Free Uneasy Relations by Aaron Elkins Page B

hardworking, and he was reputed to be a decent field archaeologist as well. But he was a plodder, always drudging away, more at home with details and minutiae than with the provocative, exciting themes and patterns that made archaeology something alive. He was also cursed with a slow, nasal, maddeningly precise monotone that, depending on your mood at the time, could either put you to sleep or drive you up the wall.
    But his positive traits — thoroughness, diligence, an exacting if narrowly focused intelligence — had worked in his favor, as had a certain tendency toward servility to authority that Gideon found unpleasant, but that some others apparently did not. He had been one of Adrian Vanderwater’s last research assistants at Cal, and it was to his loyal, reliable former student that Adrian had turned when he was in need of an assistant director for the Europa Point dig. Corbin, for his part, had been born to be an assistant director. He accepted eagerly and was with Adrian from the beginning to the end of the excavation.
    It had turned out extremely well for him. His association with Gibraltar Boy and the First Family had made his name. He had written several excruciatingly detailed papers on the dig, and two of Adrian’s books on the subject listed Corbin as full coauthor (although Gideon had always assumed this was simply a generous gesture on Adrian’s part; an expression of thanks for Corbin’s probable assistance with bibliography, background research, data compilation, etc.). On the strength of all this, he was able to leave his position at Tunica State College in Mississippi, where he’d been locked into a disastrous specialty in ceramic techniques of the middle woodland horizon, and move into an assistant professorship at Stanford, where he had since acquired tenure and advanced to associate professor.
    “Now then,” Corbin said, having studied his card a few moments, “as to timing. I think we ought to keep the whole thing to no more than an hour and a half, so may I suggest that we all limit ourselves to fifteen minutes each at the most? Would fifteen minutes be agreeable to everyone . . . yes, Rowley?”
    Rowley Boyd, looking uncomfortable, coughed discreetly and stood up, nervously sweeping back a few strands of lank, straw-colored hair from his forehead. “I just want to say that, ah, we might want to rethink tonight’s event entirely. Ivan is . . . well, I don’t know how to put it other than to say that he’s not the man he was.”
    “As are none of us,” Audrey said. “And your point is?”
    “I only mean to say that, well, that he doesn’t always . . . he’s not always . . . we don’t want to put too much, shall I say, stress on him, that’s all I mean to say.”
    “I don’t think there’s much fear of that.” Adrian laughed. “I’ve never known anyone to be overstressed by testimonials to his own eminence.”
    “No, you don’t understand,” Rowley persisted. “I’m suggesting that we eliminate the testimonials completely. Just present the awards and call it an evening. Keep it short. I say that entirely in his own interest. ”
    Rowley was closer to Gunderson than any of them, and probably more in debt to him as well. Before the Europa Point dig, the Gibraltar Museum of Archaeology and Geology had been a virtually unfunded operation with a dedicated but unpaid part-time staff of a single archaeologist (Rowley), housed above a hole-in-the-wall Arab grocery store in George’s Lane. Now it was in an impressive old naval headquarters building on Line Wall Road, with a salaried staff of eight, the finest cast of the First Family skeletons in existence, a collection of stone tools from the site, and three magnificent, life-sized dioramas of prehistoric life at Europa Point, including a torchlit, affecting scene of the burial in progress. All of this was thanks to Ivan Gunderson, only partly because of his initial excavation and subsequent donation of the dig site itself.