Mastodonia (3 page)

“Asa, forget it. You're not riding a hobbyhorse. It's all hard to accept, the hypothesis that you have and the evidence you have found, but the evidence is there. You can't simply overlook it.”

“In that case,” I said, “there is something further. On this one, there is no evidence at all. Just the evidence of my eyes and the feeling that I have. A strange neighbor—I guess that's the best way to describe him. I've never really seen him, never got a good look at him. But I've felt him looking at me, and I've caught glimpses of him, not really seeing him, but a certain outrageous configuration that makes me imagine he is there. I say imagine because I'm still trying to be scientific and objective. On a purely observational level, I'm sure that he exists. He hangs out in the orchard, but he's not there all the time. He wanders quite a bit, it seems.”

“Is there anyone else who has seen him?”

“Others, I would guess, have seen him. Periodically, there is a panther scare—although why people should be afraid of panthers, I don't know. But in rural communities, bear and panther scares seem to be a favorite pastime. An atavistic fear, I suppose, that still hangs on.”

“Maybe there are panthers.”

“I doubt it. There has been no authentic mountain lion sighting for forty years or more. The thing about it is that this creature I am talking of does leave a cat impression. There is one man who knows more about it than anybody else. He's sort of a cross between Daniel Boone and David Thoreau, and he's spent his life out in the woods.”

“What does he think about it?”

“Like me, he doesn't know. I've talked to him a few times and we've agreed we don't know what it is.”

“You think there is some connection between this creature and your spaceship?”

“At times, I'm tempted. But it seems a bit farfetched. The implication would be that it's an alien creature that escaped the crash. That would mean it is impossibly long-lived. Also, it would seem unlikely anything could have survived the crash, if there was a crash.”

“I'd like to see some of the metal you dug up,” she said.

“No problem,” I told her. “It is in the barn. We'll have a look when we go back.”

FOUR

Hiram was perched on one of the lawn chairs in front of the house with Bowser laid out on the grass beside him. The front-yard robin stood impertinently a few paces off, eyeing their intrusion of its territory with perky belligerence.

Hiram explained, “Bowser said he didn't want to stay in the house, so I carried him out.”

“He used you,” I told him. “He could have walked himself.”

Bowser beat an apologetic tail.

“The robin feels sorry for him,” said Hiram.

The robin had no look of sorrow.

“I ain't got nothing to do,” said Hiram. “You go about your business. I'll watch over Bowser till he's well. Day and night, if you want me to. If he wants anything, he can tell me.”

“All right, then, you watch over him,” I said. “We have things to do.”

At the barn, I had a hell of a time getting the sagging door open again. Someday, I promised myself, I would get it fixed. It wouldn't take more than a few hours work, but somehow I had never quite gotten around to it.

The interior of the barn, redolent of ancient horse manure, had a pile of junk stacked haphazardly in one corner, but was mostly filled by two long tables I had set up with boards laid across sawhorses. Ranged on the tables were all the pieces of metal I had found or dug out of the pit. At the far end of one of the tables lay two hollow hemispherical pieces of bright metal I had found when I had cleaned out the barn.

Rila walked over to one of the tables and picked up a jagged piece of metal. She turned it over and over in her hands. She said, in some amazement, “Just as you said, there isn't any rust. Just some slight discoloration here and there. There's some iron in it, isn't there?”

“Quite a lot,” I told her. “At least, that's what the university people said.”

“Any ferric metal rusts,” she said. “Some alloys will stand up for a long time, but they finally show some rust. When oxygen gets to them.”

“More than a hundred years,” I told her. “Probably, a great deal more than that. Willow Bend celebrated its centenary several years ago. That crater was formed before the town was founded. The crater has to be much older than that. There are several feet of loam in the bottom of it. It would have taken some time for that loam to form. It takes a lot of leaves over many years to form a foot of soil.”

“Have you tried to fit some of these fragments together?”

“I've tried, and there are a few pieces that can be fit together, but they don't tell you anything.”

“What do you do next?”

“Probably nothing. Keep on with the digging. Keep quiet about it. You're the only one I've told. If I said anything to anyone else, all I'd get would be ridicule. Suddenly there'd be all sorts of instant experts who could explain everything away.”

“I suppose so,” she said, “but here you have at least tentative evidence that there is, at least, one other intelligence in the galaxy, and that Earth has been visited. This would seem important—important enough to face up to some ridicule.”

“But, don't you see,” I argued, “that any sort of premature announcement would blur, if not kill off, any significance. The human race seems to have a strange, instinctive defensiveness against admitting there is anyone but ourselves. Maybe that's because we are afraid, deep down inside of us. We may have a basic fear of any other kind of intelligence. Maybe we are afraid that another intelligence would show us up as second rate, make us feel inferior. We talk, at times, about the loneliness of our situation in the universe, voicing a fear that we are alone, but sometimes, it seems to me that that is no more than philosophical posturing.”

“But if it's the truth,” Rila said, “sooner or later, we'll have to face up to it. There would be some advantage in facing facts early. Then we'd have some time to get used to the idea, to get our feet planted more firmly under us if the time ever comes when we have to meet them.”

“A lot of people would agree with you,” I said, “but not that faceless mob, the public. We may be intelligent and fairly level-headed, but collectively we can be pig-headed in a lot of different ways.”

Rila moved down the table and stopped opposite the two shiny hemispheres. She tapped one of them with her fingers. “These? They came out of the dig?”

“Not out of the dig,” I said. “I don't know what they are. They fit together to form a hollow sphere. The skin is about an eighth of an inch thick and extremely hard. At one time, I was going to send one of them along with the metal I sent the university, then decided not to. For one thing, I'm not sure they tie in with any of the rest of this mystery. I found them here, in this barn. I wanted to set up the tables, but there was a pile of junk in the center of the floor. Old pieces of harness, some odds and ends of lumber, a couple of packing cases, a few worn-out tires, things like that. I moved everything into that stall over there. That's when I found the two hemispheres at the bottom of the pile.”

Rila lifted one of the hemispheres and fitted it over the other, running her hand around the area where they came together.

“They do fit,” she said, “but they can't be fastened back together. There is no thread arrangement, nothing. A hollow ball that came apart somehow, sometime. You have the slightest idea what it is?”

“Not the faintest.”

“It could be something fairly simple, something in relatively common use.”

I looked at my watch. “How about some lunch?” I asked. “There is not too bad a place about twenty miles up the road.”

“We can eat right here. I could cook up something.”

“No,” I said. “I want to take you out. Do you realize that I never took you out to eat?”

FIVE

The Manhattan tasted good. I realized that it was the first civilized drink I had had in months; I'd almost forgotten how a decent drink could taste. I said as much to Rila. “At home, I guzzle beer or slop some Scotch over a couple of ice cubes.”

“You've been sticking close to the farm,” she said.

“Yes, and not regretting it. It's the best money I ever spent, buying that place. It's given me almost a year of interesting work and a sense of peace I've never had before. And Bowser has loved it.”

“You think a lot of Bowser.”

“He and I are pals. Both of us will hate going back.”

“I thought you said you weren't going back. You said when the sabbatical was up, you would resign.”

“I know. I say that every now and then. It's a fantasy, I guess. I have no desire to go back, but I haven't much choice. When I think of it, I come up against the hard fact that while I'm not exactly destitute, I'm not in a financial situation to become a non-wage-earner for any length of time.”

“I know how you must hate the thought of leaving,” she said. “It's not only the peace you speak of, but the chance to continue the dig.”

“That can wait. It will have to wait.”

“But, Asa, it's a shame.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But if it's waited for God knows how many centuries, it can wait a little longer. I'll come back each summer.”

“It's strange,” said Rila, “what long-range views archaeologists can take. I imagine that is a viewpoint that goes with the profession. They deal in long-time phenomena, so time has less importance to them.”

“You talk as if you never were an archaeologist.”

“Well, I never really was. That summer with you in Turkey and then, a couple of years later, a fuddy-duddy dig in Ohio, excavating an Indian campsite. A year or so at Chicago, mostly spent in cataloging. After that, it was easy to decide being an archaeologist was not what I wanted.”

“So you went into the fossil-artifact business.”

“Small at first,” she said. “A little shop in upstate New York. But apparently I came in at about the right time. Collectors were beginning to get interested and the business grew. There were more and more shops springing up each year and I could see that the real money was as a supplier, so I scraped together some money and floated a loan and again started out in a small way. I worked hard. I got a perverse satisfaction out of it. Here I was making a living out of something that was a rather despicable offshoot of a profession I had failed at—perhaps, rather, had been too impatient to try to succeed at.”

“You said last night you are considering selling out.”

“I took in a partner some years back. He wants to buy me out. He's willing to pay more than the business is worth. He has become somewhat upset at some of my ideas and my methods. If he buys me out, I give him three years before he goes broke.”

“You'll miss it. You like being in business.”

She shrugged. “Yes, I do. There's a ruthlessness about it that appeals to me.”

“You don't look the ruthless type to me.”

“Only in business,” she said. “It brings out the worst in me.”

We finished our drinks and the waiter brought the salads.

“Another round?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I limit myself. One drink at lunch. Long ago, I set that rule. At business lunches, and there were a lot of them, you were expected to lap it up, but finally I refused to do that. I'd seen what it could do to people. But have another if you wish.”

“I'll go along with you,” I said. “After we finish here, if you're willing, we'll go see our old Daniel Boone.”

“I'd like to, but it may run us late. How about Bowser?”

“Hiram will take care of him. He'll stay with Bowser until we get back. There's a cold roast in the refrigerator and he will split it with Bowser. He'll even go out and collect the eggs. He and Bowser will talk it over first. He'll say to Bowser, it must be time to pick up the eggs, and Bowser will ask what time it is, and Hiram will tell him, and then Bowser will say, yes, let us go and get them.”

“This pretense about Bowser talking. Do you think Hiram really thinks he does or is the whole thing just make-believe?”

“I don't honestly know,” I said. “Probably, Hiram thinks so, but what difference does it make? It's funny with animals. They have personalities and you can set up routines with them. When Bowser is out digging at a woodchuck hole, I go out to get him and drag him out of the hole, caked with mud and dirt and about worn out. Even so, he doesn't want to go home. He is committed to that woodchuck. But I grab him by the tail and say, ‘Git for home, Bowser,' and he goes, trotting ahead of me. But I've got to grab him by the tail and I have to say the words. Otherwise, he'd never go home with me. I couldn't coax him home and I couldn't chase him home. But when I go through that silly business, he always heads for home.”

She laughed. “You and Bowser! Both of you are crazy.”

“Of course we are. You can't live with a dog for years …”

“And chickens. I remember I did see some about. Have you pigs and horses and …”

“No. Chickens are all. Eggs to eat and an occasional fryer. I considered buying a cow, but a cow is too much bother.”

“Asa, I want to talk business with you. You said you didn't want the university horning in—I think is the way you put it—on this dig of yours. What would you think of me horning in?”

I had a forkful of salad halfway to my mouth and now I put it down. There was something in the way she said it that was almost a warning. I don't know what it was, but all at once, I was a little scared.

“Horn in?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Let me share your work with you.”

“What a silly thing to ask,” I said. “Of course you can share it with me. Haven't I already shared my discovery with you, telling you about it?”