Reliquary

= 9 =

MARGO APPROACHED the door, noting with distaste that it was as dirty as ever. Even in a museum known for its high dust tolerance, the door to the Physical Anthropology lab—or Skeleton Room, as the staff universally referred to it—was almost unbelievably grimy. This can’t have been washed since the turn of the century, she thought. A patina of hand oils coated the knob and the surrounding area like a shiny varnish. She considered getting a tissue out of her carryall, then dismissed the thought, grabbed the knob tightly, and turned.

As usual, the room was dimly lit, and she had to squint to make out the tiers of metal drawers that rose to the ceiling like the stacks of some vast library. Each of the twelve thousand drawers contained, either whole or in part, the remains of a human skeleton. Although most belonged to native peoples of Africa and the Americas, Margo was interested in the subset of skeletons that had been collected for medical, rather than anthropological, purposes. Dr. Frock had suggested that, as a first step, they examine the remains of people with acute bone disorders. Perhaps, he’d hypothesized, the victims of such ailments as acromegaly or Proteus syndrome could help shed some light on the bizarre skeleton that waited for them under the blue plastic sheet in Forensic Anthropology.

As she threaded her way between the giant stacks, Margo sighed. She knew the impending encounter would be unpleasant. Sy Hagedorn, administrator of the Physical Anthropology lab, was almost as old and desiccated as the skeletons he watched over. Along with Curley manning the staff entrance, Emmaline Spragg of Invertebrate Biology, and a few others, Sy Hagedorn was the last remnant of the Museum old guard. Despite the Museum’s computerized collection database, and despite the high-tech laboratory that lay just beyond the Skeleton Room, he steadfastly refused to bring his cataloguing methods into the twentieth century. When her erstwhile colleague Greg Kawakita had made his office in the lab, he’d had to endure Hagedorn’s withering scorn every time he opened up his laptop. Behind Hagedorn’s back, Kawakita had nicknamed the administrator “Stumpy.” Only Margo and a few of Frock’s other graduate students had known the name referred not to Hagedorn’s diminutive size, but to Stumpiniceps troglodytes, a particularly mundane kind of bottom-feeder that populated the oceans of the Carboniferous period.

At the thought of Kawakita, Margo frowned guiltily. He’d left a message on her answering machine maybe six months before, apologizing for dropping out of touch, saying he needed to speak to her, that he’d try again the same time the following evening. When her phone had rung again at the appointed time twenty-four hours later, Margo had reached for it automatically, then frozen, her hand inches from the handset. Nobody left a message when the machine picked up, and she had drawn her hand back slowly, wondering exactly what instinct had prevented her from answering Kawakita’s call. But even as she’d done so, she’d known the answer. Kawakita had been a part of it all… along with Pendergast, Smithback, Lieutenant D’Agosta, even Dr. Frock. His extrapolation program had been the key that helped them understand Mbwun: the creature that had terrorized the Museum and that still roamed her uneasy dreams. Selfish as it was, the last thing she’d wanted was to talk to someone who would unnecessarily remind her of those awful days. Silly, in retrospect, now that she was chin-deep in an investigation that—

The sudden fussy clearing of a throat brought Margo back to the present. She looked up to see a short man standing before her, wearing a worn tweed suit, his leathery face lined with innumerable wrinkles.

“I thought I heard somebody wandering around my skeletons,” Hagedorn said, frowning, tiny arms crossed in front of his chest. “Well?”

Despite herself, Margo felt annoyance begin to take the place of her daydreams. His skeletons, indeed. Stifling her irritation, she pulled a sheet of paper from her carryall. “Dr. Frock wants these specimens sent up to the Forensic Anthropology lab,” she replied, handing the sheet to Hagedorn.

He scanned it, the frown deepening. “Three skeletons?” he said. “That’s somewhat irregular.”

Up yours, Stumpy. “It’s important we get these right away,” she said. “If there’s a problem, I’m sure Dr. Merriam will give whatever authorization you need.”

Mentioning the Director’s name had the desired effect. “Oh, very well. But it’s still irregular. Come with me.”

He led her back toward an ancient wooden desk, heavily scarred and pitted from years of neglect. Behind the desk—in rows of tiny drawers—was Hagedorn’s filing system. He checked the first number on Frock’s list, then ran a thin yellow finger down drawers. Stopping at last, he pulled out a drawer, rifled through the cards within, and plucked one out, harrumphing in displeasure. “1930-262,” he read. “Just my luck. On the very top tier. I’m not as young as I used to be, you know. Heights bother me.”

Suddenly he stopped. “This is a medical skeleton,” he said, pointing to a red dot in the upper right-hand corner of the card.

“All of the requests are,” Margo replied. Though it was clear Hagedorn wanted an explanation, she fell into a stubborn silence. At last the administrator cleared his throat again, his eyebrows contracting at the irregularity of the request. “If you insist,” he said, sliding the card across the desk toward her. “Sign this, add your extension and department, and don’t forget to place Frock’s name in the Supervisor column.”

Margo looked at the grimy paper, its edges soft with wear and age. It’s a library card, she thought. How quaint. The skeleton’s name was printed neatly at the top: Homer Maclean. That was one of Frock’s requests, all right: a victim of neurofibromatosis, if she remembered correctly.

She bent forward to scrawl her name in the first blank row, then stopped abruptly. There, three or four names up the list of previous researchers, was the jagged scrawl she remembered so well: G. S. Kawakita, Anthropology. He’d taken this very skeleton out for research five years earlier. Not surprising, she supposed: Greg had always been fascinated by the unusual, the abnormal, the exception to the rule. Perhaps that’s why he’d been attracted to Dr. Frock and his theory of fractal evolution.

She remembered how Greg had been notorious for using this very storage room for fly-casting practice, snapping nymphs down the narrow rows during practically every coffee break. When Hagedorn was not around, of course. She suppressed a grin.

That does it, she thought. I’ll look up Greg’s number in the phone book this evening. Better late than never.

There was a high-pitched, rattling wheeze, and she looked up from the card into the small impatient eyes of Hagedorn. “It’s just your name I want,” he said waspishly. “Not a line of lyric poetry. So stop thinking so hard and let’s get on with it, shall we?”