A short fiction where a well-preserved corpse of a tens of thousands years old homo sapiens sapiens is used to make a clone, and more

Question

I read this SF novelette (I think, or maybe longish short story ?) about 20 years ago, in a collection that might have been older.

it is rather complex. The very well preserved corpse of a homo sapiens sapiens (not Neanderthal) but tens of thousands years old, was found in an acidic bog somewhere in western Europe (maybe France).

Some scientist is trying a really crazy experiment. Not only was he able to recover the corpse's DNA but he believes that his (yes, the corpse was male) memories are still preserved in the chemistry of his brain. Well preserved indeed !

So first he clones his body. Second, he transfers into it the memories of a live man, whose body is crippled and who has agreed to have his memories transferred into the cloned body, with the promise he'll be allowed to keep that body at the end of the experiment. He does wake up in the cloned body and enjoys it, because it is so much better than his old one. But the old body died during the transfer, and his memories are far from perfect.

Not quite clear why that was done. The scientist probably wanted to be able to talk to the clone, so he needed a contemporary man's mind in the clone. Because the most important part of the experiment was still to come.

The scientists now begins to transfer the memories of the corpse, in addition, into the brain of the clone. When only a few memories are transferred, the contemporary mind keeps control and is more or less able to describe the new impressions he is getting, however unusual they appear to him (IIRC smell is important and hard to interpret to a contemporary mind).

But when more memories from the corpse are transferred, the old "homo sapiens sapiens" takes over. I'm not sure how it ends, but I believe, not too well for the scientist...

Answer 1

Forefather Figure by Charles Sheffield. I read it in the 1981 anthology A Spadeful of Spacetime.

The disabled man is Bayle Richards and the body is referred to as Pierre. The story starts with Bayle waking in the newly cloned body in a state of some confusion. To help him remember what had happened he is shown the "bog body" from whom he was cloned:

You remember what this is, Bayle?"
"Yes. Now I do. It's a morgue. You made me a clone from a dead man's body, right?"
"Sort of." Lana Cramer moved forward to one of the drawers and placed her finger on the button that would open it. "You don't remember it all yet? Bayle, I was hoping this would trigger it for you. You're a clone from a dead man all right."
"I don't mind that.'' He seemed relieved. No chance now that he would meet himself in a hospital corridor, or out on the street. "Show me the body, that won't worry me."
"It might." Lana remained with her finger on the button but she did not press it. "Bayle, I want to tell you before I show you, because this may be a shock. You heard John say that we had promised to get Pierre back to the Paris Institute in thirty days? Well, you are Pierre. And Pierre is the body inside here."
"Well? What difference does the nationality make?"
"It's not the nationality that matters, Bayle. John borrowed Pierre from Paris, and over there he's known as 'Vieux Pierre'—old Pierre. He comes from a sort of peaty salt march near the Dordogne River, just east of Bordeaux."
She pressed the button, and the drawer began to slowly slide open with a low hum of an electric motor.
"Pierre died fighting in the marsh, and fell over into a deep part. They found him when they were draining the marsh two years ago. For some reason, the chemical balance there in the marsh preserves animal tissue perfectly. When they got him out, Old Pierre had been lying there for twenty-two thousand years."

It ends as you describe. When Pierre's memories are transferred into the clone his personality takes over and he kills the scientist:

Naked, he crouched low and looked around him. He had been brought here without the comforting presence of stone axe and spear, without the cheering smells and sounds of the People. The smells that filled his nostrils now were alien and menacing. In front of him, two others struggled together, not seeming to see him at all or to detect his scent. Before they could attack, he had leapt forward to strike hard at the base of the neck, first the man, then the woman. To his surprise, they both crumpled unconscious to the level floor of the white cave.
He bent over and sniffed more closely at the man. Certainly alien, not of the People. With one efficient movement he snapped the neck, then bit the jugular vein to reach the blood. It had been many days since he remembered eating, but for some reason his hunger was satisfied almost at once. He dropped the man's body to the floor, surprised by the peculiar skins that seemed to cover it.
The woman's scent was different. She was not of the People, but it was good to mate outside the People. If he could find his way out of the strange cave, he would take the white-haired woman with her strange mixed smell back with him to the Home. But he wondered if he would find his way Home. If he had been ended in the marsh—his last memory was of the spear in his throat—then he must make a new life for himself here, in the After-Life. First he must possess the woman, to show that she belonged to him.
He knew how to be patient. Looking around the new cave, he squatted next to her on the floor and waited for her to wake. Already her eyelids were moving. It would not take long now.