Symbol of wisdom and hieroglyph for all Egyptian prepositions, the owl sign, permeates ancient cartouches, documents, and glyphs. Uninitiated priests casually pronounced the glyph as if it were not magical. In fact, though, with each proper utterance the owl sign brought either good fortune or, more usually, misfortune to the priest and to all who heard him.
Amenhotshepsibu, who might have become Pharaoh, died of plague after pronouncing the owl glyph correctly. His consort, Amenhotshepsa, also died of plague, which became general, killing over one-fourth of all Egyptians. From then forward, priests purposely mispronounced the owl glyph to avoid invoking its curse.
All tokens of Amenhotshepsibu’s existence were purged from all public records. The only remaining records were buried with him in his minor pyramid, which was recently discovered in the Valley of the Kings. The correct pronunciation of the owl glyph and the tale of its terrible consequences remained buried for three millennia.
Recently a team of young, talented Egyptologists recreated the correct pronunciation of the owl glyph though forensic linguistics. Unaware of the curse that they were about to invoke, the precocious Egyptologists uttered the owl sign with the correct pronunciation at an international symposium in Cairo.
The results of their demonstration caused a sensation. Not one attendee of that symposium survived; instead, all died of plague. The curse of Amenhotshepsibu was alive in the world again. Because the symposium was re-broadcast worldwide, plague raged globally in the name of the owl.
Of all the Egyptologists who were subjected to her colleague’s pronunciation of the owl sign, only Professor Nancy Higgenbotham, of the University of New Hampshire, remained alive. Analysts opined that her nerve-center deafness was what saved her. Because she could speak, and because she was aware of the latest forensic techniques, the “deaf professor” was able to reconstruct and pronounce the owl sign correctly, though her pronunciation had a slightly different linguistic intonation than had been offered by her colleagues at the symposium. Miraculously, her pronunciation’s effects negated the effects of her colleagues’ reconstruction. Her pronunciation not only stopped plague, but it also provided immunity to all diseases.
Making use of this discovery to save lives, disease control operatives destroyed all media that contained the original pronunciation of the owl sign, and then they substituted Professor Higgenbotham’s pronunciation of the owl sign. As a result, the global pandemic was arrested in all regions where the Professor’s intonation of the sign of the owl could be heard. The recording of her pronunciation was ordered to be administered through the public affairs systems of all clinics and hospitals in the world.
Governments ordered that recordings of the Professor’s owl sign be played at large outside events and on street corners. Commercial entrepreneurs created inexpensive recordings of the Professor’s voice that could be used in universities, schools, day care centers, and home nurseries. As a result, raging plague burned out and then vanished.
Ironically, the deaf professor never heard her own pronunciation of the owl sign. Nevertheless, she became a global celebrity and an instant authority on ancient curses of all kinds. Forensic intonation was said to be her broader specialty, so adventurers and tomb raiders consulted with her before they launched into the unknown.
Among those brave, lost souls was Hiram Himsley, an Oxford physical anthropologist whose passion was early hominid cave burials in southwestern China. A high mortality rate among his predecessor savants was the caution that brought Himsley to the deaf professor’s door in New Hampshire that afternoon in October 2005.
Higgenbotham and Himsley had communicated by encrypted email, so she was ready for their face-to-face meeting. While Higgenbotham made tea, Himsley espied on a library table in her living room a pile of human teeth, a small sack of seeds, four round stones, and a brass gong. She brought the piping hot tea on a tray with two cups and saucers. She found her English colleague entranced by her artifacts.
“Professor, the artifacts on your table are simply remarkable,” professor Himsley said, shaking his head in amazement.
“Please, it’s Nancy if I may call you Hiram. Why do you find them remarkable?” She asked the question while she poured the tea and handed one cup to her colleague. She invited him to partake of her homemade shortbread as well.
“I’ve found similar artifacts in each of the three cave tombs I’ve excavated in southwestern China. How did you come by these specimens?”
“Are you shouting, Hiram? Don’t exert yourself. As long as I can see your lips, I can understand what you are saying well enough. The artifacts on the table were given to me by an explorer, like yourself, who was doing excavations somewhere in southwestern China in close proximity to your digs, I believe. I am not privileged to say precisely where because of a confidentiality agreement I have with the man’s estate.”
“So the explorer is now deceased?”
“I’m not sure. I know that he disappeared and now is presumed to be dead. Our consulting agreement novated to his estate one year after his last known contact, which was a year ago last June. I’m afraid I cannot give you details of that agreement. I brought the artifacts from the accessions room of the university museum so you could see the kinds of things my client brought me in payment for my services. Since they were my payment, I own them. Therefore, the covenants of our agreement do not extend to them. I needed to have you confirm that the artifacts are credible because I could hardly exhibit them if they are bogus.”
He frowned. “I see what you mean. Quite frankly, my concern is related, I think, to your other client’s concern. I have led three teams into southwestern China over the last fifteen years to do my excavations. All members of each of those three teams have died inexplicably. I am the sole survivor. How long I’m going to survive, I don’t know. I want to lead a fourth team to the area next summer, but I don’t want to risk their suffering the same fate as their predecessors.”
“What do you need from me, Hiram?”
His face took on a look of grave concern. “I need to know what may have caused the deaths of my assistants and associates, and what may prevent further deaths on my next expedition.”
She nodded in sympathy. “I’ve read your publications on your digs. I know you have articles in the mill, so to speak. Tell me a little about your findings so far. I’ll keep what you tell me confidential.”
“May I have more tea, please? Your shortbread is excellent.”
“By all means, pour yourself tea whenever you like. The shortbread is my mother’s recipe. She’s English. She lives in Nottingham near what’s left of Sherwood Forest.” Professor Himsley smiled and nodded.
“I’ve been working on the idea that our ancestor homo migrated from the Great Rift Valley region in Africa to southwest China, much earlier than previously thought. A great many anthropologists’ reputations will be shattered when the truth is finally known. The evidence I’ve amassed is fragmentary. Essentially, the same artifacts that lie on your table form the whole of it. The teeth are physically compelling. Carbon dating puts them at 80,000 years, give or take. The seeds may have been gathered in the hunter-gatherer fashion. The stones are ciphers. The gong is an anomaly because the Bronze Age has never been calculated as being anything like as old as the carbon dating suggests.”
“I’d like to ask a question at this point. May I?”
“Of course. Please ask away.”
“In all your studies of prehistoric remains, have you come across evidence that tomb hunters like yourself preceded you?”
“Often, I’ve suspected that tomb raiders had taken priceless artifacts and left the detritus like what you have on your table. In one of the three caves in southwestern China, I found the skeleton of a woman who had harbored in the cave and died there.”
“Did you find any relationship between the location of the artifacts and the orientation of the female skeleton?” He seemed to be most curious about this particular detail.
“The skeleton’s right hand seemed to be holding the brass gong.”
Now he seemed excited. “Did you independently carbon date the gong and the skeletal remains?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. Results indicated 5,000 years plus or minus, what I’d expect for Bronze Age artifacts.”
“What do you deduce from the evidence?”
“I’d say at least one and probably a team of adventurers went searching for the same caves that I’ve found. Only they went searching five thousand years ago.”
“And that would account for the brass gongs you’ve found at every single site?”
“It would be a logical extrapolation.”
“What about the four round stones on the table?”
“I found the same kind of stones in a tetrahedron configuration in each cave.”
“Will you please arrange the stones on that table in that configuration?”
Professor Himsley looked closely at the four stones on the table. He then arranged three stones like a triangle and placed the fourth stone on top of the others.
“That’s the way I found them.”
“I’m not sure you are right, Hiram. You can see from the slanting light in this room that the orientation of the stones is not easterly as it should be. Let me realign the stones.” She aligned the stones so one base stone pointed to the east and the two adjacent stones faced west. If I’m not mistaken, all your caves so far face east. Do they, or don’t they?” She said this like a schoolmistress.
“Yes, they do. In fact, I plan to publish my ideas about these primitive hominids’ superstitions about sunrise in my next article, due out this December in Physical Archaeology Review.” The professor seemed very proud of his achievement, particularly now that his colleague had independently corroborated his thoughts.
“My client had similar conclusions, but he by no means thought of the hominids as primitive. He thought those early precursors of ourselves were uncannily advanced.” She smiled while her hand gently caressed the four stones on the table. “Did you analyze the seeds that you found?”
“I had them analyzed by colleagues at Oxford and Cambridge. The seeds are from early specimens of edible seeds that today are considered high-energy health foods. My Oxbridge colleagues were astounded by the high protein and fat contents of the seeds.”
“Did the seeds germinate?”
“It’s strange that you ask that. As a matter of fact, they did germinate. The seedlings were transplanted into a special archaeological garden at Balliol College, Oxford. The plants are flourishing in a greenhouse there as I speak.” He smiled, and his eyes squinted. “You already knew about this?”
“Come with me into my backyard greenhouse.” She stood up and walked to her back door while he followed her. In the backyard was a small greenhouse. They entered and were suddenly in a hot, humid environment. Plants luxuriated inside. An entire table of plants was labeled, “Herbs of Southwest China c. 80,000 BCE.”
“I’ve had 80 percent germination of those seeds. That is most remarkable for seeds as old as the carbon dating implies. The seeds are not the normal seeds we associate with prehistoric hunter-gatherer diets. In fact, they are more advanced than we’ve discovered among the farming cultures that supposedly followed the hunter-gatherer stage of humanity.” The deaf professor was reflective when she said this, as if the implications of what she had imparted were profound.
“Nancy, I’ve been working with a number of colleagues on the DNA mutation patterns and pattern rates of hominids from 100,000 years ago to present.”
“All right, Hiram, what have you found?”
“There is no way to join the DNA from the found remains to our present-day humans in that interval of time.”
“What do you deduce from that?”
“Either our algorithms don’t work or the carbon dating is incorrect, or both.”
“My client came to the same conclusion. Let’s go back inside to look at our rocks again.” Nancy retraced her steps to her living room with Hiram following in her wake.
She picked up the stones one by one from the configuration and laid them in a line.
“Did you do chemical analysis on the four stones that you found in each cave?”
“I didn’t do that yet. Would you advise me to do so?”
“Absolutely yes, I would. Let me give you a few hints, though. Invariably, one of the stones will be iron.” She smiled while the shock set in and reflected on her colleague’s face.
“Don’t look so surprised. Meteorites of nearly pure iron have struck the earth for millennia. Another stone of the four will invariably be a geode. Those are the containers for beautiful hydrated crystals of many kinds. A third stone will invariably be roseate quartz with beads of gold. The fourth stone will be filled with silver, tin and lead salts. Encapsulated, then, these four salts look forward thousands of years toward the history of metallurgy as we know it.” What she said so matter-of-factly seemed to be science fiction to the Oxford professor.
“Taken together, you’re suggesting that Von Danekin and his ilk are right: aliens roamed the earth?” He was incredulous.
“I’m saying nothing of the kind. I’m rather suggesting that we need more analysis of your finds to discover what they portend for your new assistants and what they mean for you.”
“I’ve worried about my having survived when all my associates and assistants perished.” His face was a mask of mourning tinged with worry.
“As well you might worry. From the outside, a case might be built that you or someone else eliminated them to hide your potential findings.”
“My findings are in line with other discoveries so far.” He was now defensive.
“What we’ve been discussing have not been part of your published work. The deductions we’ve made may not be publishable for hundreds of years. People are not ready for the good news. Priests and academics who hold the myths of our culture together will be outraged. They’ll fight the conclusions with every means available. Some will want to kill to prevent anyone’s knowing what we know. Believe me, from my experience with the Egyptian mysteries, I’ve found that the forces of the status quo are formidable.” She said this fervently with her blue eyes glittering.
“Are you suggesting that I stop my excavations and research?” Himsley was clearly upset that his life’s work might be in jeopardy.
“No, I am not. I’m just warning you that what you are about to do is dangerous to yourself and others. In your emails, you asked whether I could help you discover how to protect your assistants. Did you mean what you wrote, or not?”
“I do want to protect my expedition. The last thing I want to do is subject my people to danger and almost certain death.”
“Nothing in the world can stop fate. All I can do is give you the facts that I know. I may be deaf, but my mind still works.”
“Would it be improper for me to ask the last known location of your client when you lost contact with him?”
“For what it is worth, his last email arrived on Midsummer’s Day in 2003. The email’s contents were simple: ‘You were right!’” His previous email on the prior day gave his location as Yunnan Province, China.
“What were the contents of that earlier email?”
“He emailed that he and his team were converging on a new cave site on a yellow cliff side that locals had told him about. In response to that email, I warned him to be careful. I guess he was not careful enough.”
“Be careful of what exactly?”
“I’m not sure, but in Africa hemorrhagic fever was contracted by people who had entered caves. The manner of infection was never proven, but I thought skin invasion of the virus might be caused by people not using gloves while they worked.”
“The work can be hot, and gloves can get in the way sometimes.”
“You mentioned that all your fellow workers died. Were there common symptoms?”
“Hemorrhagic fever may have been the common prognosis. The deaths came so swiftly that no proper diagnosis was possible. The authorities were quick to bury the corpses and hush up the circumstances.”
“Well, hemorrhagic fever could link your population of hominids in China to their origin in the Rift Valley. Of course, it could also have worked in the opposite direction if the carbon dating or the theory of hominid dispersal should be incorrect. Did you follow the same protocols as your people when you went on a dig?”
“I needed to show by example what we were to do. Of course, I always followed my protocols. My people, however, did not. Perhaps that caused their unfortunate deaths?”
“We cannot be sure, but I’d advise that this time, you counsel your people to follow your protocols to the letter. At the first sign of fever, engage a medical evacuation team at once and look for Marburg or some other hemorrhagic as the cause.” She could see that her guest was shuddering at the thought of the effects of hemorrhagic fever.
“What you’re saying is that the hominids I’ve found carried the disease with them. Do you think it might have caused their deaths?”
“Clinically, it might have, but then how did so many survive over such a long period? I think they knew the secret of the disease without all our modern medicine. They knew enough about it to make their burial places death traps.”
“I understand what you’re saying. My hominids buried their dead in caves facing east and protected the sites from intruders with a dread disease.”
“Now, I think you are ready to consider the brass gongs.”
“What we know is that one brass gong was discovered in each of the grave sites we’ve found so far. Of those, one includes the skeleton of a female associated with the gong. Clearly, the gong did that female no good, so the gong is not the answer to the cause of the disease.”
“But the woman may have thought that the gong was the answer to whatever curse plagued the burial site. Brass was known to be a curative from its earliest manufacture. Today, brass is worn to alleviate symptoms of arthritis, for example.”
“I’ve taken your whole afternoon, Nancy, and now I’ll have to go. I want to thank you for a most enlightening discussion.”
“What will you do now, Hiram?” Her face showed motherly concern. He sat up straight to show his resolve and answered her directly.
“I’m going to China to excavate my next cave. While I’m there, I’ll also try to discover what happened to your client.”
“By doing that, you may just find another cave site worth investigating. But I’ll warn you right now. Be careful. Follow your protocols. Come back alive. And if you come back, please bring artifacts like the ones we’ve played with this afternoon. Our museum could use them. More than that, they could be my recompense for having these discussions today.” She said this offhand, but she made her point. She had done him invaluable service. She deserved to be paid back in kind. He understood her implicitly. Artifacts were the currency they valued. He decided to repay her with what he found in China.
Nancy showed Hiram to the door. There, they shook hands. Hiram drove off in his rental car to Logan International Airport, where he flew to London Heathrow International Airport. He arrived via transit to London, where he had an enormous breakfast in the Automobile Club Restaurant in Mayfair with the man who wanted to fund his expedition.
“Sir Charles,” Hiram said, “I’m now ready to take my new team to China if you’re ready to fund the trip.” He waited while his potential benefactor devoured the remains of his breakfast.
“Hiram, this is the fourth expedition I’ve backed, isn’t it?”
“You’ve been most generous, Sir Charles! I could not have published my findings without your support.”
“Tell me again why this fourth expedition is necessary. Your prior three expeditions have turned up the same evidence. Is a fourth not redundant?”
“It’s true that we have additional work to do with the artifacts we’ve already found. Recently, I’ve discovered that we need to do analytical chemistry on four rock samples we found at each site. I’ve also learned that we may not only have one site to investigate, but also another that may have been discovered by another party.”
“So you have a competitor in the field? That would be news to me. You know how I like to be funding exclusive projects. I don’t know who is supporting another bloke in this line, but if it’s true, I don’t like it one bit.”
“Think of my so-called competitor as a mere grave robber, Sir Charles. I have reliable word that whoever it is has died with all hands in his last attempt. You’re well aware that all my assistants on my last three missions have died suddenly.”
“So we have a curse afoot?” He said this with a shocked expression as if a ghost had entered the conversation.
“Yes, sir, I’m afraid we do.”
“And you somehow survived through it all?”
“Yes I did, and I’m glad to say it, too.”
“So, how much did you say you needed again?”
“Two hundred fifty thousand pounds for the expedition and ten thousand pounds for the additional chemical analysis of those rocks. I’d also like to add twenty-five thousand pounds as a medical contingency fund just in case.”
“Nonsense. I’ll write the bank draft right now for two hundred sixty thousand pounds: take it or leave it.”
“I’m most grateful. Thank you.” Hiram watched as his sponsor wrote the check and handed it to him.
“Here is your money. Bring back one of those brass rings for my wife specially. She rather fancied having one after I said it was all the rage in China once upon a time. Trophy wives, you know: you’ve got to keep them stocked with high fashion items. As for me, I’m off to the races. Maybe there, I’ll win back what I just gave you with the right bet. Ta ta, now. And, Himsley, please come back alive with all your crew intact.” Sir Charles bolted without paying for the lunch, so the professor asked that the amount be added to the man’s account with the usual gratuity. The thought of the huge gratuity brought a smile to the waiter’s face.
Getting his three-person team together late that evening at Oxford in his rooms, Professor Himsley led the celebration with a toast, “To the earliest hominids of southwestern China.” He then launched into a briefing of what he had learned in America from the deaf professor and emphasized the protocols that, he said, would protect them all from suffering the curse that had plagued his prior expeditions.
“Herb, please run around to the assayer with these twelve samples and this order for chemical analysis of the rocks. All of you, please be ready with all your gear to fly to China the next Thursday for a three-week adventure. Herb will coordinate everything for everyone. As for me, I’ll be setting out three days early to scope out an additional site.”
The idea of having two sites to work brought broad smiles to everyone.
Alyson said, “Two sites on one trip. That’s grand! But will you be sure to meet us in China?” As a graduate intern, she was going on her first-ever expedition, and she was excited.
“I pledge that I’ll to meet you at the foot of Xi Tang Mountain in Yunnan Province, where our planned excavation is to take place on the Saturday morning after your arrival near the site. Alyson and George, do you have any questions? No? Well, get some sleep and spend a couple of days relaxing. After we start this expedition, there won’t be much sleep for any of us.”
Herb Griggsby was an excellent choice as Professor Himsley’s second. He made sure that everything was well in hand with their team before his major professor headed for the airport.
“Have you any last moment thoughts, professor?” Herb asked before he left Himsley at his departure gate.
“My only regret is that I couldn’t get Sir Charles to agree to spend the money for an emergency medical team in case anyone had to be evacuated while we are in China.”
“We’ll manage somehow, sir. I’ve been on three other expeditions with others, as you know from my resume and references. I’ve seen it all, believe me. Have a great flight. We’ll see you in Yunnan.”
Professor Himsley had a long, but uneventful flight to China. He staged in Shenzhen and flew into the outback, then rented a Jeep as ground transport to the place where his competitor last communicated with Professor Higgenbotham.
Himsley inquired about him at the most likely hotel. He was informed that Professor Chumley, of Clemson University in the U.S., had last stayed there on the night before Midsummer’s Day in 2003. He had checked out and never returned.
Himsley described the yellow cliff with caves, but the concierge was unable to help with that, but he summoned a local guide who would take him wherever he wanted to go.
That was how Professor Himsley made his way to the foot of the yellow cliff that the deaf professor had described during his visit. The guide told Himsley that he had led a team to a cave on the side of the cliff, but the team had not reappeared. He offered to take Himsley up to the same cave for a few thousand Yuan, which seemed a bargain.
So, they went up to the cave to find four skeletons in modern clothing on the cavern’s floor. The guide went to inform the authorities while Himsley made a gloves-on survey of the site. First, he used his cellphone to take pictures. He then harvested and placed in his knapsack four stones, a sack of seeds, a little sack full of human teeth, a bundle of threads, and a brass gong.
With some satisfaction, he realized that the configuration of the stones was the same as he had seen in other such sites. With a frisson, he realized that the skeleton figure he found next to the brass gong was in the same location relative to the gong as the ancient skeleton had been at his last site. The bag of teeth was found in the right hand of the man he presumed was his competitor archaeologist. A check of the man’s wallet indicated that was the case.
The PRC police and army representatives arrived within two hours. Himsley and his guide were questioned and escorted off the site. The policeman first wanted to know how Himsley knew about the bodies in the cave. Through his guide, the professor explained how he learned about the lost expedition from a colleague in the U.S.
The policeman then wanted to search Himsley’s knapsack, but he interdicted the attempt by showing the uniformed man the papers authorizing his participating in a dig in Yunnan. The policeman was confused by the fact that the dig noted in the paperwork was different from the current location, but the guide retorted that one permit fitted all such sites in Yunnan. The policeman did not contradict that idea, though he frowned when he handed the papers back to the professor.
When Himsley and his guide made it down to the Jeep, they both breathed a sigh of relief that they were escaping the scene of a crime without a long detention. Himsley gave his guide a tip of twice what he had offered him when they returned to the hotel. It was, he thought, the least he could do for a man who had rendered such timely service.
Then, Himsley brooded on the grisly sight he had seen in the cave. He took out his cellphone and reviewed the pictures he had taken, carefully. He pulled on his gloves again to examine the artifacts he had gathered. He rationalized that he now had time to reach the hotel nearest his planned excavation site in plenty of time to meet his arriving team. In fact, he arrived so early at his destination that he decided to reconnoiter the cave by himself.
Before he set out for the cave, though, he wrote an email to Professor Higgenbotham. He informed her of the fate of her client and attached photos he had taken as proof. She did not respond right away, but when she did respond, she inquired about artifacts. Himsley emailed that he had in his possession all the items her client’s team had harvested from the site. He also wrote that he intended to bring those things to her when he returned to the U.S.
The deaf professor expressed her gratitude for his having found the cave with the remains. That was the proof that the man’s estate required. She would share the email with the information that the Chinese authorities could not provide further substantiation of the deaths. She warned Himsley to be careful that his own team did not end up like the team he had photographed.
Professor Himsley proceeded to the cave dig site as planned. He did an initial survey and discovered some of the artifacts that he had expected to find there. The stones were configured as always and oriented toward the rising sun. The pieces of woven material were evident, as was the brass gong. He did not immediately see the human teeth or the bag of seeds, but he reasoned that his team should have the pleasure of making some of the finds themselves.
He took cellphone photographs of the interior of the cave. Then, he went back down to his hotel room to compose an email with attachments to Herb, so he could share the information with his team.
Himsley took a long, luxurious, hot shower and slept until dinner. Just before he went to dinner, he received an email from Herb acknowledging receipt of his earlier email with the pictures of the cave attached. Herb reported that he and the other team members were excited by the photos.
The next day, the team arrived and met their professor. After they had a chance to check into the hotel, rest and stow their gear, everyone met for a long dinner.
“I took the opportunity to visit that other site I mentioned. I found both good news and very bad news. The good news is that the artifacts at that site confirm what I’ve already found at my other digs. The bad news is that I found the skeletal remains of an entire four-person team on the floor of that cave.”
The team froze when they learned about the remains of the other team.
“How did they die?” asked Alyson. She was pale with apprehension and foreboding.
“Their skeletons were intact. There were no signs of shattering. My guess is that they all died of some kind of dread disease. It must have been very fast-acting because the bodies were laid out on the cool cave floor almost as if they had died instantly.”
“The cave was cursed,” Alyson said, in a tremulous tone. “Maybe we shouldn’t be going up to our cave in the morning.”
“Come on, Alyson. Don’t get weak-kneed now that we’re so close,” said Herb, trying to show some leadership.
“Professor Himsley, what do you think are the risks?” asked George, always the practical one.
“George, I don’t know what to tell you. I went into that other cave and came out alive. I also went up to our cave. In both cases, I wore the gloves that I mandated for the team’s use. I picked up the artifacts from the other cave, but I left the artifacts at the Yi Tang site, so you could see them exactly as they are without modern human interference. From the evidence, the odds are one in three that you’ll come out alive if you count my guide to the other site.”
“The prof has proven we can do this thing.”
“Yes, but I used the protocols exactly as I trained you to do. I make no guarantees for anyone not following the guidelines explicitly.”
Alyson was the only team member who still had doubts.
The next morning, before the team had a chance to gather for breakfast, Chinese police, and army representatives arrived at the hotel and asked to see Professor Himsley. Through their own interpreter, they informed him that the guide who had shown him the way to the cave had died suddenly. The combined police and army team that was trying to remove the remains of the tomb raiders at the other site had all died as well, of mysterious circumstances. The reason they had come to Himsley was to be sure he was all right. They said they fully expected to find that he had expired. They apologized for having inconvenienced Himsley and went away.
At breakfast, Himsley told his team what had happened. He told them that he had made a command decision: they would use his photography from both caves and the artifacts he had gleaned from the other cave to satisfy the requirements of their expedition. That having been done, he said their expedition was over. He ordered Herb to arrange for transportation back to England as soon as possible. The team members were both upset at having been denied their dig, and relieved that they were not going to be subjected to danger, and possibly even death. Alyson was the only one who really took umbrage with the professor’s decision.
“Professor, we’ve all come a very long way to work with you on this dig. Here we are in Yunnan, within walking distance of our objective. You’ve already been there and scouted it out. You even took pictures. How tantalizing! Now we’re supposed to pack up again and return to Oxford like the King of France and his forty-thousand men marching up the hill and marching down again? I, for one, am not going to cut and run. I came for a reason—and my resume, and I’ll not go back until I’ve accomplished my mission. I’ll go up the hill alone if I have to. But first, I’m going to have my breakfast.”
“Alyson, I understand your frustration. You saw how serious the Chinese were about what has happened. You’ll get your credit, and your name will be included in any articles that stem from what we have done. Will that satisfy you? At least let’s talk about this over breakfast.”
So the team had breakfast, and the professor had a split decision by the end of the meal. Alyson’s arguments had appealed to George, but not to Herb. So it was the professor and his second hand against the others.
The professor offered a compromise to break the tie. He said that he would take Alyson and George to the site and let them take cellphone pictures with their gloves on. His proviso was that neither should take off the gloves or touch anything sharp in the cave. Herb was not to enter the cave but remain outside in case of trouble.
While Alyson still protested that she wanted to get her hands dirty rummaging for teeth on the floor of the cave, she knew that she would be overruled. She backed down and acceded to the professor’s final deal.
The group went to the cave. Herb stood guard outside while the professor, Alyson and George went inside with their gloves on and their cellphone cameras out. After fifteen minutes, they reemerged from the cave with their pictures. The professor had gathered the visible artifacts in his knapsack.
They lacked only the teeth, but Himsley decided he must have the teeth. So, he handed his knapsack to Alyson and told her and George to go back down the hill. He told Herb to wait outside the cave until he had gathered the teeth. Then, he went inside the cave again with a handkerchief tied around his nose and mouth and a dibble in his right hand. His intention was to scour the surface of the cave’s floor for the missing teeth.
Himsley worked for an hour scraping the floor carefully and using his cellphone torch to view what he had unearthed. He could not find a single tooth. This, he thought odd. In every other cave he had found, including the one where the four bodies had been found, teeth were the prizes. They definitively proved that the sites had been used by hominids.
After another hour of delicately scraping around the edges of the interior of the cave, Himsley decided that he had done enough to prove that the teeth were not inside. He figured that negative information was still information, so he backed out of the cave.
There, he met Herb, who was glad that his professor was still alive. They proceeded back down the hill to their hotel, where Himsley discarded his gloves and kerchief. He asked all his team to take soapy showers to be sure that they had not come in contact with viridian materials.
When everyone had showered and changed clothing, Himsley hosted a triumphant dinner. The team had, he said, done their explorations and had in their possession the only artifacts that were available. On a side table, he ranged the stones, the brass gongs, the sack of teeth and the sacks of seeds. Over wine, he lectured on the deductions that he and Professor Higgenbotham had made during his trip to New Hampshire. He also told his assistants about the chemical analysis he had ordered before he left England.
Alyson was intrigued by the thought that some deadly virus protected each of the cave burial sites. Himsley told her that protecting burial sites with chemical and biological agents was as old as time. In ancient Egypt, for example, the tombs of the pharaohs had been protected by agents that scientists were still trying to decipher today.
“I can understand chemical agents because they serve to kill anyone daring to enter and rob from the tombs. I don’t understand the biological agent because it could cause widespread destruction well beyond the tomb.”
“Consider, Herb, that this biological agent is a deadly virus that kills almost immediately. Think of the four bodies on the floor of that other cave. It must have worked faster than the most lethal viruses known to contemporary man. It is a virus that acts exactly like a lethal chemical agent.”
“Professor, that’s frightening.”
“That’s why I was reluctant to subject you to that virus today. I’m hoping that you will not succumb to it as I have not.”
“Can you think of any reason why you did not catch the virus when all your other team members died of it?” asked George.
“No, I cannot. Perhaps I am immune. Perhaps the hominids whose teeth we found were also immune, but I somehow doubt it.”
“Professor Himsley, isn’t it true that the homo at one point defeated the Neanderthals throughout what is now Europe?”
“That’s the prevailing theory, yes.”
“So is it possible that this virus caused the deaths of those Neanderthals and let the hominids live?”
“If we are related to the hominids you are talking about, they would have died along with their enemies. Consider the deaths of the many excavators, including those from my prior teams.”
“One other thing I’m curious about is the implication of the brass gongs.”
“Okay, Herb, what do you make of those?”
“They imply that we are not the first to explore these cave burials. Your finding a Bronze Age female holding a brass gong indicates that. So before the time of the first pyramids in Egypt, teams just like ours were scouring the countryside for burial sites that hark back to the beginnings of mankind.”
“Go on.”
“Well, for seventy-five thousand years, no one cared. Then, suddenly someone cared enough to manufacture countless brass gongs and put one in every burial cave that was found. In at least one case, that caused the death of the explorer.”
“At least they made a positive contribution to the burial site.”
“How so?”
“They left the brass gongs.”
“I see what you mean. We, in contrast, take everything and leave nothing.”
“In the case of the other cave that we will definitely not be visiting as a group, if I had not decided to check out what happened to our competitors, all four bodies and what they were wearing would have remained at the site for as long as it took for the next enterprising generation to go looking for those caves again. In fact, how many expeditions have been undertaken to find those caves will not be known until all the caves are found.”
“The way some American Indian burials sites were formed in large earthen shapes, we might be searching for a long time to find all those sites.” This was Herb’s hopeful announcement.
“Yes. That’s why we need archaeologists like you three. If you made it your mission in life to find and map the other sites, we might begin to know the mysteries we have uncovered today.”
“Are you ready to go back to Oxford and write up what we’ve found?” the professor queried his team.
“We have enough information to satisfy our course requirements, I suppose,” said Alyson.
“Teamed with the professor, we have a lot more than that,” said Herb.
“Wait a minute!” interposed George, “We’re forgetting something really important.”
“What’s that, George?” Alyson asked, bored and ready to move right on.
“This virus is pretty deadly.”
“Definitely, it is.”
“And it could kill a lot of innocent people as well as a lot of grave robbers.”
“Go on. Make your point.”
“What is to prohibit the Chinese from discovering what this virus is and weaponizing it?”
“That’s nonsense,” Alyson quipped.
“No, Alyson, that’s genius,” the professor exclaimed. “That’s another reason we’re all going to pack our things tonight and depart the first thing tomorrow morning. Herb, make the arrangements tonight, please.” The professor had an alarmed look in his eyes. He was anxious to be on the move. Like an infection, his team members caught his excitement without being able to penetrate the source.
The next morning, the four made their way out of China and flew back to England without incident. When they arrived in Oxford, they settled back into their scholarly routine.
Professor Himsley briefed Sir Charles about their expedition and discussed what needed to happen next for planning purposes. The professor was always selling the next expedition, and he was pleased to report that everyone had returned safely from the last one.
He gave Sir Charles the brass gong he had promised to bring for the great man’s trophy wife.
Sir Charles almost jumped out of his seat for joy when he received it. The brass gong, having been polished to a sheen, was gorgeous. Sir Charles said he would build a mount for it as a setting.
He was so happy that the professor decided to ask him right then for another twenty-five thousand pounds for his next dig. The man wrote the bank order immediately, and once again, he left the table without settling the bill for the quail and canard, the fine wine and the liquor. Himsley told the waiter to place the cost of the meal with a large gratuity on the great man’s account. Everyone was pleased at the lunch, including the Automobile Association.
At Christmas break, Himsley flew back to New Hampshire to talk with the deaf professor, who was glad to see him again. He turned over the artifacts that he had harvested from the cave where the four bodies had been found. She watched as he laid them on her table, glad that he remembered how to stack the stones.
She was particularly interested in the brass gong. She asked Himsley to see what she had made of the other gong that she had shown him on his previous visit. Like the gong he had presented to Sir Charles, this gong was burnished to a sheen. Professor Higgenbotham had mounted it as a gong should be mounted, and equipped it with a baton so it could be struck. She handed Himsley the baton.
“Hiram, strike the gong, please. Don’t be bashful.”
So Hiram Himsley struck the gong and heard its resonating tone. Happy with the sound, he struck it again and again.
“Nancy, its tone is spell-bindingly beautiful.”
“Yes, it is. You may recall we discussed many possibilities for this gong having been deposited in the caves where the burials had taken place, but we never talked about the meaning of the tones these gongs make when struck.” She smiled as it dawned on her friend what she was suggesting.
“Tell me, Nancy, what does the tone do?” He leaned closer to her so he could hear her clearly after his ears had been affected by the gong.
“I believe that the gong is the antidote to the horrible virus that infects the caves you’ve been exploring. Don’t ask me how it happens. I’m no virologist.”
“I think I understand you, but let me ask a couple of questions to be sure.”
“Fire away, Hiram.”
“Are you suggesting that the Bronze Age intruders knew that the curse of the graves had something to do with an invisible death-dealing cause and used the gongs as the antidote?”
“They knew nothing about viruses, but they knew about cause and effect.”
“Why would they have been left in the caves?”
“Let’s assume that they were left to help any who found them, survive the effects of having entered the caves.”
“That means that unaccountable deaths had occurred in such numbers that as with our improvised explosive devices, the authorities found it more cost effective to spend on a known antidote than to find the cause of the deaths and remove it?”
“I’d say that’s close enough for this Christmas season, wouldn’t you?”
“But one female had a gong, but died anyway.”
“Proving nothing but that the poor fool did not know how to use what she had.”
“I take it that you mounted this gong as an antidote, then.”
“I did, and I’ve not had a single cold this year. That’s a first.”
“After our celebration, I must get back to tell my team in England about this. But I also must raise the question that one of my assistants brilliantly posed to me.”
“Let me guess: what are we going to do about the possibility of weaponizing the virus for use in war?”
“Precisely. How did you know?”
“I was contacted by the authorities from a place called the United States Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases. They were most serious gentlemen in uniform. They asked all about my connection to that unfortunate professor and his team whom you found in that cave in Yunnan, China. They wanted to know many more details that I could possibly know as a forensic anthropologist. Anyway, you should stand warned that your Porton Downs folks are likely to be calling on you soon to ask the same questions. So, will you have some of my English Plum Pudding with freshly whipped cream? I’ll take that as a yes.”
After the friends had spent a quiet weekend together, Himsley returned to Oxford where he immediately arranged to have his gong polished and mounted with a baton. He also had lunch with Sir Charles and told the great man the medicinal benefits of the brass gong. The knight grumbled about how difficult it was to keep a trophy wife happy. It seems they were getting a divorce. He said he would mount the polished gong on his country estate by the stables.
“The damned thoroughbreds are always coming down with something. This might do nicely to help with that. By the bye, the boys from Porton Downs dropped by to talk about some virus rubbish you diddled with in China. They were most importunate, I thought. Anyway, they’ll be visiting you in your digs in Oxford sometime soon. I’d make time to see them; I would if I was you. What have you gotten me into this time, Himsley? Well, no matter, I’m off to the hounds this weekend. Just sit here and enjoy your port wine. Leave when you like. And have them put the whole bill on my account.”
Professor Hiram Himsley sat back in his plush leather seat at the Automobile Club Restaurant. He enjoyed his seventeen-year-old port to the last drop. He mused about the mystery of the brass gong.
He already had, in his own account, the money for his next expedition. Should he return to China to find yet another hominid cave burial? He thought he might look into the new Indian finds in Belize. At least, he thought as he waved to the waiter, those ruins had not been overrun by enthusiasts from the Bronze Age. How could they have been when they were only constructed two millennia later?