The Ancestor
and other stories
by
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That evening, as the fog had descended on the monastery and was later followed by snow and sleet, one of the monks -- a wild-haired, dark-skinned, ill-smelling man, not the oldest and not the youngest there -- dropped the felt hammer with which he had been sounding a gong suspended from the dusty rafters of one of the larger halls. A strange feeling -- a ringing in his right ear, and the beginning of a headache -- made him rise, walk across the yard, open the massive wooden door to the back of the monastery, and step outside into the blizzard. The monk had not yet closed the door behind him when he became aware of a presence, a huge dark shape, yellow eyes reflecting the dim tallow light from the monastery yard. The creature seemed eight feet tall. It had sloping, powerful shoulders, long arms, a flat skull and a receding chin. Its legs were short, and its whole body was covered with long, dark hair not unlike that of a yak. The monk, still driven by some internal force, shut the door with his heel and stood facing the monster that had appeared out of the fog. Then he pulled a flat barley pancake from under his filthy tunic, and held it out to the visitor. The giant hesitated. It looked for a moment as if he were about to attack the monk, but in the end it sighed deeply, sadly, turned and vanished in the blizzard. ****** For the last kilometer, Marín had been stuck behind two heavy trailer trucks traveling South. When he was finally able to overtake them, he noticed a car approaching from behind, its undimmed headlights blinding in the rearview mirror. The car passed Marín on a bend, doing at least hundred and eighty, cutting sharply in front of him and splashing his windshield with water and sleet. As the car speeded by on the outer left-hand lane, Marín had time to see a woman sitting next to the driver. The car was a bright red Porsche (odd color for a Porsche! Customized, no doubt) with "75" (i.e.Paris) license plates. "F--- you!" Marín shouted at the Porsche before it disappeared around the next curve. "Bastard! Get yourself killed!" In his mind, he had a brief vision of the speeding car swerving, skidding, crashing into something -- perhaps another car -- and bursting into flames. Good riddance! He was still tense, and seething with anger at the Parisian driver when, half an hour later, traffic came to a standstill, and then was warned to proceed slowly, single file, by a police spotlight and a blinking traffic triangle with the words "ATTENTION -- ACCIDENT". A quarter-kilometer or so ahead, one could in fact see the lights of several police cars and ambulances, and a motorcycle cop with a flashlight waving traffic into a single lane. The wreckage of two cars and a trailer truck lay scattered about in the yellow glare of the police spotlights; some dark figures were standing around one of the cars, whose rear and side had been smashed flat by the trailer. As Marin passed it, with the traffic moving at walking speed, he recognized the wreck as the red Porsche with the Paris plates that had overtaken him a while back. Next to it lay two bodies (Marín assumed them to be bodies) covered with yellow plastic blankets. ****** The woman gave a brief laugh. Then she reached for his hand, pulled it toward her and pressed it against her belly. "Useless? Nonsense!" Their eyes met. The man she called Laury -- Paul Laury -- had a gentle face, a shock of dark hair over a Beethoven-like forehead, regular traits, gray eyes. Mid-thirties, perhaps, or early forties. He could feel the soft warmth of the woman's body through the flimsy fabric of her overalls. "It's moving. Isn't it?" the woman asked. In fact, a muscle twitched under his fingers, and then relaxed again. "You mean to say that . . . " "Of course. My birth allowance." "Great," Laury muttered. "I had no idea . . . we're never told of these things. I assume you made sure that it's female." "Don't know. I don't want to know." Laury stared at her. "You mean you didn't ask when they inserted the embryo? They should have told you . . . but I suppose it was cloned. So it would be a girl, of course." "It isn't a clone. Not an embryo insert at all." "Then what . . . ?" "You should know." "You're crazy!", Laury exclaimed, rising to his feet. "This is madness. You, of all people! The boss-woman. And I? They'll crucify me. Put me out to pasture . . . !" "You can say that again!" The woman touched Laury's cheek with the back of her hand and burst out laughing. He threw her a hurt glance, but finally joined in her laughter.
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About the Book
These eight stories take the reader across space and time to the limits of the believable. In THE ANCESTOR, two paleo-anthropologists looking for the fossil remains of an extinct hominid do not realize that a survivor of that species is watching them; THE GREEN BRAIN is the story of a young man who communicates and talks with plants; in the WHEELS OF FORTUNE the hero finds that he has the power to predict (or perhaps even to influence) future events; in AN ARTIST, set in Afghanistan, a man painting decorations on a truck is punished by the Taleban for having represented the female figure; KID SOLDIERS is a snapshot of vicious danger; SEABED PIRATES deals with a technologically advanced but illegal seabed mining and smelting operation on an Arctic island; ZAH recounts the last few days of the man whose frozen body was recently found on a glacier in the Austrian Alps; BRAZILWOOD follows a courageous woman to sixteenth century Brazil, while DRONE, OR THE LEDUC Y-CHROMOSOMAL ANOMALY takes a leap into the distant future, when the few remaining males are relegated to the official role of drones or communal studs in a world peopled and run by women.
About the Author
Peter Koenz has traveled widely and lived in Europe, Asia, and Latin America as a lawyer, international official, and scholar. He writes fiction, but is also a painter and sculptor devoted to visual creativity. Other books by Peter Koenz include Pacifica, The Parrot Tree, and The Ancestor. When not on the move, he lives at present in rural Normandy, even though in his heart – and in his writings -- he continues to wander from New England to the rugged mountain valleys of his native Switzerland, Northern India, Afghanistan, and the frontier country of central Brazil.