done it.
Mary introduced two primerssmall pieces of mitochondrial DNA that matched the beginning of the sequence that she had identified years ago in the German Neanderthal fossil. She then added the enzyme DNA-polymerase, triggering the polymerase chain reaction, which would cause the section she was interested in to be amplified, reproducing itself over and over again, doubling the quantity each time. She would soon have millions of copies of the string to analyze.
As Reuben Montego had said, the Laurentian lab did a lot of forensic work, and so had sealing tape that could be applied to the glassware. The tape was used so that geneticists could truthfully testify that there was no way the contents of a vial could have been tampered with while out of their sight. Mary sealed the container in which the PCR amplification was happening and wrote her signature on the seal.
She then used a web terminal in the lab to access her e-mail at York. Shed received more e-mails in the last day than she had in the preceding month, and many of them were from Neanderthal experts around the world who had somehow gotten wind of the fact that she was now in Sudbury. There were messages from Washington University, the University of Michigan, UCB, UCLA, Brown, SUNY Stony Brook, Stanford, Cambridge, Britains Natural History Museum, Frances Institute of Quaternary Prehistory and Geology, her old friends at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, and moreall asking for samples of the Neanderthal DNA while, at the same time, making a joke of it, as if, of course, this couldnt really be happening.
She ignored all those messages, but she did feel a need to send a note to her grad student back at York:
Daria:
Sorry to leave you in the lurch, but I know you can handle things. Im sure youve seen the reports in the press, and all I can say is, yes, there really does seem to be a chance that he might be a Neanderthal. Im running DNA tests right now to find out for sure.
I dont know when Ill be back. Ill probably stay here a few more days at least. But I wanted to tell you to warn you really that I think a man was trying to follow me when I left the lab on Friday night. Be careful if you are going to work late, have your boyfriend come and meet you at the end of the day or call for a walking companion to escort you back to the residence.
Take care.
Mary read the note over a couple of times, then clicked Send Now.
She then simply sat, staring at the screen for a long, long time.
Damn it.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
She couldnt get it out of her headnot for five minutes. She guessed that fully half her waking thoughts today had been devoted to the horrible events ofMy God, was it really only yesterday? It seemed so much longer ago than that, although the memories of the horrible things hed done to her were still scalpel sharp.
Had she been down in Toronto, she might have talked it over with her mother, but
But her mother was a good Catholic, and there was no way to avoid unpleasant issues when discussing a rape. Mom would be worried about whether Mary might be pregnantnot that shed ever countenance an abortion; Mary and she had argued about John Pauls edict that raped nuns in Bosnia had to bring their children to term. And telling her mother that there was nothing to worry about because Mary was on the Pill would hardly be better. As far as Marys parents had been concerned, the rhythm method was the only acceptable form of birth controlMary thought it was a miracle that she only had three siblings instead of a dozen.
And, indeed, she could speak to her siblings, but but but there was no way she could talk to a manany manabout this. That left out her brothers Bill and John. And her one sister, Christine, had moved to Sacramento, and somehow this didnt seem to be the sort of thing she wanted to talk about over the phone.
And yet, she had to speak to someone. Someone in person.
Someone here.
There was a copy of the Laurentian calendar sitting on a table in the lab; Mary found the campus map in it, and located what she was looking for. She got up and made her way down the corridor to the stairs, crossed over from Science One to the Classroom Building, then headed down to what shed learned Laurentian students called the bowling alleythe long ground-floor glass corridor that ran between the Classroom Building and the Great Hall. She walked down its length, afternoon sun streaming in, past a Tim Hortons donut stand and a few kiosks devoted to student activities. She finally turned left at the bowling alleys far end, going past the liaison office, up the stairs, past the campus bookstore, and down a short corridor.
Going to the rape-crisis center at York University would have been out of the question. The counselors there were volunteers mostly, and, although they all were doubtless supposed to keep things confidential, the gossip that a faculty member had been attacked might prove irresistible. Plus, she might be seen entering or leaving the facility.
But Laurentian University, small as it was, had a rape-crisis center, too. The sad truth was that every university needed to have one; shed heard there was even one at Oral Roberts University. Nobody here knew Mary, and she hadnt yet been interviewed on TV, although she doubtless would be once she had results of Ponters DNA tests. So, if she wanted any anonymity at all, this couldnt wait.
The door was open. Mary entered the small reception area. Hello, said the young black woman behind the desk. She stood up and walked over to Mary. Come in, come in. Mary understood her solicitousness. Many women probably made it to the threshold, but then scurried away, unable to give voice to what had happened to them.
Still, the woman could probably tell that if Mary were a rape victim, it hadnt just happened. Marys clothes werent disheveled, and her makeup and hair were all fine. And the center must get visitors who werent victims: people coming in to volunteer, to do research, to service the photocopier.