“They’re fine,” Mitch said, unwilling to talk much until he saw what he was being dragged into. He liked Merton well enough, found him interesting, but did not trust him one bit. He resented that the man seemed to know so much about his private life.
Daney’s mansion made a three-story, gray stone curve at the end of a redbrick drive flanked by beautifully manicured lawns, perfect as a putting green. A few gardeners were out trimming hedges, and an elderly woman in jodhpurs and a broad and ragged straw hat waved at them as Merton drove past. “Mrs. Daney, our host’s mum,” Merton said, waving out the window. “Lives in the housekeeper’s cottage. Nice old woman. Doesn’t go into her son’s rooms very often.”
Merton parked in front of the brownstone steps leading to the huge, double-door entrance.
“Everybody’s here,” he said. “You, me, Daney, and Herr Professor Friedrich Brock, formerly of the University of Innsbruck.”
“Brock?”
“Yes.” Merton smiled. “He says he met you once.”
“He did,” Mitch said. “Once.”
The entry way of the Daney mansion was shadowy, a huge hall paneled with dark wood. Three parallel beams of sun dropped through a skylight onto the age-darkened limestone floor, cutting over a huge Chinese silk rug, in the middle of which rose a round table covered with a hemisphere of flowers. Just to one side of the table, in shadow, stood a man.
“William, this is Mitch Rafelson,” Merton said, taking Mitch’s elbow and leading him forward.
The man in shadow stuck out his hand into one of the shafts of sun, and three gold rings gleamed on thick, strong fingers. Mitch shook the hand firmly. Daney was in his early fifties, tanned, with yellow-white hair receding from a Wag-nerian forehead. He had small, perfect lips quick to smile, dark brown eyes, baby-smooth cheeks. His shoulders were broadened by a padded gray blazer, but his arms looked well-muscled.
“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Daney said. “I’d have bought them from your friends if they had been offered, you know. And then I would have turned them over to Innsbruck. I’ve told this to Herr Professor Brock, and he has given me absolution.”
Mitch smiled to be polite. He was here to meet Brock.
“Actually, William doesn’t own any human remains,” Merton said.
“I’m happy with duplicates, casts, sculptures,” Daney said. “I’m not a scientist, merely a hobbyist, but I hope I honor the past by trying to understand it.”
“Into the Hall of Humanity,” Merton said with a flourish of his hand. Daney tossed his head proudly and led the way.
The hall filled a former ballroom in the eastern curve of the mansion. Mitch had seen nothing like it outside of a museum: dozens of glass cases arranged in rows, with carpeted aisles in between, each case containing casts and replicas of every major specimen of anthropology. Australopithecus afarensis and robustus; Homo habilis and erectus. Mitch counted sixteen different Neandertal skeletons, all professionally mounted, and six of them had waxwork reconstructions of how the individuals might have looked in life. There was no attempt to avoid offending modesty: All the models were nude and hairless, avoiding any speculation on clothing or hair patterns.
Row upon row of hairless apes, illuminated by elegant and respectfully softened spotlights, stared blankly at Mitch as he walked past.
“Incredible,” Mitch said, despite himself. “Why have I never heard of you before, Mr. Daney?”
“I only talk to a few people. The Leakey family, Bjorn Kurten, a few others. My close friends. I’m eccentric, I know, but I don’t like to flaunt it.”
“You’re among the elect now,” Merton said to Mitch.
“Professor Brock is in the library.” Daney pointed the way. Mitch would have enjoyed spending more time in the hall. The wax sculptures were superb and the reproductions of the specimens first rate, almost indistinguishable from the specimens themselves.
“No, actually, I am here. I couldn’t wait.” Brock stepped around a case and advanced. “I feel as if I know you, Dr. Rafelson. And we do have mutual acquaintances, do we not?”
Mitch shook hands with Brock, under Daney’s beaming and approving inspection. They walked several dozen yards to an adjacent library, furnished in the epitome of Edwardian elegance, three levels with railed walkways connected by two wrought-iron bridges. Huge paintings of Yosemite and the Alps in dramatic moods flanked the single high north-facing window.
They took seats around a large, low round table in the middle of the room. “My first question,” Brock said, “is, do you dream of them, Dr. Rafelson? Because I do, and frequently.”
Daney served the coffee himself, after it was rolled into the library by a stout, somber young woman in a black suit. He poured each of them a cup in Flora Danica china, botanical patterns in this series displaying the microscopic plants native to Denmark, based on nineteenth-century scientific art. Mitch examined his saucer, adorned with three beautifully rendered dinoflagellates, and wondered what he would do if he had all the money he could ever hope to spend.
“I myself do not believe these dreams,” Brock picked up the conversation. “But these individuals do haunt me.”
Mitch looked around the group, completely unsure what was expected of him. It seemed distinctly possible that associating with Daney, Brock, and even Merton, could somehow be turned to his disadvantage. Perhaps he had been battered once too often in this arena.
Merton sensed his unease. “This meeting is completely private, and will be kept secret,” he said. “I don’t plan to report anything said here.”
“At my request,” Daney said, lifting his brows emphatically.
“I wanted to tell you that you must be correct in your judgments, the judgments you have shown by seeking out certain people, and learning certain things about our own researches,” Brock said. “But I have just been released from my responsibilities with regard to the Alpine mummies. The arguments have become personal, and more than a little dangerous to all our careers.”
“Dr. Brock believes the mummies represent the first clear evidence of a human speciation event,” Merton said, hoping to move things along.
“Subspeciation, actually,” Brock said. “But the idea of a species has become so fluid in past decades, has it not? The presence of SHEVA in their tissues is most evocative, don’t you think?”
Daney leaned forward in his chair, cheeks and forehead pink with the intensity of his interest.
Mitch decided he could not be reticent among such fellow travelers. “We’ve found other instances,” he said.
“Yes, so I hear, from Oliver and from Maria Konig at the University of Washington.”
“Not me, actually, but people I’ve talked to. I’ve been ineffectual, to say the least. Compromised by my own actions.”
Brock dismissed this. “When I called your apartment in Innsbruck, I had forgiven you your lapse. I could sympathize, and your story rang true.”
“Thank you,” Mitch said, and found himself genuinely affected.
“I apologize for not revealing myself at the time, but you understand, I hope.”
“I do,” Mitch said.
“Tell me what’s going to happen,” Daney said. “Are they going to release their findings about the mummies?”
“They are,” Brock said. “They are going to claim contamination, that the mummies are in fact not related. The Nean-dertals are going to be labeled Homo sapiens alpinensis, and the infant is going to be sent to Italy for study by other specialists.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mitch said.
“Yes, and they will not get away with this pretense forever, but for the next few years, the conservatives, the hardliners, will rule. They will mete out information at will, to those they trust not to rock the boat, to agree with them, like zealous scholars defending the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are hoping to see their careers through without having to deal with a revolution that would topple both them and their views.”