Jack couldn’t help but hear Barbra Streisand belting out those lyrics from Mom’s
“I’m not, Weez. You know better that that.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I guess I do. Sorry.”
“I just don’t want you disappointed. I mean, you know, sometimes your parades march right off a cliff. And then you know how you get.”
She tended to get herself so worked up in anticipation, only to crash and burn when it fel through. He’d seen an up mood change to down in a
heartbeat. It wasn’t pretty.
“I’l be fine. Because I
history!”
There she goes, Jack thought as she headed toward the highway—off on her bike and off on a bubble of expectation. He hoped the professor wouldn’t
burst it, but he sensed it coming. He didn’t want to be there when she fel , but someone had to catch her.
The professor took them to the library and pul ed up an extra chair so both Jack and Weezy could sit, then seated himself behind the desk.
“What is it?” Weezy said, squirming in her seat. She couldn’t seem to sit stil .
Looked like she was going to vibrate herself into another dimension.
“What did you find?”
“Nothing useful, I am afraid. Most sorry. Almost everything points to your artifact
as of modern origin.”
Uh-oh, Jack thought, glancing at Weezy. Here it comes.
“That can’t be,” she said softly—too softly. “Your tests are wrong. They’ve got to
be.”
He shook his head slowly. “I fear not. We did electron-micro scanning of the symbols and found they have the fineness and sharp edges that only a laser
can do. Actual y, sharper than most lasers.”
“‘Sharper than most lasers,’” she said, her voice rising. “Doesn’t that tel you something right there?”
“It tel s me it is a hoax. Those engraved characters are meant to lead us to believe your object is pre- Sumerian, but no pre-Sumerian culture had such
technology. As I told you yesterday, they scraped their writings, their pictograms and ideograms, onto clay tablets.”
“But what if there was an advanced civilization before Sumer? One that was wiped out by the Great Flood?”
The professor smiled. “That is the stuff of fantasy. No record of such a culture or civilization exists.”
“Al right then,” she said. “What’s the pyramid made of? Did you figure that out?”
He shook his head—a bit uncertainly, Jack thought. “No. But we know it is some kind of al oy.”
Weezy leaned back. “An al oy that can’t be scratched—or at least I couldn’t scratch it. Could you?”
Professor Nakamura looked even less certain. “We did not try. It is not our property—it is yours.”
“That’s right. And I’d like it back now.”
Jack said, “We’re forgetting about the most important test. What about that argon dating you mentioned?”
“Yes-yes. Potassium argon. We did that.”
Jack waited to hear the results but the professor did not go on.
“And?” Weezy said.
Now the professor looked
Weezy shook her head, “I don’t understand what you mean. I understand what ‘inconclusive’ means, but what kind of inconclusive results are you talking
about?”
“You couldn’t date it?” Jack said.
“Oh, yes, we got a date, but an impossible date.”
Jack felt a fleeting tingle up his spine.
chair.
“W-what was the date?” she said.
The professor waved his hands. “I hesitate to tel you because it wil only fuel groundless speculation.”
