2040 Revelations (5 page)

He eyed her with suspicion. ‘That depends on what it is.’

‘Is there any chance you could do an analysis of the bones I need tested, this evening?’

‘Seriously, now – tonight? It’s nearly nine.’

‘I’d owe you big time,’ she said, her eyes pleading with him.

‘Yeah, ya would,’ he said, mock vehemently.

‘So you will, then?’

‘Sure, just one item, though; I’m not going stay here all night.’

‘Oh, thank you.’ She gave him a peck on the cheek.  ‘You’re a real star, do you know that?’

Looking a little nonplussed, Dean sent Roland to get Sarah’s artefacts from the security vault on the far side of the large room. Meanwhile he went about preparing the mass spectrometer for operation while Sarah re-read the results of the hair sample.

A couple of hours later, the analysis on the large near-complete finger bone finished, Dean printed out the data and took a look. Barely a moment passed before Sarah could contain herself no longer. She whisked the paper out of Dean’s hands, much to his chagrin, and read the results.

‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It matches the hair sample. Five hundred and eleven thousand years old.’

‘Give or take a few hundred years,’ Dean said.

‘This is fantastic!’ she enthused, overjoyed at the news.

‘That is impressive and certainly interesting,’ Dean said. ‘But it’s late and I’ve done enough work for one day, so if it’s all right with you two, I’m off home.’

With all in agreement, Dean locked up the building after they had shut down all the systems and turned off the lights. Outside, Roland gave them a parting wave of farewell before trundling off into the night in the opposite direction to the pub.

‘Pleased?’ Dean said as she found herself looking at the new results again, with a grin on her face.

‘Yes, very. Thank you so much, you’ve been really great tonight.’

He smirked. ‘I’ve heard you say that before.’

‘Really, do you ever get your mind off sex?’

‘You know me,’ he said, grinning.

She laughed. ‘That I do.’ She looked down the street and then back at Dean. ‘Anyway, I’m going to hit the sack.’

His expression turned serious. ‘Do you have anywhere to stay?’

‘I’ll be fine, thanks. I’ll check into that nice little hotel next to the Tavern, the one we—’

He was smiling again.

‘Oh,’ she said, blushing, ‘never mind, yes, that one.’

Ever the gentleman, Dean escorted her to the hotel where she bade him goodnight.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to—?’ he asked her, darting his eyes pointedly up at the hotel rooms above.

‘You’re terrible; I thought you were seeing someone, anyway?’

‘I’m not really, I was hoping to make you jealous. Did it work?’

‘No, ’fraid not,’ she said, even though she was tempted to take up him up on his offer, what with her situation with Mark. She’d felt a lot happier today than she had for quite some time and a night with Dean would be very enjoyable, but she wanted to make it work with Mark.

‘So?’ he said.

‘Sorry, Dean, I—’

He held a hand up. ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow and we can finish off the rest of your tests if you want? Perhaps have lunch, strictly platonic. Sound good?’

‘It does.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’ With a wave goodbye, she turned and walked into the hotel. It had been a long day and she was looking forward to resting her head on a nice soft pillow.

Once in a room and tucked up, snug, ready for sleep, her mind wandered on the day’s events, settling at last on the carbon dating breakthrough she’d been waiting for, seemingly for her whole life. As she drifted off to sleep she dreamt of receiving the International Archaeology Award for Archaeologist of the Year.
And this year’s winner is … Sarah Morgan
.

Chapter Three

Sarah arrived back bright and early the next day at the mass spectrometer building to find a police car parked outside. Wondering what was going on, she went inside to where Dean was talking to one of the officers, while a disconsolate Roland sat alone at one of the desks, around which papers were scattered and trays upended.

‘Roland, what’s happened? Is everything all right?’

‘Hi, Sarah; no, not really. We’ve had a break-in; they trashed the office and broke into the vault.’

‘What! Hell, no one was hurt, were they?’

‘No, it must have happened some time late last night. The vault is like a bomb site, artefacts all over the place.’

Sarah looked at him suddenly feeling anxious. ‘What about my bones and hair?’

Roland shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The police won’t let us in there now. They want to take photos and see if they can get prints and that.’

Sarah had a dreadful sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Slumping down on a chair next to Roland, she ran one of her hands over her head, her brow furrowing. She’d suffered the loss of evidence a couple of times before, not only her mysterious maps, but also a bone she’d found early on in her career, a complete femur. This fossilised limb had been massive in comparison to modern day humans. Dating revealed it to be two hundred thousand years old and she declared it as a previously undiscovered human ancestor or cousin, the ever elusive Homo gigantis.

The bone indicated the height of the individual must have been at least nine feet, fully erect. At the time she made comparisons with fossils of an animal known as
Gigantopithecus blacki
, a giant ape estimated to measure ten feet in a standing position. This massive creature lived between nine million and one hundred thousand years ago, in what was now India, China and Vietnam. That such an animal evolved, an animal that was a member of the Hominidae family – of which humans were also a member – added credence to Sarah’s claims. The fact that massive giant apes had evolved in Earth’s history opened up the door to the real possibility that humans, or more specifically, their ancestors, may also have grown much larger.

To some this sounded preposterous. Giant humans, people scoffed at the notion. This entrenched cultural scepticism, or modern day superiority complex, seemed to Sarah to be wholly out of touch with the palaeontological discoveries displayed in museums and taught in schools the world over. Huge great lumbering beasts had roamed the Earth for millions of years; none better known than the dinosaurs, pterosaurs and the fabled giant mammals of the ice age. Descendants of these colossi were even with us today in the form of elephants, giraffes, crocodiles, and the largest animal ever to have existed, the one hundred foot long blue whale.

These arguments began to gain purchase with a few academics – until, that was, the femur in question had been stolen from one of her cases soon after she had published a paper on Homo gigantis. Sarah’s work had utilised a plethora of supporting data, written accounts, photos and videos she had compiled over the years, with the femur as the crowning evidence for the new species.

Of course she had been ridiculed by the general scientific community. She had expected resistance, as many of her friends outside of more credible circles had also received such treatment. Sarah, however, being an up and coming archaeologist at the time and predicted to do great things by some top academics, had believed she could give credence to the subject, especially with her new proof.

The intense scepticism shown by most had briefly waned when a couple of her colleagues had shown tentative interest after they had seen the bone in question. Sarah had been so excited when a senior scientist and her mentor, Dr. Middleton, had been willing to go out on a limb for her and take a look at the bone. This was when her world had been turned upside down by the theft. Without the bone, she had no hard evidence and without evidence, she had nothing. Her career had taken a nosedive since that fateful day and she had been treading water ever since.

The most disturbing thing was the fact that it wasn’t just she who had been plagued by bad luck. Many of her friends and like-minded believers in the existence of Homo gigantis had also experienced many accidents and thefts of finds that may have proved their theories. Too many to be coincidence, many argued. Sarah had initially thought they were paranoid; however, she had come to feel the same way over the years. If this break-in had targeted her evidence then it was time to take a stand, but how? That was the question.

Sometime later, rousing her from these increasingly speculative musings, Dean finished talking to a policewoman and came over to Sarah and Roland. ‘They’re bringing in the investigators shortly to try and gather evidence but they seem to think it’s a professional job, as the vault couldn’t have been opened by amateurs. They knew what they were doing. I had a look around before I rang the police and it looks like a few things were taken, but most were just trashed mindlessly.’ He looked at Sarah, his expression sad. ‘Sarah, I’m so sorry, your pieces weren’t there. I looked everywhere for them. There may be an outside chance they’re amongst the debris, but the box they were in is one of the ones that are missing.’

So there it was, her proof gone – again. She put her head in her hands wondering why she deserved such bad luck.

‘Roland, you didn’t happen to see a woman hanging around here yesterday, did you?’ Dean said.

Roland looked confused ‘Can you be more specific?’

‘Sarah, what did she look like, the woman in my office?’

‘I don’t know; my height, grey suit—’

‘Dark curly hair and glasses?’ Roland said, finishing her sentence.

Sarah’s head shot up. ‘Yeah – yes!’

‘What was she doing here?’ Dean asked him.

‘She said she was meeting you here, but you never showed up. She waited a while and then went.’

‘Me?’ Dean said.

Roland nodded.

‘Did she look at the vault?’ Sarah asked him before Dean could say something else.

‘Actually she did. She looked at everything, really, just wandered about. I didn’t think anything of it then, but now—’

‘Well, that’s it then,’ said Dean. ‘We know who did it, this mysterious woman. You two had better tell the police and give them her description. I already told them about last night, Sarah, they were going to talk to you anyway.’

After Sarah and Roland had given their accounts to the police Roland went home and she and Dean went to a café around the corner for lunch.

‘So what are you going to do now?’ Dean asked her as a waiter cleared away their plates.

‘I’m not giving up on this. There’s something going on here, it’s too much of a coincidence. Two times now this has happened to me.’

‘They never did recover that femur, did they?’

She shook her head, not wanting to discuss it further. She was already too angry and upset to think about that right now.

‘You think someone is deliberately preventing you from finding or going public with any evidence to support your theory?’

She heard the scepticism in Dean’s tone even though he tried hard to hide it. She shrugged, not trusting herself to answer.
What can I do now?
she wondered.
I can’t let this keep happening
. One thing was for certain, someone was doing their best to discredit her and prevent her theories from seeing the light of day and she would find out why or, at the very least, get the better of them. She stood up, suddenly knowing what she had to do.

‘Are you going home?’ Dean said.

‘Yes and no.’

He looked puzzled by her answer.

Without elaborating, she thanked him for all his help, kissed him on the cheek goodbye and headed for home. No sooner was she out the door than she was on her phone, booking a flight to Turkey.

♦

Sarah arrived back at her apartment early in the evening and went straight into the bedroom to pack her flight case.
First things first, though
, she thought to herself. Going to the closet she opened the double doors and parted the clothes hanging on the rail inside. Grabbing a stool, she climbed up, the top of her head now grazing the ceiling. At eye level a small air vent nestled off to one side behind some old musty smelling boxes on a shelf. Sarah pushed her hand over and popped off the plastic grate from the wall. Feeling around inside, her palm brushed against a flat metal object; curling her fingers around it, she pulled it out. For a moment she looked at it and then gave it a quick kiss before slipping it into her pocket; it represented her final piece of evidence and she felt a great sense of relief and comfort that she still had it in her possession.

As she walked back into the lounge to go into the bathroom to collect toiletries, something caught her eye. She slowed to a stop in front of the mantelpiece, on which sat a rustic oak picture frame. Sarah picked it up with care and stared into her mother’s beautiful blue eyes. A thought suddenly struck her. Her discoveries – the femur, the finger bones, the hair – if they had all been taken from her due to some kind of conspiracy, then it stood to reason that the maps had been destroyed on purpose, too; especially considering the fire investigation report had been inconclusive, perhaps even hinting at foul play.
That means Mum didn’t die in an accident at all
, Sarah thought in horror,
she was murdered!

Memories of the fire all those years ago came flooding back to her, the smell of the smoke and the intense heat of the blaze. She remembered the noise of the flames as they consumed her mother’s house. Perhaps the most vivid recollection of that terrible day was the sound of her own screams as firemen fought to hold her back as she tried in vain to get into the house to save her mum’s life.

Sarah felt faint and put her hand against the wall to steady herself. Her head swam and the room grew dim. The thought was too much to take and she crumpled slowly to the floor, the picture frame falling with a clatter from her hand. Her mind awash with emotion, she dragged the photo back towards her and stared at her mother’s face through distorted vision as tears welled. A dark, slow realisation wound its way around her heart, constricting and restricting it;
it
was my discoveries that killed Mum
.
If I hadn’t taken the maps to the house she’d still be alive today
. Agony lanced through her stomach and she scrambled to her feet and rushed to the kitchen sink, where she retched until her throat burned with pain. She stood there for some time in silence, her head hanging limp; finally she turned on the tap, washed out her mouth and cleaned her face.