Forge of the Elders, page 15
She and her school had been interested in preparing her for a career as an officer. At the time, she'd have regarded any other kind of knowledge as useless mental clutter, possibly of mild interest but essentially irrelevant. This had certainly included subjects like paleontology, archaeology, and all but military history. If she'd ever heard anything about it, she'd have promptly forgotten it, having no way of knowing that such information might someday prove critical to her survival, not to mention her career.
Later, of course, she'd done some casual reading, a paperback purchased at a terminal or base exchange, shoved as an afterthought into a duffel bag. The hurry-up-and-wait life led by any professional soldier affords plenty of time for casual reading. A surprising number of thick-necked, dog-faced grunts of her own acquaintance might easily have qualified for doctorates, based on this sort of casually acquired information, if they'd given a damn, which they didn't. Now, thanks to Pulaski, who more or less fit into the same category, Reille y Sanchez had been supplied with new data and some refreshed memories.
"Thanks, Toya, that's about what I thought. And now I wonder why it's never occurred to anyone to ask one simple, highly disturbing question."
"Colonel?"
Better than "ma'am." Come to think of it, a lot better. "Well, if the oldest known human remains are two hundred fifty thousand years old, and the oldest known civilization only about eight thousand, what, in the sacred name of the martyred Geraldo Rivera was Homo sapiens doing with himself during the intervening two hundred forty-two thousand years?"
Pulaski had an odd, frightened expression on her face. "I don't believe I follow you, ma'am."
The colonel was too deep in concentration to be annoyed at this relapse. "Sure you do, Toya, look: it required only eighty centuries for mankind to step from your sun-baked adobe villages, somewhere in the Middle East, to the crater-marked surface of the Moon, right?"
"Right—" A dismayed look on the girl's face indicated a suspicion that, by some tricky, characteristically military twisting of logic, her answer might somehow get her into trouble. Reille y Sanchez knew from her own experience that such a suspicion, although groundless on this occasion, was as soundly rooted in reality as the great trees surrounding the encampment. "I mean, yes, Colonel."
"Relax, Toya, and answer this: could it actually have taken poor old Homo sap each of the preceding two hundred forty-two millennia to claw his way up from animal subsistence on the blood-soaked veldt of Africa to those damned adobe villages?"
"That's colorful, Colonel." The sergeant swallowed, still uncomfortable. "But not very, um, scientific—I mean I don't believe I ever thought much about it before."
Reille y Sanchez laughed. "That's what I was warned you'd say, as a representative of established science. Well, it occurred to me to ask that question, rather it was asked for me last night. And now, either I can't leave it alone, or it won't leave me alone. Could our species, the supposedly human race, possibly be as slow-witted as that empty, accusing quarter of a million years seems to imply?"
"I, er—" Pulaski closed her mouth, thinking.
"If that were truly so, how could they have survived all of those long, danger-filled tens of thousands of years in tooth-and-nail competition with what would, by logical comparison, have been vastly more intelligent species, like turtles, parakeets, garden snails—"
Pulaski giggled. "And giant ground sloths?"
"I think, Toya," Reille y Sanchez laughed again, "that you've got the idea. No matter how hard I try—no matter how the contrary proposition flies in the face of accepted scientific evidence—I can't bring myself to believe we're that dumb. I never thought of myself as an optimist regarding human nature, but there it is."
"There what is, Estrellita?" A shadow fell across the women. Gutierrez stood before them bare-chested, toweling himself off, his shirt still tucked in and hanging from the waist. Across the campsite, Danny was stacking kindling under a shuttle wingtip.
The colonel eyed the general's hands, covered with painful-looking blisters, broken and weeping. "I suppose I could be wrong," she mused. "Still, two hundred forty-two thousand years. What if people were doing something more ambitious, something nobler, with all that spare time?"
"Like what?" Pulaski asked.
"What are you two talking about?" demanded the general.
Pulaski looked up, visibly embarrassed by his naked, hairy torso, and even more, the colonel thought, by his not-unpleasant male-animal odor. "Anthropology, sir, and prehistory." Together, the women explained what they'd been discussing.
He nodded, folding his legs beneath him and sitting on the ground. "So the question is: what if people were accomplishing something all that time—besides bashing cave bears, saber-toothed tigers, and each other over the heads and subsisting as the fur-clad stone-tooled Alley Oops you see in museum dioramas? Well, what about it?"
Reille y Sanchez took up where she'd left off. "Okay, why is it archaeologists and paleontologists, even when they're violating all accepted academic precedent looking for it—"
"Which, for the most part," Pulaski interrupted, surprising even herself, "they're decidedly not—"
"Why can't they find any physical trace of it?" the colonel finished.
"For the excellent reason . . ." The general thrust his arms into the sleeves of his shirt, pulled it around his shoulders, and closed the zipper halfway. From the way his uniform hung, Reille y Sanchez guessed that he was still carrying the weapons left behind by Kamanov and Richardson. " . . . that the poor, ignorant, tenured schmucks've been looking in all the wrong places!"
Reille y Sanchez opened her mouth. She closed it.
"Don't look surprised," he said. "I've been doing some snooping on my own, as I said I would, among the asteroid's better-informed inhabitants. For instance, I had a long, interesting talk with Eichra Oren yesterday, while some of you were out looking for Vivian. Funny kind of investigator. He answers more questions than he asks. He suggested they'd be better off—archaeologists and paleontologists—if they'd drill for evidence of archaic civilization beneath the South Polar icecap. They might even find something rewarding by randomly dragging the bottom of the Indian Ocean."
"For what?" both women demanded of the man.
"For what, sir?" Pulaski added, after a moment, in a small voice.
Gutierrez grinned. "For physical evidence of a prehistoric civilization which it appears Mother Nature—or maybe it was Auntie Evolution—once shoved off the edge of a continental shelf."
Pulaski began nodding, understanding something Reille y Sanchez hadn't caught yet. "Tens of thousands of years ago," the girl declared, staring off at the treetops as if she were talking to herself, "what we regard as our hospitable home-continent of North America was every bit as uninhabitable as the surface of the Moon."
"The whole thing was covered," agreed Gutierrez, "from the Arctic Sea, almost to the Gulf of Mexico, by an ice sheet—as hard as it may be to imagine it—three kilometers thick in places."
They're both right, the colonel realized, remembering colored maps and artists' renderings from science and geographic magazines which, long after she'd left the academy and its narrow concerns, never failed to fascinate her. "The North and South Poles," she volunteered, "were in different places only a few thousand years ago."
He clapped his palms together. "As usual—sonofabitch, look at those blisters, will you? I didn't realize I'd done that! So much for healthy physical labor! I was about to say, you've hit the nail on the head, Estrellita. And at the same time—well, you tell it, Sergeant. About Antarctica during the same period. It's your hobby, after all." He stared down at his hands and shook his head.
Pulaski smiled a shy smile. The general, too, had made a friend. "Well, sir—ma'am—the fossil record demonstrates that today's ice-bound Antarctica was, by contrast, a dry, warm, heavily forested environment, even though, on all the Earth, it's now the bleakest and most barren."
"Right." In his enthusiasm, the general couldn't resist interrupting. "At least according to Eichra Oren, it wasn't in the so-called `Fertile Crescent' of the Middle East that the human race built its first real civilizations. In a sense, if you believe him, that's where they were forced, later on, to begin climbing to the stars all over again."
"I don't know, sir, if it's smart to believe everything we're told." Again Reille y Sanchez faced the dilemma of open-mindedness and gullibility. "What you're saying, what Eichra Oren maintains, is that civilization began in Antarctica, the least hospitable—"
He nodded. "Back, to paraphrase George Harrison, when it was fab. I don't know whether we can believe Eichra Oren either, Estrellita, but it's fascinating to think about. Everything about Mister Thoggosh's new deputy seems mysterious and unbelievable. But Eichra Oren says his immediate ancestors once lived there."
"On that little frozen-over continent?"
"Not that little, really. And only recently frozen over. Soviet science states—correctly, according to Eichra Oren—that human beings first arose as a sapient species in nearby southern Africa. Somehow, some of them managed to cross the water and made history for thousands of years—history which would have been lost to us forever if we hadn't met Eichra Oren—and learned and grew as a people. Which accounts for at least a part of your missing two hundred forty-two thousand years, Estrellita. I gather these people spent a chunk of it building themselves a fairly impressive civilization, in every way comparable to the civilization achieved, oh, say by our European ancestors during the early Industrial Revolution."
Pulaski looked concerned. "But what became of them, sir?"
"Well, Toya, in a sense, nothing. Here we are, aren't we?"
Reille y Sanchez shook her head. "You mean to say, sir, that these ancient people we're just hearing about for the first time happen to be our ancestors, too?"
He stood up, grunting just a little. "By a more indirect route than they're Eichra Oren's, but yes. Our remote ancestors. Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I'm going to go find a Band-aid or nine."
"Our remote ancestors." Toya sighed.
"From the Lost Continent," the colonel answered, "of Antarctica."
SIXTEEN Method, Motive, Opportunity
"I'm sorry," the rubber flower told her, "Tl*m*nch*l is out of the office. I'm Llessure Knarrfic, his, er—excuse me, please."
Reille y Sanchez wondered what this being had evolved from. Impossibly thin greenish fingers, six or seven to a hand (of which there were four), clattered over a circular keyboard set in the top of the desklike piece of furniture behind which the lower half of the peculiar sapient was hidden.
The "office" was a roofless cubicle she'd found after wandering a maze of similar corridors for what seemed hours. Overhead, a Fresnel lens two meters square focused the canopy's diffuse sunlight on the desk's occupant. Nearby, a humidifier hissed, adding to the tropical heat and moisture of what already seemed like a greenhouse.
From the general's description, Reille y Sanchez had imagined something like a big talking sunflower with petals around a "have-a-nice-day" face. This thing looked more like a pale green chrysanthemum with a blossom larger than a soccer ball. No eyes or other features could be seen, nor could she tell where the being's clear, androgynous voice was coming from. Beneath the blossom, a stalk or torso of the same color branched at intervals to produce the arms before it disappeared behind the desk. Now, symbols appeared on a screen no thicker than cardboard, standing at one end of that desk.
"There it is, according to this glossary of the human language, I'm Tl*m*nch*l's `secretary or receptionist.' Can I help you, Col. Sanchez?"
This Tl*m*nch*l (at least it sounded like that to Reille y Sanchez) was one of the sea-scorpions, sapient crustaceans brought here by the Elders. Decorative frames on every wall except the one which had dilated to admit her made the colonel suspect this creature or its boss, head of the "giant bugs with guns," perceived light in different frequencies than human beings. Significant areas of the pictures seemed an empty, dull gray.
"Reille y Sanchez," the colonel corrected, "mine works differently than most human names, there's really more than one human language. Ask Aelbraugh Pritsch, he speaks lovely Spanish. You can tell me where Tlumunchul is, or when he's likely to be back."
The chrysanthemum made a noise, clearing whatever it used for a throat. "That's Tl*m*nch*l, Colonel Reille y Sanchez. Most sapients find his name, along with the rest of his language, difficult to pronounce and won't even try. He's busy somewhere, doing something I'm not supposed to talk about with you newcomers—"
Reille y Sanchez nodded. "The Elders' mysterious search for whatever?"
"I'm afraid," Llessure Knarrfic replied, ignoring the remark, "I don't know when he'll be back. Would you care to leave a message?"
"Sure. I'd like to speak with Tlemenchel about Piotr Kamanov's death. He's the Proprietor's security chief, therefore my `opposite number.' He's also the first nonhuman I happened to see here. I've never investigated a murder before, and I'm trying to be methodical."
"That's Tl*m*nch*l, Colonel Reille y Sanchez. I'll give him the message. Will there be anything else?"
"I'll—hold on a minute, one more thing, if you don't mind." Excusing herself, Reille y Sanchez walked around the desk. Tucked beneath it were two pairs of fairly ordinary legs and feet, fairly ordinary considering that she'd expected to see a pot full of dirt. "That'll be all, thanks. I'm going to look up Aelbraugh Pritsch, and can be reached there, wherever `there' is."
"Oh, fudge," answered the flower. "I'm afraid that you'll be disappointed again. Aelbraugh Pritsch happens to be with Tl*m*nch*l, as we speak."
Reille y Sanchez suppressed the first response that came to mind. "I'm afraid `oh fudge' doesn't say it. Surprise the next human you talk to: check your glossary under sexual intercourse and bodily elimination."
"I will," the petals constituting Llessure Knarrfic's face seemed to spread, "and thank you, Col. Reille y Sanchez!"
"Don't mention it." She grinned, walked out through the wall, and stopped the next sapient she ran into.
By chance—or perhaps not—Tl*m*nch*l's office was near the infirmary (at least on the more-or-less random course Reille y Sanchez was following) where, it felt like such a long time ago, Kamanov had been taken for his shoulder injury. "Ran into" was more than a figure of speech. The "walking quilt" Gutierrez had told them of, who dispensed refreshments, came close to running the colonel over with its pushcart.
"Oops! Excuse me," were the colonel's first, reflexive words, "I'm Estrellita Reille y Sanchez. Have you seen Aelbraugh Pritsch or Tliminchil around anywhere? I need to speak with one of them."
"Greetings, Estrellita Reille y Sanchez, Colonel in Fullity of Kaygeebee, I have pleasure to be Remaulthiek and regret to inform you that both worthy sapients after whom you inquire—and it is pronounced Tl*m*nch*l—are at this time occupied in righteous and sacred undertakings which are not to be discussed with homosapienses. May I do something to recompense the debt of civility which this may otherwise create between us? You would, perhaps, delight to ingest caffeine infusion and a doughnut?"
Reille y Sanchez smiled. It was difficult to dislike these beings, even when they looked like GI-issue mummy bags wrapped in Saran Wrap. "Thanks—let me get this one straight: Remaulthiek?—the coffee smells wonderful, and I will have a doughnut. You haven't created any debt. If these were ordinary circumstances, I'd just mind my own business. But I need to talk to somebody among your people, the nonhomosapienses, who knows something."
Beside the cart, she watched Remaulthiek treat itself—herself, the general had decided—using a flexible corner of her blanket-shape to dissolve a doughnut in a cup of coffee, sipping the mess through a large-caliber straw thrust through her protective wrapper. As with Llessure Knarrfic, there was no expressive face to go by, no familiar body language, but Remaulthiek seemed to be pondering the request.
"Something, if I may ask, about what, Estrellita Reille y Sanchez?"
"I had definite ideas about that, earlier," the colonel replied, "detective-type questions about Semlohcolresh, Mister Thoggosh, the Elders' culture in general. Now, I'd settle for practically anything. What have you got in mind?"
"Please, if you wish it, to follow me."
Disposing of the cup and leaving the cart, the entity waddled toward a corridor wall and through, the colonel following. As the wall closed behind them, they encountered an insectile being, perhaps one of the surgeons who'd worked on Kamanov. It stood as tall as Reille y Sanchez, and was different from the sea-scorpions. For one thing, it wasn't wearing the transparent plastic affected by them and Remaulthiek. Instead, it wore a garment made of hundreds of centimeter-wide strips of fluorescent orange-and-green fabric. It seemed to be examining a sheaf of papers on a clipboard.
"Remaulthiek," it rasped, apparently making sounds by rubbing vestigial wing-cases together under its clothing, "you never sicken, nor are you easily injured. What service may I do you?"
"Dlee Raftan Saon," intoned the quilt-being, "though denied in kindness, I pay a debt of civility. Estrellita Reille y Sanchez, in Kaygeebee Full Colonelness, wishes to ask, of somebody who knows something, detective-type questions about Semlohcolresh, Mister Thoggosh, the Elders' culture, practically anything in general. Estrellita Reille y Sanchez, Dlee Raftan Saon, Restorer-of-Health, who knows much about many things."
Reille y Sanchez put out a hand. "Thank you, Remaulthiek, and for the, er, caffeine infusion and doughnut."
Remaulthiek bent a corner, touching her hand. "You are welcome, Estrellita Reille y Sanchez. I have savored the sweet scent of your naming and return to my occupation." With that, she walked through the wall.
Through its tattered, dazzling attire, the insect extended a bristly limb which the colonel accepted without examining closely. "Sit, my dear, while I finish these confounded records. May I call you Estrellita? Then we'll sneak out of this sweetshop—correct?—no? `Sweatshop,' then, for a bit and a bite of talk, or is it the other way round? No matter. Tell me, this is your wish, to ask questions? It's difficult with Remaulthiek, her species communicates with pheromones and I've never quite trusted their translating software."
