Page 26 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Archaeontogeny

The next lucky soul unknowingly to receive the unsolicited
beneficence of Al Magnus was Eugene Cutter, professor of physical
anthropology at Runyoke College. I was surprised, upon reading the
dossier provided by the Charybdis Foundation, Magnus’s front
organization for my intermediation in the charitable disbursement of
research grants—well, one grant, anyway—to learn that this crackpot
was a respected member of academia. But I needn’t have been: the
man was pursuing a successful career as a teacher and popularizer of
ideas in his field; the fact that he could not get support for his most
ambitious experiment had not hurt him professionally. Not yet.
Despite the traditional constraints of his area of expertise, Cutter
did not limit himself to the measurement of man. In recent years
breakthroughs in DNA analysis had opened the possibility of
understanding human evolution and migration as far back in time as
extrapolation of the laws governing mutation and genetic drift would
allow, completely apart from purely paleontological comparative
studies. The professor, already well on his way to holding a tenured
position at Runyoke, had embraced the new science and encountered
little difficulty integrating it into the curriculum. According to my
informants, his lecture halls were always filled, the undergraduates
mesmerized by his entertaining presentation of the course material’s
dry bones. In his signature hound’s-tooth tweed jacket and bowtie he
would demonstrate early man’s mode of locomotion, occasionally
calling up fresh-faced coeds to the podium to aid in the visuals.
Yes, the professor was a ham, but something else as well: a
speculator in the multifarious applications of otherwise theoretical,
mathematical characteristics of the stuff of life, deoxyribonucleic
acid. Medical science was moving quickly to link genotype to
phenotype, leading to the hidden wellsprings of heritable disease and
treatment or cure via gene therapy. Cutter found himself increasingly
drawn to the molecular basis of human nature and how it could be
used to advance anthropology. The fossil record, rife with
controversy and spotty at best, interested him decreasingly as he built
on his knowledge of the data imprinted in every living cell. He chafed

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