Across a Billion Years

  For a long while I watched as though in a dream as these beings went about their unimaginable business, gliding up and down on their cables, bowing to one another, gracefully touching hands, exchanging gifts (I saw some inscription nodes being handed out), and engaging in conversations that I could not hear, for there was no sound accompanying the projection. Then I turned to face the next sequence.

  It showed a scene inside one of the dangling houses: a large red-lit room whose walls appeared covered with a living substance, something soft and rippling that swelled and shrank in an unpredictable cycle, now puffing up and becoming tight as a drumhead, now deflating, now writhing like sheets of flesh.

  There were nine High Ones in the room. Two, clutching cables mounted in the ceiling, were lost in trances, or, for all I could tell, were dead and stuffed. (The funeral customs of alien races defy all comprehension. So do the funeral customs of non-alien races. Can you explain to me the virtue of putting dead people in a box and burying the box in the ground?) Three of the High Ones stood in a far corner, taking part in what might have been a quaint folk dance or perhaps some kind of sex: they had formed a circle, facing inward, with their arms interlaced and their heads pressed cheek-to-cheek, and they were sliding around and around and around in a slow, determined way. You figure it out. Another High One was crouched over a miniature model of a globe much like the one that was entertaining us; it was projecting a tiny image, but we weren't able to see it clearly. The remaining three High Ones sat in a pit in the floor, passing a flask of some colored fluid back and forth, and now and then dipping the tips of their fingers into it.

  The adjoining sequence showed a building under construction. First a cable descended from the web-work. Then machines at ground level sent spurts of— plastic?—into the air. Midway between ground and web the spurted stuff collected around the cable as if pulled to it by a magnetic field, and shaped itself into a neat eight-sided structure. Everything was done automatically, and it took about six minutes.

  The fourth sequence was a purely abstract pattern, a coiling and uncoiling of green and red shapes that was so unsettling and disturbing that I don't feel like talking about it.

  The fifth sequence revealed an empty landscape, no trees, no grass, ice-covered boulders scattered about, sky copper-red, ground iron-gray, the sun pale and feeble. In the middle distance was another group of three High Ones, heads inward, arms interlaced, cheeks touching, doing that same slow dance.

  The sixth sequence presented the interior of some kind of cave whose walls were encrusted with huge uncut gems, great glistening crystals of a hundred different kinds. The camera peered through the floor of the cave, which appeared to be made of glass, and revealed colossal machines throbbing and hammering in an underground chamber: huge green pistons pumping endlessly, sleek black conveyor belts, spinning turbines. High Ones wearing yellow belts (the only clothing I saw on any of them) walked down the aisles between these devices, pausing occasionally to examine control panels.

  I had come full circle, for the adjoining sequence was the city scene again, not much changed. But the room with the nine High Ones had vanished, and now I saw a close-up shot of a single High One who held an inscription node in his hands. The camera zoomed in on the inscription and lingered there a long while, long enough for the inscription to change several times.

  The sequence next to this no longer showed the construction project; now it depicted—

  But why go on? For a full hour I watched these scenes, all of them fascinating, all of them bewildering. I could continue multiplying mysteries by listing everything, but you must have the idea by now of how remote and strange these people were, how advanced their civilization, how little we comprehend them.

  Curious thing. The usual effect of archaeology is to discover kinships with the ancients. "How very much like ourselves the early Egyptians were!" an Egyptologist will say. "Lying, cheating, fixing elections, dodging the draft, all our own special little sins, existed back then too! Even as we, the subjects of Pharaoh had foibles and ambitions, hopes and dreams," etcetera, etcetera. Substitute Sumerians for Egyptians, or Cro-Magnon cave painters for Sumerians, and you will still find the experts telling you that the more closely we get to know them, the clearer it is that these figures out of the remote past were Just Plain Folks.

  Zit! Not the case at all with the High Ones! This globe I found told us a million times as much about them as we knew before: the way they looked and moved, the shape of their cities, something of their customs. And they don't seem like Just Plain Folks at all. They seem tremendously alien, far stranger than Shilamakka or Dinamonians or Thhhians or any of the alien beings we encounter in our own lives. We may have difficulty understanding Dinamonian theology or the Shilamakkan craze for replacing perfectly good limbs with machinery, but we can still get along with them on a business basis. I don't think we could ever have gotten along with the High Ones, even if they weren't separated from us by a billion-year gap. Not only because of their immense technological superiority, either. They way they think would always be unintelligible.

  Consider the cultures of Earth before communications satellites and rocket transport helped everybody to live just like everybody else. Consider the world-outlooks of Eskimos, Polynesians, Bedouins, Belgian businessmen, Pueblo Indians, and Tibetans. Not a whole lot in common there. Pretty alien to one another, matter of fact, and all native to the same planet. Okay, eventually they all died out or became smoodged together into "Earthmen," but now we were part of a galaxy full of other intelligent species, each one with its own various cultures, and each one different from us ... and so on. Huge gulfs between peoples of the same world, and huger gulfs between peoples of different worlds, yet all these gulfs were bridgeable.

  The hugest gulf of all seems to be the one between us and the High Ones. Forget my romantic ideas about finding them still alive somewhere. I don't want to find them any more. I think it would be pretty frightening if we did.

  * * *

  After an hour of viewing the globe, 408b shut it off and we had a Discussion. The eleven of us sat around trying to interpret what we had just seen. Jan carefully positioned herself as far from Leroy Chang as she could get, but Leroy seemed to be going out of his way not to look at her. He seemed twitchy and ill at ease, more so than usual; I guess he was scared that Jan was going to rise up and denounce him as a rapist. A bungling rapist, at that. (Question: Is a man more loathsome if he succeeds in Having His Way with a woman, or if he's such a spinless vidj that he botches the job? Don't bother answering.)

  Dr. Schein acted as chairman. He said, "It's apparent that the whole scope of High Ones archaeology has changed overnight. For the first time we know something of what their living culture was like, as a result of Tom Rice's fine discovery."

  I glowed nicely and nodded to acknowledge the cheers of a multitude of admirers.

  Dr. Horkkk dampened my furnace a little by saying crisply, "Let it be noted that as a result of careless excavation technique this miraculous artifact nearly was destroyed."

  I looked at the floor in shame and counted my toes for lack of anything else to do. Dr. Horkkk tacked on a few more criticisms in his neat Teutonic way and I tried to shrink out of sight. Jan, who was sitting next to me, whispered, "Don't let him get you quonked. You did find it. And you didn't damage it." I should have added that Jan had chosen to sit next to me instead of Saul Shahmoon. Interesting. Is she trying to awaken his slumbering jealousies, or do Jan and I have something going?

  When Dr. Horkkk finished flaying me, 408b said, "It is questionable that this instrument represents a view of the living culture of these beings. Perhaps it is an entertainment device, providing pure fantasy."

  "Good point," said Dr. Schein. "But I don't go for it."

  Pilazinool took off one hand and waved it in the other to get the floor. The mechanical man said, "On the basis of a quick analysis, I too doubt that 408b is correct. I feel that we've got an authentic look at High Ones life, here. I c
an't say what purpose this globe was meant to serve, but I do believe that those were genuine scenes of daily life, as Dr. Schein suggests."

  Dr. Schein beamed. 408b folded his tentacles in irritation. Mirrik, Saul Shahmoon, and Kelly offered opinions, more or less simultaneously. I didn't have the slice to open my glapper after the things Dr. Horkkk had said about me, but privately I agreed with Pilazinool and Dr. Schein.

  "The question is," Dr. Schein said, "should we ship the globe back to Galaxy Central for detailed study of the content of its images, or should we keep it here to guide us in the remaining period of our excavations?"

  "Keep it here," said Pilazinool.

  "Send it to Galaxy Central," said Dr. Horkkk.

  We went around on that for a while. It developed that Dr. Horkkk was so enthralled with the globe that he proposed calling the expedition off at this point, heading back toward civilization, and devoting all our efforts to trying to learn things from the projected scenes. Leroy Chang seconded the motion. I guess Leroy is looking for any excuse to get off Higby V after that fiasco with Jan.

  Steen Steen said, "That seems hasty. Why leave now, when we may be on the verge of even more amazing discoveries?"

  First sensible thing I ever heard him/her say.

  Dr. Horkkk replied, "As long as we stay here with the globe, we run the risk that it may be lost or destroyed. It's our duty to convey it safely to some more settled world."

  Dr. Schein, who in his mild way can be murderous, smiled sweetly at his Thhhian rival and said, "Perhaps, Dr. Horkkk, you and Professor Chang would be willing to detach yourselves from the expedition and take the globe to a safer planet, while the rest of us proceed with the work?"

  Dr. Horkkk made a gargling sound. He wasn't pleased by that maneuver.

  In the end, when all the verbal knifeplay was over, a reasonable decision emerged. All of us, and the globe, will remain on Higby V while we complete our scheduled period of excavation work. For safety's sake, though, we'll make several copies of the films of the globe's projections and ship them out to civilization aboard the monthly transport packets. Jan and I were given the assignment of writing up a press release about the globe which is to be sent out via the TP communications network as soon as possible. We're supposed to write the release tonight.

  The work schedule is going to be revised somewhat. Pilazinool, 408b, and Dr. Horkkk will be relieved of all supervisory work at the excavation and instead will devote themselves pretty much full time to playing the globe and puzzling over the meaning of the scenes it shows. The hope is to get some clue that will lead us to other important discoveries. This means that the burden of overseeing the digging will fall to Dr. Schein and Leroy Chang, since Saul will be busy classifying artifacts in the lab, and that most of the actual grubbing in the pit will be done by our two specialized diggers, Mirrik and Kelly, and by the three apprentices, Steen, Jan, and yours cordially.

  Dinnertime now. Nasty rain coming down.

  I still feel dazed by the things the globe projected. Those dangling buildings . . . the weird customs . . . above all, just seeing the faces of the High Ones. Did I mention their eyes? Three of them, side by side. Cold. Glittering. They look at you out of those projected images and you want to crawl into the ground. That look of chilly intelligence ... of having lived a hundred thousand years. It's terrifying to meet a High One's stare, coming at you across so much time. What kind of race was this? Where did they learn the skills that let them grow so great before all the other races of the galaxy had begun to evolve? How were they able to keep their civilization intact for all those hundreds of millions of years? (Hundreds of millions of years! Those long-ago Egyptians and Cro-Magnons happened just an eye-blink back, on a scale like that!)

  So much for deep philosophical thoughts. Your handsome and profound brother is hungry. Off for now.

  * * *

  Bedtime, five hours later, same night.

  Jan and I spent a couple of hours after dinner writing our press release. Actually she wrote the whole thing, though I'm supposed to have verbal skills and so on. I fooled around doing a couple of trial drafts and scrapped them; then she got to work and knocked off a professional-sounding statement with the greatest of ease. This girl has much orbital velocity. Tomorrow morning we go into town to give the release to the TP people, and I trust that that lady dog Marge Hotchkiss will be off duty.

  Everybody else spent the evening in the lab. Jan and I went over there when we were finished. Chess is obsolete here; as of today, the only evening activity is going to be watching the scenes that come out of that globe. There were some new ones tonight, as baffling as the earlier ones. The thing seems to have an infinite number of reels, or whatever, inside it. I hope we don't burn it out.

  SEVEN

  September 10, 2375

  Higby V

  Jan and I almost didn't make it into town to deliver the press release. Some dumb clump had forgotten to recharge the battery of the electric runabout we use for commuting between town and the site. We were still twelve kilometers from town when the engine gave a soft sighing sound and zapped out. I opened the hood and tried to show masculine competence, but there wasn't a thing I could do, and we both knew it. Jan called to me, "The battery's dead. Don't waste time playing with the engine."

  "What do we do now? Walk the rest of the way?" "It's starting to rain," she said. "What a lovely surprise!"

  "Let's wait. Maybe somebody'll come along." We waited for half an hour, all alone together in the middle of emptiness. I took no advantage of my great opportunity to slip in a little biology. For one thing, the endless gray downpour that is this planet's characteristic weather has definitely dismalized my passions. For another, even if I had happened to be in the mood, I wouldn't have wanted to get involved in anything at the risk of failing to notice a passing car. Traffic isn't so heavy on that road that stranded wayfarers can afford to let a lot of potential rescuers go by. Most important, though, was this strange and old-fashioned attitude that suddenly came over me: that it would be bad form to launch a possibly quite serious romance in a stalled runabout on a muddy road. Not that Higby V offers more luxurious surroundings anywhere, but I rebelled against the sordidness of it all. I can be quite perverse sometimes. I think you know that.

  So instead of leaping lasciviously at each other, we sat chastely side by side and talked. It occurs to me now that Jan may not have shared my sudden puritanism, but it's too late to do anything about that. Mostly what we talked about was how we happened to go in for archaeology. She asked me, and I said, "It's because I hate to think that anything goes to waste. I mean, that anything that was ever important or valuable or precious to somebody is just buried and forgotten about. I want to salvage all those things and let them be important to somebody again ... so they won't feel neglected."

  And I told her the Lost Statuette Story.

  Do you remember, Lorie? How could you have forgotten? We were six years old. Dad had been on a planet whose name I can't recall, in the epsilon Eridani system, setting up one of his real-estate deals, and he brought back two little native statuettes as toys for us, one for you, one for me. They were images of pet animals of that planet, made out of some kind of porcelain extremely smooth and voluptuous to the touch, so that once you began fingering it, you didn't want to stop. You kept your statuette next to your bed at the hospital, and I kept mine in my pocket except when I slept, and then it sat on the night table so I could reach out for it in the night. And I loved that little porcelain animal more than anything else I owned, and then one day Dad took me to watch them constructing a new building he was putting up in Alaska, and I was on this balcony, looking down into the foundation site, with the statuette in my hands, and I sneezed or something and it fell into the site. I started to scream, and told Dad to get it back for me, but the construction machines were too fast; they poured tons of concrete into that hole in the next five minutes. "Make them dig it up!" I said to Dad. "You own the building! You can make them! I want it
back!" He laughed and said it would cost thousands of credits to look for my toy under the concrete, and did I want him to waste that much money? Besides, he said, a million years from now archaeologists would come there and explore the ruins of the building and find my toy, and put it in a museum. I didn't know what an archaeologist was, and I didn't want the statuette dug up a million years from now, I wanted it right that minute, and I threw such a howling tantrum that they had to take me away and give me something to calm me down. And when you heard what had happened, you said, "Well, if Tom doesn't have his statue, I don't want to have mine either," and you told your nurse to give it away to some other little girl, and she did. Which was a typically subtle and sensitive Lorie-type thing to do, since I was madly jealous that you still had your toy and I had lost mine. I suppose an ordinary good-hearted sister would just have given her own toy to her brother, but you never did things the ordinary way, and what you did was just right, because I wouldn't have been satisfied with a substitute for what I had lost, but your not having one either somehow took the sting out of the whole incident.

  Later I found out what archaeologists were. And started going to museums to see the things they had dug up, including plenty of toys lost by other little boys five or ten or fifty thousand years ago. And it struck me: how sad it is that these things were lost and had no one to love them and care for them. And how fine it is that somebody takes the trouble to find them again, after all those years. Still later I thought: how sad it is that whole civilizations are lost, whole slabs of the past, kings and poets and artists, customs and religions and sculptures and kitchen utensils and tools, and how fine it is that somebody takes the trouble to find them again, after all those years. Then I made up my mind that I was going to be one of the finders. Which horrified Our Father, naturally, since he had already decided I was going to be a real-estate tycoon just like himself. "Archaeology? What kind of thing is this archaeology for someone like you? I've got an empire waiting for you, Tom!" I said I was more interested in empires that don't exist any more. I couldn't really tell him that at the bottom of everything was a toy animal from epsilon Eridani.