Dance Of Death

And then, quite distinctly, the clump of a boot on stone.

Smithback whirled around. "Who is it?" he blurted out, his voice echoing among the vaults and boilers.

No answer.

"Who's there?" Smithback said a little louder. And, as he took a slow step backward, the only response was the thudding of his heart.

THIRTY-ONE

margo made the final correction to the last page of the bluelines for Museology and laid the proof aside. I'm probably the only editor in the country who still works with hard copy, she thought to herself. She settled back into her chair with a sigh and glanced at the clock: 2 a.m. exactly. She yawned, stretched, the old oaken chair creaking in protest, and rose.

The offices of Museology were located in a stuffy set of rooms half a flight up from the fifth floor, jammed under the eaves of the museum's west wing. A dirty skylight provided illumination during the day, but now the skylight was a rectangle of black, and the only light came from a feeble Victorian lamp that sprouted from the ancient desk like an iron mushroom.

Margo slipped the corrected bluelines into a manila envelope and wrote a quick note to the journal's production manager. She would drop them off at the museum's printing office on her way out. The journal would be printed first thing in the morning, and by noon proof copies would be going out by hand to the museum's president, the dean of science, Menzies, and the other department heads.

She shivered involuntarily, experiencing a moment of self-doubt. Was it really her duty to mount this crusade? She loved working again at the museum-she could see herself working here happily for the rest of her life. Why mess it up?

She shook her head. It was too late now, and besides, it was something she had to do. With Menzies behind her, it was doubtful they'd fire her.

She climbed down the metal stairs and entered the enormous fifth-floor corridor, stretching four city blocks, said to be the longest horizontal corridor in all of New York City. She walked along its length, heels clicking on the marble floor. At last, she stopped at the elevator, pressed the down button. A rumble sounded in the bowels of the building as the elevator rose. After about a minute, the doors opened.

She stepped in and pressed the button for the second floor, admiring as she did so the once-elegant elevator, with its nineteenth-century brass grille and fittings and its ancient bird's-eye-maple paneling, much scarred by time and use. It creaked and groaned its way back down, then stopped with a jolt, the doors rumbling open again. She made her way through a succession of old, familiar museum halls- Africa, Asian Birds, Shells, the Trilobite Alcove. The lights in the cases had been turned off, which gave them a creepy aspect, the objects inside sunken in shadow.

She paused in the gloom. For a moment, memories of a terrible night seven years earlier threatened to return. She pushed them aside and quickened her step, arriving at the unmarked door to the printing division. She slipped the bluelines into the slot, turned, then made her way back through the echoing, deserted galleries.

At the top of the second-floor stairs, she paused. When she spoke to the Tano elder, he'd told her that, if the masks had to be displayed, they must be placed facing in the proper directions. Each of the four masks embodied the spirit of a cardinal direction: as a consequence, it was critical that each faced its respective direction. Any other arrangement would threaten the world with chaos-or so the Tanos believed. More likely, it would threaten the museum with even more controversy, and that was something Margo was most anxious to avoid. She had forwarded the information to Ashton, but Ashton was overworked and snappish, and she had little faith he'd carried it out.

Instead of descending the stairs to the employee security entrance, Margo turned left, heading for the Sacred Images entrance. In a few moments, she arrived. The door to the exhibition had been designed to look like the portal to an ancient Hindu tomb of the Khmer style, the carved stone lintels depicting gods and demons engaged in a titanic struggle. The figures were in violent motion: flying apsaras, dancing Shivas, gods with thirty-two arms, along with demons vomiting fire and cobras with human heads. It was unsettling enough that Margo stopped, wondering if it wouldn't be better to call it a night and do this errand in the morning. But tomorrow the hall would be a madhouse again, and Ashton would be there, impeding her and- in the wake of her editorial-perhaps even denying her access.

She shook her head ruefully. She couldn't just give in to the demons of the past. If she walked away now, her fears would have won.

She stepped forward and slid her magnetic card through the reader beside the entrance door; there was a soft click of well-oiled steel disengaging, and the security light went green. She pushed the door open and entered, carefully closing it behind her and making sure the security LED returned to red.

The hall was silent and empty, lit softly by exterior spots, the cases dark. Two o'clock was too late for even the most dedicated curator. The air smelled of fresh lumber, sawdust, and glue. Most of the exhibits were in place, with only a few remaining unmounted. Here and there a curatorial cart stood loaded with objects not yet in place. The floor was strewn with sawdust, lumber, pieces of Plexiglas, and electrical wires. Margo looked around, wondering how they could possibly open in three days. She shrugged, glad the opening was Ash-ton's problem and not hers.

As she walked through the initial room of the exhibition, her curiosity rose despite the sense of unease. Last time, she'd been looking for Nora and hadn't bothered to pay much attention to the surroundings. Even in its unfinished state, it was clear this was going to be an exceptionally dramatic exhibit. The room was a replica of the burial chamber of the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertari, located in the Valley of the Queens in Luxor. Instead of depicting the unlooted tomb, the designers had reconstructed what the tomb might have looked like just after being looted. The enormous granite sarcophagus had been broken into several pieces, the i

She continued to read the label, her mission temporarily forgotten. It explained that the tomb had been robbed not long after the queen's burial by the very priests who had been assigned to guard it. The thieves had been in mortal dread of the power of the dead queen and had tried to destroy that power by smashing all her grave goods in order to purge the objects of their sacred power. As a result, everything not stolen had been smashed and was lying about helter-skelter.

She ducked under a low stone archway, its dark surfaces busy with graven images, and found herself suddenly plunged underground into the early Christian catacombs beneath Rome. She was in a narrow passageway cut into the bedrock. Loculi and arcosolia radiated outward in several directions, niches in their sides packed with bones. Crude inscriptions in Latin graced some of the niches, along with carved crosses and other sacred Christian imagery. It was disturbingly naturalistic, down to the models of rats scampering around the bones.

Ashton had gone for the sensational, but Margo had to admit it was effective. This would definitely pack in the crowds.