The Rings of Poseidon (14 page)

"Names" said Frank, "Names were one thing.
I'm not sure what the woman herself was called, I rather think she
had the same name as the daughter."

"No. The mother was Itzapec the daughter was
Mayapec," Alicia corrected.

" Anyway," Frank continued, "Po-atl sounds
Central American, though it's more Aztec or Toltec than Mayan, but
Itzapec is definitely Mayan. Chichin Itza was a huge Mayan centre
with substantial remains to-day and PEC is a typically Mayan
ending. And I hardly need mention Mayapec."

"We have enough anomalies already," observed
Alicia with a sigh. "First there's a metal ring far back in the
stone age, and we haven't even started to tackle that one. Second,
there are memories of a time when agriculture was widespread, we
didn't eat meat and didn't have human sacrifice. Thirdly there are
Central American names in Europe, fourthly there's a trade in Kohl
at least three thousand years BC and last of all there's Steve's
question about the Gulf Stream. It's not part of the story but it's
certainly an anomaly. That's a lot of problems, and yet the stories
tend to 'hang together' with what we know in so many areas."

She pushed back her hair in a gesture that
might have indicated either frustration or concentration.

"I think the other thing which put me in mind
of the Mayans is possibly as important," said Frank. "These people
couldn't write and kept records of their reckonings with knots in
cord. Both are true of the early Mayans and the Incas. The later
Mayans had a sort of hieroglyphic writing which they used to record
calendar dates, and some possibly early documents have been
preserved in museums. Apart from those records and some sacred
documents destroyed by the priests with the Conquistadors, they
seem not to have been used for much."

"It's perhaps no coincidence that the Mayan
features came in the Mayan expert's story," said Alicia. "However,
you may not have known that spirals carved in stone have presented
European archaeologists with one of their biggest puzzles. Your
story came up with a silly but plausible explanation of the source
of them. Carving spirals was almost a habit and your story does
explain where they came from. It's almost silly enough to be
true."

"I didn't know anything about spirals, but I
must say the whole experience is a lot more uncanny and unsettling
than I expected. I see what Gill meant by not having deliberately
invented anything. I'll tell you something else we should have
guessed from Steve."

"What's that?" asked Gill.

"Something you kinda hinted at too, but I
should've guessed. When you sit in on someone else's story, dream
or whatever you call it, you get their story and that's all. I know
things not included in the story. Like the weather further north -
I think it was north she mentioned and the fact she ... I was
wearing the amulet affair, but more as a personal ornament than
anything. Steve could answer my questions from the point of view of
the storyteller. Well I could do the same."

"I think I could too," agreed Gill.

"You know," said Manjy, "I think you all have
past lives connected with the ring. You know things the people know
but beyond the ring's experience."

"Too much of a coincidence to have three
people at once connected with the ring," Alicia almost.

"I'll bet all five of us are connected with
the ring," persisted Manjy. "Maybe even Alan as well."

Alicia was dismissive "That's an even bigger
coincidence," she said. "I've heard of psychometry - reading the
past of an object psychically, though I've always been sceptical
before. I've heard stories of Tom Lethbridge dowsing for
archeological answers with a pendulum and being right when more
traditional colleagues were wrong, much to their annoyance. All the
same, both are a lot easier to take than a belief in this all being
a case of reincarnation."

"I wouldn't like to say whether psychometry
or reincarnation is more likely", said Frank, "We ought to sleep on
it before we decide but I must say, even though Alicia has logic on
her side, I sure felt as if I was the woman in my story."

"You don't need to be the same sex in each
incarnation," observed Manjy.

"It doesn't matter what sex you are when it
comes to psychometry," argued Alicia.

"I think Frank's right. We should sleep on
it," said Gill. "Perhaps if the rest of us try it on, someone will
dream up an answer to the problem of a metal ring," she added.

Alicia yawned. "Mm. Maybe so," she said. "But
nobody else is experimenting tonight."

She picked up the ring and stood up as the
sound of the revellers returning from the pub drifted through the
camp. She had the cabinet drawer open as the Alan entered the
cabin.

"Can I have a quick word, Alicia?" he asked,
and continued as she nodded, "Coming back from the pub to-night I
saw your bird watcher watching the camp again."

"Bird watcher?" said Gill, "There was a bird
watcher the first morning, before we started the dig proper."

"Oh, he's been seen around the dig a lot,"
Alan said.

"It may be nothing," said Alicia, "but I
think we'll be more careful about locking up the place and on
security generally."

"Do you want me to leave the generator on all
night?" asked Steve.

"I think that would be going too far."
answered Alicia. "I'll just be more security conscious is all for
the moment. It's probably nothing."

"Just thought you'd like to know," said Alan
and he left to join the volunteers again.

Alicia put the ring with some other exhibits
in the cabinet. As an afterthought she crossed back to the desk,
took up the box of computer disks and put it into one of drawers of
the filing cabinet as well. She closed the drawers firmly, locked
the whole cabinet and stuffed the key into her jeans pocket,
commenting, "I think the risk is more imagined than real, but we
can play safe by locking the cabinet and locking the cabin."

"I don't think would be thieves can count on
anyone driving a fast getaway car on Hoy," remarked Steve.

Alicia looked startled for a moment and then
laughed. "No," she said, "You couldn't drive far, but we'll just
play safe."

Chapter 11

When Steve went to turn on the generator next
morning, he had his waterproof on and the hood up to keep off a
steady downpour. The ground squelched beneath his feet and water
gathered in the hollows of the tarpaulin sheltering the
generator.

Alicia knew there was no hope of any outside
work when she woke to the drumming of rain on the caravan roof. She
could, of course, find plenty of work to do herself and she could
usefully employ several of the university team, but the volunteer
labour represented something of a problem because there wasn't much
to do on Hoy in the rain. Correction. There wasn't anything to do
on Hoy in the rain.

Alicia needn't have worried too much, in the
short term anyway. After breakfast most of the volunteers seemed to
be more than happy to settle down with Trivial Pursuits and the
radio, while Frank, Alan and Manjy helped Alicia with the
cataloguing of finds and Gill went with Steve to meet the
ferry.

Alicia was mildly surprised when Gill
announced that she was going to meet the ferry and was that okay
but, as Steve showed no surprise, Alicia assumed that he had
already agreed and didn't give the matter much further thought. She
had already turned her attention elsewhere before the Landrover
oozed carefully out of the field and onto the road.

Manjy was one of those people for whom
computers seemed to jump through hoops. Alicia, of course, had used
them extensively before and Gill too was reasonably conversant with
them as a tool, but Manjy was a natural. Alicia was thinking about
her doctorate and the need to be exact about everything, so she was
happy to let Manjy handle the computer and simply direct the
recording of data and locations.

In the Landrover the windscreen wipers
slapped steadily as it rained equally steadily. Gill shook her wet
hair and flicked it aside with her hands.

"So we slept on it," she said, "Now what do
you think? Is it reincarnation or psychometry?"

"Hmm," replied Steve. "I can't quite make up
my mind, but I certainly felt that I was that person. On the other
hand I have to say that Alicia's right about the chances of three
people connected with the ring coming together at any one time.
Even if you believe in reincarnation in the first place," he
added.

"And you don't?"

"I don't know. Before the last few days I
hadn't given much thought to death and what might happen after it.
Since the business with the ring and my story ... Well." He left
the sentence unfinished. The engine rumbled, the road wheels
splashed and the wipers still slapped rhythmically.

"I was almost jealous of the girl in your
story," said Gill. "It was just as if she was real."

"I know what you mean on both counts.
However, I don't think the storyteller was doing anything other
than following a ritual. I don't think there was anything personal
in it."

"Making love to someone's pretty personal,"
Gill objected.

"You're the expert in the Bronze Age, of
course, but I didn't feel that there was much commitment other than
a religious one. Until the end maybe, and even then it was more
'survival of the group' than a personal commitment. Anyway, I felt
you were untouchable as the priestess." He paused. "I could
understand that bloke wanting you on his last night on earth. If I
had to go too, I think that's what I'd choose ..."

"To make love to someone?" she asked.

"To make love to you," he answered.

"Oh well ..." she said, carefully not looking
at him to cover her confusion. "It's not actually necessary to wait
until your last night on earth. Not in this incarnation,
anyway."

Steve considered this. He thought it was
probably an invitation, though this wasn't exactly the time or
place. He both admired and desired Gill but he didn't want to get
his face slapped. Nor did he want her to feel rejected by what
amounted to a refusal, especially as he didn't feel like
refusing.

"Well," he said, picking his words with some
precision, "the girl you seem so worried about isn't around in this
incarnation and there isn't anyone else, so I'm ... shall we say
... available."

"Pull over a minute." Gill suggested. "I may
have been untouchable in that story, but I'm not untouchable here
and now."

Steve stopped the Landrover in a gateway at
the crest of a low hill overlooking the sea. There was no traffic,
nobody about and no sound but the rain on the roof. Since there was
little wind it ran almost silently down the windscreen, now that
they had stopped.

"We have a few minutes to spare. We're early
for the ferry, but not that early," he said, and put an arm round
her, drawing her nearer.

"I didn't mean pull over and screw me right
now," she said, possibly hiding her self-consciousness in bluntness
and uncertainty behind a need to make a fresh start. "Tempting
though that might be as an idea. I mean, I know we haven't got much
time and, although this is a quiet spot, it's still a bit public
for me." She really did feel a growing attachment to the reformed
hooligan.

"In this incarnation," she added, "I'm quite
a shy girl."

But she wasn't too shy to respond to Steve's
kiss.

"What did you do for a living, before all the
trouble?" Gill asked when the passion had eased a little. She felt
an urgent need to know more about him.

"I was a mechanic in my father's garage," he
said. "I trained as a cook when I left school, but I went into the
garage when I couldn't find work."

"Man of many parts."

"Some of them not very useful to society,"
Steve commented.

"But some of them very useful to me." said
Gill with a grin. She leaned against him listening to the rain. "I
wish we'd met before ... " She was going to say 'before I met Tony'
but stopped.

"Before I got into trouble on the
terraces?"

"No. I don't think that matters to me. It
isn't the real you." She paused. "Why didn't you go back to you
father's garage?"

She was expecting him to make some remark
about getting away from trouble. Instead he said, "My father died
while I was inside and my mother sold the business. Then she died
as well. A lot can happen in seven months, as I discovered. It all
left me well off but jobless, which is not a desirable state of
affairs for an ex-con."

There was a touch of bitterness in his voice
warning Gill not to press him any further. Instead she kissed him
again.

* * *

Manjy was entering information referring to
various spots, which Frank was marking on a detailed plan of the
excavations.

"I think I've figured out a way we can tell
if it's reincarnation or psychometry," she said to Frank, looking
up.

"Oh yeah," he responded, "What's that?"

Alicia stopped what she was doing and
listened too as Manjy explained. "The ring would be the centre of
psychometry," she said, "so let some of the volunteers unconnected
with the group from the university try it on. If they don't
experience anything, I'll put it on."

"Well if two of the volunteers don't
experience anything and you do, I'll try it on as well." said
Alicia.

"You're on. I'll just go and get two of the
volunteers." Manjy almost ran out.

"What the hell's that all about?" demanded
Alan.

"Well," said Frank. "There's so much to it
that I don't know where to begin."

"For a start, what ring are you talking
about?"

"The one we dug up," Frank told him. "Either
psychometry or something like it is causing people who try on the
ring to 'experience' events from the past of the ring. Steve, Gill
and me, we've all had a sort of waking dream that the others
shared."