Across a Billion Years (7 page)

For an hour the work was uneventful. Then we started coming around a zone of soft pinkish sandstone in which a batch of puzzle boxes were embedded. When you work hard enough and intensely enough, you start to become a kind of machine, sometimes, moving mechanically in an automatic rhythm, and that’s how Kelly, Mirrik, and I were functioning. I’d point, Kelly would core, Mirrik would clear away; that exposed an artifact, which Jan photographed, Leroy charted, and I lifted carefully from its place to go into the collection box. Point, core, clear; photograph, chart, lift. Point, core, clear; photograph, chart, lift. Point, core, clear—

Something strange gleamed at me out of the sandstone.

It was a curved metal mass, gleaming brightly. From the gentleness of its curve I estimated that it was a globe of some kind at least one meter in diameter. It was fashioned of one of the customary gold alloys used by the High Ones for larger mechanisms; its surface was smooth in some places and covered with centimeter-high ridges in others.

“Bring that corer in here, Kelly!” I called. “Let’s see what we’ve got!”

I guided her to the edges of the embedded artifact. Beautifully, delicately, she cored it free, exposing another few centimeters, and then a little more, and then still more. I scrabbled at the sand with my fingers, pushing it out of the way. Leroy didn’t pay any attention to what we were doing; he was busy charting, or perhaps he was trying to get a little biology going with Jan. In any case both of them were well up above me on the rim of the pit and I was too involved in my digging to stop and see it Leroy had any special instructions for me.

“Here we go,” I said to Kelly. “Follow the curve. See? Get the corer under here, and then—”

Kelly nodded. She looked tense and keyed-up with excitement, and when an android gets excited, it has to be something special. She gripped both handles of her corer and started drilling in from the side. The corer tip found a huge mass of sandstone and split it neatly. I started to heave debris, but Mirrik said, “That’s too much for you, Tom. Get back.” And jammed his tusks into the opening and pitched a half-ton of rubble out of sight.

Point, core, clear. Point, core, clear. I was drenched in sweat. Kelly, who doesn’t sweat, somehow seemed flushed and sticky too. For ten minutes we went at it in a frenzied way, until half the globe was uncovered. I began to see a control panel and a variosity of knobs and buttons.

This is
not
the way to dig up something important. We were working in a mad rush, the three of us caught up in the thrill of a major find and unwilling or unable to slow up. I won’t speak for Mirrik and Kelly, but I confess that I wanted to complete the excavation of this mysterious globe before any of the senior archaeologists could cut in on me. Unworthy motive! Also stupid chimposity and a display of colossal slice, since a mere apprentice like myself could easily have bungled the job and earned the curses of the whole profession.

I thought of all these things. But yet we went zooming ahead. Point, core, clear. Point, core, clear. Pointcoreclear. Pointcoreclear. Pointcoreclear.

I stopped for breath and looked up. Leroy and Jan weren’t watching. They were biologizing. At least, Leroy in his subtle way had one hand on Jan’s … well, hip … and the other groping for the magnet stud of her blouse, and he was trying to get his mouth on hers and she was fighting him off with clenched fists, and the whole thing had the look of a rape scene in the making. The chivalrous thing would have been for me to leap to the rim of the pit in one bound, cry, “Unhand her, knave!” and knock his teeth down his grinning glapper. But I told myself a) Jan can take care of herself, and b) while Leroy is wrestling with her he won’t be able to meddle with what we’re doing. So I was unchivalrous. Shame! Shame!

She fisted him in the gut. Leroy turned purple, doubled up, and dropped his chartbook into the pit.

Jan took off, streaking away into the rain. Leroy followed, yelling things like, “Jan! Jan! Just let me explain!”

“We’re on our own,” I said to Kelly and Mirrik. “Dig we onward!”

Dug we onward, unhindered. Kelly now was coring under the globe, and I tested it carefully, trying to rock it free of its embedment, but nothing going. Mirrik gave it a cautious nudge, too, and it tilted a little but remained in place. We could see that it was a beauty—so big I could barely span it with my arms, and covered along one side with all kinds of controls. Another five minutes, I figured, and we’d have it loose.

“Wait,” Mirrik said. “At this moment I feel I should pray for the success of our labor.”

Mirrik often does that. He’s deeply religious, you know. He’s a Paradoxian, worshiping the contrary forces of the universe, and bursts into prayer whenever those forces need to be placated, which is much of the time. Kelly drew back the corer and Mirrik delicately knelt in the pit, folding his huge legs under his massive body and letting the tips of his tusks rest on the globe. He began to groan and bellow in Dinamonian. Later I asked him to translate the prayer and he gave me this version:

O Father of confusions and sorrows, give us aid.

O Thou whose existence we doubt, doubt us not at such a time.

O ruler of the unrulable, O creator of the uncreated, O speaker of truths that lie, let our minds be clear and our aim accurate.

O mystery in clarity, O foulness in purity, O darkness in light, comfort us and guide us and lead us.

Bring us not into error.

Cause us not to feel regret.

Remain with us now as on the first and last of all days.

Thou concealer of destinies and shatterer of patterns, be merciful, for in hatred lies love, in blindness lies sight, in falsehood lies righteousness. Amen. Amen. Amen.”

You must agree with me that this is an odd kind of prayer. An odd kind of religion, too. The thing about aliens is that they tend to be so
alien.
But I have asked Mirrik to explain Paradoxianism to me one of these days, and perhaps he will.

When he finished his prayer he reared back, dug his tusks in under the big globe, uttered a moan of ecstasy, and pushed. The globe gave a little. He pushed again. The globe gave some more.

“Down here with the corer!” I yelled. “Just nip this little flange of stone away, and we’ve got it!”

In a kind of joyous insanity the three of us tugged, tusked, and cored at the bottom of the pit, jostling each other, jockeying for position, grabbing at the globe, altogether generating a chimpo scene of the first order. We thought the globe would come free, but it was more tightly embedded than we thought, and we came shudderingly close to damaging it in our lunatic urge to get it loose.

A cold, thin, furious voice said suddenly, “What are you
doing?
Idiots! Vandals! Criminals!”

I looked up. Dr. Horkkk peered down at me. His eyes were red with anger and seemed five times their normal size; he was waving all his arms at once and hopping around on three legs while wildly kicking himself with the fourth, which the people of Thhh do when they’re upset; and both his talking mouth and his eating mouth were gaping in rage.

“We found this globe,” I explained, “and now we’re trying to clear the sandstone matrix, and—”

“You’ll ruin it! Fools! Assassins!”

“Just another second now, Dr. Horkkk, and we’ll have it.”

You have to understand that while I held this discussion with Dr. Horkkk, Mirrik and Kelly and I were continuing to batter at the stone. If anything we grew more slapdash and hasty, as though the fate of the universe depended on lifting that globe from the stone within the next two minutes. Dr. Horkkk shrieked and screamed and capered. Dimly I heard him say, “… or I’ll discharge the three of you!”

Other faces were peering into the pit now. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Pilazinool, 408b, Saul Shahmoon, and Jan. Incoherent with rage, Dr. Horkkk seized Pilazinool’s leg and pointed at us while expostulating in what I suppose was the Thhhian language. Pilazinool tried to calm him.

Dr. Schein appeared, sized up the situation, and jumped down into the pit beside us.

The strange berserk frenzy that had overwhelmed us faded as soon as he arrived. Kelly put down her corer, Mirrik backed away from the globe, and I stood up, mopping off the sweat.

“What have we here?” Dr. Schein asked gently.

“An … artifact, sir …” I mumbled.

“Most unusual. Most unusual. Why the hurry though?”

“I don’t know, sir. We got … carried away …”

“Well, we don’t want to be carried away, do we? We need to follow orderly procedure, as Dr. Horkkk has been saying. I understand your enthusiasm, but nevertheless …” He frowned. “Who’s charting the site?”

“Leroy Chang,” I said.

“Where is he?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I peered up at Jan and she smiled grimly. Her clothes were a little mussed, and she was soaked from her run in the rain, but she winked at me. As I say, Jan can take care of herself.

“Where is Professor Chang?” Dr. Schein repeated.

“He left the site about ten minutes ago,” I said.

Dr. Schein looked puzzled, but shrugged the matter aside and picked up the chartbook. “Let’s go, now,” he said. “I’ll supervise. Finish removing the globe … patiently.”

With everyone watching us and Dr. Schein setting the pace, we completed the job in a more professional way. I felt guilty and embarrassed about that mad rush, and when Dr. Horkkk hopped into the pit for a closer look at the globe, I couldn’t bear to face him. It took another half an hour to free the globe. Pilazinool, Dr. Schein, and Dr. Horkkk conferred about it in the pit; they all agreed it was some kind of High Ones machine and that it was by far the largest High Ones artifact ever found, but they had no more idea than I did of what it was. No one offered congratulations to me for having made the best discovery in this field since the finding of the first site. I didn’t feel awfully proud of myself myself, considering the chimpo way I had carried on during the excavating work.

When the conference broke up, Mirrik reverently scooped the globe up on his tusks—it weighs about as much as a man, he says—and carried it to the lab. That was three hours ago. Dr. Schein, Dr. Horkkk, and Pilazinool have been in there all this time. With them is 408b; Saul Shahmoon has been going in and out. Each time he comes out he looks more excited than the time before, but he isn’t saying a thing except that nothing definite has been learned yet.

Mirrik, Kelly, Steen Steen, and Leroy Chang have gone back to the dig. Leroy’s face is a little bruised and he looks pretty sour about things. Jan and I were assigned to cleanup detail for the afternoon, she in her shack and I in mine.

That’s a great reward for making a big find, isn’t it?

Two hours later. The conference in the lab is still going on. I’d love to know what’s up, but if they wanted apprentices in there, they’d invite us. Saul hasn’t come out for a long time. The diggers are still at work, though they haven’t found anything unusual. Kelly and Mirrik would dig all night, if we’d let them.

When I finished my cleanup I went across to talk to Jan.

She was less interested in discussing the strange ancient globe than she was in talking about Leroy Chang’s uncouth behavior. I’d say that that’s just like a girl, but I’d probably offend you, and besides I’m not sure I’m right.

“You saw him pawing me,” Jan accused. “Why didn’t you do something?”

“I didn’t realize anything serious was going on.”

“Serious? How much more serious could it have been? He practically had my clothes ripped off!”

“Good old Leroy. He sure knows how to coax a girl along.”

“Very funny. Suppose he had raped me?”

“He didn’t get very close to succeeding, did he?”

“No thanks to you. Down there in the pit digging like a madman, and me screaming for help.”

I said, “You know, they say that rape isn’t really possible unless the victim cooperates. I mean, all she has to do is defend herself, and if she’s a girl of normal strength and her attacker isn’t some kind of superman, she’ll be able to fight him off. So when a rape happens, it’s either because the girl is paralyzed with fear, or else because she secretly
wants
to be raped. Besides, I don’t remember hearing you scream.”

“I don’t find your two-credit psychology very convincing,” Jan said. “I don’t know where you got that half-baked theory, but I can tell you it just isn’t so. Like most men you don’t have the first idea of what a woman’s viewpoint is in such things.”

“I suppose you’ve been raped a couple of times, so you know all about it.”

“Can we change the subject? I can think of several hundred thousand subjects I’d rather discuss. And, no, I
haven’t
been raped, and I mean to keep it that way, thank you.”

“How did you discourage Leroy?”

“I hit him in the face. I didn’t slap. I
hit.
Then I kicked.”

“And he gave in. Which proves my theory that—”

“We were changing the subject.”

“You were the first one who started talking about rape,” I said.

“I don’t want to hear that word again!”

“Right.”

“And I still think it was foul of you to go on digging when Leroy began to—to attack me.”

“I apologize. I got wrapped up in what I was doing.”

“What
was
that thing, anyway?”

“I wish I knew,” I said. “Shall we go over to the lab and see if they have any answers yet?”

“We’d better not. They don’t want us there.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I didn’t mean to do so much cranking just now, Tom,” she said. “It’s just that Leroy scared me. And when nobody helped out—”

“Are you going to complain to Dr. Schein about him?”

She shook her head. “Leroy won’t bother me again. There’s no sense making a scandal out of it.”

I admire Jan’s attitude. I also may as well admit here that I admire Jan, too. So far in these letters I’ve been a little sketchy about that. Part of it is because I’ve only been slowly discovering how interesting a girl Jan really is, as well as being attractive in a physical way and all that. The other part is—well, forgive me, Lorie—I’ve always been uneasy about discussing my love life with you. Not because it embarrasses me to share such things with you, but because I’m afraid of hurting you.