‘They have the baby already,’ Mitch said. ‘That should be exciting enough. A Neanderthal infant.’
The inspector made a doubtful face. ‘Nobody says anything about Neanderthal. So maybe this is a delusion or joke?’
Mitch was long past the point of losing everything he cared about – his career, his standing as a paleontologist. One more time he had screwed things up royally. ‘Maybe it was the headache. I’m just groggy. Of course, I’ll help them find the cave,’ he said.
‘Then there is no crime, merely tragedy.’ The inspector rose to leave, and the officer tipped his cap good-bye.
After they were gone, the mountaineer with the peeling cheeks told him, ‘You are not going home soon.’
‘The mountains want you back,’ said the least snow-burned of the four, across the room from Mitch, and nodded sagely, as if that explained everything.
‘Screw you,’ Mitch muttered. He rolled over in the crisp white bed.
CHAPTER SIX Eliava Phage Institute, Tbilisi
Lado and Tamara and Zamphyra and seven other scientists and students gathered around the two wooden tables on the south end of the main laboratory building. They all lifted their beakers of brandy in toast to Kaye. Candles flickered around the room, reflecting golden sparkles within the amber-filled glassware. The meal was only halfway finished, and this was the eighth round Lado had led this evening, as tamada, toastmaster, for the occasion. ‘For darling Kaye,’ Lado said, ‘who values our work … and promises to make us rich!’
Rabbits, mice, and chickens watched with steady sleepy eyes from their cages behind the table. Long black benches covered with glassware and racks and incubators and computers hooked to sequencers and analyzers retreated into the gloom at the unlighted end of the lab.
‘To Kaye,’ Tamara added, ‘who has seen more of what Sakartvelo, of Georgia, has to offer … than we might wish. A brave and understanding woman.’
‘What are you, toastmistress?’ Lado demanded in irritation. ‘Why remind us of unpleasant things?’
‘What are you, talking of riches, of money at a time like this?’ Tamara snapped back.
‘I am tamada!’ Lado roared, standing beside the oak folding table and waving his sloshing glass at the students and scientists. Above slow smiles, none of them said a word in disagreement.
‘All right,’ Tamara conceded. ‘Your wish is our command.’
‘They have no respect!’ Lado complained to Kaye. ‘Will prosperity destroy tradition?’
The benches made crowded V’s in Kaye’s narrowing perspective. The equipment was hooked into a generator that chugged softly out in the yard beside the building. Saul had supplied two sequencers and a computer; the generator had been supplied by Aventis, a huge multi-national.
City power from Tbilisi had been shut off since late that afternoon. They had cooked the farewell dinner over Bunsen burners and in a gas oven.
‘Go ahead, toastmaster,’ Zamphyra said in affectionate resignation. She waved her fingers at Lado.
‘I will.’ Lado put down his glass and smoothed his suit. His dark wrinkled face, red as a beet with mountain sunburn, gleamed in the candlelight like rich wood. He reminded Kaye of a toy troll she had loved as a child. From a box concealed under the table he brought out a small crystal glass, intricately cut and beveled. He took a beautiful silver-chased ibex horn and walked to a large amphora propped in a wooden crate in the near corner, behind the table. The amphora, recently pulled from the earth of his own small vineyard outside Tbilisi, was filled with some immense quantity of wine. He lifted a ladle from the amphora’s mouth and poured it slowly into the horn, then again, and again, seven times, until the horn was full. He swirled the wine gently to let it breathe. Red liquid sloshed over his wrist.
Finally, he filled the glass to the brim from the horn, and handed it to Kaye. ‘If you were a man,’ he said, ‘I would ask you to drink the entire horn, and give us a toast.’
‘Lado!’ Tamara howled, slapping his arm. He almost dropped the horn, and turned on her in mock surprise.
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘Is the glass not beautiful?’
Zamphyra rose to her feet beside the table to waggle a finger at him. Lado grinned more broadly, transformed from a troll into a carmine satyr. He turned slowly toward Kaye.
‘What can I do, dear Kaye?’ Lado said with a flourish. More wine dripped from the tip of the horn. ‘They demand that you must drink all of this.’
Kaye had already had her fill of alcohol and did not trust herself to stand. She felt deliciously warm and safe, among friends, surrounded by an ancient darkness filled with amber and golden stars.
She had almost forgotten the graves and Saul and the difficulties awaiting her in New York.
She held out her hands, and Lado danced forward with surprising grace, belying his clumsiness of a few moments before. Not spilling a drop, he deposited the ibex horn into her hands.
‘Now, you,’ he said.
Kaye knew what was expected. She rose solemnly. Lado had delivered many toasts that evening that had rambled poetically and with no end of invention for long minutes. She doubted she could equal his eloquence, but she would do her best, and she had many things to say, things that had buzzed in her head for the two days since she had come down from Kazbeg.
‘There is no land on Earth like the home of wine,’ she began, and lifted the horn high. All smiled and raised their beakers. ‘No land that offers more beauty and more promise to the sick of heart or the sick of body. You have distilled the nectars of new wines to banish the rot and disease the flesh is heir to. You have preserved the tradition and knowledge of seventy years, saving it for the twenty-first century. You are the mages and alchemists of the microscopic age, and now you join the explorers of the West, with an immense treasure to share.’
Tamara translated in a loud whisper for the students and scientists who crowded around the table.
‘I am honored to be treated as a friend, and as a colleague. You have shared with me this treasure, and the treasure of Sakartvelo – the mountains, the hospitality, the history, and by no means last or least, the wine.’
She lifted the horn with one hand, and said, ‘Gaumarjos phage!’ She pronounced it the Georgian way, pbah-gay. ‘Gaumarjos Sakartvelos!’
Then she began to drink. She could not savor Lado’s earth-hidden, soil-aged wine the way it deserved, and her eyes watered, but she did not want to stop, either to show her weakness or to end this moment. She swallowed gulp after gulp. Fire moved from her stomach into her arms and legs, and drowsiness threatened to steal her away. But she kept her eyes open and continued to the very bottom of the horn, then upended it, held it out, and lifted it.
‘To the kingdom of the small, and all the labors they do for us! All the glories, the necessities, for which we must forgive the … the pain …’ Her tongue became stiff and her words stumbled. She leaned on the folding table with one hand, and Tamara quietly and unobtrusively brought down her own hand to keep the table from upsetting. ‘All the things to which we … all we have inherited. To bacteria, our worthy opponents, the little mothers of the world!’
Lado and Tamara led the cheers. Zamphyra helped Kaye descend, it seemed from a great height, into her wooden folding chair.
‘Wonderful, Kaye,’ Zamphyra murmured into her ear. ‘You come back to Tbilisi any time. You have a home, safe away from your own home.’
Kaye smiled and wiped her eyes, for in her sodden sentiment