difference. But,” he said, looking at me with a mesmeric fascination, “we know very well that the smallest difference means everything for the survival of a species. What is it that Charles Darwin said? ‘A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die—which variety or species shall increase in number . . .’”
“‘And which shall decrease or finally become extinct,’” Justine said, finishing Dr. Feist’s sentence. It was a religion, I realized, this worship of Darwin. A cult.
“Yes, precisely,” Dr. Feist said. “She’s been hiding in plain sight.” He looked down at me, his eyes narrowing. “Perhaps she didn’t even know herself what she was. What do you have to say, Alberta? Were you aware of how special you are? Of your function as a transitional form?”
I stared at him, angry and humiliated, but the truth was his words hit me with particular force. I had known that I wasn’t like everyone else. My wide, flat feet were abnormal. The secondary hallux, as Dr. Feist had called it, was a constant embarrassment. But I had found a way to live with it and never considered it to be anything but a superficial defect, a weird flaw, like being double-jointed.
“She is what you have been looking for, then?” Justine asked.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. She is of great interest to cryptozoology.”
“What do you think she is, exactly?”
“I will know more once I get her to our facility in Lausanne,” Dr. Feist said. “I’d like to do some genetic tests. But I would wager that we will find her to be Homo sapiens expressing long-dormant genes of a pre–Homo sapiens hominid. A throwback, if you will.”
“There were many kinds of pre–Homo sapiens hominids,” Justine said. “Dozens.”
“True,” Dr. Feist said. “The earth was once filled with earlier varieties of human beings. We—the last and only survivors of these ancestors—inherited everything.” He stared at me intently, studying my features. “I would guess she carries a large number of Neanderthal variants.”
The words stung. I imagined a hairy, inarticulate thing, ugly and ungainly. Did I really have the features of a Neanderthal?
“Surely not,” Justine said. “She is much too . . . human to be a Neanderthal.”
“Ah, that is where you are wrong! In the past fifteen years, we have proven the hominids we call Homo neanderthalensis to be much more like us Homo sapiens than previously believed. They were not hairy, apelike creatures that jumped around in caves, as they have so often been depicted. They were elegant, even beautiful archaic human beings with language, developed societies, family structures, and even artwork. Recent technology in dating cave paintings has shown that Neanderthals actually created pictures and symbols in their dwellings, which proves they had the capacity for higher thought processes. Fossils reveal that their vocal cords were swollen, suggesting complex language. They evolved during the European ice age and could withstand conditions that Homo sapiens would never have been able to live through, although it is clear that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens coexisted for a period of time. Some theories suggested that Homo sapiens waged war on the Neanderthals and killed them off. I don’t believe that to be the case. I believe Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens were friends and partners. Genetic material taken from a finger bone of a fifty-thousand-year-old Neanderthal male has recently yielded models of a hominid with blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. The Neanderthals may account for what we now recognize as Northern European coloring. They may have looked a lot like”—Dr. Feist looked at me, his eyes glistening—“Alberta.”
“She is a missing piece to the puzzle of evolution,” Justine said, looking at me as if I were a prize she had won.
“And the reward?” Pierre asked.
Dr. Feist looked a bit lost for a moment. “Oh, yes, that,” he said. “The reward is yours. Every cent.”
Turning his attention back to me, he lifted the tape measure and began taking measurements, scribbling them down in his notebook as he went. Balancing his notebook on his knees, he lifted the camera and snapped a series of photographs. Sweat soaked my clothes. No matter how I struggled, I couldn’t break free from Pierre’s grip. I was trapped. The helplessness and rage I felt at this moment is hard to relive, let alone describe. The most secret, hidden part of myself was being exposed, documented, recorded. Knowing there was no way to stop him, I closed my eyes in horror and shame and resigned myself to his