Artifact

by Gregory Benford

  “Hampton could make Kontos send them to Boston.”

  Her eyes flashed. “And keep whatever he likes? I don’t want him pawing through my things!”

  John said wonderingly, “You think Kontos won’t look for us? Word will get back to him and—”

  “Are you willing to take that risk?”

  A long silence. John avoided her eyes. He was remembering the beatings, she knew. She hated to use that, to refer to it even obliquely, but she didn’t have any time.

  He stiffened slightly. “I suppose so, yes.”

  “All right then,” she said cheerily. “I’ll go across first.”

  “Why not together?” John asked.

  “They’ll look for a group. And I can talk my way out better, knowing Greek.”

  John didn’t like that very much, but he agreed to follow in ten minutes. She left the medical aid station. She thought wryly that it wasn’t hard to look like a weary, anxious traveler, because that was exactly how she felt. When she was halfway across the street two jeeps came barreling toward her, horns honking. She jumped out of the way. They zoomed past, three men in each, ignoring her. They turned, tires howling, and blocked the international terminal entrance. The soldiers bounded out and checked their swiveled heavy machine guns. Claire had put down her bags to watch. Soldiers came over to the new arrivals and bombarded them with questions. Claire picked up her bags and noticed that nearly everyone within sight had melted away, leaving the street nearly deserted, and she was conspicuous. She hurried for the domestic terminal.

  It was quiet inside. During a crisis in the capital, no one seemed interested in flying to the provinces. Speaking Greek, she got their two tickets and checked them onto the flight. No one paid her the slightest extra attention. She turned away from the counter and a soldier came abruptly out of nowhere and stood directly in her way.

  “Where are you going, Madam?” he asked formally in Greek.

  He was thin but wiry and his dark eyes shifted rapidly over her face, assessing. She held her breath and thought irrationally of running. But where? “I…Crete.”

  “You have a ticket on this flight?”

  “Yes. I am on holiday and—”

  “Then I would consider it a great favor if you would take this.” He held out a letter. “Please, I ask you, drop it in the post at the airport. It will be delivered in Heraklion within a day.”

  Relief was like a weight lifted from her. “But—but why not post it here?”

  The dark eyes studied her, looked to the left, slid uneasily back. “I am afraid that mail from Athens will not reach Heraklion quickly. There are…political divisions. This letter, it is to my relatives, people who may not be in…”

  “In favor?”

  “Please, it is all I can do, I will pay you for the trouble if you—”

  “No no, of course I’ll take it. But do you really think—”

  Apparently he did, because the man poured out a rich stream of thanks before bolting away, as if afraid to be seen talking to a foreigner.

  When John arrived a few minutes later she was still turning it over in her mind. John reported that there was a line of soldiers at the international terminal now, checking carefully anyone who entered. The monorail from Athens wasn’t running due to a labor strike, and bunches of people arrived in overloaded buses, only to be slowed at the entrance. “Typical,” he said. “Heavy weapons, as if somebody’s going to escape by attacking the airport.”

  “Don’t look concerned and no one will notice you. We’re just tourists, remember?”

  “With this kind of security, somebody’ll catch on to us.”

  “Not necessarily. Outside Athens, people are more relaxed.”

  “Like in Nauplia?”

  “Okay, my optimistic streak is showing.”

  “All this, just to get those notes?”

  “They represent months of work. I can’t do my part of the project without them. And on Crete perhaps I can find some connection to that ivory map. Archeology is mostly a process of making associations between objects, and every discovery opens up possible resonances with things we already have. Sometimes, simply wandering through a museum or a site can open your eyes.”

  He sighed.

  She was quiet for a moment, second thoughts beginning to surface. But it was too late now. Praxis.

  She put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure a call to Hampton will straighten this out.” She grinned, even though she didn’t believe a word of it.

  CHAPTER

  Two

  John settled back contentedly. A short order of garlic-laden souvlaki, a full plate of oily moussaka and a bottle of tart red wine had all conspired to smooth out the world, filming it with a pleasant and benign glaze. He sat in piercing autumn sunlight, blades of it cutting crisp and clean through the olive branches. So this was the fabled air of Greece. He toasted it with more Metaxa brandy. His fatigue had retreated, but he felt it biding its time, ready to smother him with sleep if he challenged it.

  Claire came out of the hotel across the small park, looked both ways—always a good idea in the bee-swarm traffic of Heraklion—and strode toward him. Her lean, focused body had an ample sway, an unconscious lushness of gait transcending mechanical necessity and mocking the severe cut of her red blouse and gray slacks. The inevitable lounging men, out of work and unshaven, followed her trajectory like rotating radars.

  “You have fans.”

  “What? Oh, them. It’s always like that.”

  “Occupational hazard of working in the Mediterranean?”

  “You don’t know much about Boston Irish, do you?”

  He smiled. “Any luck?”

  “I got two rooms. And called Boston.”

  He sat up. She was vexed.

  “I got through right away, using the new satellite link through Cairo.” She sipped her brandy.

  “And?”

  She said reluctantly, “Hampton…wasn’t cooperative. He hadn’t heard from Kontos, thank God, but he brushed off what I told him. He said if I had irritated Kontos he was sure he, Hampton, could straighten it out.”

  “Didn’t you say that—”

  Her eyebrows flared upward. “I couldn’t tell him everything. Use your head! I don’t want Kontos hearing that I think that artifact is important.”

  “Or that you want to go back for your notes in person.”

  “Of course not. I described Kontos bringing in his Army goons, and roughing you up, and confiscating a lot of our notes—okay, a shading of the truth, I’ll admit—and expelling us from the country without any official authority. Hampton went tsk-tsk and told me there was a lot of political unrest and to leave everything to his great big capable hands.” She made a face.

  “He’ll call Kontos right away.”

  “Perhaps not. I said I was calling from Paris, that I wanted a few days of holiday. I asked him to hold any action until I could describe what happened in detail, in Boston. Hampton likes to write long, thoughtful letters and circulate them widely—‘getting a forum,’ he calls it. That’s how he wants to deal with this, I think.”

  “Maybe that’s the best course.”

  “No, it’s just a way to sweep it—me—under the rug. Hampton and Kontos will Old-Boy-Network this until I find myself working some Syrian mud village dig while they carry on the Mycenaean sites.”

  He said carefully, “Well…maybe you shouldn’t place too much weight on those notes.”

  “Nonsense. Remember, part of it is that data of yours I was going to incorporate into my records. If I’d had time to copy it and get it back to you, you’d have it.”

  “Well, still…”

  “After those spectral lines you found? Some kind of alloy, or an unusual stone at least. Plus the fact that it’s unique, a funerary relic nobody’s seen before. Who knows what it means, being hidden like that? Next year we can dig down on that ledge behind it, explore the water cistern, maybe find things they threw down it”—her eyes flashed—�
��and I want to be there!”

  He took a deep breath. Here goes. “What I meant was, my results are preliminary and could be…wrong.”

  She blinked. “Why? You were careful, I watched you.”

  “Yes, but…well, it’s not my area.”

  “Ancient metallurgy has its tricks, certainly, but you—”

  “My point is, I’m not a metallurgist.”

  She looked blank. “What?”

  “I never saw equipment like that before in my life.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “A mathematician.”

  She stared in disbelief.

  “I…I’m working on a new mathematical model of impurities in metals, applications of group theory.”

  “Your office…”

  “They had space so they stuck me in there. I talk to some of the metallurgy people, but otherwise—”

  “You lied to me!”

  “Not exactly. I never said I was any good at this stuff, you’ll remember.”

  “I thought you were—were—”

  “I know, and I do apologize. I thought it was going to be a lark, you know, sort of a vacation.”

  “So for the free trip you—!” She slammed her brandy glass to the table. It broke. She didn’t notice.

  “Not really. Mostly it was you.”

  “Me?”

  “I was attracted to you from the first second.” He hung his head. “I know that sounds stupid. I—I just let my glands run away with me, I guess.”

  To his surprise, she subsided. “So you decided to simply…fake it?”

  “Yes. I got the equipment easy enough. Signed out for it. Ransacked the library for reference books. Read ’em on the plane.”

  “All that…” She gazed at him as if he were a stranger. “For me?”

  In the For me? he saw a momentary chink in her dazzling armor. Unremittingly competitive and self-confident in her professional life, did she harbor doubts about her womanly qualities? He would have to do something about that. Somehow.

  He said sheepishly, “I did as best I could. I know a little electronics, built some stereo components once, but…I can’t be sure the work is accurate. I know you’re disappointed, but I want you to know that, well”—he looked directly into her eyes—“I’m not. It was worth the experience.”

  “Hell,” she said irritably, “you could’ve just asked me for a date.”

  “I didn’t want to let you slip by. I just acted, well, straight from the heart.”

  “Some cold, analytical mathematician you are.”

  “I should’ve admitted it when I got to the site, saw what a job it was, more than I expected. But then you’d have had nobody at all to help you. If I hadn’t been such a poltroon—”

  “Pol-what?”

  “Poltroon. Coward.”

  She softened visibly. “No, that’s not…you worked hard. I couldn’t have gotten what I did without…”

  “I’m sorry. But I’d still do it again. It’s been worth it.”

  She blinked rapidly, suddenly discovered the spilled brandy and began sopping it up with her napkin, not looking at him. After a moment she laughed unevenly and gave him a crooked smile. “You know, I’ve felt…different…about you, too.”

  He gazed at her wonderingly. “Why, that’s—”

  A certain reserve came back into her face and she licked her lips. “Maybe it’s because we have a lot in common. You realize, don’t you, that we’re both sneaky, lying bastards.”

  He didn’t like hearing women talk that way, but he had to agree.

  George brought bad news.

  His flight had been delayed by general hubbub. More troops had arrived at Athens airport and were screening all passengers. They checked even those on domestic flights inbound from other parts of Greece. He had gotten through because the officers were paying more attention to incoming passengers, probably because of fears of a counter-move in Athens by opponents of the takeover. George had witnessed several arrests.

  All this implied that returning through Athens was a poor bet. Yet Claire persisted—she had to return to the tomb, retrieve her notes.

  They could try to charter a private plane. But the airports were more closely watched—George had seen more police arriving at the Heraklion airport as he collected his luggage.

  That left the sea. The best and most inexpensive way would be to cruise gradually northward on the regular tourist ships. And, since Kontos could trace them to Crete from the airline passenger list, they had better get quickly clear of Heraklion. This was not immediately possible. The government had kept the tourist trade running well, because it was now a chief source of hard currency. The schedules for northbound ships were filled. By bribing a booking agent Claire managed to get three seats on a ship leaving for Santorini the next morning. There was one seat available that afternoon.

  They would be less conspicuous if they separated. George wanted to take the single, rather than wait. Claire and John would follow the next morning, meeting George at the Atlantean Hotel.

  Meanwhile the smart policy was to look as ordinary and touristy as possible. Police patrols were moving through the streets, asking for IDs, but not bothering obvious foreigners. George left to catch his ship, grinning, enjoying the intrigue.

  John tried to look relaxed. He was uneasy about the clumps of police and Army uniforms at every major intersection. Suppose Kontos found out they hadn’t left the country? There was certainly some charge the man could dream up. In the current climate, it might stick.

  They strolled through the open market, resisting the blandishments of traders. Claire bought some saffron—a wildly eccentric indulgence, he thought, since she had only the clothes on her back, some underwear, two paperbacks and a few toilet articles.

  She led him through narrow streets of blaring cars and hawking vendors, into the vaulted quiet of the Museum. “Browse around,” she said. “The frescoes are upstairs. I’ll go get some cash on my American Express card and pick up some necessities. And cable American Airlines, asking them to store our baggage in Boston.”

  John deliberately concentrated, shutting out the dusty, unruly world outside. He liked the clean, skillful lines of the stone vases and urns, some with jeweled handles. Most of the elegant gemwork and gold necklaces reminded him of the Mycenaean artistry Claire had shown him at the site, so he was not surprised to learn from the museum booklet that cross-cultural currents ran through the great eras of Cretan civilization.

  The first era ended with an earthquake, but the Cretans rebuilt, leading to their golden age that lasted 250 years. A label beneath an exquisite gold pendant described the end as “engulfment in tidal waves and earthquake.” Two bees curled toward each other, forming the arcs of the pendant as they stored honey in a comb. Or perhaps they were mating. The tiny granulation glowed with inner life and purpose, and he felt suddenly the reality of this past—the millions of struggling, loving people who had built, hoped and died, the pulse of their times now an invisible presence, their only sign these elegant oddments. He often thought of the past as a crude, raw time, but here the deft craft of the ancients was a mute, forceful statement. He wandered among the artifacts, the carbonized relics of wood and wheat and furniture from the fallen great palaces, breathing in a sense of the long arc of history.

  “Looks like a Californian fashion, doesn’t it?”

  Claire’s voice at his shoulder startled him. He had been studying a Snake Goddess statue, arms outstretched, snakes crawling over her arms and round her body, even up into her tall tiara. A tight bodice left the breasts bare above a long flounced skirt and apron.

  “Some themes are eternal,” he said.

  “Their cults kept snakes in clay tubes—see those?—and fed them milk.” When he looked puzzled she added, “They may have used them in worship, but I think snakes were medical technology. Their bites could be used for some ailments.”

  She led him through rooms of pottery. “Fired clay outlasts everything.”
r />   “Even modern materials?”

  “Certainly. Our toilet bowls will still be usable ten thousand years from now. Oh, look.”

  In the blue fresco a bull charged at a flying gallop, head down. A woman in a codpiece and high boots gripped its horns. A brown, jeweled man was halfway along its back, grasping the bull, flipping heels over head. A woman had landed on her feet just behind the charging hooves, arms poised from her flip. The three stages of the “leap of death.” The composition vibrated with energy.

  “They really did this,” Claire added. “It was a sport.”

  “No religious connection?”

  “Well, these events might be what started the myth of Theseus, who was sent here from Athens with other young men and women to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. We don’t know a lot about Cretan religion.”

  “And we think it’s a big deal to dodge one of these with a cape.”

  She smiled. “Don’t be so hard on the matadors. Everybody shaves the odds if they can. Some excavations found bull skulls with the horns sawn down, dulling them.”

  “Ranchers do that if they’re keeping a bull indoors a lot, y’know. Keeps them from gouging the walls, or people, or the cows.”

  “Really? How do you know?”

  “Farming’s in the DNA of Georgians.”

  “Um. I wonder if the excavators know that about keeping bulls.”

  “They must. I mean, that’s what the Minotaur was.”

  “No, it was half man, half bull. The god Poseidon gave a bull to the king of Crete, Minos, to sacrifice. Instead, Minos kept it, and his wife fell in love with it.”

  “You’re right, it was like California.”

  She looked askance at him. “No, Poseidon made her do it.”

  “I’ve heard that one before.”

  A sigh. “She had a child by the bull—the Minotaur. Minos shut it up in a labyrinth. Later on, after Minos’s son was killed by the Athenians in a war, Minos demanded that they send him a sacrifice of young people, as tribute. He fed them to the Minotaur.”

  “Nice fellow. That’s where Theseus comes in?”

  “Correct. He was one of the sacrifices. Only he went armed and killed the Minotaur. He found his way back out because he had unwound a thread to mark the way.”