'The lives of their customers depended on it.'
'Right. I might have one group devise a siege machine while another comes up with ways to defend against it. Or I can give one side metal-piercing arrows while the other comes up with armor that works without being unwieldy. Then we switch sides and try again. They learn to use their native intelligence rather than to rely on computers and such.'
'Maybe you should offer your services to NUMA. Learning how to blast holes in ten-foot-thick walls with a trebuchet sounds like a lot more fun than staring at budget pie charts.'
A sly smile crossed Skye's face. 'Well, you know, most executives are men.'
'Boys and their toys. A surefire formula for success.'
'I'll admit I pander to the childish side of my clients, but my sessions are immensely popular and very lucrative. And they allow me the flexibility to work on projects that might not be possible on my salary from the Sorbonne.'
'Projects like the ancient trade routes?'
She nodded. 'It would be a major coup if I could prove that tin and other goods traveled overland along the old Amber Route, through the Alpine passes and valleys to the Adriatic, where Phoenician and Minoan ships transported it to the eastern reaches of the Mediterranean. And that the trade went both ways.'
'The logistics of your theoretical trade route would have been complex.'
'You're a genius! Exactly my point!'
'Thanks for the compliment, but I'm just relating it to my own experiences moving people and material.'
'Then you know how complicated it would be. People along the land route, like the Celts and the Etruscans, had to cooperate on trade agreements in order to move the materials along. I think trade was a lot more extensive than my colleagues would admit. All this has fascinating implications about how we view ancient civilizations. They weren't all about war; they knew the value of peaceful alliances a long time before the EU or NAFTA. And I mean to prove it.'
'Ancient globalization? An ambitious goal. I wish you luck.'
'I'll need it. But if I do succeed I'll have you and NUMA to thank. Your agency has been wonderfully generous in the use of its research vessel and equipment.'
'It goes both ways. Your project gives NUMA a chance to test our new vessel in inland waters and to see how this submersible operates under field conditions.'
She made a sweeping gesture with her hand. 'The scenery is perfectly lovely. All we need is a bottle of champagne and foie gras.' Austin leaned over and handed a small plastic cooler to his companion 'Can't help you there, but how about ajambon et frontage sandwich?'
'Ham and cheese would be my second choice.' She unzipped the cooler, extracted a sandwich, handed it to Austin and took one for herself.
Austin brought the submersible to a hovering stop. As he chewed on his lunch, savoring the crusty baguette and the creamy slab of Camembert cheese, he studied a chart of the lake.
'We're here, alongside a natural shelf that roughly parallels the shoreline,' he said, running his finger along a wavy line. 'This could have been exposed land centuries ago.'
'It goes along with my findings. A section of the Amber Route skirted the shore of Lac du Dormeur. When the waters rose, the traders found another route. Anything we find here would be very old.' , 'What exactly are we looking for?'
'I'll know it when I see it.'
'Good enough for me.'
'You're far too trusting. I'll elaborate. The caravans that plied the Amber Route needed places to stop for the night. I'm looking for the ruins of hospices, or settlements that may have grown up around a stopping place. Then I hope to find weapons that would flesh out the full trade story.'
They washed their lunch down with Evian water, and Austin's fingers played over the controls. The battery- powered electrical motors hummed, activating the twin lateral thrusters that the sphere rested on, and the submersible continued its exploration.
The SEAmagine SEA mobile was fifteen feet long, about the length of a mid sized Boston whaler, and only seven feet wide, but it was capable of carrying two people in one-atmosphere comfort to a depth of fifteen hundred feet for hours at a time. The vehicle had a range of twelve nautical miles and a maximum speed of 2.5 knots. Unlike most submersibles, which bobbed like a cork when they surfaced, the SEA mobile could be operated like a boat. It sat high in the water when it wasn't submerged, giving the pilot clear visibility, and could cruise to a dive site or edge up to a dive platform.
The SEA mobile looked as if it had been assembled from spare parts cast off from a deep submergence lab. The crystal ball cockpit was fifty-four inches in diameter and it was perched on two flotation cylinders the size of water mains. Two protective metal frames shaped like the letter D flanked the sphere.
The vehicle was built to maintain positive buoyancy at all times and the tendency to float to the surface was countered by a midship-mounted vertical thruster. Because the SEA mobile was balanced to remain level constantly, at the surface or under it, the pilot didn't have to fiddle around with pitch controls to keep it at a horizontal attitude.
Using a navigational acoustic Doppler instrument to keep track of their position, Austin guided the vehicle along the underwater escarpment, a broad shelf that gradually sloped down into the deeper water. Following a basic search pattern, Austin ran a series of parallel lines like someone mowing a lawn. The sub's four halogen lights illuminated the bottom, whose contours had been shaped by the advance and retreat of glaciers.
The sub tracked back and forth for two hours and Austin's eyes were starting to glaze from staring at the monotonous gray seascape. Skye was still entranced by the uniqueness of her surroundings. She leaned forward, chin on her hands, studying every square foot of lake bottom. In time, her persistence paid off.
'There!' She jabbed the air with her forefinger.
Austin slowed the vehicle to a crawl and squinted at a vague shape just beyond the range of the lights, then moved the submersible in for a closer look. The object lying on its side was a massive stone slab about twelve feet long and half as wide. The chisel marks visible along its edges suggested that it was not a natural rock formation.
Other monoliths could be seen nearby, some standing upright; others topped with similar slabs like the Greek letter.
'Seems we took a wrong turn and ended up at Stonehenge,' Austin said.
'They're burial monuments,' Skye said. 'The arches mark the way to a tomb for funeral processions.'
Austin increased the power to the thrusters and the vehicle glided over six identical archways spaced thirty feet or so apart. Then the ground on either side of the archways began to rise, creating a shallow valley. The natural hillsides morphed into high cyclopean walls constructed with massive hand-hewn blocks.
The narrow canyon ended abruptly in a sheer vertical wall. Cut into the wall was a rectangular opening that looked like the door on an elephant house. A lintel about thirty feet wide topped the door opening and above the huge slab was a smaller, triangular hole.
'Incredible,' Skye said in hushed tones. 'It's a tho los
'You've seen this before?' ~~
'It's a beehive tomb. There's one in Mycenae called the 'Treasury of Atreus
'Mycenae. That's Greek.'
'Yes, but the design is even older. The tombs go back to 2200 B.C. They were used for communal burials in Crete and other parts of the Aegean. Kurt, do you know what this means?' Her voice quivered with excitement. 'We could establish trade links between the Aegean and Europe far earlier than anyone has dared to suggest. I'd give anything to get a close look at the tomb.'
'My standard price for an underwater tomb tour is an invitation to dinner.'
'You can get us inside?'
'Why not? We've got plenty of clearance on either side and above. If we go slowly '
'The hell with slow! Depeche-toi. Vite, vitel' Austin laughed, and moved the submersible forward toward the dark opening. He was as eager as Skye, but he advanced with caution. The lights were beginning to probe the interior when a voice came over the vehicle's radio receiver.
