The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2) (28 page)

38

“Is
that it?” D. Payne asked.

The stone was real. Against all odds, a party of Norse explorers had reached the middle of what would centuries later become the United States of America. We had seen them. They had not been the tall, fierce warriors with horned helmets and spears that I had foolishly imagined the first time Quinn had brought up the topic, but bare-headed, frightened men far from home. Why they had come, whether their comrades had made it back to their ship, and where Vinland was—these were questions that Dr. Payne would have to tackle.

It was a job he had taken on with the swiftest change of heart I’d ever seen. He had asked for extraordinary evidence. It was the lousiest photo imaginable as far as quality went, most of it blurry with rain and my shaking hand, but it was enough. He slid the photo under the lit lamp on his desk. His computer seemed out of place in his office, which—with all its dark wood and filled-to-the-brim bookcases—could have been an old-fashioned gentleman’s study in the days when they still had them. Dr. Payne was only missing a monocle as he bent over the photo. He cleared his throat. “Hmm, intriguing…Well, yes, that certainly changes things somewhat…A STEWie run to investigate further would not be amiss.”

When I left, he was already drafting a STEWie run proposal to document the Psinomani villagers’ culture and to follow the Norsemen back to Vinland in an unconscious echo of Dagmar Holm’s plan. He hadn’t asked about her final moments. I managed to feel bad for her as I passed by the locked door to her office. She would have so wanted to be part of Dr Payne’s team.

I doubted she would have ever been happy, building a career around the stone she had carved, knowing it was fake. Quinn had said they were carving something simple, along the lines of
Vinlanders on a journey inland
, and the date.
All of the scientists and academics I knew had a deep-rooted drive for the truth. In the end, that was what it was about, really, as firm as the concrete foundations of the buildings that circled Sunniva Lake. Though they might scorn that description, the researchers under my care had an almost sacred respect for truth. Still, they were human. Like athletes who used performance-enhancing drugs, a person might forget what it was all about, the lure of the medal—the Olympic or the Nobel kind—proving irresistible.

But she did get to breathe the fourteenth-century air,
walk the woodlands, eat berries, and hear the drum beat of Psinomani dancers. And, in the end, she found her beloved Norsemen. I wondered what kind of life she would have managed to have if by some chance she had survived the tornado and stayed behind while the rest of us made it to STEWie’s
basket
. She would have been constrained both by History’s rules and her own unfamiliarity with fourteenth-century life. Would she have been able to find a home with the Dakota, or perhaps in Vinland itself? Either way it would have been a very small life. She would have been unable to reveal any knowledge from the future, either the big things (that the white explorers would come back one day and bring a disease with them) or the mundane ones that corn would be sold in crinkly bags to be popped in the microwave for two minutes and eaten in front of screens with moving pictures.

Dr. Payne would focus on the broad strokes of what we had seen; I knew that he wouldn’t return with the answers I really wanted—whether Tokala’s village had been spared that day, or if he had grown up to be a hunter, a village leader, a dreamer. But one thing was certain. The investigation to discern whether our Norsemen were indeed the lost Greenlanders would be an easily funded one—this was big news.

I walked over to the RV in the parking lot to say good-bye to Ruth-Ann and Ron, having called Abigail and Sabina to let them know we were back. Nate had gone straight from the TTE lab to his office to take care of what needed to be done in reporting Dagmar’s death after the ambulance had taken her body away. Ruth-Ann and Ron had decided not to stick around. I understood why. Time travel. As Jacob had said, it messed with your head.

I found the Tuttles deep in conversation with Quinn by the steps of their RV. Officer Van Underberg gave me a wave as he drove out of the parking lot at the posted campus speed limit, having dropped the three of them off. Quinn had his suitcase.

“Are you really interior decorators?” I heard Quinn say as I approached them. “That seems fated—I have a fixer-upper I’m working on in Phoenix. Two, actually—well, three—and they could all use an expert hand. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in driving me down and taking a look?”

Ruth-Ann and Ron glanced at each other. Ron’s ankle was wrapped up, but he looked like himself again as he leaned on a crutch, his beard freshly combed above a bright yellow St. Sunniva University T-shirt, which he must have picked up at the hospital. “We have been talking it over,” Ruth-Ann said. “It would be nice to have a change of scenery for a bit, get some thinking done on how to organize our experiences into a book, wouldn’t it, Ron?”

“Hmm. There
are
some very interesting petroglyphs in the Phoenix area,” Ron said.

Ruth-Ann added, “And we could use the money.”

“Quinn doesn’t have any money,” I said as I walked toward them. “He
owes
money.”

“Jules, there you are. I’m surprised you would worry about money at a time like this. Like Ruth-Ann here pointed out, after what we’ve just been through in the fourteenth century—the bear, the tornado, the
guns
—we all need some time to unwind. Except for me. The media is going to be clamoring for the Norsemen story and we need a spokesperson. I might not get my reality show, but I’ve already booked three TV interviews as soon as I get to Phoenix. Ron, you’ll have to fill me in on the Vinland connection…”

“It’s not exactly the best publicity for the school,” I said.
Or for Sabina,
I wanted to add but didn’t.

“Jules, any publicity is good publicity, haven’t you figured out that yet?”

“You were faking a runestone, Quinn. That’s not exactly the headline you want.”

He waved the charge away. “That was all Dagmar. I believed in the Kensington Runestone, and I was proven correct. As for the rest of it…” He didn’t finish the thought, suddenly looking crestfallen. I knew he was thinking of Dagmar. “Maybe the two of us should have been more patient.”

I wasn’t sure I believed him that the whole thing was Dagmar’s idea, but he was right. Like Dagmar herself had said to me in the Coffey Library the first time we met, good things come to those who wait. Of course, had she waited for a proper STEWie run, the Norsemen might have remained a legend, and Dr. Payne’s jaw would never have dropped when he saw the photo I had brought back home. In a sense, she had accomplished just what she’d set out to do.

I told the Tuttles they had a standing invitation to drop by the TTE lab or my office any time. Ruth-Ann hopped into the driver’s seat while Ron readied the RV, Quinn having secured a spot on their couch for the drive down to Arizona. I hoped he would find a way to pay them for their time, especially if they did help him with the luxury house flips he had left unattended in Phoenix.

He handed me a pair of keys from the RV steps. “Would you mind returning my rental car?”

“Fine. Where is it parked?”

“Dagmar’s cabin on the St. Croix. It needs gas.”

“Of course it does. Remember your promise,” I reminde
d h
im.

He flashed a grin at me as he dragged his suitcase up the steps of the RV. “What promise would that be? The divorce papers?” He pulled an envelope from his pocket and grinned at me. “Last chance to change your mind, Jules…I could rip them up.”

I knew he didn’t mean it. “It wouldn’t work, Quinn. I’m not sure it ever did.”

“No, it didn’t really, did it.”

“Anyway, I meant the promise about Sabina,” I said, checking that all the papers were in the envelope and signed properly.

“Ah, that one. Will do. Can I tell the Tuttles?”

I had meant to fill them in on the story but never got the chance. I nodded. “But only the Tuttles.”

“Do
n’t say it,” I said to Helen, who was waiting for me at the edge of the parking lot.

“Don’t say what?”

“That we haven’t seen the last of him.”

“Julia, as long as we keep Sabina’s story secret, Quinn will always be able to hold it over us.”

“I want to give her as much time as possible. Besides, it’s Abigail’s call. She’s her guardian. I’m just their landlord.”

“You know that you’re much more than that. Abigail has followed your lead in this matter. You know, I don’t know why you say you’re not motherly,” she added.

“Because I don’t know anything about the day-to-day stuff. Keeping kids fed and clothed and clean and all that.”

“Hmm. Speaking of young people, how did Jacob do?” she asked as we neared the Hypatia House.

Jacob, I explained, had emerged from the experience a little wiser about time travel, but only a little. I related a text message exchange he and I had on my way back from Dr. Payne’s office, which had gone something like this:

Julia, I wanna do run to Norway to find Sunniva, who do I talk to?

STEWie roster full until end of year. Where will you get funding?

Can u help?

Library research first, then proposal writing, then seek grants.

Oh.

Plus Dean Braga needs to give approval - IF you have funding.

I felt bad about squashing his youthful enthusiasm, but he needed to learn about the reality of life as a time travel researcher, really any researcher. As Dr. Holm had found out, money was key. No matter how exciting your idea, it simply wasn’t doable until you had secured lab time and funding. Even if you were a theoretical physicist or a philosopher and made do with a pencil and paper, you still needed food to eat, a desk and chair to sit in, and the pencil and paper (and laptop) to write up your thoughts and publish them.

“To be young again,” Helen said. I thought she would supply a quote from Shakespeare, but she went on, smiling, “Jacob has a crush on St. Sunniva, our Sabina has a crush on him, and no doubt someone at Sabina’s high school has a crush on her. Well, making Sunniva the focus of his PhD is not a bad idea. Like anything else, it will take a lot of hard work and some luck.”

We walked in silence for a moment.

“So Chief Kirkland decided there was nothing he could charge Quinn with? Illegal use of school resources?” she suggested as we stopped in the courtyard of the Hypatia House. “Wasting everyone’s time?”

“Quinn claims Dagmar told him that she had secured last-minute permission from Dr. Payne for a STEWie run. She hadn’t, of course, but he had no way of knowing that. At least, we can’t prove otherwise. And it’s not illegal to purchase a hunting handgun—Quinn says it was Dagmar’s idea anyway. Nate considered a charge of attempted fraud because of the fake stone, but even he admitted that that would be a long shot.”

My cell phone rang just as I got to my office. It was Nate. “I have a couple of things to attend to here and a shower to grab, but would seven-thirty work for you?”

“Seven-thirty? For what?”

“Remember, shrimp curry at my place?”

I had forgotten it was still Friday. The whole thing was odd, as it usually was with time travel. We had spent two nights and days in the fourteenth century, but only a couple of hours had passed for Helen and everyone else on campus.

“Shrimp curry it is,” I said. Thinking that it would be nice to talk about something lighthearted for a change, I said, “But only on one condition. No time travel talk.”