Higher Mythology (9 page)

“Great!” Keith said enthusiastically. “No more orientation. We’re working on formulating ad campaigns for new products. This department’s a lot more interesting than Research. We can really use our imaginations. Our supervisor, Paul Meier, said this is just what a real creative team does during ‘ideation.’ I like Paul. He’s trying to treat us like regular employees while still leaving us room to make mistakes.”

“Too bad all life experiences aren’t so forgiving,” Mrs. Doyle said, glancing down the hall opposite. It led to the family bedrooms. Keith caught the meaning of her expression, and pulled a long-suffering expression.

“Jeff’s home, huh?”

“Yup. Dinner in half an hour, sweetie,” Mrs. Doyle said. “You can make the salad after you change.”

The battle of the day was fought, but the battle of the evening was just beginning. Keith felt that he got more tired out in four hours arguing with his younger brother than he did in the ten hours of commuting and working downtown.

The younger Doyle was on the floor of their shared room with his back against the bed. After a short glance upward to make sure it wasn’t anyone important who entered, he returned his attention to the small electronic game propped on his hunched knees. Jeffrey Doyle had almost a movie star’s good looks. He had much the same shaped jaw as Keith, but it had more squared bone, a little more muscle. His hair was red, too, but deeper, with bronze in it, and his eyes had decided on an olivine green, instead of changeable hazel like Keith’s. His skin never freckled; it wouldn’t dare. He tanned smoothly in the earliest spring sun. In him, the Doyle intensity fueled his emotions. He never forgave a slight, and Keith returning home to stay in the room he had staked out as his own was a personal affront.

“There’s a message for you,” Jeff said tersely.

It was almost the most civil pronouncement Keith had heard in a month. “Thanks. Where is it?”

Without looking up, Jeff gestured toward Keith’s bed.

On the pillow was a scrap of paper torn from the corner of a junk mail flyer. In the corner under the paste-on address label was a scrawl in Jeff’s seismic handwriting. Keith scanned it. “Catra called? When? ‘Check the front page of the paper’?” he read. “What’s that mean?”

Jeff raised resentful eyes to him. “Couldn’t tell. She had a weird way of talking. She said something valuable was stolen. Your strange friends.” He went back to his game, glowering at the miniature screen.

“Today’s paper?” Keith asked.

“She didn’t say,” Jeff said shortly, and ignored any further questions Keith asked. His audience was at an end. Keith would have to find out for himself.

“Mysterious,” he said, hurrying out of the room to find the daily paper. For one of the Folk to telephone long distance meant that something was very wrong.

It had already been consigned to the recycling bin. He pulled section one from the heap and straightened it out. At first he didn’t see anything that related to the Little Folk, until he noticed the boxed reference in the upper left hand corner under the daily weather report.

“Archaeological display at Field Museum!” Keith breathed. He felt his invisible whiskers twitch. Surely that was what Catra meant him to read. He flipped through the pages to the main body of the article. There, as the Elf Master had predicted, was the display of Bronze Age artifacts brought to the United States by Professor Parker. The photograph that accompanied the article showed the comb Keith himself had unearthed in Scotland.

“It must have been stolen,” Keith said to himself. So that was the problem. You just couldn’t have a magic comb bouncing around the city. He picked up the phone and dialed Hollow Tree Farm. The line was busy.

Never mind. He’d go to the Field Museum and investigate for himself. Keith snatched the family membership card from its niche in the desk where his parents kept it, and hopped into the Mustang. The traffic outbound from the heart of the city was thick, but inbound, he had reasonably clear sailing.

The museum’s ornamented portico had shadows across it already as the daylight dwindled. Keith shot up the flight of shallow steps to the grand entrance.

“Good evening,” Keith said to the woman behind the marble counter just inside the doors. “I’m a friend of Professor Parker.” The woman gave him a noncommittal smile, as if uncertain of the significance of his statement. “The English archaeologist who’s visiting with the Bronze Age stuff from the Hebrides? Is he here?” The woman still looked blank. Keith glanced confidentially from side to side and leaned closer. “The short one?”

“Oh, yes!” the woman exclaimed, her face lightening, then looking a little self-conscious.

“I’d like to see him, if that’s possible.”

“Sorry. He’s busy this evening.”

“How do you know that when a second ago you didn’t know who he was?” Keith asked, plastering a foolish grin on his face to soften the question.

Flushing, the woman countered with another question. “Did you want to visit the museum this evening, sir?”

“Uh, yeah.” Keith plunged a finger and a thumb into his shirt pocket for the membership card.

The woman beamed to acknowledge a museum supporter. The young man might be strange, but he was a patron. “Thank you, sir. Would you like a map?”

“Will it help me find the professor?” Keith asked, full of innocence, as he took the pamphlet.

“I can’t help you with that, sir,” the woman explained patiently. Their voices had gotten louder, catching an echo from the polished walls. A security guard on watch near the entrance started forward, hand on radio, but she waved him back. “I can direct you to the Bronze Age exhibit. Second floor.”

Using the map, Keith had no trouble finding Parker’s display on the upstairs gallery, sandwiched between another small visiting exhibit and the museum’s huge Oriental collection. Four or five showcases were dedicated to the finds, which combined the discoveries of two or three groups of archaeologists working in the same region of the Hebridean northwest. Keith felt a surge of pride when he found the case that contained the round clay bottle and the string of amber trading beads that he and his Scottish friend Matthew had unearthed together a little over a year ago. Moreover, their names were typed on the little identification tag pinned in front of it. Parker was generous in giving credit. Keith was delighted. He wished that someone he knew was there, so he could show them his name.

Most of the artifacts were of the shard and fragment variety, with carefully-made mockups of how the pieces were assumed to have looked when they were in use. Once again, Keith was impressed by the way the scientists had extrapolated the shape of the whole items from formless fragments found out of context in three-thousand-years-worth of dirt. Previously discovered examples were used as templates, but it took a good eye to tell the difference between the potential fracture zones of the neck of a jar from its similarly-formed pedestal. Bone pins, small toys, glass beads and the like were all that remained fully intact after the passing millenia.

Keith surveyed the display. Each of these pieces was as ordinary as it looked. None of them aroused that tingle of second sight, calling to him the way the wood-and-bone comb had. Catra’s elliptical message had been correct. The comb was not where it belonged. In the next to last case, he saw the little pinned label designating where the comb belonged. A little bar labeled “REMOVED” lay in most of the empty spots where artifacts had been taken out, but none marked this particular absence. His invisible whiskers sprang erect in alarm.

He dropped to his knees in front of the case, his nose almost pressed into the glass. The possibility of the truth hadn’t concerned him so long as it was likely there had been a mistake. Keith felt a lead weight drop into the pit of his stomach. He stared into the heart of the case, hoping for a clue. Did someone else latch on to the fact that there was something extraordinary about that one piece, and steal it? The Little Folk would want to avoid letting wander loose any artifact that could be traced back to them. It was safe with Parker. Keith knew he had to find it and get it back here where it belonged. He suddenly felt someone’s eyes upon him, and looked around.

A uniformed security guard stood against a pillar, peering obliquely at him, clearly wondering why a young man in suspenders was getting so upset about Bronze Age antiques. It was the same guard who had been near the front door. Keith gave him a huge, mindless smile. The guard scowled, and looked away.

Keith sighed. It was going to be harder to investigate the comb’s disappearance with a tail following him all over the museum. Nonchalantly, Keith backed away from the case and stared up at the large map suspended above it, showing the locations in Scotland where the various artifacts had been found. A light sound came from behind him, as if the guard had shifted a foot on the polished floor.

Without haste, though his nerves were going bonkers, Keith sidled away from the Parker display, and ambled toward the nearest stairwell.

Was there any way to trace the comb, using its previous presence in the case as a thread? Keith threw a mental glance over his shoulder, hoping the guard wouldn’t notice. The case didn’t emit any perceptible energies pointing one way or the other. There wasn’t enough magical oomph in the comb to have left a trail. As a psychic detective, he was on his own.

Keith started walking down the stairs. The guard sauntered behind him, the radio on his hip emitting whispering sibilants. Keith looked up and smiled at the man, whose brows drew together in a scowl. He guessed that it hadn’t been too smart to draw attention to himself at the museum entrance. Now the staff was suspicious. How could he get rid of his tail?

In the main floor of the museum were the famous dinosaurs, a tyrannosaurus rex standing triumphant over the prone body of its prey. Keith stopped at the well-worn handrail and stared up at its toothy jaws. The guard paused about twenty feet away, arms folded, and wearing a carefully neutral expression on his face that made him look no less threatening than the giant dinosaur. Keith studied paleontology, wondering what to do.

There hadn’t been a news report on the radio about the theft of the comb from the museum, so either the loss hadn’t been discovered yet, or the museum staff was covering up. He wondered how the elves had gotten the word so quickly. Maybe Professor Parker himself had called the Master with the news.

It was likely to be an inside job, Keith reasoned. Those cases couldn’t be opened easily by an outsider without keys, and to judge by the persistence of the security staff around suspicious visitors, without being observed. If the comb remained on the premises, maybe he could find it. It gave off a recognizable auric energy that Keith had detected shortly after he’d found it. That process of investigation, as Holl and Enoch had been at pains to instruct him, took concentration. Keith stared up into the flat eye socket of the tyrannosaurus, and looked past it, focusing his own inner eye.

Suddenly, he was surrounded by ghost-lights, as ordinarily-unseen energies pulsed at him, beckoning him toward a myriad of glass cases visible in the large chambers that led off from all sides of the main hall. More energies thrummed at him through the floors from upstairs and downstairs.

Oh, great, Keith thought, overwhelmed, looking around at the sudden display. He didn’t know where to turn first. This place is
full
of magic artifacts.

Well, where better to hide a needle than in a haystack full of needles? If the thief knew the special property of the comb, he wouldn’t bother to remove it from the premises. Keith went from one source of energy to another, hoping that one of them belonged to the missing comb. Most of the Hopi kachinas glimmered at him in their case, creating a tremendous mass presence that was the most powerful thing for yards. A few of the Inuit household goods shone brightly against the dimness of the hall where they were displayed. Keith hurried through the aisles, eliminating one false lead after another. After the thirtieth false alarm on the ground floor drew him to yet another Native American display, he made a mental note to research those mystical traditions one day and learn more about the source of their talents.

None of the artifacts he inspected had the correct mental feel, so he was able to slowly fine-tune what he was looking for. The Indian items had their own strong identity, and it didn’t match the sensation he had had from handling the comb. Gradually, he began to feel that what he wanted was not on this floor at all, but somewhere below.

A loudspeaker interrupted his thoughts with a pleasant chime, followed by a woman’s voice that echoed through the big chamber, drowning out the identity-less roar of human voices and footsteps. “The museum will be closing in twenty minutes.”

Keith looked around him. A few of the other patrons left what they were doing and headed toward the main entrance or toward the gift shop. No one was paying attention to him. At long last, the guard who’d been tailing him had gotten bored with the seemingly-aimless tour of the Native American rooms, and abandoned him. Hands in pockets, Keith strolled along the inner wall of the museum toward a down staircase.

Maybe before technology humankind knew more about the mystical side of life, but the industrial revolution had changed things. He’d read about a theory that suggested that people stopped believing in fairies after machines were invented that spun thread or made shoes, because those tasks were no longer such hard work. Keith knew better. Humanity was just ignoring its closest neighbors. He smiled, a little smugly.

His new skill made the world look subtly different to him. His expanded perception gave him insights into other cultures in ways he never dreamed of. He was grateful to his little friends for making it possible. Running errands like this was one of the very minor ways he had to show thanks.

The Egyptian rooms were an unexpected ordeal. Definitely the ancient kingdom had a handle on the unseen energies. Ever since he was a kid, the Field Museum displays of mummies and sarcophagi had given him a feeling of exciting and incomprehensible danger, like the chilling sensation aroused by hearing really good ghost stories around campfires, and now he knew why. Every mummy in the glass cases had a creepingly terrifying pseudopod of light coming from it that reached out to him, questing snakelike to investigate him, and as he shrank back from its touch, fell away. It seemed as if each mummy was looking for someone, someone particular—maybe the people who had defiled the tombs where they had once been buried—but was not interested in anyone else.