Finch laughed. "Now, who's dragging in the improbable? Are you hinting that Apollonios of Tyana is still doing the thaumaturgical business at the old stand after a couple thousand years?"
"I'd hardly go as far as that. It might be a local tradition or a descendant or something of that sort. You know how hard those things die out. I think it would really be worth while to stop off at Bulgunlu on our way in. There's a branch railroad running up past Nigdeh."
"I don't know how I can prevent you if you want to go up there and make a check on Iblunos, myself, I'd rather do something useful, like verifying the medieval idea that griffins put emeralds in their nests to keep snakes away."
"While you're on that subject," said Owens, "has it occurred to you that Tiridat's little pebble fits the medieval description of the Philosopher's Stone pretty well? Remember that some of the schoolmen believed the Etruscans had discovered it. High of St. Victor, for instance, said—"
"Listen," said Finch, "don't treat me to the whole 'Anatomy of Melancholy.' What do you want me to do, pulverize it to see whether it will turn mercury to gold? We'll interpret it as best we can, and if we can't make anything of it, turn it over to old man Pushman, so he'll have a genuine Armenian antique to put under glass in the museum wing of that palace of his in Beverly Hills."
"All right. While we're on that subject, though, I forgot to mention that I picked up another telegram from him while I was in Van this morning." -
"Any more money?"
"Of course not. Just wants to know when we'll have some more relics and something to give to the newspapers."
"Damn all movie magnates with an itch for publicity through culture," said Finch. "Sometimes I wish the old bastard had never read my book."
"In which case there wouldn't be any dig," said Owens. "Cheer up, maybe you'll get another book out of this one, or a feature article in a Sunday supplement, and another money-bags will read it." He closed his eyes and smacked his lips appreciatively: "I can see the headlines —'Poet-Laureat of Archaeology; Author of "Hiawatha in Trebizond."' "
Finch smiled, but a trifle wryly. "I suppose. Damn it, Lloyd, doesn't it strike you there's something unreasonable about a world where the really important things you do can only get attention because you do something unimportant? Maybe I'm just wrong about that confounded volume of verse, but the critics did like it, and it sold 37 copies. And here I am with all expenses paid on an expedition because an unimportant movie man read an unimportant piece of prose I wrote once."
"It's an unreasonable world where they make radios like this, anyway. The one tube for which we have no spares has burned out."
"Can't you—I mean, use a spare for one of the other tubes? Interchange them?"
Owens grinned. " 'Fraid not. These tubes aren't like electric light bulbs. You can't interchange them"
"Why don't they design them with the same size sockets in the first place?"
"It's not a question of sockets. I'll have to write for a new tube, but I doubt whether we'll get it before the end of the season. You know what the Turkish postal service is like."
"In that case we'll just have to suffer along without news. We wouldn't hear anything but wars and rumors of wars anyway."
"Yes, there's something unreasonable, if you like, Arthur. Hitler talks big and everybody backs down. You'd think any rational person could see that the moment they called his bluff he'd go home with his tail between his legs."
Finch sighed. "I suppose the majority of people don't want to be rational, really. By God, if I were a Hitler, I'd fix things so that archaeological work didn't depend on the whims of movie producers, and poetry didn't depend on doing something else, and—"
"Try your Philosopher's Stone."
"My huh?"
"Your carnelian cube. Tiridat said it would take you to heaven in your dreams, and that's what you're asking for, isn't it? Besides, that fits the medieval description, too. The alchemists were always talking about making gold with it, but when you pinned them down, they always had a metaphysical explanation, something about meaning spiritual perfection by 'gold.' You might say it transmutes the base metal of the actual world in»—"
"Another nightmare." Finch grinned. "Maybe I will try it"
Later, a succession of grunts from Arthur Cleveland Finch's bedroom indicated that he was making one of his nightly assaults on the convexity of his belly. Not that it did any particular good to he on his back and raise both feet together a stated number of times, but Finch kept trying. It was humiliating that one of the best coxwains Cornell had ever had should be preceded wither he went by such a pod.
At least Finch had always so considered it. Despite a balding head he had never abandoned the idea that he was fundamentally an outdoor man-of-action. Only accident, he believed had brought him to an early marriage and the inevitable bread-winning by teaching. Only the accident of economic compulsion had kept him at the grindstone till the arrival of this windfall of the Leo Pushman Expedition to Asia Minor. Nobody knew how Finch's book on "The Armenian Deme; a Study of Pontus and Armenia under the Byzantine Empire" had fallen into the hands of a movie magnate with two swimming pools, or why Pushman had read it after he got his hands on it. Finch knew as well as anybody that the book was as dull as a third-rate sermon, but it had urged the egregious Pushman actually to lay out money.
Damn it! Finch thought, history wasn't supposed to entertain. It was unreasonable to expect it to do anything but inform. If—
"Damn!" yelled Finch, in full voice this time, bounding from his bed. A terrific outburst of caterwauling Armenian music had sprung from the other buildings. Evidently the diggers had not found other money inadequate for the purchase of more raid.
He slammed the window, despite the midsummer heat and returned to his insulted bed. The little red cube lay on the table. He hesitated a moment, then picked it up and stuffed it under the pillow, chuckling at his own absurdity, and still chuckling drifted off into slumber, wishing for that unattainable ideal, a perfectly rational world.
Two:
Bongg. Bongg.
Finch rolled over and pulled the blanket up between his head and shoulder. That damned Armenian music was really getting out of hand.
Bongg. Bongg. Bongggg.
No, that wasn't Armenian music His eyes assured him that the sound came from a large circular gong over the door of his room. A rod, projecting through a hole in the wall, was connected by a simple lever mechanism to a hammer. As the rod slid in and out of the wall, it forced the hammer against the gong, against which it snapped back, with a harsh, resonant noise. It was much lighter than it should be.
There was no such gong in Ismet Toghrul's house on the shore of Lake Van. As Finch looked around the bare little room which his eyes encompassed, he realized that this was not Ismet Toghrul's house at all.
Finch chuckled comfortably under the blanket.
This was how Tiridat Ariminian's carnelian cube worked! Or perhaps it hadn't worked at all, and this was just an ordinary dream. In any case it was nothing to get excited about. Finch pulled the blanket one inch higher and closed'his eyes to wait for the next phase.
Bongggg! Bonggggg!
The contraption gave out a note of impatience, as nearly as an impersonal mechanism could transmit such an idea. It was certainly determined not to grant him any more—sleep? What would you call it if, in a dream, you experienced the illusion of waking from sleep? But there was no question that he would no longer be allowed to sleep in his dream. He got up and opened the door.