Across A Billion Years

?Miscellaneous artifacts. These include dials, levers, buttons that glow in the dark, small items of what we think is jewelry, prisms, gears, tubes that heat up at one end when a finger is placed at the other, and a lot more. Everything is glossy and beautifully made, even the miniatures; and everything has stood up well to a billion years of geological pressure.

As we proceed inward toward the center of the deposit, we are collecting an amazing quantity of this stuff. The density of discarded material is higher here than anywhere else, leading us to hope that this was some special place and that we’re likely to find something of special significance inside. Such as a tomb. We have never, you know, discovered the physical remains of a High One. Even a fossil skeleton can’t be expected to last a billion years — not intact, anyway — but it was within the grasp of High Ones technology to build a metal or plastic container capable of standing up to any kind of conditions, judging by the survival characteristics of these artifacts. Yet nowhere at any of the twenty-three sites have we come upon a burial, or even a trace of one. Since each of these sites was occupied for several decades, it’s not unreasonable to think that some members of the expedition must have died in the course of duty.

Were dead High Ones taken to the home planet for burial?

Were the bodies of the dead cremated right down to the atomic level?

Or… did the High Ones have such enormous individual life-spans that it just wasn’t statistically probable for any of them to die in any fifty-year occupation of a given site?

We don’t know. But we’d love to find out for sure what the High Ones looked like.

Progress here is necessarily slow. We all dig, even the big bosses, but we can’t cover more than a few cubic meters a day. Mirrik goes first, bulldozing away the overburden. Kelly moves in with her vacuum-corers and slices off a little rock. The rest of us pitch in to free whatever artifacts she’s turned up. Before we can lift anything, we have to photograph it and record its position. Then it goes over to the laboratory, where Saul Shahmoon makes chronological studies. He hasn’t finished dating this site yet, but he’s already hinted that it’s a pretty late one, maybe no more than 900,000,000 years old. Next, everything bearing an inscription goes to Dr. Horkkk, who collects the data and feeds it into his computer. 408b, whose specialty is paleotechnology, checks everything out mechanically, looking for insight into the ways things work. Pilazinool, meanwhile, snoops around here and there, trying to pick up the scattered clues that will allow him to make one of his intuitive judgments.

We all have this strange and mysterious feeling that we’re on the brink of something important. Nobody knows why. Maybe it’s just overoptimism.

We work hard. Archaeology is mostly a sore back and aching fingers. The romance gets into it afterward, when the newstape boys write their stories. In the evenings we rest, play a lot of chess, argue some, listen to the rain. I find that hour by hour I’m often bored, but that the overall effect of being here is terrifically exciting.

We are having a problem with Mirrik. If it isn’t solved soon he may be dismissed from the expedition. Which would be sad, because in his ponderous way he’s a delightful vidj.

I told you that Mirrik is in the alcoholism pocket, so to speak. He goes not for booze but for flowers; something in the nectar of an ordinary blossom clangs him with terrific impact. The metabolic effect of a flower on a Dinamonian must be tremendous, far more potent than alcohol is with us, since a couple of mouthfuls of flowers are sufficient to give all of Mirrik’s to

Bleak as this place is, it’s got some flowers. One of the terraforming engineers must have had a poetic soul — he planted a grove of frostflowers about two kilometers from where we’re digging. The plants took hold in a few sheltered places. Mirrik, who needs plenty of exercise and likes to go on long rambling solitary roamings, found them.

I was the first to discover his secret.

One afternoon last week I was going off duty after finishing my stint at the dig when I saw Mirrik come capering toward me. He’d had a couple of hours of free time too. As he approached the site, he leaped up and tried to click his front feet together. That didn’t work, and he landed in a tangle. He got up, ran in a circle, tried it again. Again he failed. He saw me and giggled. Imagine ten tons of giggling Dinamonian! He clicked his tusks playfully. He wobbled toward me, grabbed me amiably with his arms, and made me spin. This so amused him that he began a rhythmic pounding of his feet. The ground shook.

“Hello, Tommo, howzaboy?” He winked. He breathed in my face. “Good old Tommo. Letz danz, Tommo!”

“Mirrik, you’re tanked!” I told him.

“Nonzenz.” He prodded me playfully in the ribs with his tusks. “Danz! Danz!”

I jumped back. “Where did you find flowers?”

“No flowerz here. Juzzt happpppy!”

His muzzle was golden with frostflower pollen. I frowned and brushed it off. Mirrik giggled again. I said, “Hold still, you oversized sposher! If Dr. Horkkk sees you like this, he’ll flay you!”

Mirrik wanted to stop off in the laboratory to argue philosophy with Pilazinool. I discouraged him from that. Then it began to rain, which sobered him a little, enough to see that he might get in trouble if one of the bosses found him. “Walk with me until I zober up,” he said, and I did, and we discussed the evolution of religious mysticism until his head was clear. As we returned to the camp he said sadly, “I grieve for my weakness, Tom. But I feel I have learned restraint with your help. I won’t visit the frostflower patch again.”

He came in drunk the next day too.

I was in the lab, cleaning and sorting the latest haul of broken inscription nodes and battered plaques, when a voice from outside roared as though over a cosmic loudspeaker:

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Zpring Your Winter-garment of Repentanz fling;

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To flutter — and the Bird is on the Wing.

“It’s the Rubaiyat!” cried Jan, entranced.

“It’s Mirrik!” I gasped.

Dr. Horkkk looked up grimly from his computer input. Dr. Schein frowned. 408b muttered something in disgust; it has no use for such foibles as this.

Mirrik went on:

Zome for the Gloriez of Thiz Worrrld; and zome

Zigh for the Prophet’s Paradizzzze to come;

Ah, take the Cash, and let the Crrredit go,

Nor heed the rumble of a diztant Drrrum!

Jan and I hustled out of the lab and found Mirrik tusking up the turf in front of the building. Crushed frostflower blossoms were sticking out behind his ears, and his whole face was dusted with pollen. He looked mournfully at me for an instant, as though a sober Mirrik were trying to peer out behind the drunken mask; then he giggled again and continued:

Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears Today of pazzt Regrets and future Fears:

Tomorrrrow! — Why, Tomorrow I may be Myzelf with Yezterday’s Zev’n thousand Years.

“Tomorrow you may be on your way home,” I said sharply. “For Omar’s sake, Mirrik, get out of here! If Dr. Horkkk sees you—”

Too late.

That night Mirrik had a long conference with our bosses, who are afraid that he’ll show up really glapped some day and wreck the camp. A drunken Dinamonian is about as safe to have around as a runaway rocket, and unless Mirrik can lay off the frostflowers he’ll be shipped out. 408b had a sweeter suggestion: simply chain Mirrik up, like an unruly bull, when he isn’t working. Kindly old 408b always goes straight to the humane solution.