attend.’ ” He looked at her. “What do you know, Lester really is doing his book launch here. I half thought he was kidding.”
“ Uneasy Relations: Humans and Neanderthals at the Dawn of History: Implications for Today’s World,” Julie repeated. “Now there’s a mouthful.”
“It sure is. I bet Rowley had a heck of a time talking him out of Making It with a Neanderthal, or Caveman Sex.”
“But are these academics really going to show up for it, do you think?” Julie asked. “I mean, no offense to Rowley, but would these people be that interested in what he has to say?”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Gideon said, laughing. “Free booze, free food – of course they’ll attend.”
Delivered with the meal was a folded copy of the Gibraltar Chronicle (“The Independent Daily – First Published 1801”), and now, while Gideon contentedly sipped his third cup of tea and continued with the program, Julie unfolded it to browse.
“Oh, boy,” she said the moment she looked at it.
He glanced at her. “What?”
Mutely, she handed the paper to him.
And there it was again, big and bold, and apparently tracking him around the world like a vindictive ex- spouse.
PROMINENT SCIENTIST TO REVEAL “STUNNING” SCIENTIFIC FRAUD AT PUBLIC LECTURE TODAY.
“Aw, no,” he groaned, scanning the piece. It was an abbreviated version of the overheated Affiliated Press release, with the addition of the title of his presentation: “ ‘Mistakes’ in Human Evolution.”
“Well, look on the bright side,” Julie chirped
“There’s a bright side?” he said dismally.
“Sure, there is.” She stood up, leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, and headed inside. “I bet you’ll have a heck of a crowd.”
AT ten thirty, Gideon returned to the hotel for a final prep session before for his presentation, then went downstairs to wait for Rowley, who had offered to have his administrative assistant, Henrietta, stop by the hotel at eleven to give a ride up to the cave to anyone who needed one. (Rowley himself had gone up earlier to make sure everything was in order for the lecture.) He found Buck and Adrian already beside the curving driveway, waiting for the lift. The others were there too, grouping up to walk into town so they could drop in on the society meetings for a few minutes before going up to the cave.
“Say, Gideon,” Pru said wryly, “just in case we get tied up and don’t make it to your, um, ‘stunning expose,’ will you have abstracts of the paper you can let us have?”
Gideon sighed. “I gather you saw the article in the Chronicle.”
“Hard to miss. Right there on page one.”
“Well, the answer to your question is no. I do not have abstracts. I am not giving a ‘paper.’ This is going to be strictly off-the-cuff, seat-of -the-pants stuff. Miss it today, and there will never be another opportunity. ”
“Oh, well, then, we’ll be sure to be there,” she called merrily as she, Audrey, and Corbin started down the driveway. “Wouldn’t want to miss that!”
At eleven on the dot a gray, mud-spattered Ford minivan pulled up beside them. “I’m Henrietta,” the large, jovial driver jauntily proclaimed. “Climb aboard, gents!”
Buck instinctively took the front seat beside her; not only was he the biggest of the three, and needful of the most leg room, but riding shotgun seemed to suit him. Gideon and Adrian sat behind.
“Henrietta,” Gideon said as she pulled out onto Europa Road, “do you happen to know how Ivan Gunderson’s doing?”
“Ah. Ivan.” Henrietta’s round, jolly face sagged. “I haven’t seen him today, but according to Rowley, he was quite destroyed by what happened last night. As soon as I drop you gentlemen off, I’m on my way to see him with a load of broken pots – that’s the clinking you’ve been hearing from the back. We’re hoping it helps him find his footing, but sometimes it takes days.”
“Yes, that’s typical of dementia senilis,” Adrian averred. “But it was dreadful to see him in that condition.”
“Well, you know-” Buck began, but Adrian hadn’t yet relinquished the floor.
“Did I understand Rowley to say yesterday,” he continued, “that Ivan is expected to give some sort of welcoming presentation at the Europa Point ceremony tomorrow?”
“Yes, he-”
“Will he be able to manage it?”
Henrietta shrugged. “God only knows. Rowley’s going to make sure he writes it down, but…” Another shrug.
They climbed the flank of the Rock in silence for a few minutes, until Adrian slyly lifted his eyebrows and disingenuously said, “Bigger than Piltdown, eh?”
Gideon sighed again. He’d been expecting more of this, although perhaps not from Adrian.
“Yeah, hey, I saw the paper too,” Buck said, turning. “What is that about? Aud says it’s, like, some kind of stupid joke.” His beefy face flushed. “Not that she meant-”
“I understand,” Gideon said. “And it is a stupid joke. Not that you could tell from the way the article was written.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” Henrietta said, unabashedly joining in. “I read it too. I think most people could tell you weren’t being serious. ”
“The thing is,” Gideon said, “some of these reporters take what you say and-”
“Indeed they do,” said Adrian with a full-throated laugh, and Gideon got his first rich morning whiff of Tullamore Dew. “They take what you say in all innocence and twist it unconscionably. Of course it’s irritating at the moment, but really, it becomes quite amusing with the passage of time. Let me tell you what happened to me once. It had to do with the relative chronology of the Mousterian succession at Peche de Bourre. Now, what I actually said was that the superpositioning of the Ferrassie variant was an unfortunate-”
And off he went on a convoluted story about Neanderthal lithic technology, stopping when the car stopped at the pay booth that marked the entrance to the Upper Rock Nature Preserve, which encompassed most of the popular visitor sites on the Rock, including St. Michael’s Cave. But as soon as Henrietta was recognized and waved through, he took up where he’d left off.
Even Gideon, let alone Buck and Henrietta, had trouble following him. When the story had finally reached its conclusion (they knew because he had stopped talking for a full five seconds and was looking at them with a wry, expectant expression), Henrietta, after providing the appreciative chuckle that was expected, addressed Gideon.
“Tell us, then, will you? What will your lecture be about? Really.”
“Well, why not wait to hear the full, unexpurgated version? I wouldn’t want to spoil the anticipation for you.”
“Oh, come on, give us a hint,” Adrian coaxed. “Whet our appetites. ”
“Yes, do,” agreed Henrietta. “What are these ‘mistakes’?”
“We won’t tell anybody,” Buck said.
Gideon, a professor through and through, wasn’t the sort of man who could easily turn down multiple requests for a lecture – even a prelecture lecture – from a captive and apparently sincere audience.
“All right, it’s about what you might call the slipups, the bloopers, that have occurred over the years – over the eons – of human evolution. ”
Buck’s open, honest face showed shock. “Can evolution make mistakes?”
“Well, not mistakes. Call them arrangements that haven’t worked out quite as well as they might have, things that, oh…”
“What Gideon is referring to are what are known as vestigial organs,” explained Adrian, ever ready to provide expertise and edification to the insufficiently educated. “You see, Buck, our bodies carry around these tag ends of structures that were at one time functional, but now serve no use, and in fact may do us damage. Our appendix would perhaps be the best example. All it can do for us now is to become infected. Our coccyx, which is no more than the rudimentary root of the tail we once had, would be another such example. Most of the time, these tag