Mythology Abroad

by Jody Lynn Nye

  Diane clicked her tongue in exasperation. “Don’t you have their phone number? Call them yourself. They’d be thrilled to hear from you. Can I go back to sleep now?”

  “Be my guest,” Keith said magnanimously. “Call you again later in the week?”

  “Later in the week and the day. Bring me a souvenir. A pot of gold would be nice. Love you.”

  O O O

  “Yeah, love you, too,” Keith echoed fondly. He winked at Holl and pushed the blue button again and dialed another number. He waited for it to begin clicking through to the American exchange, then handed the surprised elf the receiver. “Here. Phone home.”

  “They thought it was a young miracle, hearing my voice travel four thousand miles,” Holl told him later, impressed by the feat. “They’re all well, though Dola has the sore throat again.”

  “Probably still. You’ve only been gone a couple of days,” Keith chided him lightly. “Not much usually happens in that short a time. Sorry I ran out of coins, there.”

  Holl waved a dismissive hand. “Ah, they’ll never know the difference. Having never received a call of this distance, I don’t think they know how one should end.”

  “Did you talk to everyone?” Keith grinned, picturing a crowd of fascinated elves around the phone.

  “Nearly,” Holl returned the impish smile. “Those I missed this time will demand their turn when I call again.”

  They followed the crowd past the baggage carousels to the two wide doorways marked Red Channel and Green Channel. As they had nothing to declare, Keith and Holl obediently joined the queue going through Green. At that time, it wasn’t moving at all. They stood yawning behind a family wheeling a huge number of bags, and waited for the way to clear.

  “They must have just returned from going around the world,” Keith muttered behind his hand to Holl. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  Holl was becoming impatient. “Wait a moment.” He left his bag beside Keith and ran forward to the edge of the Green Channel. Surrounded by Customs men opening a host of matching luggage, a woman in a fur coat was gesticulating with an official in shirtsleeves. Her face was bright red. One by one, the Customs men set bottles of liquor on the metal tables. There seemed to be dozens in each bag.

  He marched back to Keith, and explained what he had seen. “The whole channel is constricted by Customs Agents helping to move her bags aside. Come with me.”

  Seizing Keith’s arm, he marched them around the queue and into the Red Channel.

  “What are you doing?” Keith demanded in an undertone. “We can’t go that way. They’ll search us.”

  “They won’t even look at us,” Holl promised. “I’m putting an aversion between us and them.”

  It was true. The agents in the Red Channel seemed to look everywhere but at the two youths walking between them. They passed unnoticed by everyone, and abruptly found themselves amidst a huge, busy crowd in the waiting room of the airport. Everyone else seemed to know where they were going. A number of the people waiting for passengers had small white signs of cardboard in their hands. Keith peered at them all as he went by, looking for the Educatours representative.

  “Now, where to?” Holl asked, feeling lost and helpless among all those Big Folk.

  “I don’t know,” Keith answered, casting around.

  A tall, thin, elderly lady with silver hair tied back in a knot scurried up to them. In one hand she held a clipboard; in the other, a cardboard sign which read “Educatours.” She peered at Keith through thick, round glasses which magnified eyes of flower blue. “Doyle? Are you Keith Doyle?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered politely, hoisting the strap off his shoulder and setting his bag down on his foot.

  She thrust the sign among the papers on the clipboard, took Keith’s right hand and pumped it enthusiastically. “I’m Miss Anderson. How do you do? And is this Holland?”

  “Holl,” the elf said, extending his hand to her. She gripped it, and Holl winced in astonishment.

  “How do you do, Holl? I’m the Educatours director for this tour. Nice to have you with us. The weather’s not as fine as we could have hoped, but it may improve as the day progresses. I often find that it’s foul before noon and fair afterwards.” Keith was fascinated by the perfection of her diction.

  “Perhaps it has the same trouble I do with getting out of bed in the morning,” Keith joked.

  The blue eyes gleamed behind the glass circles. “Hm! It wouldn’t surprise me at all. If you tend to be a slug-a-bed, you’ll have to scotch your tendencies over the next six weeks. We get an early start every day. This way. Our motor coach is waiting in front of the terminal building. You look tired. Let me take that. I must meet one more flight, and then we may leave for Glasgow proper.” She hoisted Keith’s large bag over one shoulder without the least suggestion of effort and strode ahead. The electronic-eye doors parted before her.

  “Boy, if that’s an example of the old ladies of Scotland, I don’t want to get in any fights with the wee lads,” Keith muttered under his breath to Holl as they scurried behind with their carry-ons.

  “She’s likely an example of why they’re so polite,” Holl suggested. “All bones and wires. She must have ten times their energy.”

  O O O

  “Michaels here, sir. We caught sight of him on his way through Immigration: Danny O’Day.” The mustachioed man in the nondescript tweed suit spoke into a telephone at the front of the airport. He sent a suspicious glance around, watching out for illicit listeners, but no one seemed interested in a middle-aged man who looked like a retired mathematics professor lately returned from a fishing holiday. “Aye, it had to be him. Face like the very map of Ireland and a midget with him pretending to be a kid, on a plane from the States. Oh, yes, big bill-cap and all. Cool as you please. They came through the Red Channel, if you like. Yes, incredible. No, no one on the floor saw them. I got word from the operator minding the security cameras. The bloke got all excited when he watched those two trot unmolested through the channel, and made me a phone call. Left here with a tour group led by an old bag. Wondering what he’s smuggling in this time. Whatever it is would have to be light. They have no sizable luggage. The airline said there’s nothing in ’em but clothes and books. A lot of books.”

  “No idea, Michaels,” said the Chief of Operations. “Might be disks or microfilms of classified information hidden away, like the last time, but it’s just as likely to be diamonds. We’re fortunate you spotted him. The gen was that he’d be entering from the U.S. either here or Manchester.”

  “Shall I have him stopped?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the telephone line. Michaels eyed a woman who was waiting impatiently for him to finish, and then turned his back on her. “No,” the Chief answered reluctantly. “They’ll laugh themselves sick at Scotland Yard at our expense if we stop him, and he’s here empty to make a pickup instead of a delivery. Keep an eye on him, will you? Report anything he does that looks suspicious.”

  “I will, sir.” Michaels pushed the Follow-On Call button, and punched 100, requesting Directory Inquiries to tell him what it could about a company called Educatours.

  Miss Anderson shepherded them into the waiting motor coach, painted a natty silver and blue with “Educatour” blazoned in white across the sides and front of the vehicle. “Keith Doyle and Holl Doyle,” she said formally, indicating the other passengers with a sweep of her hand, “meet your classmates for the next six weeks.”

  The group assembled on the coach was a mixed one. A cluster of college-age male students huddled together at the back of the bus. They stared blankly through a haze of acrid cigarette smoke at Keith when he was introduced to them. Max, Martin, Charles, Edwin, Matthew, and Tom came from the same college at Edinburgh University. Alistair was one of Miss Anderson’s own pupils at Glasgow University. In spite of their casual insouciance, they were dressed in button-down shirts with identical ties. Keith was glad he hadn’t given in to the temptati
on of comfort and worn a tee shirt. Two middle-aged women, Mrs. Green and Mrs. Turner, whom Keith guessed to be teachers, sat together in the second seat behind and to the left of the driver. They gave him polite, shy smiles, but positively beamed at Holl. Miss Anderson dashed off and returned with a petite Indian girl dressed in a sari.

  “There. With Narit’s arrival, we have our full complement.” Miss Anderson plumped herself into the seat in front of the pair of teachers. “Open the windows, extinguish cigarettes, thank you! It’s too nice a day not to take the air.”

  Keith and Holl took a seat on the left side halfway back, between the Scottish students and the English teachers. Even though he had seen the driver seated on the right when he got on, Keith still did a double take when the bus pulled out to the right, with apparently no one driving it. They left the one-way system in front of the airport, and pulled onto the motorway.

  “Now, now!” Miss Anderson clapped her hands at Keith. He had just settled back with his head on his rolled-up jacket. “No naps yet. We’ve too much to do!”

  “I can hardly stay awake,” Keith pleaded.

  “Nonsense!” cried Miss Anderson. “Today is your first day of class!” There was a chorus of groans from the back of the coach. “Now, pay attention, and I will begin. The area of the island of Great Britain known as the Highlands had a surprisingly rich Neolithic culture, which was during the period between 4400 and 2400 B.C. In the ensuing millennia, the population in many of these centers has declined. As a result, a number of the Stone Age and following Bronze Age sites have remained relatively undisturbed, because until air transport and surveillance became a reality, they were unknown. That feature which our ancestors have left for us in the greatest abundance is the tomb. It was the custom for most of these ancient peoples to bury substantial goods with the dead, and from these goods, we are able to deduce as much about the way they lived as we can from the remains of the people themselves.

  “The first site we will explore is just southwest of here in the portion of the county of Strathclyde which was known as Renfrewshire, in which Bronze Age settlements were common. Alas, this area has been heavily settled through the ages since the beginning, so we are hard pressed to discover undisturbed sites near here. In this case, we’re immediately in front of the bulldozers. There will be construction on the site in ten months’ time unless something of significant cultural or historical importance is unearthed, so time is precious. The team does not expect such a find, so they are working quickly to document the site while they still can.”

  “Do they hope that they’ll find something that will save the site?” Keith sat up, remembering Gillington Library on the Midwestern campus and how he had worked to prevent its demolition.

  Miss Anderson shook her head. “Indeed, no, not really. In this case, we’re merely record takers, making notes of what was where, and when, for future historians. We can’t hope to preserve all the sites where our ancestors lived—we’d soon run out of places to live! Most of what we find will be reburied in situ. The second and third digs, both in the ancient province of Alban, now known as Inverness-shire and the Islands, are much better. Neither is immediately subject to development.”

  She went on with her lecture. Keith strained to comprehend and remember what she was saying, but realized, hopelessly, that the words were bouncing off his jet-lagged ears. Holl had dozed off miles back. Maybe one of his fellow classmates could help fill him in later.

  The coach turned in off the main street and passed by an arched stone gate. Keith glimpsed relief carvings on the archway and a square surrounding a grass sward, banked by solid walls of buildings inside of the same soot-darkened stone as the arch. He was awed by the antiquity of the University buildings, compared with those of Midwestern University. What they offered here was Education, with a capital E, tried but untroubled by the passing ages. He was enormously impressed, and couldn’t wait to explore.

  “That is the MacLeod Building,” Miss Anderson pointed out. “We’ll have seminars in the Small Lecture Room once a week, where those of you taking this tour for credit will present weekly essays, which I’ll explain later. The University is not in session during the summer, so we’ve got the place pretty much to ourselves. You’ll all be staying in rooms in the Western Residence Hall just along this road for the next two weeks. Meals are in the refectory. Your names are on the doors of your dormitories.”

  The party clambered out of the coach before a gray granite building with no windows on the ground floor. Checking Miss Anderson’s chart, Keith and Holl found they were sharing a suite with Martin and Matthew on the second floor, which, translated for them, meant that they had to climb two flights of stairs to get there. “We’re on the ground floor, now,” the teacher explained, as they pulled into the car park next to the gray stone building. “First is just above us.”

  “Miss Anderson,” Keith began apologetically, “can I get a review sheet or something of the lecture you gave on the bus? I don’t think I absorbed very much of it.”

  “Never mind, lad,” the teacher smiled brightly. “I was talking simply to keep you awake on the coach, though it won’t hurt if you retained some of it. We’ll be reviewing the same information tomorrow morning before we go out. Wear old clothes; we’ll be getting a bit mucky.”

  Keith enkindled instant admiration for the wiry instructor. “Yes, ma’am!” He pulled a smart salute. Holl groaned.

  With a smile, she shooed them away. “Get on with you before your room-mates bag the best beds!”

  ***

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The accommodations were comfortable enough. Holl and Keith shared a tiny bedroom that bore a striking resemblance to Keith’s dormitory room at Midwestern. “Even the dressers are in the same place,” Keith pointed out with amusement. “I bet they stamp them out of a mold in Hong Kong.”

  “Keith Doyle,” Holl spoke up suddenly from behind him. “I’ve been meaning to ask—those rows upon rows of houses in Illinois and those we saw on the way from Glasgow Airport? Are there really molds large enough to make houses?”

  Keith, turning around to face Holl, tried to stifle a grin, but was unable to do anything about the twinkle in his eye. “They don’t stock much in the way of architecture texts in Gillington Library, do they?”

  “No …,” Holl admitted thoughtfully, turning red. “They’ve a subscription to Architecture Quarterly, but that deals mostly with unique structures. Not the mass-produced ones we saw.”

  “It’s just an expression,” Keith assured him, going back to unpacking his suitcase, “although they sometimes make them out of prefabricated sections. It would save a lot of time if they could cast a whole block’s worth of houses at once.”

  Holl’s jaw dropped. “Do you mean those identical, cheap-looking boxes are constructed one by one? On purpose? There are frauds passing themselves off as craftsmen, then.”

  A rap sounded at the door, cutting off further exclamations of outrage. Holl sat down on the bed with his cap pulled down over his forehead, and yanked a half-whittled stick and his knife out of his jacket pocket.

  “It’s open,” Keith called over his shoulder.

  Matthew and Martin leaned in. “Are you settled now?” Matthew asked. He was about Keith’s height and build, but his face was sharper in outline. His hair was black and smooth, but his pale skin seemed curiously thin, showing pink through it over the cheekbones.

  “Just about,” Keith said, shutting a drawer full of tee shirts.

  “If you do’ mind it, we can show you about the town. Maybe nip into the pub for a quick one. It’s well on into lunchtime, though they’ll serve meals until two,” Martin grinned, exposing crooked, white teeth. His hair was taffy-colored, similar to Holl’s, cut short in the back, but long enough in front to droop over his eyes. “We know where to find the best cider in Glasgow.”

  “Cider? Sounds good. I’m thirsty,” Keith said.

  “It gets dry on those jets,” Holl added, sliding the cap’s bill
further back on his head with the point of his knife.

  “Um, he’s your nephew?” Matthew asked the American youth, aiming a shoulder at Holl. The lilting cadence made it a question, though he had none of the broad accents of the Customs officer or his roommate. “We’ve got legal age limits in the pub. How old is he?”

  “Twelve,” said Keith.

  “Fourteen,” said Holl at the same time. With a long-suffering look at Keith, he handed over his passport. The date of birth bore him out. Keith looked at it curiously, but said nothing.

  “You certain he’s a relative?” Martin joked.

  “Well, I suppose he could have aged while I wasn’t looking,” Keith defended himself lamely. “It seems such a long time since he was born.”

  “Small for your age, my lad. Still, that’s old enough to get in, though not to drink cider,” Matthew affirmed cheerfully. “There’s squashes and other things for you. Come on, then.”

  “What made you come to Glasgow for the summer?” Matthew asked when they plumped into a booth in the Black Bull pub on Byres Road, just outside the grounds of the university. Glasgow was a city of four-hundred year old golden sandstone and gray granite buildings standing alongside new glass and chromium-tube constructions. The whole seemed to fit together fairly well. The walking tour had taken them over an hour. They had been on and off the cylindrical orange trains of the Underground transportation system three or four times at different points around the city. Keith was ready for a snack and a drink.

  “Curiosity, I guess,” he admitted. “My best excuse is that I get college credit for this tour, while getting to know another country.”

  “The same for me,” Holl put in. “I’ve never been away from home before.”

  “Well, we don’t have the endless money you Americans do, so we have to get our education at home,” Martin said darkly. “No jollicking off for us.”

  “Hey, I work for my tuition,” Keith retorted. “My family isn’t rich. You’ve been watching too much American television.”