She picked up the empty water glass next to the carafe on the side table. She didn’t smoke and needed something to hold onto, in order to stop her hands from shaking.

Her words flowed.

She told him about the ground opening.

Holding Hashim’s hand.

The terrified wonder in Nazir’s eyes.

“What about Julian?” Kurt asked.

“His eyes went white as if he were blind, and a harsh sorrow flushed through him. I could taste it as much as I tasted the dust.”

She didn’t tell him about the girl Julian told her he’d killed.

She put the water glass down.

Released from the pressure of holding the glass tight, her fingers came back to life and, like a waking spider, unfurled themselves of the tension.

She picked up the briefcase on the floor by her chair. Opened it and took out a wad of newspaper. She unwrapped the paper. She held out the fragment to Kurt.

He took it and rubbed his fingers around it.

She smelled a faint trace of roses, and wondered if he could. He seemed to have no reaction to the change in the air.

Slivers of light snuck through the blinds and landed on the stone in Kurt’s hand. The carved symbols were pronounced in the chiaroscuro light.

“You found this in the warehouse?”

“Yes. And if you didn’t think I was crazy before…”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“You will now.”

“Why?”

“I believe the stone helped save us.”

Kurt sat in his chair, and pointed for her to sit as well.

“How much do you know about cuneiforms?” he asked, looking at the stone in his hand.

“A little.”

He gave her back the stone and the light seemed to follow it into her hand.

“Do you know the story of Gilgamesh?” he asked.

“I know it’s an early myth.”

“In 1872 an engraver of bank notes in London, George Smith, made a discovery. He’d come upon clay tablets in a back room of the British Museum that spoke of man’s heritage being far more ancient than had been supposed. The tablets were said to be from the library of tens of thousands of volumes that King Assurbanipal had collected twenty-five centuries before, in the area that’s modern-day Iraq. What Smith discovered was these tablets told the story of the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh.’ A story of the quest to become human, and the search, and failure, to gain immortality. But what shocked Smith more was that he’d also found himself reading about a flood, an ark, and pairs of animals.”

“Genesis.”

“No. What he was reading wasn’t from the Bible. The tablets he’d found were already centuries old by the time the Genesis we know was supposed to have been written.”

“You’re saying the Bible plagiarized it?”

“I’m telling you what history suggests.”

“And that is?”

“We’re more than we know.”