humans. We’re looking at strong theory of mind, possibly an abaptive response to not being able to use speech as a proxy for grooming in extended family situations. That’s also the area that gets chewed up most in cases of K syndrome – it’s implicated in the practice of ritual magic.
“Specimen B was beheaded and buried with an expensive cold iron stake through her heart inside a crude ward, some time around 950 AD. This happened in proximity to a much older structure that had been abandoned centuries earlier. A long way away from where anyone lived at the time, in other words. There are no grave goods or clothes, suggesting they didn’t have any or, more likely, their property was sufficiently valuable to be stolen. But.” Professor McPherson smiles triumphantly. “There’s one remaining clue that really got the archeologists’ attention – although it made them think it was a hoax at first, before they carbon-dated it on principle.”
Another photograph, this time of a fully excavated mandible sitting on a display tray, and now McPherson’s got everybody’s undivided attention because the gold fillings are unmistakable.
“Baby’s got bling, and the dental caries they plug show the characteristic abrasion pattern of a diamond-tipped drill.
“
So.
Are there any questions?”
After his midweek meeting with Jez Wilson, Alex returns to Leeds on an evening train. On arrival he heads for the Arndale Centre, where he spends the hours until midnight reading briefing papers that can’t be removed from organization premises. Whenever he gets bored he wanders the empty office corridors. There are bulletin boards for nonclassified organization-related material, such as vacancies and out-of-hours activities. One of them is reserved for personal ads, including flat shares. This one he scrutinizes. When he finally tires of being the last night owl in the building (apart from the night watch body in the stairwell) he lets himself out and rides his moped back to the room he’s renting in an old red-brick hotel on The Calls.
He has a lot of food for thought. But for the time being, he confines himself to writing up his worries in the diary HR told him to keep – he saves it on an encrypted thumb drive – then duct-tapes the curtains firmly shut, hangs out the do-not-disturb sign, and crawls into bed.
One of the disadvantages of being a vampire on the night shift is that you never wake up in time for the cooked full English breakfast. But it’s early spring and Alex’s hotel is in the city center, in a clump of densely packed late-Victorian buildings five and six stories high, interleaved with newer slabs of glass and steel. They form a canyon-like maze, and on an overcast day it’s possible to go out with no more protection than heavy-duty sunblock and a wide-brimmed hat. So Alex showers, shaves, covers his face and hands in skin-toned theatrical latex paint, and gives thanks to the Lares of street fashion for decreeing that hoodies are de rigueur this decade.
First things first: it is nearly noon, he has the day off work, and there is a tantalizing “roommate wanted” ad on the bulletin board at the office. Even with the organization’s bargaining leverage working to his advantage, the hotel is costing an arm and a leg compared to his share of the rent on a house. It is beginning to look as if he may be stuck here for the foreseeable future – not just a couple of weeks – and the beckoning bedroom in his parents’ house holds all the appeal of a rusty man-trap. So before he ventures out Alex screws his courage to breaking point, checks the photo of the ad that he snapped the night before, and dials a local number.
“Yo. Who is this?” The voice is male, and has a naggingly familiar accent lurking behind the reserve with which unidentified callers are invariably received these days.
“Um, this is Alex Schwartz? I’m answering the room for rent ad on the bulletin board at the offices in the
“Specimen B was beheaded and buried with an expensive cold iron stake through her heart inside a crude ward, some time around 950 AD. This happened in proximity to a much older structure that had been abandoned centuries earlier. A long way away from where anyone lived at the time, in other words. There are no grave goods or clothes, suggesting they didn’t have any or, more likely, their property was sufficiently valuable to be stolen. But.” Professor McPherson smiles triumphantly. “There’s one remaining clue that really got the archeologists’ attention – although it made them think it was a hoax at first, before they carbon-dated it on principle.”
Another photograph, this time of a fully excavated mandible sitting on a display tray, and now McPherson’s got everybody’s undivided attention because the gold fillings are unmistakable.
“Baby’s got bling, and the dental caries they plug show the characteristic abrasion pattern of a diamond-tipped drill.
“
So.
Are there any questions?”
After his midweek meeting with Jez Wilson, Alex returns to Leeds on an evening train. On arrival he heads for the Arndale Centre, where he spends the hours until midnight reading briefing papers that can’t be removed from organization premises. Whenever he gets bored he wanders the empty office corridors. There are bulletin boards for nonclassified organization-related material, such as vacancies and out-of-hours activities. One of them is reserved for personal ads, including flat shares. This one he scrutinizes. When he finally tires of being the last night owl in the building (apart from the night watch body in the stairwell) he lets himself out and rides his moped back to the room he’s renting in an old red-brick hotel on The Calls.
He has a lot of food for thought. But for the time being, he confines himself to writing up his worries in the diary HR told him to keep – he saves it on an encrypted thumb drive – then duct-tapes the curtains firmly shut, hangs out the do-not-disturb sign, and crawls into bed.
One of the disadvantages of being a vampire on the night shift is that you never wake up in time for the cooked full English breakfast. But it’s early spring and Alex’s hotel is in the city center, in a clump of densely packed late-Victorian buildings five and six stories high, interleaved with newer slabs of glass and steel. They form a canyon-like maze, and on an overcast day it’s possible to go out with no more protection than heavy-duty sunblock and a wide-brimmed hat. So Alex showers, shaves, covers his face and hands in skin-toned theatrical latex paint, and gives thanks to the Lares of street fashion for decreeing that hoodies are de rigueur this decade.
First things first: it is nearly noon, he has the day off work, and there is a tantalizing “roommate wanted” ad on the bulletin board at the office. Even with the organization’s bargaining leverage working to his advantage, the hotel is costing an arm and a leg compared to his share of the rent on a house. It is beginning to look as if he may be stuck here for the foreseeable future – not just a couple of weeks – and the beckoning bedroom in his parents’ house holds all the appeal of a rusty man-trap. So before he ventures out Alex screws his courage to breaking point, checks the photo of the ad that he snapped the night before, and dials a local number.
“Yo. Who is this?” The voice is male, and has a naggingly familiar accent lurking behind the reserve with which unidentified callers are invariably received these days.
“Um, this is Alex Schwartz? I’m answering the room for rent ad on the bulletin board at the offices in the
Similar Books
