The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2) (3 page)

I found Dr. Holm between a pair of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of the library. Hardcover books lay open all around her, and one was nestled in her lap. She was, I guessed, in her late twenties, with fine auburn hair held back by a sky-blue hairband. I’ve been told often enough that I look young for my age, but Dr. Holm took it to a whole new level. The tip of her tiny nose turned to one side ever so slightly, which, coupled with the small ears that held the blue headband in place, made her look like an erudite pixie as she bent over the textbook. Above black leggings and flats, she had on an oversized white T-shirt with photos of a Viking ship on the front and back.

“Sorry to disturb you,” I said in the measured tone everyone automatically adopts in libraries. “I’m Julia Olsen, assistant to Dean Braga over in the science departments.”

She looked up, blinking to adjust from reading printed materials in the low library light, and nimbly sprang to her feet and shook my hand. She was petite, as befitted a pixie, and had a suitably high-pitched voice. “Pleased to meet you. You’re the one who went on that accidental run into far time, aren’t you? Let me put these books away and maybe we can grab a smoothie or something? I went for a jog this morning, and I’m famished.”

I wasn’t into jogging. In my opinion, people who jog always look like they’re suffering—it’s not often that you see a smiling jogger—but I could see how it would make a person hungry.

“Nice T-shirt,” I said as we headed out of the library to the student café next door. The photos printed onto the front and back of the custom-made T-shirt had been taken from shore. One showed a long and agile wooden vessel with a dragon
figurehead
on the prow, a single mast, and tightly packed,
bareheaded
figures expertly manning
the oars. The other showed a workhorse vessel, its open cargo hold overflowing with cattle, sheep, and other goods as it sailed away to unknown lands.

“Thanks. The one the front is a longship, used for raiding. The one on the back is a
knarr
, a cargo ship of the kind used to settle Iceland and Greenland. The photos were taken by Dr. May on her runs to eleventh-century Europe. The longships were up to thirty-five meters in length. They were sturdy enough for long sea voyages, yet shallow enough to navigate up rivers as well.” The academic language made for a strange partnership with her girlish voice. “Most people think the Vikings wore horned helmets, but as you can see, they didn’t.”

After she got her smoothie and I got a caffeinated pop, we wound our way through tables where students sat engrossed in their various electronic devices nursing coffees and energy drinks, only a few of them carrying on conversations.

“Dr. Holm, I don’t want to take up too much of your time…” I said once we sat down, having chosen an inside table since the outside ones were still wet from the rain. Realizing that I didn’t even know for sure that she and Quinn had spoken, I suddenly felt foolish.

“You’re Quinn Olsen’s wife, right?”

“I am,” I admitted. “Look, I don’t know what he told you—”

“That there’s a family legend concerning his
grandfather
and the Kensington Runestone.” She took a long sip through a straw that was the same pink color as her strawberry smoothie, then went on. “I told him the runestone
is
real, of course—it’s a two-hundred-pound slab of graywacke inscribed with rows of runes and you can drive half an hour to Alexandria to see it.”

This, of course, was not the Alexandria in Egypt, but the biggest town in the county and its seat.

“The real question is, who carved it?” She paused for another sip of the smoothie. “Norse explorers who sailed to North America
more than a century before Columbus and reached as far inland as the Great Lakes, like the text on the runestone claims? Or
a nineteenth-century Swedish immigrant with a
talent
for
hoaxes?”

“You sound as if you think there’s a chance the runestone is authentic,” I said, pulling the paper wrapping off my straw. This was no good. She was supposed to discourage Quinn, not add fuel to his latest wild scheme. “That it was carved by Vikings.”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have been the Vikings. The Viking Age—of raiders, Thor-worshipers, and masters of sea and river travel—ended in the eleventh century. The
medieval
Norse were traders who had converted to Christianity.” She paused for more smoothie, then said in a measured tone, “The stone is almost certainly a hoax.”

“Almost certainly? You didn’t tell Quinn that, did you? He’s perfectly capable of taking that as an encouragement.”

“Well, to be honest, he didn’t seem discouraged in the least by what I had to say.” She paused for another long sip, then said, “I’m somewhat familiar with the details of the runestone finding. I don’t remember any mention of a Magnus Olsen, though I thought it would be rude to mention that.”

“He was just a neighborhood kid, eight years old.” As I related the tale, it suddenly occurred to me how much alike Quinn and his grandfather were. Perhaps the runestone hadn’t been as influential on Magnus Olsen’s life as family lore had it. Maybe it was in the genes, this dislike of being tied down to a steady job that paid the bills. Whatever it was, Quinn certainly had it. Before the flipping-houses-in-Phoenix thing, Quinn had invested our savings in a restaurant that failed immediately, started several blogs that never went anywhere and didn’t bring in any money, and even suggested we move to Hawaii to open a snorkeling business, something neither of us knew a thing about. Though I didn’t obsess over it—the end of our relationship had been a long time coming—I had always wondered if I’d said or done something to finally make him leave. Now I realized that it didn’t matter. In the end, it didn’t have much to do with me, after all; it had everything to do with his quest to make his mark on the world.

Dr. Holm had downed her drink before the edges in the ice cubes in mine had the chance to round. She took a loud slurp of what was left in the bottom of her cup and said, “It’s sweet that your…that Mr. Olsen wants to clear his grandfather’s name.” I didn’t think so, especially given that he had resorted to blackmail. And Quinn was probably just as motivated by the thought of getting his face on TV as anything else. He certainly seemed to have exercised his charms on Dr. Holm, I noted.

She added, “I’ll pass on what I told him. I tried…I wrote up a STEWie proposal to investigate the runestone last year. Dr. Payne said no. In his opinion, runic linguists should stick to European sites and go no farther west than Greenland, which the Vikings reached in 982.”

I realized why her name was unfamiliar. I had never seen it on the STEWie roster. She hadn’t been on a run yet. The Dr. Payne she had mentioned was a senior professor of American history. Several of his research proposals, all written densely and with elevated prose, had crossed my desk on their way to the science dean’s office. They were usually approved, unless there was some technical reason prohibiting the run. I had seen the thin-haired, stooped professor in period costume—coat, waistcoat, and knee-length breeches—around the Time Travel Engineering building. Rumor had it that those Toliver Payne mentored—his postdocs and grad students—had a hard time getting the professor to sign off on projects that had not originated in his own brain.

Dr. Holm confirmed as much. “In the two years I’ve been a postdoc here at St. Sunniva University, I’ve written forty-nine proposals for projects I thought would make good research topics. I’ve managed to obtain funding for only three—
three!
—and none for a STEWie run. Since Dr. Payne had mentioned Greenland, I got the idea to study the Kingittorsuaq Runestone, which was found north of the two Viking settlements there, and establish a full translation and date of carving for it.” As before, her words, those of an authoritative researcher, sounded odd when coupled with her high-pitched voice. Not that a personal characteristic of that sort should have much bearing on the prospect of a professorial position down the road—at least, not in an ideal world. What makes someone a good teacher is his or her ability to connect with students and get the best out of them, not his or her method of delivery.

“Unfortunately,” she sighed, “Greenland turned out to be a kind of a no-man’s land academically speaking—no one can decide if it belongs in American history, Dr. Payne’s domain, or European history, Dr. May’s domain. Dr. Payne told me to
submit
to Dr. May, and Dr. May told me to submit to Dr. Payne.”

I was familiar with her complaint. Getting funding in
academia
was no easy matter, and securing a STEWie roster spot was an order of magnitude harder. Tenured professors enjoyed priority and were the most frequent visitors to the cavernous lab with its maze of mirrors and lasers. Postdoctoral researchers like Dr. Holm occupied the gray area between graduate student and junior professor. Postdocs were relatively cheap, highly trained, and worked long hours without any guarantee of a professorship down the road. It often took three or four postings—usually at different research centers around the country and abroad, each lasting only a year or two and requiring uprooting and relocation each time—before a
tenure
-track faculty position was offered, if the person was lucky. I decided to try and give Dr. Holm what little help I could, which amounted to no more than putting her STEWie proposals in front of Dean Braga when she was in a good mood and not at the end of the day, when she was rushing to get things done. I owed Dr. Holm that much at least for trying to talk Quinn out of his plan.

As if echoing my thoughts, she commented with a self-conscious laugh, “I’d bribe Dean Braga or treat her to dinner or something if I thought that would get me a run. She always looks so severe, though, that I barely dare to say hello to her. Uh—I don’t suppose you have any influence over who gets
chosen
for runs, do you?”

“Not much, no. Sorry.”

She tugged at the hairband. “What was it like?”

“Which?”

“Going to Pompeii. Other than the danger presented by the volcano, obviously, and being marooned against your will.”

“It was…
extraordinary
. I’m sure you’ll get your chance,” I said.

“I know, good things come to those who wait and all that.” She got to her feet. “Did you want to see it, your runestone? There is an excellent life-size reproduction in the map section of the library.”

A couple of minutes later, our drink cups dispensed with, Dr. Holm led me to the lower level of the library and a large glass cabinet. This was where historical maps and manuscripts obtained on STEWie runs and through more conventional means were made available to students and other library
visitors
in a sort of disorganized, overflowing fashion. She rummaged around a bit and finally pulled out a rolled-up poster from the back of a low shelf. I followed her to a free table, and when she unrolled the poster, I helped her pin down its corners with four library books that had been discarded by previous patrons.

Perched on the table next to the poster, her tone and the T-shirt with the Viking ships making her seem like a perky museum guide, she said, “Farmer Olof Ohman was the one who found the stone. He was clearing a new field on his homestead with the help of his two sons. One of them noticed the stone clasped in the roots of a tree they had just uprooted. This is what they said they found.”

The poster displayed the front of the stone: