They had recovered roughly five hundred writing samples of the target language, mostly from a dozen major sites. Generally, they consisted of only a few clusters of symbols. Context tended to be limited to the knowledge (or assertion)

that the sample had been taken from a government building, or a library, or a statue of an animal.

The Lower Temple had major potential. Maggie possessed several tablets of varying degrees of completeness, transcribed in one or another of the Casumel family. These were probably inspirational tales, because they were accompanied by picto-graphs that translated to rainstorms, the sea, military valor, the moon. And so she could make a guess here, and take a stab there. She had reconstructed a primary alphabet, and several alternates, and had started a vocabulary. But she desperately needed more samples.

The printing press was the answer. That should give her two or three thousand characters of text. A magnificent find. If she could get her hands on it.

This morning, she was lingering over a tablet which had come in almost two years before from an excavation site several hundred kilometers inland. She had scanned and indexed it, but had not sent it back to the Academy with her regular annual shipment.

The piece was an oblong, as wide as her hand, about twenty centimeters long. It depicted the Quraquat hero Malinar as a child, with a dish in his hand, feeding a ferocious ursine animal with tusks and huge eyes, while an infant watched. She knew the myth: the animal was a horgon, a demon beast capable of seeing all things. The horgon was one of the classic monstrosities of local mythology, a creature suggestive of divinity gone wrong, not unlike Satan. No one could hide from it. No one could defeat it. But it traditionally spared children, because this child had fearlessly approached it with a plate of food to divert attention from his sister. The horgon rewarded Malinar's valor, and never after was known to attack the young. The valor ideograph, which consisted of three arrows within a circle, appeared atop the engraving. And there were six lines of text. She believed she had identified several terms: the verbs to see and to offer, and the nouns Malinar and horgon.

In addition, the text supported some of her syntactical notions.

She had not sent the tablet on to D.C., because she had recognized the character group for horgon from somewhere else: it was part of the Oz inscription.

Andi was in the process of powering down nonessential electronics when Karl passed through Ops with his luggage. On the lower level, he saw Art Gibbs and Sandy Gonzalez tarping a digger. Other equipment, pumps, generators, jet-sleds, had been brought in, and were now being laid in storage. There was a tendency to behave as if Seapoint were simply being mothballed, as if someone would return and pick up where this expedition was leaving off.

The Academy would ordinarily have salvaged its equipment, the diggers, the sub, Seapoint itself. But the decision to evacuate had been made suddenly, without including Henry in the process. And consequently too little time had been allowed, and it had become necessary for the Temple team (and their managers back on the Second Floor in D.C.) to choose between bringing out expensive gear or rescuing artifacts of unknown value. The artifacts, of course, had taken precedence. Karl had been on duty when the Second Floor had directed Henry to leave personal luggage at Seapoint, to make extra room aboard the shuttles for storage. Henry had been around long enough to know better than to disagree. But he forgot to implement.

Karl entered the sub bay. It was empty. He strode along the walkway that bordered the docking pool and dropped his bags beside Janet's, along the boarding ramp. "I'm ready," he said to her. The place was filled with Eddie's containers. There were more than a hundred. "Do we really have to haul all these up to the ship?"

"There are more coming." Janet smiled wearily. "Karl, what are you going to do when you get home?"

"I have a position at the Institut von Archaologie." He tried to make it sound casual. But they both knew it was a prestigious appointment.

"Congratulations." She kissed him. "I have no idea what I'm going to do." There had been a list of vacancy announcements around for about a month. The Academy would keep a few of the team on the payroll, and it would try to assist the others. Most, like Karl, would be going back to the classroom. "I want to stay in the field," she said. "But the waiting list for Pinnacle and Nok are both long."

"Two years, last I heard," Karl said. Allegri was a damned good archeologist. With experience. But it would be like the

Academy to waste her, to offer her a job teaching undergraduates. "Maybe they'll make an exception for people here." The approach lamps came on. "Get Henry to put in a word for you."

The water began to churn. "Pity about all this," she said. "Henry deserves better."

"He may not be done yet," said Karl. "He wants Linear C. And I'm not entirely sure he won't get it."

LIBRARY ENTRY

Like most mythic heroes, Malinar may have had a remote historical basis. If so, the reality is hopelessly entangled with fable. This hero appears in epochs thousands of years apart. This is no doubt due to the extreme length of Quraquat history, and to the lack of technological progress after the exhaustion of the world's nonrenewable natural resources, resulting in a telescoping effect upon earlier eras, all of which come to resemble one another.

Although Malinar's time predates the construction of the Knothic Towers by almost ten thousand years, he is nevertheless said to have visited the holy site to consult an aspect of the Deity. The Temple then stood on a rock shelf well above the sea. We possess a tablet thought to depict the event.

Unfortunately, most of the Malinar cycle is missing. We know neither the reason for the consultation, nor its result. We know only that the Quraquat could not bear the thought that their great hero had not at some point visited the imposing shrine on the north shore.

— Linda Thomas, At the Temple of the Winds Harvard University, 2211

"I'm sorry we found the thing, Hutch." George Hackett was weary, but he managed to look upbeat anyhow. "If I had my way, we'd call the whole business off. I'm ready to go home."

"How long have you been here?"

"Four years."

"Long time."

"Seems like forever." They were alone in the community room, enjoying coffee and toast. The sea moved against the view panels. "I don't think I'll do any more field trips."

Hutch enjoyed being with him. She loved the glow of his eyes, and his gentleness. Old passions were reviving. When they were together, she had a tendency to babble. But she curbed it, and maintained a discrete distance, waiting for him to make a move. When he did, if he did, she would have to put him on hold until they got home. Anything else would be unprofessional. She knew from long experience that it was impossible to keep secrets on shipboard. "Why not, George?" she asked, in a detached tone. "Your career is in the field, isn't it?"

He shook his head. "I'm not an archeologist. I'm an engineer. I only came out here because the opportunity surfaced, and 1 thought it was a chance to travel." He laughed.

"Well," she said, "you've certainly traveled."

"Yeah. That I have." He looked at her wistfully. "You know. Hutch," he said, "you're lovely. It's been worth the trip just to meet you."

She, in her turn, glowed. "That's nice of you," she said.

"I mean it."

She could see that he did. "What will you do when you get home?" she asked.

He stared at her. "I'm going to find a place where there are green parks and lots of summer days. And where all the women look like you." He reached out and stroked her cheek.