Read Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time for Free Online

strange aberration of her jet lag.
    “I need to apologize ...” she started.
    “Don’t. I just hope you don’t write off my kind of archaeology. In living the life, we find out things that are never apparent in your laboratory. And, by the way, it’s real life, not a play. But we do reenactments on special occasions, to educate and gain public interest. You should come and visit.”
    His one free hand fumbled in the pocket of his jacket, and then he handed her a card.
    Nicholas L.Greenwood, Director, Tavistock Farm. Dorset. A phone number was listed at the bottom.
    “I didn’t mean to sound so critical,” she said. “So I take it away and analyze it to death, and you find a way to reconstruct it.” This was not much of an apology, but it was the best she could come up with in her current sleepless state. Her brain was scrambled.
    “What if we’re both wrong?” she asked. “The big mystery to me has always been what sort of story we give these unknown, so-called primitive people. We always recreate them from our side of the time spectrum. From how we moderns think. I know anthropologists say their brain size was the same as ours, but they certainly didn’t think like us. How could they? They were worlds apart. We make up stories about everything based on a few meager scraps dug up by archaeologists.”
    This was close to heresy. Her own field in archaeology was based on material remains you could see, touch, analyze; it was scientific, written in large capital letters. If you could measure it, it was true. And modern science was very smug. Prehistoric people were usually judged savage and worse, mainly because they had no writing.
    “The real question is how did they think? What did they feel? And we’ll never know.
    People are really the great unknown, aren’t they?” she concluded, lamely.
    Greenwood raised his eyebrow again and gave her another enigmatic smile.
    “That’s why I live in an Iron Age roundhouse on a farm. Maybe living the life will help me figure out what the people were like.”
    Grimly, Germaine thought it was hard enough understanding the people living today, like her ex-husband and her difficult, new boss. How could Nicholas Greenwood hope to reach into the distant past and discover what ancient people were like?
    He was almost exactly her height. His eyes looked straight across to hers and seemed clear as a pool of water, reflecting light from its depths. Germaine felt a flash of something almost remembered run through her mind and then disappear. A shiver ran down her back.
    She was always conscious of her height and acutely aware of other peoples’ heights relative to hers. Not so with this man. There was a straight line of contact. No unspoken psychological games here. They were equals in a vaguely exciting way.
    She felt a hand on her arm and jumped. Aubrey! It broke the unusual connection she just felt with Nicholas Greenwood.
    “Interesting stuff, eh? Tavistock Farm is a showplace. You should go down and see it. It’s a real place out of the past. You know, ‘The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see,’ as Winston would say.” Aubrey beamed at the opportunity to quote his idol.
    She gazed fondly at him, glad to be rescued from her awkward conversation. Then someone called his name, and waved frantically from the other side of the room.
    “Aubrey Clarke, Sir Aubrey! Message for Sir Aubrey!”
    Germaine turned to him with a puzzled look. Aubrey’s grin turned his cheeks bright pink.
    “Yes, my dear, I forgot to tell you last night. I am a real royal figure now, an OBE, Officer of the British Empire!” He gave quite a good imitation of bending a knee in her direction.
    “Oh, Aubrey, you were knighted! What an honor.” She bobbed an awkward imitation of a curtsey in return as they both laughed.
    “Sir Aubrey!” The messenger found him. He handed Aubrey a handwritten note marked Urgent.
    “Oh, look at this. From His Lordship himself.