“Traditional cultures didn’t just pile shit up, hoping that you or I would come some day and dig them up. They were looking to join the gods. Their view of the future was to see it as a time of gods. So don’t start digging without vowing to look at these people from a divine perspective, welcome them to the heaven of your mind. See them as brave, as having gathered the best of what they had, to make this major journey across the dark time into a bright and unknown future. The future is the only thing that is eternal. There will always be a tomorrow, always a place that they are journeying to. We must respect the brave dead that have journeyed alongside us, so that their message arrives when our paths cross. They want to tell us about their lives, their world.”
She did something she never did. She held up her hand. “ I disagree, Dr. Caswell. There’s no way that those people would’ve even pictured us. They couldn’t conceive of a society other than their own.”
“Of course they didn’t picture our society, they dreamed of some great Other, looking on their things and loving them. Gods have feeling. The gods would feel what they felt in preparing these tombs. They would know the love of the living, the sorrow at loss, of the person whose items we find. The more different the archaeologist from his target, the more the target has traveled into a new world. Think about how different Howard Carter was from the family of Tutankhamen.”
She was his student by the end of the week, his best friend by the end of the quarter, and his lover by the end of the year. He took her on his digs in Poland and Moldova, he took her when he gave papers on the semiotics of Bronze Age burials, and by the time she got her BA, everyone that was anyone in the field knew her.
At first, they all thought she was just the teacher’s pet. Then she began publishing her own field reports. Then there were discoveries in Afghanistan. She found out where the Sumerians came from and where he homeland of the Indus Valley people was.
Everything was based on a single idea--that she and Keith would be a forever couple. She was, perhaps, the smarter of the two, but he had a great synthesizing vision that helped unify her work. He was also tons better at popularizing it, which meant funding wasn’t quite the nightmare for them that it was for most archaeologists.
But years passed, and passion cooled a little. Keith stopped loving the field as much and screwed around with some of his students. She published material that was a tad fringy; she was impatient that conventional theory had not caught up with her. He wanted to retire from the field into a nice full professorship, and she wanted to do really daring things.
The split up happened gradually. She would be gone on fieldwork, and he would agree to more and more speaking gigs.
Their last trip together was to Egypt. They had realized, in their own ways, that their love was becoming a thing of the past, and they honored the past enough to want things to end with a fight. Daddy had had a love of Egypt, so in some way, she was opening the old space left by his death as a new dig in her soul, and burying the decade-long distraction of Keith.
When she first saw the pyramids at night under their shimmering domes, Keith quoted the old Arabic saw, “Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids.”
“Is it because their message is so great?” she asked. ”So terrible?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes were on the short skirt of the stewardess of Hapi Tours, Inc. He no longer led the godlike life of inviting the dead into the world.
Popular archeology, as opposed to academic archeology, is about entertainment. Popular archeology has brought us the Curse of King Tut, the Face of Mars, and the Temple at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Popular archeology erupted about five years after their divorce--the Cylinders of Mars. A mining group had unearthed--or “unmasked “--three cylinders of steel in
Aurorae Sinus, which the media called the “Golden Sinus Cans.” Almost immediately, the cylinders were found to be of earthly origin. They were canisters that an earlier survey crew had lost during exploratory drilling.
However, once a media myth is born, it can never die. A group, calling itself the Secret Mars Society, theorized that Mars was much warmer billions of years ago, when carbon dioxide clouds had darkened the atmosphere. Well, that’s real science. Perhaps a “canister making civilization” had flourished. Yeah, perhaps Santa winters in Florida. Maybe they had even sent cans of primordial soup to Earth starting life here.
In an ill-advised move, Dr. Susan McNutt, President of the World Archeology Association, gave an interview explaining why the theory of the “Martian Can Makers” was bunk.
Then, all the great unwashed believed. Their slogan, “Soup to McNutt!” made little sense, but it made for great merchandising.
Videos of Martian antiquities were produced. Novel-writing machines created Martian novels, and scholars of folklore discussed the image of Mars in hoaxes. There were monographs on Orson Wells and his Invasion, the “Face” on Mars, the “Martian Viagra,” and the Church of Barsoom.
No reputable archaeologist was going to go within ten kilometers of this one.
Then, Dr. Peggy Reynman published a paper suggesting that the reports might be partially true. She was not only a Real archeologist, she was the daughter of Captain Sarah Reynman, the first woman to die on Venus. She should know. She had space in her blood.
Keith flew out to see her. They had not communicated in three years. He found her in her office, polishing her locket and the railroad watch. She wouldn’t look up at him. Behind her desk was huge map of Mars.
“Peggy, you’ve gone mad. This is professional suicide.”
“Keith, how nice of you to drop by.”
“Peggy, why are you doing this?”
“Do you really still care, or are you worried that, somehow, my strength-to-dream might reflect badly on your professional sinecure?”
“Peggy, I know we’re not what we used to be, but I lo-- I care for you, and I know you are smart enough to know that these reports are bullshit. So what are you doing? Are you hurting yourself to make me feel bad?”
Peggy laughed. He was really more egocentric than she had ever imagined. Why had she married him? How could this small man fill the space that daddy had made in her heart?
“Keith, it is not about you. It is about making a big sign in the world. You told me how to do this years ago.”
“I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. I just know your professional worth is about to be zero.”
“Well, it’s my worth.”
They bantered and bickered, and Keith flew away.
Her next paper was even more pro-Can than the first.
She lost her job.
She got a job writing for the Secret Mars Society. Her old students contacted her. Half were full of tears that she had lost her mind, half were angry that she had whored herself out for fame and money. At first, she tried sending them cryptic messages, mentioning that events look different from the far side of tomorrow. Then she just isolated herself. Fringe science occasionally acquires big money. People that had to make their fortunes when the world said they couldn’t, often have a sweet spot for ideas that the respectable world scoffs at. When Randolph Chu had said he was going to make a fortune in garbage mining, people laughed at him. They laughed when his first business failed. They laughed more when his second business failed. And when his third business made billions, they all said they had seen it all the time. Randolph Chu loved the Secret Mars Society. He loved the idea that garbage from a past civilization had made its way to ours. Besides, he knew a great publicity gimmick when he saw one. When Dr. Reyman excavated the biggest hole in the solar system with his new laser-drilling rig, his name would be the name in excavation.
Randolph Chu was scared of space flight, so he wasn’t riding with Peggy.
The ship touched down.
#
Keith Caswell landed two sta
ndard weeks later.
He had spent good money to make as sure as he could that no one knew he was on Mars. He also had good connections; he had gone to school with Roy Chadwick’s daughter, Marie. A Chadwick Mining vehicle picked him up in Helium and took him south to Bradbury, which was the closest settlement to the supposed Martian ruins. Her team had come back a week ago.
They were sitting around in the local bars, boozing it up on SMS money.
They claimed that everything they knew was secret, but a few multiC$ and they talked.
She had sent them back. They had made a big hole in the shape of a pyramid. The apex pointed almost half a kilometer down; the base was a square kilometer. She halted their very excited digging and sent them away.
She said that she had found a secret door and that things were so fragile, only she could go in. The weight of their equipment, or even just them walking around, could bring down the ruins.
“That’s the way archeology is,” they told him. ”Fragile business.”
They said she was good to work for, since she mainly stayed in her dome while they dug.
She was due back in a day or two. She was going to make an announcement that would change the world. They would all be very, very famous.
No, they hadn’t actually seen any Martian ruins. Not even a single rusty can.
Keith tried to see her, but Chu Garbage kept her under wraps. He was going to get Peggy to stop this. He knew it was all about him. She was mad because of the women he had cheated with. She was going to hurt archeology as a whole--just to get to him. His mood swung from loving concern to bitter anger, even faster than Phobos swung around Mars. Keith broke into her room at the Hotel Splendide. Archaeologists are, after all, thieves. There were books, a couple of changes of clothes, quite a few empty drug packs, and a script for a speech.
She saw the door to her room was ajar. She pulled a small (and very illegal) gun. No one could interfere now.
She almost killed him, but in the dim light, saw that he was sitting on the edge of the bed. She remembered waking up to that shadow on nights when he would be troubled.
“Keith?” she asked.
“I came to stop you.”
“Because of love or because you are mad?”
He lifted an empty drug pack. “What are you here for, Peggy?”
“I am here to die. I have some of the same abreactions to modern life that my late father had. Very few people have inoperable cancer in the world. I may even live to make the trip back to earth.”
“I don’t understand. I’ve read you speech. I know--”
“You know that I will tell them I found nothing, but that I have a gut feeling that the region should be looked into,” she said. “I will die shortly thereafter. Since the disease will have affected my brain by then, my big, upside-down, negative pyramid will be a monument to human craziness.”
“Why are you doing this? It’s crazy and hurts my heart,” said Keith.
“I am sorry for your heart, Keith, but you will figure it out. When you do, it may heal your heart. I am doing it for the gods.”
. “You’re throwing your life away to make it look like there are Martian ruins, then you are going debunk those very ruins, and then you are going to die,” said Keith.
“That’s pretty much it.” Peggy smiled.
“You’re not going to tell me anything. Why do you think I’ll keep quiet?” asked Keith.
“Because, after all, you love me,” said Peggy.
Keith was on a ship back to Earth before she gave her press conference. He feigned surprise at her death and kept her photo at his desk for the rest of his life.
It took him about ten years to figure it out. He doubted Peggy’s grand gesture would be anything more than a monument to human eccentricity--but on some nights when he would catch sight of Mars, he wondered if she might have exactly the mysterious effect she hoped for. He was dreaming of her gods on the night he died.
#
The Earth continued to go around the sun and, eventually, the sun went around the galactic core, and the human race did themselves in. They had done a great deal during their time, as races go--inventing new forms of music, beat the Beletrin in a war, invented dozens of beautiful and goofy religions, and they made their own Moon into a hyper-university. Sadly, the humans developed a more efficient bomb in their last years and destroyed not only their Moon, but turned Earth into a rather uninteresting glassy ball.
Space is big and time is vast, and in the great cosmic seasons of things, a race called the Speenourains visited the human solar system. They found some space junk near the moons of Jupiter, some mining robots in the Belt, and a large, weathered (but obviously) artificial pyramidal hole in the South Polar regions of Mars. At the lowest point of the pyramidal shaft, they found a small, cylinder shaft extending another kilometer downward. At the base of this shaft was a small, platinum box. It contained a timepiece, a locket with two pictures, three flint arrowheads, and a small silver disk once known as a “Mercury” dime.
Many volumes would be written on the significance of this find and the great care with which the objects had been buried. The objects became the core of Speenourain “Martian studies.” Why had these items been sent across the abyss of time? The human that had buried them had taken such care in being sure they were found. Who or what had it imagined would dig them up? Had they known that they would blow up their own world? Was this a message of religion, or love, or just “we were here”?
No one can be sure, of course. But in every school in the Speenorain empire, which spread to almost a third of the galaxy, pictures of twelve-year-old Peggy Reynman and her father, George, are displayed as the example of the human race. The gods loved their little mystery. And when the Speenoarins faded, a robotic race dug up their museums. By the time of the Heat Death of the Universe, images of little Peggy Reynman and her Daddy passed through twenty races.
(dedicated with love to the mortuary specialist, Guiniviere Marie Webb)
An Afternoon’s Nap, or: Five Hundred Years Ahead
Aurelia Hadley Mohl
In this 19th century tale, John Langschlaf falls asleep,
only to awaken 500 years later in a strange utopia.
Originally published in 1865, Aurelia Hadley Mohl’s little reprinted work
is one of the earliest science fiction tales written by a Texan.
“I wish you wouldn’t wake me up again,” said Mr. John Langschlaf, crossly, to a little urchin whose shouts sounded through the balmy summer air, “you are a perfect torment! Go away and let me alone.”
“I will that, old Crosspatch,” answered the saucy fellow, making a wry face; “I wouldn’t wake you up again if you slept five hundred years!”
“Umph! I wish I could,” muttered Mr. Langschlaf, as he fell back upon the rug he had spread beneath a wide-spreading elm, and resumed his interrupted slumbers.
We might as well take this opportunity to tell our readers that Mr. John Langschlaf was a gentleman of great learning and fine intellectual endowments, but like many others of his class, a sworn foe to modern “innovations,” and an ardent theoretical admirer of the “good old times.” The men of the present day were physically and mentally inferior to those of the middle ages; and as for the woman--bah!--and, Mr. Langschlaf would turn up his bachelor nose, and roll up his bachelor eyes, in unmitigated scorn. Flimsy, frivolous nondescripts, he called them. Where could you find a woman who could compare to the housewives of the “good old times,” when the dear creatures spent their time in scolding their tire--women, and making impossible birds and beasts on useless pieces of canvass. So, in spite of a comfortable home, and a nice fortune, or perhaps because of them, Mr. Langschaf remained till his forty-fifth year--at which period our story takes him up--a single gentleman of elegant leisure. Notwithstanding his contempt for the
modern race, he had no objection to the many comforts and improvements these pigmies had invented or perfected. Gas transformed night into day in his well furnished home; newspapers, and literary and scientific journals, lay constantly upon his library tables; messages from distant friends came to him over the electric wires; and railway cars or steamboats carried him on his frequent journeys. Nay, even the “frivolous nondescripts” contributed to his pleasure. Mrs. Hemans, and Mrs. Browning, Madam DeStael and Miss Pardoe, had, with many other female writers, their immortal representatives in his book shelves. Rosa Bonheur and Miss Hosmer also sent their pictures (or copies of them), and statuary to adorn his picture gallery, far advanced as these noble women are; or as he would say, far as they fall behind their highly cultivated and useful ancestry.
To a pleasant, shady nook in one corner of his pretty park, Mr. Langschlaf had taken himself with a new book for company, to enjoy his customary post-prandial nap. The book was full of all sorts of innovating and disrupting notions, and our old bachelor uttered many scornful “pshaws” and deprecatory “humphs,” as he read; yet he read on and had nearly finished a particularly progressive and “new-fangled” chapter when he fell asleep.
“Dear me, I must have slept a long time!” exclaimed Mr. Langschlaf, yawning prodigiously, and then looking at this watch, he added, ‘”Pon my word, six o’clock, and the sun low in the sky, and I am as hungry as a wolf; wonder why they haven’t called me to dinner?”
So saying he started to the house, but when he emerged from the grove in which he had been sleeping, he stopped and began to rub his eyes in extreme bewilderment. What could it mean? When he had fallen asleep a few hours since, he left a beautiful open meadow intersected by a clear meandering brook, and studded with groups of trees; now, as far as he could see, rose stately palaces and beautiful public buildings; they crowded up to the very iron fence which enclosed his own park. Was he still asleep? Well, he would go up to the house and they would soon wake him up there with their clatter, he’d warrant.
Rayguns Over Texas Page 14
