The professor gave him a pointed look, but said nothing.
"Come on, have a seat in the parlor," Hatch said. "Let me get you a cup of coffee."
When he returned with a tray of cups and saucers a few minutes later, the professor had taken a seat in an easy chair and was idly flipping through one of the old mysteries Hatch's mother had so adored. She'd kept about thirty on the shelf—just enough, she'd said, so that by the time she'd finished the last, she would have forgotten the first, and could start over again. Seeing this man out of his own childhood, sitting in his front parlor and reading his mother's book, gave Hatch a sudden stab of bittersweet nostalgia so intense that he banged the tray harder than he intended onto the small table. The professor accepted a cup, and they sat for a moment drinking in silence.
"Malin," the old man said, clearing his throat. "I owe you an apology."
"Please," Hatch replied. "Don't even mention it. I appreciated your candor."
"To hell with my candor. I spoke hastily the other day. I still think Stormhaven would be better off without that goddamned treasure island, but that's neither here nor there. I have no right to judge your motives. You do what you have to do."
"Thanks."
"As atonement, I've brought along a little something for show-and-tell this evening," he said, the old familiar gleam in his eye. He removed a box from his pocket and opened it to reveal a strange, double-lobed shell, a complicated pattern of dots and striations set into its surface. "What is it? You've got five minutes."
"Siamese sea urchin," Hatch said, handing the shell back. "Nice specimen, too."
"Damn. Well, if you refuse to be stumped, at least make yourself useful by explaining the circumstances surrounding that" The professor jerked a thumb in the direction of the dining room. "I want all details, no matter how trivial. Any oversights will be dealt with most harshly."
Stretching out his legs and crossing his feet on the braided carpet, Hatch related how Bonterre found the encampment; the initial excavations; the discovery of the mass grave; the gold; the astonishing array of artifacts; the dense tangle of bodies. The professor listened, nodding vigorously, eyebrows alternately rising and falling at each fresh piece of information.
"What surprises me most," Hatch concluded, "is the sheer body count. The teams had identified eighty individuals by the end of this afternoon, and the site isn't fully excavated yet."
"Indeed." The professor fell into silence, his gaze resting vaguely in the middle distance. Then he roused himself, put down his cup, brushed the lapels of his jacket with a curiously delicate gesture, and stood up. "Scurvy," he repeated, almost to himself, and followed with a snort of derision. "Walk me to the door, will you? I've taken up enough of your time for one evening."
At the door the professor paused, and turned. He gave Hatch a steady look, his eyes dancing with veiled interest. "Tell me, Malin, what are the dominant flora of Ragged Island? I've never been there."
"Well," said Hatch, "it's a typical outer island, no trees to speak of, covered with sawgrass, chokecherries, burdock, and tea roses."
"Ah. Chokecherry pie—delicious. And have you ever experienced the pleasure of rose hip tea?"
"Of course," said Malin. "My mother drank lots of rose hip tea—for her health, she said. Hated the stuff myself."
Professor Horn coughed into his hand, a gesture that Hatch remembered as one of disapproval. "What?" he asked defensively.
"Chokecherries and rose hips," the professor said, "were a staple part of the diet along this coast in centuries past. Both are very good for you, extremely high in vitamin C."
There was a silence. "Oh," said Hatch. "I see what you're getting at."
"Seventeenth-century sailors may not have known what caused scurvy, but they did know that almost any fresh berries, fruits, roots, or vegetables cured it." The professor looked searchingly at Hatch. "And there's another problem with our hasty diagnosis."
"What's that?"
"It's the way those bodies were buried." The old man rapped his cane on the floor for emphasis. "Malin, scurvy doesn't make you toss fourscore people into a common grave and skedaddle in such a hurry that you leave gold and emeralds behind."
There was a distant flash, then a roll of thunder far to the south. "But what would?" Hatch asked.
Dr. Horn's only answer was an affectionate pat on the shoulder. Then he turned, limped down the steps, and hobbled away, the faint tapping of his cane sounding long after his form had disappeared into the warm enveloping darkness of Ocean Lane.
Chapter 28
Early the next morning, Hatch entered Island One to find the small command-and-control center jammed with an unusually large gathering. Bonterre, Kerry Wopner, and St. John were all talking at once. Only Magnusen and Captain Neidelman were silent: Magnusen quietly running diagnostics, and Neidelman standing in the center, lighting his pipe, calm as the eye of a hurricane.
"Are you nuts or something?" Wopner was saying. "I should be back on the Cerberus, decrypting that journal, not frigging spelunking. I'm a programmer, not a sewer worker."
"There's no other choice," Neidelman said, taking his pipe from his mouth and looking at Wopner. "You saw the numbers."
"Yeah, yeah. What did you expect? Nothing works right on this damn island."
"Did I miss something?" Hatch said, coming forward.
"Ah. Good morning, Malin," Neidelman said, giving him a brief smile. "Nothing major. We've had a few problems with the electronics on the ladder array."
"A few," Wopner scoffed.
"The upshot is that we'll have to take Kerry along with us this morning on our exploration of the Pit."
"The hell with that!" Wopner said petulantly. "I keep telling you, the last domino has fallen. That code is mine, believe you me. Scylla'll have the bad boy fully deciphered in a couple of hours."
"If the last domino has fallen, then Christopher here can do the monitoring," Neidelman said, a little more sharply.
"That's correct," St. John replied, his chest swelling slightly. "It's just a question of taking the output and making some character substitutions."
Wopner looked from one to the other, his lower lip projecting in an exaggerated pout.
"It's a simple matter of where you're most needed," Neidelman said. "And you're most needed on our team." He turned to Hatch. "It's imperative that we get these piezoelectric sensors in place throughout the Pit. Once they're linked to the computer network, they'll serve as an early warning system in case of structural failure anywhere underground. But so far, Kerry's been unsuccessful at calibrating the sensors remotely from Island One." He glanced at Wopner. "With the network acting flaky, that means he's going to have to come along with us and calibrate them manually, using a palmtop computer. Then he can download the information into the computer's registry. It's a nuisance, but there's nothing else for it."
"A nuisance?" Wopner said. "A major pain in the ass is more like it."
"Most of the crew would give half their shares to be along on the first penetration," St. John said.
"Penetrate this," Wopner muttered as he turned away. Bonterre giggled.
Neidelman turned to the historian. "Tell Dr. Hatch about the sentence you just deciphered from the second half of the journal."
St. John cleared his throat self-importantly. "It's not a sentence, really," he said. "More of a sentence fragment: Ye who luste after the key to the, some word or other, Pitt shall find...."
Hatch looked at the Captain in amazement. "So there is a secret key to the Water Pit."
Neidelman smiled, rubbing his hands together with anticipation. "It's almost eight," he said. "Assemble your gear and let's get started."
Hatch returned to his office for his medical field kit, then met up with the group as they were trekking up the rise of the island toward Orthanc. "Merde, it's cold," Bonterre said, blowing on her hands and hugging herself. "What kind of a summer morning do you call this?"