“What can there be in there?” asked Miyiko with a sigh, never once taking her eyes off the door and its haughtily gleaming gold symbols. “It seems to be laughing at us… ‘I won’t let you in, I won’t tell you anything!’ “
“What did you see in the cupboards you gamma-rayed in the second cave?” asked Veda, driving away her primitive and useless chagrin at this unexpected obstacle.
“Drawings of machines, books printed on metal sheets instead of on the old-fashioned paper made from wood. Then there was something that looked like rolls of films. some sort of lists, stellar and terrestrial maps. In the first hall there are samples of machines and in the second there are the technical documents belonging to them and in the third there are, well, what can I call them? — historical relics and the valuables of the period when money still existed. It all follows the usual scheme.
“Where are the things that we regard as being valuable? The loftiest achievements of man’s spiritual development — science, art, literature?” exclaimed Miyiko.
“I hope they’re behind that door,” answered Veda, calmly, “but I should not be at all surprised if there were weapons there.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Weapons, armaments, the means of slaughtering masses of people in the shortest possible time. I don’t think that such an assumption is either fantastic or pessimistic!”
Little Miyiko thought it over for a while and then said:
“Yes, that seems to be quite regular if you think of the object of this cache. The chief technical and material values of the Western civilization of those days are hidden here. What did they regard as fundamental? If the public opinion of the planet as a whole or even of nations or of a group of countries did not then exist? The necessity or the importance of anything at any given moment was decided by the ruling group of people who were not always competent to judge. That is why the things here were not really the most valuable possessions of mankind but those things that the given group deemed valuable. They tried to preserve chiefly machines and, possibly, weapons, not realizing that civilization is built up historically, like a living organism,” added Miyiko, thoughtfully.
“Yes, by the growth and acquisition of working experience, knowledge, techniques, stores of materials, pure chemical substances and buildings. The restoration of high civilizations would have been impossible without highly durable alloys, rare metals, machines with a high productivity and great precision. If all these things were destroyed where would they be able to get them from and where would they get the experience and ability to build complicated cybernetic machines capable of satisfying the needs of thousands of millions of people?”
“It would have been just as impossible to return to a pre-machine age civilization, like that of antiquity, although some people did dream of it.”
“Of course. Instead of the civilization of antiquity they would have been faced with a terrible famine. Those were individualist dreamers who did not want to understand that history does not turn back.”
“I’m not insisting that there are armaments in there,” said Veda, “but there is every reason to suppose there are. If the men who devised this cache made the mistake that was typical of their day in confusing culture and civilization and ignoring the absolute necessity of training and developing a man, they would certainly not have seen the vital necessity for preserving works of art, literature or research far removed from current needs. In those days science was divided into useful and useless sciences and no thought was given to their unity. There were branches of art and science that were regarded as being merely pleasant but by no means an essential or even useful accompaniment to the life of mankind. Here, in this cave, the most important things are preserved, that’s why I think of weapons, no matter how foolish and naive that may seem to us today.”
Veda stopped talking and stared at the door.
“Perhaps that’s just a cipher lock and we can open it by listening to it with a microphone,” she said, suddenly, walking over to the door. “Shall we risk it?”
Miyiko jumped between her friend and the door.
“No, Veda, why take such a foolish risk?”
“It seems to me that the roof of this cave is very insecure. We’ll go away from here and we’ll never have a chance to come back. Listen!..”
A diffused and distant sound from time to time penetrated into the cave in front of the door. It came sometimes from below, sometimes from above.
Miyiko, however, was adamant, she stood with her back to the door and her arms outstretched.
“You think there are weapons in there, Veda. If there are they must be well protected. No, no… it’s an evil door, like many others.”
Two days later a portable X-ray reflector screen to study the mechanism and a focussed high-frequency radiator for the molecular destruction of parts of the door were brought into the cave. They did not, however, have time to set their apparatus to work.
Suddenly an intermittent roar resounded through the caves. Strong earth tremors underfoot sent the people who were in the third cave running instinctively to the exit.
The noise increased until it became a dull rumble. The whole mass of fissured rock was apparently settling along the line of the fault at the foot of mountains.
“Save yourselves, everybody get out,” shouted Veda and her people ran to the robot cars, directing them towards the entrance to the second cave.
Hanging on to the cables of the robots they scrambled out of the well. The noise and the tremors of the stone walls followed close on their heels and, at last, overtook them. There came a fearful crash as the walls of the second cave tumbled into the abyss that had formed where the wall had been seconds before. The air blast literally carried the people together with a shower of dust and rubble into the first cave. There the archaeologists threw themselves on the floor and awaited death.
The clouds of dust began to subside. Through the dusty haze it could be seen that the stalagmites and the niches had not changed their form. The former grave-like silence returned to the caves.
Veda came to and stood up, trembling from the reaction. Two of her assistants took hold of her but she shook them off impatiently.
“Where’s Miyiko?”
Her friend was leaning against a low stalagmite carefully wiping the dust from her neck, ears and hair.
“Almost everything has been lost,” she said in answer to an unasked question. “The impassable door will remain closed under a four-hundred-metre thick layer of stone. The third cave has been completely destroyed but the second can be excavated. There and in this cave are the things of greatest value to us.”
“You’re right.” Veda licked her dry lips. “We were wrong in dallying and being over-careful. We should have foreseen the fall.”
“You had only unfounded instinct to go on. But there’s nothing to worry about, we would hardly have tried to prop up those masses of rock for the sake of very doubtful treasures behind that closed door. Especially if it is full of worthless weapons.”
“But suppose there are works of art there, inestimable human creations? We could have worked faster!”
Miyiko shrugged her shoulders and led the depressed Veda in the wake of their companions, out into the magnificence of a sunny day, to the joy of clean water and an electric shower to drown all pain.
As was his habit, Mven Mass strode bade and forth in the room that had been allotted him on the top floor of the History House in the Indian Section of the northern inhabited zone. He had arrived there but two days before after having finished work in the History House in the American Section.
The room, or verandah with an outer wall of polarizing glass, looked out on the blue distance of the hilly plateau. Mven Mass from time to time switched on the cross polarization shutters. The room was plunged into grey gloom and pieces of old cinema films, sculptures and buildings that he had selected appeared on the hemispherical screen. The African watched them and dictated notes for his future book to a robo
t secretary. The machine printed and numbered the sheets, folded and sorted them according to subject matter, descriptions or generalizations.
When he grew tired Mven Mass switched off the shutters and walked over to the window to stare into the distance with unseeing eyes as he stood for a long time thinking over what he had seen.
He could not help but feel amazed that much of mankind’s recent culture had already passed into the limbo. Verbal finesse that had been so typical of the Era of World Unity, oral and written whimsicalities that had at one time been regarded as the hallmark of a good education, had completely disappeared. Writing for the sake of beauty, so widespread in the Era of Common Labour, had gone and with it the juggling with words that went by the name of witticism. Still earlier the necessity to hide one’s thoughts, an important matter in the Era of Disunity, had ceased to exist. All talk had become simpler and terser and it seemed that the Great Circle Era would become the era of the third system of signals — comprehension without words.
From time to time Mven Mass- turned to the ever wakeful mechanical secretary with new recordings of his thoughts.
“The fluctuating psychology of art had its beginning in the second century of the Great Circle Era and was founded by Liuda Pheer. She first gave a scientific proof of the difference in the emotional perception of men and women and laid bare that sphere that had for centuries been regarded as the semi-mystic subconscious. The proofs she offered for the understanding of her contemporaries, however, constituted the lesser part of her work. Liuda Pheer did more — she indicated the main series of sensual perceptions that made it possible to achieve similarity in the perception of the two sexes.”
A ringing signal and a green light suddenly called Mven Mass to the televisophone. A call that came during working hours meant something very urgent. The automatic secretary was switched off and Mven Mass hurried downstairs to the room where long-distance calls were received.
Veda Kong, with bruised and scratched cheeks and with deep shadows under her eyes, greeted him from the screen. Mven Mass was pleased to see her and held out his huge hands to her, causing Veda’s worried face to break into a faint smile.
“Help me, Mven. I know you’re working but Darr Veter isn’t on Earth and Erg Noor is far away; besides them you’re the only one I have to whom I can turn with any request. I’ve had a misfortune.”
“What? Darr Veter….”
“No, a cave collapsed during excavations.”
Veda gave him a brief description of what had happened in the Hall of Culture.
“You’re the only one of my friends who has free access to the Prophetic Brain.”
“To which of the four?”
“The Brain of Lower Definition.”
“I understand; you want me to calculate the possibility of reaching the door with a minimum expenditure of labour and material.”
“You’re right.”
“Have you got the data?”
“I have them before me.”
“All right. I’m listening.”
Mven Mass wrote down some columns of figures very rapidly.
“Now you’ll have to wait until the machine can accept my figures. If you wait I’ll get in touch with the Prophetic Brain engineer on duty. The Brain of Lower Definition is in the Australian Section of the southern zone.”
“Where is the Brain of Higher Definition?”
“That’s in the Indian Section, where I am, now. I’m changing over. Wait for me.”
As Veda stood before the empty screen she tried to imagine the Prophetic Brain. Her imagination pictured a gigantic human brain with its furrows and convolutions, alive and pulsating, although the young woman knew that they were electronic research machines of the highest class capable of solving any problem that could be solved by the known branches of mathematics. There were only four such machines on the planet and they all had special uses.
Veda did not have long to wait. The screen lit up and Mven Mass asked her to call him again in six days’ time. later in the evening.
“Mven, your help is invaluable!”
“Just because I know something of the rules of mathematics, is that it? And your work is invaluable because you know the ancient languages and cultures. Veda, you’re overdoing it with the Era of Disunity!”
The historian frowned but Mven Mass laughed with such good nature and so infectiously that Veda also laughed, waved him good-bye and disappeared.
At the appointed time Mven Mass again saw the young woman in the televisophone.
“You needn’t speak, I see by your face that the answer is unfavourable.”
“Yes, stability is below the safety limit. If you go straight to it you will have to remove almost a million cubic metres of rock.”
“It will only be possible for us to tunnel to the second cave and remove the safes,” said Veda, sadly.
“Is it a matter of such distress?”
“Excuse me, Mven, but you have also stood before a door that hid an unfathomed secret. Yours are great, universal secrets and mine are tiny little ones. Emotionally, however, my failure is the equal of yours!”
“We’re companions in misfortune. I can tell you that we’ll be knocking our heads against closed doors many times, yet. The stronger and more courageous our efforts the more often we shall come up against doors.”
“One of them will open!”
“Naturally.”
“You haven’t given up altogether, have you?”
“Of course not, we’re collecting fresh facts and the indicants of more correct methods.”
“And suppose you have to wait all your life?”
“What is my individual life compared with such a step forward in knowledge!”
“Mven, what has happened to your impassioned impatience?”
“It hasn’t disappeared, it’s been curbed — by suffering.”
“How’s Renn Bose?”
“He’s better. He’s looking for ways to make his abstractions more precise.”
“I see. Wait a minute, Mven, there’s something important for me!”
Veda disappeared from the screen and when the light flashed on again, she was another, younger and more carefree woman.
“Darr Veter is returning to Earth. Satellite 57 is being completed ahead of time.”
“As quickly as that? Is it finished?”
“No, it’s not finished, they’ve only put on the outer walls of the hull and mounted the engines. The work inside is easier. He is being called back to rest and to analyse Junius Antus’ report on a new form of communication around the Great Circle.”
“Thanks, Veda. I’ll be glad to see Darr Veter.”
“You’ll see him all right. I didn’t finish. Supplies of anameson for the new spaceship Lebed have been prepared by the efforts of the whole planet. The crew invite you to see them off on the journey from which there will be no return. Will you come?”
“I’ll be there. The planet will show Lebed’s crew everything that is beautiful and lovable in the world. They also wanted to see Chara’s dance at the Fete of the Flaming Bowls. She is going to repeat her performance at the central cosmoport in El Homra. We’ll meet there!”
“Good, Mven Mass, my friend.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE ANDROMEDA NEBULA
The huge plain of El Homra stretches away to the south of the Gulf of Sirt in North Africa. Up to the time the trade winds and doldrums were eliminated it had been known as Hammada, the Red Desert, a waste of sand and stone, especially the triangular red stones that had given it its name. In summer it had been an ocean of scorching sunlight and during the autumn and winter nights it became an ocean of cold winds. Only the wind now remained of the old Hammada and that sent wave after wave across the tall silvery-blue grass that covered the firm soil of the plain; the grass had been transplanted from the South African veldt. The whistling of the wind and the bowed grass awakened in man’s memory an uncertain feeling of sorrow and, at the same time, a feeling that
the great grassy plains are somehow close to his heart, something that he had met with before in his life — not just once before, but many times and under different circumstances, in sorrow and in joy, in good times and bad.
Every take-off or landing of a spaceship left behind a circle, about a kilometre in diameter, of scorched and poisoned earth. These circles were surrounded by red metal screens and were out of bounds for a period of ten years, twice as long as the harmful fall-out from the spaceship’s exhaust would be active. After each landing or take-off the cosmoport was transferred to another place which gave its buildings the imprint of temporariness and made its staff kin to the ancient nomads of the Sahara who for thousands of years traversed the desert on a special kind of animal with a humped back, a long curved neck and big corns on its paws, an animal called the camel.
The planetship Barion on its thirteenth journey between the satellite under construction and Earth brought Darr Veter to the Arizona Plain that, on account of the accumulated radioactivity there, still remained a desert even after the climate had changed. At the very dawn of the application of nuclear energy in the Era of Disunity, many experiments and tests of this new technique had been carried out there. The radioactive fall-out has remained to this day — it is now too weak to harm man but is sufficient to check the growth of trees and bushes.
Darr Veter took pleasure not only in the great charm of Earth — its blue sky in a bridal gown of white clouds — but also in the dusty soil, the scanty, tough grass….
How wonderful it was to walk with a firm tread on solid earth, under the golden rays of the Sun and with his face turned to meet the fresh dry breeze. After he had been on the threshold of Cosmic space he could better appreciate the full beauty of our planet that our ancestors had once called “the vale of tears and sorrow.”
Grom Orme did not detain the builder for he himself wanted to be present when Lebed took off. They arrived at El Homra together on the day the expedition was to leave.
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