Burtons linger pointed skyward again. “Charnel houses have existed in many other cultures.”
“For animals?”
“Why not? If the animals are considered sacred—”
“Sacred enough to eat?”
“Ritually, yes.”
“Pet cemeteries?” interjected Rick.
Both men ignored him.
“Taxidermist?” This time Burton glowered and Rhys cracked a smile.
“You’re wrong, Llewellyn,” Burton said with finality. “These are temples. Places of worship, sacrifice and tribute. Everything we’ve found suggests it. No, confirms it. The animal bones, the potsherds, the metal tools and coins. I realize, of course, that it’s only your relative inexperience speaking,” he added and shook his head, thereby missing Yoshi’s furious but silent retort. “If there were only some way I could prove it to you.”
“What are your opinions about all this?” Rhys asked Nyami and Tzia later, when the professor had retreated to his cabin to work on his field notes.
The two women shared an enigmatic glance, then Nyami answered for both of them. “We’re not paid to have opinions. At least not outside of our respective areas of expertise. That means I boss the crew and Tzia restores artwork. All of us,” she added, glancing at Tzia again, “arc keeping our own journals. And some us will be writing our own books.”
“You’ve seen his field notes, then?”
“Of course.” Nyami chuckled, brushing graying hair back from her forehead. “Drew sees gods and goddesses everywhere. ‘Water goddess filling the world ‘ocean.’ Heck, I think she’s probably running the local bath house.”
Burton’s team located the entrance to the tower at the beginning of the next week. That the building was hollow but for its organic centerpiece was no surprise—that feature had showed up clearly in the sonic profile. What came as a surprise was that the conical tower was lined with a tough amalgam of plant liber and ceramic Rhys suspected would make a great material for orbital spacecraft and re-entry shuttles. This, in turn, was covered with a thick deposit of ash and soot. The floor was so deep in the stuff, a misstep could leave one covered to the neck with a fetching coat of powdery gray.
“Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” murmured Rick when they had spent the better part of a day sifting and digging through thick layers of invasive soot and char that hung in the humid air and clung to clothing, hair, and skin.
Burton, occupied with running a sample through the Field Remote Analysis Unit (known affectionately among diggers as the Frau), looked up sharply. “Are you suggesting this was a crematorium?”
Rick blew a lock of lank brown hair out of his eyes and gave the professor a bland stare. “I’m in a deep hole, up to my elbows in fine gray soot. I just thought it was an appropriate comment.”
Burton looked thoughtful. “An interesting one, Roddy. You may have unwittingly stumbled onto something. Although, I think the crematorium was likely sacrificial in nature. You recall the biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, of course.”
Rick opened his mouth to tell Dr. Burton that he had never heard of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and that further, only Rhys Llewellyn called him “Roddy,” then thought better of it and asked, “Have you found evidence of any Etsatat bone fragments or DNA during your analysis?”
The question, neutrally posed, caused Dr. Burton to redden perceptibly and cast a sideways glance around the tree trunk at Rhys, who was digging with Tzia along one curved, fire-blasted wall. “No, actually. What I have found are laige amounts of coal and some cellulose, trace elements of other organic compounds and carbonized bits of rock. Altogether a disappointment, I admit. I had hoped we’d discovered a burial vault. The modem Etsatat inter their dead…” His voice trailed off as he read the data spilling onto the Frau’s small display.
“Don’t give up yet, Professor.” Rhys straightened from his work, holding something out on the palm of his hand.
Burton pounced on it as an aging tabby might pounce on an unwary mouse. “Air! Air!” he cried, accepted an air bulb from Nyami and feverishly cleaned the object. The entire work crew ceased digging and gathered around in the glare of palm lights and overheads.
“It’s some sort of jewelry. A brooch, by the look of it, or a medallion. And there’s a jewel in it, too. I’ve never seen the stone before.” He looked up at Rhys, fire in his pale eyes. “You’re in charge here, Llewellyn. Nyami, you and I are going to subject this to full analysis. Right now.”
Within seconds, the two archaeologists had disappeared into the entrance shaft and Rhys and the crew had returned to work. Three hours later, Rhys and Tzia had unearthed (or unashed) three more pieces of jewelry and a crude stone figurine. Scott Buchanan turned up a glob of interesting slag and one of the other diggers found a second partial figure made up of heavily carbonized hardwood. Eager for a report from Burton and Nyami, Rhys ordered the crew to “clear up their loose,” then, with their artifacts in a finds canister, he led the weary team of grimy, sweat-soaked archaeologists back to camp.
Burton was still hard at it and Nyami nursing a bottle of cold tea when the diggers filed up to the Finds tent. She moved to intercept them, cutting Rhys off before he or anyone else could enter. “I wouldn’t interrupt him yet,” she told them.
Buchanan’s ashy blond brows furrowed. “How does it take three hours to analyze a piece of jewelry?”
Nyami studied her squeeze bottle. “He’s run the same battery of tests five times. I did the first set. He didn’t like the way I did them, so he did them again…” she looked up at Rhys, “…and again and again.”
“Whatever’s the matter?”
“It’s not precious metal for one thing, just an odd, rather impure alloy. And the stone? It…” She licked her lips and Rhys couldn’t tell if the gesture concealed a smile or grimace. “It’s not stone. It’s man-made.”
Scott Buchanan’s brows rode halfway up to his receding hairline. “A fake stone? What’s he thinking—that this is a hoax? That the Leguini have been hoaxing us?”
“He’s thinking…” She shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s thinking. But the stone is a hunk of very hardy glass which dates to about 5,000 B.P.”
Rhys expelled a rush of air. “Can the Etsatat have found a way to foil our dating techniques?”
“Who knows? Maybe the ancients had junk jewelry.”
“Look, I’m going to take this assemblage in to Professor Burton. Maybe I can help him make sense of this.” Rhys tucked the canister under his arm and entered the Finds tent warily, his eyes on Burton’s back. As he moved to lay the canister down on the sorting table, Burton glanced up at him, sweating even in the well-ventilated cabin.
“What’ve you got there, Rhys?”
“More jewelry. A couple of figurines—wood and stone.” He unpacked the canister as he spoke.
Burton was at his side in a second, poring over the finds. “This is more like it! Yes, this clarifies the situation considerably. What we’re looking at here, my boy, is a single cremation. There’s may be no significant Etsatat DNA because the cremation involves only that one individual. These—” He held up a corroding brooch and the stone figure, “—are tribute, as I theorized previously. I predict that if we continue to dig, we will find the remains of one man—Ets-eket, himself—or his mortal proxy.”
“What’s your evaluation of the brooch?”
“Ah, well, originally I thought it a rather poor specimen. The metal is sturdy but hardly precious, the stone is, em, rather an enigma. But the style!” He put the thoroughly cleaned piece into the photonic bath and switched the perfect 3-D image to the holotank. “See the intricate detail, the precision of the scroll work? The Leguini haven’t produced anything this fine since.”