‘Homo Cliftensis,’ said Kylie.
They halted where the sandstones had been excavated and there were tokens of human activity, with planks, brushes, jackhammers, and a wheelbarrow incongruous nearby. They stood on a bluff overlooking the desert, across which mesas were sending long fingers of shadow. A well of shadow filled the excavation they now contemplated, as it lay like a pool below the ancient crusts of the K/T boundary.
Kylie shivered. But the air was cooling, the sky overhead deepening its blue.
Two students, a man and a woman, were standing guard by the dig. They moved back as the new arrivals appeared. Clift jumped down into the hole and removed a tarpaulin, revealing the ancient grave. The skeleton remained lying on its side, cramped within the coffin for an unimaginable age. The Bodenland family looked down at it without speaking.
‘What’s all the red stuff?’ Kylie asked, in a small voice. ‘Is it bloodstains?’
‘Red ochre,’ Clift said. ‘To bury with red ochre was an old custom. The Neanderthals used it – not that I’m suggesting this is a Neanderthal. There were also flowers in the grave, which we’ve taken for analysis. Of course, there’s more work to be done here. I’m half afraid to touch anything …’
They looked down in silence, prey to formless thought. The light died. The skeleton lay half-buried in ochre, fading into obscurity.
Kylie clung to Larry. ‘Disturbing an ancient grave … I know it’s part of an archaeologist’s job, but … There are superstitions about these things. Don’t you think there’s something – well, evil here?’
He hugged her affectionately. ‘Not evil. Pathetic, maybe. Sure, there’s something disconcerting when the past or the future arrives to disrupt the present. Like the way this chunk of the past has come up to disrupt our wedding day.’ Seeing Kylie’s expression cloud over, he said, ‘Let the dead get on with their thing. I’m taking you to have a drink.’
‘You’ll find a canteen at the bottom of the hill,’ said Clift, but he spoke without looking away from his discovery, crouching there, almost as motionless as the skeleton he had disinterred.
The sun plunged down into the desert, a chill came over the world. Kylie Bodenland stood at the door of the trailer they had been loaned, gazing up at the stars. Something in this remote place had woken unsuspected sensibilities in her, and she was trying to puzzle out what it was.
Some way off, students were sitting round a campfire, resurrecting old songs and pretending they were cowboys, in a fit of artificial nostalgia.
City ladies may be fine
But give me that gal of mine …
Larry came up behind Kylie and pulled her into the trailer, kicking the door shut. She tasted the whisky on his lips, and enjoyed it. Her upbringing had taught her that this was wickedness. She liked other wickednesses too, and slid her hand into Larry’s jeans as he embraced her. When she felt his response, she began to slide herself out of her few clothes, until she stood against him in nothing but her little silver chain and crucifix. Larry kissed it, kissed her breasts, and then worked lower.
‘Oh, you beast, you beast,’ she said. ‘Oh …’
She clutched his head, but he got up and lifted her over to the bunk.
Lying together on the bunk later, he muttered almost to himself, ‘Funny how the marriage ceremony annoys Joe. He just couldn’t face it … I had to go through with it to spite him … and to please you, of course.’
‘You shouldn’t spite your father. He’s rather a honey.’
Larry chuckled. ‘Pop a honey? He’s a stubborn-minded old pig. Now I’m adult, I see him in a more favourable light than once I did. Still and all … Grocery’s a dirty word to him. He resents me being in grocery, never mind I’m making a fortune. I’ve got a mind of my own, haven’t I? It may be small but it’s my own. To hell with him – we’re different. Let me fix you a drink.’
As he was getting up and walking naked to his baggage, from which a whisky bottle protruded, Kylie rolled on to her back and said, ‘Well, it’s Hawaii for us tomorrow. It’ll be great for you to get from under Joe’s shadow. He’ll change towards you, you’ll see. He may be an old pig but he’s a good man for all that.’
Larry paused as he was about to pour, and laughed.
‘Lay off about Joe, will you? Let’s forget Joe. For sure he’s forgotten about us already. Bernie Clift has given him something new to think about.’
Only a few metres away, Clift and Bodenland were walking in the desert, talking together in confidential tones.
‘This new daughter-in-law of yours – she is a striking young lady and no mistake. And not happy about what I’m doing, I gather.’
‘The religious and the economic views of mankind are always at odds. Maybe we’re always religious when we’re young. I lost anything like that when my other son died. Now I try to stick to rationality – I hate to think of the millions of people in America who buy into some crackpot religion or other. In the labs, we’ve also come up against time. Not whole millennia of time, like you, but just a few seconds. We’re learning how to make time stand still. As you’d expect, it costs. It sure costs! If only I can get backing from Washington … Bernie, I could be … well, richer than … I can’t tell you …’
Clift interrupted impatiently. ‘Rationality. It means greed, basically … Lack of imagination. I can see Kylie is a girl with imagination, whatever else …’
‘You have taken a fancy to her. I saw that when we met.’
‘Joe, listen, never mind that. I’ve no time for women. And I’ve got a hold here of something more momentous than any of your financial enterprises. This is going to affect everyone, everyone on earth … It will alter our whole concept of ourselves. Hasn’t that sunk in yet?’
He started off towards the dark bulk of the mountain. Bodenland followed. They could hear the one group of students who had not yet turned in arguing among themselves.
‘You’re mad, Bernie. You always were, in a quiet way.’
‘I never sleep,’ said Clift, not looking back.
‘Isn’t that what someone once said about the Church? “It never sleeps.” Sounds like neurosis to me.’
They climbed to the dig. A single electric light burned under the blue canopy, where one of the students sat on watch. Clift exchanged a few words with him.
‘Spooky up here, sir,’ said the student.
Clift grunted. He would have none of that. Bodenland squatted beside him as the palaeontologist removed the tarpaulin.
From down in the camp came a sudden eruption of shouts – male bellows and female voices raised high, then the sound of blows, clear on the thin desert air.
‘Damn,’ said Clift, quietly. ‘They will drink. I’ll be back.’
He left, running down the hill path towards the group of students who had been singing only a few minutes earlier. He called to them in his authoritative voice to think of others who might be sleeping.
Bodenland was alone with the thing in the coffin.
In the frail light, the thing seemed almost to have acquired a layer of skin, skin of an ill order, but rendering it at least a few paces nearer to life than before. Bodenland felt an absurd temptation to speak to the thing. But what would it answer?
Overcoming his reluctance, he thrust his hand down and into the ochre. Although he was aware he might be destroying valuable archaeological evidence, curiosity led him on. The thought had entered his mind that after all Clift might somehow