Julie was first, soberly explaining the importance of “fire management polices that replicate as closely as possible the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of natural fire regimes, taking into account the importance and reality of anthropogenic fires in woodland subsystems and thereby achieving the maintenance of biodiversity in a form adhering as closely as possible to its natural facets and fluxes.”
Damn, he thought with pride, she’s almost as good at that stuff as I am. When she took her seat again and glanced furtively in his direction he gave her a vigorous thumbs-up.
The others followed with equally turgid descriptions of their work, and although he took mental issue with a few things that were said, it wasn’t too hard to keep his peace through most of them, including even Victor Waldo’s rattling on inscrutably and at length about holistic and naturalistic paradigms that would reconstruct the nature-human dynamic of the postindustrial world.
But Donald Pinckney, speaking last, broke through his self-restraint when he dipped a toe into the treacherous waters of Darwinian theory.
“… and therefore demonstrate that hunting, properly regulated, positively impacts wildlife populations by preventing game from exceeding the carrying capacity of their habitat areas, thus serving as a valuable adjunct to the mechanisms of natural selection and the survival of the fittest.”
“Nggkk,” Gideon said.
To his dismay, this strangled, inadvertent squawk, wholly unintentional, dropped smack into a dead spot in the presentation and was heard clear around the room. Donald, with the faintest of frowns, glanced questioningly at him and prepared to continue reading, but Kozlov interceded.
“Mr. Skeleton Detective wants say something?”
No, Gideon didn’t want to say anything, but by now his professorly instincts were beyond his control. “Well, it’s only that Donald may have made a small… a very small but nonetheless important, um, misinterpretation of the way that natural selection works.”
Donald’s pale eyes glittered behind his glasses. “Oh?”
“The thing is,” Gideon said, as delicately as he could, “in nature, natural selection works by selectively eliminating the more vulnerable-those animals that are least ‘fit’ to survive in their current environment. By removing them from the gene pool, the stronger-or I guess I should say the better-adapted-animals are more likely to reproduce, to contribute their genes, and to thus keep the species genetically strong; that is, genetically well-adapted to their environment…”
Unnoticed by Gideon, a pursed-mouthed Donald slid silently back into his seat.
“Hunting by natural predators has the same result,” Gideon went on, well-launched now. “They’re most likely to catch and kill the weak, the old, the slow, the sick, and so on. But modern human hunters, with their intelligence and technology, are a kind of super-predator that’s never been seen on earth before. They kill the strongest and ablest animals, which of course means that the less ‘fit’ animals have a relatively greater opportunity to reproduce and pass on their genes.”
“Ha-ha, that’s exactly right,” a delighted Joey Dillard cried. From the looks of him, he had had more to drink than was good for him. “What it is, is, it’s evolution in reverse.”
“Well, no, I wouldn’t exactly say that. The idea that evolution can reverse itself, while it has a certain poetic appeal…”
“I tried, I really did,” Gideon told Julie afterward, when they had come back outside to take a few turns around the ramparts, watching dusk turn to night as the sun dropped toward the sea beyond the Western Rocks, a jumble of offshore boulders that had been the end of many a seagoing vessel during winter storms, but in summer served mainly as a picturesque backdrop for the sunset-watchers who picnicked on Garrison Hill as the evening came on. Julie and Gideon could see several groups of them on the bluffs below the castle walls.
“Actually, I thought what you said was quite interesting,” Julie told him loyally. “I think everybody did. Honestly.”
“Not Pinckney.”
“No, not Donald,” Julie agreed. “But then he does tend to be a little touchy, a wee bit sensitive.”
With a predatory wife like Cheryl, Gideon thought, who wouldn’t be?
“So, what did you think of his wife?” Julie asked.
“Um… his wife?”
“Cheryl? The person sitting next to you? Certain parts of whom were more or less on top of you there for a while?”
“Oh, that Cheryl,” Gideon said, laughing. “I didn’t think you noticed.”
“I bet you noticed.”
“I did, but I hope you also observed that she didn’t get to first base with me. Why would she? I can do a whole lot better than Cheryl Pinckney.” He swung an arm around her shoulder, pulled her to him, and kissed her warmly. “Have I mentioned to you today that I’m in love with you?”
A gruff “Hey, you two, knock it off there” came from a nearby niche in the walls, where Liz was having a postprandial cigarette, its end glowing red in the dark. “We’re running a G-rated consortium here. This time, anyway.”
“Hey, yourself,” Gideon growled back, leaving his arms where they were, “go find your own parapet.”
But after another lingering moment with their arms wrapped around one another they separated and resumed their slow tour of the ramparts, their fingers entwined.
“ This time?” Gideon said. “Meaning, ‘As opposed to last time’?”
Julie nodded. “It got pretty torrid around here a couple of years ago.”
“Rats,” Gideon said. “I was hoping it was just something about me that brought out the beast in Cheryl.”
“’Fraid not, the beast in Cheryl is pretty easy to bring out. But it wasn’t just Cheryl-well, it was, but the hanky-panky was really pretty general. I mean, I know this stuff happens at conferences, but that was the first time I’d ever experienced anything quite like that.”
“Not first hand, I hope.”
She squeezed his fingers. “Not a chance. Edgar was at the center of it all, and I guess I wasn’t his type. He made only one move on me that could be construed as a pass-about as subtle as Cheryl’s move on you-and then quit.” She smiled. “I suppose I should have been insulted, because I was the only one he didn’t keep after. He managed to have affairs-well, to have sex with-all three of the other women. Not that he had to try too hard.”
“In one week?”
“Well, you know, the man was brilliant, famous, moody, edgy, good-looking in a dangerous sort of way… the kind that appeals to a lot of women.”
“But not to you, I take it.”
“Ugh, no!” He was absurdly pleased by her enthusiastic shudder. “Not that I have any objection to brilliant, famous, and good-looking, but I like my men a lot bigger, and sunnier, and friendlier… and I already have me one of those.”
You sure do, Gideon thought. And just you try and get rid of him. “But I thought Villarreal was supposed to be some kind of loner, a recluse-preferred living with the bears and the wolves to being around people. Was that all hype?”
“No, as far as I know it was true. He spent a lot of the year in the wilds. When he left here he was heading straight out to the Alaskan wilderness to spend the summer all by himself, keeping tabs on a cluster of bear families-you know, tracking their eating, and mating, and migration activities. All alone with the bears, that’s what he loved.” She shook her head. “But when he was around people-women, anyway-he got very, um, shall we say, social.”
“Yeah. Well, who knows, maybe I would too, if I spent my summers all alone, watching bears have sex.”
They walked on a few steps, still hand-in-hand. “You said all three of the women,” he said. “That means Cheryl, which is not exactly a huge surprise, and Liz-which is a surprise, because I wouldn’t have pictured her going for a one-night stand-but who else was there?”