Sam said, “The publicity came from another volunteer who was up there with us. He didn’t believe in keeping the find quiet, based on his own principles: The discovery belongs to the people so the people should be told about it. We thought we’d talked him into waiting, but he went public without us. After that, we took steps to give the scientific community a chance to see things before the tourists and souvenir hunters destroyed them.”
“It’s a good thing you did. Do we have anything here we can carbon-date?”
Remi said. “Quite a bit. Our guy made himself a pair of dishes out of hollowed-out pieces of wood. There was some plant residue in one of them.”
“Perfect,” said Caine. “Anything living begins to lose carbon 14 the minute it dies.”
“I’ll get them.” She went off to the other end of the room, disappeared through a door, and came back with the two plastic bags containing the wooden vessels, seeds, and husks.
Caine returned his attention to the pot. “This pot has a lid. The seal looks translucent, a bit like beeswax. Have you opened it?”
“No,” said Sam. “We realized that the minute we cleared the lava out of the doorway to the shrine, or whatever that building is, we exposed the man and his belongings to air and started the clock ticking. We didn’t want to do anything that might harm the pot. We’ve carried it around quite a bit, so we know the contents aren’t liquid and aren’t stone or metal, but it’s not empty. Something shifts around a little when you move it.”
“Shall we try to open it now?” asked Caine.
“We have a good place to do it,” Remi said. “In our remodeling, we’ve had the builders put in a climate-controlled room—low temperature, low humidity, no sunlight—just like a rare-book room in a library.”
“Wonderful,” said Caine.
“Follow me.” She led them to the door she had just emerged from, opened it, and turned on the light. The room had a long worktable and a few chairs and a wall of glass cabinets, all of them empty at the moment. In the corner of the room was a tall red tool chest on wheels that looked like the ones in auto mechanics’ shops.
Professor Caine carried the pot into the room and set it on the table. Sam wheeled the chest over and opened the top drawer, which held a collection of tools for working on small, delicate objects—brushes, tweezers, X-Acto knives, dental picks, awls, magnifiers, and high-intensity flashlights. There was also a box of sterile surgical gloves.
Caine put on gloves, chose a pick and tweezers to examine the seal and pull some of it off. He looked at it under a magnifier on a stand. “It seems to be a glue made from some kind of plant resin.” He switched to an X-Acto knife and methodically cut away the translucent substance from around the lid.
“What’s in there can’t be food. It’s glued shut,” said Remi.
“I don’t dare guess,” said Caine. “Archaeology is full of high hopes and pots that turn out to be full of mud.” He gripped the lid and twisted. “Interesting. I can turn the lid a little but not raise it. What it looks like is that he heated the pot a little, sealed it, and let it cool. That would produce a partial vacuum in it to keep the seal tight.”
“Just like canning,” said Remi. “Maybe it is food.”
“Now, I wonder how to get it open without breaking it.”
Sam said, “We could heat it a bit again to get the air inside to expand. Or we could take it up to a high altitude, where the air pressure is lower.”
“How could we warm it a bit without harming it?”
“If we do it evenly, the pot shouldn’t break,” said Sam.
“I agree,” Caine said.
“Another modification to the house: We put in a sauna,” said Remi.
They climbed the stairs to the second floor, and Sam entered the sauna, placed the pot on the wooden bench, then turned on the heat, slowly raising the temperature. At the end of ten minutes, he entered the sauna, wrapped the pot in a towel, and brought it out. He held the pot while Caine tried the lid. It came up and the pressure was equalized. Sam put the lid back on, and they all went back downstairs to the climate-controlled room.
“The big moment is coming,” said Remi.
“Don’t be disappointed if it’s just a mess of organic matter that used to b
e food,” said Caine. “Sometimes the best bits of information don’t look like much at first.”
Sam set the pot on the table. Caine, still wearing surgical gloves, took a deep breath and reached in. He pulled out a mass of what looked like dried weeds. “Packing material?”
He picked up a small flashlight and looked inside the pot. “Oh . . .” He stood up and peered down into the vessel. “Is it possible?”
“What is it?”
“It looks like a book,” he said. “A Mayan book.”