Birthright

this,” he told her and started out of the kitchen. “Bring the cookies.”
    She didn’t want to go with him, to be around him at midnight when he was all but naked and the smell of him had her system quivering. But banking on that stupendous personal control, she followed him into his makeshift office.
    He hadn’t gone for a desk, but had jury-rigged a long work space out of a sheet of plywood and a couple ofsawhorses. He’d set up a large display board and pinned various photographs, sketches and maps to it.
    Even with a cursory glance she could see his thought process, his organization of data. When it came to the work, at least, she knew his mind as well as her own.
    But it was the drawing on his worktable, one he’d anchored with an empty beer bottle and a chunk of quartz, that grabbed her attention.
    He’d taken their grid, their site survey, their map and had created the settlement with paper and colored pencils.
    There was no road now, no old farmhouse across it. The field was wider, the trees ranging along the creek, spreading shadows and shade.
    Around the projected borders of the cemetery he’d drawn a low wall of rock. There were huts, grouped together to the west. More rocks and stone tools collected in the knapping area. Beyond, the field was green with what might have been early summer grain.
    But it was the people who made the sketch live. Men, women, children going about their daily lives. A small hunting party walking into the trees, an old man sitting outside a hut, and a young girl who offered him a shallow bowl. A woman with a baby nursing at her breast, the men in the knapping area making tools and weapons.
    There was a group of children sitting on the ground playing a game with pebbles and sticks. One, a young boy who looked to be about eight, had his head thrown back and was laughing up at the sky.
    There was a sense of order and community. Of tribe, Callie noticed. And most of all, of the humanity Jake was able to see in a broken spear point or a shattered clay pot.
    “It’s not bad.”
    When he said nothing, just reached in the bag for another cookie, she gave in. “Okay, it’s terrific. It’s the kind of thing that reminds us why we do it, and will help Leo make points when he shows this along with the gathered data to the money people.”
    “What does it say to you?”
    “We lived. We grew and hunted our food. We bore ouryoung and tended the old. We buried our dead, and we didn’t forget them. Don’t forget us.”
    He trailed a finger down her arm. “That’s why you’re better at lecturing than I am.”
    “I wish I could draw like this.”
    “You’re not too bad.”
    “No, but compared to you, I suck.” She glanced up. “I hate that.”
    When he touched her hair, she shifted away, then opened the screen on the sliding doors and stepped out on his deck.
    The trees were silvered from the moon, and she could hear the gurgle of the creek, the chorus of cicadas. The air was warm and soft and still.
    She heard him step out behind her and laid her hands on the rail. “Do you ever . . . When you stand on a site, especially if you’ve focused in so it’s like you’re alone there. You know?”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “Do you ever feel the people we’re digging down to? Do you ever hear them?”
    “Of course.”
    She laughed, shook back her hair. “Of course. I always feel so privileged when I do, then after, when it passes, I just feel dopey. Hating the dopey stage, I’ve never said anything about it.”
    “You always had a hard time being foolish.”
    “There’s a lot to live up to. My parents, my teachers, the field. No matter how much lip service is paid, if you’re a woman in this, you’re always going to be outnumbered. A woman acts foolish in the field, starts talking about hearing the whispers of the dead, guys are going to dismiss her.”
    “I don’t think so.” He touched her hair again. “One thing I never did was dismiss you.”
    “No, but you wanted me in the sack.”
    “I did.” He brushed his lips over the back of her neck. “Do. But I was nearly as aroused by your mind. I always respected your work, Cal. Everyone does.”
    Still, it warmed her to hear it when he’d never said it toher before. “Maybe, but why take the chance? It’s better to be smart and practical and dependable.”
    “Safer.”
    “Whatever. You were the only foolish thing I ever did. Look how that worked out.”
    “It’s not finished working out yet.” He ran