Race Against Time (19 page)

She trailed off as John gestured toward the speaker vent of the comfort station's apparatus. They still could not hold a private conversation—if that made any difference now.

"I doubt it," Pei said, answering Betsy's second question. "It classified us as 'monumental,' and that is still not clear. We have not yet found what we came for."

"Does it exist—what we came for?" Meilan asked.

"If this is a typical standard unit...." John began.

"It's
not
typical," Betsy said. "All the cubicles are open at once. No rotation."

She was right. It was probably the only compartment in the area, and outside was nothing but desert.

"Well, you're the leader," John told Humé.

Humé looked nervous. "I am a warrior. This—this is not war as I know it."

Somehow this went far to dispel John's dislike of him. Humé was aware of his own limitations. He knew when to call it quits.

"Communicator," Meilan asked suddenly, "what are we here to learn?"

"You are here to appreciate your temporal and cultural framework."

"In this desert? What
is
our framework?"

"The monument of earth."

"It's still talking riddles!" Betsy exclaimed angrily.

Meilan was unperturbed. "Earth is dead. We are living. How can we be part of this monument?"

"You are sample manifestations of the history and culture of
Homo sapiens
—the animate portion of the monument."

"Thus we are monumental," Pei murmured.

"The history of man," Betsy said, thoughtful now. "His development, his wars, his manners, religions, and races. Through all time. That's an interesting kind of monument."

"Race against time," John said. "That's what we are—three sample races, each set in an appropriate place and time. Very clever contrast of settings."

"How did earth die?" Meilan asked the communicator.

"The monuments illustrate."

Pei smiled. "You need to be more specific in your phrasing. Obviously it isn't going to tell you the entire history of a world in one instant, especially since that seems to be the job the monuments are equipped to do. This is merely the—comfort station."

"How did T'ang die?" she asked, undaunted.

"The monuments illustrate."

"Where can we find the T'ang monument?"

The communicator gave a series of digits—a long series.

"The coordinate of the monument at Wei," Pei said. "That one alone. The real Wei, not the mock-up on Standard."

"Data insufficient."

It was Meilan's turn to smile. "The coordinate of the monument where the Middle Kingdom city of Wei once stood."

The communicator gave it.

"But this is
earth!"
Betsy protested. "What's it doing with Standard coordinates?"

"Why not?" John asked her. "They can apply their system to one planet as easily as to another.
We
use feet and miles wherever we are."

"How do we reach the Wei monument?" Meilan asked it.

"Summon a conveyance."

"I prefer to learn of Songhai," Ala said.

Humé finally reasserted his leadership. "We shall take turns. We shall return to our ship and travel to each monument in turn. First Wei, then—"

"Mopti," Ala put in.

"And finally—"

"Newton," John said.

"After we have seen our monuments and learned what we can from them, we shall decide what to do," Humé said.

Pei and Meilan went out to see their monument alone. The remaining four stayed in the ship and played tournament tick tack toe. No one had the nerve to conjecture about the report that might emanate from the Middle Kingdom.

Two hours later the two returned. Pei looked shaken, and Meilan had been crying. John reminded himself that the Chinese empires had been ravaged repeatedly by civil wars, changes of dynasty, and foreign conquests, though the essential culture always reasserted itself in a few decades or centuries. To Pei and Meilan that history was the future, real and personal. Had they seen Wei razed by the Mongols? The populace ravaged by the British, the Japanese? Or were worse things buried within that vast history he hardly comprehended?
What had they seen?

"Mopti," Humé said quietly.

The ship lifted, slanted, dropped. Again the dust and clouds concealed any view they might have had.

Humé and Ala departed. Neither Pei nor Meilan seemed inclined to socialize yet, so John played cryptics with Betsy: Each would invent a simple letter-transposition, apply it to some familiar quotation, and give the coded message to the other to solve. Both were having trouble, because it was hard to concentrate.

Meilan cried silently for a time, and Pei put his arm about her shoulders in the first open display of affection either had shown. Betsy, aware of it, kept her eyes fixed on the code sentence. John could understand her mixed jealousy and compassion. Those two had shared a traumatic experience that brought them together.

John solved his riddle first. "Thucydides!" he cried. " 'To famous men all the earth is a sepulcher.' "

"Yes!" Meilan exclaimed and cried some more. Both John and Betsy were taken aback. The quotation did have an uncomfortable relevance!

Finally Humé and Ala returned. Humé was angry, his large hands clenching and unclenching, but he was not shattered. Ala looked once at John, lips tight, and turned away.

The slave trade!
He knew at once that she had seen it and that anything that might have been between them was over. Why hadn't he realized before that this would happen? He could have warned her. Humé, the warrior, understood the realities of war, conquest, and exploitation; Ala did not. She was a citizen of civilized Songhai.

But now it was the white man's turn. "John, I'm afraid," Betsy whispered, taking his hand in a way she had not done before. He nodded, dry-mouthed, but they had to go.

Newton Monument: just a short trek through the desert. It was an empty, transparent octagon-floored structure fifty feet on a side. John and Betsy entered by phasing directly through the entrance wall and doffed their suits. Outside the perpetual dust storm raged visibly but silently; inside it was pleasant.

"Now what?" Betsy mused, looking about.

"There must be a starting button somewhere."

Near the door panel they discovered a button marked
Inauguration of sequence.
John depressed it.

"Welcome, Stans," the communicator voice said. "This is Monument America, location north-central, number fifteen. This structure commemorates the significant history of the ground covered by this structure."

Betsy looked perplexed. "How's that again?"

"It's the history of a hundred feet square!" John exclaimed, intrigued. "The area, I mean. You know—anything that happened
right here."

"Oh? What about the rest of America? History doesn't happen just in one place, you know, even when that one place is Newton."

"Guess we'd better play along and find out." But he was dubious himself. As far as he knew, Newton had no significant history—not where world events were concerned. It was strictly backwater. Yet here was the monument.

The voice was silent, and they had nothing to contemplate but a level floor and the brown swirl outside.

"There's a line on the floor," Betsy said. "Almost a path. Do you suppose...?"

As she walked along it, the voice resumed, causing her to stop. "Circa forty-five thousand B.S.E.—Before Standard Era—the first man passed this site. A single
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis,
probably garbed and armed as you see...."

Here a man appeared, startling them. He walked through the wall and into the center of the chamber, glancing occasionally to left and right. He was stocky and hirsute, barely five feet tall, with a flat-vaulted head and pronounced brow ridges and no apparent chin, yet in a hat and a suit he could have mixed with the populace of modern Newton. He wore leather, the fur side in, and carried a wooden spear, a wicked-looking stone hand ax, and an assortment of flint implements. One of these fell from his crude belt when his attention was distracted by a flying hawk and remained lost in the ground cover: the sole evidence of his passage.

"No further visitations occurred at this time," the voice said. "Settlement of this hemisphere was erratic and largely unsuccessful, perhaps because of limited technology and unfavorable climatic conditions."

Betsy started to say something as the voice stopped but decided on action instead. She moved a little farther along the line, and the commentary continued.

"Circa fifteen thousand B.S.E.
Homo sapiens
appeared in force, admitted to the continent by a temporary contraction of the Laurentide ice sheet and the Rocky Mountain sheet before the rise in ocean level blocked the Bering corridor. In this region mastodons were hunted."

There was a rousing presentation of that portion of a mastodon chase that occurred on the immediate site. John was fascinated, never having realized that elephants once lived wild in America. But Betsy, impatient to get to more recent events, began walking slowly along the line. The scene vanished in mid-hunt, and a new lecture began. But Betsy did not stop.

John followed, since there was nothing else to do unless he wanted to make an issue of it. He could always run the sequence through again later, if it came to that. So he was treated to tantalizing glimpses of the various hunting and food-gathering cultures of this region, each fragment some hundreds or thousands of years after the last.

This site was apparently astride the major north-south corridor between the retreating ice sheets, and tribes migrating from Asia through Alaska had to pass here before debouching into the main continent. Thus there was fairly constant turmoil until the ice age passed. Around 10,000 B.S.E. the culture was nomadic, the hunters bringing down seemingly inexhaustible American bison. By circa 7000 the plain grew dry and hot, the large game left, and only the gatherers were able to make a bare living. The climate ameliorated by 4000, bringing the bison back. By 2000 a village of pottery-making, burial-mound-building Amerinds occupied the site, doing some limited farming.

In 1600 B.S.E.—John translated this into his terms as A.D. 500 to 800—more sophisticated agricultural tribes encroached from the east, settling and absorbing the natives. The newcomers were the Siouan. The Caddo moved up from the south, building earth-covered lodges, and their subgroup, the Pawnee, hunted at the site. Finally a migration of quite a different nature developed: The white man came, bringing horses and guns. The French explored and dominated the region; then it passed over to the Spanish, then back to the French. In 292 it was purchased by the recently emerging Union.

"The Louisiana Purchase!" John cried. "That was 1803!"

Betsy ignored him and walked on.

"The Goths were originally from Sweden," the narrator said. "Teutonic barbarians who migrated across the Baltic Sea in the fifth century B.C., displacing the Scythians and Sarmatians there. Then down across the plains of southern Russia toward Hungary and the valley of the Danube, where they settled in the second century A.D. In this period the Goths became excellent horsemen and learned the use of a vital device, the stirrup. With this equipment a heavy cavalryman could keep his seat in the saddle and sustain the shock of the lance's impact."

"This is American history?" Betsy demanded. "They aren't even using B.S.E. dates!"

John watched the scene, confused but fascinated. Mounted, vaguely knightlike horsemen were charging across a plain, their long lances leveled. The narrator explained how, under pressure from the Huns, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths had moved into Roman territory and encountered difficulty there.

"...Adrianople in 378. Emperor Valens drew up the Roman imperial army in the historic fashion, legions massed in the center, and attacked...."

"It's Roman history!" John cried. "It really
is!"

"What's it doing
here?"
Betsy said.

But John was already absorbed in the unfolding battle. The Roman infantry was advancing against the Gothic footmen. John was sure the Romans would win, since he knew they had formed one of the most powerful empires of all time. He was mistaken. Goth horsemen appeared at the side, charging against the Roman flank and sweeping the infantry before them. The carnage was appalling, and the Roman army was wiped out.

"Thus medieval warfare was instituted in Europe by the Goths," the narrator said, "and the thousand-year-long dominance of the heavy cavalry in...."

The voice and image vanished. Betsy had stepped forward again.

"In 228 B.S.E. the territory the site occupied was admitted to the Union as the state of Nebraska, but the site itself was unremarkable. It was part of a field of barley situated somewhere between the South Loup and Platte rivers. In 110 the barley diminished and died, the victim of environmental pollution."

Betsy stopped walking.

"...most serious menace to life on earth," the voice was saying. "It developed first in the most populous and industrial regions but spread rapidly until no portion of earth, sea, or atmosphere was untainted. This site was only marginally affected"—the picture showed a weedy waste—"and the renovation program of 105 brought it back to full yield." Now the field was verdant again.

"Newton!" John said. "Where is Newton? This is the site of Newton, Nebraska. We've passed 1960...."

"Oh, be quiet," Betsy snapped. "That was an enclave on Standard. There was never any such place on earth."

Chastened, he shut up. But it was like the death of a friend.

"...the solution," the voice continued. "But this was illusory. The problem was international in scope. The advanced nations suffered first and so defined the problem first and acted accordingly, and this eliminated the worst offenders and gave the world a stay of execution. But industrial technology was spreading explosively, and its early phase necessarily brought massive pollution—chemical, radioactive, thermal, sonic, aesthetic. Thus the nations who had reduced their personal standard of living in the interest of a sanitary environment saw their efforts dissipated by the excesses of the emergents, who could not yet afford to apply restraints or limit themselves to nonpollutant sources of power. By 80 B.S.E. the second crisis was at hand...."