"Oh! George Ayers. Right," Dr. McDunn says. "Well, I gave him leave to go to Ethiopia for a year. Must have been... ten years ago?"

"Do you have any records indicating where in Ethiopia he went?" Pretty sure there's also kind of a lot of Ethiopia.

"Oh, yes, he was doing a dig at an ancient site... Dallol, I think? Must be Dallol. He sent perfunctory reports for a while." Dr. McDunn gestures. "I had them filed away.... I didn't read them."

"Can we? We'd like to know whether it's possible to reach him, and where precisely we'd go if we wanted to track him down now."

"What story did you say you were doing?" Dr. McDunn says.

"We're investigating some events that happened ten years ago involving a former student."

"...And you are willing to go to Ethiopia about it?"

"I'm willing to read his reports about it, at least."

Dr. MacDunn super thinks that Dr. Ayers is dead, and in the absence of anyone confirming it plans to keep him on the payroll indefinitely. Graduate students can cover teaching Dr. Ayers's classes, and he can allocate the money that's supposed to go to Dr. Ayers's salary to covering other budget shortfalls.

"I suppose," Dr. MacDunn says. "I'll try to see if I can find them somewhere in here and send them your direction."

Of course he thinks he's dead. She thinks he's dead. "We are mostly concerned about the events involving his student, Lev Aarons. George Ayers is currently our best lead. Do you have any ways short of tracking him down that we could get information on that?"

"I suppose you could look at his records at the school," Dr. MacDunn says.

"I assume those aren't in the university library; can you tell us where we'd find them?"

"You go to the registrar's office," Dr. MacDunn says.

"Thank you so much."

Mordred is having flashbacks to every time he ever had to make a schedule change.

"Should we come back for the reports at a later time, or do you want somewhere to send them?"

"Give me your address and I'll send them."

(He will not send them.)

"Thank you. It'd be miserable for this not to pan out and us have to go all the way to Dallol."

"We'd really appreciate it if you could send them here. This is the address of Mrs. Winston-Rogers, who is interested in learning more about what occurred to Mr. Aarons. Please understand, he was recently released from a decade-long term of treatment in an asylum, and though he's made great progress, I think it would be very helpful to him to have anything that might provide some closure to his association with Mr. Ayers, or lead us in the direction of something that might. Even Mr. Ayers himself is unreachable, I think there's a chance the reports could be a game-changer for his personal recovery."

Anemone doesn't think this will be helpful to Lev at all but she is prepared to go to Ethiopia to find something that will be. And to track down weird bullshit. Mostly to track down weird bullshit.

Dr. MacDunn looks hesitant. "I guess... I can have Samantha look at it for you?"

Dr. MacDunn brings them to the secretary, who brings them the reports.

The reports are more-or-less "still in Ethiopia! doing an archeological dig! probably going to discover something soon." They stop entirely in 1926. Dr. MacDunn remembered correctly that the dig was in Dallol; the papers are extremely light on information about what he was trying to dig up.

Well At Least They Have Narrowed It Down To A Single Settlement.

Meanwhile--

Zoe and Carrie do not see their friends anywhere obvious on campus. They SO, however, snag a university directory that tells them that Dr. Ayers is in 213 Dodd Hall.

Dr. Roman says, "Office hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday" in a tone of obvious annoyance.

"I'm sorry. - We're looking for Dr. Ayers?"

"Or our friends, who were also looking for him."

"That lazy Anthropology department secretary really needs to update the registry."

Dr. Roman directs them to Burnish, who tells them that their friends are in a meeting with Dr. MacDunn.

"Wait, we can't go in there!"