15

“I’m glad you spoke to us all today,” said Davis. “It helped.”

“I had begun to wonder if the task here might be too troubling for you,” said Dr. Higg.

“Not at all,” Davis was quick to respond. “I like it here very much.”

Higg nodded, observing the younger man, and enjoying what he saw. Davis was a sensitive man. Most intelligent men were, in one way or another. But Davis thrived on work. That was very important.

He had asked Davis and Langton to join him at the White Swan. He had, actually, asked Peter Chambers as well, but the man had explained that he was not feeling particularly well.

Higg sipped his whiskey. It was that furtive young man, with his lean face and darting eyes, who had him troubled.

“Something is bothering Peter,” said Higg. “We all know—that is, the three of us here—that he has had some emotional troubles in the past. I wonder if the stress of all this has been too much.”

“He’s always been a quiet sort of man,” said Davis. “He seems about the same as always to me.”

Higg had his doubts, but perhaps Davis was right. It was difficult to understand a man like Peter Chambers.

Davis guessed that the two administrators would like to be alone together, so he stood and excused himself.

“No need to run off,” said Dr. Higg.

Davis thanked him, and turned away.

“I was thinking I might drop by and visit the laboratory just briefly tonight,” said Dr. Higg. “Actually, I wanted to spend a moment there alone. Do you have—?”

Davis gave him the keys, but pressed himself on Dr. Higg as an eager helper. “I’d be glad to show you anything you want to see in the lab.”

Davis had been disturbed by the apparent movement of the Skeldergate. Man, much more than he had even liked to admit to himself. Dr. Higg had seemed like a monument of rationality, and Davis was as grateful as a little boy that the distinguished scientist had paid them a visit. He had too much respect for Dr. Higg to argue with him. If he wanted the keys to the lab, he could have them.

“I want to putter about for a bit on my own, if I may,” said Higg, cradling the keys in his hand. “You run along.”

Davis did just that, shook hands with Dr. Higg and thanked him, and then left Higg with Langton’s balding pate for company. Langton wasn’t such a bad sort, but he was hardly a man of vigor and new ideas. Higg envied the young for their superstitions, and their need for reassurance. It took energy to be uneasy.

“It was, I must agree, a marvelous speech today,” said Langton.

“Hardly that. Hardly a speech, and only a bit of common sense.” Why was a compliment from Langton so irritating? “They are good, hardworking young people. That’s what counts.”

Music played, when it had been so comfortable and quiet. It was some displeasing thumping sort of music. It did not last long. When it was quiet again, Higg leaned toward Langton. “I am going to do some research tonight.”

“Indeed.” Langton blinked.

Higg nodded. “I am going to spend the night in the room with our friend.”

“Peter?”

“Oh no, heavens no, dear Charles. You can be really amusing. Please pay attention. I am going to spend the night with our friend the Skeldergate Man.”

Langton smiled uneasily. Then, seeing that it was not a joke, he twitched. “Is that wise, do you think?”

“My dear Charles, do you suppose there is any danger whatsoever?”

“How could there be?”

“Precisely. There can be no danger, and I would like to find what sort of draft or tremor or prankster it is that moves our ancient friend from the table to the floor each night.”

Langton grew solemn. “Do you really intend to spend the night there?”

“Alone, unless you intend to join me. I’ve spent worse nights in the field. I was bitten by a rattlesnake in New Mexico once on getting out of my sleeping bag. We were excavating pueblos near Taos. It was dark, and he had found my body warmth somehow pleasant. Fortunately, I was sleeping with my boots on, and the snake was so ill prepared he merely scratched the leather and left two little spurts of venom. He wasn’t a very large snake, poor fellow. The men we had with us shot him and skinned him within a minute. He bit a dog when he was dead. The dog was very sick, but didn’t die. The only time I can imagine a dead creature doing anything like harm. But here, you have me reminiscing, and this is very much unlike me.”

“You should write your memoirs, William,” said Langton. He was irritated with Dr. Higg. Langton felt vaguely responsible to Higg as long as he was in York. Higg would not have traveled to York if Langton had somehow managed to keep things sorted out. Langton was not nervous about the Skeldergate Man, but he was hardly going to sit up all night with Dr. Higg, who had twice his energy, and would no doubt want to spend the night discussing cranial volume or body art among the Papuans or some other ungodly subject. Langton admired Higg, but did not crave his constant companionship.

Besides, if you really considered it, there was something wrong about spending a night in that room. Langton couldn’t decide what it was. Something willful and stubborn and something else, too. It seemed, at bottom, very unwise. Langton could not suppose why. Langton himself had a wife and a border collie, and it was late. The dog would want a walk, and it would be fortunate to make it to Clifton Green tonight. Langton was tired.

Langton asked after Higg’s requirements. Bedding would not be necessary, said Dr. Higg. He would spend the night reading, and writing up his notes. It would, he said, be like the nights in the Yucatán, when rumors simmered that bandits were about and the unarmed scientists had to take turns staying up all night, reading to the hiss of a Coleman lantern.

Langton walked Higg to the college. Higg swung his blackthorn in one hand, and jingled the keys in the other. He would be glad to be alone. For some reason, he had spent too much time thinking about the past during the last day or two. And worse, talking about the past. Higg was far from young, but he was a man with many present interests. Nostalgia had no place in his intellectual landscape.

Langton wished him good night, and added, to Higg’s mild annoyance, “Are you quite sure you want to do this, William?”

“Entirely, thank you, Charles.”

At last, Higg was alone. He fumbled with the keys, and found the right one, door after door, until he stood in the brightly lit lab, thankful for his overcoat. He selected the one key he had not used, and strolled toward the room that held his friend, the Skeldergate Man.

Why did he feel that this was an adventure of sorts? He simply wanted to establish the fact that there was nothing at all supernatural about the Skeldergate Man, or the laboratory, and communicate it to his young colleagues. All it would take would be patience.

He could see his own breath. He unlocked the door, and the door handle would not open for a moment. It felt as though someone held it from the inside. Higg was not a particularly good man with devices of any sort. He supposed a door handle was, in its way, a device.

The door opened, as though relenting. Foolishly, Higg found himself hesitating before the darkness of the room within. For some reason, he had not expected dark. He wanted to laugh at himself. He had never in his life been, even for a moment, afraid of the dark.

He found the light switch. The fluorescent tubes stuttered and went out. They came on again, and stayed on, making that high, insect hum.

The Skeldergate Man was under a black plastic sheet. Its profile was discernible. It could be nothing else; only a human body would have had these contours. Higg found the only chair in the room, and pulled the results of the CAT scan from his inner pocket. He decided to leave his overcoat on in this cold room—cold and silent, except for the high, fine sound of the lights. He should have brought a flask of coffee.

Hadn’t there always been that footstep just beyond hearing, that skull he could not bear to have sitting beside him as he slept? He had always put away a skull he might have sitting about before he switched out the lights. He had always had an imagination.

He unfurled a sheaf of paper showing what looked like the topography of a complicated range of mountains. He let the paper fall to the floor. He really, indeed, should have brought a flask of coffee, or something to read aside from this report on the smuggling of icons from the Soviet Union, and this one, on the wear patterns on molars from the Roman cemetery in Aries. Both subjects would have been fascinating at any other time, but now, for some reason, he could not concentrate on them at all.

It had, after all, been a long day, but he was accustomed to work. He was not tired. It was something else. He was not sleepy, not a bit—there was something entirely different troubling him and making it impossible to read. Or to sit still. Or to think of anything else.

Except for the figure under the black plastic sheet. He had known a young woman working on the excavations in the ancient crypt of Spitalfields who had gone quite mad from working with the dead. It had been an especially difficult task, with high lead levels in the air from the old coffins, and both “wet” dead and “dry” dead, as they called them. Higg did not blame the young woman for her troubles, but usually these mental problems were the result of a preexisting stress. The more morbid aspects of archaeology could be easily dissipated by a rational approach. Naturally, it was a very good idea to screen the younger scientists carefully, and in this light Peter still troubled him.

Higg was itching with a very great desire to peek under the plastic sheet. Just a peek.

Why shouldn’t he, really, if one really stopped and thought about it? He could take a quick look, if he wanted to. Why was he even hesitating?

But he did hesitate. He should sit still, and read. There was no reason to pay any notice to the poor fragment of a human life that lay under the black plastic sheet.

Just a peek.

There had always been that sense that something was watching, on those star-filled nights in New Mexico. One of the old wranglers who handled the horses had laughed about the snake. “It is a gift,” he had said. “Of luck from the other world.”

From the Other World.

This was impossible. He was sitting, unable to read, fidgeting like a boy. The thing to do was very simple: stand up, and step over to the table and take that good, long peek, just to get it done and out of the way. Then he could sit and read, and the article about the icons was really quite interesting, in its way.

Don’t.

Higg was extremely annoyed with himself now. His body would not rise from the chair. He could not reach the table from here. It was quite impossible for him to examine the Skeldergate Man without rising from the chair—as he did now, at last—and stepping to the table.

At last his arms and legs were cooperating. This was very kind of them, he thought. Now I will put my hands on the black plastic, and pull it to one side.

No.

His hand was trembling. This was most irritating, and made Higg think that perhaps there might be some medical trouble. There was no reason he could think of that would account for this extreme cold he was feeling, and the great difficulty he had in getting his hands to obey his will.

Higg calmed himself, taking deep, regular breaths, and realized as he did so that he had been, and probably still was, afraid. Afraid! It was really thoroughly absurd, and he knew one quick way to dispel any such nonsense immediately from his mind.

He grasped the edge of the plastic between his thumb and his forefinger, and he whisked the sheet aside.