Mrs. Rhodes was ready for the abrupt shift in subject. She rotated her sturdy frame a quarter turn on the seat and looked out over the landscape. "I see an irregular network of shrubbery interspersed with dirt or gravel—what I would term a badlands. At the base of the valley is a meandering brown stream, and in the distance are gray mountains."
Miss Concher smiled. "Beautiful." She was small and ancient, hair off-white and wirelike, and her eyes focused alertly though she was long blind. Personality radiated from the fine lines of her face: in crows-feet, deltas and crevasses.
"What do you see?" Mrs. Rhodes asked. She had learned that such direct questions did not offend the old lady, who thrived on her handicaps as though they were advantages.
"I see a great verdant vale, cooler and wetter than now. Trees of many types grow on its flank, rich with fruit and nut, and the river is wide and clear despite the nearby volcano-cone. High grass waves over rolling stretches, and flowers sparkle in the gentle breeze. Birds abound, from the colorful flamingo to the huge brooding vulture. I call it a garden of Eden, for in addition to the foliage there are animals for a spectacular hunt. Baboons, pigs, gazelles, hares, rhinos, chalicothere—"
"Beg pardon?"
"Chalicothere. A large tree-cropper, now extinct. Oh yes, it was fascinating here, two million years ago."
"Your vision is far more pleasant than mine. Miss Concher."
"My vision is of the past, as befits me. I am closer to it than you are, by a good thirty years." The old gray eyes pierced her again. "Let's have the map."
Mrs. Rhodes brought out the sheet showing East Africa. "We're in Tanganyika—Tanzania, I mean—somewhat south of Lake Victoria, and west."
Miss Concher smiled indulgently "Now look at the natural features."
Mrs. Rhodes studied the map, not certain what the point was this time. "There's Lake Victoria, of course, and only a few miles from us is Lake Tanganyika. And another long thin lake farther south, Nyasa. And mountains—to the east is Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest point, almost twenty thousand feet. And the Nile River drains to the north, and the Congo to the west."
"Very good." The old lady sounded disappointed, as though an apt pupil had overlooked the obvious.
"And within three hundred miles of us is Olduvai Gorge, where old Dr. Leakey discovered Man's bones."
"Bones!" But Miss Concher still wasn't satisfied. "My map shows the mighty continent of Africa, a vast tropical reservoir of life. Beyond its coastlines, two thousand miles out. is the great mid-oceanic ridge, the longest continuous mountain range in all the world. And in the center of this ridge is the rift, looping through the Indian Ocean, projecting up to slice off Arabia and parting Israel from Jordan, and a branch spiking down into Africa itself to form the Great Rift Valley wherein we now stand. And athwart that rift is a crater, as though a monstrous meteor had impacted there and smashed it into a broken circle. And the rains came, a flood like none we know today, filling the fragments of the Rift and crater—"
"Lake Victoria!" Mrs. Rhodes exclaimed, suddenly seeing it come to life on the map. "Tanganyika! Nyasa!"
"Yes. What a cataclysm! But a blessing for Man, for it was in this crazily shattered region, this verdant land protected by its new geography—it was here that he found Eden." Miss Concher smiled once more. "And we're here for the serpent."
"The serpent? Surely you don't mean the one that tempted Eve—"
"Surely I do, my dear. Without that snake, man never would have left Eden—and that, believe me, would have been too bad."
"Miss Concher, I realize you're speaking metaphorically. But—too bad? Wasn't the Biblical exile God's punishment for—?"
"Punishment can be very instructive. Look at Eden now."
Mrs. Rhodes looked around again at the bleak, baking terrain. It had changed, certainly, from the lush gardens of the past. But she felt she was missing the point.
"Trundle out the gimmick and we'll see what we can smell," Miss Concher said briskly. The temperature hovered near a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, but it hardly seemed to diminish the old lady's energy.
"The gimmick" was hardly a device to be trundled. It was a massive electronic instrument that occupied the greater portion of their converted army truck. There was also a collapsible tower for a miniature drilling rig. Its generator was powered by the truck's motor.
"That's as good a spot as any," Miss Concher said, indicating a declivity. Blind she might be, but she had a feel for the land.
Mrs. Rhodes maneuvered the truck and placed its tailgate neatly at the spot. This much was within her competence; it had been one of the prerequisites for the job. Not many female registered nurses could handle a three-axle vehicle with dispatch over rough ground. She could thank Mr. Rhodes for that legacy.
Mr. Rhodes. Her legal separation from him was hardly three months old, yet she found herself missing the crusty old engineer. Had he been too demanding, or she too independent? Now that she worked for Miss Concher she was beginning to appreciate the fact that a number of the traits she had objected to as masculine arrogance were actually natural functions of ambition. Surely her husband drove himself and others no harder than Miss Concher did.
Meanwhile she operated winch and derrick skillfully, setting up the drill-rig and anchoring it and connecting the generator. She was perspiring heavily by the time the job was done, but was glad for once that she was not a frail innocent beauty. The truck's motor pounded, the generator cut in, and the slender rod spun into the turf, squirting water down and spewing mud up rapidly. As the column penetrated to bedrock the rig disengaged automatically: time for the diamond bit. She made the exchange and set it working again. This would take some time.
They ate a crude picnic lunch while the drill did its job. Mrs. Rhodes looked out over the worn landscape again, wondering whether anything would come of this particular project. It still surprised her when she thought of it, to be wandering in a land of natives who wore headdresses of mud and dung and who drank fresh blood with gusto. Of course their conventions made sense, and that was only part of the story—
"The small-mouthed animal," Miss Concher repeated. "That bunglike orifice is one of man's few distinguishing traits. That, and his voluminous buttocks, and his naked skin. Doesn't sound like equipment to conquer the world, does it?"
Mrs. Rhodes was becoming used to her companion's acerbic viewpoint. "I had always understood that man's brain was the—"
"Brain? Whales and elephants have larger, and porpoises have convolutions as impressive. Nothing unique there."
"Or the specialized hands—"
"With the opposed thumb? Forget it; any tree-swinger has similar. Man's vaunted hand is one of the least specialized extremities in nature. It retains all the primitive fingers, poorly armored, suitable neither for fighting nor digging. No, the fleshy buttocks count for more; they give him vertical control and the ability to stride, and that frees him from the forest. And his bare skin gives him a large tactile surface. But most of all, his small mouth enclosing a proportionately large air-space provides a sounding chamber, and that makes true speech possible."
"I never looked at it quite that way—"