Artifact

by Gregory Benford

  “I suppose so. Not nearly so much as when they find out what really went on.”

  He said as mildly as possible, “You could’ve come out with it.”

  “And lose the piece immediately? No thanks,” she said fervently.

  “So what’ve you gained?”

  “Time.”

  He gestured at the artifact. “Time to work on this.”

  “Yes, and to think. How’s it going? That x-ray stuff you described on the phone last night—”

  “Out of date. Abe’s found something more. He was just telling me.”

  At mention of his name Abe Sprangle stopped fooling with his electronics and came over with an anticipatory grin. Claire gave him a warm, professional greeting, and listened while he summarized his thinking on the problem. “A reasonable deduction, I believe, that pitchblende was the source of the x-rays. Archeologically probable, I mean. Do you agree?” When Claire nodded he went on. “But pitchblende it cannot be. I measured the x-ray spectrum. Pitchblende does not fit. So Fred and 1, we dragged out the gamma-ray detectors.”

  Claire said disbelievingly, “Gammas?”

  “Indeed. And they are increasing.”

  John said, “Nothing, no isotope gives off a lot of high energy radiation. You must have a wrong calibration.”

  Abe grinned again, enjoying his story. “So I thought, too. But the x-ray spectrum was suspicious. It was not lines, like uranium or radium. I get all energies out—soft x-rays up to hard ones, smooth all the way. There is not the remotest possibility that pitchblende could yield such emission.”

  “That’s no single isotope, then,” John put in. “There must be a mixture of different radioactive minerals in there.”

  Claire shook her head. “Unlikely. Somebody made this thing, remember? How would they select radioactive ores when they didn’t know such things even existed?”

  Abe played his hole card. “You can stop worrying about might have beens. Because I measured the gamma-ray spectrum. It’s smooth, too. There are no lines.”

  Nobody said anything. Claire shook her head again, this time so vigorously that her carefully pinned-back hair shook loose a few strands at the neck. “As much respect as I have for your expertise, Abe, I can’t believe that.”

  “We check it, certainly. Fred is setting up a whole different set of detectors, ones I borrowed from Kemberson’s group.”

  John said, “Suppose the measurement holds up. What’s it mean?”

  Abe’s elation wore off a little. “That is the problem. I know nothing that yields such a high energy spectrum.”

  Claire said, “It’s got to be wrong.”

  But it wasn’t.

  The second, carefully calibrated measurement gave identical results. The flux of radiation from the cube was still not dangerous, but it had none of the spectral lines that would distinguish natural emission from atoms. Checking and calibrating took two days of tedious care.

  Abe said judiciously, “Look how relatively smooth this spectrum is. Perhaps a lot of lines, overlapping each other?”

  John said, “This means there are either a lot of radioactive isotopes inside, or…” He paused awkwardly.

  Abe grinned. “Or else we make some stupid mistake.”

  “And the radiation,” Claire asked earnestly, “it only comes out through the two locations—the cone and the hole on the opposite side?”

  “Absolutely. The source, it lies deep in the rock itself.” Abe meditated on this fact. “My guess is, they buried something in the middle of the cube.”

  John nodded. “Buried what?”

  “Wait,” Claire said decisively. “I know we’re all curious, but we’ve got to proceed step by step. We have to have chemical analysis of the rock, of the amber in that cone, of whatever’s plugging that hole in the back.”

  Abe said mildly, “Dunnsen in Chemistry, I have already arranged with him to do some analysis. He’s had experience, you know, did the work with Watkins and Hampton on that zinc and tin from Italy.”

  Claire stiffened. “We have to be sure there’s minimum damage to the artifact.”

  Abe nodded emphatically. “We can do all, all with passive means. No damage.”

  Claire said earnestly, “Only when we have those results will we be able to say something intelligent.”

  Intelligence is relative. It has biases and blind spots. John had never entertained the notion that two citadels of intelligence he knew well—Rice University, where he had labored long hours, and MIT, which he hoped to make a major professional stepping stone—might be seen most importantly by society as mills grinding out a special breed of intelligent trolls able to wire the machines, titrate the solutions, program the chips, and speed the wheels of industry.

  Similarly, Claire had never encountered a situation where a careful series of intelligent tests did not narrow down possibilities until only one remained, and the mysterious substance plucked from an ancient site was revealed as an odd sort of alloy, a trace of decayed matter, or an unusually shaped amalgam of several substances. Abe was similarly biased. He had never been in a situation where the active, emitting substance was unreachable, so that he could not even get a good look at it.

  “This composition analysis doesn’t make sense,” Abe said, frustrated. Dunnsen had brought his expertise to bear and rendered up a detailed list of what the cone contained. This chemist’s-eye view was painted in a graphic display of compounds and elements, all found by various diagnostics which tested the sample’s ability to re-emit or absorb light of a definite frequency. “That stuff’s damned funny.”

  “Let me see.” Claire studied the sheets, which were covered with curves in scarlet, blue and yellow. The peaks and valleys representing differing amounts of each element resembled jagged, multicolored teeth. “Actinium, boron, calcium—good grief, this is nothing like amber.”

  John said quietly, “What is amber, actually?”

  “Tree sap, fossilized tree sap,” Claire replied abstractedly. “The resins from trees accumulate in the soil and gradually the volatile elements leak out. That leaves a solid.”

  “Amber is mostly hydrogen and carbon, then?” John asked. He had always found chemistry boring and impossible to remember. It all seemed so messy and detailed. He remembered declaring as an undergraduate that the subject was trivial, representing merely the tedious working-out of quantum mechanics—an already understood discipline, elaborately mathematical—in complicated, uninteresting cases. The fact that these cases were of immense practical use could not change the matter to his youthful eyes; the subject was simply a form of smelly engineering.

  “Mostly, yes,” Abe answered. “You can identify it by the nodules in it, and that cone”—he crouched and peered at the artifact—“sure as hell glistens, like it’s got inclusions and irregularities.”

  Claire smacked the pages with the back of her palm. “But this says there are a lot of metals in it.”

  “Cannot be amber, then,” Abe declared.

  “Why not?” John asked. “Amber with a lot of impurities.”

  Abe’s brow furrowed as he studied the sheets. “Is that possible?”

  Claire put in, “Actually, I studied this once in Turkey. The tree sap would have to mix with a lot of odd minerals…. I suppose it could happen.” She smoothed her olive skirt with spread palms and sat back in her chair. They had commandeered a small office just off the bay, where they could tap into the campus computer with a portable console. The desk was littered with printouts, coffee cups, lab records and books on mineralogy. The inevitable vacuum pump chugged in the distance. “Everything I know about mineral deposition says don’t bet on it, though. Inclusion of something like iron, all right. Sometimes that happens and it changes the color. This material in the cone looks like the usual yellow amber, with nuances of orange and red. Iron, perhaps. But a whole range of elements?”

  John said slowly, “Maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way. I mean, trying to find a way amber could get all this variety
of stuff inside it.”

  “They had to get thoroughly mixed in,” Abe pointed out.

  “Sure. But the cone has been sitting near that radiation source for thirty-five centuries.”

  Silence while the words sank in. Then Claire said doubtfully, “The x-rays?”

  “No, only the gammas could do that,” John declared. “Those could cause transmutation.”

  Abe smiled deprecatingly. “Now that would require an immense radiation flux in the gammas. Far more than is coming out of there now.”

  John replied, “Whatever’s in there, it had to have some effect on the cone.”

  Abe shook his head. “I could calculate it for you, but I can tell right off there won’t be enough to break up a lot of iron into calcium and oxygen and so on.”

  John shrugged. “Just an idea.” But the set of his jaw remained. “Still, have you got any better one?”

  Abe sighed. “Not right away. Here, I’ll do that calculation.” He turned to the computer keyboard and started work.

  Claire was still gazing at the sheets. “We’ve been worrying about the cone, but look at this—the analysis for the plug in the back.”

  The spikes of blue and crimson were difficult to read. John asked, “So? Those peaks don’t look like the cone’s.”

  “I’d say it’s much closer to ordinary rock. Silicates, with some heavier stuff.”

  “The same sort of composition as the rest of the cube—the limestone?”

  “No. Close, though.”

  “Maybe they plugged the backside with ordinary rock. Why not?—nobody’s going to see it.”

  Claire smiled. “Who ever saw the front?”

  “True enough, we don’t know. But if they did use ordinary rock, and it spent the last few thousand years sitting next to a radiation source, what would it look like?”

  “Well, there are some peaks here….” She grimaced. “Perhaps a few impurities from bombardment by the source inside. But look, the limestone isn’t all shot through with these heavier elements. I tested the rock myself. Why is the limestone so ordinary, then?”

  John spread his hands, as though his explanation was most natural, inevitable. “It’s too thick. Only along the axis, at the cone and the plug, do we get to see through a thin layer at whatever’s inside.”

  Claire shook her head, exasperated. “Look, this is an artifact. Remember? It must come out of a culture we already know, which had methods we have studied in detail, with a history we can fit into mythology, records—all sorts of ways of checking and cross-checking. This thing has to have some continuity with what we’ve learned about the Mycenaeans. It can’t just be a—a rogue object, with no connections to anything else.”

  “Unless, of course, we just don’t see the connections yet.”

  Claire said darkly, “This is so—so complicated. I…don’t like it. I wonder if it could be a hoax?”

  John was startled. “What? How could it?”

  “If, say, Kontos planted that there, knowing we would…no, that’s crazy.”

  “Yes,” John said judicially, “it is.” He studied her frowning, introspective face for a long moment. She was obviously troubled with the cross-currents of loyalties, torn between the code of honesty that science demands and the impulse that had led her into this situation. Now the artifact itself was proving to be a puzzle, the ramifications of it impossible to see clearly.

  Abe slapped the desk beside the computer keyboard and announced, “There! The present gamma-ray flux could not possibly cause that much transmutation.”

  They pondered this for a moment. “Well,” John drawled thoughtfully, “the source is probably decaying, right? How much more powerful would it have to have been 3500 years ago?”

  Abe punched some commands into the program. The MIT computing system was algebraic-interactive now, which meant it could take a simple question, translate it into an equation, and solve that equation for a given range of possibilities. The answer came back only seconds after Abe finished typing. “That source would have to have been about three million times more active. How could a source of various isotopes do that?” Abe turned and grinned, enjoying the riddle.

  “A pretty tall order, huh?” John admitted ruefully.

  Claire said mildly, “Yes. But does anyone have another idea?”

  They looked at each other pensively.

  The telephone rang.

  Claire picked it up. “What? Oh, ah—all right, I’ll hold.”

  She gave John a frown. “I left this number with the archeology department, but I didn’t think—” She broke off and listened. Then nodded, said, “Yes,” and hung up.

  She looked bleakly at the two men. “It was Hampton’s secretary. He wants to see me right away. She said he had just finished a call from Kontos.”

  CHAPTER

  Four

  Professor Hampton was barricaded behind a formidable oak desk, which in turn matched the heavy bookshelves behind him. Against the long runs of journals and carefully arranged volumes his tweed suit and silk finish, wide red tie made a colorful contrast. Tucked in among the bookshelves, as if to pointedly show that this office’s inhabitant was au courant, was one of the new 3D paintings which managed to look simultaneously like a vase of electrically colorful spring flowers, and also resemble a particularly nasty aftermath of an explosion in a glass factory.

  After Claire was seated Hampton paused for effect, steepling his fingers and gazing through them with rapt concentration, as if the solution to a vexing problem lay there. Claire wondered if this was a method to insure that she would begin the conversation first. There were so many little games of this kind she was never sure what was casual and what had calculation behind it. She resolved to force him to begin, and unconsciously gripped the padded arms of her chair. After a full minute, just as the lengthening silence had started wearing away her determination, he sighed and spoke.

  “I had, less than an hour ago, a profoundly disturbing call from Alexandros. He was most agitated.”

  “Yes?” Bright, expectant, innocently interested.

  “He has lost the large artifact.”

  Her stomach tightened. “Lost?” she prompted.

  “Evidently he was studying it at the site, fearing that transport might damage some of the, er, delicate ornamentation. Apparently it is quite a beautiful piece.” Hampton said this slowly, sadly, with a hint of reluctance.

  “There was, of course, a guard at the site. Yet when Alexandros returned from his duties in Athens, the piece was gone.”

  “Thieves?”

  “The door was still locked.”

  “It must be the guard, then.”

  “Alexandros is of course having the fellow, er, questioned.”

  “Amazing, how these people think they can sell such an artifact on the black market. They should know any reputable buyer would realize what had happened.”

  Distracted, Hampton said, “Yes, yes, ’tis ever thus, eh? They never realize.” He steepled his fingers again and turned meditatively toward the pale light of the window, through which she could see rowing crews earnestly laboring up the gray Charles beneath facetious, cottonball clouds. “Tsk, tsk.”

  “A terrible thing,” she said, to be saying something.

  “Indeed. Alexandros said little of the attempt to recover. I am sure a man with his resources in the police and, er, military will have few problems with that. He did, however, ask about your notes.”

  “Many of them are in the crates he seized and took to Athens,” she said sharply.

  “Ah. Yes, he said there were some…. But the bulk, they—er—seem to be in your possession.”

  “They are my notes. George and I discovered the piece, after all.”

  “You know that discovery, as a concept, does not apply to cooperative digs,” he chided, gazing solemnly at her over his fingers, which he had begun to press together rhythmically.

  “Kontos deserves no cooperation. He was going to steal credit from the whole group.”<
br />
  “I assure you, that would not have occurred. The raison d’être of our expedition was strengthening Greek-American relations. Alexandros has just as much at stake—”

  “He’ll take what we offer, sure. Then he’ll claim this artifact as his own.”

  “I have prepared my draft of our report, and when your own results are included it will be a solid piece of work. This object, fascinating as it may be, is not so important. It is the slow piling up of detail, as you well know, which makes our profession a reliable—”

  “Doesn’t that judgment depend on what the object turns out to be?”

  Hampton, his set speech interrupted, seemed flustered. “Well—er—of course. I do not think we will have to reevaluate the entire logos of our interpretation, however, simply because of one artifact. It could easily be an anomaly, something brought from Crete or another area.”

  “All the same, I—”

  “Claire, you must turn over your notes on this object to Alexandros,” Hampton said forcefully, as if he had abruptly decided to shift tactics. The thoughtful, distant professor was gone. He leaned across his desk. “Now.”

  “I won’t. They’re not his.”

  “He will recover the object, and then write that portion of our paper. He will need your information.”

  “That’s what he called for, wasn’t it?”

  “Not solely, no. But I assured him of our complete cooperation.”

  “My answer is still no.”

  Hampton seemed taken aback. “You cannot refuse.”

  “Oh yes I can.”

  “This is contrary to everything we agreed upon when we undertook a joint expedition.”

  “I need my own notes.”

  “I doubt that, I doubt that sincerely. You are merely obstructing Alexandros’s work. I must ask you again—”

  “No.”

  “You are endangering your entire professional position here, Claire. If you—”

  She stood up. “Professional? Ha! My father used to say, you have to be able to tell a tracheotomist from a cutthroat. Well, I can.”

  She swung her umbrella in a wide arc, barely missing a stack of books on the big oak desk, and stamped out, her boots rapping angrily on the creaking wooden floor.