Serpent (NUMA Files 1)

The passageway once again became wider and more polished. Nina squeezed over the top of a pile of rubble, encouraged by a greenish glow in the distance. She swam to the light, which became brighter the nearer she came.

In pursuit of knowledge Nina had crawled through piles of bat guano and lairs guarded by badtempered scorpions. As wondrous as the tunnel was, she was anxious to be out of it and drew a sigh of relief when the passage ended. She floated up a stairway and through an archway, emerging into an open space surrounded by crumbled foundations.

Nina suspected Dr. Knox had an idea of what she might find in the lagoon, but he couldn't have known the extent of it. Nobody could. Hold on, girl. Order your thoughts. Assess the details. Start acting like a scientist, not like Huckleberry Finn.

She sat underwater on a waisthigh stone block and pondered her findings. The port was probably a combined military and trading post that kept out foreign traders and guarded commercial shipping. There was a growl in her ear The dogs of skepticism were hungry for their dinner of solid scientific fact. Before she made her findings definitive, every square foot of the port would have to be explored and evaluated.

She ventured a guess that the port had sunk from a shifting of tectonic plates. Maybe during the big earthquake of A.D. 10. Quakes were not as common here as in the Mediterranean, but it could happen. Growl. I know, I know. No conclusion until all the evidence is in. She watched the bubbles from her exhalations rise to the surface, thinking there might be a quicker way to get to the truth.

Nina had a talent that went beyond the ordinary and the explainable. She had discussed it with only a few dose friends, and then in forensic terms comparing herself to an FBI criminal scene profiler who reads a crime scene like an eyewitness. Nothing psychic about it, she had convinced herself. Only a superb command of her subject combined with a photographic memory and a vivid imagination. Something like the way dowsers find water veins with a forked twig.

She discovered her talent accidentally on her first trip to Egypt. She had pressed her hands against one of the huge foundation blocks on the Great Pyramid of Kufu. It was a natural gesture, a tactile attempt to comprehend the enormity of the incredible pile of stones, but something strange and frightening happened. Her every sense was assaulted by images. The pyramid was only half as high, its leveled summit crowded with hundreds of dark men in breechcloths hoisting blocks with a primitive scaffolding. The sweat on their skin gleamed in the sun. She could hear shouts. The squeak of pullies. She yanked her hand away as if the rock had turned red hot.

A voice was saying, "Camel ride, missy?"

She blinked her eyes. The pyramid soared in a point toward the sky again. The dark men were gone. In their place was a camel driver. Grinning broadly, he leaned onthe pommel of his saddle. "Camel ride, missy? I give you good price."

"Shukran. Thank you. Not today" The driver nodded sadly and loped off. Nina pulled herself together and went back to the hotel, where she sketched out the block and pulley arrangement. Later she showed it to an engineer friend. He had stared at her drawing, muttering, "Damned ingenious." He asked if he could steal the idea to use on a crane project he had been working on.

Since Giza there had been similar experiences. It wasn't something she could turn on and off at will. If she got a long distance call from the past every time she picked up an artifact, she'd be in an insane asylum. She had to be drawn to something like an iron filing to a magnet. At a smaller version of the Coliseum, located at an imperial resort outside Rome, the images of pain and terror were so strong, the bloodsoaked sand, severed limbs, and cries of the dying so vivid, that she retched. For a while she thought she had lost her mind. She didn't sleep for several nights. Maybe that's why she didn't like the Romans.

This was no Roman amphitheater, she rationalized. Before she talked herself out of it, she swam to the edge of the quay, placed her palms on the fitted stones, and closed her eyes. She could picture the longshoremen hauling amphorae filled with wine or oil, and the slap of sails against wooden masts; but these were only imaginings. She breathed a sigh of relief. Served her right for trying to shortcut the scientific process.

Nina shot a few photographs, disappointed only that she hadn't found a shipwreck. She collected more pottery, found a halfburied stone anchor, and was taking a few last shots when she saw the roundish protuberances rising from where the bottom was sandy.

She swam over and brushed the sand away. The lump was part of a larger object. Intrigued, she got down on her knees and cleared more covering from a large stone nose, part of a huge carved face about eight feet from its blunt chin to the top of the scalp. The nose was flat and wide and the mouth broad, with fleshy lips.

The head was covered by a skullcap or closefitting helmet. The expression could best be described as a glower. She stopped digging and ran her forgers over the black stone.

The fleshy lips seemed to curl as if in speech.

Touch me. 1 have much to tell you.

Nina drew back and stared at the impassive face. The features were as before. She listened for the voice. Touch me. Fainter now, lost in the metallic burble of her breath going through the regulator.

Girl, you've been underwater way too long.

She pressed the valve on her BC. Air hissed into the inflatable vest. Heart still pounding, she ascended slowly back to her own world.

2 THE SWARTHY THICKSET MAN SAW Nina approaching the circle of tents and ran over with his hand extended. In his thick Spanish accent, Raul Gonzalez said, "May I help you carry your bag, Dr. Kirov?"

"I'm fine" Nina was used to hauling her gear around, and in fact preferred to keep a tight rein on it.

"It would be no trouble," he said gallantly, displaying his painted on grin to the fullest. Too weary to argue and not wanting to hurt his feelings, Nina handed the load over. He took the heavy bag as if it were full of feathers.

"You had a productive day?" he said.

Nina wiped the sweat out of her eyes and downed a swig from a warm bottle of lime Gatorade. Nina was no absentminded professor. In a field where a bead or a button can be a major discovery, an archaeologist is trained to look for the tiniest of details. She couldn't figure Gonzalez. She had noticed little things about him, especially when he thought nobody was looking. She had caught him studying her, the bigtoothed grin absent, the eyes under the fleshy brow as hard as marbles. Nina was an attractive woman and often drew sidelong glances from men. This was more like a lion watching a gazelle. Finally, there was just the way he was always there looking over your shoulder. Not only her. He seemed to be stalking everyone on the expedition.

Nina's elation at her discoveries overcame her normal caution. "Yes, thank you," she said. "It was productive. Very productive."

"I would expect no less of such a knowledgeable scientist. I'm very much looking forward to hearing about it." He carried the bag over to her tent and placed it out front, then wandered about the encampment as if he were an inspector general making his rounds.

Gonzalez told people he had retired early on the money he made selling Southern California real estate and was indulging his lifelong amateur love of archaeology. He looked to be in his midforties or early fifties, shorter than Nina by several inches, with a thick, powerful blacksmith's body. His slicked down hair was as shiny and black as a bowling ball. He had joined the expedition through Time-Quest, an organization that placed paying volunteers on archaeological digs. Anybody with a couple of thousand dollars could get a week's worth of spooning dirt through a sieve with a child's plastic shovel. The third degree sunburn was thrown in at no extra cost.

Counting herself and Dr. Knox, there were ten people in the party. Gonzalez, of course, and Mr. and Mrs. Bonnell,

an older American couple from Iowa who had come in with another pay-as-you-go organization. And to Nina's regret, there was the insufferable Dr. Fisel from the Moroccan Department of Antiquities, who was said to be a cousin of the king. Completing the party were Fisel's young assistant, Kassim, a cook, and two Berber drivers who did double duty working on the dig.