Unnatural Selection Read Online Free PDF Page A

attendance to make it happen.
    Villarreal had waited until Williams had been escorted out before getting in the last word. “And if anybody wants to know what I’m really sorry about,” he’d declared brutally, “what I really regret-it’s that they killed that bear in Montana. There was no need for that. What was the point? Human stupidity is not an excuse for murdering a rare, beautiful wild animal.”
    “A cold fish, all right,” Gideon said now.
    “It so happens I agree with him,” Joey declared, or rather blurted. “Intellectually speaking.”
    “Oh, pish-tush,” Liz said with a flap of her hand. “You do not.”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “No, you don’t,” said Julie.
    “Yes, I do!” Joey’s voice went up half an octave, coming perilously close to a screech. “All right, sure, Edgar was no prize as a human being, but that doesn’t mean that what he said wasn’t right. I’ll trade a human life for a grizzly’s life any day of the week. There’s no difference between Edgar and me on that score.” He glared at the three of them, his tic going full blast.
    “Sure, there is,” Liz said, using her thumb to flip another chocolate-covered cookie to him, which he deftly snatched out of the air. “That sonofabitch really believed that shit. You don’t.”
    Joey started to reply, then grinned and hung his head. “Maybe not every word.”
    “Look who’s here,” Julie said glancing up. “Victor.”
    Gideon followed her gaze with a mixture of curiosity and dread. If there was one certified wacko in the group, he thought, it had to be Victor Waldo, editor of the Journal of Spiritual and Sacred Ecology and founder of the Crystal Butte Earth/Body Center, located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. (“Effortlessly absorb timeless shamanistic techniques for healing, growth, and homeostasis in our authentic Kirghiz mountain yurts.”)
    Once again, however, Gideon was surprised at what he saw. He’d half-expected a bearded dropout in a tie-dyed sweatshirt, or maybe fringed buckskin, or with a ratty Afghan thrown over his shoulders, but Victor Waldo’s long chin was clean-shaven and his lean body was neatly attired in a tweed sport coat and well-pressed trousers. With his short, steel-gray hair, his proboscis of a nose-lifted slightly as if searching for an elusive scent-his pale, cold, intelligent eyes, and an all-around dryness of manner, he could have passed with ease for a professor of microeconomics. It was very hard indeed to imagine him thumping ceremonial drums, or whatever it was they did in an authentic Kirghiz mountain yurt.
    “Hey, Victor, how you doing?” Liz yelled. “Come join us. Is Kathie with you?”
    Waldo waited until he came within normal speaking range to reply. “No, she isn’t. As a matter of fact, Kathie and I are no longer… No, she isn’t. We’ve separated.”
    That prompted a knowing, embarrassed glance between Liz and Julie, and they quickly moved on to another subject. “Pull up a chair, Victor,” Liz said. “Have you heard about Edgar?”
    He had not, and after the bear story had been told once again and Waldo had expressed the requisite astonishment and a distinctly cool minimum of sorrow at his loss, Gideon, in the interest of furthering his own knowledge, apologized for never having read the Journal, and asked if Waldo would be kind enough to give him some idea of what exactly the province of spiritual and sacred ecology comprised. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Liz wince.
    Like any expert asked to talk about his field, Waldo obliged with an enthusiasm that brought a stony glitter to his washed-out blue eyes. “Certainly. In a nutshell, it provides an alternative paradigm to the non-relational ways of being in the world that have traditionally dominated Western thought. It relies on a model that aims for a synergistic relationship with other species and ecosystems. It explores the dialectic between…”
    Good gosh, Gideon thought, he even talks like a