XIII

"Really, Doctor. I feel fine," said Megan.

"I don't care how you feel," said Ra. "We're going downstairs right now and one of the medical robots is checking you over. Detective?"

"Yes, go ahead," I said.

I hardly cared what any of the murder suspects were doing right now, because they had been here the whole time. The intruders who had stolen my cloning tube had literally been standing in front of me for most of the last three hours. I'd seen all their faces, heard their names and listened to their voices. And I'd still managed to let them get away. I just wanted to bang my fists - and my head - against the nearest wall, assuming I could find one that wasn't covered in laser burns or ruined books.

"How are you doing?" said Mirabi, who'd been checking no one else had been hurt.

"I'm fine," I said.

"Oh, dear."

"That isn't funny," I said.

"Yes, but don't beat yourself up too badly," said Mirabi. "You're not the only one who didn't guess. I should have recognised their heights. Don't worry. We'll find them."

She meant to be comforting, but it really wasn't. We both knew exactly how hard it would be - like getting blood from a stone - to get the fiercely independent and nationalistic Free Mars police to investigate Anubis and his men, let alone extradite them. Assuming they made it safely back to Free Mars - and the teleporter certainly had that range - they'd probably gotten clean away.

"We don't need to," I said. "They don't matter anymore."

"I wouldn't recommend telling the boss that," said Mirabi.

"They were hired," I said. "Someone paid them to steal it. By the sound of it, they didn't even know what it was."

"But someone else does," said Mirabi. She touched my shoulder. "We'll find them and get it back. Stop worrying and get your head back in the game. We've still got a murder to solve. We need to find out who killed the only father figure Megan had. Quit scuba diving in the lake of self-pity and let's get back to work."

I sighed, but she was right and in more ways than she knew. Megan was affecting me. I couldn't pretend she wasn't. And whatever was going on with my own problems - whatever whoever was behind this whole thing was doing with my cloning tube - I was not going to leave this murder unsolved. She'd helped me when I needed it and I was going to give her as much justice as I could.

"Fine," I said. "How?"

"Huh? What in the..."

We turned around to see that Baldr, still handcuffed to the chair, had just woken up and was looking around in astonishment at the gunfire-wrecked main room.

"What in Darwin's name happened?" he said.

_ _ _ _ _

"So I take it you didn't send Anubis to raid ChronOps?" I said.

"I have no idea what the hax you're talking about!" said Baldr. Helmcom polygraph gave him 94%+

"Raid ChronOps?" said Isabel Chernobog.

"I'll explain later," I said, before Mirabi could tell her to mind her own business. That would just make her more suspicious.

"No, I didn't," said Baldr. "What in Newton's name could you small-minded, glorified temporal traffic wardens possible have that I'd want?"

"But you did send them to Io," said Mirabi. "You hired them to provide security for the Library Project and then offered them extra money if they'd steal the prototype for you."

Baldr twisted his lip.

"I asked Anubis if he enjoyed a challenge," he said. "He said yes. I have nothing further to say on the matter until my lawyer gets here."

"I hope you've got a good one," said Zeus.

"Don't worry. With the rest of the budget - whatever he didn't spend on Anubis - I'm sure he can hire the best," said Mirabi.

"For the last time, that wasn't me!" said Baldr. "Someone else was dipping into the budget as well! I just took what I needed. I never checked the overall balance."

"But... who else would be?" said Bernard Baal.

"It wasn't you, was it?" said Mirabi. "You did mention your tuition fees?"

"No!" said Baal. "I've only been getting the artefacts. I've making more than enough from them."

"He's telling the truth, Detective," said Hades. "The money from the sales comes straight to me. I pay him his cut afterwards. And we haven't done anything recently except the twelve crates I sent up this morning. Which you've already found."

"Twelve?" said Baal, looking at him. "You sent thirteen this morning."

"What?" said Hades. "No, I didn't. I sent twelve boxes up here straight to the Yucatan room. You sent me the coordinates just after breakfast this morning."

Due to the time difference between Earth and the moon, that would have been well before breakfast here and probably before anyone else was out of bed or in the library. Just as it had been throughout recorded history, dawn or dusk were the best times to conduct a smuggling operation.

"And I came in early to check them and there were thirteen," said Baal. "I counted them twice. I was only expecting ten."

"Hold on. Why were you sending them up here?" I said. "I thought you were bringing them from Tutal Xiu and sending them down to Earth?"

"We do. But I have to send them back up here again to send to the customers," said Hades. "I only have a short range teleporter at the dig. It's all the archaeology department's budget will stretch to. It's not powerful enough for international delivery. I just examine and price them at the dig and then send them back up here for Bernard to ship out."

"And where better to hide Mayan artefacts than a Mayan excavation," said Chernobog. "You two are clever than you look."

"Oh. Thank you," said Baal.

"It wasn't a compliment, Bernard."

"Hang on, if there were thirteen this morning, why are there only twelve in there now?" said Mirabi

"Oh, I locked one in the store cupboard," said Baal. "It was the one with the big stone box in it that was too big for the lid to fit properly. I was worried somebody would notice. I was going to move it later."

"What big stone box?" said Hades, looking at Baal like he was crazy. "The largest thing I sent you this morning was that Bul board you brought back last week. And all the lids fitted properly. I wouldn't send something half open..."

"Well, it was here this morning," said Baal.

"But I didn't... What did it look like?" said Hades.

"Well, it was big," said Baal, showing the size with his hands. "Made of red stone. It was rectangular, with a heavy lid. There were lots of carvings and hieroglyphs all over it. It was about as long as a bed..."

"What?!" shouted Hades. "The sarcophagus!?!"

_ _ _ _ _

We all hurried back into the Yucatan room.

Baal tapped in the code he'd used to lock the storage cupboard door, which he'd reprogrammed from the official one, and opened it. Inside was the box. It was heavy and it took me, him and Zeus to pull it out. The plastic lid was fitting badly, bulging up on the four corners of what was inside it. Baal pulled the lid off and revealed the sarcophagus, made of red stone and covered in carvings, just as he'd described it.

"That's it," said Hades. "That is it. No wonder I couldn't find it."

"And you definitely weren't planning to sell it?" said Mirabi.

"No, I was not! I wanted to donate it to the Maya Museum in Merida," said Hades. "I don't believe this. I definitely did not send it here. Someone else must have... Someone else is stealing my artefacts!"

"I suppose I should be grateful you were planning to donate something," said Domingo Xibalba. "My people have suffered more than enough indignities, Doctor. They should be allowed to rest in peace at least."

"I'm sorry."

"I thought you said you hadn't opened it," I said, staring at the edge of the heavy stone lid.

"What? No, I haven't," said Hades. "Bernard?"

"No. I didn't touch it," said Baal.

"Well, someone has," I said. I knew nothing about archaeological artefacts that I hadn't learnt today, but I did know how to look for disturbances at crime scenes. I could see the breaks in the caked dust and grit left by fingertips and the scrape marks where the heavy stone lid had been slid open and pushed back, probably more than once. "Doctor Hades."

As he was the archaeologist, it was only fair to let him do it. Hades stepped forward and we each placed our hands on the lid. We both pushed and the stone groaned and squeaked as the lid slid sideways - we turned it in a circle so it wouldn't fall on the floor - and we could see inside.

The first thing that rose up was a dry, dusty old-paper-like smell. I'd been expecting a body wrapped from head to toe in bandages, like an Egyptian mummy. But the corpse in the sarcophagus, lying on its side at the bottom, had been mummified in a more natural way, simply drying out and desiccating until the old, almost ochre coloured skin had shrunk to the skeleton. We could see every rib and the joints of the elbows in the very thin limbs and all the bones of the face were clearly visible. The long hair had mostly fallen out and so had most of the short beard...

My heart almost stopped. My breath did stop in my throat. My eyes widened and a cold chill filled my spine. The body was dry, desiccated and shrivelled. But I still recognised the face.

"Holy Darwin," said Ishtar.

Doctor Julian Ra - the deputy director of the Library Project, who had just taken Megan Uzume to be checked by one of the university's medical robots - was lying dead in the bottom of the sarcophagus.

_ _ _ _ _

We all stood in stunned silence, gazing at the face we all recognised. I tore my eyes away from it and turned to look at where Professor Wei'To lay dead under the force dome.

Suddenly, in the back of my mind, several things clicked. Separate items suddenly connected, like jigsaw pieces slotting together. A gravity field slowly expanded in deep space, pulling a dozen planets into orbit around a new sun, and I worked it out. I saw all the details of what had happened, what must have happened, the only thing that could have happened, and why, to have led to this; Doctor Julian Ra's body, not a day older than he was now, lying in a Mayan sarcophagus that had been buried for hundreds of years.

I actually sighed outloud. Everyone else looked at me with astonishment.

"Don't worry," I said. "I know what's..."

"David? Domingo?" came Ra's voice from the other room. "Where is everyone?"

"Detective Midgard?" said Megan's voice, and my heart turned to ice.

We all spun around as Ra and Megan appeared in the doorway of the Yucatan room, and saw us standing around the open sarcophagus.

Both of Ra's eyes went wide. Then they shrunk back down to their normal size and the fear in them was replaced by cold fire. He grabbed Megan's arm by the wrist and burst into a run, wrenching her almost off her feet. To my surprise, he didn't turn on his heel, but sprinted into the room, dragging Megan after him, across to Professor Wei'To's body. The force dome shimmered and flickered grey and white as Ra thrust his hand through it, ripped the jaguar knife out of the professor's body, spun Megan around and gripped her from behind and pressed the blood-coated obsidian blade against her throat.

Mirabi and I had our Uniguns out of their holsters and aimed at him an instant later.

"Put them down," said Ra, breathing hard, but sounding surprisingly calm. "You don't know how sharp this is."

"You first," said Mirabi.

"Julian, what the hax is going on?" said Zeus, looking between Ra dead in the sarcophagus and Ra alive and holding a knife to Megan's neck.

"Is he a ghost?" whispered Ishtar.

"Shut up," said Chernobog.

"Not yet he isn't," said Mirabi, keeping her gun trained on his forehead.

"Megan, don't move," I said. I did remember how sharp obsidian was - more than steel. If Mirabi shot him and he fell backwards and his weight pulled the blade... I'd never get a pressure bandage unwrapped in time. Megan nodded, her teeth clenched, trembling. Being used as a hostage twice in one day by two of your own university lecturers had to be a strain on anyone. At the back of my mind, I absently wondered when I'd stopped thinking of her as Uzume and started using her first name.

For a long moment, we were all silent. There was no sound, but breathing. Ra's eyes flicked towards the door, towards the Project's time teleporter.

"Doctor," I said. I touched the box behind my with my shoe, indicating the sarcophagus. "It doesn't have to be this way."

Ra glared at me.

"It isn't going to be," he said. "I'm leaving right now. You are not stopping me. Don't try to follow us."

"I can guess what's happened," I said.

"We have nothing to discuss," said Ra. He started to back away, drawing Megan with him.

"You sent Anubis and his team to ChronOps this morning," I said. "You stole the rest of the money missing from the budget. That's how you paid them."

"What?" said Mirabi. She looked across at me. "That was him?"

"Yes. Anubis must have thought Christmas had come early," I said. "He got hired for one job officially - heading security for the project - and then he was offered twice the money under the table for two unofficial ones, by two different people, both of whom were unaware of the other."

"What?" said Zeus.

"What?!" yelled Baldr from the other room.

"Well, he is a Free Martian. What do you expect?" said Chernobog.

"Wait... He sent them to HQ?" said Mirabi, looking between me and Ra and trying to keep her Unigun aimed. "But how the hax does he know about..."

"Andrew told you, didn't he, Doctor?" I said. "He told you about me."

"Shut up!" said Ra. He started inching back towards the door.

"Erik. Talk," said Mirabi. "How the hax did Andrew Tawaret know about..."

"He was a hierophant," I said. "Thor told me. I can guess what happened, Doctor. He was with you when you were last down at the dig site. He was there when you opened the sarcophagus."

The knife trembled in Ra's hand, actually touching Megan's neck. But I had to keep going.

"It must have been a shock," I said. "Finding your own body. Learning you were going to die in the past. That's why you haven't been back to Tutal Xiu since. Or made any time jumps in weeks."

"Shut up!" said Ra.

"But you know the rules of time," I said. "You can't change the future without a paradox reaction. You thought you were doomed. Tawaret tried to comfort you."

Ra inched through the doors back into the main room, with Mirabi and me following as close as we dared. Baldr twisted around in his chair to see what was happening.

"What the hax is... Oh, Darwin's beard!"

"He revealed he was a hierophant to you," I said. "He would have told you that there was a reason for this, that time had a plan, that you had to have faith. I have one question about that, actually. Did he really die from a lightning strike or did you kill him?"

There were gasps behind me. Mirabi glanced at me again. Megan's eyes went wide and Ra himself looked away for a second.

"I thought so," I said. "When he told you he was a hierophant, you would have asked what he knew. The cult worships the time stream. They get up to stuff no one else does. You asked if he knew of anyone who had cheated death in the future. He would have told you about me."

Despite the situation - and my absolute terror, which I was fighting to keep down, of what could happen to Megan - a part of me was feeling elated. The weight had lifted off my shoulders. I almost felt euphoric. Because I was wrong. Megan had been right. This was not fate. It wasn't destiny. It wasn't time twisting to make sure I did die in the future. This was just someone else learning the truth about me and trying to take advantage of it. The whole thing was nothing more than coincidence.

"You told everyone he died in a lightning strike," I said. "His body must have been badly burned."

"Yes... 82%," said Zeus, from behind me.

"He knew about me, but I don't think he would have told you willingly," I said. "You would have demanded to know if he knew a way out and he would have told you to have faith, that the situation might not be what it seemed. So you forced it out of him. Was he actually struck by lightning, Doctor, or did you burn his body afterwards to hide that you'd tortured him?"

There were more gasps behind me. Ra looked away again, gritting his teeth and didn't answer.

"He told you about me," I said. "You probably didn't think it was helpful at first, because I didn't actually change the future. I just found out that what I thought was going to happen was wrong. But what did interest you was my cloning tube."

"Your what?" said Chernobog.

"That's why you sent Anubis to steal it," I said. "It's a good plan, I have to admit. Your body is in the sarcophagus. But it doesn't have to be your body."

"What?" said Baal.

"...So... he is a ghost?" whispered Ishtar.

"You were going to clone yourself, send the clone back to the past and let him die and be buried the sarcophagus in your place," I said. "You'd still be alive in the present. There would be a body - your body, with your DNA - in the sarcophagus, and there won't be a paradox reaction. But a normal cloning system wouldn't work. It can only produce a baby. But mine's from the future. It can turn an embryo into an adult in eighteen hours."

"What in Darwin's name are you talking about?" said Baldr, as we all inched past his chair.

Ra listened with gritted teeth, not taking his eyes off me. But he finally spoke.

"Yes," he said. "Why do you get to be the only one who cheats fate? I am not going to die."

"I didn't cheat fate. I told you. I was wrong," I said. "You could be as well. The body, the situation, it might not be what it looks like."

"Don't say it. It is me," said Ra. "My face, my DNA, my fingerprints. It is me. The clone is my only way out. I am not going to die. You have no right to stop me."

"And you have no right to send the clone to his death," said Mirabi. "He's a still a person with human rights. That's true under every legal code in the Solar System. "

"He shares your DNA, Doctor. He'll be no different from a natural identical twin," I said. "And are you really going to kill one of your own students?"

"Shut up!" said Ra, pressing the blade harder into Megan's neck, making her flinch.

"Well, you have already killed one of your fellow teachers, haven't you?" said Mirabi. Now that I'd started the ball rolling, she was seeing the connections too. "You stabbed Wei'To. You found the sarcophagus and hid it on Earth, buried in all the other boxes waiting to be catalogued so Hades wouldn't find it and recognise you. When you worked out he was smuggling artefacts, you had the perfect way to get it up to the moon without suspicion. That's why there were thirteen boxes instead of twelve. Baal conveniently hid it for you and then Wei'To caught you while you were checking it and saw what it was. You just panicked and grabbed the knife from one of the other boxes."

"Shut up. Shut up!" said Ra, as we reached the double door and inched out towards the stairs. "I am leaving here right..."

"Doctor," I said. Crunch time was getting closer. I could not let him leave with Megan or with my cloning tube, which he had to have nearby.

"Don't worry. He hasn't cloned himself yet," said Mirabi.