Higher Mythology (10 page)

The keen thrill of terror made him shiver, wondering if he was in for the same kind of retribution for snooping through the remains of the Celtic villagers in Scotland. No, there’d been no sensation of evil or anger there. The priests and embalmers of Egypt had deliberately put a malign influence that reached out long after the body was inert matter, to revenge the departed Pharaohs on the despoilers of their graves.

Lessons in countering the Little Folks’ talent for misdirection brought his attention obliquely to an unmarked steel door at the end of the corridor at the opposite end of the hall from the exhibits. It had been painted the same color as the walls to make it unobtrusive. From the musty smell wafting gently underneath it, Keith guessed that the corridor beyond probably led to the archives and storage rooms.

The pulse he was following grew stronger and stronger the closer he got. He was more and more convinced that it was the Scottish comb he was tracing. It
was
still in the museum.

No security guards were in sight, but it wouldn’t hurt to use a little misdirection of his own. After a moment of concentration, he observed happily that none of the museum visitors looked directly at him any more. Under cover of a large crowd heading for the stairs, Keith slipped in the door, and closed it gently behind him.

He’d never been “behind the scenes” in the museum before. It made him feel a little uneasy as if now he’d see the fakery and animatronics that made the place run. Everything remained blessedly if not refreshingly real. The storage rooms at the end of the corridor reminded him strongly of the library stacks at college. They consisted of numbered shelves along narrow aisles, but instead of holding books they held antiquities of every description, smelling of spice, dust, and time. There wasn’t much light, but it was sufficient to navigate by, and besides, he wouldn’t need to see the comb with his normal vision to find it.

Echoing eerily down the clay-scented corridor came the voice of the public address system. “The museum is now closed. Will you please make your way immediately to the exits. Thank you for visiting the Field Museum.” That was it. Keith was now on the premises illicitly. He hoped he could get to the comb and get out of the building without causing a fuss.

The sensation that he was being watched by someone smiling made him turn slowly around to see who was there. He jumped in surprise. The empty eyeholes of a mask from the South Pacific stared at him blankly, the shards of polished shell, jade, and bone set into its face gleaming softly like milky jewels.

Hand on his chest, Keith leaned against the shelf opposite while his heart stopped pounding basso staccato.

“Whew,” he whispered.

As it had been in the outer museum, there were plenty of artifacts that provided their own illumination. Keith was able to pass most of them by without even looking at them.

The feeling that the comb was very near persisted. On the other side of the second huge room of shelves were several small doors. Offices, Keith guessed.

A yawn erupted suddenly. He stifled it with difficulty. Using his second sight so much was making him tired. He hoped his energy would last until he solved his mystery and got out of the museum. He wasn’t so nimble at making excuses when his wits were fuddled.

The first few offices were dark. Each was small, crammed full in every available corner and on every flat surface with books, papers, small artifacts, stones, and assorted impedimenta. A quick glance into each was enough to tell Keith that what he sought wasn’t there. Besides, the yearning cry of the Scottish artifact was still up ahead.

The tingly glow summoned him to the last room on the left.

It was larger than the other offices, with an extra door standing ajar in the right hand wall. Beyond the door, Keith could hear someone with an English accent and pedantic cadence lecturing. Good. If everyone was occupied, no one would notice him while he investigated.

To his great relief, the comb was in the glass case across from the inner door. The moment he came around the corner he was washed with a sensation of relief and comfort like meeting an old friend. Whatever had been the purpose of its magical enhancement in the Bronze Age, it gave off a soothing radiation that calmed its possessor or anyone else in close proximity. Not a bad survival trait for something so fragile.

Keith stood back to think, eying the case. It was in plain sight, with no attempt to disguise it or its contents, so there was no question that the comb was down here deliberately, with the blessing and knowledge of the museum. He wondered why the Little Folk were concerned about it.

Maybe their real reason for sending him was feedback from the artifact next to the comb, which was putting out a louder and more insistent signal. It was a thumb-sized, baked clay figurine, made to be strung on a necklace, shaped like a stylized human child except for—Keith had to lean down closely to make certain—the pointed ears.

“Oh, my God,” Keith breathed. He wondered who else was aware of the charm’s special characteristics, and what conclusions they’d drawn from it. He wasn’t sure why the Folk were worried that they might be at risk for discovery from the display of a Bronze Age clay fetish in Chicago. Maybe it was something that belonged to them that got lost. Well, if that was the case, he was going to make sure they got it back. But how to “liberate” it? He hunkered down in front of the glass door to see if there were alarm wires or anything that would go off when he opened it. He put his hands flat against one of the panes and started to slide it slowly leftward.

Suddenly, the voices behind him got louder, and the door at his back was flung open. Keith turned around, blinking with terror at the knees of a group of people mostly wearing gray suits or neutral skirts; all except for the one at their head, an adult human male who was at eye level with Keith. Professor Parker, researcher and lecturer, was a dwarf.

“As I live and breathe, Keith Doyle!” exclaimed Parker, coming forward with his sailor’s gait. He extended a cordial hand to Keith. “How very nice to see you! This
is
an unexpected pleasure.”

“Professor,” Keith said weakly, putting out his own hand. Parker shook it vigorously. “Well, well, well, what have you been doing with yourself?”

“Oh,” Keith replied, smiling up at the small researcher’s companions. They didn’t seem as pleased to see him as Parker was. He glanced back. His handprints were clearly visible on the front of the display case. “Uh, hot air ballooning. Things like that.”

Parker’s face lit up with childlike delight. “Really? Very different from the last time I saw you, young man. Above the ground is undoubtedly better for you than below it, eh?” Parker chuckled heartily. Keith joined in, sounding like a sick engine valve.

“Well, Keith Doyle, what a businesslike dash you cut!” The small professor looked him up and down. Keith was suddenly acutely aware of the fashionable short haircut he wore, and that he hadn’t changed out of the white button-down shirt with the fatuous patterned suspenders holding up his trousers he’d worn to the office that day. The outfit looked silly next to the conservative autumn weight gray suits on all the men in the room. Suddenly aware also that there were a lot of them, and some austerely dressed women, too. Though Parker was happy to see him, he’d obviously interrupted a presentation of some kind.

“Uh, thanks.”

“And how is my good friend Professor Alfheim? Although it is not uncommon for people our size to have children
your
size, you’re not really his son, are you?” Parker asked conspiratorially.

“No, sir,” Keith admitted, a little shamefacedly, remembering the subterfuge the Master had employed to have an excuse others would accept why he was helping Keith. “But we are distantly related. There was a good reason why he said so, really.”

“Ah.” Parker nodded. “I rather thought so. There is a fairly strong resemblance. And how is your cousin Holl?”

“Married,” Keith said, with a grin. “And …”

“What? Surely not. He’s just a boy. Must be about sixteen by now, what?”

Keith backpedaled furiously, clamping his mouth closed on the phrase “and they have a baby girl.” “I mean as good as married. He’s got a girlfriend, Maura. They’re really serious about each other.”

He dug into his back pocket for his wallet and pulled out a picture he’d taken of the two of them at the wedding supper wearing their flower wreaths. Keith was certain those hid the points of their ears, but there wasn’t time to check before Parker seized the picture and admired it.

“Very pretty. Very pretty. What interesting clothes. Lovely embroidery. Almost medieval. Could it be some kind of Renaissance Festival?”

“Uh, kind of,” Keith said weakly.

“What a lot of varied interests you American youths have. I hope you haven’t lost interest in the study of past cultures. I thought you showed a lot of promise. Young Matthew is doing very well, by the way. Came to admire your addition to the display, did you? With your contributions in?”

“Well, yeah,” Keith said, struggling to turn the conversation his way. He pointed at the case behind him. “You know, Dr. Alfheim would really like to see that little figure. That’s really unusual. That kind of thing is really his specialty. Really.” He was suddenly aware of how silly he sounded, and swallowed. Parker didn’t appear to notice.

“Forgive me, Professor,” one of the curators interrupted. “But may we get on with the lecture?”

“Oh, yes, forgive me. Forget my own head, that’s what I’ll do,” Parker said, apologetically, smacking a hand to the side of his head. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the young man who discovered the comb, by the way. He was one of my assistants that summer. And what a fruitful summer it was, I must add.”

“So we are finding out,” the curator said, pointedly. Parker took the cue a trifle sheepishly, and returned his attention to Keith.

“It was very nice seeing you, Keith. Please give my best to Dr. Alfheim. I hope to see him some time soon. Perhaps we can all have a little time together then. I would be delighted to show him the clay pendant and give him all the details of its discovery. Oh, and you, too,” he added.

It was a dismissal. Keith had no choice but to accede. He stood up, feeling awkward to be taller than the professor. Parker didn’t appear to notice. “Uh, I’ll tell him.”

Keith took another glance at the glass case. The small clay figure continued its insistent psychic wail, so insistent that it made him wonder if he could use the elves’ invisibility-avoidance technique to divert everyone’s attention away while he took it out, but with another glance at the curator, Keith saw that his chances of staying in that room would only have been increased if he was in another glass case, preferably stuffed and mounted.

“Um, could I stay and hear the lecture?” he asked, hopefully.

***

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

The same security guard who’d been following him around was summoned to escort Keith out of the building. Keith thought that the guard was enjoying himself just a little too much, hustling him by the back of the neck and one arm through the echoingly empty chambers to the front door. With a thrust reminiscent of a garbage collector shooting a barrelful of trash into the back of his truck, the guard shoved Keith out into the warm autumn night.

Keith stumbled on the uneven threshold and rolled down a handful of stairs before he came to a halt on a landing. He rose to his feet and brushed himself off as the heavy bronze doors boomed shut above him.

At least, Keith consoled his bruised dignity, the comb was safe. He spent the walk to his car and the long drive home thinking up one plot after another for getting the little clay charm out of the museum without being detected. He had to let the Little Folk know that the original treasure was okay, and that the distress call they must have sensed was coming from something entirely new.

Although it was very late when he telephoned the farm, the other end was picked up on the first ring.

“Hello?” Catra’s voice said, anxiously hollow.

“Hi, it’s Keith. Mission accomplished. The mystery is solved. You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said, and it was on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the little female clay figurine when she interrupted him.

“Wonderful! Then you mean she’s with you? Oh, I’m so glad, you cannot imagine. How did she get there? Why didn’t you call us at once when she turned up?”

“You knew about it? Yeah, Parker had it himself,” Keith said, remembering his embarrassment at blundering into the austere classroom in the museum basement. “He was using it for a lecture. I interrupted his presentation to the other researchers at the museum. He says ‘hi’ to the Master. If he wants to come up and see the exhibit, I can take him up this weekend. I’m free.” Catra’s words suddenly penetrated his consciousness, and he paused to let the outpouring of relief, unusual for the coolheaded Archivist, catch up with him. He blinked. “Who?” he demanded. “Which she? Who’s supposed to have turned up?”

“Dola,” Catra said pleadingly. “She’s gone missing, and Holl’s babe with her.”

“What?” Keith yelped. Jeff and Keith’s youngest sister turned their heads away from the television to stare at him. He lowered his voice at once. “When did it happen? And how?”

Catra sounded ready to burst into tears. The words poured out in a tumult. “Dola was caring for the babe until dinner time. She didn’t turn up to do her chores, and she wasn’t in the cottage when Maura went back looking for them. Holl and Maura are half mad with fear,” Catra said, finally getting the sense that she and Keith had been talking at cross-purposes but were on the same wavelength at last. She explained what had happened, and what action the Folk had taken so far. “Tay’s ready to call up the Wild Hunt!”

Keith was horrified. “Oh, my God, no! Did you call Ludmilla?”

“The first thing we thought of,” Catra said, “and we’ve called upon Diane, who telephoned all the other Big Folk. With the evening’s delay while we were waiting to hear from you, there would have been plenty of time for Dola to reach the Midwestern campus.…” Her voice trailed off, leaving the phrase “if she was able,” unspoken but understood between them. “All know the way to Ludmilla’s apartment.”

“I’m sure sorry I didn’t understand,” Keith said. “I should have waited until your line was clear to find out what your message meant, ‘look on the front page of the newspaper.’”

“No harm done, Keith Doyle,” Catra said. “No further harm done, that is. It’s my fault. I was so upset I forgot you’d be looking at another paper. Our local had a story about a kidnapped child.”

“Look, I’ll get down there right away—No, I can’t,” he said, tearing at his hair despairingly. “I’ve got to go to work. What can I do?”

“Stay there, for now. You must not toss aside your responsibilities. There are plenty of us here. Tell us what to do.”

“Why do you think she’s been kidnapped?” he asked.

Catra explained quickly about the Big Folk footprints, and the marks of truck tires.

“Okay,” Keith said, thinking quickly. “If someone grabbed her, there’ll be a ransom demand. That’ll mean a call or a note. They’ll probably tell you they don’t want interference from the cops, but you can’t call the police anyway.” The idea passed through his mind of all the pictures of lost kids on the back of milk cartons, and the horrible things he had heard that sometimes happened to them. He’d seen too many true-life crime programs on television. Not to his little pet, Dola, and Holl’s baby—it just couldn’t happen.

Catra had a practical nature, and she read more newspapers than most of her Folk. She must have guessed what was going through his mind. “Aye,” she agreed, speaking carefully. He knew then that there were people in the room around her. “We’ll have a watch put on the telephone to wait for a call and trace its source when it comes.”

“Good,” Keith said. “Gather up all the clues you can as to who might have taken her away. You want all the, er,
forensic
evidence you can find. The Farm is pretty well sheltered. Whoever did it was there on purpose.”

“I’d thought of that,” Catra said grimly. “And we’re not certain as to why. In the meantime, should we search?”

“You bet,” Keith said. “If you can do it without being observed.”

“It’s what we’re best at, Keith Doyle, going unobserved. We’ll do anything not to endanger the children.”

“Let me know what’s going on,” he said. Keith hung up and sat staring at the phone. For once, he was at a loss for what to do, and realized there was nothing immediate he
could
do. The real world had no business impinging on his friends. For a moment, he wished he’d never discovered them underneath the college library. It was better for them when they were safely mythological. He felt helpless, and he hated feeling helpless.

He picked up the receiver and dialed Diane’s number. If he couldn’t be there in person, he could at least help coordinate the search.

Mona Gilbreth glared at her employees. Pilton looked, as usual, slightly bemused. He was concentrating hard on keeping his eyes fixed on hers, as if enlightenment could be found through direct eye contact. Jake studied the floor. He seemed embarrassed. Mona didn’t care about his feelings. She was so angry she didn’t know what to yell about first.

“You two have really dumped me in it this time. Why did you bring those kids back here? What do I want with two little kids? I told you to dump that truck and get back here for the next load. Now their folks will be on the lookout for us. You’ve involved this company in a felony, and for what?”

“She was watching us dump the tank load in that sump-hole,” Williamson said defensively. “We couldn’t tell what she’d seen, or how much she understood. She ran away, and we ran after her, and it just snowballed.”

“Let me tell you about snowballs,” Mona said angrily, poking a finger close to his eye. His gaze shifted nervously back and forth between her sharp red nail and her face. “What do you think this is going to do to my political career? Can you see the headline? ‘Local business owner kidnaps two local children in waste dumping scandal’? How can we return them, just like that, and tell the parents, oh, it was just a mistake?”

“I dunno, Ma’am.”

“This girl’s uncanny,” Pilton said, drawing his two superiors’ attention away from their quarrel. “There’s something strange about her. I think she’s a fairy or something like that.”

“She ain’t no fairy,” Williamson said, rolling his eyes. “Got no wings, Grant.”

“Well, she’s real small, and what about them ears?” Pilton wanted to know.

Williamson tried to explain. “It’s a mutation, like those people in Spain who have ten fingers.”

Pilton checked. “
I
got ten fingers.”

“On each hand!”

Pilton was fascinated and delighted. “Weird!”

“If we’ve finished with the natural history lesson?” Mona asked, with heavy sarcasm. “You keep an eye on her while I think what to do. Where are they?”

“I shut them in one of the offices in the back. It’s only got a grille vent for a window. She can’t get out that way.”

Dola stared as the door slammed shut behind them. There was only one source of air and light in the room, and it was high and small. If she’d had only herself to think of, she’d have been through the frame and out, running for the nearest patch of green no matter how much skin it cost her. Beyond the room’s edge, though, she could sense nothing but a sort of organic horror. The miasma tainted the intangible world as well as the purely physical. If her mind could wrinkle its nose, it would have. The comfortable sense of her family and people was hidden far behind the awful curtain. She was in the midst of an industrial complex of huge metal cylinders and bolted-together pipes all emitting hollow and sinister noises.

Asrai whimpered softly in the cold room. It had been a hard time and a frightening ride for the infant for all the child had ridden in a car once before. She was hungry. Dola knew that she had reached the end of her minute patience, and would be giving forth with a fierce and terrible yell at any time. Mother was nowhere nearby, and she doubted these two big men would let them go merely to fulfill the needs of a three-month old infant.

As she had feared, the storm soon broke. Asrai started sobbing, catching her breath in short gasps. When Dola picked her up over her shoulder, Asrai let out with one of her famous banshee yells and began to shriek. Dola jogged her gently, talking in a smooth murmur, and hoped that one day her ear would cease ringing.

“Come on, then, it isn’t so bad,” Dola crooned. “You’ll dine soon, I promise you, if I have to cut my own veins for you. Calm, little one, please.” She noticed an edge of panic in her own voice, and sought to calm herself. “Easy, Asrai. I love you. None will hurt you.”

The door opened.

“Well, and not before time,” Dola said. She glared at the men who regarded her from the doorway. They glanced impassively back. She held the baby up. “Her mother will be worried about her. We must go back.”

Disturbed, Asrai’s mournful mutterings grew louder. Her small face and the tips of her ears began to redden. The two men looked at each other and exchanged regretful glances, but when they turned back to her, had once more lost all expression. Dola’s temper flared.

“Can’t you see she’s frightened and hungry?” she asked them. “Take us home! She’s got to be fed. A mite like this has little time.”

That
worried them. They must never have thought a baby could starve to death in the arms of someone caring for her. Skinny looked uncomfortable.

“We can’t,” he said. “The boss lady said we have to keep you here.”

Dola stood up and stamped her foot. The movement startled the baby, who whimpered louder. To those who knew Asrai, it was a warning signal.

“Then get her food, if you won’t let her back to her mother!”

As if on cue, Asrai let out another siren wail. Both of the men jumped, just as if they were some of the Folk who had no children of their own. In unison, they turned and fled into the echoing hallway, but maintaining enough presence of mind, Dola regretted, to shut and lock the door behind them.

The wait for milk was endless. Dola had to use every trick she had ever learned to distract Asrai from the growing void in her small stomach. Her throat was dry from singing endless nursery rhymes and chanting the nonsense verses that babies didn’t understand but loved because of the cadences. She joggled Asrai on her shoulder, and walked around the room, trying to amuse her by showing her Big Person things: the huge, oversized desk, the filing cabinet, the tall locker with its handle as high off the ground as Dola’s head, the small washroom with toilet and sink and mirror. All those things were made with a great deal of metal in or about them, and served to make them both more uncomfortable. Dola winced as Asrai continued to shriek. The noise gathered itself in the tons of cold steel around them, and made it sing a high, frightening note that only made things worse.

She boosted herself up into the room’s only chair, a petal-shaped extrusion of orange plastic with four tall spindly legs too high to let her feet touch the floor. Its cup-shaped bottom made it difficult to get leverage to rock the baby, but she managed a back and forth motion that soothed Asrai from her screaming rage into unhappy hiccups. By the time the Big Folk arrived with feeding supplies, Dola felt completely worn out, but at least Asrai was quiet.

Jake watched her from the door. She glanced at him distrustfully. The thin man came closer, and handed her a tall can, a plastic bottle, and rubber nipples which would have been good for feeding the cow. Dola held up the can to him.

“What is this?”

He seemed surprised she asked. “Formula. It’s a substitute for mother’s milk.”

Dola tested the temperature of the can against her cheek. “I can’t feed her this. It’s cold.”

The two men conferred and the skinny one left. He came back with a device Dola recognized as a coffee maker. There had been one in the staff room in the Library.

She watched closely as Skinny poured water into the screened top, and waited for it to dribble out into the glass carafe. Skinny broke open the top of the can with an attachment on his pocket knife, and filled the bottle partway, then put it in the steaming jug of water. While it was heating, Dola dealt with the delivery system. The bottle’s capacity would have fed the child for days, but the nipple simply wouldn’t fit into her small mouth. It would have to be adjusted.

Dola, shaking her head at the thoughtlessness of Big Folk, began to think about the lessons she’d been learning lately with others of her age group: how to enhance and move
with
the substance of what one sought to alter. She measured it. The broad end needed to remain intact so that it would fit between the plastic collar and the bottle top. In her hand she squeezed the rubber bulb, willing it smaller and smaller. Skinny shook his head when he realized what she was doing.