let’s hear from you. You’ve just arrived, you have a fresh mind, how does the discovery strike you?”
Since the Nelson woman had arrived only that day, Eleanor had yet to form an opinion of her. The newly minted Dr. Nelson came highly recommended. Her specialism was a very useful expertise to have on a dig like the one Eleanor ran, but the director had not anticipated Dr. Nelson being so attractive. She was tall, almost as tall as Eleanor herself, and had close-cropped dark hair, which curled forward under her ears, a longish face with cheekbones that stood out and cast their own shadows down her cheeks, long tapered fingers, and what the women’s magazines, the last time she had looked, called a full figure. Eleanor Deacon had already taken on board that both Russell North and her son Christopher had been immediately drawn to the newcomer and she hated that sort of emotion in the confined quarters of an excavation. Romance on a dig was not unknown—her own late husband had made a speciality of it—so she knew at firsthand that it could make life very difficult.
Natalie swallowed some water. After a few hours’ sleep she had unpacked, showered, and changed into a blue shirt with khaki trousers. She wore no ring or necklace but had on a man’s watch. Her eyes were as dark as the night outside the tent.
“I’m sorry to be a wet blanket,” she said, setting down her glass. “But I think you would be unwise to publish until you can check the tibia and femur you have found against a set of modern bones. If your dating is right, they’re two million years old, but you can’t be certain they prove bipedalism without a close comparison and … well, you have probably thought of it, but if you get such a simple thing wrong … it could be embarrassing.”
“No!” breathed Sutton. “No—I won’t have that!” He slapped the table and looked hard at Eleanor. “How many digs has Natalie been on, how many hominid bones has Dr. Nelson seen close up, in the field?” He paused. “Very few, very few if any, that’s my bet. This is her first day here, for pity’s sake. What does she know? This creature was bipedal. It’s a straightforward piece of anatomy. I feel it! I’ve been excavating in Africa for ten years. Nature, here we come!” He thrust his chin forward and glared hard at Natalie, staring her down, his lower lip stuck out beyond his upper lip, daring her to contradict him.
Natalie colored. As he had reminded everyone, she was the least experienced of those present. But she still thought he was being méchant, as the French said, cruel.
Eleanor came to her defense. “Don’t be such a bully, Richard. Natalie is right. We have to be careful.”
“But that means delay,” complained North, putting his knife and fork together. “Dick and I are here only until Christmas. After that, we disperse, back to the States, to teach. It will take much longer to write this paper when Richard is back in New York, I’m in California, and you are still here in Kenya, Eleanor.”
“I agree, Russell.” Eleanor smiled. She paused as a great barking of baboons broke out nearby. But it quietened down as quickly as it had started. She laid her hands on the table, palms down. “But we are scientists, not journalists with a deadline to meet. Of course we need modern bones, to make the comparison Natalie suggests. I don’t know why none of us thought of it—perhaps the champagne has gone to our heads, clouding our minds. Natalie, coming from the outside world, has brought us some fresh air.”
She sat back and transferred her gaze from Natalie to Richard, to Russell. “I understand your sense of urgency—both of you—but you must curb it. Richard, what would your father think if you published prematurely, and then got egg on your face—egg that might be plastered all over the New York Times?”
Sutton said nothing but he worried at the watch strap on his wrist. Eleanor’s barb had hit home.
Mutevu Ndekei came round again, clearing the dinner plates.
Richard and Russell exchanged glances.
“Look,” said Eleanor, modifying her tone. “We’ll assume that the bones tell us what we think they tell us. We’ll write up the paper, here, now, in camp, while we’re all together, as if the comparison with modern bones has been done, so that we are all ready to go into print as soon as