A Treasure Deep (27 page)

Claire sat in one of the chairs. And
waited.

“INTERESTING,” RUTHERFORD SAID and tapped a key on
his keyboard. The image on the video monitor zoomed in slightly.
“Only mildly vocal, but he seems aware of things around him.”

Julia looked over her brother’s shoulder. “He
shows no sign of fear and has offered no resistance. He’s the most
passive person I’ve seen.”

“He doesn’t seem all that intelligent,” Alex
said.

“He’s not,” Rutherford said. “He’s a savant,
brilliant in a few things he cannot himself understand. Beyond
that, he’s dysfunctional in every way. I did a little research
while Julia was gone. Extraordinary material. Seems it all centers
on damage to the left hemisphere. There are several cases on record
in which adults, even the elderly, become savants after injury or
disease. Our boy here may be a ‘prodigious savant.’ Not many of
them around, maybe fifty in the world.”

“Prodigious savants?” Julia said.

“People with skill levels beyond any
expectation. They’d be remarkable even if they were normal in other
ways.”

“What’s his fascination with drawing?” Alex
asked.

“It’s one of the few communication outlets he
has. I doubt his brain processes information as ours do. Our brains
work by retention and relation. We see things or events happen, and
we store them away. The brain then processes that information
through relation to other events and expresses it in the form of
emotion or thought. I’d bet the way his brain relates to its stored
information is nothing like that. He might as well be a creature
from another world, evolved in a way we can’t imagine. And here he
is, stuck among five billion people who are nothing like him at
all.”

“He’s also stuck in one of our unused labs,”
Julia said. “And I’m not comfortable having them here for long.
After all, I did kidnap them. I believe that’s still a felony.”

“The lab is in a secured wing. We are in no
danger, and we can observe them at our leisure. Here.”

Rutherford punched another few keys with his
one still-obedient hand. The color printer on the side desk came to
life. It spat out several color images from the monitor.

“Take those, Alex. It’s time for another trip
to California.”

“THE LATE HOUR getting to you, doc?”

Perry found Curtis sitting in the oak grove
office, his arms crossed over his chest. His face was pallid under
the artificial light, his shoulders slumped as if holding bags of
wet cement. “Maybe you should try to get a couple hours of
sleep.”

“Couldn’t sleep if I tried, Perry. Not
tonight. I may not sleep for a week.”

“That’s understandable,” Perry answered.
“You’re walking on the greatest archeological find ever. I imagine
you’re pretty excited.”

“So you’d think,” Curtis replied
morosely.

Perry pulled up a camp chair and joined the
doctor. “Something eating at you?”

“This is not the way to run a dig, Perry,”
Curtis blurted. “We’re moving too fast, taking too many risks.
Things are going to be overlooked. Archaeology is built upon bits
not just blocks. Secrets are hidden in the small things. We should
be sifting the dirt from the pits; we should have a team of
archeologists here and graduate students too. At the very least we
should have an expert in Roman archaeology.” He sighed, and his
shoulders dropped another notch. “I’m going to be vilified in the
literature, Perry. I’m about to become the poster boy for bad
archaeology.”

“You know why we’re doing this, Professor,”
Perry soothed. “The speed isn’t a choice; it’s a requirement that
was foisted upon us. I agree we should be moving slowly, but there
are forces against us. If there were any other way, we’d do it, but
we’ve been compromised, and a man has been killed. When the whole
story is known, you won’t be vilified, you’ll be honored.”

“It still gets under my skin.”

“Why do I think there’s something else
percolating in your brain?” Perry asked.

“Am I that transparent?”

“Not really, but I am good at guessing games.
For example, I bet what’s really eating at you is that you’ve seen
five ancient Roman soldiers where no such soldier should be. Am I
right?”

Curtis uncrossed his arms and leaned forward,
gazing at the ground. “How can it be, Perry? It’s been known for
decades that Columbus wasn’t the first man to cross the oceans.
There’s some evidence that Vikings landed on the east coast nearly
a thousand years ago. There is even slight evidence that Asians may
have made it to the California coast long before Columbus was
around. It’s all speculative and hotly debated. It’s certainly not
mainstream science, but it’s nonetheless there, hovering at the
fringes.”

“And now . . .”

“And now I have five foolproof, undeniable
evidences that the new world was visited by first-century Romans,
and a sixth one being unearthed as we speak.”

Perry looked across the pasture. Five gaping
holes punctuated the terrain, marked off by yellow plastic
construction tape, their gaping mouths covered with sheets of
plywood. At each dig, two men shoveled the remaining mounds of dirt
into heavy plastic bags, each marked with a large number painted on
the side. A paper tag containing the same number and additional
information was wired to the twisted top of each bag. The sixth
coffin was being excavated and was due to be extracted in the next
few minutes.

Curtis had overseen each removal, supervised
the opening of each coffin, made prodigious notes, and then
supervised the resealing. Each coffin was wrapped in thick plastic
sheeting, and finally a crate was built around it. Once the last
excavation was finished, the six ancient caskets would be carted
under guard to a waiting truck and driven to the airport. Perry had
leased a large private plane to fly the bodies to the various
universities Curtis designated.

Curtis had been on the job since his arrival,
with the hours filled by unexpected stressful events. He’d been
pulled from his home by Perry’s call, flown across country,
witnessed the uncovering of a murder victim, been grilled by the
police, learned of Perry’s remarkable find, and confronted the
archaeologically impossible. All in all, Perry thought, he’s
holding up quite well.

“Every moment brings new questions,” Curtis
said. “At first all I could ask was, ‘What’s a nice Roman like you
doing in a place like this?’ Silly way to put it, I know, but it
sums up the problem . . . I should say, problems. It’s just one
problem layered upon another.”

“I think I know what you’re getting at,”
Perry said. “How did they get here? I don’t think the Romans of
that period sailed the open ocean. They weren’t true deep-water
sailors.”

“They didn’t have to be,” Curtis said. “Their
army owned the land, and their navy had only the Mediterranean to
contend with. They extended their influence all the way to Spain,
but the Atlantic was too big a barrier to cross. Besides, as far as
they knew there was nothing beyond, so why bother?”

“That’s one thing that bothers me,” Perry
said. “If my geography is right, even if a Roman ship sailed out of
the Mediterranean, they would be in the Atlantic. That’s the wrong
ocean. Could they sail from one ocean to another?”

“Long-distance sailing could be done in
ancient cultures. The technology of sailing wasn’t that different
from that available to fifteenth-century explorers. The later
sailors had larger ships, multiple sails, and navigation skills the
Romans lacked.

All in all that’s significant, but there’s
nothing to say that a Roman cargo ship or warship couldn’t have
endured a transatlantic trip, even by accident.

“The Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl
sailed a balsa-log raft he called Kon-Tiki from Peru to the
Tutamotu Islands, east of Tahiti. He crossed 4,300 miles of open
seas in just over one hundred days. On board were only five men,
and the raft was basically a log and lashing construction. The boat
endured harsh conditions, but it survived. He also crossed the
Atlantic from North Africa to Barbados in less than sixty days. So
it’s possible for a small boat to cross the oceans.

“The ancient Romans had some pretty
sophisticated ships,” Curtis continued. “Most people think of their
warships like a penteconter, a vessel with a square sail and room
for fifty oarsmen, but there were also large merchant ships with
two or three masts sporting square sails and measuring five hundred
tons. Some historians are convinced that there were ships twice
that size to move grain from Egypt throughout the Empire.”

“So it’s not impossible for a Roman ship to
sail across the ocean,” Perry said.

“Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Why
would they bother? Unlike the Vikings, Romans were not known for
being great explorers.”

Perry thought for a moment then said, “People
do the unusual out of need or fear. Maybe they were fleeing.”

“Because of what you expect to find below the
ground?” Curtis said.

“Yes. I think they might have been driven to
protect their precious cargo. Many questions remain. As you said,
we’re on the wrong side of the continent. If a Roman vessel left
the Mediterranean, it would be afloat in the Atlantic, not the
Pacific.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, Perry.”
Curtis leaned back in his chair and gazed skyward. The work lights
washed out any chance to see stars, but Perry knew the
archaeologist was not looking skyward; he was looking inward.
“Ancient sailors usually stayed within sight of shore. Coming past
the Pillars of Hercules, they could have followed the African coast
south and rounded what we now call the Cape of Good Hope, then
sailed up the coast in the Indian Ocean. From there they would
follow the trade route to Asia.”

“A long and rough journey,” Perry said. “The
seas around the southern tip of Africa are notoriously bad.”

“They would have needed a lot of luck and all
the breaks they could get.”

“They needed more than luck; they needed
Providence,” Perry added. “Still, they would have to cross the
Pacific or follow the coastline north into the cold and treacherous
waters around the Bering Strait and down the western edge of
Alaska. Not a trip I’d want to take.”

“That’s just one possibility,” Curtis said.
“It’s also possible that they were blown out to sea and forced to
cross the Pacific. The truth is we just don’t know, and we may
never know.”

“And that’s just part of the mystery,” Perry
added. “Why come all the way to the Tehachapi Mountains? We know
they made it this far regardless of the path they may have taken,
but why settle here? The coast is eighty miles away by air. These
guys would have to have walked that distance. Why go through that
much trouble?”

“Perhaps they didn’t know where they were. If
they were blown to sea by a storm then continued east, they would
encounter land, but not a land they would recognize. Maybe they
were confused. Maybe they weren’t welcomed by the coastal Indians.
Maybe they lost their minds. I don’t know.”

“Or maybe they wanted to make sure their
treasure was as safe as they could make it,” Perry said.

“Perhaps, perhaps. I don’t think anyone will
ever know.”

Perry shifted his gaze across the field. Jack
was standing at the last grave, Site Six as it had been dubbed, and
he was motioning for them. “It looks like they have our last friend
out of the ground, Doc. It’s time for you to make your
inspection.”

Curtis rose and started across the field.
Perry stepped to his side. “You know, Doc, once we make the needed
extractions, you will be free to scour the site for years to come.
The agreement we have with the property owners allows us access for
quite some time.”

“That’s good to know. It may take years to
piece the whole story together. We’ve only scratched the surface.
For every one thing I see, fifteen new questions arise. For
example, did the people take up residence here? If so, where is the
evidence of their habitation? There should be rubbish pits,
evidence of homes, and more. And the planks, where did they come
from? Did they hew them from the surrounding trees? Somehow I don’t
think so.”

“I’ll bet you a breakfast that the coffins
are made from the wood of their ship,” Perry said. “I know, I know,
that opens even more questions. Why tear up the boat and then cart
it a hundred miles or so away from the shore?”

“It would be an insane act, but nothing would
surprise me now,” Curtis said.

When they arrived at the open grave, Jack,
Gleason, and Brent hovered over the dark wood box. Two other
workers stood nearby. Brent stood ready to fire up the video
camera. “Last one,” Jack said as he unhooked the straps that had
been used to secure the casket. The moment he finished, he gave the
backhoe operator the signal to move the rig back from the site.

“Let’s pop it,” Perry said. “Then we can
bring the backhoe around to start on the primary dig.”

Jack took a small crowbar and slipped its
thin edge between the center top board and the coffin’s vertical
front surface. The square iron nails protested the intrusion but
gave way easily. Jack passed the tool to Perry, who adroitly worked
the other side. Together they lifted the board and gently set it to
the side.

The men gazed into the coffin expecting to
see what they had seen in the other five. They didn’t. There was no
shield, no helmet, no cloak of iron mail, and no sword.

“Well,” said Curtis softly. “It appears I was
wrong, Perry. I am still capable of surprise.”

“It’s . . .” Brent began, then realized he
wasn’t taping. He raised the camera and activated the tiny halogen
light. “It’s a woman.”

Perry was staring down at the small, skeletal
frame that seemed far too small for the coffin. A cloth, darkened
by centuries, lay across the bones. The skull was tilted to one
side, resting on a thin pillow of long brown hair. He said nothing.
He had expected the unusual. The whole idea, the whole project was
beyond the scope of the expected, but this sight rattled him.