The Eye of Horus by Carol Thurston Read Free Book Online Page B

of styrene or some other rigid plastic. Then there’s laser sintering, where a computer-guided laser beam duplicates whatever shape it’s told to by polymerizing a powdered plastic. A surgeon I know in Houston uses that technique for the parts he needs in reconstructive surgery.” He glanced at Kate. “No offense intended, but you’d get a more accurate armature for building that head, and much faster.”
    Kate looked around him to Cleo. “Not only the skull.Think of it, Clee—Tashat dressed and adorned as she might have been thirty-three centuries ago, walking the streets of ancient Waset—Thebes to the Greeks—with her little white dog. A blue lotus blossom tucked behind one ear, to match her eyes. All with
exquisite
accuracy.” The little smile plucking at one corner of Max’s mouth told her he remembered using that very word.
    For a moment Cleo just sat there, letting her imagination take up where Kate left off. Then, unable to sit still, she jumped up and began pacing back and forth across the end of Dave’s big desk, skirt swirling around her ankles.
    “Picture it, Dave. An entire room”—she used both arms to draw a huge square—“or rooms, devoted to life as a young Theban woman lived it during the Golden Age of Egypt! We could open with a series of X rays and cross sections from the scan, intermixing them with poster-size images of what Tashat looks like now—the composites Max mentioned. Follow that with drawings or photographs of each step in the reconstruction process. Next would be Kate’s sketches and colored portraits of Tashat, adorned with different wigs and jewelry, all building to the grand climax—a fully realized figure from life in her natural setting. All done with unassailable accuracy!”
    She stopped pacing, braced her hands on the desk, and spoke directly to Dave. “What the Egyptians really looked like remains controversial because the ethnic mix is speculative at best. We still don’t know how literally to take their reliefs and paintings, or Akhenaten’s physical abnormalities—the pear-shaped torso and elongated face. How much of that was real versus symbolic? Or was it just artistic convention?” She pushed free of the desk and went back to pacing. “With Tashat as the cornerstone, plus a few important loans, I’ll bet we could get a corporate grant to underwrite the whole thing.”
    Dave began to nod, slowly, eyes focused inward on his own fantasies—a cushy professorship at Chicago, if not Harvard or Yale.
    “Yes,” he murmured finally, smoothing a hand over his dark, razor-cut hair, “it does present some very interesting possibilities.”
    “Of course you’d have to write the monograph to go with it,” Cleo reminded him, adding fuel to the fire she’d lit under Dave’s ego. “From what Dr. Cavanaugh says, we might even discover something about the extra head that points to a death ritual nobody’s ever seen before.”
    Kate watched Max watch Cleo stack the deck in their favor. “The scanner is available this Sunday, day after tomorrow,” he put in, “if that works for whoever you’d get to transport her from the museum.”
    Dave stood up suddenly, signaling that he’d come to a decision. “Cleo is right. This could be an invaluable tool for educating the public. And that, after all, is our primary reason for being.” All smiles now, he came around his desk to seal the deal by shaking Max’s hand.
    As they all began moving toward the door, Cleo flashed Kate a self-satisfied grin, as if to say “See, I told you not to worry.” Dave almost caught her when he turned and dropped a proprietary hand on her shoulder. “I know you’ll want to be there, Cleo, so I’ll leave all the arrangements to you.”
    Kate had heard enough. Craving quiet, she started back to the workroom, and was halfway down the hall when Cleo caught up with her.
    “I know you want this, Katie, but be careful. From what I heard in there, I’d say this one is cut off the same