Artifact

by Gregory Benford

  “How’d he kill the Minotaur?”

  “We don’t know. He’d already practiced—the legend says he had already slaughtered the fire-breathing bull of Marathon.”

  “Two bulls? And where was the labyrinth?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Knossos was a short taxi ride out of town, away from the ever-present police uniforms. On the way out they were stopped at an Army checkpoint.

  “What if they want our passports?” John asked. “The hotel’s got them.”

  “Then that’s what we say.”

  The officer peered in, saw they were tourists and waved them on. “See?” Claire said. “Things are more relaxed away from Athens.” She pointed at a donkey which browsed beside a tumbledown wall in the shade of an ilex, ignoring the buzzing flies around it.

  “Then what’s the roadblock for?”

  “Political. Cretans aren’t going to like this one-party business.”

  “Let’s get going to Santorini, then. Stay away from this.”

  “I booked us on tomorrow’s ship at eight A.M.”

  In the open sprawl of Knossos, though, John began to regret having to leave so soon. The walls of dazzling white and veined blocks of gypsum cast an ivory aura over the excavated ruins, framing the frescoes with a luminous radiance. There was a feeling of openness to the ruined palace with its ample rooms giving onto courtyards and squares, an hospitable welcoming in the scent of oleander and pine that blew down from the low hills. Lizards scuttled among the brilliant white blocks and vultures patrolled above, circling and crying sweetly in the high sharp air.

  “Hard to believe this was a labyrinth.”

  “Oh, this is merely the unearthed part. The original palace had fifteen hundred rooms.”

  “That’s why historians think the Greeks based the legend on it?”

  “Well, it was certainly the most complicated building a Greek had ever seen. And Minos is the dynastic term for the line of priest kings of Knossos.”

  “And he kept a man-eating, fire-breathing bull around the house for laughs.”

  “It’s a legend after all, not a newspaper story.”

  “This labyrinth was the palace itself?”

  “Presumably. They cut tombs into the rock, but nothing very big. Something like the Mycenaean ones.”

  They climbed up spacious stairs supported by thick pillars of gaudy scarlet. Even inside there was a fresh, luxurious air. The inhabitants, she told him, were only four and a half feet tall.

  “The Mycenaeans took over there?”

  “After the second burning of this palace, yes.”

  “But I thought the Athenians were the big Greek power.”

  “Oh no, Athens was a backwater at this time. Plato, Pericles—they came a thousand years after all this.”

  “But Crete fought battles with the Athenians, and it was Theseus who killed the Minotaur.”

  “Well, you’ve got to remember that history is written by the survivors. The whole Minotaur business might have involved Mycenaeans, not Athenians at all. The Athenians simply expropriated the existing legends.”

  “Boy, no wonder Henry Ford said history was bunk.”

  She bridled. “What does it matter? Some nameless hero from the region around Mycenae came here. Perhaps he was a great bull-leaping athlete. Or perhaps he slew fearsome beasts. It became a big story back home, got passed on and amplified. Homer used it.”

  “So Homer is just a bunch of tall tales.”

  Primly: “In a manner of speaking.”

  They walked among the stairways and toppled columns, John reflecting on the silent stones. Claire fidgeted.

  “Say, are those police over there looking at us?”

  Claire whirled, “What? Where?”

  He chuckled. “Well, they were, a minute ago. You’re not as calm as you make out.”

  She gave him a guarded look. “Okay, I’m jumpy, too. Let’s get back to town.”

  He returned to the museum in late afternoon, drawn by its atmosphere. Even the museum tickets were unusual, bearing line drawings of ancient scholars or statesmen, and quotations from great works of antiquity. Inside, the glass cases laid bare the silent eons. He felt as never before the yawning abyss of things lost, great deeds forgotten, people gone to dust.

  In a case of its own a black steatite bull’s head gazed out at him across the millennia. Its glossy seashell nostrils flared angrily and eyes of rock crystal and jasper regarded him ominously. The descriptive card said, Rhyton from the Knossos Palace. The hair is skillfully rendered by incision. Styles and tools used suggest an origin shortly before the final catastrophe. There is evidence in Homer that ceremonial bulls had their horns gilded. The horns of this work have not been found, but were probably of gilded wood like those of the famous rhyton of similar type found in the royal tombs of Mycenae.

  The malevolent stony gaze seemed to follow him as he moved, studying the craftsmanship. The recently added wooden horns were artfully curved and painted a luminous gold. They gleamed in the cool light of the Museum, and he imagined running toward them in the smell of dust, heart pounding, as cries of the crowd rose around him, hooves thumping, the great beast lunging for his belly, horns lowered and glinting in the clear sunlight, death hot in the eyes, as his arms tensed to reach out, to grab and lift and fly free above the brutal devouring rush.

  He admired it for a long time, chewing absently at his lower lip, thinking that it reminded him of something, but he could not remember what.

  CHAPTER

  Three

  As the Attika pulled out of Heraklion harbor Claire pointed out a scrawled message painted by spray can on the gray concrete bulwarks of the dock: YANKEE GO HOME.

  “No cliché” like an old cliché,” John murmured.

  “They mean it, though.”

  “Yeah. I thought that guy at the hotel this morning was going to throw our filthy exploitative money right back in our faces.”

  “He was rather rude, wasn’t he?”

  “Is that why you fed him that guff about going to get our rental car?”

  She nodded. “If the police come checking, they’ll waste time running down all the rental agencies first.”

  “Thought so. Anyway, I don’t take signs like that personally.” He lounged lazily against the railing, the soft wind ruffling his hair, musing at the passing fishing boats. “They don’t apply to me.”

  “Why not?”

  He deepened his drawl. “Ah’m not a Yankee.”

  She laughed despite herself. He went to such lengths to separate himself from her New England heritage, yet with a mocking sense of himself. As if he knew he came from a culture that was fading, still wrapped in its past. Perhaps that same sense let him relax so easily; she envied him that. Last night she had chattered on about what had happened, what they might do, letting her own anxieties out in a torrent of ifs and supposes and maybes. He had listened attentively but contributed little, almost as though he was humoring her. She had gotten them into this on impulse, and now had second thoughts. John didn’t seem to mind that. He simply took in all the possibilities she fretted over and nodded, as if he was calculating somewhere, but not needing to talk about it. A strange man.

  The Greek sun came cutting through morning mist, the same sharp radiance that had lit antiquity, proving anew its ability to light, to warm, to make everything known. They went inside to get some sweet coffee and a honeyed roll. The ship was packed with Germans, all talking excitedly and waving newspapers. He asked her if she understood what they were saying.

  She studied the Greek newspaper headlines. “There’s a new state censorship law. That one says they’re printing only releases from the government for now. Umm…Borders are closed to everybody except tourists. Controls on movement of currency and capital.”

  “The usual. Banks closed?”

  “Yes. I’m glad I got my money yesterday.”

  “What are the Germans saying about it?”

  “I don’t speak Ger
man.”

  “You, the language whiz?”

  “I’m not really that good. I can read German for archeological purposes, that’s all. Except for Greek, I simply spend the month before I go to a country boning up on vocabulary. I learn the present tense of a few verbs—to be, to get, things like that. Then I spend an evening speaking with someone who knows the language, a day or so before leaving. There’s no big trick to it. I decided to stop at a reading knowledge of German when I discovered that the word for maiden took a neuter article—Das Mädchen.”

  “So?”

  “Only by getting married could I get a feminine article, Die Frau. That told me enough about the German mentality.”

  “My, my.”

  She had told this to a number of men, but none of them had simply leaned back, hands behind neck, and yawned, as did John. The others—earnest, quick-witted Cambridge types—had instantly professed understanding and support. Having passed this litmus test, however, they had all eventually dropped away or turned her off in some fashion. She had never been certain whether the reason for this lay in her or in them, but in time she had come to distrust men who immediately endorsed her position, and seemed to be looking to her for clues about which posture they should strike to win her approval. John’s indifference—or was it?—left her unsettled.

  Two hours later they watched the red crescent arms of Santorini rear slowly from the sea to embrace the Attika. Layers of gray ash, ruddy lava and pumice streaked the high cliffs. Claire leaned on the railing and let the impossible liquid blues seep into her.

  Across the turquoise shimmer came a fishing boat with rough planking and a big-bellied white sail, its prow raking in a pure proud curve above its rippling image in the bay. Its captain shouted orders in a harsh, penetrating bark as old as seafaring.

  They slipped near the stubby protrusion of the Great Kameni at the center of the bay. A faint sulphurous tang prickled her nostrils. Pitch black lava boulders tumbled down to the water’s edge, obdurate and threatening, their angular faces undulled by the rub of waves.

  “That’s the volcano?” John asked.

  “Yes, the active one. The last big eruption was in 1956. Half the population left after that.”

  “How do they live here?” He surveyed the bleak, rocky land high above the bay.

  She pointed. “Those layers of pumice are good fertilizer. See those ramps down into the sea? They load freighters with the stuff.”

  He turned back to the receding low profile of the Great Kameni. “That doesn’t look like much of a volcano. What’s the size of the open hole?”

  “We can motorboat over later and see. But if you mean the caldera of the whole volcano—this is it.”

  “No, I mean—” Then he understood. “This bay is the caldera?”

  She nodded. “The explosion of 1426 B.C. blew half the island away. The date comes from tree rings of bristlecone pines in California. They showed reduced growth that year. Santorini’s dust made it a chilly summer all over the planet.”

  “All this…clean to smithereens?”

  “The ancient name for the whole island meant ‘round.’ The eruption took half the island. Now it’s crescent-shaped.”

  “My God, it’s five or six miles across, easy.”

  “It must have been like a hydrogen bomb.”

  “That’s why I wanted to come here. Remember the ivory square?”

  “Oh yes. You figure it’s a map.”

  “If we were looking at it upside down the whole time, then the big land mass at the bottom represents Crete. Santorini is the only major island to the north, so the round blob halfway up the square probably represents this island.”

  “The distances don’t seem right, from what I remember.”

  “They aren’t—but the ancients had no accurate way of measuring, remember, other than sailing time, which depends on the prevailing winds. There were other marks up to the left, too, that may correspond to other islands; the location is about right. The important point is, the Santorini mark is nearly round.”

  “I see.” John gazed wonderingly at the vast azure bowl. “Before the volcano blew this away.”

  “Now see why I’m determined to piece this together? This connects to the legend of Atlantis, to the myth-making days of earliest Greece, to everything.”

  John nodded, studying the map of Santorini he’d bought. “Hell of a note,” he said with respect.

  They moored near the base of the cliffs. The Germans pushed into a tight jam at the disembarking station, grimly determined to be among the first into the small boats that ferried them ashore. Claire had seen the pattern before and stayed on deck until the last boat. They ambled along the quay and up to the donkey station. The animals were remarkably quick at propelling them up the zigzagging cobblestone path, the guides shouting and administering slaps. As their straps landed a cloud of dust rose from the beasts’ matted coats. John automatically dug his heels into his donkey, passing the shrieking Germans and earning a reproachful glare from a guide.

  Phira, a clustered town of striking blues and whites, crowned the cliff. Trinket shops lined the snaking streets. Terraces and courtyards had been designed to deflect the perpetual gusty winds into narrow alleys and smother them. Long, belled strands of blue convolvulus looped down walls, uniting neighborhoods. Scarlet geraniums poked from unlikely pockets in the walls.

  Claire always thought of this island as the embodiment of the Greek spirit. Limestone houses lay their courtyards bare to the piercing sunlight, open but unyielding. Each domed and ribbed building added to the challenge that Phira hurled at Great Kameni across the shimmering bay. Humans had again returned to the lava island and impudently lived on the old battleground where Vulcan had won before and would doubtless win again. The Greeks always came back, beaten down but undiminished, to make a beautiful upthrusting testament that sparkled in the eternal sun glare.

  The Atlantean Hotel was blocky and balconied, so close to the cliff edge that it seemed to lean forward, tantalizing the abyss with its audacity. Claire and John dumped their bags in the foyer and she negotiated for their rooms. Yes, there were a few left. (Clerks always implied that one should be happy to get anything.) No, none with a view. (Unless you wished to pay more…?) Well, if only for a day, perhaps they could find something. (It was off season and they were probably empty.) The clerk sniffed when she asked to see the rooms first.

  They were scrupulously clean and the view from the iron-railed balcony was superb. While the clerk pointed out sights to John in his room she ducked down the hallway toward the EXIT sign. There was a back stairway. She returned and gushed over the view, too, hamming up the tourist role. John, poker-faced, gave the man a tip. Claire handed him their passports and asked for them back soon, so they could use them to cash travelers checks in the shops. The man nodded curtly and left. He had seemed surprised that an American man and woman traveling together would not sleep together.

  “Not the friendliest character, is he?”

  “I wonder if the tourist season has worn them out. Usually the Greeks are wonderful hosts. I love this country, but in the last few years…” She shook her head.

  “Why didn’t you ask him about George?”

  She sat on a bed of crisp starched sheets. “I don’t want to associate the three of us in his mind. If Kontos has a bulletin out on us, or whatever you call it, we’ll be described as a party of three.”

  He smiled knowingly. She knew he hoped she had split them off from George for romantic purposes, and with a demure smile encouraged the belief without saying anything more. John was attractive, yes, but she had other things on her mind. Still, it was best to distract John, not let him worry about the seriousness of their situation. She had no clear idea of how she could return to the tomb, but she was determined to keep the men from simply skipping out, back to the States. Cold-blooded, perhaps, but she was in this now, and damned if she would give up.

  “And you spoke only English to that clerk just now, to lo
ok touristy—”

  A knock at the door. “Passports, I guess,” John said, and answered. George stood there, looking drawn.

  “You made it!” Claire embraced him, surprised at her own excitement.

  “Yeah. Your reg’lar bargain basement James Bond.” He grinned and shook John’s hand.

  “Did you have any trouble?”

  George shook his head. “Not a bit. Took the ship, checked in here, saw all the sights. Got us reservations on tomorrow’s tour ship headed north.”

  Claire nodded. “Great. Kontos won’t follow a zigzag like this.”

  “Seems reasonable,” John said. This settled, he stretched and yawned. Claire studied him. He seemed genuinely unconcerned, radiating a lazy self-assurance.

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

  They idled in the restaurant after lunch, logy with green peppers and spiced sausage, squid, fried zucchini, rice with pine nuts and two bottles of a fierce local red wine named, appropriately, Lava. A pair of American girls came in and sat near the door. Beyond noticing the usual uniform of scruffy jeans and nondescript blouse, Claire paid them no attention until one suddenly fell sideways out of her chair, hitting the floor with a heavy smack. The restaurant owner hurried over, brought a napkin dipped in water, pressed it to the fallen girl’s throat.

  “Hey, don’t make such a big deal out of it,” her companion said. “I mean, y’know, it’s her own fault. I keep telling her, hey, don’t take a big hit before you get some breakfast in you.” She looked around the room for support, fixed on Claire. “Right? Geez.”

  They watched as the fallen girl regained consciousness, mumbled something and, helped by the restaurant owner, crawled back into her chair. Coffee appeared and the girl downed it in a gulp.

  “I’m starting to feel a little more sympatico with our hotel clerk,” John said dryly.

  “More fuel for the likes of Kontos,” Claire said. “Flouting the local mores only turns the Greeks toward a political creed that echoes their Mediterranean Catholic values—paternalistic, central, dogmatic.”