The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2)

by Maslakovic, Neve

  It was a job he had taken on with the swiftest change of heart I’d ever seen. He had asked for extraordinary evidence. It was the lousiest photo imaginable as far as quality went, most of it blurry with rain and my shaking hand, but it was enough. He slid the photo under the lit lamp on his desk. His computer seemed out of place in his office, which—with all its dark wood and filled-to-the-brim bookcases—could have been an old-fashioned gentleman’s study in the days when they still had them. Dr. Payne was only missing a monocle as he bent over the photo. He cleared his throat. “Hmm, intriguing…Well, yes, that certainly changes things somewhat…A STEWie run to investigate further would not be amiss.”

  When I left, he was already drafting a STEWie run proposal to document the Psinomani villagers’ culture and to follow the Norsemen back to Vinland in an unconscious echo of Dagmar Holm’s plan. He hadn’t asked about her final moments. I managed to feel bad for her as I passed by the locked door to her office. She would have so wanted to be part of Dr Payne’s team.

  I doubted she would have ever been happy, building a career around the stone she had carved, knowing it was fake. Quinn had said they were carving something simple, along the lines of Vinlanders on a journey inland, and the date. All of the scientists and academics I knew had a deep-rooted drive for the truth. In the end, that was what it was about, really, as firm as the concrete foundations of the buildings that circled Sunniva Lake. Though they might scorn that description, the researchers under my care had an almost sacred respect for truth. Still, they were human. Like athletes who used performance-enhancing drugs, a person might forget what it was all about, the lure of the medal—the Olympic or the Nobel kind—proving irresistible.

  But she did get to breathe the fourteenth-century air, walk the woodlands, eat berries, and hear the drum beat of Psinomani dancers. And, in the end, she found her beloved Norsemen. I wondered what kind of life she would have managed to have if by some chance she had survived the tornado and stayed behind while the rest of us made it to STEWie’s basket. She would have been constrained both by History’s rules and her own unfamiliarity with fourteenth-century life. Would she have been able to find a home with the Dakota, or perhaps in Vinland itself? Either way it would have been a very small life. She would have been unable to reveal any knowledge from the future, either the big things (that the white explorers would come back one day and bring a disease with them) or the mundane ones that corn would be sold in crinkly bags to be popped in the microwave for two minutes and eaten in front of screens with moving pictures.

  Dr. Payne would focus on the broad strokes of what we had seen; I knew that he wouldn’t return with the answers I really wanted—whether Tokala’s village had been spared that day, or if he had grown up to be a hunter, a village leader, a dreamer. But one thing was certain. The investigation to discern whether our Norsemen were indeed the lost Greenlanders would be an easily funded one—this was big news.

  I walked over to the RV in the parking lot to say good-bye to Ruth-Ann and Ron, having called Abigail and Sabina to let them know we were back. Nate had gone straight from the TTE lab to his office to take care of what needed to be done in reporting Dagmar’s death after the ambulance had taken her body away. Ruth-Ann and Ron had decided not to stick around. I understood why. Time travel. As Jacob had said, it messed with your head.

  I found the Tuttles deep in conversation with Quinn by the steps of their RV. Officer Van Underberg gave me a wave as he drove out of the parking lot at the posted campus speed limit, having dropped the three of them off. Quinn had his suitcase.

  “Are you really interior decorators?” I heard Quinn say as I approached them. “That seems fated—I have a fixer-upper I’m working on in Phoenix. Two, actually—well, three—and they could all use an expert hand. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in driving me down and taking a look?”

  Ruth-Ann and Ron glanced at each other. Ron’s ankle was wrapped up, but he looked like himself again as he leaned on a crutch, his beard freshly combed above a bright yellow St. Sunniva University T-shirt, which he must have picked up at the hospital. “We have been talking it over,” Ruth-Ann said. “It would be nice to have a change of scenery for a bit, get some thinking done on how to organize our experiences into a book, wouldn’t it, Ron?”

  “Hmm. There are some very interesting petroglyphs in the Phoenix area,” Ron said.

  Ruth-Ann added, “And we could use the money.”

  “Quinn doesn’t have any money,” I said as I walked toward them. “He owes money.”

  “Jules, there you are. I’m surprised you would worry about money at a time like this. Like Ruth-Ann here pointed out, after what we’ve just been through in the fourteenth century—the bear, the tornado, the guns—we all need some time to unwind. Except for me. The media is going to be clamoring for the Norsemen story and we need a spokesperson. I might not get my reality show, but I’ve already booked three TV interviews as soon as I get to Phoenix. Ron, you’ll have to fill me in on the Vinland connection…”

  “It’s not exactly the best publicity for the school,” I said. Or for Sabina, I wanted to add but didn’t.

  “Jules, any publicity is good publicity, haven’t you figured out that yet?”

  “You were faking a runestone, Quinn. That’s not exactly the headline you want.”

  He waved the charge away. “That was all Dagmar. I believed in the Kensington Runestone, and I was proven correct. As for the rest of it…” He didn’t finish the thought, suddenly looking crestfallen. I knew he was thinking of Dagmar. “Maybe the two of us should have been more patient.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him that the whole thing was Dagmar’s idea, but he was right. Like Dagmar herself had said to me in the Coffey Library the first time we met, good things come to those who wait. Of course, had she waited for a proper STEWie run, the Norsemen might have remained a legend, and Dr. Payne’s jaw would never have dropped when he saw the photo I had brought back home. In a sense, she had accomplished just what she’d set out to do.

  I told the Tuttles they had a standing invitation to drop by the TTE lab or my office any time. Ruth-Ann hopped into the driver’s seat while Ron readied the RV, Quinn having secured a spot on their couch for the drive down to Arizona. I hoped he would find a way to pay them for their time, especially if they did help him with the luxury house flips he had left unattended in Phoenix.

  He handed me a pair of keys from the RV steps. “Would you mind returning my rental car?”

  “Fine. Where is it parked?”

  “Dagmar’s cabin on the St. Croix. It needs gas.”

  “Of course it does. Remember your promise,” I reminded him.

  He flashed a grin at me as he dragged his suitcase up the steps of the RV. “What promise would that be? The divorce papers?” He pulled an envelope from his pocket and grinned at me. “Last chance to change your mind, Jules…I could rip them up.”

  I knew he didn’t mean it. “It wouldn’t work, Quinn. I’m not sure it ever did.”

  “No, it didn’t really, did it.”

  “Anyway, I meant the promise about Sabina,” I said, checking that all the papers were in the envelope and signed properly.

  “Ah, that one. Will do. Can I tell the Tuttles?”

  I had meant to fill them in on the story but never got the chance. I nodded. “But only the Tuttles.”

  “Don’t say it,” I said to Helen, who was waiting for me at the edge of the parking lot.

  “Don’t say what?”

  “That we haven’t seen the last of him.”

  “Julia, as long as we keep Sabina’s story secret, Quinn will always be able to hold it over us.”

  “I want to give her as much time as possible. Besides, it’s Abigail’s call. She’s her guardian. I’m just their landlord.”

  “You know that you’re much more than that. Abigail has followed your lead in this matt
er. You know, I don’t know why you say you’re not motherly,” she added.

  “Because I don’t know anything about the day-to-day stuff. Keeping kids fed and clothed and clean and all that.”

  “Hmm. Speaking of young people, how did Jacob do?” she asked as we neared the Hypatia House.

  Jacob, I explained, had emerged from the experience a little wiser about time travel, but only a little. I related a text message exchange he and I had on my way back from Dr. Payne’s office, which had gone something like this:

  Julia, I wanna do run to Norway to find Sunniva, who do I talk to?

  STEWie roster full until end of year. Where will you get funding?

  Can u help?

  Library research first, then proposal writing, then seek grants.

  Oh.

  Plus Dean Braga needs to give approval - IF you have funding.

  I felt bad about squashing his youthful enthusiasm, but he needed to learn about the reality of life as a time travel researcher, really any researcher. As Dr. Holm had found out, money was key. No matter how exciting your idea, it simply wasn’t doable until you had secured lab time and funding. Even if you were a theoretical physicist or a philosopher and made do with a pencil and paper, you still needed food to eat, a desk and chair to sit in, and the pencil and paper (and laptop) to write up your thoughts and publish them.

  “To be young again,” Helen said. I thought she would supply a quote from Shakespeare, but she went on, smiling, “Jacob has a crush on St. Sunniva, our Sabina has a crush on him, and no doubt someone at Sabina’s high school has a crush on her. Well, making Sunniva the focus of his PhD is not a bad idea. Like anything else, it will take a lot of hard work and some luck.”

  We walked in silence for a moment.

  “So Chief Kirkland decided there was nothing he could charge Quinn with? Illegal use of school resources?” she suggested as we stopped in the courtyard of the Hypatia House. “Wasting everyone’s time?”

  “Quinn claims Dagmar told him that she had secured last-minute permission from Dr. Payne for a STEWie run. She hadn’t, of course, but he had no way of knowing that. At least, we can’t prove otherwise. And it’s not illegal to purchase a hunting handgun—Quinn says it was Dagmar’s idea anyway. Nate considered a charge of attempted fraud because of the fake stone, but even he admitted that that would be a long shot.”

  My cell phone rang just as I got to my office. It was Nate. “I have a couple of things to attend to here and a shower to grab, but would seven-thirty work for you?”

  “Seven-thirty? For what?”

  “Remember, shrimp curry at my place?”

  I had forgotten it was still Friday. The whole thing was odd, as it usually was with time travel. We had spent two nights and days in the fourteenth century, but only a couple of hours had passed for Helen and everyone else on campus.

  “Shrimp curry it is,” I said. Thinking that it would be nice to talk about something lighthearted for a change, I said, “But only on one condition. No time travel talk.”

  As I was trying to decide whether to wear a strappy dress, which would expose my mosquito-bitten arms and require nicer shoes, or a more casual combination of jeans and shirt, Sabina popped into my room.

  “Good,” I said. “Let me run something by you. Dessert or not? I think I should bring dessert—Nate probably doesn’t serve dessert to his guests. Or if he does, it’s probably fruit salad or something.” Maybe we could meet halfway, I thought. That is to say, I could learn to like healthy dishes as long as I didn’t have to cook them myself. And perhaps he’d be open to occasionally introducing—what had he called it?—subpar food into his body. Though when you put it that way, it didn’t sound appetizing at all.

  Sabina hadn’t come over to talk about food. Getting right to the point, she said, “Reveal secret, Julia.”

  I moved the two outfits, which I had been studying in my robe, off the bed, transferring them to a chair. “Here, have a seat. The prudent thing would be to give yourself more time to get used to things before—well, before becoming a celebrity and fielding offers to go on TV news shows and write an autobiography—that’s a book about your life—and have a movie made about you. All that stuff.”

  “Yes, that sound no fun. Except for movie.”

  We had shown her a few classics like Some Like It Hot, which she enjoyed very much, and also the romantic comedy Around the World in Eight Days starring heart-throb and St. Sunniva alum Ewan Coffey, on whom Abigail had a bit of a crush.

  Sabina asked about Tee-Vee news shows.

  I decided the jeans and a shirt were the way to go since my feet were way too sore for heels. “I suppose it’s time we let you watch more television. I’ll talk to Abigail about it. Just—well, ignore most of what you see, especially the commercials.” At Sabina’s raised eyebrows, I added, “They’re like what your father had on the wall above his shop to let people know how good his garum was, only the information is acted out and, uh, exaggerated.” I sat down next to her on the bed. “Look, Abigail and I just want you to be more comfortable in our culture before we reveal your background to the world.”

  “Wait to get my teeth white, yes? All right. We wait. But not long. I want to get reveal over with.”

  39

  An uneventful week had passed and things were just starting to get back to normal when my cell phone beeped in the middle of the night. I didn’t hear it at first, but the second beep woke me out of the nightmare that was making me toss and turn. I had been dreaming of Dagmar running toward the tornado and her Norsemen and never reaching them. I shook off the dream and reached for my cell phone.

  The text was from Jacob.

  Celer trending on Twitter

  Graduate students keep odd hours. I texted him back that it was the middle of the night—3:00 a.m. to be exact—and what did he mean Celer was trending?

  Tons of tweets about how you rescued a dog from Pompeii & he’s living at your house

  He followed that with Except they’re spelling it Keller.

  I sat up in bed, turned on the light, and texted back Are they saying anything about Sabina?

  No, just Celer

  Quinn. It was his way of keeping the upper hand, reminding me that he still knew our secret, making sure he didn’t get retroactively charged with anything. I couldn’t decide if I was furious at Quinn for revealing the truth about the dog or grateful that he hadn’t said anything about Sabina.

  In the morning, very early even by my standards, I called Nate. I reached him on his way out the door. He had been busy the past week—I had never realized how much work needed to be done when a death occurred in circumstances as unusual as this one. I hadn’t seen him since our shrimp dinner, when we had talked long into the night and finally fallen asleep, exhausted for more than one reason.

  His Jeep screeched into my driveway not fifteen minutes later. He dropped off Wanda the spaniel and drove off with Celer. After a quick consultation with Abigail, we had come up with a temporary solution. Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, as everyone who had access to the Internet knew, traced their lineage to only six dogs (with delightful names, I found out, researching the matter over breakfast: Ann’s Son, Aristide of Ttiweh, Carlo of Ttiweh, Duce of Braemore, Kobba of Kuranda, and—perhaps my favorite—Wizbang Timothy). Wanda could not, therefore, with rock-solid genetic certainty, have been brought back from 79 AD. I resolved to tell anyone who asked that the rumor was a prank pulled by students who had too much free time on their hands. I’d even offer, if necessary, to send one of Wanda’s chestnut hairs to anyone who wanted to do a DNA analysis.

  Nate had driven Celer to his grandmother’s house. I pictured the mellow, gray-coated mutt curling up by her fireplace as she cooked him delicious dog meals. I had a suspicion they would get along very well. Sabina was still asleep, but I was sure she’d understand the need for the dog switch. Like I said, it
was just a temporary measure anyway, until things died down.

  It didn’t work out that way.

  After a somewhat harried day trying to keep up with Wanda, I was having a calming cup of tea, having confirmed that Keller was no longer trending on Twitter. Sabina, who had been somewhat quiet all day, was next door catching up on homework—I could hear the TV and was a bit surprised she had it on so loud. Abigail was picking up some pizza for them on her way back from campus.

  As for my side of the house—Nate was coming over and I had picked up a bottle of wine for us and some of Ingrid’s Swedish meatballs, which were sitting in the oven to stay warm. I was mulling over whether to light some candles for the dinner table, when my phone rang.

  I thought it might be Nate calling to say he was running late.

  It was Professor Mooney.

  “Julia, we have a problem.”

  I put down the tea. What was it now—another blackmailer like Quinn, a wannabe murderer like Dean Braga’s predecessor, what?

  “Sabina—she’s gone.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Back in time.”

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This is the second book in my time-travel series and I want to repeat something I said in the first: Like Julia Olsen, I am not a historian. Julia’s journey into the nineteenth and fourteenth century was one for me as well. Put more plainly, I’m uncomfortably aware that despite my best efforts, historical oversights are sure to have snuck in. I can only hope they will be looked on kindly by the reader.

  The central question, whether the Kensington Runestone is a phantom or a real data point on History’s timeline, is one whose answer will have to wait for more weighty evidence on one side or the other. I followed the writer’s prerogative in choosing the more interesting story, and took the liberty of adding a small eyewitness to the discovery event.