The Darwin Conspiracy Read Free Page A

finches.”
    “That’s right,” said Beth.
    “And there’s only one single sentence in The Voyage of the Beagle that even hints at the theory.”
    “So they say.”
    “Ah, well. You’ve got to hand it to him. He got there eventually, though he took his sweet time about it.” Nigel looked over at Hugh.
    “Tell me,” he asked, “exactly what is it about Darwin that engaged your interest?”
    The question had been thrown down like a gauntlet. Hugh was startled.
    How to answer? How could he even begin to put what he felt into words? He admired so many things about Darwin—his methodical exactitude, his boyish enthusiasm for experiments (imagine, playing the bassoon to see if earthworms could hear!), his demand for facts, nothing but facts, and his willingness to follow them wherever they led, wading knee-deep into lakes of hellfire if need be. But one thing he admired above all else was Darwin’s ability to think in eons—not centuries or millennia but entire epochs. He elongated time, stretched it out, examined cataclysmic events as if in slow motion. He could look at mountain ranges and imagine the earth’s crust rising up ever so slowly. Or come upon marine fossils high up in the Andes and envision the antediluvian seabed that buried them there. How extraordinary to possess sight that could stretch so far backward that the infinitesimal wheels of change and chance became apparent in their movement, like Galileo examining heavenly revolutions through the telescope. And how brave to measure yourself against the eons of all that time and recognize you live in a  Godless universe and admit your nothingness. Hugh found that oddly comforting—the nothingness.
    “I like that he took the long view,” he finally replied.
    Nigel turned to Beth. “And you?”
    Hugh leaned forward to listen. Beth took a swig of scotch and spoke matter-of-factly.
    “I like that when he came to these islands and went inland, he took a single book with him.”
    “Which was . . . ?”
    “ Paradise Lost. He read it here and then he thought about what he saw here and somehow he put the two together.”
    “Meaning what, exactly?” asked Nigel.
    “He found Eden, he ate from the tree of knowledge, and the world hasn’t been the same since.”
    “I see. ‘And they realized they were naked and they covered themselves.’ I see what you mean, though—it is like paradise here.”
    “I’m not so sure,” she said. A few minutes later she got up and stretched, reaching her arms above her like a dancer, and then walked off toward her tent, her body disappearing into the darkness.
    The two men were silent for a while, and Hugh felt the weight of the other man’s presence now that he had finally stopped talking. But Nigel wasn’t quiet for long.
    “You know,” he said, tilting his head toward the spot where Beth had been sitting, “it’s interesting to hear her talk about Darwin like that.
    There’re these rumors that she’s related to him somehow, somewhere way back there, a great-great something or other.”
    “But she’s American,” Hugh said.
    “Yes, it’s unlikely, I know. Just a rumor. Some people collect these kinds of legends around themselves. And she’s certainly a legend, all right.”
    “In what way?”
    “Part of a fast crowd, Cambridge, London, the States. Stunningly beautiful—well, that you can see for yourself. Read everything, done everything. She was married for a while to a brilliant chap, Martin Wilkinson. He had everything going for him—read history at St. John’s Oxford, took firsts in every subject under the sun, good family, world at his feet. But he has problems, a depressive actually, an incredible writer  and conversationalist but mentally unstable. He went into a downward spiral. They’re divorced. It was quite the talk there for a while.”
    “And you’ve known each other for . . . how long?”
    “Oh, ages. But things have picked up since the divorce.”
    “Ah. So you’re . . . what?