One by one, Reid prepared slides for Kilgore, carefully taking the swabs, flushing them, and staining them. Then he handed them to Kilgore where she sat at the microscope. She’d mount the slide and place her eyes to the view screen as she adjusted the focus. Reid checked the time. They’d been at it for six hours; his stomach reminded him of a twisted washcloth: empty and knotted.
No sooner did Kilgore refine the focus then she’d refer to the pollen catalog, scrolling through different morphologies in the key.
“Anything?” Reid asked.
“I’ve got just about every weed, grass, and fiber that grew in ancient Egypt. But not one speck of corn pollen, no sunflower, no tumbleweed, not a single pollen grain from an invasive or imported species. I’ve ID’d cotton fibers, goat and camel hair, cat fur, and strands of human hair. I’ve got indigenous insect parts and egg sacs. But not a single fiber of nylon, rayon, Dacron, or any other synthetic—and believe me, they’re all over the world now. I mean . . .” she leaned back, brow furrowed, “I’m smarter than this. How’d they do it?”
“Do you want to look at the dental micrographs again?”
“No. The abrasion on the grinding surfaces of the teeth are completely consistent with an ancient Egyptian.” She started, lifting a finger. “Wait. I’m forgetting the calculus.”
“You talking mathematics?”
“Calculus, that’s the hard stuff commonly called tartar that forms around base of the teeth. It traps microparticles from food and drink, cements them in layers. So, if I go to the bottommost layer, I’ll get a sample of what he was eating immediately after his dental hygiene cratered.”
“And?”
“And if I get a New World domesticate like corn, chocolate, tobacco, sunflower, potato, peanut, or chili, I’ve got him.”
“Because none of those crops grew in Egypt before Columbus.”
“Egyptians did somehow obtain cocaine and tobacco a couple hundred years BC, but not much, and it was definitely a luxury good. Someone transported it from South America, across the Atlantic, and to Egypt.”
“Could that be the source of the mtDNA?”
“Not if he’s from the Eighteenth Dynasty, a thousand years before even that tiny bit of trade.”
Two black-clad guards pushed the lab doors open and stepped in. HK MP-5 submachine guns rested in slings across their chests. They took positions to either side of the door, hard eyes on Reid and Kilgore.
In their wake Bill Minor entered, and a tall woman followed.
Reid lowered his voice. “Fluvium’s wife, as promised?”
“Yeah, sure. And I’m Cleopatra.”
“Well, given your father’s genetics . . .”
She elbowed him in the ribs.
Minor shot them a warning glance, but Reid’s attention was on the woman. She didn’t just enter the room; she owned it upon arrival. Her movements were fluid, her head erect as she surveyed the lab. She wore a flowing, almost iridescent blue gown that added to the effect. Bill Minor and his guards might have been superfluous.
It hit him: Here was a supernatural among mortals. And then she fixed on him with blue eyes so intense they almost made him gasp.
“You find him?” she asked in an accent-heavy contralto.
“I’m Dr. Reid Farmer.” He offered his hand. “And this is my colleague, Dr. Kilgore France.”
She ignored his hand. “You find Fluvium? In sepulcrum?”
“You mean in the tomb? Yes.” Reid—aware of Kilgore’s sudden bristling—crossed his arms defensively. “We dug where they told us and located a tomb, yes. Over the door was engraved the words, TEMPUS DEVINCERO.”
Her expression softened. “Certo, quo declaissent.” Then, with resolution, she said, “I see him, please.”
Bill Minor stepped forward, glancing sidelong at Reid and Kilgore. “You’d better have taken all of your samples. I’m letting her in to see the deceased.”
“The hoax, you mean?” Kilgore seemed entirely unaffected by the woman’s magnetism.
The woman took Kilgore’s measure, apparently unimpressed. “What is this word? Hoax? I do not understand.”
Bill Minor said, “These scholars, um, discipuli, question your husband’s age, um, antiquitas.”
“Damn right.” Kilgore lifted a leg and tapped her ankle. “That broken leg and the screws, for one thing.”
The woman’s gaze intensified. “What you call crash. Volocaelum. Airplane. Yes?” She made what Reid took to be a flying motion with a cupped hand. “Seven anni gone . . . past. Medicus . . . what is word? Fix. Yes?” She bent down pointing at her lower calf. “Here.”
Kilgore looked confused. “You admit it was only seven years since he was injured?”
“Tempus invilatus non est, sed certumque inexorablum est.” With a bitter chuckle, she said in English, “Time always, in the end, wins.” Then her face hardened, and she turned to Minor. “Take me. Please.”
Reid watched as the woman was escorted past the doors and into the back. With a surreptitious glance at Kilgore, he followed. No one bothered to stop them.
The woman stepped up to the mummy where it lay on its raised gurney. Her fists curled into knots at her side; the muscles in her forearms rippled beneath alabaster skin. A vengeful saint might wear an expression like hers, filled with bottled rage, pain, and a soul-coring guilt that might have sucked at her very bones.
Then, like the rending of a mighty oak’s heartwood, her right arm extended. Her hand was delicately boned, the fingers long and slender. The way she caressed the side of the corpse’s desiccated face, sent a spear through Reid.
She was whispering softly now, the words a curious mixture of what Reid believed to be Latin, mixed with something else.
“Me paenitet,” She closed her eyes, head bowed, as if frozen.
My God, Reid thought uncomfortably, can a woman really love that much?
Kilgore was shifting beside him, a skeptical squint in her eyes. Surely, as a female, she had to be sensitive to the emotion conveyed by that sorrowful posture. Reid could hear Kilgore’s teeth grinding.
He shot a sidelong glance at her just as Bill Minor’s belt pager buzzed. A tiny voice carried loudly in the room as it said, “We’ve got another security alert. Perimeter fence. Section six.”
Minor frowned, lifted his belt comm, and said, “Status?”
“Nothing on visual, sir. Unit seven happened to be right there on patrol. He reports all clear, but I think whoever’s been toying with us is at it again.”
“Keep me posted. With the Domina here, I want everyone on their toes.”
“Copy that.”
The woman might not have heard. Her reverential pose remained unbroken, her head bowed like a grieving goddess.
No sooner had Minor removed his hand, than the belt comm buzzed again, the voice saying, “Sir? We’ve got more perimeter alarms. Sections three, five, and eight.”
“Analysis?” Minor’s expression tightened.
“Unsure, sir. I’m sending people to check each one. Either the hacker’s getting better, or we’ve got a glitch.”
“No room for error here. Do I evacuate the Domina?”
“I’ve got nothing on the screens, sir. Just the perimeter alarms going off. Assets on the ground report nothing out of the ordinary. Perimeter defense is deploying according to plan. Still no evidence of attempted infiltration.”
“When I find that asshole . . .” Minor growled. “Bastard’s had us running in circles for hours now.”
As he replaced his belt unit, he stepped forward, saying, “Domina, excuse me. Security reports an irregularity. I really need you to return to the upper level. We may have to fly you out of here in a hurry.”
She started—as if from a dream—and fixed him with her remarkable eyes. “Pericula?”
“We don’t know, ma’am. But a lot of people would love to get their hands on you. Please, um, placere.”
“Ad aeternum, tu amo, Fluvium,” she whispered to the mummy, then bent down and brushed a kiss across the thing’s desiccated forehead. Then she drew herself to her full height and took a resolute breath. Like a wounded queen, she walked out with her head high, tawny curls spilling down her back.
Reid caught the words, “Dzibilchaltun” and “Xlacah” as she crossed the lab.
“Dzibilchaltun? The Xlacah cenote?” he asked. “You know it? In the Yucatan?”
Her remarkable eyes flew wide. She stared at him, disbelieving. “You understand me?” Then she rattled off a string of words.
Reid cried, “That’s Yucatec! A Maya Indian dialect. I heard a lot of it while I was working in Mexico. I dug at Dzibilchaltun.”
Her incredulous gaze bored into his like blue lasers.
“Dzibilchaltun,” he repeated. “The Maya city just south of Merida. You’ve obviously been there if you can speak Yucatec. It’s the indigenous language.”
“I know no Merida. But yes, Dzibilchaltun, the dzonot Xlacah.” A faint smile bent her lips. “In chi’hi’lama Ch’olti. I speak . . . read Ch’olan language. Fluvium, he and I discipuliae, how you say, students. At the collegium. Nubere, ah, the word, matrimonium? That is marry?” She crossed her fingers, as if the gesture would explain.
“We call it matrimony. You and Fluvium?” He pointed back at the sterile room. “You married him there? In Dzibilchaltun? As students? How long ago?”
“Sedecim. In Ch’olan: wuklahun. You say seventeen years. My years. Perhaps not yours.” With a tilt of her head toward the sterile room, she bitterly added, “Certe, certainly not his.”
“What did you study there?” Reid asked, aware that both Bill Minor and Kilgore were giving them stunned looks.
“What you call theoretical physics. The finest collegia mathematici . . . All are in Dzibilchaltun.”
“And you know the mathematics?” he asked, thinking of the Mayan glyphs he’d seen in the tomb. He grabbed for a piece of paper and clawed his pen from his pocket. He was uncomfortably aware of her presence as she leaned next to him. He began the Mayan notations, a dot for one, two dots for two, and so on.
“Crudis urina! You know this? In your world? You have studied mathematicus in Yucateca?”
“Many archaeologists have worked out the Mayan mathematics. We can even translate most of the language. Slowly, surely, we’re learning their history, who their rulers were.”
“Were?” she asked, her voice curiously hollow. “No more?”
“The Yucateca remain. They help excavate the heritage of their ancestors. But Dzibilchaltun, as you surely know, is nothing but ruins.”
Her blue gaze cooled until it became glacial. “No collegia? No physics at Dzibilchaltun in your world?”
“Dzibilchaltun is a dead city. Abandoned almost a thousand years ago. The brush, the brasada, grew over it.”
In disgust she said, “Nequam populi, inanus orbis.”
Bill Minor’s belt comm buzzed, and the disembodied voice said, “Sir? We think the alarms are a diversion. Someone is attempting to download our system. I think the firewall stopped them cold for the moment.”
“And if they succeed?” Minor asked, lifting the comm.
“Our guess is that they’re trying to access our files. They’ve made two attempts already.”
“Keep them out!” The corners of his eyes tightened. “Meanwhile, nobody lets up. I want every alarm checked, and then double-checked.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nequam populi, inanus orbis?” Reid asked. “What does that . . .”
The lights went out, leaving him blinking in the sudden blackness.
“Son of a bitch!” Minor’s voice boomed. His flashlight beam shot a white cone across the room. “Domina, I need you to take my hand. That’s it. We’re going to get you out of here now.”
“But libris, the book? Vitrum amphoram . . . the container? Most important: Did you find cerebrum?” she was almost frantic about that last.
“We’ve got to go now!” Minor snapped. “Periculum!”
Reid started forward, only to feel Kilgore’s hand tighten on his elbow. She leaned close, whispering, “It could be that Savage and his people have finally found us. Let’s get our notes together, Reid. I want to take everything with me that I can.”
He watched the flashlight waver as Bill Minor led Domina, or whatever her name was, from the room. In the afterglow the two armed guards stepped out behind them. The lab went pitch-black as the hallway doors slipped shut.
He heard clattering as Kilgore felt around on the workbench. A small LED flashlight cast a white glare—the light she used when peering into the mummy’s orifices. “Let’s go.”
Reid helped her gather her notes, muttering, “She attended a college at Dzibilchaltun? Seventeen years ago? She says she speaks Ch’olan? How impossible is that?”
“Gotta hand it to her,” Kilgore growled, “She’s one hell of a bullshitter.”
“That woman was hurting,” Reid insisted. Then, remembering her words, he tossed the papyrus book, the glass jar of liquid, and the heavy electrical box into a satchel.
“You’re bullshitting yourself,” Kilgore snapped acidly. “She looks to be in her mid-thirties. That mummy in there was in his sixties. Fake ancient Egyptian that he is, he didn’t just die yesterday! That’s an old corpse, decades old. And we’re supposed to believe they were students together in an abandoned Maya city? Give me a break.”
They’d no sooner stepped out the door than the lights flashed on.
“Shit,” Kilgore growled.
“Come on,” Reid muttered. “This is the only time since we’ve been here that the lab door hasn’t been guarded. Let’s go.”
“Go where? You heard. They’ve got teams scouring the outside looking for intruders.”
“Well . . . what the hell? I say we head for the kitchen. We know which door the food comes out of at mealtime. Maybe the cooks won’t care. I’ve got this satchel, and you’re carrying that pack of notes. The lab coats make us look official.”
“And if we’re caught?”
The lights flickered off again as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
“We say we’re looking for Bill Minor. That we’ve found something important about the mummy.”
“What?”
“You’re smart. Think of something.”
Her LED light flickered on and was pointed at his face, making him squint. “You’re blinding me.”
“No, I just want to see your eyes when I ask if you’re as dumb as every other man on the planet.”
“Huh?”
“Laserlike blue eyes, corn silk hair, tall and thin, wearing a stunning blue dress that accented every sensual curve? I look over and you’re staring at her with dilated pupils. I watch your heartbeat and respiration increase, your posture adopting a presentation mode. And you’re nodding while she tells you she married that corpse while studying physics in a Mayan ruin? I don’t get it. You’ve suddenly gone dumb as a post?” Then she said in disgust, “Typical idiot male.”