Previous: Chapter Sixteen: Earth Under the Macropods
Jo awoke on the futon beneath the Perrera-Perez’s immaculately tuned piano.
Gaby was answering the door, with Feliz over Gaby’s shoulder. Now Bender was joining them at the door. Jo fought off a heavy blanket, and squirmed from out from under the foot pedals of the grand piano.
The government official at the door was speaking in English.
“There is no trouble. But we would very much like to speak with you, regarding what you have seen.”
“What have you seen?” asked Frances, getting up from the Perrera-Perez’s sofa. “We uploaded all we had last night, that’s all we have. We’re still waking up, here. If you know where we were last night,” (Frances gestured towards the others, rising from behind comforters and pillows) “then you know what an imposition this is on our hosts.”
Jo was now standing with the others. The parlor was quite warm.
The representative at the door said, “There are other…. Considerations? Factors? That you don’t know about. We have information for you, but we have questions as well.” A pause. “My name is Agent Jane, from UNESCO. Dr Stapledon, if you can hear me, we spoke once on the phone.”
MaryLiz shot a glance backward at Jo, who nodded.
MaryLiz stepped forward towards the crack in the door. Merl eased out of Cap’s way. Cap spoke.
“I’m MaryLiz Bender. This is my project. I’m here as a guest of the Perrera-Perez family, and my team, here at my request, are also their guests. We’re here in the name of private scientific research. As such,” Bender gestured towards her friends, “we’re not awfully big on having secrets, especially scientific ones.”
The silence in the room let the agent at the door know that this was true. The agent turned to the rest of the forces on the stair, and sent them away. “May I come in to talk?” said Jane.
Gaby unlocked the chain, and the agent was let in. Merl moved over on the Perrera-Perez’s love seat to make room for the agent to be seated.
“So,” said Bender, to Agent Jane, “You go first.”
Jane drew a breath. “You’re the Rocket Ranchers, so you don’t need to be reminded of the Cold War.”
“From the way you cop-knocked the door, it would seem like it’s still on,” said Gaby.
“It’s not,” said Agent Jane. “It’s really not. But that period of human history, fueled by nuclear material and the fear of its misuse, has cast a long shadow. There are still people alive today who remember the Nuclear Scare when they were children. And some of those people still have an interest in global affairs.”
“We read of your discovery of the wallabies in Rio Grande Estuary, it was all over the popular press – congratulations, incidently. The reports said you were working up mitochondrial DNA, and your best date for the founding female, the one you call Wallabeve, is 1950.
“That almost made us dismiss it as bad data. 1950 is a ‘cursed date’ in radionucleide dating. It’s the zero date for radiocarbon dating. Partly because the science was first being developed around that point….”
“But mostly,” said Frances, “because of nuclear weapons testing. Before the Comprehensive Ban. The world got coated in radioactivity, poisonous to radiocarbon dating studies, and other living things.”
Jane paused. “Yes. So it looked like you were all saying, “We don’t know, somewhere around the year 0 Before Present, where Before Present equals 1950.”
Jo spoke up. “But that’s not how we got that figure. This is all fresh material. There’s no reason to carbon date it.”
Jane nodded. “Yes, you weren’t basing your dates on nucleIDEs, but nucleoTIDEs. Your mitochondrial Wallabeve. Genetic clocks, operating on completely different principles. Gestation period. Dropping size. Temporal isolation between successive generations. It was all there.”
Frances protested. “You said you had information for us. 1950, we already suspected that. You’ve offered us nothing. You’re just baiting us.”
“All right,” said Jane. “This is what we know.”