"You asked about the age of civilization here. Common wisdom puts it at six thousand years, roughly the same as ours. Also like us, they have an Atlantis legend, a place called Orikon. Except that this one really existed, Richard. Don't know how old it is, but it would go back a long way."
He gestures toward the river valley. "Incidentally, you will be interested in knowing that tradition places Orikon in this area. Come see it, before they blow up the neighborhood.
Cheers."
— David Emory, Response CKT144799/16 (Received on Winckelmann, June 16, 2202)
INTERLUDE
PASSAGE
The flight home lasted twenty-seven days, eleven hours. This brought the Winckelmann in approximately two days behind schedule, well within the inexactitudes imposed by transdimensional travel.
During the voyage, the members of the Academy team went through a period of mourning. Those who had argued to press their luck at the Temple found that their exhilaration over having recovered the foundations of a Linear C vocabulary was diluted by a shared portion of guilt. Henry, particularly, sank into dark moods. He spent time with his people, but they could see that the life had gone out of his eyes.
They responded to all this, for the most part, by losing themselves in examining their trove of artifacts and data, and beginning the decades-long process of analysis and interpretation. No such retreat was available to Hutch.
Almost none understood the ties between Richard Wald and his longtime pilot. They regarded his death as their own loss, and tended to reserve their sympathies for members of the Temple team. The ship's captain was left to her navigation.
For Hutch, the moment when an emotional link with George might have developed came and went. George kept a discreet distance, she thought, while he awaited an encouraging signal from her. But the time was not right for even an implied promise of future possibility. Maybe it was her need to mourn, or the general gloom that weighed on her during this period. Or maybe even her fear that George might come to associate her with disaster. Whatever her motivation, she began a policy of treating him with polite neutrality, and found that it locked quickly into place.
When they docked finally at the Wheel, they held a farewell dinner in the Radisson Lounge. Everybody said a few words, and there were some tears. And the steaks were very good. In the morning, the first contingents rode shuttles to Atlanta, Berlin, and London.
PART THREE
BETA PAC
15
The Academy of Science and Technology (HV Simulation Section), Washington, D.C. Tuesday, October 19, 2202; 1700 EOT
Hutch stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the stars and at Shola's shimmering rings. The gas giant itself was behind her, low in the sky.
It was unsettling. This was not like climbing around the hull of a ship. She smiled at her reaction, and knelt, partly to examine the lip of the cliff, partly to regain her balance.
It was not the jagged, irregular rim one would expect, but the precision cut of a jewel.
This was a truly alien place, a place without purpose, a place that made neither aesthetic nor functional sense. But certainly, after Oz, a place with an echo. A stone plain, polished and chiseled, spread out behind her. It was pool-table flat, marred only by a few craters and a spread of fissure lines. The limits of the plain were not horizons; rather, at fairly close range, the smooth rock simply stopped, and one knew instinctively that beyond those abrupt summits, the cliff side fell away forever. The sky surrounded her, came at her from all angles. It was full of fire and light and crescents. A great clockwork, its spheres and stars clicked steadily through their rhythms while she watched.
It oppressed her. It was ominous. Frightening in a way she could not quite grasp.
Four of these objects circled the big world the Noks called the Companion. Identical size. Once equidistant. Two of them were badly charred.
Charred. Again, like Oz.
What were they?
There were no cryptic symbols here, as there were in the round tower. But there was a message nevertheless, an outcry, perhaps, in this spartan geometry.
She removed the helmet, and the lights came on. She laid it on the table beside her, and looked out at the Arlington skyline.
Deja vu.
Cumberland, Maryland 10/19/02 Dear Henry,
I have a translation: Farewell and good fortune. Seek us by the light of the horgon's eye. A horgon is a mythical Quraquat monster. But don't ask me what it all means.
Maggie
On the anniversary of the publication of Richard Wald's landmark study, Memory and Myth, his family and friends conducted a celebration of his life. They chose a hilltop in Arlington, a site from which the Academy was visible, and erected a small pavilion. It was a bleak day shortly before Thanksgiving, gray, threatening rain, with the kind of chill that no clothing can deflect.
Hutch received an invitation and considered staying away. She was not one to be taken in by the fa?ade of affirming life when she knew damned well what was really on everyone's mind. It was all still too painful, too close to the bone. Maybe next year she could sit comfortably and reminisce about him, but for now all she could recall was the limp figure dangling below the shuttle.
When the day came, however, wearing the talisman he had given her, she was there. The event's sponsors had set up a small platform atop a low hill, and laid out a table beneath a stand of spruce trees. They filled the table with souvenirs and artifacts and photos. There were copies of Richard's books and tablets from Pinnacle and crossbows from Quraqua and representations of the Monuments. The Academy's seal and colors were centrally displayed.
Refreshments were in liberal supply. People spotted old friends, and clustered in animated conversations. Hutch stood off to one side, ill at ease and dispirited. At noon, a tall man who looked like a younger Richard climbed onto the platform and waited for the crowd noise to subside.
"Hello," he said. "I know some of you, but not all. My name's Dick Wald. I'm—I was—Richard's cousin. He'd have been pleased to see how many of you came out here today. And he'd have wanted me to say thanks." He paused, and looked over the crowd. "He often said he was happy with his life, and fortunate in his friends. We used to make a lot of 'dead' jokes about him. And there are so many archeologists here today that I know you've had to put up with them too. You know how they go, about how everybody he knows has been dead at least eight hundred years. About how he only speaks dead languages. Well, there's a lot about death in an archeologist's field of interest, and it seems painful that it should come eventually to the archeologist himself." He paused, and the wind moved in the trees behind him. "I'd like to invite Bill Winfield to say a few words. Bill taught Sumerian 101 to Richard."
In turn, people got up and spoke about him. They thanked him for launching their careers, and for helping them with money or advice or encouragement. For setting the example. Several quoted favorite passages from his books, or idle remarks tossed off on windswept evenings:
The difference between history and archeology is the difference between public policy and a coffee table. One is theory and analysis and sometimes even spectacle. The other is a piece of life.
There is a kind of archeology of the mind in which we unearth old injuries and resentments, pore over them, and keep them close to our hearts. Eventually, like thousand-year-old air encountered in a tomb, they poison us. It gives me to wonder whether the value of history is not overrated.