“How many did you have in mind?”
“Two.”
Bargaining room. I looked appropriately shocked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Two. Two artifacts. That’s the absolute best I can do.”
We went back and forth and finally settled on six.
After she was off the circuit, I brought up the Memorial Wall in the Rock Garden, which is located behind Survey’s administrative center. It’s a tranquil place, a glade, with a loud brook, a few stones left over from the last ice age, a wide range of flowering plants, and the wall itself. It’s separated from the rest of the grounds by a line of galope bushes, so that you get a sense of being in a forest. This is the memorial set aside for those working under Survey’s auspices who have given their lives “in the service of science and humanity.” There are more than a hundred names, covering almost two centuries, carved into the wall, which is really a series of shaped rocks.
The Polaris passengers and their captain are there, of course. Whenever more than one person is lost in a single incident, the names are grouped and placed alphabetically, with the date. That put Chek Boland at the head. Maddy was listed third. There’d been a twelve-year delay before they were officially added to the roll call of lost heroes. The ceremony had been, at long last, an official recognition of their deaths. A concession.
Windy had called me on my day off. Afterward, I arranged to meet Alex for lunch. I wanted to tell him that we had an inside track for some of the Polaris artifacts, but I saw right away that he was distracted. “You okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”
He listened while I explained what the deal was, and he nodded and looked pleased. “When do we get to see them?”
“She’s making an inventory available. Visuals. So we can look at them at our leisure.”
“Good,” he said. “I have something else.”
“I thought you might.”
We were in Babco’s, on the Mall. Out back, in the courtyard, overlooking the Crystal Fountain. It was supposed to be a mystical place. If you’d lost your one true love, you tossed in a few coins, concentrated, and he would come back into your life.
Assuming you wanted him to.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that Rainbow could expand into a new field.
Something no one’s ever done before.”
“And what might that be?”
“Radioarcheology.”
“What’s radioarcheology?” I asked.
“We deal in antiquities. We collect, trade, and sell all kinds of dishware, pottery, electronic equipment. You name it.”
“Right,” I said.
He looked at me, and his eyes glowed. “Chase, what is an antiquity?”
“Okay. I’ll play your game. It’s an object that has an identifiable history. From a remote period.”
“Isn’t that redundant?”
“Well, maybe. What else did you want to know?”
“You said object. Are you implying that an antiquity has to be physical, in the sense of something you can hold in your hands?”
“Only the ones that lend themselves to selling.” Traditions, stories, customs were all antiquities of a sort.
“Has to be physical for us to sell it?” he said.
“Of course.”
“I’m not so sure. I think we’ve been missing something.”
“How do you mean?”
Sandwiches and drinks showed up.
“What about transmissions?” I must have looked baffled. He smiled. “We already use radio broadcasts to locate things. That’s the way we found the Halvorsen. ”
The Halvorsen was a corporate yacht whose captain and passengers had died back at the turn of the century when the ship was fried by a gamma ray burst. We’d found and tracked their Code White. It was a quarter century old by the time we ran it down. It was the last transmission, but it gave us a vector. It wasn’t much, but it turned out to be enough. We tracked it back, calculated for drift, and there was the Halvorsen. Okay, it wasn’t quite that easy, but it worked.
“I’m not talking about using transmissions to find things,” he continued. “I mean collecting them for their own value.”
I took a bite from my sandwich. It was cheese and tomato. “Explain,” I said.
He was delighted to oblige. Nothing made Alex happier than enlightening the slow-witted. “Six hundred years ago, when the Brok terrorists were trying to bring down Kormindel, and it looked as if the entire population was on the edge of panic, Charles Delacort broadcast his famous appeal for courage. ‘More than our lives are at stake, my friends. It is our future through which these lunatics wish to drive a stake.
We must hold fast, for ourselves, for our children, and for everyone who follows after.
Generations unborn will remember that we took a stand.’ Remember?”
“Well, I don’t exactly remember, but I know about it, sure.” At the critical moment, Delacort rallied the nation. Today, every schoolkid is familiar with the appeal. “I’m still not following.”
“It’s lost, Chase. The appeal. We don’t have it anymore. We know what he said, but we don’t have the actual broadcast. But it’s out there somewhere. We know approximately when it happened, so we know where it can be found. What stops us from going out, tracking it down, recording it, and bringing it back? Intact. All we have to do is get in front of it, and we can recapture one of our great moments. What do you think such a recording would be worth?”
A couple of quegs flapped past, landed in a tree, and turned their attention to the fountain. Someone had thrown bread into it. Quegs are not shy. They sat for a minute or so, then launched themselves, flew over our heads, splashed down, and began feeding.
“It’s a nice idea, Alex, but a broadcast doesn’t last that long. Not nearly. There’s nothing out there to recover except a few stray electrons.”
“I’ve done some research,” he said.
“And?”
“The Delacort Address was forwarded to several off-world sites. That means directed transmissions. Not broadcasts. Add the kind of power they used during that era, and the transmissions might still be recoverable.”
“Is there a way to pin down the transmission vectors?” Worlds and bases move around a good bit.
“We have the logs,” he said. “We know exactly when the transmissions were made. So yes, it should be possible to work out the direction.”
I was impressed. It sounded plausible.
“There’s a lot of history out there,” he said. “Brachmann’s Charge to the Dellacondans. Morimba holding the fort against the religious crazies on Wellborn.
Arytha Mill’s address at the signing of the Instrument. Damn, we don’t even have that one written down. But it all went out in directed transmissions, and in every instance we can nail the time.”
“We might be able to do it,” I said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever considered the possibility before.”
He looked pleased with himself. “Something else.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a lot of entertainment out there, too.”
“You’re talking about holodrama.”
“I’m talking about a substantial portion of broadcast arts over the last few thousand years. Most of it, or at least much of it, was packaged and forwarded to orbitals and ships and everything else. It’s all out there. You want to hear Paqua Tori, we can get her for you.”
“Who’s Paqua Tori?”
“The hottest comedienne on Toxicon during the Bolerian Age. I’ve heard her.
She’s actually pretty funny.”
“Does she speak Standard?”
“Not hardly. But we can do translations, and keep her voice and mannerisms.”
“Tastes change,” I said. “I doubt there’ll ever be a wide audience for antique comedy. Or drama, or whatever.”
“Sophocles still plays.” He was all smiles. “As soon as we get this Polaris business taken care of, we’ll look into some antenna enhancement for Belle. ”
THREE
Antiquities are… remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
-
Francis Bacon
The Advancement of Learning We received our invitations to the banquet and auction the day after I spoke with Windy. Later in the week, she called again. “Chase, I wanted to let you know we’ve put together a reception tomorrow evening. There’ll be some VIPs on the premises.”