reasons he was so distressed at this press release. It was one thing to have a few faces, in a tour group, peering down from the observation platform, but it was another to have a raucous crowd tapping on the Plexiglas windows or trying to shout questions down into the pit. He was used to working in out-of-the-way places—the hills of Sicily, the Utah desert, the rural provinces of northeastern China—accompanied only by his fellow scientists and perhaps a few local workers. He wasn’t yet accustomed to doing his fieldwork in the middle of a city, with an amateur crew, and gawkers wearing iPods and Nikes up above.
“Does this release,” he said, “mention Miranda Adams?”
“No,” Gunderson said, “who’s Miranda Adams?”
“She’s the young UCLA grad who actually first found the fossil.”
“I thought you did.”
“Not without her help.”
Carter could see Gunderson’s gears turning. How did this affect the story? Did it needlessly complicate it? Did it somehow lessen the museum’s role?
“The news media would love that,” Carter threw in. “A young woman, planning a career in paleontology, stumbling upon something so startling.”
Gunderson pursed his lips and nodded. “Is she still working on the site?”
“Yes.”
“She attractive?”
Carter should have seen that one coming. “Yes.”
“Let me run this by the PR people. You could be right.” Gunderson’s phone rang; he glanced at the flashing light. “I’ve been expecting a call; this could be it.”
Carter stood up, the press release still in hand. “Can you at least give me a few days to proof this before sending it out?”
But Gunderson had already picked up the phone and swiveled his chair to face the sparkling windows. He was saying something about a future exhibition; please, Carter thought as he folded up the release and stuck it in his pocket, don’t let him be planning the “La Brea Man” exhibition quite yet.
THAT AFTERNOON, HE’D planned a special treat for Miranda Adams.
As she had been the first to come upon whatever it was still lurking in the muck of Pit 91, Carter thought it would be a good idea to give her a firsthand tutorial on how the process worked. If she was thinking about becoming a physical anthropologist, there’d be no better introduction than this.
He’d arranged to meet her in the interior garden of the museum—an enclosed space where visitors could walk through a lush, verdant landscape, not so different from what it had been in the prehistoric era. Today, the garden was almost untenanted, apart from an elderly couple speaking German, and that Native American man Carter had seen at the observation window of Pit 91 many times before. Once you saw him—laden with silver and turquoise jewelry, a long black braid hanging down the back of his buckskin jacket—you didn’t forget him. On at least one previous occasion, as Carter recalled, he’d become obstreperous with a museum docent and had been escorted off the grounds. Right now, he was just muttering to himself as he stared down into the running stream that coursed through the garden.
The security staff, Carter knew, had code-named him Geronimo.
When Miranda breezed in, twenty minutes late, Carter quickly escorted her down into the bowels of the museum, where few ever went. Down here were long, linoleum-floored corridors, with endless rows of numbered metal cabinets, each one divided up into a dozen separate drawers containing different plant and animal fossils from the region. Excavation had been going on since the turn of the twentieth century, and with such success that the area had actually lent its name to an age—the Late Pleistocene time in America, when man first appeared in the New World, had been officially designated the Rancholabrean Land Mammal Age.
Miranda
“Does this release,” he said, “mention Miranda Adams?”
“No,” Gunderson said, “who’s Miranda Adams?”
“She’s the young UCLA grad who actually first found the fossil.”
“I thought you did.”
“Not without her help.”
Carter could see Gunderson’s gears turning. How did this affect the story? Did it needlessly complicate it? Did it somehow lessen the museum’s role?
“The news media would love that,” Carter threw in. “A young woman, planning a career in paleontology, stumbling upon something so startling.”
Gunderson pursed his lips and nodded. “Is she still working on the site?”
“Yes.”
“She attractive?”
Carter should have seen that one coming. “Yes.”
“Let me run this by the PR people. You could be right.” Gunderson’s phone rang; he glanced at the flashing light. “I’ve been expecting a call; this could be it.”
Carter stood up, the press release still in hand. “Can you at least give me a few days to proof this before sending it out?”
But Gunderson had already picked up the phone and swiveled his chair to face the sparkling windows. He was saying something about a future exhibition; please, Carter thought as he folded up the release and stuck it in his pocket, don’t let him be planning the “La Brea Man” exhibition quite yet.
THAT AFTERNOON, HE’D planned a special treat for Miranda Adams.
As she had been the first to come upon whatever it was still lurking in the muck of Pit 91, Carter thought it would be a good idea to give her a firsthand tutorial on how the process worked. If she was thinking about becoming a physical anthropologist, there’d be no better introduction than this.
He’d arranged to meet her in the interior garden of the museum—an enclosed space where visitors could walk through a lush, verdant landscape, not so different from what it had been in the prehistoric era. Today, the garden was almost untenanted, apart from an elderly couple speaking German, and that Native American man Carter had seen at the observation window of Pit 91 many times before. Once you saw him—laden with silver and turquoise jewelry, a long black braid hanging down the back of his buckskin jacket—you didn’t forget him. On at least one previous occasion, as Carter recalled, he’d become obstreperous with a museum docent and had been escorted off the grounds. Right now, he was just muttering to himself as he stared down into the running stream that coursed through the garden.
The security staff, Carter knew, had code-named him Geronimo.
When Miranda breezed in, twenty minutes late, Carter quickly escorted her down into the bowels of the museum, where few ever went. Down here were long, linoleum-floored corridors, with endless rows of numbered metal cabinets, each one divided up into a dozen separate drawers containing different plant and animal fossils from the region. Excavation had been going on since the turn of the twentieth century, and with such success that the area had actually lent its name to an age—the Late Pleistocene time in America, when man first appeared in the New World, had been officially designated the Rancholabrean Land Mammal Age.
Miranda
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