The Dig (14 page)

“So what if you just kept touching the piece, Matthew?” asked Tuni. “Would you come out of it still because that particular block of imprint was over?”

“Actually, it would be dark nothingness for a while but would then sort of automatically roll to the next imprint until there was nothing else. Personally, I prefer to take the opportunity for a breather and pull myself out of the session. I need either the shock from my timer or a moment of nothingness like that to find my hands again and move them away from the imprint object.”

A loud flush sound echoed from the RV’s restroom.

Tuni replied, “I see, so you think you can get more out of it?”

“Yeah, I mean, if he put the thing on again—which maybe he did the next time somebody died. I don’t know.”

“So… what happened this time?” Peter asked.

Rheese emerged from the restroom and dried his hands on a hanging towel.

“Hang on,” Matt said. “Let me write something down real quick.”

He pulled the notebook in front of him and wrote down the date: “single + batch + batch + batch + full batch + gross batch + single + single.”

“Is that the date you were talking about?” asked Tuni.

“Yeah, past the ‘moon event,’ apparently.”

“Okay, so what happened?” Rheese asked, sounding impatient yet interested.

“Well, not too much
happened
, Doctor, but I did see a lot that I’m going to write down real quick, and then we can discuss it all in detail. After that, I’d like to go over this numbering system. I understand the base numbers but can’t really do the math in my head.”

Matt scratched down a page of notes, muttering to himself sporadically. Pete and Tuni were craning their necks, trying to read as he wrote, but his handwriting was dreadful. When he was done, he flipped back to the sheet with numbers.

“All right,” he said at last. “So, Pete, I’m hoping you can help with this—and, of course, anyone else who’s good with numbers is welcome to join in. Single is one; batch is eight…”

They all simply nodded, wide-eyed.

“Can somebody write this down? You’re not going to remember it all.”

“Oh, sure—sorry,” Peter said as he clicked his pen and began to write.

“Full batch is sixty-four, gross batch is five hundred twelve, and all batch is four thousand ninety-six. Got it?” He went on, explaining how the math worked.

When Matt was done, Pete scratched out some equations and looked up.

“Eighteen-oh-three!” Pete chimed out.

They all sat there for a moment, nodding happily and looking at the number Matt had now written in big numerals on the notepad: 1803.

Rheese and Enzi stood back and just observed it all. Neither understood the numbers just discussed, but both wanted to hear what else had happened in the eight minutes that Matt was under.

“So,” Peter finally said, “are we assuming this is eighteen hundred and three
years
past this moon event?”

Matt had no idea. It could have been 1,803 decades, days—heck, perhaps even hours, considering that they counted the very steps they took!

“There was another mention of time,” Matt said. “Irin was thinking about something from before, and he made reference to moon cycles.”

“What did he say, exactly?” asked Pete.

“Well, they don’t exactly
say
anything that I can understand. It’s all from the interpretation in his head that I can glean what he or someone else is saying—or if he’s thinking something. It’s actually easiest with thoughts, because he thinks almost entirely in concepts and images. Some people think words in their head; others think whole sentences at once. I think I could write a whole paper on the ways different people think.”

“Yes, interesting,” Peter replied, wondering how he thought in his own head, and how it differed from the next person’s thinking process.

Matt could tell that Tuni was doing the same thing.

“So anyway, what he ‘said’ in his head was something to the effect that this other guy had been warning people about something ‘for many moon cycles.’”

“So perhaps,” Tuni theorized, “it is eighteen hundred and three moon cycles since this big moon event. How many moon cycles are there per year?”

“About thirteen,” Rheese chimed in. “But it varies year to year. For the purpose of this exercise, though, thirteen should be more than adequate as an estimate.”

Peter did the math on his pad.

“That’s twenty-three thousand something. That would be a pretty long time to be able to keep track of the date. I don’t know…”

They sat in silence, considering the myriad possibilities.

“Well, anyway,” Matt broke in, “we’ve got these numbers written down. Let me tell you what happened.”

P
ETER
S
HARMA STOPPED CHEWING HIS MECHANICAL
pencil to say, “I think we need to get some research points identified so we can structure this analysis. We could easily get lost in the details here since, frankly, it’s all far too intriguing. Matt, I’m going to get on the phone with some good people back at the lab and see if we can’t bring on some more specialists. While I do that, did you want to spend some more time with the artifact?”

“I really am interested in doing more,” Matt replied, “but I sort of need to break it up. It’s a bit of a mental drain, if you recall.”

The sun was beginning to set, and Rheese had suggested that everyone ready their sleeping arrangements before the equatorial night fell like a black-out curtain. Though Peter had brought a large tent for himself, Tuni and Matt had supposed that their shelter and bedding were arranged. Rheese had one sleeping bag and a couple of extra blankets in his motor home. With some prodding, he agreed to give up his queen-size bed at the back of the RV and take the fold-down single along the side. Tuni put to rest any thought of her sharing a bed with either of them, volunteering to sleep in Peter’s tent outside while Peter and Matt shared the queen bed. Peter called to have a few more tents and bedding brought to the site and submitted a request for another fully outfitted RV.

On hearing Sharma’s conversations with the museum, Rheese worried that this distraction was escalating. If they managed to find some sort of concrete evidence from the American’s information, as Sharma had said, Rheese would at the very least achieve greater notoriety, which could lead to much easier funding of his personal excursions, with fewer strings attached and questions to answer. But time was of the essence. Did he want to spend the next three years digging for more pieces of metal fabric? Hardly. He knew where to find his ticket to riches, and it was just sitting there, waiting for him in one of twelve more sites. While mining companies would have no reason to begin exploring those areas, he worried that the Ministry of the Interior could at any time decide to expand the borders of the preserves. They had already done so twice in as many years. He made a mental note to prioritize the potential sites that were nearest the preserve.

Enzi had left two others behind to prepare dinner while he went in the Jeep to drop off the laborers, and when he returned, Tuni was finishing setting herself up in the tent. As she zipped the tent door shut, he approached and walked with her to the food tent.

“Unasema Kiswahili?”
he inquired as they walked.

“A little. Your elephant joke was certainly interesting.”

Enzi laughed hesitantly. “Sorry, miss, I not feel good about shooting elephant. It just, the men…”

“You don’t need to apologize, Enzi,” Tuni replied as they sat down at one of the tables. Smoke rose from the grill nearby, where the two cooks, Wekesa and Zuberi, were working. “I know a joke is just a joke. What is for dinner—
chapati na sukuma wiki
?”

“Hamburgers.”

“Ah, authentic local cuisine,” she laughed. “I like it.”

Pete arrived with Matt in tow. They were discussing the odd features of the Pwin-T
people, as they were now being called.

“You don’t think maybe they’re aliens or something?” Matt asked. “They’re really close to humans. It’s just the crazy eyes and eight fingers thing I think is so strange.”

Pete stopped and faced Matt. Everyone else was already seated at the picnic tables.

“Well, consider this,” Pete began. “Let’s assume this town really is a hundred fiftyplus million years old. That would mean that, concurrent with the evolution of the dinosaurs we know of, a previously unknown primate-like species existed. That primate would have had to be pretty well isolated from the predators of the day to survive for the millions more years it would take for them to evolve greater intelligence, learn to use tools, develop agriculture, and all the rest.”

“So you’re saying that we descended from
these
people, and not the whole caveman story you usually hear about?” Matt asked. Rheese rolled his eyes.

“No, not at all. I would think that they had their time. They evolved, died off, and millions of years later the process began again, resulting in us. I also don’t believe humans would have survived the mass extinction event of sixty-five million years ago. Half of all species were lost after that asteroid struck.”

“But, Peter,” Tuni said, “wouldn’t scientists have found bones of humans or the primate ancestors you mentioned by now? At least one or two, considering all the other things we find?”

“Central Africa at that time was an extremely volcanic area and believed prone to wildly variable weather patterns and quakes. This is the main reason why fossils are so difficult to find anywhere south of the Sahara—there simply hasn’t been enough stability or dryness in the area to preserve specimens. In fact, Dr. Rheese has been one of the few paleontologists to make significant discoveries in the region.”

Wekesa brought trays of hamburgers and a steaming pot of beans to the table, and the group began eating.

“These people would have had to remain in the same area where their primitive ancestors had been. Safer, but probably still pretty dangerous in a world with foot-long mosquitoes and hundreds of species of hungry, toothy reptiles out there.”

“I suppose,” Rheese interjected. “That you find it entirely plausible that these supposedly intelligent, self-aware people happened to evolve in the same exact way that we did, but with different hands and eyes? I would have less trouble with it if it didn’t take
us
so long. And what other species could we possibly cite as having evolved from a separate ancestor but ended up, for all intents and purposes, the same?”

“I understand your skepticism, Doctor.” Peter’s nodded as he raised a finger. “If I was not as sure as I am about Matt’s abilities, I would probably be even less open-minded than you on the matter. But to address the first part first—in the grand scheme of history we didn’t take long at all. Think about it…six million years of evolution. With the right conditions and starter mammal, we could have evolved to civilized beings and died off twenty-five times since that metal fabric was made. Obviously an unlikely occurrence, but we definitely aren’t limited by time in our hypotheses.”

Rheese chewed the side of his lip as he made a noncommittal “hrmff” sound.

“As to your like species question, there are actually numerous examples of species being entirely separated and evolving to nearly identical end species over millions of years. In this case, it would not have happened in parallel to us, but that does not change the plausibility of humanoid beings evolving more than once on Earth. All it takes is time, people. And our planet has had more than enough.”

Everyone listened to Peter’s evolutionary science lesson with great interest. After a bit, he hauled his notebook and set it on the table while everyone continued eating.

“If you all don’t mind,” Peter said, “I’d like to go over some of the research items I’ve identified. This is mainly for your benefit, Matt, but everyone should be aware of our direction. Oh, and before I forget, Flip Chamberlain and some others will be arriving late tomorrow to assist with further excavations, and Flip can really help with any lunar cycle questions. He’s bringing along an assistant who is an excellent sketch artist.”

“You want me to talk to more people about this?” Matt asked. “How do you propose that I explain where the lunar cycle question came from? And a sketch artist? I think you’re doing it again, Pete.”

Pete slapped his own head and rolled his eyes. “Dammit, you’re right! I’m an idiot, Matt. I haven’t told anyone anything, though, believe me. We’ll figure something out. The vast majority of the researchers I have coming are going to be heads down in the pit.”

“And did you say ‘late tomorrow?’” Matt asked.

“Yeah,” Peter replied. “As you know, it takes a bit of doing to get here from London.”

“It’s just that… well, I wasn’t really planning on staying that long. I was pretty dead set on flying out tomorrow morning.”

Everyone looked at each other.

“I thought… uh,” Peter stuttered, “well, I guess I thought we were together on this. Didn’t you say you wanted to figure all this out, learn more about the people and some of these other questions that have arisen?”

“I do, I do,” Matt assured him. “I just don’t really want to hang out in a jungle in the middle of Africa. I’ve got a lot of stuff going on back home, you know…”