The 13th Goddess

        They had climbed to a dangerous height; the first, nearly eighty years old, silver-haired and shaky; the other, almost fifty years younger, crew cut and muscular. They stopped, pausing in the shade on a shallow ledge, far up the mountain, the aged man wheezing pathetically, the other breathing easily.

        “I’m an old man,” Marcus Hamlin gasped, leaning against the cool stone. He closed his eyes, exhausted muscles quivering, and fatigue weighing heavily on his shoulders. Hamlin knew he did not have the strength to climb back down the precipice, but that thought did not frighten him. He smiled as he accepted this truth; there was another way down, an easier way. Hamlin opened his eyes and squared his shoulders; he had finally reached his last, and most important decision. The finality of this decision eased his discomfort. Hamlin gazed out at his beloved Crete, absorbing its vibrancy—its silvery-green olive groves—its clumps of dark-green cypress trees—and the effervescent lushness of its vineyards.

         The young man did not see what the old man saw. “You going to live, Old Man?”

         “Am I going to live?” Hamlin laughed, the sound coming from his lungs more like a rasping cough. “Hell, I’m 79 years old, my lungs are rotted, I’ve got arthritis in my joints, and my heart’s putrefied.”

         The graduate student studied the professor. “I’ll get you some water,” he said.

         “Grad students,” muttered Hamlin, shaking his head. He had spent his entire academic life babysitting grad students. He had rushed them to hospitals, and taken them to counselors, psychiatrists, and lawyers. He had been part of their weddings, childbirths, divorces, and funerals. He had attended their birthday parties, graduation celebrations, and religious festivals. He had bailed some out of jail, prosecuted a couple, and intervened with foreign authorities to save others. But along the way he had discovered he needed their youthfulness and energy to survive. Archaeology Professor Marcus Hamlin held tenure at Oxford University, and even though he was pushing eighty, he still stood guard in the “Bone Room,” and still took tea on Beaumont Street, and all the while, was surrounded by grad students.

         “Grad students,” Hamlin whispered. They had come to him in an endless stream, their brilliant minds bursting with ideas. There were so many their faces blurred in his memory. Occasionally one would display more than just brilliant imagination and limitless energy. Occasionally Hamlin would meet one who could harness a dazzling idea within the boundaries of respectable writing, and he found himself pleased to award them a degree. However, in the end, they were all just a passing stream of energy and noise.

         But there had been one—just one—in his forty-plus years, who had gotten to him. This solitary student, a pixy-like beauty with a perspicacious mind and a passion to succeed who was different, so different, she had worked her way into his soul and changed his life. This girl—this woman-child—with an intellect far superior to any Hamlin had encountered was the reason he now struggled on this dangerous cliff. She was the force driving his final, definitive decision.

         “You couldn’t know,” he murmured. “You were just too young and inexperienced to understand. No one should have been given a mind like what you possessed. You were light-years ahead of all the rest. You were even way ahead of me.”

         "What?” asked the graduate student?

         Hamlin ignored the youth. He faced out over the precipice and whispered, “There was no way you could realize your theory would have been the death of me. You couldn’t see that your thesis would have caused the unraveling of everything I created. Your idea would have ripped through the pillars of the archaeological world, destroying careers, including mine. You would have reduced my life’s efforts to a bucket of worthless pot shards.”

          “You wanted me to co-author your theory. Ah! You were too naïve to appreciate what your proposal would have done to me. You couldn’t know that my enemies would have laughed at me, a has-been, clinging to the skirts of a pretty co-ed. I couldn’t joint publish with you, I would never again, have been able to look my enemies in the eye.”

         “You didn’t see the dangers to me that you had created. So, I had to stop you. I had to prevent you from destroying my reputation. But you wouldn’t turn away; you wouldn’t back down. You became an enemy, just like all my other enemies. I needed to defeat you, just like I conquered everyone else who confronted me. But this was different, I had to crush you so viciously the violence would brutalize your very soul.”

         “And that is what I did,” Hamlin muttered loud enough for the graduate student to hear. The youth leaned towards the old man, puzzled by those words.

         “Are you okay?”

         The Professor did not reply to the student’s question. Instead, Hamlin waved a grizzled hand, fanning the hot air. “Now, it is TIME that is the enemy; Time; a much more tenacious foe. I may have crushed you and saved my reputation. I bought myself another dozen years, but now it doesn’t matter. Now, your idea bubbles up everywhere. You were right then, and you’re right now. I was wrong. Now, my ideas are as ancient as I am. But for a few brief moments more, I am still king; still an icon, my words etched in stone.”

          Hamlin took a deep breath and wiped at the sweat covering his forehead. “My enemies, it was you who gave me satisfaction. It was you who gave me life. Carter, Hawkes, Kenyon, Gimbutas; we all battled each other, a brotherhood—yes, Marija, a sisterhood—of opposition. It was these wars that gave me life. But now you’re all gone; why did you leave me? Cancer, a heart attack, a silly bout of phenomena, and an unfortunate car accident—fate stripped every one of you from me. You were the best enemies a person could have! But you have left me all alone.” Hamlin frowned.

         “Now, it’s just me and this new generation of whiz-kids; specialists with all their gizmos and computers. They come to me in awe, seeing a Neanderthal, marveling at what I’ve accomplished using a pencil and a slide rule. I’m an icon to them. They do not dispute anything I say. To them, I am the Man on the Mountain. They are happy to be near me, but their ideas are like wolves at my throat.”

         “One should never be the last survivor. It’s better to go before you’re left all alone,” he muttered.

         “Doctor Hamlin, here’s some water.”

         Hamlin ignored the offering. “I am done now. It is time for me to go, it is time for my ideas to be replaced.” Hamlin chuckled, “But you still won’t actually let me alone. You’ll dismember my corpse, then bury it deeply among mindless pages of endnotes.”

         Hamlin gazed down at a handful of graduate students who stood, peering up at him, nearly a hundred feet below. Grad students; they had plagued him all his life. He smiled. Hamlin had cleaned up after his grad students all his life. Now, they would finally be useful to him. Today they would clean up after him.

         “It is time for me to go,” Hamlin announced. He looked up at the bright Aegean sun and basked in its early-season heat. He took one last look out over the dramatic Cretan landscape. This was the land he loved, his adopted home; his homeland he had fought and bled for. Hamlin cherished Crete, its mountains, olive groves, orchards, vineyards, and grain fields. He adored this island’s extraordinary people, their customs, remarkable language, dramatic history, and breathtaking archaeology. Marcus Hamlin felt no fear. The time was now. He had given all he could. He was ready to join those who had gone before him.

          He cried out a single word, “Roxanne,” and stepped out from the ledge.