“Well, if I have less time available, what are you going to do? You can’t spend all your time visiting the archaeological sites.”
“I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to vegetate. That’s the point.”
“So you say, but I’ve yet to see you do it. You’re not taking along any work at all?”
“Nope. My prep for next quarter is done, the paper on Neanderthal locomotor biomechanics has already gone off to Evolutionary Biology, and I have no outstanding forensic cases. Nothing.”
She closed the laptop’s lid. “Well, I don’t know why I should be worried. Some old skeleton will turn up for you; it always does.”
“No way, not this time. I’m not bringing any tools with me; no calipers, no nothing. Nobody will even know how to find me, so what could happen?”
“Something will happen,” she declared. “Come on, let’s see if we can still see the orcas.”
He got up to go with her. “What could happen?” he repeated in all sincerity.
THREE
Even at the best of times, Dr. Bustamente, with his bald, bony head, scrawny neck, and narrow, hunched shoulders, bore a remarkable (and frequently remarked-upon) resemblance to a vulture. But never so much as at this moment, thought Flaviano Sandoval. The old buzzard had been leaning over the leathery carcass for twenty minutes, probing, prodding, scrutinizing, his beaky proboscis almost buried in the dried-out cavity that had once held a full complement of internal organs.
Not that the thing on the table would have held interest for any but the most starving of vultures; not anymore. It had been out in the sun a long-a very long-time, and had been found the day before by old Nacho Lopez while he was out in the hills gathering firewood a couple of kilometers from the village. Findings had been scarce, so with his burro, he had strayed from the usual paths, paths that had been in use for a thousand years and more, since the days of the Old Ones.