I don’t think you’re going to control them, or sell the rights, make Caveman Barbie dolls or whatever.” He took a deep breath.
“No, again, I say Mitch is right,” Tilde stated slowly. Franco regarded her with a speculative squint. “This is very huge. We will be good citizens. They are everybody’s ancestors. Mama and Papa to the world.”
Mitch could definitely feel the headache creeping up. The earlier oblong of light had been a familiar warning: oncoming head-crushing train. Climbing back down the mountain would be difficult or even impossible if he was going to fall under the spell of a migraine, a real brain-splitter. He hadn’t brought any medicine. “Are you planning to kill me up here?” he asked Tilde.
Franco shot a glance at him, then rolled to look at Tilde, waiting for an answer.
Tilde grinned and tapped her chin. “I am thinking,” she said. “What rogues we would be. Famous stories. Pirates of the prehistoric. Yo ho ho and a bottle of Schnapps.”
“What we need to do,” Mitch said, assuming that she had answered in the negative, “is to take a tissue sample from each body, with minimal intrusion. Then—”
He reached for the torch and shone the light beyond the close, sleepy-eyed heads of the male and female to the far recesses, about three yards farther back in the cave. Something small lay there, bundled in fur.
“What’s that?” he and Franco asked simultaneously.
Mitch considered. He could hunker and sidle his way around the female without disturbing anything except the dust. On the other hand, it would be best to leave everything completely untouched, to retreat from the cave now and bring back the real experts. The tissue samples would be enough evidence, he thought. Enough was known about Neandertal DNA from bone studies. A confirmation could be made and the cave could be kept sealed until—
He pressed his temples and closed his eyes.
Tilde tapped his shoulder and gently pushed him out of the way. “I am smaller,” she said. She crawled beside the female toward the rear of the cave.
Mitch watched and said nothing. This was what it felt like to truly sin—the sin of overwhelming curiosity. He would never forgive himself, but, he rationalized, how could he stop her without harming the bodies? Besides, she was being careful.
Tilde squeezed so low her face was on the floor beside the bundle. She gripped one end of the fur with two fingers and slowly turned it around. Mitch’s throat seized with anguish. “Shine a light,” she demanded. Mitch did so.
Franco aimed his torch as well.
“It’s a doll,” Tilde said.
From the top of the bundle peered a small face, like a dark and wrinkled apple, with two tiny sunken black eyes.
“No,” Mitch said. “It’s a baby.”
Tilde pushed back a few inches and made a small surprised hmm!
Mitch’s headache rolled over him like thunder.
Franco held Mitch’s arm near the cave entrance. Tilde was still inside. Mitch’s migraine had progressed to a real Force 9, with visuals and all, and it was an effort to keep from curling up and screaming. He had already experienced dry heaves, by the side of the cave, and he was now shivering violently.
He knew with absolute certainty that he was going to die up here, on the threshold of the most extraordinary anthropological discovery of all time, leaving it in the hands of Tilde and Franco, who were little better than thieves.
“What is she doing in there?” Mitch moaned, head bowed. Even the twilight seemed too bright. It was getting dark quickly, however.
“Not your worry,” Franco said, and gripped his arm more tightly.
Mitch pulled back and felt blindly in his pocket for the vials containing the samples. He had managed to take two small plugs from the upper thighs of the man and the woman before the pain had peaked; now, he could hardly see straight.
Forcing his eyes open, he looked out upon a heavenly sapphire blueness precisely painting the mountain, the ice, the snow, overlain by flashes in the corners of his eyes like tiny bolts of lightning.
Tilde emerged from the cave, camera in one hand, pack in the other. “We have enough to prove everything,” she said. She spoke Italian to Franco, rapidly and in a low voice. Mitch did not understand, nor did he care to.
He simply wanted to get down the mountain and climb into a warm bed and sleep, to wait for the extraordinary pain, all too familiar but ever fresh and new, to subside.
Dying was another option, not without its attractions.
Franco