Across a Billion Years (6 page)

•Commemorative plaques.
These are medals of some sort, about the size of large coins and stamped from some rustproof white metal. Heaps of them litter all High Ones sites. On one side they bear the image of what we assume is a High One: a humanoid creature with four arms, two legs, and a dome-shaped head. On the reverse side is an inscription in the same symbols found on the nodes. The melting point of the metal used in these plaques is upward of 3500 degrees; the metal is so extraordinarily hard that we don’t see how it could have been stamped. Chemical analysis has not revealed the nature of the alloy used.

•Puzzle-boxes.
Just as the name implies: these are interlocking sheets of metal arranged in a variosity of disturbing patterns. The simplest ones are moebius strips, which are just flat lengths of metal with a twist in the middle and the ends joined, so that you can run your finger along one side, keep going past the twist, and end up on the other side without ever having lifted your finger. That is, the moebius strip is truly two-dimensional, since it only has one side. Okay? Then there are klein bottles, which are three-dimensional containers that loop back on themselves so that they also have just one surface. Also there are tesseracts, which are structures with four spatial dimensions—a tesseract is to a cube as a cube is to a square, yes? If you look at a tesseract the right way, you’ll understand, but I don’t recommend trying. And then there are puzzle-boxes that don’t fit any mathematical theory, that fit together in odd ways so that you can trace a path down one side, and up another, and then you come to a place where the surface disappears and you’re somewhere else. About a dozen different kinds of puzzle-boxes are known. Maybe the High Ones used them for intellectual amusement. There are plenty of them here, in surprisingly good shape.

•Miscellaneous artifacts.
These include dials, levers, buttons that glow in the dark, small items of what we think is jewelry, prisms, gears, tubes that heat up at one end when a finger is placed at the other, and a lot more. Everything is glossy and beautifully made, even the miniatures; and everything has stood up well to a billion years of geological pressure.

As we proceed inward toward the center of the deposit, we are collecting an amazing quantity of this stuff. The density of discarded material is higher here than anywhere else, leading us to hope that this was some special place and that we’re likely to find something of special significance inside. Such as a tomb. We have never, you know, discovered the physical remains of a High One. Even a fossil skeleton can’t be expected to last a billion years—not intact, anyway—but it was within the grasp of High Ones technology to build a metal or plastic container capable of standing up to any kind of conditions, judging by the survival characteristics of these artifacts. Yet nowhere at any of the twenty-three sites have we come upon a burial, or even a trace of one. Since each of these sites was occupied for several decades, it’s not unreasonable to think that some members of the expedition must have died in the course of duty.

Were dead High Ones taken to the home planet for burial?

Were the bodies of the dead cremated right down to the atomic level?

Or … did the High Ones have such enormous individual life-spans that it just wasn’t statistically probable for any of them to die in any fifty-year occupation of a given site?

We don’t know. But we’d love to find out for sure what the High Ones looked like.

Progress here is necessarily slow. We all dig, even the big bosses, but we can’t cover more than a few cubic meters a day. Mirrik goes first, bulldozing away the overburden. Kelly moves in with her vacuum-corers and slices off a little rock. The rest of us pitch in to free whatever artifacts she’s turned up. Before we can lift anything, we have to photograph it and record its position. Then it goes over to the laboratory, where Saul Shahmoon makes chronological studies. He hasn’t finished dating this site yet, but he’s already hinted that it’s a pretty late one, maybe no more than 900,000,000 years old. Next, everything bearing an inscription goes to Dr. Horkkk, who collects the data and feeds it into his computer. 408b, whose specialty is paleotechnology, checks everything out mechanically, looking for insight into the ways things work. Pilazinool, meanwhile, snoops around here and there, trying to pick up the scattered clues that will allow him to make one of his intuitive judgments.

We all have this strange and mysterious feeling that we’re on the brink of something important. Nobody knows why. Maybe it’s just overoptimism.

We work hard. Archaeology is mostly a sore back and aching fingers. The romance gets into it afterward, when the newstape boys write their stories. In the evenings we rest, play a lot of chess, argue some, listen to the rain. I find that hour by hour I’m often bored, but that the overall effect of being here is terrifically exciting.

We are having a problem with Mirrik. If it isn’t solved soon he may be dismissed from the expedition. Which would be sad, because in his ponderous way he’s a delightful vidj.

I told you that Mirrik is in the alcoholism pocket, so to speak. He goes not for booze but for flowers; something in the nectar of an ordinary blossom clangs him with terrific impact. The metabolic effect of a flower on a Dinamonian must be tremendous, far more potent than alcohol is with us, since a couple of mouthfuls of flowers are sufficient to give all of Mirrik’s tonnage a colossal charge.

Bleak as this place is, it’s got some flowers. One of the terraforming engineers must have had a poetic soul—he planted a grove of frostflowers about two kilometers from where we’re digging. The plants took hold in a few sheltered places. Mirrik, who needs plenty of exercise and likes to go on long rambling solitary roamings, found them.

I was the first to discover his secret.

One afternoon last week I was going off duty after finishing my stint at the dig when I saw Mirrik come capering toward me. He’d had a couple of hours of free time too. As he approached the site, he leaped up and tried to click his front feet together. That didn’t work, and he landed in a tangle. He got up, ran in a circle, tried it again. Again he failed. He saw me and giggled. Imagine ten tons of giggling Dinamonian! He clicked his tusks playfully. He wobbled toward me, grabbed me amiably with his arms, and made me spin. This so amused him that he began a rhythmic pounding of his feet. The ground shook.

“Hello, Tommo, howzaboy?” He winked. He breathed in my face. “Good old Tommo. Letz danz, Tommo!”

“Mirrik, you’re tanked!” I told him.

“Nonzenz.” He prodded me playfully in the ribs with his tusks. “Danz! Danz!”

I jumped back. “Where did you find flowers?”

“No flowerz here. Juzzt happpppy!”

His muzzle was golden with frostflower pollen. I frowned and brushed it off. Mirrik giggled again. I said, “Hold still, you oversized sposher! If Dr. Horkkk sees you like this, he’ll flay you!”

Mirrik wanted to stop off in the laboratory to argue philosophy with Pilazinool. I discouraged him from that. Then it began to rain, which sobered him a little, enough to see that he might get in trouble if one of the bosses found him. “Walk with me until I zober up,” he said, and I did, and we discussed the evolution of religious mysticism until his head was clear. As we returned to the camp he said sadly, “I grieve for my weakness, Tom. But I feel I have learned restraint with your help. I won’t visit the frostflower patch again.”

He came in drunk the next day too.

I was in the lab, cleaning and sorting the latest haul of broken inscription nodes and battered plaques, when a voice from outside roared as though over a cosmic loudspeaker:

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Zpring

Your Winter-garment of Repentanz fling;

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.

“It’s the Rubaiyat!” cried Jan, entranced.

“It’s Mirrik!” I gasped.

Dr. Horkkk looked up grimly from his computer input. Dr. Schein frowned. 408b muttered something in disgust; it has no use for such foibles as this.

Mirrik went on:

Zome for the Gloriez of Thiz Worrrld; and zome

Zigh for the Prophet’s Paradizzzze to come;

Ah, take the Cash, and let the Crrredit go,

Nor heed the rumble of a diztant Drrrum!

Jan and I hustled out of the lab and found Mirrik tusking up the turf in front of the building. Crushed frostflower blossoms were sticking out behind his ears, and his whole face was dusted with pollen. He looked mournfully at me for an instant, as though a sober Mirrik were trying to peer out behind the drunken mask; then he giggled again and continued:

Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears

Today of pazzt Regrets and future Fears:

Tomorrrrow!—
Why, Tomorrow I may be

Myzelf with Yezterday’s Zev’n thousand Years.

“Tomorrow you may be on your way home,” I said sharply. “For Omar’s sake, Mirrik, get out of here! If Dr. Horkkk sees you—”

Too late.

That night Mirrik had a long conference with our bosses, who are afraid that he’ll show up really glapped some day and wreck the camp. A drunken Dinamonian is about as safe to have around as a runaway rocket, and unless Mirrik can lay off the frostflowers he’ll be shipped out. 408b had a sweeter suggestion: simply chain Mirrik up, like an unruly bull, when he isn’t working. Kindly old 408b always goes straight to the humane solution.

Most of us try to cover for Mirrik when he comes into camp loaded. We walk him sober, or steer him away from the bubbleshacks if he tries to enter, or otherwise protect him against himself. But we aren’t fooling anyone. Dr. Schein and Dr. Horkkk are both worried about this business. And when those two agree on anything, it means trouble.

Leroy Chang thinks I’m having a love affair with Jan, by the way. That’s pretty funny.

I did take a long walk with her one night, I admit. And several shorter walks. Can I help it if I like her company? She’s the only female human being here—whoops, I mean, not counting Kelly Watchman! Anyway, she’s the only person here of my own age except Steen Steen, for whom I don’t care very much, and she’s the only girl here, Kelly being past ninety and android besides, and I have more in common with her than I do with, say, 408b or Dr. Horkkk. So I naturally tend to spend time with Jan.

But a love affair?

Leroy is jealous of phantoms. He’s one of these twitchy bachelor types who chases girls compulsively, usually without much luck, and his score with Jan is zero. She regards him—pretty accurately—as a creep. Since he can’t accept that as his explanation for his lack of success with her, he has made up a better one, which is that since I am younger and taller and dumber than he is, Jan in her postadolescent shallowness has fallen for me.

His way of expressing his resentment is to poke me in the ribs and leer and say, “You two had a hot time last night, huh? I bet you did! You’re a real biology artist, eh, kid?”

“Get sposhed, Leroy,” I tell him amiably. “Jan and I aren’t in the same orbit.”

“You say it with a straight face, too. But you don’t fool me. When you bring her back, she’s got that steamy, excited look on her face—a man of the worlds like me, I know right away what you’ve been up to.”

“Usually we’ve been discussing the day’s finds.”

“But of course! Of
course
!” He lowers his voice. “Listen, Tommo, I can’t blame you for doing all the passionating you can, but have a heart! There are other men on this expedition, and females are in short supply.” A coarse wink. “Mind if
I
take her behind the rockpile one of these nights?”

That’s me, Tom Rice, villainous monopolizer of women! Would you believe it? There isn’t any tactful way that I can explain to Leroy that he’s his own worst enemy, so far as his relationship with Jan goes: that if he weren’t so pushy and possessive and grabby and raw, she might be able to tolerate him a little. Certainly it isn’t that I’ve locked up her affections, because, no matter what Leroy thinks, my dealings with Jan have been those of brother to sister.

Well … more or less….

She is still totally tickled toward Saul Shahmoon, and I blush to confess that most of the time when I’m alone with Jan she talks about how wonderful Saul is and how terrible it is that he won’t fall for her. She praises his clarity of mind, his neatness, his suave Mediterranean good looks, his cool self-possessed manner, and his other virtues. She laments that his strange obsession with philately leaves him too busy for love, and asks my advice on how best to win him over. Honest!

And Leroy Chang keeps insisting that Jan and I hold orgies back of the rockpile….

Maybe I’ll make a cough in her direction the next time we go strolling, you know? I mean, if Leroy has already tarnished our reputations with his insinuations and sniggerings, what’s there to lose? She
is
an attractive girl. I have not taken any vows of chastity on this expedition. Besides, I’m getting awfully cranked about hearing her sing the splendors of Saul Shahmoon.

September 5, 2375

Higby V

I
PERSONALLY DISCOVERED SOMETHING
of major importance this morning. And almost got myself fired for doing it. We still don’t exactly understand what it is I found, but we know it’s big. Possibly the biggest thing in High Ones archaeology up till now. Here’s what happened—

After breakfast, five of us went out to the site to dig: me, Jan, Leroy Chang, Mirrik, and Kelly. At the present stage of things a five-man team is about as big as is efficient. The rest were in the lab, processing artifacts, dating things, running computer analyses, and doing other sorts of backstage work.

We are now pretty deep into the hillside, and the zone of High Ones occupation has widened considerably. Artifacts are thickly strewn about; we have more than a hundred inscription nodes already and a huge carton of plaques and puzzle boxes. All standard items, though; just more of them than usual.

It was a cool, rainy morning. They all are. We huddled under our weather shield and got to work. First Mirrik scooped out the backfill of soil that we had used to cover the actual excavation level. Then Kelly moved in with her vacuum-corer. The way we organized things, I got down in the hole to direct the work; Kelly crouched above me, drilling cores from the rock where I told her to; Mirrik stayed to my side, scooping up the debris with his tusks and carting it away; Jan ran the camera, filming everything in three dimensions; and Leroy, as the senior archaeologist of this particular team, kept a chart of all that went on.