Child of Time by Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg

Author:Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX - Disclosing

LATER IN THE DAY Dr. McIntyre arrived at the dollhouse for his second visit with Timmie. Miss Fellowes said, as he came in, “Thank you for the books, doctor. I want to assure you that I’ve been doing my homework very thoroughly.”

McIntyre smiled his small, precise, not very radiant smile. “I’m pleased to have been of some help, Miss Fellowes.”

“But there’s still more I’d like to know. I mean to keep reading, but since you’re here, I thought I’d ask you—”

The paleoanthropologist smiled again, even less glowingly. He was all too evidently eager to get down to his session with the Neanderthal child, and not at all enthusiastic about stopping to answer a nurse’s unimportant questions. But after the fiasco of the last visit, Miss Fellowes was determined not to allow McIntyre to drive Timmie into tears with the intensity of his scientific curiosity. The session would proceed slowly, at the pace Miss Fellowes intended to set, or it wouldn’t proceed at all.

Her word was going to be law: that was Hoskins’ phrase, but she had adopted it as her own.

“If I can help you, Miss Fellowes—something you weren’t able to discover in the books—”

“It’s the one central question that has troubled me since I came to work with Timmie. We all agree that Neanderthals were human. What I’m trying to find out is how human they were. How close they are to us—where the similarities are, and where the differences. I don’t mean the physical differences, particularly—those are obvious enough and I’ve studied the texts you sent over. I mean the cultural differences. The differences in intelligence. The things that really determine humanity.”

“Well, Miss Fellowes, those are exactly the things I’m here to try to learn. The purpose of the tests I’m going to give Timmie is precisely to determine—”

“I understand that. Tell me first what’s already known.”

McIntyre’s lips quirked irritably. He ran his hand through his fine, shining golden hair.

“What in particular?”

“I learned today that the two different races, the Neanderthal race and the modern human one—is that correct, calling them races?—lived side by side in Europe and the Near East for perhaps a hundred thousand years during the glacial periods.”

” ‘Races’ isn’t quite the proper word, Miss Fellowes. The various ‘races’ of mankind, as we employ the term nowadays, are much more closely related to each other than we are to the Neanderthals. ‘Subspecies’ might be more accurate when talking about ourselves and the Neanderthals. They belonged to the subspecies Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and we’re classed as Homo sapiens sapiens.”

“All right. But they did live side by side.”

“Apparently they did, at least in some areas. In the warmer places, that is—the Neanderthals probably had the colder regions all to themselves, because they were better adapted to deal with the conditions there. Of course, we’re talking about very small populations, widely scattered bands. It’s altogether possible that an individual Neanderthal tribe could have persisted for centuries without ever once encountering Homo sapiens sapiens. On the

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