“The theory that EBEs interfered genetically with hominid evolution seven hundred thousand years ago? You see, because wouldn’t that explain why the Neanderthals died out so suddenly? That they were simply a genetic experiment that didn’t pan out, so that the EBEs gave up on them and replaced them with us?” She was burbling excitedly away now, rattling out more words than he’d heard her speak in all four days put together. “I mean, couldn’t it be that all we are is a kind of new, improved-model android that’s doing the EBEs’ work without our even being aware of it?”
“Well, now...”
“I’m sure you know about the briefing paper that was submitted to President Clinton from the Science Advisory Committee in 1994, that the government tried to hush up, and then there was President Eisenhower’s Executive Memorandum, NSC 5410—” She made herself stop speaking the way a child does, clapping a hand over her mouth. “I’m talking too much. It’s just that I’m so excited. Anyway, what do you think?”
“What,” Gideon made himself ask, “are EBEs?”
“What are—?” She couldn’t believe it. “Extraterrestrial biological entities. EBEs.”
“Oh,” said Gideon, “those.” He threw a glance over her shoulder, hoping for the appearance of the taxi, but no relief was in sight. “Well, truthfully, the evidence is somewhat... scant.”
“Oh, no, we have their own word for it.”
“The Neanderthals?”
“No, of course not,” she said, laughing. “The EBEs. I went to a talk in April—this was back in Iowa—by David Moody, who’s been abducted three separate times by EBE research craft—he’s written a wonderful book about it, with some amazing photographs—and he told us that Garnoth-Thoth—oh, I’m sorry, Garnoth-Thoth is their chief life-form scientist—told him that they’d interfered— that was Garnoth-Thoth’s word, ‘interfered’—with the proto- human genome at that time, and I just don’t know whether to believe it or not, because, I mean, Garnoth-Thoth hasn’t always been truthful, so that’s why I wanted to know what you thought about it.” She stopped, out of breath.
“Well, frankly, Paula,” he began slowly, not wanting to offend but not wanting to give any credence to this depressing nonsense either—not wanting to have this conversation at all, in fact. “My own view—” He brightened. “Oh, darn, here’s my taxi. I’m afraid I have to go.”
“That’s all right, Dr. Oliver,” she said agreeably. “There’s plenty of time. Maybe I can catch you at lunch tomorrow? There’s so much else I want to ask you.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” he said miserably.
“THIS is bad,” Ignazio Calderone said.
“It’s not good,” agreed Luigi Abruzzi.
The two men, field supervisor and senior foreman of Aurora Costruzioni, stood in the flooded ditch, hunched against the slanting rain. Water poured from the brims of their sou’westers and ran in braided runnels down the lengths of their slickers, much of it finding its way into the tops of their work boots.
“The ditch is wide enough,” Calderone said, his toes curling against the wet chill. “That’s not the problem. What we need is a bigger-diameter pipe through the culvert here. With all the construction up above, there’s more runoff than there used to be. If this keeps up, it’s going to wash out the road and make all kinds of problems for us down below. We better do something.”
“This is the biggest pipe we have on hand, boss. We’d have to order some more. It would take days.”
Calderone used his finger to brush beaded water from his glasses, then knuckled the runoff from his upper lip. He hated this wet weather with all his sunny Sicilian heart. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s dig out the culvert, get another length of this pipe, the same diameter, and lay it in there right alongside this one. That’ll double the capacity for now. And then add some more gravel to neaten it up. It won’t look bad, and later, in the dry season, we can put in a bigger pipe. Take a couple of men off the foundation work to help you. It shouldn’t take any heavy equipment, just shovels.”
Abruzzi scratched the stubble on his cheek. “You mean now?”
“What’s the matter, you’re afraid of getting wet?”
“No, but don’t you want to check with Vincenzo first? This area here, isn’t it part of the green stripe, the green band—”
“The green belt, yes, so?”
“So we’re not supposed to disturb it. Remember what happened to Matteo when he took down two little trees that were in the way, without asking first? You want to get us fired too?”
What he wanted was to go back to the shed and get out of the damn rain. “In the first place, look for yourself, it’s already disturbed. And if we sit on our asses, it’s going to be more disturbed. And in the second place, we’re not touching any trees. We’re not even widening the ditch. If you do it right, it won’t even look any different.”
“Yes but—”
“And in the third place, Vincenzo’s kid still hasn’t shown up. He’s worried, he has a lot on his mind. You want to call him to ask about a piece of drainage pipe? Be my guest.”
Abruzzi sighed. “All right, I’ll put a couple of men right on it.”
Twenty minutes later, with the rain finally beginning to tail off, two of the day laborers, having gotten their instructions from the foreman, unloaded the new length of PVC pipe next to the ditch and began to lay open a channel in the gravel beside the existing drainage pipe. They had moved no more than a half dozen spadefuls when one of them dropped his spade and crossed himself.
“Oh, Jesus, look at this.”
The other one came over to see, and to poke a little with his finger. “Will you look at that?” he said with interest. Should we go get Abruzzi?”
“Abruzzi? Never mind Abruzzi, the
