Page 37 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Archaeontogeny

With that revelation Runyoke College had cause to dismiss Dr.
Cutter, and did so. The lawsuits came thick and fast, and the college
had deeper pockets. Now the professor had effectively changed his
own hominid classification: he was persona non grata inside and
outside academia. He tried to explain to anyone who would listen the
probable behavior of the six students rapidly redefined by TV
commentators as armed and dangerous criminals. But he was
ignored—when not being sued, demonized or ridiculed. Others,
better credentialed but less informed, became the interviewees in the
nightly news. They were clearly out of their depth, those cautious
scientists encouraged to speculate about an unprecedented event and
its likely consequences. It seemed to me the professor would have a
much more realistic opinion; it took a bit of patience, but I ultimately
found one extended quotation buried in an article written on the first
anniversary of the Wild Men of Runyoke scandal. The half-dozen
runaways were still at large despite the ongoing search of the
uninhabited regions to which they were presumed to have fled. A cub
reporter, searching for a different angle on a slow news day, located
ex-Professor Cutter—now serving mankind in a downtown soup
kitchen.
Call me Gene, he had told the young journalist. After delivering a
recapitulation of archaeontogeny unrecorded by his interviewer,
Cutter laughed when asked what he thought had become of his
erstwhile experimental subjects. The police made one mistake after
another, said he, seeing them first as missing persons, then kidnap
victims, and finally as amoral throwbacks to a knuckle-dragging
brutish type found only in the fantasies of popular culture. Why, he
asked, did they get their hands on cash if they were going to live in
the woods like chimpanzees? It could not be accepted by the
investigators that they were dealing with much smarter people than
the usual run of petty thieves; but that should have been obvious
from the break-ins. As far as he was concerned, the theft of outdoor
equipment was a deception designed to misdirect their pursuers into
a long and fruitless beating of the bushes far from their real
destination. If so, it had worked: ever since a lone skyjacker with a
backpack full of extorted cash had parachuted into a vast forest
known for harboring the elusive Bigfoot, the public had been
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