Free Skeleton Dance by Aaron Elkins Page A

imposing persona and acknowledged preeminence.
    It was amazing, really, that they never got tired of haranguing each other, or that they'd never physically attacked one another in sheer frustration. (Or maybe they had, who knew?) Probably, the answer lay in the fact that they were out of each others' sight for seven months out of every twelve. According to the terms of its charter, the institute was in session only five months a year, from late June to the end of November, typically allowing them a three-month digging season followed by a two month "data consolidation" period. Except for Jacques Beaupierre, whose administrative duties were year-round, and Pru McGinnis, who held no outside faculty position, the staff members spent the rest the year away from the institute and each other on half-or three-quarter-time appointments at their home universities.
    But whatever the reason, their endless debate had never been in danger of growing stale. "Ridiculous!" Montfort was declaring in his blunt Alsatian French at the moment. "Do you really think that if we could take a typical Neanderthal, give him a shave, dress him up in a jogging suit, and sit him down in a New York subway train, that any of the other passengers would even look twice at him?"
    Pru received this with a hearty laugh. "You're absolutely right, and you want to know why? Because people who ride the New York subways know better than to notice
anybody
. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about here."
    Watching from the doorway, Gideon smiled. It was nice to see that Pru was still Pru.
    "As to the New York subway," said Émile Grize dryly, the egrets bobbing under his chin, "that is a subject on which, happily, I am unable to speak with conviction. However, as a trained paleopathologist—" As Gideon remembered, Émile began a lot of sentences with "As a trained paleopathologist"; in his own mind he was the one real scientist in this band of rock-hunters. "—as a trained paleopathologist I can assure you that a Neanderthal would
not
pass unnoticed in the Paris Métro, however well-shaven."
    He sounded positively offended at the idea, as if, were poor Charlie Caveperson to shamble unassumingly aboard at the Étoile metro station, he, Émile Grize, would personally boot him off at the next stop.
    "Be that as it may," said Audrey Godwin-Pope in her usual no-nonsense manner, "I would think we might agree that the outward appearance of these beings is beside the point."
    "
Does
this interminable discussion actually have a point?" Montfort asked. "It continues to elude me."
    "It was my impression," Audrey said, standing up to him (no surprise there), "that it was their social organization that was under discussion, and there even you, Michel, have to admit the evidence is unambiguous. They had none—at least not on a human level. Everything we know about Neanderthal society tells us that it was on a par with that of a wandering troop of mountain gorillas, nothing more."
    "Is that so?" Montfort snorted, leaning combatively forward. "Suppose you tell me then: when was the last time you encountered a wandering troop of mountain gorillas that made a practice of burying their grandfathers?"
    Touché
, Gideon thought. Montfort was on the wrong side of the argument, but
touché
all the same.
    "I saw a study recently," Jacques Beaupierre piped up, "that suggests there is now good reason to believe that the morphological differences between Neanderthal Man—"
    "Neanderthals," said Audrey with the stoic demeanor of someone who was making the same correction for the thousandth time and had no hope that it was going to take this time any more than it had before. Nice to see that she hadn't changed either. "Or Neanderthalers, if you prefer."
    "Differences between Neanderthals," said Beaupierre without missing a beat—-he was used to it too—"and modern humans are not evolutionary at all, but nothing more than the result of an iodine-deficient diet, due to their distance from the