“What?”
“Well, you’ve seen their primitive-looking ornamentation. Ye gods, the shops are full of it, even on Earth!”
“Professor, that’s a current fashion, like art deco on early twentieth-century Earth, or the turn of the century trend toward aboriginal art. There’s no grounds upon which to compare it to this.”
Burton’s face turned to stone. “Llewellyn, you have argued every single find with me since you arrived. Where do you get the gall?”
“From you, I’d like to think, Doctor.”
“You were my favorite student, you know. When I brought you here, I thought you’d be appreciative.”
“I am, sir, I—”
“Then why are you playing dog in the manger?”
“Sir, I’m not. I just happen to have formed some opinions about these sites that don’t cozy with your own.”
Burton went white and red in swift turns. “What makes you think your opinions are worth anything, Llewellyn? I’ve been in this field for decades. You’ve been out of the field since you left that classroom in Sophia to go commercial. Corporate anthropologist!” he snorted. “Corporate toady is more like it! How can you presume to think your opinion carries more weight than mine?”
Reeling from the verbal lashing, Rhys struggled to right himself. “I’m not presuming anything of the sort, Professor. But I have had a good many years of training and experience, and regardless of what you think about my association with Tanaka Corp, it’s given me experience you haven’t had. Your decades have been spent in Terran archaeology. My few years have been spent out here, on other people’s worlds. When it comes to xenoanthropology, I think the playing field is much more even.”
“Do you?”
“Yes sir, I do. And I think…” He paused, losing the will to continue.
“Well, whatever it is, Llewellyn, say it. Don’t add cowardice to your arrogance.”
Rhys sighed, feeling wretched. “I think you may be culturally biased.”
“Culturally biased?” Burton’s white hair looked shockingly bright against the near purple of his face.
Rhys lowered his voice, trying to keep his tone gentle. “This isn’t Caracol, doctor. It’s Sper-ets. Hell, it may not even be that, really. The fact is, you can’t know. You can’t know whether a thing is a coin or a… a punch card unless and until you have some sort of cultural context to put it in. We don’t have that context yet for these sites because we haven’t built one.”
“The context is a wide-spread cult dedicated to the worship of the moon. That is the context.”
“On the surface, a reasonable conclusion. But we re supposed to get below the surface to the details. And the details here don’t support many of your conclusions.”
“Name a few.”
“All right. What you call coins are identical because they were smeltered and molded. That’s not stone they’re made of, but a clever native composite of malleable ores. They ’re molded, yet they all have obviously handmade scoring along the edges.”
“Denominations.”
Rhys shook his head. “The number is totally random. Anywhere from zero scores to a complete circuit of the edge. Like a punch card. Then there’s the relief on the gate lintel. You interpret as prisoners and sacrificial victims people who are in no way bound. You ascribe warrior status to men without weapons or armor. You make moon crescents out of shapes that bear only passing resemblance to any stage of Etsat’s moon. And the village—your massive sacrificial altar could just as easily be a place where people went to be entertained, not ritually murdered. Think about it, Professor, assume for a moment that we stumbled across… the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with no cultural context. We knew nothing of the Renaissance —we’d never heard of Michelangelo. Without that context, you and I would very likely interpret the Last Judgement as depicting a warrior-priest in god’s clothing surveying his sacrificial victims.”
“You mean I’d interpret it that way. I’m sure you’d draw other conclusions.”
“I don’t have conclusions, Doctor. I have theories. Day’s too young for conclusions. I talked about building a context and I meant it. The present day Etsatat hold the key to this place, whether they realize it or not. Look at their culture if you want to advance toward conclusions.”
“Preposterous. I hadn’t realized you’d become such an iconoclast.”
“I’m not an iconoclast. I simply suggest that if you’d try to envision the village ruins as a living Etsatat town, you’ll see some of these artifacts in a different light.”
“What I see, Dr. Llewellyn, is that you and your associates are disrupting my dig and undermining my authority. I request that you leave. In fact, I demand it.”
Rhys felt the blood drain from his face. He suspected that if he looked in a mirror, he’d find the color had drained from his hair, as well. “I… wish you’d reconsider.”
“I don’t think so, doctor. Now, if you’d kindly let me get back to my work?” He gave Rhys a curt nod and returned to his study of the holotank.
Back aboard the TAS schooner Ceilidh, Rhys tried to banish his black mood without success. He’d just blown a huge hole in his personal history and, glancing backward, saw a void where there had once been a professional relationship, a wall of regret where there had once been pleasant and important memories. His mental landscape was Scotland in winter—break, gray, cold. Neither Yoshi nor Rick could pierce the veil of sorrow that hung over him like a mountain-topping cloud.
“I’ll get over it,” he told Yoshi when he felt her eyes on him for the thousandth time since they’d left the surface of Etsat. “You were right, you know. I did idolize the man. I suppose… I suppose it’s best that I’ve been reminded painfully of his humanity… and mine.” He shook his head ruefully. “I couldn’t believe he could be so… biased. I assumed that whatever expertise he applied so successfully to the Terran field, he’d apply to the broader field of xenoarchaeology and become the authority there, as well.”
Yoshi looked down at her tea cup, held in hands that were as relaxed as she could make them. “You’re the authority in xenoarchaeology, Rhys. And I think that bothers Dr. Burton more than he’ll admit.”
“Rhys?” Rick’s voice floated over to them from the intercom. “You’ve got a communication from Dr. Burton. I’ll patch it through to the mess comlink.”
Rhys made a face, his eyes meeting Yoshi’s through the steam of tea. “I guess he hadn’t quite finished flaying me.”
But Burton apparently was no longer in a flaying mood. His face, filling the comlink’s flat screen, wore a shining cloak of joviality. “Rhys! I’m glad I caught you before you left. I, em, I’d like to apologize for losing my temper earlier. It was unprofessional in the extreme. Unfoigivable, really. I’d like to have you to a bit of a send-off party aboard our cutter—a bit more plush than the cabins at the dig.”
Caught completely off guard by the older man’s conciliatory tone, Rhys could only stammer out his acceptance. Several hours later he, Yoshi and Rick ferried over to the Feathered Serpent for the send-off. Burton greeted them in the docking bay with Wayne Bell at his side. He seemed cordial enough, but Rhys caught an undercurrent of nervousness and found it impossible to relax. The slightest misstep, he feared, would bring on another fit of professional vituperation.
What actually happened was much stranger. They were passing through the row of crew’s cabins with Burton leading and Bell bringing up the rear, when the professor stopped in midcorridor and slid back one of the cabin doors. “Dr. Llewellyn, if you and your associates would kindly enter and prepare for transport?”