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which bears witness to continental-scale firestorms, and so on. Some gigantic impact occurred at that time—scientists guess at a meteorite capable of creating a vast crater, but we don’t really know.
    â€œWhat we do know is that some large-scale event ended a majestic era of brilliant and strange living things.
    â€œOur grave suggests that what perished at the end of the Cretaceous period—or the Mesozoic era, which contains all reptilian periods—was not only the dinosaurs but also a humanlike race perhaps so thinly distributed that no remains have turned up—till now.”
    â€œ Homo Cliftensis ,” said Kylie.
    They halted where the sandstones had been excavated and there were tokens of human activity, with planks, brushes, jackhammers, and a wheelbarrow incongruous nearby. They stood on a bluff overlooking the desert, across which mesas were sending long fingers of shadow. A well of shadow filled the excavation they now contemplated, as it lay like a pool below the ancient crusts of the K/T boundary.
    Kylie shivered. But the air was cooling, the sky overhead deepening its blue.
    Two students, a man and a woman, were standing guard by the dig. They moved back as the new arrivals appeared. Clift jumped down into the hole and removed a tarpaulin, revealing the ancient grave. The skeleton remained lying on its side, cramped within the coffin for an unimaginable age. The Bodenland family looked down at it without speaking.
    â€œWhat’s all the red stuff?” Kylie asked in a small voice. “Is it bloodstains?”
    â€œRed ocher,” Clift said. “To bury with red ocher was an old custom. The Neanderthals used it—not that I’m suggesting this is a Neanderthal. There were also flowers in the grave, which we’ve taken for analysis. Of course, there’s more work to be done here. I’m half afraid to touch anything …”
    They looked down in silence, prey to formless thought. The light died. The skeleton lay half buried in ocher, fading into obscurity.
    Kylie clung to Larry. “Disturbing an ancient grave … I know it’s part of an archeologist’s job, but … there are superstitions about these things. Don’t you think there’s something—well, evil here?”
    He hugged her affectionately. “Not evil. Pathetic, maybe. Sure, there’s something disconcerting when the past or the future arrives to disrupt the present. Like the way this chunk of the past has come up to disrupt our wedding day.” Seeing Kylie’s expression cloud over, he said, “Let the dead get on with their thing. I’m taking you to have a drink.”
    â€œYou’ll find a canteen at the bottom of the hill,” said Clift, but he spoke without looking away from his discovery, crouching there, almost as motionless as the skeleton he had disinterred.
    The sun plunged down into the desert, a chill came over the world. Kylie Bodenland stood at the door of the trailer they had been loaned, gazing up at the stars. Something in this remote place had woken unsuspected sensibilities in her, and she was trying to puzzle out what it was.
    Some way off, students were sitting round a campfire, resurrecting old songs and pretending they were cowboys, in a fit of artificial nostalgia.
    City ladies may be fine
    But give me that gal of mine …
    Larry came up behind Kylie and pulled her into the trailer, kicking the door shut. She tasted the whiskey on his lips, and enjoyed it. Her upbringing had taught her that this was wickedness. She liked other wickednesses too, and slid her hand into Larry’s jeans as he embraced her. When she felt his response, she began to slide herself out of her few clothes, until she stood against him in nothing but her little silver chain and crucifix. Larry kissed it, kissed her breasts, and then worked lower.
    â€œOh, you beast, you beast,” she said. “Oh …”
    She clutched his head, but