if you insist we need modern bones for a comparison, maybe I should go to Nairobi, or New York, find some bones, in a hospital or a morgue, and then come back.” He swigged his Coke from the bottle.
“Don’t be silly, Richard.” Eleanor pushed her shirt more firmly into the top of her gabardine skirt. “No one wastes digging time like that. Just because you’ve made one discovery doesn’t mean you, or Russell here, or Christopher, or any of us, will not find something even more important in the days ahead.” She took off her spectacles and waved them at him. “Don’t be so impatient. No one’s going to ‘scoop’ you on a thing like this.”
“How can you be so sure?” Sutton banged his Coke bottle down on the table. “This is a big breakthrough, Eleanor. Front-page news. The biggest coup of my career, and of Russell’s. Daniel’s greatest find. And it won’t do your reputation any harm, either. The Deacon legend will be glossier than ever. We should move fast. I feel it in my bones.” He looked around the table, from one face to another, daring them to disagree.
Natalie met his gaze.
He looked away first.
Eleanor, who had been chewing one of the stems of her spectacles, enfolded them in her hand. “Richard, please. Please. I have been excavating in Africa for nearly forty years, and running digs for much of that time. They are collective affairs, as you well know. Now, I agree that Daniel, and Russell, and you have made an important discovery. Front-page news, as you put it. Or so we think. But what if Natalie here is right, and a comparison with modern bones does not support your theory? If you go rushing off to Nairobi, or New York, or somewhere else, you’ll have wasted days of valuable digging time, time that I have organized, raised money for, negotiated permissions for, with the government and the local tribes. That’s not been easy.”
She leaned back as Mutevu Ndekei reappeared to remove the plates.
“I won’t have it, Richard. No one is standing in the way of publication, or censoring what you have discovered. For pity’s sake, I, we, are just asking you to see sense, make a simple comparison first, and delay for a few weeks. It is perfectly normal behavior that happens all the time.” She reached up and removed the bandana from her head, folded it neatly, and laid it on the table next to her napkin. “And you are surely overlooking the fact that, if we have found a tibia and femur in this part of the gorge, there is an excellent chance that we will find some other pieces of the same skeleton, perhaps even a skull. That would be even more momentous than what we have already.”
Richard went to say something but she waved him down, slapping the table with the open palm of her hand and rattling the cutlery.
“You force me to say this, Richard, by your … your refusal to back off, see sense, acknowledge that you are part of a team … But if you leave now, I’m warning you—officially warning you—that you can’t come back.” She took a deep breath. “We have achieved what we have on our digs by discipline. Not by being authoritarian—I’m not an ogre, as you well know—but by having a few rules, for the benefit of all, and sticking to them.”
She swallowed some water. No one else around the table was about to say anything. Most of them kept their eyes fixed firmly in front of them.
“Now look,” she went on, more amenably, “let’s not argue. I want this paper to be published as quickly as possible, just like you do. But I have other responsibilities and you, in my view, are being unreasonable.”
Richard said nothing. But only with great difficulty.
• • •
“Is there anything else like this in the world?” Natalie asked. “It’s extraordinary.” She held her camera to her eye and took more photographs.
“I don’t know if it’s unique,” replied Christopher, “but it’s certainly very unusual. You can see why the local Maasai, who are theoretically Christians, still worship these sands.”
Natalie, Christopher, and Kees van Schelde were standing in front of a small sand dune on the Serengeti plain, about eight miles or so from the camp. It was not far off dusk and Christopher had brought them here to show them one of the “local sights,” as he put it, Natalie and Kees being the two newest members of the