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 The conference table in the lowest level of the nose had been draped with a rich cloth and laid with china, silver and candles; and the color of the panorama outside the ship had turned a rich blue-black, indicating that we had taken an eastern turn into the deeper waters of the Atlantic, away from the waste that had marked the coast. The ship's exterior lights cut lovely shafts through these storied depths, yet even as I admired the beauty there seemed something odd about the sight, something lonely that I couldn't initially explain. I tried to shake off the feeling, attributing it to my own sense of being on my own in a strange place, and then I realized that it actually stemmed from the surprising but very apparent lack of any signs of life in the water. Tarbell was already standing by the table, along with the Kupermans, and although I couldn't see who was responsible for the cooking or where it was being done, the aromas filling the area were singularly appetizing. Tarbell handed me a glass of his personal vodka-a Russian brand that I did not know-and then Eli Kuperman asked: "You like lamb, don't you, Dr. Wolfe? Medium rare, I think it was. It'll be ready in just a few minutes." "None of us have time to eat much during the day," Jonah Kuperman added, heading through a small door that evidently led to some sort of galley, where I could see Julien FouchÚ laboring in a sweat over a stainless-steel stove. "So we try to make dinners as civilized as we can." I picked up a few pieces of the china and silver: very elegant, and very old. "I guess you do," was all I could say, taking a sip of Tarbell's vodka and trying yet again to orient myself: after all, moments earlier I'd been standing in this same area watching a battle take place outside. "I don't suppose," I went on, "that anybody'd like to tell me what it is that keeps you all so busy during the day? I mean, when you're not busting people out of jail." FouchÚ raised his voice to call from the galley, "That should never have happened! A pet project of les fr¶res Kuperman that grew completely out of hand!" "Oh come on, Julien!" Eli shot back. "It had just as much validity as anything we've done-you've seen the statistics, gambling's become an epidemic since the crash, and there's no way I'm going to let a lot of anthropologically nonsensical folk wisdom rationalize it. If we'd been able to plant that evidence-" "'Plant?'" I interrupted, surprised. "You mean you weren't stealing anything?" Jonah Kuperman threw me a friendly glance. "There's really nothing in that particular burial site worth stealing, Dr. Wolfe-" "Gideon," I said. "All right-Gideon. Well, as you probably know, it's been apparent for years that the various peoples who call themselves 'Native Americans' were not, in fact, the first inhabitants of this continent. But many of the tribes have attempted to suppress or destroy evidence that might support this conclusion. They're afraid, and with reason, that if they're suddenly revealed as simple conquerors of their predecessors they'll lose emotional and historical justification for a lot of questionable activities-mainly the creation of a generation of gambling addicts in their casinos." "That burial ground in Florida," Eli said, "is currently being explored by a team from Harvard, and Jonah and I were trying to slip several artifacts in, to demonstrate-" |
Read Chapter Two of Killing Time
Read Chapter One of Killing Time
Will a Killer Asteroid Hit the Earth?
Will the Brain Understand Itself?
Will We Travel Back (Or Forward) in Time?
Will Someone Build a Perpetual Motion Machine?
Will We Have A Final Theory Of Everything?
Will We Discover Another Universe?
Will We Figure Out How Life Began?
Will Anyone Ever Run a Three Minute Mile?
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