This had not occurred to Aleksey. He’d only come to this meeting to prevent the delectable Dr Mark seducing Emilia with his rolling r’s and his floppy blond hair, both of which gave him a rakish air he assumed no one would be able to resist. He’d had no intention of being involved with the actual archaeological exploration, which in other lights he believed could be termed…work.
But coasting along in a hydrosphere…
For one moment, envisioning this, he caught Emilia’s eye. He spoke many languages, none as well as he pretended to, but apparently he spoke eighteen-year-old almost-daughter glare extremely well. He made his dismissive hand wave. It was a bit limp and sad. ‘Unfortunately not. My many business concerns will prevent that.’
Now the introductions had been made, they broke for some coffee. Mark was loading up a presentation onto his laptop. Aleksey took the opportunity to return to the outside patio and smoke a much-needed cigarette. It was still bitterly cold, and he wondered if it was snowing up on Dartmoor, remembering the look on Molly’s face when she’d seen the flakes falling the previous evening. It had been mostly gone in the morning when they’d left, as was the way with Devon, but her school was higher up, further north on the moors, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if they were all having snowball fights on the playing fields.
From where he was, he could see the lighthouse which stood on the Hoe: Smeaton’s Tower. It wasn’t as big as his lighthouse, a fact which pleased him every time he recalled it. But then Ben had only recently pointed out that theirs stood on a plinth, and this one didn’t, and so that probably accounted for the difference in size. They’d had many such conversations over the fifteen years they’d known each other, but not usually about lighthouses.
He heard the patio doors slide open behind him, and assuming he was being called back inside took a last drag on his cigarette, preparing to flick it away. But it was Eliam Colter, eyeing the snow-dark clouds with distaste. ‘Could you spare another of those?’ Aleksey handed him the pack, and when the man selected one, bent his head to offer him a light from his own. Colter stamped his feet, wrapping his arms around his body. ‘You have an interesting way of life.’ Nicely casual.
Colter snorted. ‘Yeah, lots of people tell me that.’ He made an astonished face and mimicked breathlessly, ‘Treasure hunter! Gold! Jewels!’ With a small private smirk, he added, ‘Emerald’s my first quarry on this trip though. What did you do, before you became aphilanthropist?’
‘I worked in compliance.’
‘Huh.’ They smoked companionably together for a while until Colter offered, ‘One day, every human will be a smoker.’
Aleksey frowned, mulling this over. ‘Why? Are we not an endangered species on the brink of going extinct?’
Colter chuckled. ‘Nah. It’s Cold Climate Theory in practice. We’re forced to stand out here in the fucking cold. It makes us tough—we’ll be the survivors and we’ll breed. Our genes will be passed along, and all the weak sods who huddled in the warm sipping their mocha lattes or whatever other shit they drink, while we’re out here freezing our arses off, will die out. That’s just Darwinism in action.’
Aleksey blew a long stream of smoke. ‘What about those who don’t smoke and don’t huddle in the warmth either? Those who get up at five o’clock every morning to run across bleak wastelands in the snow? I might put my money on them.’
‘I sincerely hope not, mate. You’re putting it nicely on me at the moment.’
‘Apparently so.’
Someone rapped on the glass behind them, and they flicked their cigarettes away at the same time. Colter suddenly laughed and indicated to a sign on the wall, which Aleksey had not seen: No Smoking Zone. ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right, mate. I think you’ve pegged it just right—you’re an endangered species.’
* * *
Chapter Ten
‘I think it’s important that we all remember the aim of our study of Lyonesse, or Lethowstow as those of us with the old language call it.’ Dr Mark was staring determinedly at a map which was projected on the screen, not catching anyone’s eye. Aleksey got the impression that the young professor had used his coffee break to rewrite his welcoming remarks.
‘These are first-year students of a multi-disciplinary course. We are not and do not pretend to be specialists in prehistoric archaeology, or paleopathology, or environmental or ethnoarchaeology. We are certainly not underwater archaeologists. When Morwenna’s father, Randal, ran our department, it was termed the Department of Anglo-Saxon and Kindred Studies. I’ve always rather enjoyed that term: kindred studies. We want to foster a love of learning and research in our students. It’s the interdisciplinary nature of our degree that enables our students to contribute not only to our department but to those of English, History and Classics.’ He took a breath as if to steady his nerve.
‘So, that being said, I am not—and neither are they—here to untangle some of the competing interests I am aware of in this room—not even to offer an opinion on one side or the other. Unfortunately, the topic of Lyonesse has become embroiled within a much wider academic controversy, which is…how can I best put it…occupying the minds of some of our colleagues in this field around the world. But what I will say is this: as you can see from the map, before sea-level rises after the last Ice Age, there was a vast landmass to the east of Britain, which is now commonly referred to as Doggerland. Similarly, to the west, the area we now refer to as Scilly was one land with Cornwall, possibly extending as far as that point you can see there.’
Aleksey was fairly sure everyone else was dutifully following the little red laser pointer dot. He was more focused on a tiny green one. He couldn’t help smiling, glanced across, and saw Emilia doing the same.
‘I amnotgoing to limit my students’ interests. I’mnotgoing to shut down debate on any topic. The facts? The land was joined at some point. Sea levels rose. Any settlements on the land were drowned. And that’s all we know.’ Mark hesitated, but then in something of a rush added, ‘Is Lyonesse Atlantis? I’m not going to stop anyone discussing that. Was Lyonesse wiped out thousands of years earlier than is currently believed by cataclysmic climate events at the end of the Younger Dryas? Research this if you wish. Was Lyonesse the seat of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table?’ He smiled shyly. ‘I would welcome a fascinating essay on that topic as well.’ He sat down but then stood up again abruptly.
‘It was only a few years ago, in academic terms, that every theory about human history and our origins had to fit into the known fact that the world was only six thousand years old. It was said that fossils, which clearly contradicted this, were planted by God to give us intellectual challenge. When Egyptian historical writings were translated, which gave the accurate dates of the reigns of the pharaohs going back many thousands of years before that Biblical imperative, the Egyptologists insisted they must have been using lunar years—in other words, a month, and that therefore the six thousand year theory was still good. Academia, like science, should listen, test, debate, test again andkeeprepeating that process. Science canneverbe settled.’
He sat down and wiped his brow.
Aleksey felt he was missing something. Occasionally, Molly would come to him in tears and announce, ‘It wasn’t me, Papa,’ or something equally unprompted along the same lines, clearly being under the erroneous impression that he had already discovered what it was that she definitely had done. This reminded him of one of those moments.
Big Ears was nodding, but rather contradicted this apparent agreement when he said prissily,
‘I vehemently disagree.’
Mark sighed. ‘I know you do, Jerome, but if you’re right discussion will only add weight to your arguments, won’t it?’
‘Your funding is limited, Mark. If you want these young people to get the most out of this exploration, then they would do well to stick to the facts as we know them and not drift into wild speculation, conspiracy theories and disinformation that will do them no good at the very start of their careers. The science on this matterissettled. There should be no further debate.’
Aleksey was tempted to point out one fact—that the windswept one’s funding wasn’t limited at all, but as he didn’t have a clue what anyone was talking about, decided to keep quiet. He’d attended meetings once or twice in the past—meetings far more acrimonious than this—where those who disagreed with the senior officer present fairly swiftly found themselves the forward observational officer in Afghanistan. If they were lucky. He didn’t want to be on the wrong side of whatever this was, either.
