Alien's Concubine, The (3 page)

She’d only been working maybe twenty
minutes and had just gotten deeply enough into her work to shrug
off her irritation when the trowel she was wielding scraped against
something that sent back the sound of stone. She sensed rather than
saw several of the young men glance up at the sound. Setting the
trowel aside, she grabbed up a brush and dusted at the stone so
that she could see it better to determine whether she’d actually
found something more than just a buried rock.

The stone she’d unearthed was smooth
but rounded. It appeared to be worked stone.

Frowning, she took up the trowel again
and worked at the dirt surrounding the stone, trying to contain the
spark of excitement that surged through her. It looked like a
section of carving, but it was too small an area to be certain. It
could still just be a rock, rounded by movement of water over
it.

Sweat had begun to roll down her
forehead and sting her eyes by the time she’d removed the bulk of
the dirt over a section approximately two foot square. Absently,
she brushed at the moisture with the back of her forearm, dropped
the trowel, and picked up the brush again.

A face began to emerge from the
centuries of dirt that had settled over the stone
carving.

“
Hey! I’ve found
something!” she exclaimed, allowing the excitement she’d been
holding at bay to quicken her heartbeat. “A part of a frieze, I
think … maybe.”

“
Hold on! Let me have a
look at it!” Dr. Sheffield called from somewhere behind
her.

Irritation flickered through her and
she glanced around to see him hurrying toward her. Before she could
spit, or object, she was surrounded by rubber-neckers blocking her
light. Dr. Sheffield shoved his way through the students and
shouldered her aside. “It’s a face. You might be right!” he said,
excitement threading his voice. “What do you think,
Richard?”

The crowd parted for Dr. Richard
Oldman, who winced as he settled on his knees beside his younger
colleague and peered at the segment of stone. “Could be Toltec,
Carl,” he muttered. “It’s hard to say at this point. But it
certainly isn’t Incan. Look at the tool marks here.”

Slowly but surely edged out of the
way, Gaby stood behind them, craning her neck to see as they
carefully worked at the dirt around the spot she’d
cleared.

“
There’s a crevice here,”
Mark, one of the students pronounced excitedly. “Regular … I think
it might be a door.”

Dr. Oldman chuckled good naturedly.
“There wouldn’t be a door … not made of stone. It’s probably just a
fissure, either from shifting of the structure or possibly where
the stones were joined.”

Mark reddened, his face tightening
with anger, but he didn’t argue with Oldman. Instead, he pursued
the crack he’d found until he had managed to reveal a perfectly
straight line about eighteen inches long.

No one said anything when he’d
uncovered it. After staring at it for several moments, Oldman and
Sheffield got to their feet. “Get shovels and get this dirt removed
here. Carefully, though. This may be part of a much larger
structure.”

Gaby watched them for a while,
debating with herself. She didn’t know if she was more irritated
that they’d taken over her find and shoved her out of the way, or
if it was simply that she was tired of being on the outside looking
in. She discovered it didn’t matter, though. As tempted as she was
to do as she usually did and simply walk away, she stayed—watching
mostly like the born spectator she was—but she at least meant to
stick around and see what it was that she’d found and not learn of
it second hand down the road when they were discussing
it.

The diggers struck stone only a few
feet below the section she’d found, ruling out the possibility that
the segment was a door … unless it had been designed for midgets.
The sun had settled well below the tree tops by the time the men
had cleared a section large enough for them to see that the rock
wasn’t just bedrock. It was worked stone, revealing that the
structure jutted outward some six feet before dropping away
again.

Pyramid like, Gaby
wondered?

The Aztecs had built those, though,
and if it was a pyramid it might well blow Sheffield’s theory out
the window … unless it transpired that the Aztecs weren’t actually
the first to build pyramids in South America?

Mark had doggedly pursued his door
theory, she saw, scraping at the dirt and following the line he’d
found until he’d discovered perpendicular lines at the top and
bottom. Gaby watched him, or rather the relief he was slowly
revealing despite the fact that his focus was obviously on tracking
down the function of the piece to prove his theory.

She wasn’t an expert. Her field was
bones, but the style of the carving didn’t look like anything that
had previously been attributed to any of the known architects of
South American civilization. There were symbols around the outer
edges of the block, forming a decorative border around the strange
face, which she finally decided might not be intended as a face at
all, but rather a mask. Deteriorated with age and weather, the
symbols weren’t easy to identify, but it looked like all sorts of
two headed, many legged beasts. It wasn’t until Mark had briskly
brushed the dirt from the surface that she saw it wasn’t monstrous
two headed beasts at all.

The depictions were of men and women
in various sexual positions.

Ancient porn? Gaby wondered, feeling a
jolt of shock.

Setting his brush aside once he’d
finished cleaning the piece, Mark began to move his hands over it,
pushing along the sides and corners. It clicked in Gaby’s mind that
he was trying to pull it loose. Surging toward him, she stepped on
a piece of stone that had a hollow ring to it when her boots struck
it. She barely had time to register the sound, certainly not enough
to time to assimilate the implications of a hollow beneath her.
Mark braced himself and shoved at one edge and almost
instantaneously the ground beneath her opened.

Gaby sucked in a sharp breath as she
dropped. Her brain, like the shutter of a camera, registered a
still impression of light and still-life people wearing frozen,
startled expressions, and then darkness. Her heart leapt into her
throat, choking off the ability to scream, and her stomach went
weightless as she plummeted downward.

Chapter Two

The freefall was blessedly brief.
Gaby’s mind had barely grasped the horrific possibilities when she
collided solidly with a smooth, cold surface. She didn’t stop
moving, however. She slid down and down, so quickly that it seemed
she was sliding at a breath taking speed.

It did take her breath. It closed off
brain function for many, many dangerous moments before she could
even command her body to struggle to stop the slide.

For all the good it did. She clawed
ineffectually at the slick surface, finding no purchase at all. Her
screams, when she finally recalled the breath and inspiration to
utter them, echoed back at her at a deafening volume that drowned
out every other sound.

She didn’t even realize the shaft was
curved until the gently curving shaft took a sharp turn that slowed
her descent. She’d just had time to register that when the surface
beneath her disappeared altogether. She was airborne again for a
split second before she slammed into a hard surface, skidded
several feet, and stopped.

She lay perfectly still once she’d
finally stopped moving, trying to gather her wits to mentally
inventory her body for injury. Pain finally registered, but it was
nothing unbearable. Her palms stung from friction burns. Twinges
registered from her chin, one arm, and one knee. She pushed herself
up and looked around.

Profound blackness so thick it seemed
tangible surrounded her. A dim light in front of her was all she
could see, but it took her several moments to realize that it was
the weak light of a failing day above her, channeled downward by
the curving shaft she’d slid down.

Grunting, she pushed herself up on her
hands and knees and crawled toward the light and the sound of
voices.

“
Are you
injured?”

It was Dr. Sheffield’s voice, she
realized.

“
I don’t think so,” she
gasped, her voice still shaky and hoarse from fright. “No,” she
added after a moment. “Just shaken up and scratches. Nothing
broken.” Her ankle, she discovered when she tried to get up, hurt
like a son-of-a-bitch, but she could put her weight on it. She’d
twisted it, but not enough to break or sprain.

“
Can you climb back
up?”

She thought about her attempts to halt
her fall. “I’ll try.”

She did, for all she was worth, keenly
conscious of the blackness behind her and the rapidly diminishing
light from above. As soon as the shock had begun to subside, her
skin had begun to prickle with uneasiness, especially the skin
along her back and neck, as if she could feel eyes boring into
her.

She tried not to think about the
possibility of snakes and spiders and scorpions in the pit with
her, but her ears pricked for any furtive movements that could be
interpreted as death on legs or the slither of a
serpent.

She managed to crawl up the nearly
flat area of the shaft, but she could get no higher. Each time she
tried, she slid down again until she was wet with sweat, her
clothes clinging to her all over.

“
I can’t,” she
acknowledged finally. “The surface is too smooth.”

“
I’ll look for rope!”
someone above announced, though she could tell he wasn’t talking to
her but rather someone up top.

“
Get some lights while
you’re at it!” Oldman commanded, his voice raised as if whoever had
gone for rope had already moved off.

“
Could somebody drop a
light to me?” Gaby called up. “It’s really, really dark in
here.”

“
Just hold on, Dr.
LaPlante! We’ll get you out.”

“
What do you
see?”

That was Shelia—not hard to figure out
even if she hadn’t been familiar with the voice. There were only
two women on the dig.

“
I can’t see a fucking
thing!” Gaby snarled.

“
Try to stay calm,” Dr.
Sheffield said in a soothing voice, reminding her that she had an
audience above that consisted of the entire dig team. She didn’t
care. Ordinarily, she watched her language, but she’d grown up
around rough, streetwise kids at the orphanage. Fostering was like
a revolving door. Just about everybody made it out of the
orphanage, but they almost always came back, usually more fucked up
than before they’d left, angrier, more rebellious, sometimes
quieter and more withdrawn, and sometimes sporting bandages and
casts.

Fuck had been everyone’s favorite
word, probably mostly because it sent the dorm mothers into
gobbling spasms of shocked outrage every time one of them uttered
it.

When she’d been very young, she’d
envied the ones that got homes. She hadn’t been cute, though. She’d
been fat, had flat, listless hair that was so fine it refused to
lay down. And she’d had allergies, most of which she’d finally
outgrown, but just enough health issues that nobody wanted to be
bothered with her.

Later, when she’d finally realized
what the behavior of the others meant, she was just as glad to stay
where she was. She was ignored for the most part, but that beat the
hell out of trying to fight off nasty old men looking for sexual
playthings, women looking for live-in baby sitters and domestic
slaves, and foster parents who took out their frustrations on the
children entrusted to their care by beating the living shit out of
them whenever they were in a bad mood—or drunk, or high.

She didn’t like dark, closed in
spaces, though.

She tried to tell herself that was why
she felt the prickling all over her skin as if eyes were crawling
over her.

“
Is it a large
chamber?”

That was Dr. Sheffield again. She
couldn’t decide whether he thought talking to her would calm her
down or if he was more fucking interested in what she’d found than
her predicament.

“
A tomb, you think?”
Sheila called down.

She was going to plant her foot up
that bitch’s ass when she got out, Gaby fumed inwardly.

“
If you want to know, send
me a light down!” she yelled angrily.

“
Mark and Billy went to
get some things. They’ll be back soon,” Carl Oldman told her.
“We’ll have you out of there before you know it.”

Gaby settled, not because she found
his reassurance particularly comforting, but because her muscles
were starting to ache from the tension of crouching in the narrow
opening. The light was rapidly declining. She didn’t realize it at
first because it was so bright compared to the thick blackness
surrounding her, but as it dwindled she remembered that the sun had
been well on its way to the horizon before she’d fallen in. It was
twilight above her and before much more time passed it was going to
be as black in the shaft as it was in the chamber behind
her.

Total darkness engulfed her before a
bright spot of light appeared above. The light was moving and she
realized they must be trying to set up light to see by. A scraping
sound alerted her to movement. Her heart clenched painfully before
she realized the sound was coming from above not behind
her.