The Darwin Conspiracy

The Darwin Conspiracy

by John Darnton
The Darwin Conspiracy

The Darwin Conspiracy

by John Darnton

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Overview

From the author of the bestselling Neanderthal comes this novel of gripping suspense and scientific conquest–a page-turning historical mystery that brilliantly explores the intrigue behind Darwin and his theory of evolution.It’s 1831, and aboard HMS Beagle the young Charles Darwin sets off down the English Channel for South America. More than 150 years later, two ambitious scholars pursuing their obsession with Darwin (and with each other) come across the diaries and letters of Darwin’s daughter. What they discover is a maze of violent rivalries, petty deceptions, and jealously guarded secrets, and the extraordinary story of an expedition embarked upon by two men. Only one returned–and changed history forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307278135
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 09/12/2006
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 1,010,096
File size: 462 KB

About the Author

John Darnton has worked for thirty-nine years as a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He was awarded two George Polk Awards for his coverage of Africa and Eastern Europe, and the Pulitzer Prize for his stories smuggled out of Poland during the period of martial law. He lives in New York.

Read an Excerpt

The Darwin Conspiracy


By John Darnton

Knopf

Copyright © 2005 John Darnton
All right reserved.

ISBN: 1-4000-4137-6


Chapter One

Hugh spotted the boat while it was still a dot on the horizon and watched it approach the island, making a wide, white arc. He shaded his eyes but still he had to squint against the shards of reflected light. Already the morning sun had cut through the haze to lay a shimmering sword on the water.

All around him the birds swooped and darted in the cacophonous morning feeding-hundreds of them, screaming swallow-tailed gulls, brown noddies, boobies homing in with fish dangling in their beaks. A frigate circled behind a gull, yanked its tail feathers to open the gullet, then made a corkscrew dive to grab the catch-a flash of acrobatic violence that had long since ceased to amaze him.

The boat appeared to be a panga, but that was odd: supplies weren't due for days. Hugh fixed his stare on the dark silhouette of the driver. He looked like Raoul, the way he leaned into the wind, one arm trailing back on the throttle.

Hugh dropped his canvas tool bag near the mist net and started down. The black rocks were streaked white and gray with guano, which stank in the windless air and made the lava slippery, but he knew the footholds perfectly. The heat pressed down on him.

When he reached the bottom of the cliffside, Raoul was already there. He idled the swaying panga a few feet from the landing rock, a narrow ledge that was washed by an ankle-deep wave every few seconds.

"Amigo," shouted Raoul, grinning behind dark glasses.

"Hey, Cowboy," said Hugh. He coughed to clear his throat-it had been a long time since he had talked to anybody.

Raoul was wearing pressed khaki shorts, a Yankees cap over his thick black hair at a jaunty angle, and a dark blue jersey with the insignia of the Galapagos National Park on the left breast pocket.

"Just stopping by," he said. "What's new?"

"Not much."

"I thought you will be totally crazy by now." His English was almost perfect but sometimes an odd phrasing gave him away.

"No, not totally. But I'm working on it."

"So, how's the ermitano?"

"The what?"

"Ermitano," Raoul repeated. "How do you say that?"

"Hermit."

Raoul nodded and regarded him closely. "So, how're you doing?"

"Fine," lied Hugh.

Raoul looked away.

"I brought two chimbuzos." He gestured with his chin to two water barrels strapped to the mid-seat. "Help me to deliver them."

Hugh leapt into the boat, unstrapped a barrel, and hoisted it over his right shoulder. The weight threw off his balance and he tottered like a drunken sailor and almost fell into the water.

"Not like that," said Raoul. "Put them overboard and shove them to the mat. Then you climb up and pick them up."

The mat, short for "welcome mat," was the nickname the researchers called the rocky ledge. Raoul had hung around them so long, helping out now and then because he admired what they were doing, that he was picking up their lingo.

Hugh finally got both barrels ashore and lugged them up to the beginning of the path. He was dripping with sweat by the time he returned.

"Want to come on shore, stay a while?" he asked. The offer was disingenuous. The water was too deep to anchor-more than eighty feet straight down-and if the panga docked, the waves would smash it against the rocks.

"I can't stay. I just wanted to say hello. How're your crazy birds-getting thirsty, no?"

"The heat's rough on them. Some are dying."

Raoul shook his head. "How many days without rain?" he asked.

"Today is two hundred something, two hundred twenty-five, I think."

Raoul whistled and shook his head again, a fatalistic gesture, and lit a cigarette.

They talked for a while about the study. Raoul was always eager to hear how it was going. He had once said that if he came back to earth a second time that was what he wanted to do-camp out and study birds. Hugh thought that Raoul had no idea what it was really like-the solitude, the fatigue and boredom and endless repetition of extremes, boiling during the day and then at night when the temperature dropped forty degrees, lying in your sleeping bag and shivering so violently you can't go to sleep even though you're exhausted. Anything can sound glamorous until you do it.

"Say," Raoul said lightly, "I hear you're getting company. Two more guys coming out."

"Yeah-so I'm told."

Raoul looked quizzical.

"Sat phone," explained Hugh. "Satellite. I got a call day before yesterday. The thing scared the shit out of me when it rang."

"Do you know them?"

"No, I don't think so. I don't know anybody in the project, really."

"What are their names?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't ask?"

"No."

Raoul paused a moment, then looked at him closely. "Hombre, you okay? You don't look so good."

"No, I'm fine." Pause. "Thanks."

"All that pink skin."

That was a joke. Hugh had been burned and tanned so many times that his skin had turned a leathery brown. His lips were swollen and cracked, despite the Chap Stick, and his eyebrows were bleached blond.

"You think you ready to share this paradise with other people?"

"Sure thing," said Hugh, but his voice sounded uncertain.

Raoul turned and looked out to sea. Far away the dark profile of a ship could be seen moving quickly with a funnel of gulls circling it.

"The Neptune," he said. "More tourists for the Enchanted Isles."

"Whoever thought that one up deserves a medal," said Hugh. He could see by the shadow that crossed Raoul's face that the remark was hurtful. The depth of Equadorean nationalism always amazed him. He smiled, pretending he was joking.

"More work for me." Raoul shrugged. "Well, tengo que trabajar." He flicked his cigarette way off into the water and gave a little wave from the hip. "Ciao."

"Ciao. Thanks for the water."

"Don't drink it all right now." Raoul grinned as he turned the panga, gunned the motor, and pulled out so fast the bow rose up like a surfboard. Hugh stared after him until the boat disappeared behind the island.

He carried the chimbuzos one at a time up the long path that wound up the south face of the volcano and then down past the campsite into the bottom of the crater, where in theory it was a degree or two cooler-but only in theory. On hot days, even here, he had seen the green-footed boobies shifting from one webbed foot to the other on the scorching rocks.

He looked at his watch. Shit. Almost seven o'clock. He had forgotten about the mist net-he was sure he had seen a bird trapped there, maybe two. He had to hurry and free them before they died in the quickening morning heat. Once, months ago, before he got the routine down, he had lost a bird that way. They were surprisingly resilient if you handled them right, but if you made a mistake, like leaving them trapped in the mist net too long, they were as fragile as twigs. That time, he had recorded the death dutifully in the log, without explanation, in a single concocted word: "ornithocide."

At the top of the island it was even hotter. He grabbed his bag and looked at the net. Sure enough, there were two birds, small dark cocoons that rippled as he touched them. He reached in and held one to his chest while he deftly lifted off the black threads so thin they caught the birds in flight. As he untangled the mesh from the feathers he suddenly had a memory: playing badminton as a young boy during long summer evenings, those moments when the plastic bird hurled into the net and had to be carefully extracted.

He now saw the finch's color, black mottled with gray and dusty white. A cactus finch-Geospiza scandens-very common, no surprise there. He held it tightly in his left fist and raised it to look at it. The eyes, deep brown, looked back, and he could feel the tiny heart tickling his palm. He checked the bands-a green and black one on the left leg and a blue one on the right-and identified him in the register. Number ACU-906. A previous researcher had jotted down a nickname, Smooches, in a rounded, girlish American script.

After all this time Hugh still had trouble identifying more than a dozen finches by their nicknames, the ones that hung around the campsite. Spotting them was a point of pride with the researchers, he gathered; they told stories of sitting around the rocks and rattling off the names of thirty or forty at a shot. "You'll get to know them in no time," he had been told at the farewell pep talk by Peter Simons, a legend in the field. "Just stretch out your arm and they'll land on it." That part was true at least. He was pleasantly surprised the first week when he was measuring a small finch and another came to perch on his bare knee and peer at him, its head cocking from one side to the other. At times like that they seemed curious and intelligent. But at other times-like when he forgot to cover the coffeepot and a bird almost dove in and drowned-it was hard not to think of them as stupid.

That was back before Victor left. At first it was a relief to be alone-solitude was what he had been looking for, part of his penitence-but as weeks stretched into months, the loneliness he had sought became almost too much to bear. Then when the rainy season didn't come and the lava island turned into a black frying pan stuck way out in the ocean, at times he actually wondered if he could keep going. But of course he did. He had known he would-in that way at least, in brute staying power, he was strong. It was his psyche that was brittle.

He pulled out a pair of calipers and measured the bird's wing and wrote it in the notebook, tattered over the years and swollen from the rain despite its waterproof cover. The bird froze as he measured its beak-the all-important beak-its length, width, and depth. Since 1973, when Simons and his wife, Agatha, first came here, generations of graduate students had braved the miserable conditions to measure thousands upon thousands of beaks and search for meaning among the minute variations.

Hugh freed the bird and it flew off a few yards and landed on a cactus, shaking its feathers. He recorded the second bird and walked around to the north rim to check the traps. He could tell by looking that none had sprung shut. He went back to the campsite and fixed breakfast, watery scrambled eggs made from powder and weak coffee from used grinds. Then he went to the top of the island again to rest and look out over the blue-green water, choppy with waves from the treacherous currents. He sat in his familiar place-the smooth rocks, already hot, formed a throne that fit his rear. He could see for miles.

Darwin was no fool. He didn't like it here either.

Hugh sometimes talked to himself. Or-even stranger-sometimes he couldn't tell whether he had been thinking the words or saying them aloud. Lately, his interior monologues were becoming oddly disjointed, especially during the long hours when he worked hard under the hot sun. Half thoughts flashed through his mind, phrases repeating themselves over and over, admonitions and observations from himself to himself, sometimes addressed in the second person, such as: If it was Hell you're looking for, buddy, you've come to the right place.

And it had been Hell that he'd looked for, no doubt about that. Even the name of the island-Sin Nombre-had exerted an attraction the moment he heard it.

So how about it? Was he willing to share this place-this paradise, he scoffed to himself, maybe out loud-with other people?

(Continues...)



Excerpted from The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton Copyright © 2005 by John Darnton.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Reading Group Guide

“An entertaining, fast-paced read.” —Los Angeles Times

The introduction, discussion questions, author interview, suggestions for further reading, and biography that follow are meant to enhance your group’s discussion of John Darnton’s The Darwin Conspiracy, a novel that weaves a meticulously researched reconstruction of Charles Darwin’s life and work with some artful speculation about their lingering enigmas into a Hitchcockian historical and psychological thriller.

1. We first meet Hugh Kellem while he is conducting research on an island so small and bleak that it is known only as “Sin Nombre,” Spanish for “no name.” Toward the novel’s end—which paradoxically falls 170 years earlier—Darwin will arrive at the same island. At what other points in this novel does Hugh reenact episodes of Darwin’s life? Does Lizzie’s narrative also echo her father’s, or does it anticipate Hugh’s? In what ways does Darnton use his novel’s parallel storylines to build mystery and suspense or deepen the exploration of certain themes? How would this novel be different if it unfolded in a single time period or was told from a single point of view?

2. Darwin came to the Galapagos carrying just one book: Paradise Lost. How does that book, which tells the story of Lucifer’s rebellion and the temptation and fall of man, forecast themes in Darwin’s narrative and in those of Lizzie and Hugh? Is nature this novel’s paradise, and if so, how is it lost? How do you interpret the scene on page 223 that begins with an encounter with giant tortoises and ends with a tableau of their butchery? What are we to make of Darwin’s later outburst: “What a book a Devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low and horridly cruel works of nature!” [p. 225]?

3. Darwin’s overbearing father almost prevents him from shipping out on the Beagle, but at the last minute he secures his permission. How is he able to do this? In undertaking his epic voyage, is Darwin trying to live up to his father’s expectations or subtly defy them? How are other characters in the novel affected by their fathers? Who succeeds in breaking free of the paternal spell and who succumbs to it?

4. Both Hugh and Lizzie are overshadowed by siblings who are older, seemingly more gifted (Lizzie is known to posterity as “slow”), and more loved. How does this shape their respective characters? How does each adapt to his or her status? Compare Cal’s ambiguous role in Hugh’s expulsion from prep school to Lizzie’s love affair with her sister’s fiancé. Is Darwin’s relationship with McCormick also a form of sibling rivalry? In what ways do the veiled and often unconscious struggles between competing siblings, real or symbolic, replicate the warfare in nature?

5. As a child, Darwin is said to have told fibs, a habit he has since outgrown. How does this detail foreshadow his later actions? When does the adult Darwin first engage in an act of deception? Is he simply defending himself against McCormick’s attempts to undermine him? Does this novel portray Darwin as fundamentally dishonest, or is he someone who becomes dishonest in a moment of weakness and then feels driven to perpetuate his deceptions? Are we meant to see him as evil or simply flawed? How would you compare what Darwin does with Cal’s doctoring of experimental results, Hugh’s theft of Lizzie’s journals, or Lizzie’s subterfuges? What are the consequences of their respective acts of dishonesty?

6. Why does Captain FitzRoy object so violently to natural law and transmutation, the ideas that preceded the theory of evolution? Are Darwin’s discoveries really inimical to religious faith or only to a particular kind of faith, and if they are so heretical why do they become more widely accepted, even in his lifetime? Why do you think evolution is more controversial today than it was thirty or forty years ago? Does Darwin lose faith because of what he apprehends about nature or because of what he learns about his own nature?

7. While Darwin is collecting specimens, FitzRoy describes himself as a “naturalist in reverse” [p. 72], because the Captain proposes to return three he “collected” on an earlier voyage. The specimens are, of course, human beings, the Indians Jemmy Button, Fuegia Basket, and York Minster. What are the consequences of their kidnapping and repatriation? In returning them to their home, FitzRoy is not just being altruistic but undertaking missionary work. Discuss the ways that science and religion intertwine in the course of the voyage and to what ends.

8. As a youngster, Lizzie Darwin seems to have possessed the same traits that made her father an outstanding naturalist. But as a young woman, she has turned to “ferreting out the secrets of others” [p. 61]. What parallels does Darnton draw between Darwin’s pursuit of the inner workings of nature and his daughter’s pursuit of the inner workings of her family? Does Lizzie choose that path because Victorian society barred young women from a career in science? In what other ways is she thwarted by the sexual mores of her time? Can we view her investigation of her family’s secrets as an unconscious protest against her status? What do you make of the fact that she loses her virginity almost immediately after discovering the truth about her father’s past?

9. Among the many things that Darwin dislikes about McCormick is the fact that he is “lower class” [p. 125]. How does class figure in this novel? How does it determine the prejudices and behavior of its characters? How are the cruelties of the English class system mirrored by other systems of inequality and oppression, such as slavery, the subjection of women, or the extermination of Indians? (Of all the novel’s characters, Darwin alone seems singularly insensitive to the fate of Jemmy Button.) In what ways can Darwin’s findings be seen as challenges to the old hierarchies? In what ways can they be seen as justifying human predation and exploitation, which might be explained away in some circles as “survival of the fittest”?

10. On board the Beagle, Jemmy Button is enraptured by what Darwin’s lessons in “sigh-eenz” [p. 99]. Yet following his return to Tierra del Fuego, he rejects both science and his new name. What is responsible for his disillusionment? How do you interpret the note Hugh finds in his hand: “I seen your ships. I seen your cities. I seen your churches. I meet your Queen. Yet you Inglish know life less as we poor Yamana” [p. 155]. Is Jemmy right?

11. While reading Lizzie’s journals, Hugh, who has the benefit of knowing how her life will turn out, feels as if he is “seeing a speeding car and knowing that it is soon to crash. Possessing that knowledge was like being God” [p. 163]. Does reading this novel, so much of which is grounded in fact, place the reader in a similar position? Discuss the appeal of historical fiction and its peculiar tension between the known and the unknown, the factual and the invented.

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