The Caryatids

Vera had never shared Radic's keen fascination with ancient bodies. Her sensitive Acquis sensorweb had detected thousands of people buried on Mljet. Almost any human body ever interred in the island's soil had left some faint fossil trace there-a trace obvious to modern ultra-sensitive instruments.

Since Vera was not in the business of judgment calls about the historical status of corpses, she had to leave such decisions to Dr. Radic-and this body was the one discovery the historian most valued. Radic's so-called Duchess was particularly well preserved, thanks to the tight stone casing around her flesh and the arsenic paste in her coffin.

Still, no one but an archaeologist would have thought to boast about her. The "Duchess" was a deeply repulsive, even stomach-turning bundle of wet, leathery rags.

The corpse was hard to look at, but the stone coffin had always compelled Vera's interest. Somebody-some hardworking zealot from a thousand years ago-had devoted a lot of time and effort to making sure that this woman stayed well buried.

This Dark Age stonemason had taken amazing care with his hand tools. Somehow, across the gulf and abysm of time, Vera sensed a fellow spirit there.

A proper "sarcophagus," a genuine imperial Roman tomb, should have been carved from fine Italian marble. The local mason didn't have any marble, because he was from a lonely, Dark Age Balkan island. So he'd had to fake it. He'd made a stone coffin from the crumbly local white dolomite.

A proper Roman coffin required an elegant carved frieze of Roman heroes and demigods. This Dark Age mason didn't know much about proper Roman tastes. So his coffin had a lumpy, ill-proportioned tumble of what seemed to be horses, or maybe large pigs.

The outside of the faked sarcophagus looked decent, or at least publicly presentable, but the inside of it-that dark stone niche where they'd dumped the corpse in her sticky paste of arsenic-that was rough work. That was faked and hurried. That was the work of fear.

The Duchess had been hastily buried right in her dayclothes: sixteen-hundred-year-old rags that had once been linen and silk. They'd drenched her in poisonous paste and then banged down her big stone lid.

Her shriveled leather ears featured two big golden earrings: bull's heads. Her bony shoulder had a big bronze fibula safety pin that might have served her as a stiletto.

The Duchess had also been buried with three fine bronze hand mirrors. It was unclear why this dead lady in her poisoned black stone niche had needed so many mirrors. The sacred mirrors might have been the last syncretic gasp of some ecoglobal Greco-Egypto-Roman-Balkan cult of Isis. Dr. Radic never lacked for theories.

"May I?" asked Montalban. He caressed the cold stone coffin with one fingertip. "Remarkable handiwork!"

"It is derivative," sniffed Dr. Radic. "The local distortion of a decaying imperial influence."

"Yes, that's exactly what I like best about it!"

From his tone, Vera knew that this was not what he liked best about it. He was Dispensation, so what he liked best was that someone had taken a horrible mess and boxed it up with an appearance of propriety. So he was lying. Vera could not restrain herself. "Why are you so happy about this?"

Montalban aimed a cordial nod at their host. "European Synchronic philosophy is so highly advanced! I have to admit that, as a mere Angeleno boy, sometimes Synchronic theory is a bit beyond me."

"Oh, no no no, our American friend is too modest!" said Radic, beaming at the compliment. "We Europeans are too often lost in our theoretical practices! We look to California for pragmatic technical developments."

Montalban removed his fancy spex and framed them against the faint light overhead. He removed an imaginary fleck of dust with a writhing square of yellow fabric. "Her body flora," he remarked.

"Yes?" said Radic.

"Are her body flora still viable? Do you think they might grow?"

"There's no further decay within this specimen," said Radic.

"I don't mean the decay organisms. I mean the natural microbes that once lived inside her while she was still alive. Those microbes have commercial value. This woman is medieval, so she never used antibiotics. There's a big vogue in California for all-natural probiotic body flora."

Vera found herself blurting the unspeakable. "Do you mean the germs inside the corpse?"

Montalban pursed his lips. "'Germs inside the corpse.' That's not the proper terminology."

"You want to sell the germs inside this corpse?"

"This is a public-health issue! It's more than just a market opportunity!"

"He's right, you know," Radic piped up. "Archaeo-microbiology is a rapidly expanding field."

"At UC Berkeley," said Montalban, donning his spex again, "they call their new department 'Archaeo-Microbial Human Ecology.'"

"Very apt." Radic nodded.

"A whole lot of hot start-up labs around UC Berkeley now. Venture money just pouring in."

"Oh, yes, yes, it was ever thus in California," said Radic.