The Caryatids

Archaeologists were always a nuisance on reconstruction sites. They fluttered around the sites of major earthworks like crows before the storm. There was no getting around the need for archaeologists. Their presence was mandated.

Dr. Radic was a Croatian academic. Radic diligently puttered around the island, classifying broken bricks and taking ancient pollen counts. While Vera had labored on the island's mediation, installing her sensors and upgrading everyware, she had often encountered Dr. Radic. Their mutual love for the island and their wandering work lives made them friends.

A much older man, Dr. Radic had always been ready with some kindly word for Vera, some thoughtful little gift or useful favor. Radic clearly viewed her as an integral part of the island's precious heritage. Vera was no mere refugee on Mljet-she was a native returnee. Knowing this, Radic had jolly pet names for Vera: the " domorodac, " the " Mljecanka. " The "home-daughter," the "Mljet girl."

Radic loved to speak Croatian at Vera, for Radic was an ardent patriot. When she strained her memory, Vera could manage some "ijekavian," the local Adriatic dialect. This island lingo had never been much like Radic's scholarly mainland Serbo-Croatian. Whenever Vera knew that she would encounter Dr. Radic, she took along a live-translation earpiece. This tactful bit of mediation made their relationship simpler.

In the nine years that she had known the archaeologist, it had never quite occurred to Vera that Radic was Dispensation. As a scientist and a scholar, Radic seemed rather beyond that kind of thing. Year after patient year, Radic had come to Mljet from his distant Zagreb academy, shipping scientific instruments, publishing learned dissertations, and exploiting his graduate students. Dr. Radic was a tenured academic, an ardent Catholic, and a Croatian nationalist. Somehow, Radic had always been around Mljet. There was no clear way to be rid of him.

Montalban and his daughter were guests at Radic's work camp, an excavation site called Ivanje Polje. This meadow was one of the few large flat landscapes on narrow, hilly Mljet. Ivanje Polje was fertile, level, and easy to farm. So, by the standards of the ancient world, the pretty meadow of Ivanje Polje was a place to kill for.

Ivanje Polje, like the island of Mljet, was a place much older than its name. This ancient meadow had been settled for such an extreme length of time that even its archaeology was archaeological. At Ivanje Polje, the fierce warriors of the 1930s had once dug up the fierce warriors of the 1330s.

As an archaeologist of the modern 2060s, Radic had dutifully catalogued all the historical traces of the 1930s archaeologists. Dr. Radic had his own software and his own interfaces for the Mljet sensorweb. As a modern scholar, Radic favored axialized radar and sonar, tomographic soil sensors, genetic analyses. Not one lost coin, not one shed horseshoe could evade him.

DR. RADIC UNZIPPED AN AIRTIGHT AIRLOCK and ushered his guests inside to see his finest prize.

"We call her the Duchess," said Radic, in his heavily accented English. "The subject is an aristocrat of the Slavic, Illyrian, Romanized period. The sixth century, Common Era."

John Montgomery Montalban plucked a pair of spex from a pocket in his flowered tourist shirt. Vera had never seen such a shirt in her life. It flowed and glimmered. It was like a flowered dream.

"We discovered the subject's tomb through a taint in the water table," Radic told him. "We found arsenic there. Arsenic was a late-Roman inhumation treatment. In the subject's early-medieval period, arsenic was still much used."

Montalban carefully fitted the fancy spex over his eyeballs, nose, and ears. "That's an interesting methodology."

"Arsenical inhumation accounts for the remarkable condition of her flesh!"

Karen, looming in her boneware, whispered to Vera. "Why is Radic showing this guy that horrible dead body?"

"They're Dispensation people," Vera whispered back. She hadn't chosen the day's activities.

"He's so cute," Karen said. "But he's got no soul! He's creepy." Karen swiveled her helmeted head. "I want to go outside to play with his little girl. If you have any sense, you'll come with me."

Vera knew it was her duty to stay with Montalban. Those who observed and verified must be counterobserved and counterverified.

Karen, less politically theoretical, left for daylight in a hurry.

Radic's instrumented preservation tent was damp and underlit. The dead woman's chilly stone sarcophagus almost filled the taut fabric space. There was a narrow space for guests to sidle around the sarcophagus, with a distinct risk that the visitor might fall in.

Radic had once informed her, with a lip-smacking scholarly relish, that the Latin word "sarcophagus" meant "flesh-eater."