Once back at the table where a few of the Chinese dishes had been placed before them, Nicasio tried to get back into focus that other part of his life which was becoming far too consuming. Somehow he could see these new elements were rising to the importance of his relationship with Daniela, though he struggled to push this notion away.

"Everything OK, my boy?"

"Yeah . . ., yeah. Just someone checking in, that's all."

"Just someone?"

"No. I mean . . . yes. It's fine. Really, professor."

Tired as he was, Nicasio attempted to get back into the previous discussion. For now he did not want to think further about the troubles he had already got himself into with Daniela. It was all about this latest ramping-up of his academic priorities.

He looked into the weather-beaten face of the professor and tried to block out the image of the frowning, yet beautiful countenance of the girl he had known intimately as a lover and companion for the better part of five years. He had shared her emotions and been a part of her experiences since the dawn of her adulthood. And he took pride that he had been a significant force in her life.

A look back at the professor's balding head and the sound of his droning voice was enough to bring Nicasio thankfully back to the prosaic discourse at hand.

"So Sir . . . just who back in Spain or to the south in New Spain would have even carried out such orders as this . . . to place a domed burial structure on an isolated cliff? It's such an impossibly dangerous stretch of coastline."

Nicasio's expert knowledge of California's navigational difficulties and its hazardous coastline had come to bear on the perplexing question now faced by he and his mentor.

You know, professor, your timeline also puts on the table the earliest Manila galleon activities of Spain traveling along these cliffs. Commercial voyages back and forth from Acapulco in Mexico to Manila in the Philippines."

"Exactly, my boy. But on those earliest voyages, the return run across the Pacific usually avoided any proximity to the coast."

"Yet they were bound to it. For a line of sight back to Mexico. You don't think one of those huge sailed freighters could have stopped offshore at the mouth of the Bixby River? Rowed in with a crew . . . to climb the cliff and assemble . . ."

"Only on a very, very calm day, my boy. And at great peril to the men. And more importantly, their cargo . . .tons of silks and spices.

"OK. So you're going to keep the focus on our early expeditionaries or explorers? Rule out the more lucrative shipping trade with the Spice Islands? They traveled eastward across the Pacific and sailed back. . . around the same years"

"Well, I suppose even though the Manila to Mexico spice ships ran twice a year, they shouldn't be totally overlooked as a solution to our mystery. . ."

"Exactly, sir. But those Portuguese and Spanish galleon pilots eventually did learn not to sail too close to the coastline on their return. And epecially here at 36 degrees north Latitude where the tholos sits."

"True. They would make their great turn southward for Acapulco much further out at sea."

"Riding as long as possible the Easterly Trade Winds."

"Yes. And it was at Point Concepcion to the south of us when they turned and glided in on a southward run to Acapulco."

Nicasio began to shovel the hot food into his mouth with a fork, skipping the formality of chop sticks.

"And what kind of torture must that have been for the pilots and crew at the end of a four month journey?" He asked. "No refrigeration for food? Limited stores of fresh water? The disease of scurvy taking its toll?"

The waiter brought them both a third beer.

As a history researcher of the epoch, Nicasio tried to imagine, as he had done many times in his studies, one of the huge Spanish galleons lumbering over the waves, but in this instance maneuvering in close enough to the coast to not become trapped between the prevailing west winds and the lethal coastline.

He went on to visualize one of them, three masted and three stories high at the stern, anchored offshore while the crew set out in the small fustas to embark toward the shore, fighting the high surf. He struggled to see how this would not be a tragedy for the men amid the famously treacherous rocks, gigantic waves and high cliffs. Getting to the sandy beach at the Bixby River mouth from offshore would have certainly been suicidal, he thought.

"Many Galleon crews died of scurvy on those long runs home," the professor said, also eating now feverishly. "And we have plenty of documentation of the wrecks from ships that got trapped in too close to those California headlands."

"Many of them I am familiar with," Nicsasio said in a resigned voice.

" But those records are mostly much later than we're talking about here, young man."

"Either way, it must have been a huge risk. Whether it was the explorers, mapping the coast during the late fifteen hundreds, or the Manila fleets crossing the Pacific to Asia at the beginning in the next century."

"Well there were some real bastards in charge of their crews in those days as you have read." the professor added. "Life meant little to the investors of those Spanish merchant fleets drifting between Mexico and Asia. It was a sign of the times, my boy. Life was cheap on most nautical operations during those centuries."

"Well it was no small fortune they were risking," Nicasio astutely added. "A lifetime of leisure could be earned for a ship owner from just one or two successful crossings from Manila to Mexico. Marked up profits from tons of silk, porcelains and spices back in Europe were astronomical."

"Oh yes. Cloves alone, as an antidote for pain, carried the worth of its weight in gold during this age," the professor proudly claimed."

Nicasio was now half listening to the professor and trying not to think of Daniela. He took a long drink of his recent beer and looked at his watch. He half-expected her to call back at any moment.

"So you don't believe it was a ship from the Manila fleet that had anything to do with the tholos, then, professor?"

"No, Nicasio. I'm guessing our tomb was placed there on that cliff by someone outside the ventures of the Spice Islands. Someone possibly heading an earlier expedition . . . and with a very peculiar agenda. It would have to be a skilled crew with bold pilots sailing smaller, wind-worthy caravels. They would have to have been lateen rigged for better reaching into the wind. And equipped for safer navigation, away from the shore and the breakers. Yet able to tack in close when the situation called for it."

"Alright. Perfectly logical. But who could that have been around our time frame? We've got only a couple of worthy candidates on the seas near the West coast near 1600. Just a handful of men sailed anywhere near the California coast in that century. Few I have studied could even fit that profile, professor."

"Yes, and it had to have been an expedition that passed in close to the Big Sur headlands, either charting it while sailing up or running back down in dire straits, as they often did upon returning from expeditions, the men sick or dying."

"And at the command of an expert pilot" Nicasio weighed in. "Few maps were complete in those times of the western world, and fewer still its coast. This had to be at the hands of someone skilled enough to handle a delicate landing on that impossible stretch of coast. And weather permitting. Someone experienced with tides, winds, even the unpredictable variation of the surf. There are killer waves down there normally."

"And with the crew able to ferry those marble stones in to shore, probably on fustas or smaller crafts. Then up the steep cliff side for instillation."

Both men silently contemplated in their weariness what the risks and chances of such a landing on that coast would have been-or possibly cost in lives.

"It was definitely no small task, Nicasio," the professor finally said. "Even for today. And it amazes me still that anyone could have done it."

"And yet, professor, the tomb exists down there. Proven through our photos and video footage."

Both men, in silent contemplation, took ong drinks of their beers.

Nicasio suddenly felt his phone vibrating again in his pocket. He nervously chose to let it ring until it stopped. "I think I'm beginning to hear strange buzzing sounds in my exhaustion," the professor said, while smiling sleepily. "Perhaps we should continue this barrage of ideas and discussion tomorrow. Early."

"Early?"

"I'll be at your hotel room at seven o' clock, young man. We'll depart for the site after breakfast."

"But . . ."

"We have much to do in Big Sur before the sun is high, my boy."

Just then the waiter appeared with more of their dinner. Nicasio looked up again at his drowsy mentor as the remainder of the Chinese food was laid out before them. Both began eating the meal in silence though, he now too tired to even taste it. Professor Simons gave his final admonition as he attacked a spring roll deftly with a single chop stick.

"Let's finish here and get some sleep. You'll have a lot of library work ahead of you back at Cal when we wrap up our preliminary fieldwork tomorrow."

With a mouthful of chow mein Nicasio stretched out his arms in a gesture of being hopelessly overworked. He frowned and managed to speak.

"Give me some good news for a change."

The professor remained silent and ate determinedly, joylessly. It was obvious to his young apprentice that he had acquired this habit early in life and had probably always hurried through certain sensory luxuries at the expense of a remarkable and single-minded career. Nicasio was enjoying the meal no better but ate slower and tried to imagine at that very hour what Daniela might be doing. He was now too brain-numbed to go on speaking. Perhaps it was the beers together with the hard work, or maybe it had just been the unrelenting energy of the professor that had now finally disabled him. He could only visualize immediate and unmolested sleep in the hotel room.

The two finished their dinner and stiffly sauntered out of the restaurant, across the parking lot to the hotel complex. They parted in the lobby with barely a word. Nicasio felt a strange mixture of exhaustion, apprehension and elation as he entered his darkened room. Though he ordered a non-smoking area, he could detect the distinctive smell of cigarettes from the curtains and carpeting, and this put him in an even more depressed mood. As he undressed and stepped into the bathroom, he took his blackberry out of his backpack and noticed there had been a series of calls since he had turned it off in the restaurant. Three were from Daniela and two from a number he didn't recognize.

After declining to take a well-deserved shower, he fell onto the bed and looked at the small clock in the display of his phone. It was one-thirty in the night, not an uncommon hour for him and Daniela to talk during the past. Again he decided not to call her. His arms and back ached as he reclined on the mattress. He felt as if he had just spent a week at some punishing, hard labor camp. After several minutes of silence he found himself somewhere between sleep and consciousness, half in a reverie that he was back in the lecture hall on campus. He continued to progress into a deeper sleep, embracing the dream in earnest:

He was showing his California History class a Power Point presentation of the tholos on the slopes of Big Sur. A hand shot up from the front row. It was Becky-the girl with the angelic blue eyes. She was crying.

"Where did you go, Mr. Carvajal," she sobbed in an impassioned tone. The entire class became silent. They were listening for a response and looking at him with expressions of anticipation and confusion. The class waited, as if they all deserved some sort of explanation.

Becky's voice pierced out into the lecture hall, breaking the stillness.

"Don't you know I dream of you, Mr. Carvajal? She continued in an embarrassing confessional. "Or even how much I love you?"

The class began to laugh, clap, and then cheer loudly. She boldly stood up and walked to the front near his lectern. With tears visible in her large alluring eyes, the admiring student approached him and whispered in sobs under the sounds of the students' rude cheers.

"And don't you know . . . you'll never become a professor here now?"

From the back of the room another figure appeared, framed in the hall's central doorway. Nicasio's gaze left the crying girl and focused on the young woman standing as an outsider, observing the chaotic situation. She was in a position half in and half outside the room. It was Daniela. After a frozen moment, she gestured subtly for him to follow her, and then turned and walked back out of the doorway.

Nicasio left the lectern, retreating from the class slowly. While the students continued to chant, he broke into a run to join her. Hurrying out beyond the hall's double-doors and onto the tree-lined quad, he looked in all directions before realizing that Daniela was no where to be found."

Nicasio awoke suddenly with a frightened jolt which reverberated through his whole body. He was soaked with a filmy sweat and a discoloration on his skin infused with the dust he had carried with him from the day's long digging. Mustering all his efforts he rallied his composure, and calmed himself back into an obliterating sleep.

* * *