minor scandal at Les Eyzies the year before.
Les Eyzies was a Paleolithic site, a habitation of early man beneath a cliff ledge. The archaeologists had been digging at a level that dated to 320,000 B.P., when one of them found a half-buried condom. It was still in its metallic wrapper, and nobody thought for a moment that it belonged at that level. But the fact that it had been found there - half-buried - suggested that they were not being careful in their technique. It caused a near panic among the team, which persisted even after a graduate student was sent back to Paris in disgrace.
'Where is this glass lens?' Chris said to Marek.
'Kate has it.'
She gave it to Chris. While everyone else was cheering, he turned away, unwrapped the package, and held the baggie up to the light.
'Definitely modern,' he said. He shook his head unhappily. 'I'll check it out. Just make sure you include it in the site report.'
Marek said he would.
Then Rick Chang turned away and clapped his hands. 'All right, everybody. Excitement's over. Back to work!'
In the afternoon, Marek scheduled archery practice. The undergraduates were amused by it, and they never missed a session; recently Kate had taken it up, as well. The target today was a straw-filled scarecrow, set about fifty yards away. The kids were all lined up, holding their bows, and Marek strode down behind them.
'To kill a man,' he said, 'you have to remember: he is almost certainly wearing plate armor on his chest. He's less likely to have armor on his head and neck, or on his legs. So to kill him, you must shoot him in the head, or on the side of his torso, where the plates don't cover.'
Kate listened to Marek, amused. Andrй took everything so seriously. To kill a man. As if he really meant it. Standing in the yellow afternoon sunlight of southern France, hearing the distant honk of cars on the road, the idea seemed slightly absurd.
'But if you want to stop a man,' Marek continued, 'then shoot him in the leg. He'll go right down. Today we'll use the fifty-pound bows.'
Fifty pounds referred to the draw weight, what was needed to pull the string back. The bows were certainly heavy, and difficult to draw. The arrows were almost three feet long. Many of the kids had trouble with it, especially at first. Marek usually finished each practice session with some weight lifting, to build up their muscles.
Marek himself could draw a hundred-pound bow. Although it was difficult to believe, he insisted that this was the size of actual fourteenth-century weapons - far beyond what any of them could use.
'All right,' Marek said, 'nock your arrows, aim, and loose them, please.' Arrows flew through the air. 'No, no, no, David, don't pull until you tremble. Maintain control. Carl, look at your stance. Bob, too high. Deanna, remember your fingers. Rick, that was much better. All right, here we go again, nock your arrows, aim, and… loose them!'
It was late in the afternoon when Stern called Marek on the radio, and asked him to come to the farmhouse. He said he had good news. Marek found him at the microscope, examining the lens.
'What is it?'
'Here. Look for yourself.' He stepped aside, and Marek looked. He saw the lens, and the sharp line of the bifocal cut. Here and there, the lens was lightly spotted with white circles, as if from bacteria.
'What am I supposed to see?' Marek said.
'Left edge.'
He moved the stage, bringing the left edge into view. Refracted in the light, the edge looked very white. Then he noticed that the whiteness spilled over the edge, onto the surface of the lens itself.
'That's bacteria growing on the lens,' Stern said. 'It's like rock varnish.'
Rock varnish was the term for the patina of bacteria and mold that grew on the underside of rocks. Because it was organic, rock varnish could be dated.
'Can this be dated?' Marek said.
'It could,' Stern said, 'if there was enough of it for a C-14 run. But I can tell you now, there isn't. You can't get a decent date from that amount. There isn't any use trying.'
'So?'
'The point is, that was the exposed edge of the lens, right? The edge that Kate said was sticking out of the earth?'
'Right…'
'So it's old, Andrй. I don't know how old, but it's not site contamination. Rick is looking at all the bones that were exposed today, and he thinks some of them are later than our period, eighteenth century, maybe even nineteenth century. Which means one of them could have been wearing bifocals.'
'I don't know. This lens looks pretty sharply done…'
'Doesn't mean it's new,' Stern said. 'They've had good grinding techniques for two hundred years. I'm arranging for this lens to be checked by an optics guy back in New Haven. I've asked Elsie to jump ahead and do the oilskin documents, just to see if there's anything unusual there. In the meantime, I think we can all ease up.'
'That's good news,' Marek said, grinning.
'I thought you'd want to know. See you at dinner.'
They had arranged to have dinner in the old town square of Domme, a village on top of a cliff a few miles from their site. By nightfall, Chris, grumpy all day, had recovered from his bad mood and was looking forward to dinner. He wondered if Marek had heard from the Professor, and if not, what they were going to do about it. He had a sense of expectancy.
His good mood vanished when he arrived to find the stockbroker couples again, sitting at their table. Apparently they'd been invited for a second night. Chris was about to turn around and leave, but Kate got up and quickly put her arm around his waist, and steered him toward the table.
'I'd rather not,' he said in a low voice. 'I can't stand these people.' But then she gave him a little hug, and eased him into a chair. He saw that the stockbroker must be buying the wine tonight - Chвteau Lafite-Rothschild '95, easily two thousand francs a bottle.
And he thought, What the hell.
'Well, this is a charming town,' one of the women was saying. 'We went and saw the walls around the outside. They go on for quite a distance. High, too. And that very pretty gate coming into town, you know, with the two round towers on either side.'
Kate nodded. 'It's sort of ironic,' she said, 'that a lot of the villages that we find so charming now were actually the shopping malls of the fourteenth century.'
'Shopping malls? How do you mean?' the woman asked.
At that moment, Marek's radio, clipped to his belt, crackled with static.
'Andrй? Are you there?'
It was Elsie. She never came to dinner with the others, but worked late on her cataloging. Marek held up the radio. 'Yes, Elsie.'
'I just found something very weird, here.'
'Yes…'
'Would you ask David to come over? I need his help testing. But I'm telling you guys - if this is a joke, I don't appreciate it.'
With a click, the radio went dead.
'Elsie?'
No answer.
Marek looked around the table. 'Anybody play a joke on her?'
They all shook their heads no.
Chris Hughes said, 'Maybe she's cracking up. It wouldn't surprise me, all those hours staring at parchment.'
'I'll see what she wants,' David Stern said, getting up from the table. He headed off into the darkness.
Chris thought of going with him, but Kate looked at him quickly, and gave him a smile. So he eased back in his
