Sunbird (32 page)

^{'Lunch? That's wonderful, Professor. Why don't I pick you up. I have a hire car.' She gave me
a
triumphant thumbs-up sign.}

^{'The Bell at Hurley? Yes, of course, I remember. How could I forget.' She made a sick face at me. 'I so look forward to it.'}

^{The silver Jaguar slid into the car park, and I saw Sally at the wheel. With a scarf in her hair and laughter on her lips, she didn't look like a girl who had sat fourteen hours in the cramped seat of an intercontinental jet.}

^{She slid out of the car, giving me a flash of those wonderful sun-browned thighs, and then she was coming towards me, hanging on the arm of Eldridge Hamilton, and laughing gaily.}

^{Hamilton was a tall stoop-shouldered man in his fifties; a baggy Harris tweed suit with leather patches on the elbows hung like a sack on his gaunt frame. His nose was beaky, and his bald pate shone in the pale sunlight as though it had been buffed up with a good wax polish. All in all he was not formidable competition, but his little eyes sparkled behind the heavy horn-rimmed glasses and his lips were slack with desire, exposing a mouthful of bad teeth, as he looked at Sally. I found it a hard price to pay for his services.}

^{Sally led him to my table, and he was six feet from me before he recognized me. He stopped dead, and I saw him blink once. He knew instantly that he had been taken, and for a moment the whole project hung in the balance. He could so easily have turned on his heel and walked out.}

^{'Eldridge!' I leapt to my feet, crooning seductively. 'How wonderful to see you.' And while he still hesitated, I had him by the elbow in a grip like a velvet-lined vice. 'I've ordered you a large Gilbey's gin and tonic - that's your poison, isn't it?'}

^{It was five years since last we had met, and my memory of his personal tastes mollified him slightly. He allowed Sally and I to ease him into a seat and place the gin convenient to his right hand. While Sally and I bombarded him with all our considerable combined charm he maintained a suspicious silence, until the first gin had gone down. I ordered another and he began to thaw, halfway through the third he became skittish and voluble.}

^{'Did you read Wilfred Snell's reply to your book
Ophir
in the
Journal
?' he asked. Wilfred Snell was the most vociferous and merciless of all my scientific adversaries, 'Jolly amusing, what?' And Eldridge neighed like a randy stallion, and clutched at one of Sally's beautiful thighs.}

^{I am a man of peace, but at that moment I was having difficulty remembering it. My expression must have been a sickly grin, my fingernails were driven like claws into the flesh of my palms as I fought down the temptation to drag Eldridge around the room by his heels.}

^{Sally wriggled out from his exploring hand, and I suggested in a strangled voice, 'Let's go through to lunch, shall we?'}

^{There was a quick game of musical chairs at the dining-room table, as Eldridge tried to get a seat within clutching distance of Sally and I tried to prevent it.}

^{We out-foxed him on a cunning double play, allowing him to settle down triumphantly beaming over the top of his menu at Sally who was backed into a corner beside him, before I cried, 'Sally, you are in a draught there.' And smoothly as a pair of ballet dancers we changed seats.}

^{Then I could relax and give the pheasant the attention it deserved, although the burgundy that Eldridge suggested was nothing if not gauche.}

^{With characteristic tact Eldridge brought up the subject we had all been flirting with.}

^{'Met a friend of yours the other day, big flashy chap like a cross between a male model and a professional wrestler. Accent like an Australian with the flu. Had some cock-and-bull story about scrolls you've found in a cave outside Cape Town.' And Eldridge neighed again at a volume that momentarily stopped all other conversation in the room. 'Damned man had the cheek to offer me money. I know the type, not a bean to bless himself with, and talks like he's made of the stuff. He had "shyster" written all over him in letters two feet high.'}

^{Sally and I gaped at him, struck dumb by his astute grasp of the facts and his masterly summation of Louren Sturvesant's character.}

^{'Sent him packing of course,' said Eldridge with relish, and stuffed his mouth with breast of pheasant.}

^{'You probably did the right thing,' I murmured. 'Incidentally the site is in northern Botswana - 1,500 miles from Cape Town.'}

^{'Oh, yes?' Eldridge asked, expressing disinterest as politely as one can with a mouthful of pheasant and rotten teeth.}

^{'And Louren Sturvesant was on
Time
Magazine's list of the thirty richest men in the world,' murmured Sally. Eldridge stopped chewing with his mouth ajar, and afforded us a fine view of a semi-masticated pheasant breast.}

^{'Yes,' I affirmed. 'He is bank-rolling my dig. He has put in 200,000 dollars already, and he has set no limit.'}

^{Eldridge turned a stricken face towards me. That sort of patron of scientific research was almost as rare as the unicorn, and Eldridge realized suddenly that he had been within range of one and let him escape. All the bumptiousness was gone out of Professor Hamilton.}

^{I signalled the waitress to clear my plate, and I swear that I felt true compassion in my heart for Eldridge as I unlocked my briefcase and took from it a cylindrical bundle wrapped in its protective canvas jacket.}

^{'I have an appointment with Ruben Levy in Tel Aviv tomorrow, Eldridge.' I opened the canvas wrapping.}

^{'We have 1,142 of these leather scrolls. So Ruby will be pretty busy for the next few years. Of course, Louren Sturvesant will make a donation of 100,000 dollars to the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Archaeology for their cooperation, and I shouldn't be surprised if the faculty doesn't have some of the scrolls given to them as well.'}

^{' Eldridge swallowed his mouthful of pheasant as though it were broken glass. He wiped his fingers and mouth with his napkin, before leaning forward to examine the scroll.}

^{'
From out of the southern plains of grass
,' he whispered as he read, and I noticed the difference from Sally's translation, '
received 192 large ivory tusks, weighing 221 talents
--' His voice died but his lips moved as he read on. Then he began speaking again, and his voice quavered with excitement.}

^{'Punic in the style of the second century BC, do you see the use of ligatures to join the median "m", still using the hang of the characters from the line, that's definitely pre-first century EC. Here, Sally, do you see the archaic crossing of the "A"?'}

^{'We have over a thousand of these scrolls, preserved in chronological order - Levy is very excited,' I interrupted this flow of technicalities with a gentle untruth. Levy didn't know they existed.}

^{'Levy,' Eldridge snorted, and his spectacles flashed with outrage. 'Levy! Take him outside Hebrew and Egyptian and he's a babe in the bloody woods!' He had hold of my wrist now.}

^{'Ben. I insist, I absolutely insist on doing this work!'}

^{'What about Wilfred Snell's criticism of my theories? You seemed to find it amusing.' I had him by the ackers now, and I could afford to be a little cocky. 'How do you feel about working with somebody whose views are so suspect?'}

^{'Wilfred Snell,' said Eldridge earnestly, 'is a monumental jackass. Where did he ever find a thousand Punic scrolls?'}

^{'Waiter,' I called, 'please bring us two large Cordon Argent brandies.'}

^{'Make that three,' said Sally.}

^{As the brandy diffused a gentle warmth through my body, I listened to Eldridge Hamilton effusing about the scrolls and demanding of Sally information as to exactly where, when and how we had discovered them. I found myself beginning to like the man. It was true that he had teeth like the stumps of a pine forest devastated by fire, but then I am not a perfect physical specimen myself. It was also true that he had a weakness for Gilbey's gin and pretty girls - but then he differed from me only in his choice of liquor, and who am I to hold that Glen Grant is in any way superior?}

^{No, I decided, despite my prejudices, I would be able to work with him, just as long as he kept his bony little claws off Sally.}

^{Eldridge followed us out a week after our return to the City of the Moon, and we met him at the airstrip. I was concerned that he might find the transition from a northern winter to our 110degF summer impaired his abilities. I need not have worried. He was one of those Englishmen who, solar topee cocked, go out in the midday sun without raising a sweat. His luggage consisted of a single small valise which contained his personal effects and a dozen large packing-cases filled with chemicals and equipment.}

^{I gave him the Grade 'A' tour of the site, trying without success to fan his interest in the city and the cavern. Eldridge was a single-minded specialist.}

^{'Yes,' he said. 'Jolly interesting - now where are the scrolls?' I think even then he had doubts, but I took him into the archives and he purred like an angular old tomcat as he moved down the burdened stone shelves.}

^{'Ben,' he said, 'there's just one thing still to settle. I write the paper on the actual scrolls, agreed?' We are a strange breed, we work not for the gold but for the glory. Eldridge was making certain of his share.}

^{'Agreed.' We shook hands.}

^{'Well then there is nothing to stop me beginning right away,' he said.}

^{'No,' I said, 'there isn't, is there.'}

^{The treatment of the scrolls was an art form more than an exact science. For each of them the treatment varied, depending on their state of preservation, the quality of the leather, the composition of the ink and other inter-related factors. Sally admitted to me in a weak moment that she would not have been able to handle the task, it required a fund of acquired experience which she did not have at her command.}

^{Eldridge worked like a medieval alchemist, steaming and soaking and spraying and painting. His domain stank of chemicals and other weird smells, and his and Sally's fingers were stained. Sally reported that his absorption with the task had reduced his animal instincts to the level where he made only spasmodic and half-hearted clutches at the protruding parts of her anatomy.}

^{As each scroll was unrolled, its contents were evaluated and the detailed translation begun. One after the other they proved to be either books of account on the city's trade, or proclamations made by the Gry-Lion and the council of the nine families. The authors were nameless clerks, and their style was brisk and economical with little time for poetic flights or unnecessary descriptive passages. This starkly utilitarian outlook echoed the life style which we had so far reconstructed from our finds on the site. We discussed it at the nightly talk sessions.}

^{'It's typically Punic,' Eldridge agreed. 'They had little taste in the visual arts, their pottery was coarse and mass-produced. In my opinion their sculpture, what little there was, was downright hideous.'}

^{It requires wealth and leisure and security to produce art,' I suggested.}

^{'That's true - Rome and Greece are examples of that. Carthage and, earlier, Phoenicia were often threatened, on occasion struggling for survival - they were the bustlers and hustlers. Traders and warriors, more concerned with wealth and the acquisition of power than the niceties of living.'}