They arrived in the Great Rotunda to find the press conference already in progress. Reporters surrounded Winston Wright, Director of the Museum, poking microphones and cameras in his direction, voices echoing crazily in the cavernous space. Ippolito, the Museum’s Security Director, stood at the Director’s side. Clustered around the periphery were other Museum employees and a few curious school groups.
Wright stood angrily in the quartz lights, fielding shouted questions. His usually impeccable Savile Row suit was rumpled, and his thin hair was drooping over one ear. His pale skin was gray, and his eyes looked bloodshot.
“No,” Wright was saying, “apparently they thought their children had already left the Museum. We had no prior warning. ... No, we do not keep live animals in the Museum. Well, of course, we have some mice and snakes for research purposes, but no lions or tigers or anything of that sort. ... No, I haven’t seen the bodies. ... I don’t know what kind of mutilation there was, if any. ... I don’t have the expertise to address that subject, you’ll have to wait for the autopsies. ... I want to emphasize that there’s been no official statement made by the police. ... Until you stop shouting I won’t answer any more questions. ... No, I said we do not have wild animals in the Museum. ... Yes, that includes bears. ... No, I’m not going to give any names. ... How could I possibly answer that question? ... This press conference is over. ... I said this press conference is over. ... Yes, of course we are cooperating in every way with the police. ... No, I don’t see any reason why this should delay the opening of the new exhibition. Let me emphasize that the opening of Superstition is right on schedule. ... We have stuffed lions, yes, but if you’re trying to imply. ... They were shot in Africa seventy-five years ago, for Heaven’s sake! The zoo? We have no affiliation with the zoo. ... I’m simply not going to respond to any more outrageous suggestions along those lines. ... Will the gentleman from the Post please stop shouting? ... The police are interviewing the scientist who found the bodies, but I have no information on that. ... No, I don’t have anything more to add, except that we’re doing everything we can. ... Yes it was tragic, of course it was. ...”
The press began to fan out, heading past Wright into the Museum proper.
Wright turned angrily toward the security director. “Where the hell were the police?” Margo heard him snap. As he turned, he said over his shoulder, “if you see Mrs. Rickman, tell her to come to my office immediately.” And he stalked out of the Great Rotunda.
= 6 =
Margo moved deeper into the Museum, away from the public areas, until she reached the corridor called ‘Broadway.’ Stretching the entire length of the Museum—six city blocks—it was said to be the longest single hallway in New York City. Old oaken cabinets lined the walls, punctuated every thirty feet by frostedglass doors. Most of these doors had curators’ names in gold leaf edged in black.
Margo, as a graduate student, had only a metal desk and a bookshelf in one of the basement labs. At least I have an office, she thought, turning off from the corridor and starting down a narrow flight of iron stairs. One of her graduate-student acquaintances had only a tiny battered school desk, wedged between two massive freezers in the Mammalogy Department. The woman had to wear heavy sweaters to work, even at the height of August.
A security guard at the bottom of the stairwell waved her on, and she moved down a dim tunnel, flanked on both sides by mounted horse skeletons in ancient glass cases. No police tape was in sight.
In her office, Margo dropped her carryall beside her desk and sat down. Most of the lab was actually storage for South Seas artifacts: Maori shields, war canoes, and cane arrows stuffed into green metal cabinets that stretched from floor to ceiling. A hundred-gallon fish tank, a simulated swamp belonging to the Animal Behavior Department, perched on an iron frame underneath a battery of lights. It was so overpopulated with algae and weeds that Margo had only rarely been able to catch sight of a fish peering out through the murk.
Next to her desk was a long worktable with a row of dusty masks. The conservator, a sour young woman, worked in angry silence, spending what seemed barely three hours each day at her task. Margo figured it took her about two weeks to conserve each mask, judging by the slow turnover. The particular mask collection she was assigned to contained five thousand such masks, but it didn’t seem to concern anyone that, at the rate she was going, the project would take close to two centuries to complete.
Margo logged onto her computer terminal. A message in green letters appeared, swimming into focus out of the depths of the CRT:
HELLO MARGO GREEN@BIOTECH@STF
WELCOME BACK TO MUSENET
DISTRIBUTED NETWORKING SYSTEM,
RELEASE 15-5
COPYRIGHT ? 1989-1995 NYMNH