The night visitor, p.10
The Night Visitor, page 10
Horace Flye showed up when the full moon was two hours above the crest of the San Juans. And got to work right away.
He was, Delia Silver observed, good with his hands. He smelled of honest sweat and roll-your-own tobacco that he carried in a sack in his shirt pocket, but it was an agreeable aroma. And he was rather nice.
He fixed her thermostat so it’d By Gosh stay fixed. The cabin temperature went up ten degrees in as many minutes.
She was quite pleased. And aware that furnace work was not a part of his normal assignment. Moreover, Mr. Flye had worked overtime without any pay at all. No, it just wouldn’t be right to send him away without some kind of reward. And as it turned out, Delia had something in mind. Something special.
“Mr. Flye?”
“Yes ma’am?”
“You’ve been very kind.” She hesitated. “I want to return the favor.”
Horace felt his pulse quicken.
She looked out the window toward her father’s cabin, then pulled the shade. “But it’ll have to be… our little secret.”
He tried to speak, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. So he nodded.
On Friday, Horace was processing loose dirt through the motor-driven sifter. The noisy machine vibrated the soil through a stack of increasingly finer wire screens. All the larger rocks stayed on the top. Intermediate-sized pebbles stopped at various levels, according to size. The stuff that fell all the way through was almost like face powder. It was late in the morning when he found something very pretty on the uppermost mesh, among the rough assortment of stones.
Flye hurried to Moses Silver with his find.
The old man removed his thick trifocals, and held the specimen within six inches of his nose. “Ahhhh,” he said, obviously quite pleased. It was a short projectile point, with side notches. Made of a pale reddish-white chalcedony. He slipped the spectacles back onto the bridge of his blunt nose and blinked at Horace Flye. “So… you found this in the sifter?” He checked his notebook. “That batch would be quadrant J-22, wouldn’t it?”
Horace’s head bobbed in agreement.
The paleontologist patted him on the shoulder. “Well, good for you.” He turned to place the specimen in a small plastic box.
“D’you reckon,” Horace said, “that this mighta been used to kill the elephant?”
Moses shook his head. “Afraid not. This projectile point was rather far from the remains for us to assume any association with the mammoth.” Now a merry twinkle glistened in the old man’s eye. “Moreover, the artifact is of much too recent origin to have been associated with an ice-age mammal.”
“Oh,” Flye said, evidence of his disappointment spreading across his face. “I guess you can just tell by lookin’—how old one of them flint arrow points is.”
“Within a thousand years or so.” Moses chuckled. “But don’t be discouraged… just keep up the good work.”
Horace returned to his chores.
Delia sidled up to him and whispered. “I see you found the projectile point.”
He gave the old man a furtive glance. “Yes ma’am. And I’m much obliged to you.” She had showed Horace the pretty little arrowhead only last night. And told him what her father was up to. Moses would plant the artifact where his hired hand would be certain to find it. If the Arkansas man pocketed his find, he’d be marked as a thief and sacked at day’s end. Horace Flye—an uncomplicated soul—was not offended that his honor would be put to the test. These folks had a perfect right to find out if a stranger they’d hired would swipe everything he could stuff in his pockets. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t stolen one or two necessities in his time. Well, maybe a little bit more than one or two. But most of all, he was greatly impressed with such a clever ruse. Old man Silver had a pint or two more brains that he’d given him credit for. Maybe educated people ain’t necessarily dumb. It’s somethin’ worth keepin’ in mind …
Armed with Delia’s warning, he had passed the test and was now a trusted member of the excavation team. The Arkansas man rubbed thoughtfully at his whiskered chin. “Your daddy says the arrowhead’s not all that old. Looks plenty old to me.”
I really shouldn’t tell him.
She sure had a funny little grin on her face. “So where’d you find that little flint rock?”
Delia was enjoying her part in this small conspiracy against her father. “I didn’t find it. I made it.”
His mouth fell open. “Made it? But when …?”
“Yesterday evening. Right before you came over to fix my furnace.”
Flye stared at her, openmouthed. “No… you’re teasin’ me.”
She smiled. He was such an innocent.
And so the day proceeded toward sundown. The odd trio was happily content.
Moses Silver had his ancient bones. And nourished his secret hopes that this dig would be different from all the mediocre ones. And it would.
Delia, who was pleased with Horace Flye, busied herself with a hundred small tasks.
Flye—whose goals were simple—was pleased merely to have a job of work.
It seemed that nothing could be added to such a perfect day. But when heaven’s blessings fall like the sweet rains of spring …
It was precisely three o’clock in the afternoon. Moses Silver was painstakingly uncovering the lower section of the great beast’s pelvis. He looked up at his daughter; Delia was moving lights and reflectors about, preparing to make archival photographs. The old man’s voice was tinged with enthusiasm. “I’ve measured the oblique height of the pelvic aperture. And the width of the illium shaft. By applying Lister’s criteria on pelvic measurements, and the work of Vereschagin and Tichonov on the ratio of tusk length to basal diameter—there’s no doubt about it. We have ourselves a bull mammoth. A good-sized one, too.”
Delia smiled with affection. Even so far from his classroom, Daddy was an incurable academic.
Determination of gender was a boost for morale, though hardly a cause for jubilation. But as Moses worked through the afternoon, he uncovered a great knob of femur. The joint of the thigh bone was neatly articulated to the hollow acetabulum on the pelvis. So it seemed that they might have an intact skeleton.
This brought a shout of joy from the old paleontologist.
Delia hugged her father.
These were good, solid bones. A great sweeping tusk. Another still to be uncovered. Reliable gender determination.
And just perhaps—a mostly articulated skeleton.
It would hardly seem that so many favors could be granted in such a brief span of time. But the hours of this day were not yet exhausted. Nor were its great store of blessings. If blessings they were …
Moses, his back aching from his labors, was gently brushing the soil of ages off the upper femur.
The old man paused, holding his breath. Could this be an illusion?
His daughter had also seen it. Delia reached to adjust the flood lamp to better illuminate this discovery.
Along the surface of the bone were shallow, almost parallel incisions. “My God,” the paleontologist said, “oh my God …”
“Daddy,” she said, reaching to touch his trembling hand. All his life, this is what he had most wanted.
Horace Flye, who did not understand what all the commotion was about, kneeled beside the excavation. “Whatcha find?”
The old man looked up, shaking his head in childlike awe. “Mr. Flye… we have butcher marks on the bone. This is a human kill site.”
Moses had grabbed the gold ring. He had a site where early humans had killed a mammoth! Not the first one to be uncovered, of course—nor probably the most important. But mine own!
The mammoth fossils, he realized, would be about eleven thousand years old. Give or take a thousand. It could not have been much earlier. It was a widely accepted maxim—despite scattered hints here and there of more ancient human habitation—that humans had not set foot on the North American continent until about eleven or twelve millennia ago. And the great mammoths had perished within two thousand years of that auspicious arrival of Homo sapiens. Probably from over-hunting, though that hypothesis remained controversial. And now, in the remains of a swampy pond long since dry, man had returned to find evidence of his past.
But things are often not quite as they seem.
A week earlier, Professor Moses Silver had Fed-Ex’ed several samples from the site to a private firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the very moment he had found the marks on the bone, a young woman—surrounded by an array of artifacts of this highly technological society—was working in a laboratory filled with marvelous instruments. The bone fragments had been hydrolyzed to carbon dioxide, which in turn was purified and converted to benzene. Though all the numbers were already stored on a computer disk, and despite the fact that Dr. Weber was a mere thirty-three years old, she had an old-fashioned attitude about recording data. So she took the time to inscribe the information by hand in a bound laboratory notebook.
Prof. Moses Silver, McFain Ranch
Sample b-112/quodrant D-3. (Mommoth bone fragment) Carbon-14 (apatite): 31,200 YBP +/· 400 Y
Sample fl-119/quodront 0-3. (Plant matter under Sample b-112) Carbon14: 31,240 YBP +/- 350 Y
Too bad, Dr. Weber thought. Moses Silver—who was such a nice old fellow—had always wanted a human kill site more than anything in the world. But this particular beast had died far too long ago for that.
Moses Silver was in his cabin, with his laptop computer connected to the single telephone line. He was scanning his day’s electronic mail. Two dozen missives; much of it was departmental chaff from his colleagues at Rocky Mountain Polytechnic. Announcements of departmental meetings. A talk by the bright young archaeologist from Stanford. And near the bottom, a note from Dr. Weber. He smiled. She was an efficient young scientist. Already had the bone fragment and the plant material dated. He clicked on the line and opened the mail. And read the brief report.
He shook his head in appalled disbelief. It was one thing to have a mammoth kill site… there had, after all, been others. But never one whose age exceeded twelve thousand years. And Weber’s analysis of the bone samples yielded an age of thirty-one thousand years. Could he be wrong about the butcher marks? No. Certainly not. He felt his head swimming.
Dr. Silver shut down the computer and unplugged the modem from the telephone line. He dialed his daughter’s cabin.
Delia picked up on the second ring. “Yes?”
“It’s me.”
“Daddy?”
“Delia… something astonishing has happened.” He proceeded to tell her about the dating.
There was dead silence on the line.
“Delia, are you there?”
“Yes. Daddy, there must be some mistake… the fossil remains simply can’t be that old in a human kill site.” Or maybe the “butcher marks” weren’t made by early humans. Perhaps some large carnivore had gnawed on the femur. But she didn’t dare raise this possibility. It would break his heart.
He was calm now. “We’ll have to submit more samples, of course. And have them dated at different labs. But I know Dr. Weber. She simply does not make mistakes.”
“But if it’s true …”
“If the dates hold—and the marks are indeed butcher marks,” he said soberly, “we’ll be rewriting the history of early humans in the Americas.” He paused to think about his next step. “Delia… we’ll have to halt all work on the site. And bring in someone to corroborate our findings.”
She tapped her fingers nervously on the telephone receiver. “If you’re going to do that, you might as well bring in the strongest skeptics in the field. Someone influential.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s just what we’ll do.”
“That would be Cordell York. And Professor Newton.”
“Bob Newton,” he said thoughtfully, “is the best butcher-mark man in the business. But Cordell York is such an arrogant ass.” It was galling to him that his life’s profession was merely a delightful hobby to York. But there was more that he would not admit to. That the accursed amateur was a supernova… and himself such a minor light. Moses—who was normally a fair-minded man—preferred to believe that York’s road to success had been paved with family money and influence. “And he’s not really one of us, Delia. The man only plays at paleontology.”
“That’s beside the point,” she said. “Cordell York is a world-class expert on ice-age kill sites.”
Her father snorted. “He thinks he is.”
“Daddy, he’s very influential. If you can’t convince him… well …” She heard her father’s groan quite clearly, and knew what was running through his mind. Cordell York was arrogant. And opinionated. But worst of all—from her father’s perspective—York was not a trained paleontologist. He was a graduate of Harvard Medical School; an eminent orthopedic surgeon. York had wormed his way into the community of paleontologists by his brilliant insights. And by generous grants to struggling investigators and several cash-pressed museums. For the past decade, Cordell York had been senior editor of a very influential scientific journal. Primarily because he was an outsider, the surgeon was not well-liked by the older generation of paleontologists. But York was respected. And feared. And that combination could be an enormous advantage to her father. But only if Bob Newton verified that the marks on the bone were made by a flint implement. And if Cordell York decided to support that position. The latter was an especially big if.
He’d been silent for a long time. “Daddy… are you there?”
He grunted. “I don’t know, Delia. York will treat our dig as a big joke. And I can’t imagine Bob Newton coming to an unorthodox conclusion about what clearly appears to be butchering marks on a thirty-one-thousand-year-old mammoth fossil. He’ll take the easy way out and conclude that the incisions were made by nonhuman predators.”
Delia looked through the darkened window toward her father’s cabin, and imagined his anxiety. “I know it’s risky. But if we could get both of them on our side …”
“Okay,” Moses said with weary resignation. “We’ll invite York and Newton out to have a gander at what we’ve found.” He said his good night and replaced the telephone in its cradle. Until the dating had been reported, this had been such a fantastic dig. Now Cordell York would be examining every minute detail, criticizing every procedure, questioning every conclusion. Looking down his nose at me like I was some kind of incompetent amateur. “Damn,” he said. For Moses Silver, this was a heavy oath.
Moses arranged a conference call to Cordell York and Robert Newton. After the usual greetings, his comments were intentionally terse. “Delia and I have been unearthing mammoth remains in southern Colorado. It appears to be a human kill site.” He accepted the expected congratulations and took a deep breath. “Thing is, there are some… ahhh… rather unusual features. All work has been halted, pending consultations with colleagues. We’d certainly appreciate it if you fellows would come out and give us the benefit of your expertise.”
This cryptic comment produced the expected questions.
Moses Silver stubbornly refused to elaborate. “These are not matters to be discussed over the telephone. You’ll have to see for yourself.”
Such a mysterious invitation could hardly be refused. Robert Newton and Cordell York immediately accepted.
It was a mere three days later when the visiting experts were scheduled to arrive. Delia had driven the Land Rover to the busy airport in Colorado Springs. Now, they waited at the appointed gate. She sensed her father’s tension and nudged him. “Now remember, Daddy… be nice to them. Try not to get excited.”
Moses nervously popped his knuckles. “Bob Newton’s all right, except he can’t make up his mind about what color socks to put on in the morning. Cordell York is a horse of a different stripe. In fact, he can be a real horse’s ass,” Moses grumped.
“I know, but he’s very important. That’s why you invited him,” she reminded her father, “not because you like his personality.” Delia did not mention Cordell York was also very good-looking. And wealthy. And unmarried.
“York’s not really one of us,” her father continued.
She knew. “Hush, Daddy—there they are.” Delia waved.
And then they were face-to-face with the two Wise Men from the East.
Professor Robert Newton was a small, elderly man, dressed in mismatched clothes that hung on him like castoff rags on a comic scarecrow. He carried his years as if they were heavy. Newton also carried a brass-headed cane, and not as an ornament. He leaned on it. The scientist’s mild expression was one of continual apology, as if to beg excuse for the affront of his existence among more attractive folk.
When the meek inherit the earth, Moses thought, Robert Newton will likely end up with all of Massachusetts. And Rhode Island thrown in.
Dr. Cordell York was, so it seemed, everything that Newton was not. Well over six feet, well under fifty years. Immaculate two-thousand-dollar suit, two-hundred-dollar silk tie, custom-made shoes. This man had never apologized for any wrong done—it simply would not have occurred to him that he could be guilty of any error.
Men considered him outrageously arrogant.
Women thought him outrageously handsome. And dangerous, which is a far greater attraction. The physician’s flashing smile exposed rows of perfectly shaped teeth. A fine specimen of the well-bred shark.
It seemed to be going reasonably well. Delia and her father met the visitors with smiles, exchanged vigorous handshakes, and made the usual perfunctory questions about the flight.
“It has been pleasant enough,” Newton said thoughtfully. “One is happy to be on the ground, however.”
“We’re very pleased and gratified that you could both come on such short notice,” Moses Silver said, and meant it. Newton was the scholar-priest who could verify the butcher marks on the mammoth bone. York was the exalted bishop who—if he was so inclined—had the authority to bless Newton’s decision.
“Yes,” Delia added with a shy look at the tall surgeon. “It’s very kind of you to come all the way to Colorado.”
Dr. York flashed a half-mocking smile at the young woman. “Well, how could we miss such a remarkable opportunity? Back East, we Philistines understand Moses has parted the waters once more. Claims he’s found a human kill site from an age where humans n’er trod.” He laughed in genuine amusement. “Now that’s quite some miracle. What’s next, pray tell?”
