That was two years almost to the day before the final night—the night that was the culmination of our greatest and most secret project.
For six months we scoured the Holy Land to find Ezekiel’s precious cache. That was the trip that you may recall reading about in the newspapers—if you follow such things—where Bergen and I discovered the Negev Scrolls, sometimes called the second Dead Sea Scrolls.
For the rest of the world, that trip turned out to be one of the most beneficial parts of our project. Researchers will be poring over what we discovered for years.
But one thing the follow-up researchers won’t find are the two talismans we took from the cache, each a foot-wide blued-steel disk covered on both sides with fine script in ancient Hebrew. We smuggled them back here to the States.
The next eighteen months we were both hard to find. We labored feverishly on our project. We first worked intensively with other Biblical texts and commentaries and archeological references. We attended various symposiums on everything from archaic literary forms to n-dimensional geometry. We talked with numerous religious and archeological experts.
Eventually, our free time ran out. We had both wangled early sabbaticals for our overseas journey and its aftermath, and then cashed in our sick, vacation, and personal days. Finally we both had to go back to our regular jobs, but that hadn’t made us any less obsessed. We started overlapping the nocturnal set at the university: Programmers, janitors, and other people working on projects even stranger than ours.
Ned, even more than our wives, began getting concerned. He started to make a habit of intercepting Bergen after dinner just before he could head back to the university for the evening’s work. For a while they played cat and mouse. Finally, Bergen came in one night upset because he’d had to yell at Ned to get him out of the way.
The next night we all had a meeting. Ned began.
“Horace and Bergen. I’m glad to see you two have found such enthusiasm for your research. But we, and I know I speak for your wives as well as Kitty and myself, are concerned that you’re going at this a little too hard.”
“Nonsense, Ned,” answered Bergen confidently. His eyes were bright and alert but he coughed a bit before he continued. And his face was looking sunken and worn. The fading tan from the Negev expedition had left behind a pallor. A good rest would have done him no harm, or me either I’m sure. But I doubt either of us could have rested right then. We were too close.
“No pain, no gain,” he continued. “Besides, look what tremendous things we’ve uncovered so far! The Negev Scrolls.”
Lorraine admitted, The scrolls are an impressive accomplishment. But is whatever you’re working on now worth your health? Look at you, dear. I never get a chance to see you these days. You just run in, eat dinner, then run out.”
“I’m sorry, my dear. But the equipment we’re using is only available at odd times. It won’t go on much longer, I assure you. Another couple of weeks at most.”
“What are you working on?” asked Ned.
“I’d rather show you. It won’t be long now.”
“You’re sure you’re not overdoing it?”
“We’re doing fine,” I assured everyone. “This is truly exciting work. And we’ll have something fine to show you soon. Please, trust us for just a couple weeks longer.”
As soon as the others left we hurried back to the university to continue our work.