MAGNA MATER

Arinn Dembo

IT IS AN ingrained habit of the human species to spin tales about the origin of the universe and to exaggerate the importance of their own place in it. One can collect the evidence of this essential narcissism the world over and find it in any set of cultural folk tales, but in no culture has the practice of self-worship been honed to such perfection as among those of European descent. Europeans call the worship of their own species “Humanism,” and have been building great temples dedicated to this peculiar cult and its idolatry for many centuries. Of these, there is none still standing which is greater or more revered than the one that stands on Great Russell Street in the heart of London. They call it “the British Museum.”

I walked up to the collection of marble galleries on the afternoon of September 30^th, dressed in long skirts and a gray trench coat. I kept my shoulders hunched, my head covered by a gauze snood; the day was too dry and warm, too sunny to use the usual black umbrella to shield my face. After I mounted the front steps and passed through the doors beyond the Ionic columns, a guard stepped up to me.

“Excuse me, Miss.” He was moving to block my path. “But you’ll have to check that case.”

I looked up to catch his gaze and his eyes widened, pupils immediately dilating. He stepped aside for me, getting out of my path — an almost unconscious gesture of deference. Blood flushed his cheeks and his thick neck. For a moment, I saw myself reflected in the mirror of his corneas, seeing what he must see: a woman of his own race, young and fertile, with pale hair and piercing eyes.

The long raincoat with its deep pockets, the leather suitcase I carried in one hand — these were the things that had concerned him moments ago. If he was later questioned by the authorities, he might remember having seen them, but it was likely he would not. He would only remember that I was beautiful. Selective blindness and amnesia — most convenient for this sort of work.

I walked away quickly, releasing him from my gaze, toward the north wing. I was stopped three times on the way to the Library of the Royal Anthropological Institute, twice by guards and once by a well-meaning clerk. I sent them all stumbling away from me confused and blushing, not certain who I was but convinced that I was not subject to their authority, and continued through the echoing halls unmolested.

I had been following my prey for some time, studying his patterns and waiting for the moment to strike. Today was the perfect opportunity. I spotted him immediately as I entered the large reading room, a portly older man in a tweed suit, his head bowed over a recent journal while a stack of similar journals waited on the table at his right elbow. He sat in his favorite leather chair, a lock of long, fine, white hair swept boyishly over the bulging dome of his forehead, a pair of glasses in his hand. The tip of one black plastic earpiece was tucked into the corner of his mouth like a pipe, as he sat idly reading and chewing.

I crossed the room casually, stopping here and there to admire the stacks. There were over two hundred thousand volumes in this collection. Part of me yearned to turn aside and satisfy my own curiosity. I hesitated more than once, thinking of the rare books in the Christy collection and how easily I could spend this day hunting among them. How long would it take to find evidence of my people among those volumes, all written by the first European explorers of Africa, Asia, Oceania? How difficult would it be to pass the guards with one or two of those priceless volumes in my empty case? At minimum, there might be a surviving copy of Observations on the Several Parts of Africa hidden away somewhere behind glass.

When I was close enough, I took the chair beside the old man. Oblivious, he continued his reading until I spoke.

“Excuse me, sir.” He raised his head raised sharply, like a gazelle startled at the watering hole. “But aren’t you Louis Beatty?”

He turned toward me, already pleased: There was no sweeter sound than his own name spoken by a young female admirer. He had not yet put his glasses back on and it was obvious he could not see me clearly. I waited for his pupils to dilate, opening for me like black flowers blooming for an invisible sun … but he only squinted at me with a grandfatherly smile.

“Yes! Indeed. Guilty as charged, Miss.” His voice was bluff, jovial — a voice for funding committees and university deans. “And you are —?”

I sat for a moment, vexed and fumbling for words. Robbed of my powers, I would have to improvise. “A student of your work,” I said at last. “I enjoyed your lecture on the Olduvai finds last year.”

“Ah, excellent.” I could see him begin to dismiss me, his attention already slipping back toward the journal in his hand. His thumb still held his place. “So glad you enjoyed it, dear.”

“I was quite interested in your theories,” I said quickly. “Particularly the notion of separate pre-Human species in Africa.” I cleared my throat nervously. “I am very interested in primatology. Humans are just another primate, after all.”

It was a gamble. The old man had invested a great deal of energy in his female protégées over the past decade, sending one brave, determined young woman after another out into the wilds. He had already dispatched three of them over the last decade to study other living apes, two to Africa and one to Borneo.

“You are referring to my arguments regarding Zinjanthropus bosei and the other australopithecines of that period?”

Victory! I had earned a second look. The old man shifted toward me in his chair. It was a thoughtless reflex to lift his glasses and put them back on.

He looked into my eyes, blue as the skies above Leng, and then he was mine.

“I was actually referring to your suggested re-classification for Pan jermynus.” I dropped my voice, pitching it to a conspiratorial murmur. “I’ve read your memorandum in favor of Homo jermynus. I quite approve.”

His pupils had expanded like pools of black ink. “But it was secret.” It was a weak protest, his voice boyishly high. “That report was only for the Secretary of the Archive ….”

“Secrets are hard to keep, Doctor Beatty.” I bared my teeth in a triumphant smile. “I’d like to go to the examination room, please.” I put my hand, still covered in a gray calfskin glove, on his arm. “I need to see her. Now.”

Within twenty minutes, Doctor Beatty and I stood in a brightly-lit basement room in the bowels of the Museum. In the center of the room, there were two dissection tables, one empty and the other with a hinged lid. The lid was closed, and held shut with a chain and a padlock.

“Unlock it,” I told him and pushed him, stumbling, ahead of me. I quickly turned and locked the door behind us, uncertain of who might otherwise come into the room. We had passed through several secured doors to reach this lab. Between Doctor Beatty’s identification and my own powers of persuasion, it was not terribly difficult. Nonetheless, I had been increasingly nervous as we walked along, forcing him to stop frequently to exchange lingering looks with me in the hall, as if we were young lovers.

By the time we reached the laboratory, my victim was flagging badly, his face gone from the rosy flush of pleasant arousal to a dark red flush of hypnotic ecstasy. His hands trembled and a light sweat had broken out over his face. He would go into shock soon, perhaps even die.

It took him nearly a full minute to fumble the key into the padlock and release the chain. By the time he was finished, I had begun to feel pity for him.

I walked up beside him, feeling an impulse of kindness. “Give me your handkerchief.”

He pulled the cotton square from his jacket pocket and gave it to me. I turned him toward me like a child, and gently dabbed his brow and cheeks. “I want you to sit down now, Louis.” I put a gloved hand to his cheek and sharpened my voice to issue a command. “You will sit down, close your eyes, and breathe deeply. Do you understand?”

He had already closed his eyes, turning his head to receive my caress like an affectionate pet. “Yes, Miss. I understand.”

I accompanied him to the desk in the corner of the room and settled him into the chair. He allowed me to fold his arms on the desk and lay his head across them like a tired schoolboy who has finished his exam. “So beautiful,” he murmured to himself quietly. “So beautiful.”

I turned away from him. The steel lid of the dissection table shone under the lights. Even from here, I could smell the funeral spices of her body: cassia and cinnamon, natron and myrrh.

I crossed the room and reached for both the handles, blinking back tears, and opened the double lid.

She lay on her left side, chin to her chest, knees bent in a fetal crouch. Her body had been desecrated, of course, for the sake of “Science.” The linen bandages were already cut away from her withered face, her right arm, and her right foot. In a specimen box, they had gathered her jewelry, and the amulets incorporated into her wrappings, to ward her in the Lands of the Dead.

Her arms were longer, her legs shorter, than those of a Human. Her hand was delicate, the thumb nearly the same length as the fingers. The robust bones of her face were beautiful and fierce: her powerful jaw, her withered lips pulled back over perfect ivory tusks. Her mane was well-preserved, still golden-blonde over her head, shoulders and neck. Normally, her eyes would have been closed with beeswax, but her Human consort had replaced the long-withered flesh orbs with two polished spheres of blue topaz.

I put my suitcase on the empty table beside her and opened it.

“Wait,” the old man said softly. He had risen from his bent position, but could not yet summon the will to rise to his feet. “What are you doing, Miss?”

“I am taking her.” I moved briskly, removing a white sheet from the case. I draped it over the mummy and quickly tucked her into the sheet. My strength was more than equal to the task: Centuries after her mummification, her remaining flesh and bones were light and crisp as autumn leaves. I winced as the old wrappings crumbled and flaked away at my touch … but there was no time for delicacy.

“You … you’re taking the Ape Princess?”

I whirled to face him. All of the anxiety I had been holding within me suddenly seemed to burst into rage and grief.

“She is not an APE!” I shrieked the words at him. He cringed away from me, whimpering submission, but I had lost control. I crossed the room again in a single inhuman bound, landing on the desk before him in a half-crouch.

“How DARE you call her an APE!” I lashed out with a fist, smashing a deep dent into the heavy metal file cabinet beside him. He urinated helplessly in the face of my fury, rank yellow liquid trickling into his shoes and pattering onto the lab floor.

The old man was making little feeble warding gestures of supplication. I caught his wrists in an angry grip and roared wordlessly into his face, the belling cry of a queen’s dominance.

“How DARE you touch her!?” I let him go and my fist thudded into the file cabinet again, driving the dent deeper. “How DARE you violate her tomb!?”

“It wasn’t me!” he wailed. His crossed his arms over his face protectively. “They only asked me to examine her! Please!” He burst into sobs. “I never meant any harm!”

A male of my own species would have responded with his own aggression, forcing me to prove my worthiness by crushing him. The swift capitulation of a Human male was like a sedative drug — it quenched my rage instantly, leaving me hollow. Grief filled my chest like rainwater in a blackened crater.

I retreated slowly from the desk, stepping backward onto the floor, resuming my bipedal stance.

“No,” I admitted. “It wasn’t you. Not you, personally.” I turned away from him. “It is the way of your people. You are all grave robbers and thieves. This place is a testament to that, if nothing else.”

I bent and gathered up the body of my ancestress, folding her with reverence into the suitcase, and emptied the box of her ornaments onto her shroud — heavy rings, chains and bracelets of electrum, all marked with the hieroglyphic script of Leng.

“Your mistake was to stray outside your own species, Doctor Beatty. Violate the tombs of your own people, rob each other blind, steal each other’s corpses and make puppets for all I care! But a woman of my race is no Truganini.”

As I locked the case closed, he spoke again. “She isn’t Human.”

I turned again. He had collected himself, although the storm of terror had left him red and puffy. “I don’t know why you’re stealing her,” he said hoarsely. “But you speak as if you’re related to her, somehow.” He swallowed, his eyes owlishly wide beneath his spectacles. “That isn’t possible, Miss.”

I pulled my lips back over my teeth. “She is my thrice-great grandmother. My people live longer lives than yours, Louis Beatty.”

“She isn’t Human.” He spoke more firmly now. In this, if nothing else, he was confident. “Her limbs, her skull, her hands … she’s a hominid, yes, not Homo sapiens.”

“No,” I agreed. “Our species split apart over three hundred thousand years ago, at the dawn of a great Cold Age. We are still close enough cousins to interbreed, but the results … are unpredictable.”

He pushed the glasses further up his nose with a palsied hand. “Was she really … a surviving Homo erectus? In 1755?”

I huffed soft laughter at him, pursing my lips. “Has your own species not changed in the last 300,000 years? You can call us Homo jermynus, if you like. We do not care. Perhaps the name would comfort poor Arthur, in the Lands of the Dead. Things are always hard for mixed children.”

He stubbornly insisted, even though he was still shaking like a leaf. “You cannot be related to her, Miss.”

I moved toward him. “You think not? Why is that, Doctor Beatty?” I pulled the lips back over my teeth in a dangerous, aggressive leer. “Because you see a beautiful woman when you look at me?”

He looked up as I loomed over him. “Yes. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Your mind lies so that you can see the truth.” I laughed at him again. “Yes, I am beautiful, Louis Beatty. The women of a superior race are always ‘beautiful.’ You want to mate with me and make strong children. Offspring who will inherit my superior genes and survive the winds of the Great Plateau.”

His brow creased in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“You will.” I caressed his face with a gloved hand. “My people walk the Wastes that span the world, Louis Beatty. Our ancient gates let us venture forth into many lands; the Congo was only one. Wherever we step forth into the world of Man, we are worshipped as gods and take mates as we please. Our children pass on the traits for golden hair, for blue eyes, or stronger bones. Wherever you see those features, you are seeing our descendants among you.”

I bent and kissed his tiny mouth in parting, then removed one glove to reveal the pale ivory flesh and golden fur beneath. I looked directly into his eyes and spoke a final command.

“You no longer have my permission to see what you wish to see, Louis Beatty. I command you to see me as I am.”

He gave a strangled scream at the sight of my true face, eyes wide in shock, and threw himself away from me with such violence that both he and his chair toppled over onto the hard stone floor.

I left him lying on his side, clutching his chest, as I patiently pulled the gray leather glove back over my strange hand, re-arranged the shawl to cover my mane, and picked up my suitcase.

“Rest easy, Great Mother,” I told her, speaking the language of the Plateau. “I am taking you home.”