Paul didn’t ask him how he knew.
Beyond the river was the camp. Researchers in wide-brimmed hats or bandanas. Young and old. Two or three shirtless. A dark-haired woman in a white shirt sat on a log outside her tent. The one feature unifying them all, good boots.
Every head followed the Jeep, and when the Jeep pulled to a stop, a small crowd gathered to help unpack. Gavin introduced him around. Eight researchers, plus two laborers still in the cave. Australian mostly. Indonesian. One American.
“Herpetology, mate,” one of them said when he shook Paul’s hand. Small, stocky, red-bearded; he couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. Paul forgot his name the moment he heard it, but the introduction, “Herpetology, mate,” stuck with him. “That’s my specialty,” the small man continued. “I got mixed up in this because of Professor McMaster here. University of New England, Australia.” His smile was two feet wide under a sharp nose that pointed at his own chin. Paul liked him instantly.
When they’d finished unpacking the Jeep, Gavin turned to Paul. “Now I think it’s time we made the most important introductions,” he said.
It was a short walk to the cave. Jag-toothed limestone jutted from the jungle, an overhang of vine, and beneath that, a dark mouth. The stone was the brown-white of old ivory. Cool air enveloped him, and entering Liange Bua was a distinct process of stepping down. Once inside, it took Paul’s eyes a moment to adjust. The chamber was thirty meters wide, open to the jungle in a wide crescent—mud floor, low-domed ceiling. There was not much to see at first. In the far corner, two sticks angled from the mud, and when he looked closer, Paul saw the hole.
“Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
Paul took off his backpack and stripped the white paper suit out of its plastic wrapper. “Who else has touched it?” “Talford, Margaret, me.”
“I’ll need blood samples from everybody for comparison assays.”
“DNA contamination?”
“Yeah.”
“We stopped the dig when we realized the significance.”
“Still. I’ll need blood samples from anybody who has dug here, anybody who came anywhere near the bones. I’ll take the samples myself tomorrow.”
“I understand. Is there anything else you need?”
“Solitude.” Paul smiled. “I don’t want anybody in the cave for this part.”
Gavin nodded and left. Paul broke out his tarps and hooks. It was best if the sampler was the person who dug the fossils out of the ground—or better yet, if the DNA samples were taken when the bones were still in the ground. Less contamination that way. And there was always contamination. No matter what precautions were taken, no matter how many tarps, or how few people worked at the site, there was still always contamination.
Paul slid down into the hole, flashlight strapped to his forehead, white paper suit slick on the moist earth. From his perspective, he couldn’t tell what the bones were—only that they were bones, half buried in earth. From his perspective, that’s all that mattered. The material was soft, un-fossilized; he’d have to be careful.
It took nearly seven hours. He snapped two dozen photographs, careful to keep track of which samples came from which specimens. Whoever these things were, they were small. He sealed the DNA samples into small, sterile lozenges for transport.
It was night when he climbed from under the tarp.
Outside the cave, Gavin was the first to find him in the firelight. “Are you finished?”
“For tonight. I have six different samples from at least two different individuals. Shouldn’t take more than a few days.”
McMaster handed him a bottle of whiskey.
“Isn’t it a little early to celebrate?”
“Celebrate? You’ve been working in a grave all night. In America, don’t they drink after funerals?”
That night over the campfire, Paul listened to the jungle sounds and to the voices of scientists, feeling history congeal around him.
“Suppose it isn’t.” Jack was saying. Jack was thin and American and very drunk. “Suppose it isn’t in the same lineage with us, then what would that mean?”
The red-bearded herpetologist groaned. His name was James. “Not more of that doctrine of descent bullshit,” he said.
“Then what is it?” someone added.
They passed the drink around, eyes occasionally drifting to Paul as if he were a priest come to grant absolution—his sample kit just an artifact of his priestcraft. Paul swigged the bottle when it came his way. They’d finished off the whiskey long ago; this was some local brew brought by laborers, distilled from rice. Paul swallowed fire.
Yellow-haired man saying, “It’s the truth,” but Paul had missed part of the conversation, and for the first time he realized how drunk they all were; and James laughed at something, and the woman with the white shirt turned and said, “Some people have nicknamed it the ‘hobbit.’”
“What?”
“Flores Man—the hobbit. Little people three feet tall.”
“Tolkien would be proud,” a voice contributed.
“A mandible, a fairly complete cranium, parts of a right leg and left inominate.”
“But what is it?”
“Hey, are you staying on?”
The question was out there for two beats before Paul realized it was aimed at him. The woman’s eyes were brown and searching across the fire. “Yeah,” he said. “A few more days.”
Then the voice again, “But what is it?”
Paul took another swallow—trying to cool the voice of panic in his head.
Paul learned about her during the next couple of days, the girl with the white shirt. Her name was Margaret. She was twenty-eight. Australian. Some fraction aborigine on her mother’s side, but you could only see it for sure in her mouth. The rest of her could have been Dutch, English, whatever. But that full mouth: teeth like Ruteng children, teeth like dentists might dream. She tied her brown hair back from her face, so it didn’t hang in her eyes while she worked in the hole. This was her sixth dig, she told him. “This is the one.” She sat on the stool while Paul took her blood, a delicate index finger extended, red pearl rising to spill her secrets. “Most archaeologists go a whole lifetime without a big find,” she said. “Maybe you get one. Probably none. But this is the one I get to be a part of.”
“What about the Leakeys?” Paul asked, dabbing her finger with cotton.
“Bah.” She waved at him in mock disgust. “They get extra. Bloody Kennedys of archaeology.”
Despite himself, Paul laughed.
This brings us to the so-called doctrine of common descent, whereby each species is seen as a unique and individual creation. Therefore all men, living and dead, are descended from a common one-time creational event. To be outside of this lineage, no matter how similar in appearance, is to be other than Man.
That evening, Paul helped Gavin pack the Jeep for a trek back up to Ruteng. “I’m driving our laborers back to town,” Gavin told him. “They work one week on, one off. You want me to take your samples with me?”
Paul shook his head. “Can’t. There are stringent protocols for chain of possession.”
“Where are they now?”
Paul patted the cargo pocket of his pant leg.
“So when you get those samples back, what happens next?”
“I’ll hand them over to an evaluation team.”
“You don’t test them yourself ?”
“I’ll assist, but there are strict rules. I test animal DNA all the time, and the equipment is all the same. But genus Homo requires a license and oversight.”