Afterwards, the site had remained locked for over five years while Horizon and the Institute engaged in recriminations and negotiations. Eventually, Horizon had made handsome amends and the threat of a suit had died quietly away. Then six months ago the government had relented further, allowing Horizon to begin work again, “subject to stringent review by the Institute.” One of the express provisions was that Dr. Abraham Goldstein (who had had no part in the original dig) would personally direct the start-up, lending his impeccable reputation and expertise to an operation that had been sadly botched the first time around.

This, Gideon had no doubt, had been subtly engineered by the “retired” seventy-eight-year-old professor, who had left Sequim for Yucatan in early December to begin laying the pre-excavation groundwork. Gideon had not been asked along; the dredging of the cenote was finished, and no further burials were expected.

"What's up, Abe?” Gideon asked. “Don't tell me you turned up some skeletal stuff after all?"

"That's right. You remember the building they called the Priest's House?"

"Southeast of the temple, all buried in vines? The one we hadn't worked on yet?"

"That's the one. Only now we got some of the vines cleaned off and, guess what, there's a body a couple of feet inside the entry. I made them leave it alone to wait for you. You can come?"

"What's the weather like?” Not that it made any difference. He could already feel the excitement of a dig building in his chest. But he felt that he ought to show at least a semblance of thinking it over.

"Like it always is here. Hot. Sunny. Humid. Just the way you don't like, but the dig is a pleasure."

Gideon gazed out the window at the rain streaming from the leaves of the soaked rhododendron thicket that backed against the Sciences and Humanities Building. “When did I ever say I didn't like it hot and sunny?” he asked dreamily.