Birthright

current battle.
    “Um. Do you often locate sites like this? Through serendipity.”
    “Mmm-hmm. Accidental discovery’s one way. Naturalcauses—say, an earthquake—are another. Or surveys, aerial photography, subsurface detections. Lots of scientific ways to pinpoint a site. But serendipity’s as good as any.”
    “So this isn’t that unusual.”
    Callie stopped long enough to glance up. “If you’re hoping to generate enough interest to keep the big, bad developer away, the method of finding the site isn’t going to give you a very long run. The more we expand civilization, build cities, the more often we find remnants of other civilizations underneath.”
    “But if the site itself is of significant scientific interest, I’ll get my long run.”
    “Most likely.” Callie went back to slow, careful digging.
    “Aren’t you going to bring in a team? I understood from my conversation with Dr. Greenbaum—”
    “Teams take money, which equals grants, which equals paperwork. That’s Leo’s deal. Dolan’s footing the bill, at the moment, for the prelim and the lab work.” She didn’t bother to look up. “You figure he’ll spring for a full team, the equipment, the housing, the lab fees for a formal dig?”
    “No.” Lana let out a breath. “No, I don’t. It wouldn’t be in his best interest. We have some funds, and we’re working on gathering more.”
    “I just drove through part of your town, Ms. Campbell. My guess is you couldn’t come up with enough to bring in more than a few college students with shovels and clipboards.”
    Annoyance creased Lana’s brow. “I’d think someone in your profession would be willing, even eager, to focus your time and energy on something like this, to work as hard as possible to keep this from being destroyed.”
    “I didn’t say I wasn’t. Give me the camera.”
    Impatient now, Lana edged closer, felt her sandals slide into dirt. “All I’m asking is that you—Oh God, is that another bone? Is that—”
    “Adult femur,” Callie said, and none of the excitement that was churning in her blood was reflected in her voice. She took the camera, snapped shots from different angles.
    “Are you going to take it into the lab?”
    “No. It stays. I take it out of this wet ground, it’ll dry out. I need proper containers before I excavate bone. But I’m taking this.” Delicately, Callie removed a flat, pointed stone from the damp wall of dirt. “Give me a hand up.”
    Wincing only a little, Lana reached down and clasped Callie’s filthy hand with her own. “What is it?”
    “Spear point.” She crouched again, took a bag out of her pack and sealed the stone, labeled it. “I didn’t know much about this area a couple of days ago. Nothing about the geological history. But I’m a fast learner, too.”
    She wiped her hands on the thighs of her jeans, straightened up. “Rhyolite. There was plenty of it in these hills. And this . . .” She turned the sealed stone in her hand. “This looks like rhyolite to me. Could be this was a camp—Neolithic campsite. Could be it was more. People of that era were starting to settle, to farm, to domesticate animals.”
    If she’d been alone, if she’d closed her eyes, she could have seen it in her mind. “They weren’t as nomadic as we once believed. What I can tell you, Ms. Campbell, from this very cursory study, is that you’ve got yourself something real sexy here.”
    “Sexy enough for a grant, a team, a formal dig?”
    “Oh yeah.” Behind her tea-colored lenses, Callie’s gaze scanned the field. She was already beginning to plot the site. “Nobody’s going to be digging footers for houses on this site for some time to come. You got any local media?”
    The light began to gleam in Lana’s eyes. “A small weekly newspaper in Woodsboro. A daily in Hagerstown. There’s a network affiliate in Hagerstown, too. They’re already covering the story.”
    “We’ll give them more, then bump it up to national.” Callie studied Lana’s face as she tucked the sealed bag in her pack. Yeah, pretty as a sunbeam, she thought. And smart, too. “I bet you come across real well on TV.”
    “I do,” Lana said with a grin. “How about you?”
    “I’m a killer.” Callie scanned the area again, began to imagine. Began to plan. “Dolan doesn’t know it, but his development was fucked five thousand years ago.”
    “He’s going to fight you.”
    “He’s going to lose, Ms. Campbell.”
    Once again Lana