Sleepwalker by Michael Cadnum

cod liver—and inject the saggy parts with collodion.”
    â€œI hope you don’t suggest we do that to our friend. I know exactly what we should do with our ancient friend. We won’t keep him like an old boot.”
    â€œI wasn’t suggesting—”
    â€œWe will have him freeze-dried, like coffee. Like food for mountain climbers. We will soak him in something kind to him—polyethylene glycol and water, at fifteen percent—and then when he is dried out we can keep him at a normal temperature, and not in a giant refrigerator like this.”
    There was something mocking about her manner, insouciant, impenetrably happy. He was still slightly annoyed by her, but he was won over by her, too.
    â€œBut we are wasting time,” she said. “Use your tape recorder. We must continue. I am ready.” She set forth what Davis recognized as an endoscope, a metal tube for looking inside body cavities. She straightened a stainless steel tray on a side table. “Now, when you extract the gut, we will have somewhere to put it.”
    â€œWe don’t have to do everything in one night.”
    â€œWe will want to know what was his last meal. Hurry, Mr. Lowry. For a famous man, you are very slow.”
    â€œI don’t like to be rushed.”
    â€œYou are standing like a statue. I cannot tell who is the bog man, the one standing up, or the one lying down. You are both too slow.”
    Davis found the ON switch on the Panasonic. He cleared his throat. “We have a remarkably preserved male of as yet imperfectly determined age. In general appearance he is well built. His shoulders are fully muscled.” He bent closer to the head. “The pinna of the left ear shows some loss of inner cartilage. Otherwise, there is no sign of decay or, for that matter, damage, except for a wound to the throat.”
    â€œContinue, Mr. Lowry.”
    â€œThe hair of his head is reddish-to-ginger in color. Probably a postmortem change in pigmentation. Much of the body has lost calcium to the extent that the limbs are spongy-to-hollow in feel. Pending the results of a computerized axial tomography workup there is no way to determine the presence of a foreign body as possible cause of death. A xeroradiograph will help determine skull fractures, if any, and other such details impossible to observe from the outside.”
    He switched off the tape recorder.
    â€œYou are doing a magnificent job. Shall I insert the endoscope?”
    He hesitated.
    â€œI will make only a small hole. We want to look around the body cavity, Mr. Lowry.”
    â€œThere is something very strange about all of this. Forgive me, Irene. I have to stop for a moment.”
    â€œIt is too powerful, the presence of this ancient murder.”
    She said this calmly, even happily, but she looked into Davis’s eyes, and seemed to understand him.
    â€œForgive me. I have trouble maintaining my professional detachment lately.”
    â€œYou need not apologize. I am pleased to see that you understand our friend. He wants our respect. He will not mind if we study him. If we are respectful of the dead, they will not harm us.”
    Davis laughed, but she did not laugh in return.
    The Skeldergate Man seemed to barely sleep. He seemed to twitch and toss, uneasily, in a dream.
    As if he had made a sound.
    Davis glanced up, to see if Irene had heard it.
    She smiled back at him expectantly. “We can continue,” she said.
    The hand of the Man moved. It was only unfolding, Davis saw, from an awkward position.
    It continued to move.
    Davis held his breath until it stopped.

6
    Davis and Jane reached the pub before anyone else. They each arrived at the same time by purest coincidence. They sat in the corner, beside the fireplace. Davis bought them both a pint of Stone’s, and Jane told him about the accident in Trench Five.
    â€œOliver looked dead. We all were certain that he was, really, and then he came back to life.