Frameshift

Pierre nodded and got up off the couch. Maybe Bryan Proctor was a red herring — maybe Chuck Hanratty had just been after his tools or his money. After all, it sounded like the guy had had a fine genetic profile, and—$

“Umm, could I use your bathroom before I go?”

She pointed down a short corridor, illuminated by a single bulb inside a frosted white sphere attached to the ceiling.

Pierre nodded and made his way slowly into the room, which had pale blue walls and dark green fixtures. He closed the door behind him, having to push a bit to get it to fit the frame; it had apparently warped from years of exposure to steaming showers. Feeling like an absolute heel, he opened the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet and looked inside. There! A man’s Gillette razor. He slipped it into his pocket, made a show of flushing the toilet and running the sink for a few moments, then headed out.

“Thank you very much,” said Pierre, wondering if he looked as embarrassed as he felt.

“Why were you asking all this?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Just a crazy idea. Sorry.”

She shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I won’t be bothering you again.”

“No problem. I’ve been sleeping a lot easier since you — since that Hanratty guy died. You’re welcome here anytime.” She smiled. “ ‘Sides, I like Columbo.”

Pierre made his way out of the apartment building and headed for San Francisco police headquarters.

Molly had taken a two-year maternity leave from classroom teaching (the maximum the faculty-association agreement allowed without loss of seniority), but still went into the campus for a half day once a week to meet with the students for whom she was thesis adviser and to attend departmental meetings. Since Pierre was off in San Francisco, Mrs. Bailey was looking after Amanda.

After her last student appointment, Molly took advantage of the PC in her office to do some on-line research using Magazine Database Plus, the joys of which Pierre had introduced her to. She was about to log off when a thought occurred to her. She had tried to digest everything Dr. Gainsley had said, but she still didn’t understand it all. She typed in a query on the topic of “speech disorders,” but saw that there were over three hundred articles. She cleared that query, and thought. What was it that Gainsley had said? Something about the hyoid bone? Molly wasn’t even sure how to spell that word. Still, it was worth a try. She selected “Search for words in article text,” then tapped out HYOID. The screen immediately filled with citations for fourteen articles. She stared at the screen, reading and rereading three of the citations:

“Quoth the cavemen: nevermore” (laryngeal structures in human ancestors), Speech Dynamics, January-February 1997, v6 n2 p24(3).

Reference #A19429340. Text: Yes (1551 words); Abstract: Yes.

“Neanderthal neck bone sparks cross talk” (hyoid fossil may indicate capacity for speech), Science News, April 24, 1993, vl43 nl7 p262(l).

Reference #A13805017. Text: Yes (557 words); Abstract: Yes.

“Neanderthal language debate: tongues wag anew” (new reconstruction of La Chapelle Neanderthal skull), Science, April 3, 1992, v256 n5O53 p33(2). Reference #A12180871. Text: Yes (1273 words); Abstract: No.

She selected each of the articles in turn, and read them through.

There’d long been a debate among anthropologists over whether Neanderthals could speak, but it was difficult to resolve the issue since no soft tissues had been preserved. In the 1960s, linguist Philip Lieberman and anatomist Edmund Crelin had made a study of the most famous Neanderthal of all, the La Chapelle-aux-Saints specimen found in 1908.

Based on that specimen, they concluded that Neanderthals had a larynx high in their throats, with the air path curving gently down from the back of the mouth, meaning they would have lacked the vocal range of modern humans.

This view was challenged in 1989, when a Neanderthal skeleton dubbed Moshe was discovered near Israel’s Mount Carmel. For the first time ever, a Neanderthal hyoid bone had been found. Although somewhat larger than a modern human’s hyoid, the proportions were the same.

Unfortunately, Moshe’s skull was missing, making a complete reconstruction of his vocal tract — including the all-important positioning of the hyoid — impossible.

The Science article contained a quote from the University of Pennsylvania’s Alan Mann, who said that given the current contradictory evidence, he didn’t see “how a dispassionate observer could make a choice” between the pro-Neanderthal-speech and anti-Neanderthal-speech positions. Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History agreed, saying most anthropologists were in “bystander mode,” awaiting some new evidence.

Molly’s whole body was shaking by the time she’d finished reading it all.

It looked horribly, incredibly, unthinkably as though Burian Klimus had found a way to bring just such new evidence to light.

“Hello, Helen.”