Clive Cussler - Serpent

"Thank you, Dr. Chi," Gamay said after accepting a refill, of bottled water this time. "I'm afraid I was more dehydrated than I thought."

"It's not difficult to lose body moisture in this country. Now that our energies are restored, how may I help you?"

As I said on the phone; I'm a marine biologist. I'm involved in a project off the coast."

"Oh, yes, NUMA s tektites survey near the Chixulub meteor impact site."

Gamay cocked her head. "You know of it?"

He nodded solemnly. "Bush telegraph." Seeing her puzzled expression, he chuckled and confessed, "I can't lie. I saw an email to the museum from NUMA headquarters informing us of the survey as a courtesy."

He reached over to a file cabinet, opened a drawer, and pulled out a manila folder.

"Let me see," he said, reading from the file's contents. "Gamay MorganTrout. Thirty years old. Resident of Georgetown. Wisconsin born. Expert diver. Holds degree in marine archaeology from the University of North Carolina. Changed specialties, enrolling in Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where she eventually attained a doctorate as a marine biologist. Puts her talents to work for the world-renowned . National Underwater and Marine Agency."

"Not a fact out of place," Gamay said raising a finely curved eyebrow.

"Thank you," Chi said, replacing the file in the cabinet. "My secretary's work, actually. After you called I asked her to hook onto NUMA's Web site. There's a complete description of ongoing projects with brief biographies of those involved in them. Are you any relation to Paul Trout, the deep ocean geographer whose name was also listed?"

"Yes, Paul is my husband. The site probably didn't mention that we met in Mexico. We were on a field trip to La Paz. Otherwise, I'd say you did your homework"

"It's my strict academic training, I'm afraid."

"I tend to retain details, too. Let's see if I can remember." Gamay dosed her eyes. "Dr. Jose Chi. Born in Quintana Roo, Yucatan peninsula. Father was a farmer. Excelled in his studies, sent by the government to private schools. Undergraduate studies at University of Mexico. Graduate degrees from Harvard University, where he is still affiliated with the prestigious Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Curator at Mexico's National Anthropological Museum. Winner of the MacArthur Award for his work in helping to, compile a corpus of Mayan inscriptions. Now working on a dictionary of the Mayan language"

She opened her eyes to see Chi's toothy grin. He dapped his hands lightly. "Brava, Dr. MorganTrout."

"Please call me Gamay"

A beautiful and unusual name."

"My father was a wine connoisseur. The color of my hair reminded him of the grape of Beaujolais."

"Well chosen, Dr. Gamay. I must correct something, though. I'm very proud of my work on the dictionary, but the corpus is actually the work of many talented people. Artists, photographers, cartographers, catalogers, and so on. I contributed my skills as a 'finder.' "

A finder?"

"St. I'll explain. I've been hunting since I was eight years old. I've roamed throughout the Yucatan and. in Belize and Guatemala. In the course of my wanderings I frequently stumbled across ruins. Some people say I must carry a Ouija board around in my head. I think it's a combination of the alertness to his Surroundings a hunter must have, and simple mileage. If you walk long and far enough in these parts, you'll trip over a remnant left by my busy ancestors. Now tell me, what interest does a marine biologist have in the work of a landbound bonedigger?"

"I have an odd request, Dr. Chi. As you noted in my CV, I was an underwater bonedigger before I switched to living things. My two areas of interest have combined through the years. Whenever I'm in new territory, I look for ancient artistic renderings of marine life. An obvious example is the scallop. The Crusaders took it as their emblem. You can find paintings and carvings of scallop shells dating back thousands of years to the Greeks and Romans, and even before."

"An interesting hobby," Chi said.

"It's not really a hobby, although I find it fern and relaxing. It gives me an eye into the past, before the age of scientific drawings. I look at a painting or a carving and get an idea of what a species looked like hundreds or thousands of years ago. By comparing it to the creature as it exists today I can see if there has been genetic evolution or mutation. I'm thinking about doing a book on my collection. Do you know of any archaeological sites that have depictions of marine life? I'm looking for fish, shellfish, coral. Any sea creature that may have caught the eye of a Mayan artisan."

Chi had been listening intently. "What you're doing is fascinating. And worthwhile because it proves that archaeology is not a dead science of use to no one. Too bad you didn't .mention exactly what you wanted on the phone. It would have saved you from coming way out here."

"It was no problem, and I wanted to meet you personally."

"I'm glad you did, but the Maya's artistic subjects tended toward birds, jaguars, and serpents. Chances are that any renderings of sea life will be so stylized that you wouldn't recognize them as anything you'd seen in a biology book. Like those parrot carvings that some people say look like elephants."

"That just makes the subject more interesting.. I have some time off from the tektites project. If you could point me toward some ruins I'd be grateful."

He thought for a moment. "There's a site perhaps two hours from here. I'll take you there. You can browse around. Maybe you'll find something."

"You're sure it's not too much trouble?"

"Not at all." He looked at a dock. "We'd be there about lunchtime, spend a couple of hours, and be back here by late afternoon. You could drive to the research vessel while it's still daylight."

"That would be fine. We can go in my Jeep."

"No need to," he said. "I have a time machine."

"Pardon?" She wasn't sure she heard him correctly.

"There's a bathroom in there. Why don't you freshen up while I pack lunch?"

Gamay shrugged. She retrieved her rucksack from the Jeep, then came back inside and rinsed her face and combed her hair. Chi was closing an Igloo cooler when she came out of the bathroom.

"Where do I catch the time machine?" she asked, getting into the spirit of things.

"It's in the temporal transport module," he said seriously, leading the way out the door. He took the shotgun with him "You can never tell when you might run across some birds."

They went around behind the lab building to a path that led to another native shelter. This one had no walls, the roof supported by poles at each comer. Under the palm roof was a blue HumVee four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Gamay let out a whoop. "This is your time machine?"

"What else would you call a contrivance that can take you to cities where ancient civilizations once flourished? I'm aware that it looks very much like the civilian version of a military vehicle used in the Persian Gulf War, but that was done on purpose to discourage the curious."

He placed the cooler in the rear and opened the door for Gamay. She got in the passenger seat, recognizing the airplane-like dashboard instrumentation. She and Paul owned a Hummer back in Georgetown. Designed to replace the Jeep, its imposing width made it a formidable force in Washington traffic, and on weekends they weren't remodeling their brick townhouse they liked to drive offroad in rural areas.

"The route we came in with the Jeep is actually the back way" Chi explained. "There's a track here that leads out to the road." He got in and started the engine. His head barely made it above the wheel.

This was going to be some adventure, Gamay thought. She leaned back in her seat and said, "Take it to warp six, Mr. Sulu."