"All right" Which means another week waiting for the damned directors to make a damned decision.
"Here's your big picture." The technician waved a hand at the wide flat-screen. "Pretty weird stuff."
"What the hell?" Hutch's voice held a note of wonder that Aleksi had not heard before.
She peered at the screen, and a chill climbed her spine. The rotating three-dimensional image resembled nothing she'd ever seen before. The shape was slim, but curled up into a ball, twisted into a contortionist's nightmare, the sinuous neck canted back, long forelegs flung up at odd angles. What looked like shreds of tissue trailed from the elongated third and fourth digits of the forefeet. The hind legs were drawn up in a fetal posture, and hard to discern, the feet long-toed with what might have been claws.
"What is that?" Aleksi traced a finger along the outline of the elongated digits of the forelimbs.
"Don't touch the screen, please." The tech scowled at her.
"Sorry." Aleksi stepped back, her arms folded as she stared at the image on the screen.
"I'll just put this on a stick for you, and you can look at it all you want. I've got another scan to do today." The tech put a stick in a USB and started the process, but the image continued to rotate on the screen.
"Have you ever seen anything like that before?" Aleksi looked at Hutch, but he hadn't heard her. He stood transfixed, as if staring into a hypnotist's crystal ball.
"Hutch?" Bob said, touching his arm.
"Huh? Oh, sorry." He looked at them both then back to the screen. "No. I've never seen anything like this in my life."
By the time the specimen was back in Aleksi's lab, the winter sun had set. Hutch ushered Bob and Aleksi to his office to call Quinton. Bob sat in the upholstered chair in the corner and Aleksi paced, biting her nails. She was a wreck, but Hutch didn't know how to calm her down. He tapped in Quinton's number and put the call on speaker.
"Hutch? What's up?" Quinton sounded like he was in the middle of something.
Hutch checked the time and cringed. "Sorry to call after hours, Quinton, but we've had quite a day and I'm sending you some files." Hutch was already uploading the huge CT image files onto a shared university mailbox. "You'll never guess in a million years what we found."
"No, I probably won't, and I quit playing guessing games twenty years ago."
"Okay, then, I'll just tell you; there was nothing inside but dust and a few teeth."
"Not funny, Hutch." They heard the sound of cutlery clattering on a plate. "You wouldn't be calling me in the middle of dinner if you hadn't found anything."
"Not trying to be funny. The space inside the plaster was completely degraded. No bones, no fossilized remnants, but the CT gave us a very interesting three-dee image of the thing's outline. I'm uploading that into the shared mailbox now. Give it a look and call me in the morning."
There was a long silence. "That good, huh?"
Hutch looked up at Alexi and winked. "That good, Quinton. Nothing I've ever seen before. Aleksi's itching to cut the thing open for dating, morphology, and genetic material from the tooth remnants."
"And the journal?" Quinton asked. "How's that going?"
"I'm still working on it," Aleksi put in, pausing in her pacing for a moment. "I can send you what I've got so far, but there's probably another week of work, and classes start Monday. I won't have as much time to work on it once semester begins…"
"All right, all right. I get it. I'll have a look at these pictures and get back to you in the morning, Hutch. Don't send any of the journal until you've got the whole thing translated, Aleksi. We're not in a hurry."
They said their goodbyes and Hutch hung up.
"He sounded mad." Aleksi bit her nails and resumed pacing, still obviously wound up tight. "Maybe we should have waited to call him at the office."
"Relax, Aleksi." Hutch shut down his computer. "I'll bet you both lunch at Grendel's that he takes one look at that image and gives us the go ahead."
"I'll take that bet!" Bob's eyes flashed at the mention of food and lurched to his feet. "Come on, Aleksi, I'll buy you a slice of pizza."
"I don't know, Hutch." Aleksi bit her nails some more. "You think so?"
"I know Quinton, Aleksi. He's a scientist. When he sees what we saw on that CT, he's going to be as curious as we are." He pulled his laptop out of the docking station and stuffed it into a carry bag. "Wanna bet?"
She shook her head. "No, and I'm starving."
"Excellent!" Bob grinned and grabbed her arm, steering her out of the office. "Let's go!"
"See you for lunch." Hutch watched them go with a little flicker of warmth. Bob seemed able to break through Aleksi's shyness. He hefted his computer bag and headed for home.
An hour later, in his kitchen, Hutch had just started making dinner when his cell phone chirped. He answered with a grin. "Couldn't wait until morning, Quinton?"
"You've got the go ahead, but be damned careful, Hutch." Quinton sounded both elated and worried. "I've never seen anything like this in my life. Don't screw this up."
"We'll be careful."
"Just the teeth for now, right?"
"Yes, just the teeth, and just enough to get the samples we need."
"All right. Goodnight then."
"Goodnight, Quinton." He tapped end and punched up Aleksi's number.
"Is he going to let us do it?" Aleksi sounded positively frantic.
"Yep. Is Bob with you?"
"Right here. Let me put you on speaker."
The sounds of a busy restaurant came through the phone.
"Okay, we meet at Grendel's for planning at eleven. We don't have much to work with here, and this could be something that's never been described before. That means precise measurements and photographic documentation the whole way."
"We can get measurements from the CT images, and outline a plan for exposing the teeth and taking samples." Hutch could tell by her tone that Aleksi and Bob had already been discussing the task. "The exposed tooth from the journal is probably already contaminated with human DNA from the original excavation. We can take that one for morphology, and the others for genetic data."
"We'll discuss it at lunch. You two relax tonight. We've earned a night off."
"Um…yeah. Okay. G'nite Hutch."
"Goodnight." He ended the call and flipped his Portobello in the pan, feeling a little strange. Bob and Aleksi? It could happen, and they would be good for each other.
Locks, keys, security cameras, passwords… It's like nobody trusts anyone around here. A key slipped into the lock of Quinton Neilson's office door and turned. Click.
"Paranoia…" Derrick Penningly slipped through the door and locked it behind him for the next pass of the security guard.
He had little more than contempt for campus security. It had been no better at Princeton, and he'd hacked their system in his junior year. He had spent two years delving the files of half the faculty; tests, research, even email—which turned into blackmail when he found an assistant professor with an inbox full of explicit bondage pictures of him with another man.
At the curator's desk, his rubber-gloved fingertips tapped in Neilson's password. Patience…careful… He'd overheard Neilson talking to one of his cronies about what the Hutchinson team had found. "Like nothing I've ever seen before." It sounded like a perfect doctoral project for a brilliant young scientist from Princeton.
He found the file he was looking for and pulled it up. The image loaded slowly then came to life in a 3-D rotating display.
"What the fuck?" Was this some kind of a hoax? It looked like something out of some geek fantasy game, half bat, half human. He checked the other imaging files, but none were as good as this one. X-rays didn't show any skeletal structure at all, but he could see the outline of the plaster cast. The images were genuine.
"I gotta get a look at this thing. There's got to be more data." And Derrick knew only one place he could find it: Hutchinson's laboratory. But he didn't have keys. He might sneak in somehow for a peek
, but what he really needed was free access, time to copy their research files, figure out how to horn in.
But he had to be careful.
Patience… The sample wasn't going anywhere. Got to figure out how to make a play for this. Maybe get in with one of Hutchinson's students. Let them do the grunt work, then scoop it up.
Then he remembered the mousey woman, Aleksi, so afraid, so vulnerable, so fucking needy. A smile spread across his lips like blood flowing from an open wound. "Yeah. She's my key." He didn't know how, exactly, yet. Get close, sidle up, be friends, then get her in the sack at his place where he could get some pictures, maybe even video. Then he could ride that bitch all the way to his degree.
10
With a rising whine of the bone saw, Aleksi made her first cut into the plaster cast of the mystery specimen. Sleep had come hard, and she'd finally rolled out of bed at five in the morning. A quick shower, toast, and coffee put her in the lab at six. Three hours of measurements, markings, photographs, and calculations using the grid overlay with the CT and X-ray images from her laptop, and she was ready.
"Measure twice, cut once." The old carpenter's adage served her well. As she cut into the slab, she knew the exact position of the blade with respect to her goal. Hutch and Bob had volunteered to help, but she had declined. Bumping elbows with a couple of men while wielding a power tool wasn't a good idea.
The scream of the saw died, and the first layer lifted out. She cut the waxed canvas away with a pair of sheers. Beneath lay more plaster, five centimeters of it. Although tempted to make another cut with the bone saw, she put the heavy tool away, took pictures, and picked up the Dremel. The hand-sized tool was fitted with a router bit that would only cut half a centimeter deep. The tool spun at up to thirty-five thousand RPM and gouged through the soft plaster like a knife through cheese, lessening vibrations that might damage the fragile ash cast within. She made several passes, removed the dust with a vacuum, and took more pictures and measurements.
So the morning went.
The head-end of the specimen looked like the terraces of a miniature strip mine when a call of, "How goes it?" startled her out of her work. She looked up to see Bob Tomlin standing in the gap of the dust barrier, a brown paper sack in one hand and a tray with two tall cardboard cups in the other.
"Beware nerds bearing greasy burritos and caffeine."
"Second breakfast?" She stretched and put the Dremel down.
"More like lunch." He gestured to the clock; it showed twelve thirty. "You missed second breakfast and elevenses. Not good for a busy hobbit."
"Right." Aleksi stripped off her protective gear and did a quick pass with the shop vac.
"Inside or outside. It's cold, but the snow's stopped."
"Outside. I could use the fresh air." A quick rinse at the sink, and she grabbed her coat and followed him up the stairs.
They settled on the back steps of the MCZ. He handed her a coffee and pulled out the burritos. She took a sip and sighed with the rush of double strength caffeine.
"So, how goes it?" His breath came out in clouds as he handed over one of the paper-wrapped monstrosities. The burritos were a full two inches thick and the paper was soaked through with greasy goodness.
"Slow." She unwrapped the thing and took a bite. Her mouth exploded with spicy shredded pork, refried beans, and tangy cheese. She closed her eyes in bliss and chewed. "These are glorious. Thanks."
"No problem. Hutch offered, but I figured he'd bring you a tofu burger, so I took the duty. He said you'd work right through lunch if someone didn't remind you to eat." Bob sampled his own and smiled. "Besides, he paid."
"I wish he wouldn't do that." She sipped her coffee and took another bite. The excitement of last night, sitting with Bob and planning, eating pizza and talking about the project, had made her comfortable around him, but this morning the old anxiety had returned.
"Don't worry about it, Aleksi. He's not hurting for cash. Not with an ex like Persephone."
"She was…different." A niggling anxiety clenched her stomach. Are you two fucking… If Persephone thought that, had it happened before? Was that why they got divorced? Had Hutch cheated on her with a student? It didn't seem possible, but Lonnie had said he'd dated a law student. Should she be more careful around him? Avoid being alone with him?
"You're too nice. She's a spoiled rich bitch." Bob took another bite. "So, do I have to threaten to take away your coffee, or are you going to tell me how the work's going."
She gave him an update of her progress, more comfortable discussing work. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to tell yet. "The closer I get, the slower it's going to go."
"I know, but it's hard waiting when we know what's in there waiting for us."
"You mean when we don't know. The more I look at that CT, the more I wonder if this might be more than one specimen. Like the bone bed. The shape's just too crazy, like some kind of pterosaur, or…"
"I don't think it's that old." Bob munched as he spoke. "I did some searching through geological data from that area. Nalychevo's last eruption was only twenty thousand years ago, give or take."
"Ice-age." The CT image had plagued her restless sleep, but she couldn't think of anything that resembled the twisted form. "Gigantism? Some mutation? Chiroptera maybe…"
"Maybe it's Batman." He grinned and nudged her knee. "I'm more curious why there are no bone remnants. Even if the ash was superheated, we should have skull sections and metacarpals. I'm dying to get my hands on something I can extract DNA from. Bone marrow or teeth are just about our only hope."
"We'll get some." Sudden confidence swelled up inside her. Or maybe it was just the caffeine. She finished the monster burrito and wiped her hands on a paper napkin.
"You better wash before you touch anything in the lab, or all I'm going to get is pig DNA." He nudged her knee again with his own, a simple gesture, friendly, nice.
Nice… Her confidence melted like snowflakes on a hotplate. "Right." She dropped the napkin in the bag and sipped her coffee, staring at her hands wrapped around the paper cup.
"Aleksi, it was a joke."
"Oh, sorry. Yeah, I just can't stop thinking, you know." She liked Bob, felt comfortable talking to him, but… But he's nice and I'm Aleksi. She stood. "I need to get back to work. Thanks for the lunch. It was delicious."
"No problem." He stood and wadded up the trash, cradling his coffee in his other hand. "You going to eat dinner or should I come back with pizza?"
"I'll go home for dinner." She raised her coffee in toast. "Can't get exhausted. Tired means mistakes, and we can't afford any."
"Good." He toasted her with his coffee. "Give a call if you need any help."
"I will." She knew she wouldn't. Aleksi waved as he left and turned back to the safety of her lab and her solitary work.
Power tools gave way to tiny picks and scrapers when she got close to the ash cast. This was the painstaking part, where she could really screw up if she wasn't careful. She worked steadily, and finally removed a piece of plaster to reveal a layer of gray ash.
"Score!" She paused to stretch and look at the clock. It was five thirty. "Damn." She took a series of photos, some careful measurements, and went back to her computer. The screen came up with the measurement grid overlay superimposed over the merged images of the CT and the X-ray. She'd broken through about a centimeter from the exposed tooth, just as she'd planned.
"Three hours," she estimated with a glance at the clock. She had put in almost twelve hours, which had been her self-imposed limit for one day's work. She didn't feel particularly exhausted, and after the huge lunch, she wasn't hungry either. "Just a bit more." She set a timer for nine PM, knowing she would lose track of time, and got back to work.
The plaster yielded easily to her picks, and though bits of the ash cast came off as she progressed, she knew from the journal that it was fairly thick. A fleck of translucent golden material appeared in one of the chips of plaster and ash, maybe pyrite or gypsum. She placed
the chip aside and continued to dig.
A wedge of pearly white appeared with the next chip she removed.
"About damn time!" She grinned under her dust mask, retrieved the camera, and took a quick picture, then examined the tooth with her jeweler's loupe. It was smooth and hard, not fossilized, but resistant to her pick. "So, if this survived, where did your bones go?"
From the drawings and the CT, she knew that the exposed portion was about three centimeters long. With any luck, she could expose the rest and slip the tooth free with little difficulty. She took pictures as she progressed, careful to avoid pressing or prying right on the crescent of white. So far, it hadn't even wiggled. As it emerged, she noted that the tip was still needle sharp, the back edge like a razor, just as Loktev described, like a male baboon or macaque's canines.
"So, maybe you're a boy." She took a series of close-up photos before attempting the last bit of plaster. Minutes later the tooth hung suspended only by the ash cast. She retrieved a pair of hemostats, padded their textured jaws with gauze, and took a firm grip on the tooth. "Now come to mama." She applied gentle pressure.
It didn't budge.
"Well, that doesn't make sense." If the supporting bone had degraded to dust, the tooth should only be held in place by the ash cast. She put down the hemostats, retrieved her pick and started to chip carefully at the cast around the tooth. Tiny pieces crumbled away from the surface, but a millimeter or so in the stuff became hard, like fired clay. She frowned.
"All I need is a couple of teeth to figure out who you are." She worked on the gray deposit surrounding the tooth. A piece came free, and more of the glittering mineral came with it in a fine dust. Another piece yielded, and she thought the tooth wiggled ever so slightly. "Yes! Now I'll get you."
She applied the hemostats again and pulled. Nothing.
"Why you dirty rotten piece of…" She stopped pulling and glared, but the tooth just sat there, taunting her. "Fine. We'll do this the hard way." She retrieved her pick and inserted it the crack between the tooth and the ash cast.
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