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get that photographed before you
move it," said Alicia, "but I wouldn't be surprised if it was once
a timber supporting the roof, or rather the remains of one."
    When Frank was told he agreed with her,
saying, "Assuming this house is about the same proportions as those
at Scara Brae, that's just where I'd expect to find remains of the
roof."
    Alicia made a non-committal noise which might
have been agreement and, since Steve wasn't around, went to fetch
the camera from the cabin.
    With the photographs taken, Frank took charge
of the careful digging and sieving of the sand. Alicia noted in
passing that her 'double failure' might lack skills in exams but
had a real instinct for the practical work.
    It was during this patient trowel and sieve
excavating Alan and Frank uncovered the tip of a bone that could be
human, and Alicia was privately ecstatic.
    "Did she or he just sit there while the place
burnt around him or her, or was he or she already dead?" she
wondered.
    For a time the whole of those involved in the
dig stood and watched as Frank and Alan carefully brushed off the
sand and Alicia took far more photographs than were necessary.
Eventually she tore herself away long enough to get the other teams
back to work. Some of the workers needed a lot of persuading that
what they were doing was really of some significance.
    "You're digging down through sand that's
blown in," she told Gill and Manjy, "and sooner or later you're
going to strike the level at which these people had their floor.
The village was underground, but there had to be a slope down to
the entrance. What you do or don't find when you reach that level
may well tell us whether some outside agency was involved in the
destruction. At least we know that human remains would be found in
this soil, if there are any more."
    With that Gill's team, rather reluctantly,
started digging again. It was fortunate that they did.
    Gill watched the Landrover pull into the
field and stop near the caravans. She saw Steve emerge to begin
unloading, while she rubbed her back with one hand, sighed and gave
her attention again to the dig.
    Frank straightened up and climbed out of the
house "Here, you take over," He said to Alan, continuing to Alicia,
"It's my bet that the victim was hiding in the house when some
intruder or other came along and killed him or her before the place
was burnt down. Mind you, whether I'll ever be able to prove that
is another matter entirely."
    "You're probably right about the second but
you may also be right about the first," said Alicia. "Do you think
you'll get much from the exchange?"
    "I'm enjoying this dig. I don't know if it's
doing me any good careerwise, it's a bit early to say, but it makes
a change from the Mayans. Mind you, these people are a bit
primitive by comparison."
    "Were they more violent, do you think?"
    "Violent? I don't know. I don't know how
violent these people were, but the Mayans were pretty rough
themselves. By our standards at any rate. Human sacrifice, wars,
ruthless games in which the losers were killed and so on. This lot
probably weren't any worse than the Mayans and pre-Mayans I
shouldn't think. Those were violent times."
    Alan discovered that there was, like the
houses at Scara Brae, a bed area with stone retaining walls about a
foot high. This 'bed' seemed to be full of ashes and the position
of the bones suggested that the figure had been lying partly on and
partly off the bed. Alan thought this favoured violence.
    "If a body was dead already he'd be laid out
on the bed and if he wasn't dead he'd be trying to get out, not
trying to go to bed." he said.
    Alicia had to agree with him but said, "We
don't know what happened do we? Let's get on with uncovering the
remains as carefully as possible and look for any hard evidence
there might be."
    Since Steve was around by this time, he took
up the camera from where Alicia had just dumped it in the grass
and, before anything was moved, the remains were photographed. "I
feel like