with my male students, for that matter. None of those slanders was openly discussed in a forum where I could refute them. Just rumors. Whispered behind the back. Poisonous. More openly, they made polite suggestions of incompetence, overwork, mental fatigue. I was eased out, you see; that's how they thought of it, though there was nothing easy about it from my point of view. Eighteen months after the publication of The Ancient Enemy, I was gone. And no other university would have me, ostensibly because of my unsavory reputation. The true reason, of course, was that my theories were too bizarre for academic tastes. I stood accused of attempting to make a fortune by pandering to the common man's taste for pseudoscience and sensationalism, of selling my credibility.”
Flyte paused to take some champagne, savoring it.
Sandier was genuinely appalled by what Flyte had told him. “But that's outrageous! Your book was a scholarly treatise. It was never aimed at the best-seller lists. The common man would've had enormous difficulty wading through The Ancient Enemy. Making a fortune from that kind of work is virtually impossible.”
“A fact to which my royalty statements can attest,” Flyte said. He finished the last of the caviar.
“You were a respected archaeologist,” Sandler said.
“Oh, well, never really all that respected,” Flyte said self-deprecatingly. “Though I was certainly never an embarrassment to my profession, as was so often suggested later on. If my colleagues' conduct seems incredible to you, Mr. Sandler, that's because you don't understand the nature of the animal. I mean, the scientist animal. Scientists are educated to believe that all new knowledge comes in tiny increments, grains of sand piled one on another. Indeed, that is how most knowledge is gained. Therefore, they are never prepared for those visionaries who arrive at new insights which, overnight, utterly transform an entire field of inquiry. Copernicus was ridiculed by his contemporaries for believing that the planets revolved around the sun. Of course, Copernicus was proved right. There are countless examples in the history of science.” Flyte blushed and drank some more champagne. “Not that I compare myself to Copernicus or any of those other great men. I'm simply trying to explain why my colleagues were conditioned to turn against me. I should have seen it coming.”
The waiter came to take away the caviar dish. He also served Sandler's orange juice and Flyte's fresh fruit.
When he was alone with Flyte again, Sandler said, “Do you still believe your theory had validity?”
“Absolutely!” Flyte said, “I am right; or at least there's an awfully good chance I am. History is filled with mysterious mass disappearances for which historians and archaeologists can provide no viable explanation.”
The professor's dreaming eyes became sharp and probing beneath his bushy white eyebrows. He leaned over the table, fixing Burt Sandier with a hypnotic stare.
“On December 10, 1939,” Flyte said, “outside the hills of Nanking, an army of three thousand Chinese soldiers, on its way to the front lines to fight the Japanese, simply vanished without a trace before it got anywhere near the battle. Not a single body was ever found. Not one grave. Not one witness. The Japanese military historians have never found any record of having dealt with that particular Chinese force. In the countryside through which the missing soldiers passed, no peasants heard gunfire or other indications of conflict. An army evaporated into thin air. And in 1711, during the Spanish War of Succession, four thousand troops set out on an expedition into the Pyreness. Every last man disappeared on familiar and friendly ground, before the first night's camp was established!”
Flyte was still as gripped by his subject as he had been when he had written the book, seventeen years ago. His fruit and champagne were forgotten. He stared at Sandler as if daring him to challenge the infamous Flyte theories.
“On a grander scale,” the professor continued, “consider the great Mayan cities of Copin, Piedras Negras, Palenque, Mencht, Seibal, and several others which were abandoned overnight. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Mayans left their homes, approximately in A D. 610, perhaps within a single week, even within one day. Some appear to have fled northward, to establish new cities, but there is evidence that countless thousands just disappeared. All within a shockingly brief span of time. They didn't bother to take many of their pots, tools, cooking utensils… My learned colleagues say the land around those Mayan cities became infertile, thus making it essential that the people move north, where the land would be more productive. But if this great exodus was planned, why were belongings left behind? Why was precious seed corn left behind? Why didn't a single survivor ever return to loot those cities of their abandoned treasures?” Flyte softly struck the table with one fist. “It's irrational! Emigrants don't set out on long, arduous journeys without preparation, without taking every tool that might assist them. Besides, in some of the homes in Piedras Negras and Seibal, there is evidence that families departed after preparing elaborate dinners— but before eating them. This would surely seem to indicate that their leaving was sudden. No current theories adequately answer these questions — except mine, bizarre as it is, odd as it is, impossible as it is.”
“Frightening as it is,” Sandler added.
“Exactly,” Flyte said.
The professor sank back in his chair, breathless. He noticed his champagne glass, seized it, emptied it, and licked his lips.
The waiter appeared and refilled their glasses.
Flyte quickly consumed his fruit, as if afraid the waiter might spirit it away while the hothouse strawberries remained untouched.
Sandler felt sorry for the old bird. Evidently, it had been quite some time since the professor had been treated to an expensive meal served in an elegant atmosphere.
“I was accused of trying to explain every mysterious disappearance from the Mayans to Judge Crater and Amelia Earhart, all with a single theory. That was most unfair. I never mentioned the judge or the luckless aviatrix. I am interested only in unexplained mass disappearances of both humankind and animals, of which there have been literally hundreds throughout history.”
The waiter brought croissants.
Outside, lightning stepped quickly down the somber sky and put its spiked foot to the earth in another part of the city; its blazing descent was accompanied by a terrible crash and roar that echoed across the entire firmament.
Sandier said, “If subsequent to the publication of your book, there had been a new, startling mass disappearance, it would have lent considerable credibility-”
“Ah,” Flyte interrupted, tapping the table emphatically with one stiff finger, “but there have been such disappearances!”
“But surely they would have been splashed all over the front page—”
“I am aware of two instances. There may be others,” Flyte insisted, “One of them involved the disappearance of masses of lower lifeforms — specifically, fish. It was remarked on in the press, but not with any great interest. Politics, murder, sex, and two-headed goats are the only things newspapers care to report about. You have to read scientific journals to know what's really happening. That's how I know that, eight years ago, marine biologists noted a dramatic decrease in fish population in one region of the Pacific. Indeed, the numbers of some species had been cut in half. Within certain scientific circles, there was panic at first, some fear that ocean temperatures might be undergoing a sudden change that would depopulate the seas of all but the hardiest species. But that proved not to be the case. Gradually, sea life in that area — which covered hundreds of square miles — replenished itself. In the end no one could explain what had happened to the millions upon millions of creatures that had vanished.”
“Pollution,” Sandler suggested, between alternating sips of orange juice and champagne.
Dabbing marmalade on a piece of croissant, Flyte said, “No, no, no. No, sir. It would have required the most massive case of water pollution in history to cause such a devastating depopulation over that wide an area. An accident on that scale could not go unnoticed. But there were no accidents, no oil spills — nothing. Indeed, a mere oil spill could not have accounted for it; the affected region and the volume of water was too vast for that. And dead fish did not wash up on the beaches. They merely vanished without a trace.”
Burt Sandler was excited. He could smell money. He had hunches about some books, and none of his hunches had ever been wrong. (Well, except for that diet book by the movie star who, a week before publication
