The Bone Vault

43

The entire spring sky was spread out overhead. The hindquarters of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, were clearly defined in the familiar shape of the Big Dipper. The North Star pointed to Leo, arcing eastward to the constellation of Virgo. And just rising in the northeast for the first time was the sparkling white summer star, Vega.

I leaned my head against the back of the seat, in the rear row of the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater, and listened to the chief of detectives brief the press corps on the arrest of Erik Poste, who had just been taken out of the museum in handcuffs. It was four-thirty in the morning and I was sitting by myself as the reporters fired questions at the police brass and the exhausted detectives.

“You’re telling us he acted alone?”

“That’s right. Detective Chapman will explain a bit of the background about Mr. Poste and his father,” the chief said, stepping back from the podium and giving Mike some play.

“That accident at the Met last Friday? Related to the Grooten death?”

The chief stepped in front of Mike and took control of the microphone again. “We’re not going to go into the evidence we’ve got at this point, but it’s safe to say that we’re no longer treating that as an accident.”

“How about that arm in the diorama? The one that freaked out the schoolkids?”

“My latent print unit tells me that there are fingerprints of value on that. We’ll be doing comparisons with our suspect, of course. Mr. Poste did have access to the master keys that open the diorama cabinets.”

“You think he did that just to cast suspicion on the custodial workers over here?”

“You’re just speculating now, Mr. Diamond. I know you can build an entire story around that arm, so I’ll just leave it to your editors’ judgment. If that’s what they call it at thePost. ”

The other reporters laughed. They had most of their information and were ready to leave.

Mr. Mamdouba tapped the chief on the shoulder and said something to him.

“Before you guys go, Elijah Mamdouba-the director of curatorial affairs here-would like to say a few words.”

Some of the reporters took their seats. Others ignored the diminutive figure and filed out to call in their stories.

“This is a very strange circumstance for us, ladies and gentlemen. Very awkward indeed.” He was speaking to a small audience, maybe twelve or thirteen reporters were left in the room, but he was clearly hoping his words would be printed for millions to read.

“It was in one of the two most magnificent rooms in the city of New York, at the Temple of Dendur in our sister museum across the park-a mere week ago-that my colleague Pierre Thibodaux first learned of the discovery of Miss Grooten’s body.

“We inform you about the conclusion of this tragedy today in this other stunning arena here at the planetarium, part of our spectacular Museum of Natural History.” He gestured around him at the superb new facility at the Rose Center, the most powerful virtual-reality simulator in the world.

Mamdouba was not wrong. Both of these brilliant institutions were the city’s finest showcases. Acres and acres of exhibits, millions and millions of paintings, objects, specimens, and artifacts. Thousands of dedicated scholars and scientists who devoted their lives to assembling these unrivaled collections of art, in one case, and scientific wonders in the other.

“Over time,” Mamdouba went on, “we have reflected within our walls and our laboratories the society in which we live, in which we study and are educated. Overcoming the ignorance of those who went before us has become an inevitable part of our process of growth, whether it was about evolution or the environment, about racial stereotypes, animal extinction, or space exploration.”

I couldn’t think of any places in the entire country that were responsible for the education and enlightenment of more people than the Metropolitan and the Natural History Museum. How ironic, then, and how bizarre, that a quiet young scholar had met her death because of her work beneath these roofs.

Mamdouba was finishing his remarks. “That the scientific community once used human beings from primitive cultures for their research in such profoundly disturbing ways has caused every museum in the world to do some soul-searching. That animal specimens were so necessary for examination and studies that affected their own viability on our earth created a paradox in terms of conserving those very creatures that have become endangered.”

He went on about scientists and visionaries, explorers and anthropologists and paleontologists, the mission and the paradox, the vision and the tragedy. The reporters stayed until he spoke his piece, riveted again by the marvels that had been brought together under this splendid tangle of rooftops.

When he finished speaking and the reporters departed, I sat in my plush seat and waited for the chief to dismiss the detectives. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them five minutes later, having dozed off, some motion in the seat bottom of my chair jolted me awake. The room was empty, except for Mike, Mercer, and me.

“Liftoff,” Mike said. “Time to wake up. Zimm’s got us tickets for the fiveA.M. early bird special. He’s in the control room with the janitor. Thinks you deserve a private display.”

Speakers and woofers that vibrated to give the audience the sense of a real space launch at the start of the show were wired into each seat. Mercer was holding a bag of microwaved popcorn that he must have found in some lab worker’s office, and Mike was pouring Clem’s minibar bottles of scotch and vodka into three plastic cups.

Tom Hanks’s voice-over began a narration about our search for other forms of life in the universe.

“There’s Orion,” Mike said, pointing over Mercer’s head to a formation of bright stars.

“Last thing I want to see this morning is a hunter.”

“How about Andromeda, the princess?”

I sipped at my drink and smiled at him. “Don’t go there.”

“She was chained to a rock, left to be devoured by a sea monster, to appease the gods. Saved by-well, by one of those winged horses whose names I never remember. Let’s just say saved by Mercer and me. We’d never let it happen to you, kid.”

We clicked our plastic cups and the glorious night sky above us began to move.