Seti's Heart (2 page)

When the door of Administration clicked closed behind him, it sounded like the thunderclap of doom to Logan. His fate sealed, there was only one thing left to do – drown his sorrows in pitchers of draft beer while listening to the sympathetic commiserations and ill-conceived advice of his friends.

“Jase? Hey, it’s me,” Logan said, his voice a little breathless as he left the Museum and hurried down the sidewalk heading toward a bar favored by lesser humans beings such as anthropology graduate students. “Let’s put it this way – it went about as well as expected. I’m heading over to The Bones now.”

The Bones was actually a small bar named Hogan’s, rechristened by the museum scholars who frequented it. Located two blocks from the museum, the bar was housed behind a nondescript, red-bricked façade. Dimly lit and famous for its five-dollar pitchers of beer, it was a favorite among students and museum assistants who had deep thirsts but shallow bank accounts.
 

Logan settled himself into a booth near the back of the bar and ordered a pitcher. If he had his way, it would be the first of many.

“You shouldn’t frown like that, Logan,” Wendy said, setting a frosty pitcher of Budweiser and a mug on the table. “When your eyebrows knit together it makes you look like you have a unibrow. Plus, it’ll give you wrinkles.”

Wendy was well past sixty and had been a waitress at The Bones since it had first opened its door in 1968. She was practically an historical landmark, knew everybody and their business as well as she knew her own. Her hair, a steely gray that she refused to dye, was wrapped around the crown of her head in a thick, silver braid. Her eyes could be either kind or frighteningly hard, depending on the circumstances, but at the moment they were softened with compassion.

She’d taken a liking to Logan and his small group of friends, which meant a few free pitchers now and then and a great deal of smothering mothering the rest of the time.

“I’ll try to keep that in mind, Wendy.”

“What’s wrong? C’mon, Logan. Spill,” Wendy said, sliding her substantial rear into the booth next to Logan.

“Didn’t get the fellowship slot in Anthropology,” Logan confessed. He should have known that Wendy wouldn’t give up until she had all the sorry details. In that way, she was worse than his mother. Then again, Logan’s mother didn’t usually serve her son pitchers of beer and tell him that he needed to get laid more often.

“Why the hell not? You’ve got a freakin’ 4.0, made the Dean’s List all four years running, and have a ton of internship hours under your belt. Who could beat that?” Wendy was nothing if not loyal, taking any setback Logan or his friends experienced as a personal affront.

“Somebody who has two things I don’t have. Tits,” Logan smirked, pouring himself a beer. He downed half of it, mopping up the foam that dripped down his chin with his sleeve.

“These are napkins,” Wendy said sarcastically, pulling a handful out of the dispenser and handing them to Logan. “Useful new invention. Try some. Besides, tits are overrated. They’re fine when you’re twenty, but when gravity hits it’s like having a couple of millstones hanging around your neck.”

Logan chuckled despite himself. “Thanks.”

“Seriously, that sounds like discrimination to me. Isn’t there anything you can do? Somebody you can complain to? File a grievance or something?”

“Sure. I could file a formal complaint with the Museum Board. Demand an investigation, call for a hearing. Of course, that would be the one sure-fire way to lose any chance I might ever have at a full professorship. I’d be lucky if I could get a job selling postcards in the gift shop after that,” Logan answered, polishing off his mug. He poured another, intent on becoming as drunk as possible in as little time as necessary. “Besides, she really does have better qualifications for the position.”

“That sucks,” Wendy said, shaking her head. “So what are you going to do now?”

“Take a fellowship with Dr. Perry. He’s the Curator of-”

“Lincoln Perry?”

“You know him? I didn’t think he ever came up from the Museum’s basement long enough to make friends. For that matter, I didn’t think he was capable of making friends. Antisocial-”

Wendy’s hand shot out, smacking Logan upside the back of his head.

“Ow!”

“You keep a civil tongue in your head when you’re talking about Lincoln Perry, Logan,” she growled, waggling a finger at him. “He’s a fucking dinosaur and he’s got a really big bite. He’s got more friends in high places than the Museum Director. If you’re going to work for Perry, you’d better mind your Ps and Qs.”

“How do you know Dr. Perry?” Logan asked, rubbing the back of his head. This was taking mothering a bit too far, but he was too curious to say anything to Wendy and risk insulting her.

“I’ve been here a long time, Logan. I know lots of people. But Lincoln Perry has been here even longer than I have. He’s been working in that museum since Hector was a pup, knows everybody and everything in it.”

“He’s Curator of Relics, Wendy, which means he’s a glorified stock boy who keeps track of junk accumulated by the Museum, but unworthy of display. Donations that meant a lot to benefactors, but little to the scientific world.”

“Just you wait and see if I’m not right,” Wendy huffed, sliding out from the booth just as Logan’s friends showed up. “This can be a great opportunity for you, if you keep your nose clean and your lips glued to the old boy’s ass.”

“Okay, Wendy. Whatever you say,” Logan sighed. He knew better, but there was no sense in arguing the fact anymore. All he wanted right then was to plunge face first into a barrel of suds.

Jason, Leo, and Chris stood by, patiently waiting for Wendy to extract herself from the booth. All three were self-described SSOLs - Serious Students Of Life, although Logan’s definition was Seriously Shit Out of Luck. Whichever meaning of the acronym you subscribed to, it meant the same thing - that they were young academics with brand new sheepskins and empty bank accounts. Although Jason had landed an internship at Sloan-Kettering, he was living off his rapidly dwindling trust fund, and the other two didn’t have a single job prospect between them. Still, they were supportive and had helped keep Logan’s head above the black waters of despair on more than one occasion. Logan considered himself lucky to have their friendship and loved them all like brothers.

Each gave Wendy a brief, dutiful peck on the cheek, assuring them of at least one free pitcher that night, then slid into the booth.

“So, it’s a no-go in Anthropology, huh?” Jason said as he scooted onto the bench seat next to Logan. Logan had known Jason the longest of the three, having been assigned to the same dorm room his first day in college. The two of them had been as thick as peanut butter for years. Sometimes Logan thought Jason knew him better than Logan knew himself. “Peterson is such an asshole.”

“Please don’t associate that man with one of my favorite parts of the human anatomy,” Leo said, smiling as Wendy set a full pitcher and three more mugs on the table. His blue eyes twinkled mischievously; dimples deepening, making him look like an overgrown, platinum blonde pixie. “He gives assholes everywhere a bad name.”

“What are you going to do now, Logan?” Chris asked. His brown eyes peered at Jason from behind the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. The most reserved of the trio, Chris had the looks of a supermodel and the personality of a wet sponge. Still, he was intelligent and kind, and had been Logan’s friend since his first year of college.

“Well, I put in for the assistant slot with the Curator of Relics-”

“Perry? Are you kidding?” Leo protested. “That’s a fucking death sentence, Logan. I can hear the bells tolling for your career now.”

“Shut up, Leo. What else could he do?” Chris growled. Logan couldn’t help but smile when Leo jumped as Chris’ sharp elbow connected with his ribs. “Not everybody is content to live off of love, you know.”

“You’re going to meet a man.”

“What?” Logan looked at Jason, whose eyes were wide and unfocussed, his expression gone blank. Jason seemed to stare through Logan, seeing something beyond him that no one else could see, and it was giving Logan a severe case of the creeps. He hated when Jason went Twilight Zone on them.

“Shit. Here we go – step right up and see Jason the Magnificent predict the future while juggling beer nuts and cocktail napkins,” Leo said, rolling his eyes.

“A man with no heart.”
 

“Oh, great. Let me guess – he’s an out of work actor whose last gig was the Tin Man in a Rotary Club presentation of the Wiz, right? Just what I fucking need,” Logan groaned, rolling his eyes. “C’mon, Jase. You know I hate it when you start with this psychic bullshit.”

“You will give him what he needs most.” Jason’s voice was a flat monotone, without the slightest trace of inflection. Logan suppressed a shudder.

“It’s more like psychic diarrhea. When he gets like this, he’s got more shit coming out of his mouth than a sewer line,” Chris said, waving his hand in front of Jason’s face. “C’mon, man, snap out of it!”

“Earth to Jason, come in, Jason,” Leo snorted. “A heartless man. Sounds like a fun date. Well, it could be worse, Logan. He could have said you were going to meet a woman and hop the fence.”

“I’m not going to meet anybody, unless you mean Dr. Perry,” Logan said. He drained the last of his beer, refilling his mug. White foam sloshed over the side of the mug, pooling on the table. “Right now, I couldn’t afford to go on a date, and I certainly don’t need anybody complicating my life. It’s fucked up enough as it is.” He gave Jason a shove. “Knock it off, Jason,” he growled.

Jason blinked. “What happened?”

“You know damn well what happened. Why do you insist on playing these Psychic Hotline parlor games?” Chris asked, frowning. “It’s getting old, Jason.”

“Honest to God, I didn’t even know I was doing it,” Jason protested. He looked pale to Logan, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead, even though it was chilly in the bar. “One minute I was looking at Logan, and the next… Did I say something?”

“Yeah. You said I was going to meet a heartless man. What exactly did you see, Jase?” Logan prompted. There was something about Jason’s expression that sent a shiver down Logan’s spine, sobering him.

“I don’t know. It was dark, and hot. Windy. There was a lot of sand.”

“Like on the beach?” Leo asked.

“No, more like the desert,” Jason said. He lifted a mug to his mouth, his hand shaking so badly that beer slopped over the side onto his shirt.

“What else?” Logan prompted.

“There was a man. He was huge, like a fucking giant, and he had the head of an alligator,” Jason said, sliding the back of his hand across his mouth. “I didn’t understand what he was saying, but he was sorely pissed off about something.”

“Sounds like Setekh, the Egyptian god of Chaos. That would probably make it a crocodile head, not an alligator, although no one’s really sure what animal he was associated with. Why the hell would you channel him?” Chris asked. “He was the bad boy of the Egyptian pantheon.”

“Hell, boys! Deserts, giants, and heartless crocodile men? Sounds like a party to me,” Leo grinned.

Logan forced his lips to curl in a smile, but inside he was still feeling discomfitted. Jason’s “prophecies” were usually vague, easily interpreted to fit neatly into anyone’s life. Not this time. This time there had been something ominous in his voice, and it had chilled Logan right to the bone.

He lifted his mug, drinking deeply. The night was young and he was well into his second pitcher, but try as he might, Logan couldn’t get his buzz back.

 
Chapter Two

“Dr. Perry?” Logan called, edging his way past a gigantic wooden drum, chipped and pitted and layered with a half inch of dust. It looked to be of eastern origin, perhaps Japanese. The basement consisted of several dozen rows of ceiling-to-floor metal shelves, each one choked with boxes and crates. The mess spilled over into every corner of the large basement room, filling it completely and leaving very little room to walk.