All the Colors of Time (29 page)

“Really?” Burton responded, gold and silver brows ascending
like the wings of angels. “I’d be interested in hearing your views, Dr.
Llewellyn.”

“I have no strong alternate opinions about the deposits,
although I suppose the site might have served as a barn or a corral.”

“No excrement.”

“Or a larder. The bones might still be there because the
larder was well-stocked when the complex met whatever fate it met. The deposits
are concentrated in the southern pits, and they’re largely the bones of animals
present-day Etsatat consider meat animals.”

Burton raised a calloused finger. “Exception proves the
rule, Llewellyn. Exception proves the rule. There are also the bones of small
creatures which are definitely not part of the modern food chain. Wild
nocturnals—”

“Which could be vermin or scavengers that raided the
building after it was abandoned.”

“Which could also be small animals especially dedicated to
Ets-eket. They are almost exclusively night-stalkers of one sort or another.”

Rhys nodded. “All right. Nocturnal scavengers dedicated and
sacrificed to a moon god—possibly. But why would they leave them around to
clutter up the place?”

Burton’s finger pointed skyward again. “Charnel houses have
existed in many other cultures.”

“For animals?”

“Why not? If the animals are considered sacred—”

“Sacred enough to eat?”

“Ritually, yes.”

“Pet cemeteries?” interjected Rick.

Both men ignored him.

“Taxidermist?” Rick persisted. This time Burton glowered and
Rhys cracked a smile.

“You’re wrong, Llewellyn,” Burton said with finality. “These
are temples. Places of worship, sacrifice, and tribute. Everything we’ve found
suggests it. No,
confirms
it. The
animal bones, the potsherds, the metal tools and coins. I realize, of course,
that it’s only your relative inexperience speaking,” he added and shook his
head, thereby missing Yoshi’s furious but silent retort. “If there were only
some way I could prove it to you.”

“What are your opinions about all this?” Rhys asked Nyami
and Tzia later, when the Professor had retreated to his cabin to work on his
field notes.

The two women shared an enigmatic glance, then Nyami
answered for both of them. “We’re not paid to have opinions. At least, not
outside of our respective areas of expertise. That means I boss the crew and
Tzia restores artwork. All of us,” she added, glancing at Tzia again, “are
keeping our own journals. Some of us will be writing our own books.”

“You’ve seen his field notes, then?”

“Of course.” Nyami chuckled, brushing graying hair back from
her forehead. “Drew sees gods and goddesses everywhere. ‘Water goddess filling
the world ocean.’ Heck, I think she’s probably running the local bath house.”

oOo

Burton’s team located the entrance to the tower at the
beginning of the next week. That the building was hollow but for its organic centerpiece
was no surprise—that feature had showed up clearly in the sonic profile. What
came as a surprise was that the conical tower was lined with a tough amalgam of
plant fiber and ceramic Rhys suspected would make a great material for orbital
spacecraft and re-entry shuttles. This, in turn, was covered with a thick
deposit of ash and soot. The floor was so deep in the stuff, a misstep could
leave one covered to the neck with a fetching coat of powdery gray.

“Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” murmured Rick when they
had spent the better part of a day sifting and digging through thick layers of
invasive soot and char that hung in the humid air and clung to clothing, hair
and skin.

Burton, occupied with running a sample through the Field
Remote Analysis Unit (known affectionately among diggers as Frau Burton),
looked up sharply. “Are you suggesting this was a crematorium?”

Rick blew a lock of lank brown hair out of his eyes and gave
the Professor a bland stare. “I’m in a deep hole, up to my elbows in fine gray
soot. I just thought it was an appropriate comment.”

Burton looked thoughtful. “An interesting one, Roddy. You
may have unwittingly stumbled onto something. Although, I think the crematorium
was likely sacrificial in nature. You recall the biblical story of Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, of course.”

Rick opened his mouth to tell Dr. Burton that he had never
heard of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and that further, only Rhys Llewellyn
called him “Roddy.” Then he thought better of it and asked, “Have you found
evidence of any Etsatat bone fragments or DNA during your analysis?”

The question, neutrally posed, caused Dr. Burton to redden
perceptibly and cast a sideways glance around the tree trunk at Rhys, who was
digging with Tzia along one curved, fire-blasted wall.

“No, actually. What I have found are large amounts of coal
and some cellulose, trace elements of other organic compounds, and carbonized
bits of rock. Altogether, a disappointment, I admit. I had hoped we’d
discovered a burial vault. The modern Etsatat inter their dead . . .”
His voice trailed off as he read the data spilling onto the Frau’s small
display.

“Don’t give up yet, Professor.” Rhys straightened from his
work, holding something out on the palm of his hand.

Burton pounced on it as an aging tabby might pounce on an
unwary mouse. “Air! Air!” he cried, accepted an air bulb from Nyami, and
feverishly cleaned the object. The entire work crew ceased digging and gathered
around in the glare of palm lights and overheads.

“It’s some sort of jewelry. A brooch, by the look of it, or
a medallion. And there’s a jewel in it, too. I’ve never seen the stone before.”
He looked up at Rhys, fire in his pale eyes. “You’re in charge here, Llewellyn.
Nyami, you and I are going to subject this to full analysis. Right now.”

Within seconds, the two archaeologists had disappeared into
the entrance shaft and Rhys and the crew had returned to work. Three hours
later, Rhys and Tzia had unearthed (or unashed) three more pieces of jewelry
and a crude stone figurine. Scott Buchanan turned up a glob of interesting
slag, and one of the other diggers found a second partial figure made up of
heavily carbonized hardwood.

Eager for a report from Burton and Nyami, Rhys ordered the
crew to “clear up their loose,” then, with their artifacts in a finds canister,
he led the weary team of grimy, sweat-soaked archaeologists back to camp.

oOo

Burton was still hard at it and Nyami nursing a bottle of
cold tea when the diggers filed up to the Finds tent. She moved to intercept
them, cutting Rhys off before he or anyone else could enter.

“I wouldn’t interrupt him yet,” she told them.

Buchanan’s ashy blond brows furrowed. “How does it take
three hours to analyze a piece of jewelry?”

Nyami studied her squeeze bottle. “He’s run the same battery
of tests five times. I did the first set. He didn’t like the way I did them, so
he did them again…” She looked up at Rhys. “…and again and again.”

“Whatever’s the matter?”

“It’s not precious metal for one thing, just an odd rather
impure alloy. And the stone? It . . .” She licked her lips and
Rhys couldn’t tell if the gesture concealed a smile or a grimace. “It’s not
stone. It’s man-made.”

Scott Buchanan’s brows rode halfway up to his receding
hairline. “A fake stone? What’s he thinking—that this is a hoax? That the
Leguini have been hoaxing us?”

“He’s thinking . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t
know what he’s thinking. But the stone is a hunk of very hardy glass which
dates to about five thousand Before Present.”

Rhys expelled a rush of air. “Can the Etsatat have found a
way to foil our dating techniques?”

“Who knows? Maybe the ancients had junk jewelry.”

“Look, I’m going to take this assemblage in to Professor
Burton. Maybe I can help him make sense of this.”

Rhys tucked the canister under his arm and entered the Finds
tent warily, his eyes on Burton’s back. As he moved to lay the canister down on
the sorting table, Burton glanced up at him, sweating even in the
well-ventilated cabin.

“What’ve you got there, Rhys?”

“More jewelry. A couple of figurines—wood and stone.” He
unpacked the canister as he spoke.

Burton was at his side in a second, poring over the finds. “This
is more like it! Yes, this clarifies the situation considerably. What we’re
looking at here, my boy, is a single cremation. There may be no significant
Etsatat DNA because the cremation involves only that one individual. These—” He
held up a corroding brooch and the stone figure. “—are tribute, as I theorized
previously. I predict that if we continue to dig, we will find the remains of
one man—Ets-eket, himself—or his mortal proxy.”

“What’s your evaluation of the brooch?”

“Ah, well, originally I thought it a rather poor specimen.
The metal is sturdy but hardly precious, the stone is, em, rather an enigma.
But the style!” He put the thoroughly cleaned piece into the photonic bath and
switched the perfect 3-D image to the holopad. “See the intricate detail, the
precision of the scroll work? The Leguini haven’t produced anything this fine
since.”

“What?”

“Well, you’ve seen their primitive-looking ornamentation. Ye
gods, the shops are full of it, even on Earth!”

“Professor, that’s a current fashion trend, like art deco on
early twentieth century Earth, or the turn-of-the-century aboriginal art fad.
There are no grounds upon which to compare it to this.”

Burton’s face turned to stone. “Llewellyn, you have argued
every single find with me since you arrived. Where do you get the gall?”

“From you, I’d like to think, Professor.”

“You were my favorite student, you know. When I brought you
here, I thought you’d be appreciative.”

“I am, sir, I—”

“Then why are you playing dog-in-the-manger?”

“Sir, I’m not. I just happen to have formed some opinions
about these sites that don’t cozy with your own.”

Burton went white and red in swift turns. “What makes you
think your opinions are worth anything, Llewellyn? I’ve been in this field for
decades. You’ve been out of the field since you left that classroom in Sophia
to go commercial. Corporate anthropologist!” he snorted. “Corporate toady is
more like it! How can you presume to think your opinion carries more weight
than mine?”

Reeling from the verbal lashing, Rhys struggled to right
himself. “I’m not presuming anything of the sort, Professor. But I have had a
good many years of training and experience, and regardless of what you think
about my association with Tanaka Corp, it’s given me experience you haven’t
had. Your decades have been spent in Terran archaeology. My few years has been
spent out here, on other worlds. When it comes to xenoanthropology, I think the
playing field is much more even.”

“Do you?”

“Yes sir, I do. And I think . . .” He paused,
losing the will to continue.

“Well, whatever it is, Llewellyn, say it. Don’t add
cowardice to your arrogance.”

Rhys sighed, feeling wretched. “I think you may be culturally
biased.”

“Culturally biased?” Burton’s white hair looked shockingly
bright against the near purple of his face.

Rhys lowered his voice, trying to keep his tone gentle. “This
isn’t Caracol, Professor. It’s Sper-ets. Hell, it may not even be that, really.
The fact is, you can’t know. You can’t know whether a thing is a coin or a … a
punch card unless and until you have some sort of cultural context to put it
in. We don’t have that context yet for these sites because we haven’t built
one.”

“The context is a wide-spread cult dedicated to the worship
of the moon. That is the context.”

“On the surface, a reasonable conclusion. But we’re supposed
to get below the surface to the details. The details here don’t support many of
your conclusions.”

“Name a few.”

“All right. What you call coins are identical because they
were smelted and molded. That’s not stone they’re made of, but a clever native
composite of malleable ores. They’re molded, yet they all have obviously
handmade scoring along the edges.”

“Denominations.”

Rhys shook his head. “The number is totally random. Anywhere
from zero scores to a complete circuit of the edge. Like a punch card. Then
there’s the relief on the gate lintel. You interpret as prisoners and
sacrificial victims, people who are in no way bound. You ascribe warrior status
to men without weapons or armor. You make moon crescents out of shapes that
bear only passing resemblance to any stage of Etsat’s moon. And the
village—your massive sacrificial altar could just as easily be a place where
people went to be entertained, not ritually murdered. Think about it,
Professor, assume for a moment that we stumbled across the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel with no cultural context. We knew nothing of the Renaissance—we’d
never heard of Michelangelo. Without that context, you and I would very likely
interpret the Last Judgment as depicting a warrior-priest in god’s clothing
surveying his sacrificial victims.”

“You mean
I’d
interpret it that way. I’m sure you’d draw other conclusions.”

“I don’t have conclusions, Doctor. I have theories. Day’s
too young for conclusions. I talked about building a context and I meant it.
The present day Etsatat hold the key to this place, whether they realize it or
not. Look at their culture if you want to advance toward conclusions.”

“Preposterous. I hadn’t realized you’d become such an
iconoclast.”

“I’m not an iconoclast. I simply suggest that if you’d try
to envision the village ruins as a living Etsatat town, you’ll see some of
these artifacts in a different light.”

“What I see, Dr. Llewellyn, is that you and your associates
are disrupting my dig and undermining my authority. I request that you leave.
In fact, I demand it.”

Rhys felt the blood drain from his face. He suspected that
if he looked in a mirror, he’d find the color had drained from his hair, as
well. “I … wish you’d reconsider.”