Dark Time: Mortal Path (12 page)

He took a few deep swallows from his water bottle and got back to work. He planned to knock off early and catch up on his paperwork of diagramming and formalizing his field notes. Still, he kept at it a 39 z 138

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little longer. There was always the chance that something would turn up before then. Manco continued his slow digging, then he felt it—his trowel gently touched something, and it didn’t feel like a rock. He worked the tip of the trowel around it slowly, and then used his fingers to scrap away dirt and gauge the size of the object he’d come upon. The figurines he was searching for were small enough to fit in his palm.

What he was tracing out was big: eight inches tall or more.

Even with his excitement growing, he kept his scientific discipline. He recorded the grid coordinates and his first impressions of his find in a notebook before he went any further. Then he carefully brushed away more dirt and was stunned by the fact that it wasn’t a figurine he was uncovering.

It was a piece of pottery.

Manco’s heart was in his throat. The Caral-Supe people were preceramic. There wasn’t supposed to be any pottery, not at this depth in the excavation, where it couldn’t be a random find from a later period.

Yet the more he eased away the dirt, the more certain he was that he’d found a pot. He bent over and blew away dirt.

A few inches of rounded surface appeared, with what looked like cuneiform on its surface, from a civilization that had no writing other than strings tied in knots for counting. Manco closed his eyes for a moment and tried to calm his leaping heart. He ran his hand over the exposed area reverently, feeling the marks incised into the clay with his fingertips. The edges were sharp and distinct, so preserved they were almost…fresh. He took photographs, and then exposed more of the pot until its rounded shape emerged.

The heat forgotten, his discomfort forgotten, he worked to clear the dirt away so he could lift the pot from the ground. He took one last set of photographs and made comments and a drawing in his field notebook.

Then he held his breath, cupped his fingers in the trench of dirt around his find, and lifted it.

There were a few chips around the top edge, but otherwise the pot was in superb shape. It was full of caked dirt, which he dared not remove in the field for fear of taking chunks of pot with it.

Excitement rippled through his body, banishing his fatigue. Manco realized he was holding the discovery of his lifetime, the mark every archaeologist wants to leave on his field whether he admits to such vanity or not. He went over to his collection kit and came back with a padded case compartmentalized to hold small figurines. He tore the internal dividers out, leaving a bigger space, and fit the pot into it.

He had been working in a highly focused way for over two hours since his trowel had first encountered the pot. Tomorrow he would bring the piece to the attention of the regional archaeological museum in Huacho, a dozen miles away—with his name attached, of course.

That was for tomorrow. Tonight the pot was all his. Already he was poring over the possibilities—the mysteries—that lay before him to solve. Instead of returning to the camp with the others, he took the last bus into Huacho to stay in a hotel. He used the excuse that he didn’t feel well and might need to see a doctor, and there were better medical facilities in the town. As the bus made its way down the dirt road, the driver honking and gesturing out the window at goats and sheep that strayed across the road, Manco sat with the padded case cradled in his lap and his mind soaring.

A
dvanced PharmBots, Inc., was located in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. Maliha flew to the Raleigh/Durham International Airport, rented a nondescript car, and drove out on I–40. She found that PharmBots shared a building with a pharmaceutical company specializing in treatments for rare diseases: orphan drugs. The three-story glass-and-steel building was surrounded by a band of trees thick enough to be called a forest.

The lobby was decked out with a fountain, chair groupings, and numerous plants that failed to generate the intended hospitable atmosphere. Maliha strode up to the PharmBots desk. She was wearing a conservative skirted suit, had her hair in a polished French twist, and had a leather briefcase with a strap that went over one shoulder. Eyeglasses completed the look. She felt like a female Clark Kent.

The middle-aged woman at the desk looked up from her work at a computer.

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“May I help you?” The North Carolina accent softened the fact that she no doubt had fifteen ways to notify security of trouble.

“Marsha Winters, journalist with the
New Age Tech Journal
. I have an appointment with Diane Harvey.”

The woman checked her computerized appointment book and nodded.

“Your ID?”

Maliha produced press credentials from her briefcase. The receptionist glanced at them, compared the photo to Maliha’s face, and buzzed her through the door leading to the company’s offices.

Too easy.

Behind the door, she encountered a metal detector and several guards who put her false identity through its paces. Fortunately, Marsha Winters’s credentials were solid.
New Age Tech Journal
checked out as legitimate, and the photo that popped up on the guard’s monitor matched her face, since her Winters identity had a presence in numerous databases, governmental and private. She silently thanked Amaro. Much background work went into the identities she used. It was easier in the old days, when there was no such thing as an instant ID check. But Maliha not only changed with the times, she made sure she was on the leading edge of the change.

A guard’s phone call summoned a young assistant to escort her to Diane’s office on the third floor.

As they went up the elevator, the assistant chatted about Maliha’s trip, the great weather, and what
New
Age Tech Journal
was all about.

“The title says it all.” In response to a request for a sample copy, she shook her head. “We’re a startup. First issue comes out in December.”

“I’ll look for it, and here we are.”

Maliha was ushered into a waiting room with a single door to the inner sanctum. Although there were several chairs, she was alone with the camera. She grinned up at it. She’d been looking forward to grilling Diane’s secretary, but there wasn’t one.

She’d barely warmed the seat of her chair when she was invited into the office.

Diane Harvey was standing behind the desk in her office. As Maliha came in, Diane crossed the room and shook her hand with a firm, testing grip. Maliha tested back, resulting in a slight narrowing of Diane’s eyes.

To Maliha’s surprise, Diane was dressed in jeans and a soft ivory sweater that followed the curves of her body. No power suit here. Her figure was voluptuous, with red lipstick the only makeup on a pale face with piercing gray eyes. Her hair was long, wavy, and blonde. Diane was less than thirty years old and looked more like a Vegas dancer than a CEO.

Maliha felt overdressed.

“Have a seat. Care for some cold water? I always keep some on hand.”

Maybe she was from Vegas. Locals there always had a bottle of water close by.

Maliha nodded. She used the time while Diane retrieved a couple of bottles from a small refrigerator to check out the space. Number one on the list: There were none of the cameras she’d seen in the halls.

Evidently Diane didn’t want her private conversations to end up as part of the company’s security records.

It was a large corner office—third floor, southeast corner, Maliha noted—and was decorated in an office superstore style of furniture, the kind that came flat in a box and had to be screwed together. In startling contrast to the indifferent furniture, a spotlighted display case held a collection of Moche portrait pots. They were clay drinking cups styled after the faces of real people, complete with emotional expressions, created by the Moche people of ancient Peru. If they were authentic, the pots were up to two thousand years old and almost certainly had been smuggled into the United States. She was willing to give the woman the benefit of the doubt and assume the pots were skillful reproductions. Still, the display reminded her of the priceless objects in her own haven, collected over centuries.

Diane didn’t seem like a woman mired in the past. She pictured Diane late at night, putting together her office furniture from flat, heavy boxes, screwing together the display case and arranging the pots on the shelves. The images didn’t fit.

Even if they were reproductions, the Moche pots didn’t belong in this sterile office. Their faces showed the entire range of human emotions, including some that Maliha couldn’t imagine registering on Diane’s face, like empathy and love.

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Her mind flew back to the time she’d spent in the company of an Egyptologist, who told her that the lives of the ancient people he studied were more real to him than those of his own family. When he got a telegram saying that his wife had died, he made a brief note in his journal and went on with his excavating.

She’d heard that, years later, when he died, he left instructions to have his body mummified. His surviving relative, a son, couldn’t do it. He brought his father’s body back to England to be buried in the churchyard next to his mother. The old man would have been heartbroken if he’d known.

Now that was living with both feet in the past.

Was Diane like that? If so, how could Maliha exploit that in turning up any link to the dead coders?

Maliha noticed there were two computers in the office. The one on Diane’s desk sprouted the usual network cable. The laptop on a table, its darkened screen showing a company screensaver, had no such connection, although it could be wireless. If not, Diane may keep information on it that she didn’t want available to any network. An isolated computer couldn’t be remotely hacked, but had to be physically breached. Maliha’s curiosity was tweaked by the built-in thumbprint reader for secure access by one individual.

A computer for the office and one for travel? Maybe. Or this one’s chock full o’secrets.

Seated across from Diane Harvey, Maliha was given a thorough inspection as she twisted the cap off her bottle of water.

“Have we met before? I have the feeling I know you.”

“No, I’m sure we haven’t.”

Diane shook her head, her small lips pursed in concentration. Before she could pursue that line of thinking, Maliha tossed a little bomb in her direction.

Not literally, although she could lay her hands on the two plastic knives concealed in her briefcase in a split second.

“I’ve been admiring your display case. Aren’t those pots supposed to be in a museum? Did you get them in an auction or something?”

Diane’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you interested in those? I thought you were here to interview me about the company’s products.”

“Just thought it would make a great sidebar to the main article. Personal interest and all that. Is there some reason you don’t want to talk about them?” She smiled sweetly.

Diane leaned back in her chair and relaxed. “Of course. Personal interest. My grandfather was a collector when he was alive, bless his soul. He was from a time when people weren’t as sensitive to a country’s cultural heritage as we are now. When he died, I donated his collection to a museum with the condition that they study the items and then return them to their countries of origin. The pots were his favorites, and I asked for reproductions of them to keep. They aren’t stamped ‘Made in China’ on the bottom, but they might as well be. That one on the third shelf, second from the right—he always claimed it looked like him.”

“Great stuff. I’d like to take some pictures.”

Diane shrugged. Maliha removed a small digital camera from her briefcase and snapped away.

When she came back to her chair, Diane was peering at her.

“I never forget a face. I know I’ve seen you.”

Maliha sighed. She’d have to own up or risk alienating Diane and losing the rest of the interview.

“I write novels. You’ve probably seen my picture in the book section of the newspaper.”

“That’s it, then.” Diane stiffened a little, skepticism plain on her face. “Why would a successful author want to come here to interview one about hospital equipment?”

A question I am prepared for, thanks to Clark Kent.

“Since I was young, I’ve wanted to be like Lois Lane. You know, girl reporter. I was doing a spec freelance article on new fantasy authors and it occurred to me that I could write as well as they could and I have no shortage of ideas. I make a good living now, good enough that I can indulge my dreams. And here I am.”

To signal the end of the pleasantries, Maliha took out a voice recorder and placed it on the desk between them.

“Do you mind?”

“You will be sending me the final version of your article before publication, correct?” Diane’s voice was still guarded. “The sidebar too?” She hadn’t swallowed Maliha’s “girl reporter” story, but was willing 42 z 138

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to play along for the time being.

“Sure. Why don’t you start by explaining what products Advanced PharmBots makes? I like to get that straight from the source.”

“Ever been in a hospital, Ms. Winters?”

“Yes.” Maliha lied. No way could she let a doctor near a body that healed wounds by itself or was carved mysteriously in the front. Too much explaining to do. “And please call me Marsha.”

“Diane here. Those little cups that your medicine came in may have been filled by one of our machines. Our dispensing machines are filled by pharmacists with bulk medicines from pharmaceutical companies. Physicians enter drug orders into a central computer, and our machine responds by grabbing one pill from here, one from there, according to the physicians’ orders, and putting them in a cup with a patient ID label on it. Trays of cups are loaded into our robotic delivery cart, which visits all the nursing stations. PharmBots machines are robots with a very responsible job—getting the correct medicine to every patient at the right time. We can handle liquids and solids.”