Langue[dot]doc 1305

3. Assembling the Team

ASSEMBLING THE TEAM

“So,” Luke ran his hand through his hair for the fifty-first time. “We can’t get anyone else?”

“Lucky to get the people we have,” Konig said, picked up his briefcase and left Luke’s office. Not a word of farewell. Ben Konig assumed that they knew each other well enough. That he could take liberties. “Don’t know how we even have a historian, to be honest.” Konig threw this into the room from the doorway, as a parting volley.

We, Luke mouthed after him, his mental powers so exhausted that he couldn’t even think the word across the desk — Konig’s French Government support had nearly cost them the expedition. Ben Konig didn’t deserve to be ‘we’ — he was the evil other.

Luke blamed the evil other — in its amorphous mass — for the formidable clauses that had scared half the expedition away after training, so close to departure. Everyone had known the risks: those clauses had created confusion.

Then Professor Theodore Lucas Mann realised something. He prided himself on not being petty; he was a big man with a vast soul. Sometimes, however, he allowed a smallness into his munificent existence. Professor Theodore Lucas Mann leaned back in his big chair and smiled.

Not everyone had signed the waivers and forms. Not everyone had been able to get to the briefings. One of the team members was going into the past gloriously unprepared by the bureaucrats. If it weren’t the night before the most momentous day in human history, Luke would be thinking about the expedition and the need for preparation, and would snap his fingers and call Dr Artemisia Wormwood in and have her working the whole night long, making up lost ground. He was so annoyed with Konig, and so longed for the last sleep in his own bed, that he merely copied the briefing to his data file for transmission back.

Wormwood could be briefed in situ. And Konig could be blamed for not having ensured that she had signed his stupid French forms. Luke went home for one last night with his partner.

Artemisia lay in bed, thinking about her situation. Living underground, in a cave. And the local saint is, of course, Benedict. Patron saint of speleologists. This was the first thing she’d checked. Straight after she’d transferred almost all of her advance to her sister’s bank account. Before she’d bought the things the expedition shopping list had suggested.

The saint. His patronage. Not enough time to check out the state of his hagiography, but there was a library waiting for her in the Middle Ages. It was promised.

She had a sudden urge to check Benedict’s saint day. Something was niggling. Something that Professor Theodore Lucas Mann had said about them knowing the locals and timing the start to fit local customs. He thought he knew everything, this man in charge.

He knew something, she soon discovered. It’s the vigil of Benedict, thought Artemisia. Tonight is my last night in the world I know and tomorrow the first day in the world I’ve studied and which I don’t really know, not at all. The only thing I know about it, for certain, is that Lucia won’t be there.

With the exception of Professor Mann, the group was assembled along with the possessions they would carry. It was the first time the group had been together, and even now it lacked Cormac Smith and Luke Mann. It was in a conference room at Melbourne University. A nothing-room that could have been anywhere on the planet, furnished with nothing-chairs devoid of all specific nature.

Smith had been on the far side for three months, living ancient time while the others lived modern. They were still living modern, but were dressed in clothes that were suitable for nine months underground, their backpacks leaning ready by the door. Poised.

“We only have twenty-five minutes, and that includes provisioning,” a harried young man explained. His hair was white and rumpled and he looked thirteen, but the nametag he wore suggested he had a doctorate. “Wait here. Don’t leave. Be ready to move quickly.”

The group of strangers looked around at each other. Artemisia knew what she saw. Aliens. Scientists. People she would live in a hole underground with for long enough to drive them all mad. Her late night thoughts had been along these lines and the crowd she was looking at was not reassuring. Artemisia hated meeting new people. It took her a while to relax and to get to know anyone. It will pass, she told herself. It’s just nerves.

She’d met Mann the day before. “Call me Luke,” he’d said, jovially. He’d called her Artemisia once and Wormwood twice, not bothering to ask which she preferred. It almost made her regret the name change eight years ago. But without the name change, she would still have family and Lucia was the only family she was willing to own.

The harassed young man passed around a sheet of paper with names on it. Suddenly each of them was looking up and down and across, trying to work out who was whom.

“This’ll keep us busy ’til the time comes,” joked a tall lanky bloke with the most shaven scalp and the most soulful brown eyes Artemisia had ever seen. “I’m Geoff.” Geoff Murray, meteorologist and atmospheric scientist. Artemisia knew this for Murray was pointing at his name, on the list. . Must be my age, Artemisia realised. Or a couple of years older. Like the harassed young man, he didn’t look it. He lounged lazily. She envied him his temperament. She was wound to almost breaking point.

“Artemisia,” she added, quickly, then just as quickly looked down at her paper, hiding behind her hair, like a teenager. Life in fast-forward was not comfortable.

“Pauline,” an older voice added. “But call me Doc.” Cook, it said on the sheet, Pauline Adamson. Artemisia looked up at the woman, in her sixties with shoulder length hair, beautifully kept, and wondered where the nickname came from.

“Tony,” said an Asian Australian, short and deep-voiced. He was a plant genome expert. His hair was almost as non-existent as Geoff’s. He had the most alert gaze Artemisia had ever seen — his eyes soaked everything in. It was almost uncomfortable.

“I’m Ben,” and a rather gorgeous man in his mid-thirties gave a small bow. Dark hair and pale grey eyes. Germanic cheekbones. A bit Prince Valiant. He obviously knew he was gorgeous, too. Ben Konig, the sheet said, biologist and zoologist. Whatever did they need a zoologist for?

“Dr Sylvia Smith,” the last woman said, abruptly. She was so very small. Compact and pretty and even winsome, with a soft voice and sweetly waving short hair. The sort of woman who mostly got what she wanted, Artemisia guessed, noticing how her soft and gentle manner had switched on when Smith realised she was under observation. She was Mann’s offsider, apparently, also a planetary astronomer and a geologist. More power to her. Though why she needed a title when everyone else was happy with first names or nicknames . . . maybe it was something to do with the manner. I have to try to stop disliking her. Disliking someone at first sight will make it difficult to work in a closed environment. I have to stop disliking her.

Artemisia sighed. Apart from that, silence prevailed.

“Hell,” said Ben Konig, when the silence went on for too long, “Just because most of us haven’t met before, doesn’t mean —”

At that moment the door opened. “It’s time,” said the young man, harassment transformed into a jubilant grin. “Time for Botty to beam you down into the Middle Ages!”