It really wasn’t anything to be afraid of. It was not alive. It was, by rough definition, the mechanism I had told myself I’d find. It was cemented in the rock, only a part of it revealed.
It chittered at me and I said nothing back. If you’d paid me a million, I could have said nothing back.
Its end was a blunted point and seemed to be attached to some sort of cylinder. The cylinder, I estimated, was four inches or so in diameter.
Above and all around it I could see the rough edges of the break that must have been made when the miners had worried off the forepart of the stone in which it was embedded.
And that was the hell of it—embedded!
The blunt end of the cylinder ticked at me.
«Oh, shut up,» I said. For not only was I frightened, I was exasperated. It was, I told myself, impossible. Someone, I thought, was pulling my leg, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure who it might be or how they could have done it.
A rattle of falling rock and earth brought me around to face the entrance of the cave. I saw that someone stood there, but for a moment I couldn’t make out who it was.
«What the hell do you mean,» I asked, «sneaking up on me?»
«I’m sorry that I startled you,» the intruder said. «Please believe me, I did not intend to do so. But it seems that you have found what we’ve been looking for.»
I thought I recognized the voice and now I saw who it was—the man who had come from the Lodge to get the woman he called Angela.
«Oh, it’s you,» I said. I didn’t try to conceal my dislike of him.
«Thornton,» he said, «we have to make a deal. We must have what you have found.»
He came across the cave and stood above me. The cylinder made a few excited clicks, then fell silent.
He squatted down beside me. «Let’s have a look,» he said.
When I turned I had moved the flashlight. Now I brought it back to shine on the blunted nose of the cylinder.
«Have you got a name?» I asked.
«Sure. My name is Charles.»
«OK, Charles,» I said. «You say you want this thing. As a start, perhaps, you can tell me what it is. And be damn careful what you tell me. For my part, I can tell you that it’s embedded in the stone. See how the stone comes up close against it. No hole was ever bored to insert it. The limestone’s wrapped around it. Do you have any idea what that means?»
He gulped, but didn’t answer.
«I can tell you,» I said, «and you won’t believe it. This is Platteville limestone. It was formed at the bottom of an Ordovician sea at least four hundred million years ago, which means this thing is an artifact from at least as long ago. It fell into the sea, and when the limestone formed it was embedded in it. Now speak up and tell me what it is.»
He didn’t answer me. He took a different tack. «You know what we are,» he said.
«I have a good idea.»
«And you’re not about to talk of it.»
«I think it most unlikely,» I said. «To begin with, no one would believe me.»
«So there’s no use in my pretending.»
«I rather doubt there is,» I said. «You see, I have the saddle and Neville has the Marathon photograph.»
«The what kind of photograph?»
«The Marathon photograph. Marathon was a battle fought two and a half millennia ago. It fell from Stefan’s pocket. Neville found it when he found the body.»
«So that is it,» he said.
«That is it,» I said, «and if you think you can come in here and demand this thing that I have found—»
«It’s not a matter of demanding,» he assured me, «nor of taking. We are beyond all demanding and all taking. We are civilized, you see.»
«Yeah,» I said. «Civilized.»
«Look,» he said, almost pleading, «there is no reason not to tell you. There were a people—you say four hundred million years ago, so I suppose it could have been that long ago …»
«A people?» I asked. «What people? Four hundred million years ago there weren’t any people.»
«Not here,» he said. «Not on Earth. On another planet.»
«How would you know?» I asked.
«Because we found the planet.»
«We? You talk of we. Just who are ‘we’?»
«Myself. Angela. Stefan. Others like us. What is left of the human race. Stefan was different, though. Stefan was a throwback, a mistake.»
«You’re jabbering,» I said. «You don’t make any sense. You’re from up ahead, in the future, is that it?»
It was all insane, I told myself. Insane to ask that question. Asking as if it were just an ordinary thing, not to be greatly wondered at.
«Yes,» he said. «A different world. You would not recognize it. Or the people in it.»
«I recognize you,» I said. «You seem like anybody else. You’re no different than anyone I know.»
He sighed, a patronizing sigh. «Think, Thornton,» he said. «If you were to go back to a barbarian age, would you wear a jacket and a pair of slacks? Would you talk twentieth-century English? Would you—»
«No, of course not. I would wear a wolfskin and I’d learn—so that is it,» I said. «Barbarian.»
«The term is relative,» he said. «If I’ve offended you—»
«Not in the least,» I said. I had to be fair about it. Depending on how far in time he had traveled, we might be barbarian. «You were telling me about a planet you had found.»
«Burned out,» he said. «The sun had novaed. All the water gone. The soil burned to powdered ash. You said half a billion years?»
«Almost that long,» I said.
«It could have been,» he said. «The star is a white dwarf now. That would have been time enough. The planet had been inhabited by an intelligence. We found—»
«You mean you, personally? You saw this planet?»
He shook his head. «Not I. No one of my generation. Others. A thousand years ago.»
«In a thousand years,» I said, «a lot could happen …»
«Yes, I know. Much is forgotten in a thousand years. But not this. We remember well; this is not a myth. You see, in all the time we’ve been out in space this is the first evidence of intelligence we found. There had been cities on that planet—well, maybe not cities, but structures. Nothing left, of course, but the stone that had been used in building them. It still was there, or most of it, stone on stone, much as it had been when it was laid. Some destruction, of course. Earthquakes, probably. No real weathering. Nothing left to cause weathering. All the water gone and the atmosphere as well. I forgot to say the atmosphere was gone.»
«Come to the point,» I said, rather brutally. «This is all wonderful, of course. And very entertaining …»
«You don’t believe me?»
«I can’t be sure,» I said. «But go on, anyhow.»
«You can imagine,» he said, «how avidly and thoroughly our people examined the ruins of the structures. The work was, after a time, discouraging, for the ruins could tell us very little. Then, finally, a graven stone was found …»
«A graven stone?»
«A message stone. A slab of stone with a message carved upon it.»
«Don’t tell me that you found this stone and then, right off, you read the message.»
«Not words,» he said. «Not symbols. Pictures. You have a word. Funny pictures.»
«Cartoons,» I said.
«Cartoons. That is right. The cartoons told the story. The people of that planet knew their sun was about to nova. They had some space capability, but not enough to move a total population. What was worse, there was no planet they had ever found that could support their kind of life. I suspect it was much like our life, the same basis as our life. Oxygen and carbon. They didn’t look like us. They were bugs. Many-legged, many-armed. Perhaps, in many ways, a more efficient organism than ourselves. They knew they were finished. Perhaps not all of them. They might have hoped they still could find a planet where a few of them could live. That way the germ plasma could be preserved, if they were lucky. The plasma, but not the civilization, not their culture. Locating to another planet, having to come to grips with that planet and perhaps only a few of them to do it, they knew they would lose their culture, that it would be forgotten, that the few survivors could not maintain and preserve what they had achieved over many thousands of years. And it seemed important that at least the basics of their culture should be preserved, that it should not be lost to the rest of the galaxy. They were facing the prospect of cultural death. Do you have any idea of what the impact of cultural death might be like?»