Ulman swung around and pointed a stubby finger. “Ah! Didn’t I say you were in this together? You want everything I’ve found! And I trusted you!”
“Calm down, Dr. Ulman,” Peterson said as the rain beat harder on the roof. “Do you honestly think I’ve written about this site already?”
Ulman’s voice dropped in pitch, then slowly rose, as he turned on Peterson. His hands shook violently, and his eyes filled with tears. “Tell me you didn’t. Tell me you wrote your mother. Go ahead! Tell me she lives in an office suite in New York or works for the Archaeological Journal!”
“You’ve been poking around my materials,” Peterson said, his eyebrows bending down.
But Ulman’s voice rose to a hysterical scream, and he started stalking toward the skinny professor while Peterson backed just as quickly away. “ Your materials?!? The mail only comes up from Guatemala City once every two weeks! You asked me about that specifically two days ago! Tell me why! I’ve kept my eyes on you two thieves! Go ahead! Tell me, Dr. Peterson, that you haven’t already informed the world about my discovery!!!”
Peterson ran into the wall behind him, imitating a freshly hammered doornail. Ulman pushed his face so close that his stale cheese breath was distinct from the rotten smell of the wooden building. But instead of attacking as Peterson expected, Dr. Ulman slid by him, passing through the portal to Peterson’s right and out into the rain.
Sighing, Peterson looked around him. The entire room had grown still. Every eye waited on him until he grinned and looked at the ground. “Dr. Ulman doesn’t seem to understand the eclectic nature of our business.”
Albright sagged as well. They both knew Peterson’s words were lies. But that wouldn’t change the future.
Ulman felt the rage fighting inside him like a million baby spiders struggling to push out of their giant egg sack. The rain was cold, and his hot skin turned the liquid to steam. He was going back to his hut near the site, and he’d walk the whole way even though it was dark. He’d been traveling by foot among the black mountains long before these fly-infested robbers had come to take his glory. He insisted that he didn’t need their help.
He knew the truth. They both wanted to share in his find. Or to twist it into something that it wasn’t, to protect old reputations.
Ulman wanted the honor of addressing his worldwide colleagues with the information from his site personally. He ached to see their faces. He longed to watch their jaws go limp, their fingers tremble, their eyes wander. They would be lost! Years of work would be overturned! He wanted to witness their shock and dismay himself. He would be the new king and Hitler of scholarship, both admired and hated. His finds would put his picture in every archaeological magazine, his name on each professional journal, and his voice in numerous television documentaries throughout the planet. At last, the relatively neglected history of Mesoamerica would become important enough for universities and private parties to fund, just as people had once paid for more and more and more research in Egyptian studies!
He scowled as he rammed his way through the door of his leaking shack.
The chill of the refrigerator room surrounded him, but at least the rain was off his head. A dusty scent of soaked cardboard momentarily choked him, but he wouldn’t go back to the main operations building. Not for a while at least. He shook dramatically in the dark, then searched for his lantern.
Peterson and Albright were two fine scholars. Dr. Peterson had studied primarily in Europe, but moved to America to teach. The old man with mint breath saw his knowledge as exceptional when around the other aging professors of the United States. The way Peterson walked and talked reverberated this feeling, but his colleagues put up with him, for his publications gave the university in which he taught the prestige all schools coveted. Nevertheless, he’d danced his way from one academic institution to another, beginning in Louisiana and then curving northward. Peterson knew that no one had a shot at a faculty position before he did, so he skipped from one complex to the next without worrying that one day the simple Americans around him might discover his disloyalty and pride and no longer welcome him in any institution of higher learning. Peterson’s only other positive attribute was his reputation as a good family man. He’d been married for almost thirty years and had four children to speak of, all of whom had attended Harvard.
Albright was a much nicer fellow from Los Angeles, and Ulman really couldn’t see how he fit into this dastardly duo. Having grown up as an overweight bookworm, Albright had personified scholarship before entering college. Reading and memorizing what he read gave him a reputation that put him in the news-something Ulman never experienced.
It wasn’t that Ulman wanted to be on television, but didn’t all scholars dream of the limelight from time to time? Every worthwhile professor had found himself at his desk, circling the name of some notable historian. Ulman had written hundreds of papers, citing other historians who were always closer to the facts under his mental microscope. Just once, Ulman thought it would be nice to know that he was the one being cited!
This Mesoamerican find would be Ulman’s key to the highest heaven. He had been so sure of it! And he still was.
His shoes squeaked with wet leather as he moved to his wooden chest. He set the lamp down and grappled with the lock.
Peterson and Albright may want their fingers in the pie, Ulman thought to himself, but they don’t know about this dessert!
He opened the box and looked inside.
Within an hour, Ulman was writing his own article. It was all done by hand, and he had no publisher lined up, but that was irrelevant. He may have lost the site, but he still had enough to make him famous…first!
Dr. Albright looked at the papers strewn across the table before him.
The facts leapt at him as if alive and about to escape the muggy room.
He focused on the map once again. He couldn’t believe it was real, and yet there it was. The size of the site was enormous, rivaling Teotihuacan. Surely, an entire mountain must have fallen onto it. With all the volcanic activity that had occurred in the region, he could understand how such a place could be lost for so long. No digging had yet been done. They were waiting for the storm to first subside. In the meantime, there was plenty of work to do on the finds available.
He still couldn’t believe it. But all the facts came together. This discovery put Mesoamerican archaeology in a new perspective. It would give fresh reasons to start excavating the many known but heretofore untouched local sites of ancient origin. He just wondered how the rest of the world would take this!
Albright didn’t care about Ulman’s slow opinions. He chose not to.
Albright had worked with Ulman at Stratford University for seventeen years before Albright lost tenure, due to an incident with a female student that he didn’t like to think about. Archaeological departments in universities throughout the states were steadily dissolving, as if digs were growing more scarce. When he’d first read of a university in Arizona closing an archaeological department, Albright hadn’t worried much. One scholar went around proclaiming the end of the world for archaeologists, and Albright had shrugged it off until Stratford shrugged him off. Then he’d gone to Ohio, where he’d learned to appreciate his job.
For Albright, this find would renew the importance of the study of archaeology, especially ancient Mesoamerican studies. It would broadcast to the world in every newspaper and magazine, “We’ve had it wrong from the start! There is a need to pursue these new ideas!” His job would thereby steady and affirm itself, and Albright could relax
At the same time, Albright and Ulman had been close enough friends at Stratford for Ulman to contact him about the find. Obviously, Ulman couldn’t live alone in the highlands of Guatemala with his precious discovery without others learning of its existence.
There was no telling who else Ulman had contacted, or what he’d told them. That factor alone kept Albright working as quickly as possible. What if others developed the same idea he and Peterson had and decided to duck out of the spring semester to join Ulman in Central America? Albright had to collect all the data he could, following Peterson’s dubious example, and submit articles to professional journals immediately, thus tying his name to the project. Then, if anyone else joined the excavation, they would be seen as latecomers. Albright could be back in the states sewing a book on the Kalpa site before the summer began.
Albright recognized that his conscience repeatedly dodged the guilt and compassion he felt for his old friend. Ulman had actually found the site, after all. But Albright didn’t care. If it was one thing that historians agreed on, it was survival of the fittest!
