White?
No-no, it couldn't be.
But it was. It was a skull, certainly-but
not a fossil skull. The material was bright white.
And it didn't weigh nearly enough.
A plaster cast. Not the original at all.
Andrews opened every box inside the wooden crate, his heart sinking as each new one yielded its contents. In total, there were fourteen skulls and eleven jawbones. The skulls were subhuman, with low foreheads, prominent brow ridges, flat faces, and the most unlikely looking perfect square teeth. Amazingly, each of the skull casts also showed clear artificial damage to the foramen magnum.
Oh, some work could indeed be done on these casts, no doubt. But where were the original fossils? With the Japanese having invaded China, surely they were too precious to be left in the Far East. What was Weidenreich up to?
Fire.
It was like a piece of the sun, brought down to earth. It kept the tribe warm at night, kept the saber-toothed cats away-and it did something wonderful to meat, making it softer and easier to chew, while at the same time restoring the warmth the flesh had had when still part of the prey.
Fire was the most precious thing the tribe owned. They'd had it for eleven summers now, ever since Bok the brave had brought out a burning stick from the burning forest. The glowing coals were always fanned, always kept alive.
And then, one night, the Stranger came-tall, thin, pale, with red-rimmed eyes that somehow seemed to glow from beneath his brow ridge.
The Stranger did the unthinkable, the unforgivable.
He doused the flames, throwing a gourd full of water on to the fire. The logs hissed, and steam rose up into the blackness. The children of the tribe began to cry; the adults quaked with fury. The Stranger turned and walked into the darkness. Two of the strongest hunters ran after him, but his long legs had apparently carried him quickly away.
The sounds of the forest grew closer-the chirps of insects, the rustling of small animals in the vegetation, and-
A flapping sound.
The Stranger was gone.
And the silhouette of a bat fluttered briefly in front of the waning moon.
Franz Weidenreich had been born in Germany in 1873. A completely bald, thickset man, he had made a name for himself as an expert in hematology and osteology. He was currently Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago, but that was coming to an end, and now he was faced with the uncomfortable prospect of having to return to Nazi Germany-something, as a Jew, he desperately wanted to avoid.
And then word came of the sudden death of the Canadian paleontologist Davidson Black. Black had been at the Peking Union Medical College, studying the fragmentary remains of early man being recovered from the limestone quarry at Chou Kou Tien. Weidenreich, who once made a study of Neanderthal bones found in Germany, had read Black's papers in
Nature and Science describing Sinanthropus.
But now, at fifty, Black was as dead as his fossil charges-an unexpected heart attack. And, to Weidenreich's delight, the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation wanted him to fill Black's post. China was a strange, foreboding place-and tensions between the Chinese and the Japanese were high-but it beat all hell out of returning to Hitler's Germany…
At night, most of the tribe huddled under the rocky overhang or crawled into the damp, smelly recesses of the limestone cave. Without the fire to keep animals away, someone had to stand watch each night, armed with a large branch and a pile of rocks for throwing. Last night, it had been Kart's turn. Everyone had slept well, for Kart was the strongest member of the tribe. They knew they were safe from whatever lurked in the darkness.
When daybreak came, the members of the tribe were astounded. Kart had fallen asleep. They found him lying in the dirt, next to the cold, black pit where their fire had once been. And on Kart's neck there were two small red-rimmed holes, staring up at them like the eyes of the Stranger…
During his work on hematology, Weidenreich had met a remarkable man named Brancusi-gaunt, pale, with disconcertingly sharp canine teeth. Brancusi suffered from a peculiar anemia, which Weidenreich had been unable to cure, and an almost pathological photophobia. Still, the gentleman was cultured and widely read, and Weidenreich had ever since maintained a correspondence with him.
When Weidenreich arrived in Peking, work was still continuing at the quarry. So far, only teeth and fragments of skull had been found. Davidson Black had done a good job of cataloging and describing some of the material, but as Weidenreich went through the specimens he was surprised to discover a small collection of sharp, pointed fossil teeth.
Black had evidently assumed they weren't part of the
Sinanthropus material, as he hadn't included them in his descriptions. And, at first glance, Black's assessment seemed correct-they were far longer than normal human canines, and much more sharply pointed. But, to Weidenreich's eye, the root pattern was possibly hominid. He dropped a letter to his friend Brancusi, half-joking that he'd found Brancusi's great-to-the-nth grandfather in China.
To Weidenreich's infinite surprise, within weeks Brancusi had arrived in Peking.
Each night, another member of the tribe stood watch-and each morning, that member was found unconscious, with a pair of tiny wounds to his neck.
The tribe members were terrified. Soon multiple guards were posted each night, and, for a time, the happenings ceased.
But then something even more unusual happened…
They were hunting deer. It would not be the same, not without fire to cook the meat, but, still, the tribe needed to eat. Four men, Kart included, led the assault. They moved stealthily amongst the tall grasses, tracking a large buck with a giant rack of antlers. The hunters communicated by sign language, carefully coordinating their movements, closing in on the animal from both sides.
Kart raised his right arm, preparing to signal the final attack, when-
– a streak of light brown, slicing through the grass-
– fangs flashing, the roar of the giant cat, the stag bolting away, and then-
– Kart's own scream as the saber-tooth grabbed hold of his thigh and shook him viciously.
The other three hunters ran as fast as they could, desperate to get away. They didn't stop to look back, even when the cat let out the strangest yelp…
That night, the tribe huddled together and sang songs urging Kart's soul a safe trip to heaven.
One of the Chinese laborers found the first skull. Weidenreich was summoned at once. Brancusi still suffered from his photophobia, and apparently had never adjusted to the shift in time zones-he slept during the day. Weidenreich thought about waking him to see this great discovery, but decided against it.
The skull was still partially encased in the limestone muck at the bottom of the cave. It had a thick cranial wall and a beetle brow-definitely a more primitive creature than Neanderthal, probably akin to Solo Man or Java Man…
It took careful work to remove the skull from the ground, but, when it did come free, two astonishing things became apparent.
The loose teeth Davidson Black had set aside had indeed come from the hominids here: this skull still had all its upper teeth intact, and the canines were long and pointed.
Second, and even more astonishing, was the foramen magnum-the large opening in the base of the skull through which the spinal cord passes. It was clear from its chipped, frayed margin that this individual's foramen magnum had been artificially widened-
– meaning he'd been decapitated, and then had something shoved up into his brain through the bottom of his skull.
Five hunters stood guard that night. The moon had set, and the great sky river arched high over head. The Stranger returned-but this time, he was not alone. The tribesmen couldn't believe their eyes. In the darkness, it looked like-
It was. Kart.
But-but Kart was dead. They'd seen the saber-tooth take him.
The Stranger came closer. One of the men lifted a rock, as if to throw it at him, but soon he let the rock drop from his hand. It fell to the ground with a dull thud.
The Stranger continued to approach, and so did Kart.
And then Kart opened his mouth, and in the faint light they saw his teeth-long and pointed, like the Stranger's.
The men were unable to run, unable to move. They seemed transfixed, either by the Stranger's gaze, or by Kart's, both of whom continued to approach.
And soon, in the dark, chill night, the Stranger's fangs fell upon one of the guard's necks, and Kart's fell upon another…
Eventually, thirteen more skulls were found, all of which had the strange elongated canine teeth, and all of which had their foramen magnums artificially widened. Also found were some mandibles and skull fragments from other individuals-but there was almost no post-cranial material. Someone in dim prehistory had discarded here the decapitated heads of a group of protohumans.
Brancusi sat in Weidenreich's lab late at night, looking at the skulls. He ran his tongue over his own sharp teeth, contemplating. These subhumans doubtless had no concept of mathematics beyond perhaps adding and subtracting on their fingers. How would they possibly know of the problem that plagued the Family, the problem that every one of the Kindred knew to avoid?
If all those who feel the bite of the vampire themselves become vampires when they die, and all of those new vampires also turn those they feed from into vampires, soon, unless care is exercised, the whole population will be undead. A simple geometric progression.
