Chapter 18: Mexico

 

Mexico: Chapter 18

“Welcome to the Xcaptualla site,” Dr. Kuzer offered his hand.

“Skinner—Robert Dean Skinner,” he shook his host’s hand.

“I trust your trip was comfortable?” Dr. Kuzer was affable. His pale blue eyes seemed to glimmer constantly with mirth and boyish wonder. Though he had been tall in his prime, his bent spine made him of a height with his guest. Despite the appearance of obsolescence his bent spine gave him, his grip was firm and strong as they shook hands. Skinner liked him immediately.

“I prefer open spaces to tin cans,” Skinner shrugged, smiling despite his own sarcasm. “Someone should genetically engineer a griffon. Much better flight—or so I imagine.”

“Sure, sure,” Dr. Kuzer nodded. “So. I’ll bet you’re curious about why we brought you here.”

“Very,” Skinner nodded. “Beautiful place for a vacation, though.”

“We are about to make Mesoamerican history,” Dr. Kuzer slapped his shoulder enthusiastically. “As you edit the Museum’s magazine and such, we wanted you to be in on the original report.”

“Oh really,” Skinner asked. “Who, precisely, is ‘we’?”

“Well,” Dr. Kuzer smiled again, leading him into a tent that was only a little cooler than the outside. “Mostly me. But I got it arranged with your Director and the Board.”

“Why?” Skinner pursued the question, amazed that anyone even knew him by name. He had only recently begun to work for the Museum, only edited three issues of each of its publications and one book in a Scientific Papers series.

“What you did with Wyland’s report,” Dr. Kuzer shrugged. “To be honest, it’s not so much the report as the book.”

“Book?” Skinner stared at a spreading stain on the canvas floor of the tent, not quite understanding that drops of sweat falling from his forehead was causing the strange phenomenon.

“Book,” Dr. Kuzer nodded, handing Skinner a bottle of water from an ice chest and a cloth for Skinner to wipe the sweat from his brow.

“What makes you think I’m qualified?” Skinner was feeling dizzy now. How could anyone here know about his prolific publication within the Vale?

“Someone told me you have a novel,” Dr. Kuzer laughed, motioning Skinner to a canvas chair. “Said you have one in the pipe and a couple in the works.”

“More than a couple,” Skinner mumbled, trying to clear his head. Never one prone to jetlag, he was surprised at his own disorientation.

“Well,” Dr. Kuzer sat opposite him, helping himself to a bottle of water. “Well. Now’s your chance to put one out in the world.”

“Oh,” Skinner nodded. “You think I can take your report and write a non-fiction to market.”

“Precisely!” Dr. Kuzer gave him another friendly slap on the shoulder.

“Me?” Skinner said blankly.

“Yes,” the older man laughed again. “I saw Wyland’s report before you did, and I saw it after you took a buffer to it. You really made it shine.”

“Just moved a few words around so they’re easier to understand,” Skinner shrugged, relaxing now as he re-hydrated. Feeling more stable as he put a name to the disorientation.

“Yes,” Dr. Kuzer smiled broadly. “And I just stumbled onto a new Mesoamerican city that predates any other by two hundred years.”

“Seriously?” Skinner perked up. “You just stumbled into it?”

“Yes,” Kuzer laughed again. “Just like you. I was applying my favored skills and found success.”

“Oh,” Skinner chuckled. “Great. Let’s write a book.”

W          W          W

“I’m guessing this was another slaughter pit,” Dr. Kuzer was saying as he guided Skinner through a tour of the dig.

“No,” Skinner shook his head, taking in the scene. “Not if you’re relating it to the Falan. This is something else.”

“Then what?” Dr. Kuzer looked at him curiously.

“I think,” Skinner measured with his eyes. “Yep. ‘M pretty sure it’s a dog fighting arena.”

“You’re toying with me,” Dr. Kuzer laughed good-naturedly.

“Pretend I might be right and look at it from that perspective,” Skinner told him, smiling at his host’s good humor.

Ken Kuzer surveyed the area in question. He tilted his head to the right and did so again, then the same with his head tilted to the left. He shook his head several times as though trying to shake loose assumptions that stood in the way of his objective observation.

“Not a complete explanation,” he said musingly. “But it does account for more than the sacrificial theory . . .”

Half entranced, he made his way along the path to a table on which several notebooks contained raw notes. He looked them over, mumbling constantly in a voice too low to hear plainly enough to interpret.

“Oh!” He straightened, suddenly. “Also had a great deal to do with your illustrations in that spring issue.”

“Kinda figured,” Skinner nodded, looking over the other’s shoulder to study the field books.

“I’ll be . . .” Ken’s head snapped up, he stared at Skinner in triumph. “Well, if I had any doubt about you before, it’s gone now.”

“Why’s that?”

“I couldn’t recall offhand, but we did find an inordinately large cache of bones. Someone else was supposed to identify them, but she came down with a nasty bug . . .”

“Understandable,” Skinner nodded, muttering.

“Anyway,” Ken smiled broadly. “Anyway. We . . . well, we thought that the canine bones were anomalous—from a different era or something. We were waiting on age estimates when we formed our theories . . .”

“So,” Skinner nodded enthusiastically. “New data, new theory.”

“Exactly,” Ken nodded. “You sure you were a liberal arts grad?”

“Recently gained an interest in everything,” Skinner smirked.

“Okay,” he looked around again to survey the dig from this vantage. “So you’ve given us an interesting hypothesis about the dogs; how about you explain the human bones?”

“Poor losers,” Skinner shrugged. “Or they had a Spartan loathing for defeat.”

“Mmmmm,” Ken pondered this several moments. “Interesting concept. How about alternative explanations?”

“How were the men killed? Or were they men? What’s the mix?”

They discussed the site deep into the night. Skinner was elated to find that his host had somehow gotten a bottle of Johnny Walker through Customs. The local tequila was passable, but nothing could substitute for good scotch.

W          W          W

“We’re going to the east end today,” Ken motioned him forward, walking briskly toward the site. “Place we’ve never fully investigated. I suspect something totally new. We were going to leave it for next season, but we’re running into serious contention from the Russian researchers.”

“Wonderful,” Skinner beamed. “You know how to make a guy welcome.”

“My pleasure,” Ken winked over his slouched shoulder. “I’ll tutor you for a long while on the delicate art of recovery. Then, if you’re an apt pupil, maybe you can be an official assistant. I’ll treat you like any other grad student coming from the soft studies side of things.”

Skinner enjoyed his tutelage immensely. The old doctor had a sense of humor as zany as his own. And very similar tastes in liquor. Days turned to weeks and soon a month and a half had slipped past. They had found very little at the east end, but Ken remained a stalwart optimist.

“Final dig day,” Ken told him. “We have to find whatever it is we find by nightfall.”

“Nightfall?” Skinner asked, taken aback. “Last day? Don’t we get to—”

“We have seasonal permissions from the government,” Ken explained. “Because we have to work through the local bureaucracy, we dig three months and then share our finds for the following nine.”

“Who digs while you’re ‘sharing’?” Skinner frowned.

“No one,” Ken shrugged. “There’s a great deal of superstition related to this dig. That’s how I eventually found it. Well, the Moscow Institute is vying for time on the site . . .”

“Hey,” Skinner chuckled softly, arriving at the spot they planned to search today. “I have an idea. . .”

He picked up a pair of copper stakes that had caught his attention. They were used for something to do with electromagnetic analysis, but he was unfamiliar with the details. Having studied them for several moments, he measured two hand-breadths down and bent each at a right angle.

“Witch sticks?” Ken asked, smirking at the implied superstition.

“Divining rods,” Skinner grinned, holding them parallel to the ground and dropping into a trance. He roved this way and that for some time before the ground began to rise. Before the rods could come together, a rock rolled from under him, twisting his ankle awkwardly and causing him to sit gracelessly in the sandy dirt.

“Imagine that,” he bit off a curse and gazed around. “Do you have the aerials from over here?” he asked Ken.

“Aerials?” Ken looked around, crowed loudly, and took off back to the closest field station, the most eastern of the five spread around the dig.

“Here,” he said, panting a moment later as he handed Skinner a photograph the size of a roadmap. He pointed to the place on the map he thought represented the hill on which they stood, Skinner studying the map and the older scientist bent with palms on knees to catch his breath.

“What do you make of it?” Skinner asked a moment later as Ken’s breathing smoothed. Skinner gave him a cursory visual inspection, thoughts of heart attacks or worse teasing his mind.

“Well,” Ken took a deep breath and studied the photograph for several moments. “To be honest, I thought this area insignificant. But looking at it now . . .”

He scratched his head, pushing his legs to carry him to the hilltop. Once there, he and Skinner surveyed the area from the higher vantage. Both were surprised at the elevation, seeing it now from the top. Their climb had seemed much more gradual than it looked from here. They both stooped to their knees and studied the map; their hillock was cut off at its midline from the eastern border of the photograph and less than a half-inch from bottom.

“See these lines here,” Ken followed a lighter path with his finger. “That’s not a natural line. It curves out from this hill in a very . . . manufactured . . . sort of arc.”

“Here’s another,” Skinner traced a similar lightness in the gray, mottled photograph. “And another . . .”

“This hill . . .” Ken gave a loud whoop and danced on the hilltop. “Don’t you see, Skinner?” He laughed and hugged the younger man exuberantly. “This is no hill, my boy,” he beamed. “We’re standing on something manmade. Dollars to dimes it’s another pyramid!”

“Or something we’ve never seen . . .” Skinner muttered ominously. A tingle in the back of his mind whispered dark warnings.

“May be!” Ken crowed again. “May be. Now grab a spade and get to it. We have only a few hours—and much to do!”

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[TLK]

This story seems to be 99% Dr Kuzer, Ken, and Skinner. Does anything actually happen?