John Ferguson, an engineer in Carrier's Advanced Systems Group, quietly asked the question: "Is the hair on the back of your neck standing up, too?"
Everyone in the room was reacting in their own way as a Peruvian archaeologist carefully, almost tenderly, removed the white wrapping that covered the frozen body of the "Ampato Maiden," the 500-year-old mummy that has caused a worldwide stir since her discovery last September atop an Andean volcano.
Straight black hair reaching her shoulders frames a face whose skin has dried and pulled back slightly from a full set of white teeth. But the brownish skin of her shoulders, bodice, arms, legs and feet retains a dull lustre not far from life.
To the scientists in the room, the Maiden on the table is a cache of knowledge frozen in pre-Columbian time. She is a potential storehouse of answers to questions about her Inca contemporaries that, until now, could only be guessed at.
But some of us gathered around the table see her through a parent's emotional eyes. With her hands delicately folded in her lap and her knees drawn up toward her chin, she is a vulnerable child of 13 or 14 about to be violently sacrificed for the overall good of her community. No answers here. Her silence poses only questions about the day her life ended near the windswept 20,700-foot summit of Nevado Ampato.
These have been four or five minutes not soon to be forgotten.
But eternity is short for a frozen mummy exposed to room-temperature air. Almost as if someone had clapped their hands, the church-like silence is broken.
The mummy is inspected one last time and rewrapped. Dr. Jose' Antonio Chavez, the archaeologist has protected the "Ampato Maiden" since she was first delivered to him, lifts the frozen corpse from the table. Cradled in his arms, he lowers her into a Plexiglas case like a father putting a sleeping child into a crib.
Almost as an afterthought, Dr. Ruth Salas, Dr. Chavez's wife and fellow archaeologist, slips the girl's frozen sandals into the box with her.
Only then do Ferguson and Steve Stopyra, a designer in the Advanced Systems Group, screw the lid down firmly and slide the case into a much larger insulated box that has been cooled down with dry ice to well below zero.
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