I’m busy tomorrow. Sorry to take up so much of your time.’ He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, in an effort to still their trembling.
As he hurried from the bleak building with all its stone wings and stone walls and stony windows, he muttered a verse from Psalm XXVI to himself. ‘Oh shut not up my soul with the sinners: nor my life with the bloodthirsty …’
And as he climbed into his waiting carriage, he said aloud, ‘Holy Lord, but I need a drink. It’s a terrible way for a man to end up.’
Bodenland and Waldgrave were in the construction wing consulting with senior mechanics when a call came through from Bodenland’s secretary, Rose Gladwin, that Bernard Clift wanted to see him urgently.
‘I’ll be there, Rose.’
He could see Clift through a glass door before Clift saw his approach. The younger man still wore the dusty clothes he had had on at Old John in Utah. His whole manner suggested excitement, as he paced back and forth in the waiting room with a springy step, punching the palm of one hand with the fist of the other, and talking to himself with downward gaze as if rehearsing a speech.
‘You’ll wonder what I’m doing in Dallas,’ he began, almost without preamble, as Bodenland went in. ‘I’m on my way to PAA ’99 in Houston. Progress in Advanced Archaeology. We’re still fighting a rump of idiots who think Darwin was the devil. I’ve been scheduled to speak for some months. Well, I’m going to announce that I’ve uncovered a humanoid creature going back some sixty-five million years. I’m in for the Spanish Inquisition, and I know it.’
‘I thought you’d come to inspect our inertial project,’ Bodenland said, smiling.
Clift looked blank. ‘I wanted to see you because I’ve had a rethink about secrecy in the last forty-eight hours. Our security broke down. The students told the tale to a local radio station. I don’t want a garbled message getting about. I have to ask you for some support, Joe – I mean financial. My university won’t fund me on this.’
‘You asked them and they turned you down?’ He saw by Clift’s expression that his guess was correct. ‘They said you were crazy? What makes you think I don’t think you’re crazy? Come and have a coffee, Bernie, and let me talk you out of this.’
Clift shook his head exasperatedly, but allowed himself to be led into the secretary’s room, where he sank into a chair and sipped black coffee.
‘The experts I told you about – both able young men from the archaeological research departments of the museums in Chicago and Drumheller – took a look at the evidence. Of course they’re cautious. They have to make reports. But I think I have won their backing. They will be at Houston, at PAA ’99. Don’t shake your head, Joe. Look at this.’
He jumped up, almost upsetting his cup. From his briefcase he spilled on the table black-and-white photos of the site and the grave, taken from all angles.
‘There’s no way this can be a hoax, Joe.’ He made an agitated movement. ‘It would be to your company’s advantage to associate yourself with this momentous discovery. I’m positive there was a – at least a pseudo-human species contemporaneous with the duck-billed dinosaurs and other giant herbivores and, of course, with major predators such as Tyrannosaurus Rex. I’m going to overturn scientific knowledge just as Lyell and Darwin and others overturned the grip of false religion in the nineteenth century. You realize the amount we know for sure about the Cretaceous is virtually all contained in a lorry-load of old bones? The rest is guesswork. Inspired imagination.’
Bodenland interrupted his eloquence. ‘Look beyond your personal excitement. Suppose you were taken seriously in Houston. Think of the effect on the stock market —’
Clift jumped up, heedlessly upsetting his coffee. ‘I change the world and you worry about the Dow Jones Index? Joe, this isn’t like you! Grasp the new reality.’
‘My shareholders would shoot me if —’
‘Here’s a kind of human with burial customs not unlike ours – flowers in the grave, ochre, even some kind of meaningful symbol on the coffin lid – but below the K/T boundary. Maybe it developed from some offshoot of early dinosaurs. I don’t know, but I tell you that this is – well, it’s greater than the discovery of a new planet, it’s —’
‘Hold it, Bernie,’ said Joe, laughing. ‘I do see that it might be all you say, and more – if it proved to be true. But how could it be true? You want it to be true. But suppose it’s like the Piltdown man, just a hoax. Something some of those brighter students of yours tried on for fun … I can’t possible associate this organization with it at this early stage. We’ve got responsibilities. If you want a few hundred bucks, I’d be glad —’
Clift looked angry. ‘Joe, are you hearing me? I just told you, this is no fucking hoax. How many of the world’s great discoveries have been laughed at on first appearance? Remember how men thought that flying machines were impossible – and continued to do so even after the first flying machine had left the ground? Remember how the great Priestley discovered the role of oxygen in combustion – yet still believed in the old phlogiston theory?’
‘Okay, okay.’ Bodenland raised his hands for peace. ‘Quite contrary to Priestley’s case, in this case popular mythology is entirely on your side. The comic strips and movies have always pretended that mankind and dinosaurs co-existed. You’re just claiming that Fred Flintstone was a real live actual person.’
He saw this remark was not appreciated, and went on hurriedly, ‘Bernie, honestly, I’d be happy if I could swallow all this. Seeing orthodoxies overturned is my kind of meat. But you don’t stand a chance on this one. Go back to the goddamned Escalante, find a second grave in that same stratum. Then I’ll take you seriously.’
‘You will? Okay.’ He paused dramatically and gestured towards the table. ‘Take a look at the photos. You’ve scarcely glanced at them. You’re like the Italian authorities, refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope. You’ve taken it for granted you know what the photos are all about. These are shots of a second grave, Joe. We struck it even when you were leaving to get your plane.’
Bodenland gave his friend one baffled look, then peered at the plates.
The grave much resembled the first, which was why he had hardly bothered to look at the photos. The remains were enclosed in a similar coffin, with the same mysterious sign on the lid. In this case, the lid had been removed with little damage.
The skeleton, sunk in red ochre, lay on its side, in the same position as the first skeleton. Distance shots showed that this grave was no more than fifty metres from the first, still just below the K/T boundary, but deeper into the hill, where the strata curved inward.
‘You observe,’ Clift said, now using his voice of icy calm. ‘The second grave. There are two significant differences compared with our first discovery. In this case, the skeleton is of a female. And she lies with a wooden stake through what was her heart.’
‘I’m sure your beautiful young daughter-in-law would tell you that you know nothing about human nature, Joe,’ Clift said, as they walked through the building. ‘I can’t keep this secret. I’m bursting with it. There’s the scientific aspect, and that’s predominant. This is something that is going to cause shock waves. It’ll be hotly contested. I’m in for the Spanish Inquisition and I know it. I also know I can defend my case.
‘But there’s more to it than that. You’ve had plenty of publicity in your time, what with your association with Victor Frankenstein and Mary Shelley and all that. I also want publicity. I want recognition, as every man does, if he’s honest. Publicity will give me the funding I require.
‘Millions of dollars are needed. Millions. The whole Iron Hills area must be torn apart. We’ve got a new civilization to explore – beyond our dreams. Imagine, civilization started here, in the USA, long before apes came out of the African jungles!’
‘Yes, and when this hits the media, you’re going to have the whole universe invading