shirt, breathing hard. 'Some heavy mother,' he said. 'That bastard
must weigh two hunnert pounds. You okay, Perfesser Stanley?'
Dex barely heard him. He was looking at the end of the box, where
there was vet another series of stencils:
PAELLA/SANTIAGO/SAN FRANCISCO/CHICAGO/NEW
YORK/HORLICKS
'Perfesser--'
'Paella,' Dex muttered, and then said it again, slightly louder. He
was seized with an unbelieving kind of excitement that was held in
check only by the thought that it might be some sort of hoax.
'Paella!'
'Paella, Dex?' Henry Northrup asked. The moon had risen in the
sky, turning silver.
'Paella is a very small island south of Tierra del Fuego,' Dex said.
'Perhaps the smallest island ever inhabited by the race of man. A
number of Easter Island-type monoliths were found there just after
World War II. Not very interesting compared to their bigger
brothers, but every bit as mysterious. The natives of Paella and
Tierra del Fuego were Stone-Age people. Christian missionaries
killed them with kindness.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'It's extremely cold down there. Summer temperatures rarely range
above the mid-forties. The missionaries gave them blankets, partly
so they would be warm, mostly to cover their sinful nakedness.
The blankets were crawling with fleas, and the natives of both
islands were wiped out by European diseases for which they had
developed no immunities. Mostly by smallpox.'
Dex drank. The Scotch had lent his cheeks some color, but it was
hectic and flaring--double spots of flush that sat above his
cheekbones like rouge.
'But Tierra del Fuego--and this Paella--that's not the Arctic, Dex.
It's the Antarctic.'
'It wasn't in 1834,' Dex said, setting his glass down, careful in
spite of his distraction to put it on the coaster Henry had provided.
If Wilma found a ring on one of her end tables, his friend would
have hell to pay. 'The terms subarctic, Antarctic and Antarctica
weren't invented yet. In those days there was only the north arctic
and the south arctic.'
'Okay.'
'Hell, I made the same kind of mistake. I couldn't figure out why
Frisco was on the itinerary as a port of call. Then I realized I was
figuring on the Panama Canal, which wasn't built for another
eighty vears or so.
'An Arctic expedition? In 1834?' Henry asked doubtfully.
'I haven't had a chance to check the records yet,' Dex said, picking
up his drink again. 'But I know from my history that there were
'Arctic expeditions' as early as Francis Drake. None of them made
it, that was all. They were convinced they'd find gold, silver,
jewels, lost civilizations, God knows what else. The Smithsonian
Institution outfitted an attempted exploration of the North Pole in, I
