Forge of the Elders, page 51
"Like Howard Carter," asked the former general, "who discovered the tomb of King Tut?"
"Or Heinrich Schliemann, for another example, the oddball who supposedly dug up Troy?"
"Schliemann was the prime example I had in mind, Sam, although, as you imply, his less-gifted and persistent successors claim he didn't discover Troy at all—"
"But another city of the same name in the same place."
"Quite. Whenever I hear adventurers of the past castigated for their methods, I recall that in those days the academics, when they dug at all, did their digging with dynamite, too. And not just over artifacts; they were known to conduct authentic Western-style gun battles over sites containing dinosaur fossils. It's arguable that the best methodology was worked out by these amateurs, often pursuing dreams and legends ignored or dismissed by the experts."
"It's always seemed to me," the human agreed, "that experts exist only to tell you why something can't be done."
"Just before some gifted and persistent amateur who doesn't know any better goes ahead and does it."
"My opinion exactly," Mister Thoggosh replied. "From the academic standpoint, of course, the most grievous sin of these amateurs was simply that of any amateur with regard to any established profession. They were self-appointed, self-educated, uninitiated by the guild, uncircumcised by the priesthood . . ."
"And therefore untouchable and unspeakable," Sam observed.
The giant mollusc made a chuckling noise over the same sound system the dog was using. "Whenever we speak of archaeology, Sam, amateur or professional, we must always remember that what we're really talking about is abandoned property—"
" `Little bits of junk,' as Marion Ravenwood described it in Raiders of the Lost Ark—"
"Thrown away by their original owners who, in any case, couldn't take it with them. Whatever legislation is passed in an absurd refusal to confront that fact of pragmatic reality—"
"Among others."
"—those little bits of junk belong to no one until they're physically discovered and reclaimed."
"In other words," Gutierrez offered, " `finders keepers'?"
"I like the way you put that, Horatio."
"In any case," insisted Mister Thoggosh, "the value of those bits of junk, like all material value, is subjective. Some, whose goal was treasure and glory, were reviled by academics as `looters' and `pot hunters,' pursuing that ultimate dirty word, `profit.' In the end, even collectors came to be despised, although most were moved by the same thing that presumably motivates the professional: a fascinated curiosity with the past."
"You're right there," Gutierrez agreed. "Whenever I had time, and was stationed in the right place, I used to take my sons out to look for Indian arrowheads."
"Which makes you a pot hunter, Horatio, within the customary meaning of the term. And certainly the pot hunter's right to satisfy his fascinated curiosity—"
"Or any other itch."
"Indeed, Sam, or any other itch, is just as great as that of anyone with an academic degree, whose personal profit, if you will, consists of academic preeminence, scientific priority, prestigious publication, professorial tenure—"
"And government grants."
"As opposed to something as clean and uncomplicated," asked the general, "as cash?"
"Precisely. Nor have I yet thought to mention the greedy, self-righteous museum directors who stuff their basements with booty forever to be kept from private hands and the public eye until one day in a distant century perhaps, it's dug up once again by future archaeologists. . . ."
Gutierrez laughed.
"How," Mister Thoggosh went on, "do we avoid the inevitable conclusion that they and their colleagues were moved by a visceral, infantile, hypocritical hatred for the very concepts of private property and individual achievement, which had nothing to do with science?"
"I sympathize with your point of view, Mister Thoggosh," Gutierrez sighed, "but you still haven't explained how archaeology became `the straw that broke the American camel's back.' "
"Forgive me, Horatio, but you Americans started with a nation-state in which any individual could make of himself anything he had the gumption for. Then you let it go a little bit at a time to minor trespasses like zoning laws and building codes—or the International Law of the Sea—until no one was at liberty any longer, even to dig with his hands in the dirt and keep what he found there."
"I think I see what you're getting at, Mister Thoggosh, but—"
"One state, Oklahoma, I believe it was, demanded a written inventory of each individual's personal belongings, everything from wristwatches to farm tractors—threatening to send its minions to break into people's homes and make the inventory themselves if it was not immediately forthcoming—and there was no revolt."
"But that was—"
"How about the federal judge during the same period who ordered local property taxes increased, despite the clearly stated wishes of the voters—and even their elected officials?"
"Your Supreme Court backed him up, Horatio, ending the last pretense to democracy in America—"
"And it never occurred to anybody to take him out and string him up like he deserved!"
"Now hold on, Sam, Mister Thog—"
Gutierrez's sputtering objections were waved away by more tentacles than the man could count. "Your government routinely denied any obligation on its part to defend your life, liberty, or property, Horatio, while simultaneously forbidding you the physical means of defending them yourself. At the same time, ludicrously enough, toward the end of the last century, animals had rights in America—"
"Nonsapient animals, he means."
"But human beings did not."
"Well, I—"
"Finally, a blatantly power-hungry pack of conservative congressman, elected on the promise of bringing freedom back to the people, instead forced `emergency' legislation through, using drugs as an excuse, which suspended the Bill of Rights altogether, destroying the last vestiges of the system of which you Americans had been so proud for so long. Justifiably proud, I might add, considering the historic context. Your liberals `responded' by adopting more and more of the tattered trappings of Marxism being shed everywhere else in the world. In the end, they were even able to create an enormous slush fund through the World Bank—using three gigantic pseudoscientific hoaxes as a pretext: acid rain, global warming, and ozone depletion—to finance and enforce the sovietization process."
"Horatio might be interested to know," Sam added, "that the last capital offense on record in the Elders' culture—the last death sentence before they shed government altogether—was reserved for politicians caught lying to the public."
"In particular," Mister Thoggosh agreed, "for public misuse of the word `emergency.' "
"Which has what to do," Gutierrez sounded impatient, "with Arthur's group and archaeology?"
"It's all of a piece, Horatio, and I don't intend for a moment even to let it begin—"
Mister Thoggosh suddenly fell silent, listening to his implant. Somehow sensing the Elder's tension, even the songfish momentarily stopped its trilling.
Then: "I beg your pardon once again, my friends, but I've just received some extremely disturbing news. My assistant, Aelbraugh Pritsch, informs me that your three spacecraft, Horatio, the Laika, the Geronimo, and the John Galt—"
"Have caught fire!" Sam interrupted.
"And are burning out of control on the outer surface of the canopy!"
SIXTY-ONE Canary Row
"Shitgoddamnittohell!"
Coughing fluorocarbon every step of the way, Gutierrez erupted from the entrance pool outside the Proprietor's quarters and ran for the foot of the nearest staircase.
Access to the outer surface—and to his precious shuttlecraft—was through an air lock, installed recently as a courteous afterthought at treetop level, which penetrated the mustard yellow polymer to hang beside a convenient canopy tree. Most of the community's buildings above ground level were supported like so many shelf mushrooms anyway, so it was not unusual to see a spiral staircase encircling one of the forest giants. In the asteroid's minimal gravity, the climb always turned out to be less daunting than it initially appeared.
What was odd about this particular staircase was that it worked like a high-speed escalator—the treads and risers even canted inward to avoid flinging passengers away—without benefit of any visible moving parts. In stolid silence and with gritted teeth, Gutierrez took the spiral journey which amounted to almost five kilometers but consumed less than a minute and a half.
"Horatio!" a familiar voice greeted him at his journey's end. "Sam told me you were coming. I got here as quickly as I could, myself. Tl*m*nch*l's on his way, too." He handed Gutierrez a small bundle. "In the meantime, see if you can squeeze into this!"
Eichra Oren, looking incomplete somehow without the talking dog who'd been his lifelong companion, had met the former general on the small balcony outside the hanging air lock. They were joined within a score of heartbeats by Mister Thoggosh's security chief, one of the sea-scorpionoids that the humans sometimes called "lobster people."
Both wore the lightweight, transparent filmsuits which provided protection for various species associated with the Elders in virtually any hostile environment. Eichra Oren had brought one for Gutierrez. His arms and legs slid easily into those of the suit. The midsection stretched to accommodate his own. Sealing the seam and pulling the flexible helmet and mask over his face, he would have appreciated the many advantages it had over the bulky armor his own people had inherited from NASA, if the situation hadn't been so urgent.
By comparison with the escalator, the lock cycled slowly, rising through the canopy as it did, giving Gutierrez time to adjust to his clothing. He noticed that Tl*m*nch*l had reslung his gun belt outside his own protective covering, that Eichra Oren even had his sword of office handy, slapping at his plastic-covered thigh, and realized that his own little pistol, the Kahr K9, was buttoned up under his suit where it couldn't do him any good. As the floor of the lock rose under them, carrying them outside, he nodded toward his companions' weapons.
"You really think we're going to need all that hardware? Seems to me our real problem is going to be figuring out how to fight a fire in a vacuum."
The elevator stopped; the door began to open. Gutierrez was aware that his feet were sticking gently to the floor. Staying put had been a challenge when they'd first arrived.
"On the contrary, friend Horatio," Tl*m*nch*l's clawtips raced across the keyboard of his vocalizer, "our real problem consists of figuring out how a fire got started in a vacuum!"
"Make that three fires, Tl*m*nch*l," corrected Eichra Oren. "Horatio, I hate coincidences like this. And yes, they never fail to make me look to my arma—"
The man was suddenly speechless. Everywhere they looked, people of a dozen different species, in thin filmsuits and heavy NASA armor alike, were scurrying about like vermin whose comfortable log had just been kicked over. Although many carried fire extinguishers and other, less-identifiable equipment, they seemed to be accomplishing about as much as scurrying vermin, to Gutierrez's eye, trained for command.
Far out across the plastic plain, literally smooth as a billiard ball beneath two suns and a scattering of embarrassed-looking stars, all three of the venerable American spacecraft were belching thick, black, greasy smoke through their many hull penetrations. In the absence of any significant gravity, the pall surrounded them like an evil fog, hellishly lit, orange-red, from within.
Gutierrez set his jaw and turned to the Antarctican. "Eichra Oren, give me your sword!"
* * *
S*bb*ts*rrh was a happy being.
Although he was the only member of his species here not working in the security contingent, his position was important and remunerative. As a Small Artifactologist, it was his responsibility to supervise the excavation, handling, and disposition of whatever hand-carryable Predecessor discoveries were made. It was exacting work which he enjoyed, having spent most of a lifetime preparing for it.
That wasn't why he was happy at this particular moment, however. Earlier this morning, an entity he thought of as *rth*r*mpl**d* had barged into his office in the Elders' settlement—it was pure chance the creature had caught him there, he was usually out in the field these days among new friends who shared his interests—claiming to speak for something called "The Committee for the Preservation of Antiquities, representing the unanimous opinion of the human community" nearby. Citing the fact, which nobody disputed anyway, that the asteroid 5023 Eris was located in an alternative version of the Solar System presently inhabited by its own species and none other, it had demanded that all exploration of the ancient spaceship halt immediately.
S*bb*ts*rrh had begun by calling *rth*r*mpl**d* a liar. In the first place, there wasn't a sapient species in all of probability capable of unanimity in numbers much over three, and humans had proven themselves no different from anyone else in that regard. Dissent was the primary social characteristic of sapience. How could a species explore every environmental niche and avenue of survival—which in the last analysis was the function of intelligence—if they acted like copies of one another? In the second, some of his new friends happened to be human, and—T*y*p*l*sk* and R*g*r*w*n in particular—were as sanguine about exploring the asteroid as himself.
He'd begun by calling *rth*r*mpl**d* a liar, but he'd hardly stopped there. As exacting with his insults as he was with everything else, he'd exhausted the invective vocabulary of twenty-three languages before going on to items of his own devising. In the end, *rth*r*mpl**d* had stalked off, tossing vaguely ominous alien terms like libel and slander over his shoulder and threatening to sue S*bb*ts*rrh for what he'd said—a process the artifactologist gathered was akin to adversary proceedings before a moral debt assessor.
Determined to remain methodical, S*bb*ts*rrh was now on his way to the office of Eichra Oren between the Elders' settlement and the human encampment. He was no p'Nan professional, but he knew that, no matter how annoying it might be, moral debt cannot be created by a verbalism. Somewhere at the heart of every moral debt lay an act of initiated force, actual or threatened. He was certain that his judgement in this matter would be confirmed—which was why he was happy—and because this assessor happened to be human, the experience would add something to his understanding of the species.
Having decided to walk in order to prolong his enjoyment of the moment, he was mentally occupied with the delightfully delicate problem of preserving an actual Predecessor footprint in the dust, deep inside the asteroid, which had been covered over with more dust for a billion years, had just rounded one of the giant canopy trees, and was virtually within hailing distance of the assessor's home. Thus he failed to see his attacker until the final instant.
S*bb*ts*rrh's fleeting first impression was his last. What he saw as he drew the last molecules of air over his gills and snatched desperately at a weapon he carried on his belt—beneath his filmsuit—was an apparition three times his size belonging to no species he'd ever heard of. The thing's face may have been that of a mantoid, rather broad at the top, narrower at the bottom. Its principal features were a pair of rage-maddened eyes, two nostril penetrations, and a slash of a mouth filled with nasty-looking masticators.
The rest was worse, a patchwork of pallid flesh and haphazard plates. Some of the manipulators sticking out at odd angles around the edges appeared mammalian, others arthropodic. S*bb*ts*rrh didn't have time to be certain, but thought he saw an odd number of them, seven or perhaps nine. It was the last thought he had. Before it was complete, the entity swung a huge tool it held in a manipulator, bringing it down on S*bb*ts*rrh's head, crushing his pseudochitin skull, dashing his brains out on the grass, and ending his life.
Arthur Empleado, former head of the American KGB on 5023 Eris—in the same sense that Gutierrez was a former general—stood in the open air lock wearing someone else's discarded spacesuit, watching the efforts of several different species to fight the fire outside. A row of buttons blinking angrily on the panel told him that someone below was clamoring to use the elevator.
All three of the elderly shuttlecraft were ablaze. Each had survived many distinguished twentieth-century missions, more than three quarters of a century lying in mothballs in Florida, rededication in the names of heroes of the socialist revolution, and a three-hundred-million kilometer trip to the asteroid belt.
Soon they would be gone.
There would be no way his companions could avoid inferring that their precious spacecraft had been sabotaged. The only way to get them to burn was to fill them with oxygen instead of the plain air they'd been designed for. That sort of thing could hardly happen accidently, not to three ships separated by several hundred meters' distance. In his mind's eye, Empleado could see the incendiary devices plainly. If he remembered right, they'd been invented by the French resistance during the Second World War. An ordinary cigarette could be placed anywhere, closed in a book of matches so that, once it smoldered down to the heads—five minutes in a normal atmosphere, probably less in oxygen—they'd go up in a sudden blaze, taking everything else with them.
Gutierrez had evidently arrived at the same conclusion. Empleado saw him seize Eichra Oren's proffered sword and run toward the nearest shuttle, the flagship Honorable Robert Dole illegally rechristened Laika, followed by the assessor and Tl*m*nch*l, the sea-scorpionoid he knew was Mister Thoggosh's chief of security. Raising the razor-sharp assessor's weapon over his head, the general hacked brutally at a spot on the shuttlecraft's hull just below the pilots' windows.
Before the man had taken a dozen such strokes, the unearthly alloy of the sword had found its way through the tough material of the hull and a sudden spark-edged tongue of flame shot outward as Gutierrez leaped aside at the last instant to avoid it. The beleaguered spaceship vomited smoke and flames for a couple of seconds, then the conflagration whuffed out as if someone had thrown a switch. Without waiting to see the results, the general hurried to the next ship.
