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I waved off any further conversation “It’s okay Stay; enjoy your dessert I can find my way back from here”

Thatmy way forward that seemed difficult at the moment

CHAPTER 4

I peered over Miranda’s shoulder at the screen of her laptop “Okay,” I said, “push the button Let’s see what the verdict is”

It was nearly noon, though no speck of sunlight could penetrate the depths of the palace’s subterranean subtreasury We’d spent themeasure, and therefore welconore hoardly dinner had ended

Miranda had keyed dozens ofForDisc, softe’d developed at UT to compare unknown bones with our forensic data bank, which included thousands of skeletons whose sex, race, and stature were known Might ForDisc shed light on the racial and geographic origin of our John Doe — or Jesus Doe?

Miranda scrolled the cursor and clicked “Gee, here’s a shocker,” she said “It’s a dude” I laughed; given the robustness of the skull and the narrowness of the pelvis, there’d been no doubt in my mind that the skeleton was male “Hht?”

“I did — head to heel — and added a bit to e”

“And what’d you get?”

“About one hundred sixty-six centimeters; five five”

“Hmm,” she repeated “ForDisc puts him at one hundred seventy-five centimeters — nearly five nine”

“That’s odd Really odd” Could my tape measure be off — by four full inches? I stepped back and took another look at the skeleton Suddenly I was struck by how unusual the proportions were — an anoistered subconsciously but had failed to appreciate fully “Look how long of limb and short of trunk he is,” I said to Miranda and Stefan “This guy was like a hu froth, and normally that fory guy like this — a reminder that it’s the exceptions and outliers that

The softas also handicapped by the age — or rather the youth — of its data ForDisc knew nineteenth-and twentieth-century skeletons well — especially nita to it And so, like us, ForDisc didn’t know if our guy was first century or fourteenth, if he was Palestinian or Parisian

“Well, rats,” said Miranda “I want a ForDisc upgrade One that has time-travel and crystal-ball features”

I was disappointed, too, but Stefan seeet the sa question anyway: How old are the bones — seven hundred years or two thousand?” He turned to ht a saw if you want to cut a cross section from the femur”

“Dentist,” I said “Pulling teeth is easier Besides, it doesn’t fill the air with bone dust Or with plague spores What if this guy had the plague — wasn’t there an epidemic here in the fourteenth century?” Miranda nodded “So shouldn’t we be worried? Shouldn’t we be wearing masks?”

“Yes, but no,” said Miranda “It was really bad here An infected ship anchored at Marseilles in January of 1348, and the rats swanon teeks later Within a matter of months, two-thirds of the people were dead — twenty, thirty thousand people Corpses rotting in the streets, choking the river”

“Terrible,” I said “Must have been terrifying, too”

“A lot of people blamed the Jews,” she went on “All over Europe, Jeere driven from cities Entire Jewish settlements were massacred Horrific But here, the pope at the tiue — Clement the Sixth — defended the Jews, said they weren’t to blae”

“That took guts,” I said “The townspeople could’ve turned on him”

“No kidding,” she agreed “What’s the old saying? ‘The friend of ue doesn’ttime-bomb endospores the way some other bacteria do”