"Chi showed them to me when I was at Harvard. He asked me to run them by you. He remembered your background in archaeology before you switched to biology. But mostly he wanted a fresh eye." Trout leaned his long body back and laced his fingers behind his head. "I'm an ocean geologist. I can take this stuff and make all the pretty pictures I want to, but it doesn't make any sense to me."
Gamay pulled a chair up beside her husband.
"Look at it this way, Paul. It's no different from somebody handing you a rock from the bottom of the ocean. What's the first thing you'd ask?"
"Easy. Where they got it."
"Bravo." She pecked him on the cheek. "The same thing applies in archaeology. Mayan studies wasn't my area of expertise before I switched to marine biology, but here's my first question to you. Where did these glyphs come from?"
Trout tapped the screen. "This one here is from the site Chi calls MIT Where you first ran into the chicleros."
Gamay felt a frisson along her spine at the reminder of beating sun, jungle rot, and unshaven, unfriendly men. "What about the others?"
"All from different locations Chi has visited."
"What made him pick these, aside from the fact that they are almost identical?"
"Location. Each face was from an observatory carved with the frieze showing the boats that may or may not be Phoenician."
"Intriguing."
"Uhhuh. The professor thought so. The boat theme tied them together."
"What's it all mean?"
"I don't know," he said with a shrug. "I'm afraid that's the extent of my Meso-american expertise."
"Why don't we call Professor Chi?"
"Just tried. He wasn't in his Mexico City office. They said he was there earlier but would be unavailable."
"Don't t tell me. They said he was in the field."
Trout nodded. ."I left a message."
"Don't hold your breath now that he's got his HumVee back. What about Orville?"
"The nutty professor? Exactly what I had in mind. First I wanted to run this stuff by you in case you had any inspiration."
"Call Linus Orville. That's my inspiration."
Trout flipped through his card file and punched out a number. When Orville answered Trout put him on the speaker phone.
"Ah, Mulder and Scully" Orville said, referring to the FBI characters in the popular TV program. "How are things with the X-Files?"
In the most serious tone he could muster, Trout said, "We've uncovered solid proof that those mysterious carved boats are from the lost continent of Mu."
"You're kidding!" Orville replied breathlessly.
"Yeah, I'm kidding. I just like to say the word Mu."
"Well, moo to you, too, Mulder. Now please tell me the real reason you called."
"We need your opinion on those sketches Professor Chi left with Paul," Gamay said.
"Oh, the Venus glyphs."
"Venus?"