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This is not the way to dig up something important. We were working in a mad rush, the three of us caught up in the thrill of a major find and unwilling or unable to slow up. I won’t speak for Mirrik and Kelly, but I confess that I wanted to complete the excavation of this mysterious globe before any of the senior archaeologists could cut in on me. Unworthy motive! Also stupid chimposity and a display of colossal slice, since a mere apprentice like myself could easily have bungled the job and earned the curses of the whole profession.
I thought of all these things. But yet we went zooming ahead. Point, core, clear. Point, core, clear. Point-coreclear. Pointcoreclear. Pointcoreclear.
I stopped for breath and looked up. Leroy and Jan weren’t watching. They were biologizing. At least, Leroy in his subtle way had one hand on Jan’s… well, hip… and the other groping for the magnet stud of her blouse, and he was trying to get his mouth on hers and she was fighting him off with clenched fists, and the whole thing had the look of a rape scene in the making. The chivalrous thing would have been for me to leap to the rim of the pit in one bound, cry, “Unhand her, knave!” and knock his teeth down his gri
She fisted him in the gut. Leroy turned purple, doubled up, and dropped his chartbook into the pit. Jan took off, streaking away into the rain. Leroy followed, yelling things like, “Jan! Jan! Just let me explain!”
“We’re on our own,” I said to Kelly and Mirrik. “Dig we onward!”
Dug we onward, unhindered. Kelly now was coring under the globe, and I tested it carefully, trying to rock it free of its embedment, but nothing going. Mirrik gave it a cautious nudge, too, and it tilted a little but remained in place. We could see that it was a beauty — so big I could barely span it with my arms, and covered along one side with all kinds of controls. Another five minutes, I figured, and we’d have it loose.
“Wait,” Mirrik said. “At this moment I feel I should pray for the success of our labor.”
Mirrik often does that. He’s deeply religious, you know. He’s a Paradoxian, worshiping the contrary forces of the universe, and bursts into prayer whenever those forces need to be placated, which is much of the time. Kelly drew back the corer and Mirrik delicately knelt in the pit, folding his huge legs under his massive body and letting the tips of his tusks rest on the globe. He began to groan and bellow in Dinamonian. Later I asked him to translate the prayer and he gave me this version:
O Father of confusions and sorrows, give us aid.
O Thou whose existence we doubt, doubt us not at such a time.
O ruler of the unrulable, O creator of the uncreated, O speaker of truths that lie, let our minds be clear and our aim accurate.
O mystery in clarity, O foulness in purity, O darkness in light, comfort us and guide us and lead us.
Bring us not into error.
Cause us not to feel regret.
Remain with us now as on the first and last of all days.
Thou concealer of destinies and shatterer of patterns, be merciful, for in hatred lies love, in blindness lies sight, in falsehood lies righteousness. Amen. Amen. Amen.”
You must agree with me that this is an odd kind of prayer. An odd kind of religion, too. The thing about aliens is that they tend to be so alien. But I have asked Mirrik to explain Paradoxianism to me one of these days, and perhaps he will.
When he finished his prayer he reared back, dug his tusks in under the big globe, uttered a moan of ecstasy, and pushed. The globe gave a little. He pushed again. The globe gave some more.
“Down here with the corer!” I yelled. “Just nip this little flange of stone away, and we’ve got it!”
In a kind of joyous insanity the three of us tugged, tusked, and cored at the bottom of the pit, jostling each other, jockeying for position, grabbing at the globe, altogether generating a chimpo scene of the first order. We thought the globe would come free, but it was more tightly embedded than we thought, and we came shudderingly close to damaging it in our lunatic urge to get it loose.
A cold, thin, furious voice said suddenly, “What are you doing? Idiots! Vandals! Criminals!”
I looked up. Dr. Horkkk peered down at me. His eyes were red with anger and seemed five times their normal size; he was waving all his arms at once and hopping around on three legs while wildly kicking himself with the fourth, which the people of Thhh do when they’re upset; and both his talking mouth and his eating mouth were gaping in rage.
“We found this globe,” I explained, “and now we’re trying to clear the sandstone matrix, and—”
“You’ll ruin it! Fools! Assassins!”
“Just another second now, Dr. Horkkk, and we’ll have it.”
You have to understand that while I held this discussion with Dr. Horkkk, Mirrik and Kelly and I were continuing to batter at the stone. If anything we grew more slapdash and hasty, as though the fate of the universe depended on lifting that globe from the stone within the next two minutes. Dr. Horkkk shrieked and screamed and capered. Dimly I heard him say, “…or I’ll discharge the three of you!”
Other faces were peering into the pit now. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Pilazinool, 408b, Saul Shahmoon, and Jan. Incoherent with rage, Dr. Horkkk seized Pilazinool’s leg and pointed at us while expostulating in what I suppose was the Thhhian language. Pilazinool tried to calm him.
Dr. Schein appeared, sized up the situation, and jumped down into the pit beside us.
The strange berserk frenzy that had overwhelmed us faded as soon as he arrived. Kelly put down her corer, Mirrik backed away from the globe, and I stood up, mopping off the sweat.
“What have we here?” Dr. Schein asked gently.
“An… artifact, sir …” I mumbled.
“Most unusual. Most unusual. Why the hurry though?”
“I don’t know, sir. We got… carried away…”
“Well, we don’t want to be carried away, do we? We need to follow orderly procedure, as Dr. Horkkk has been saying. I understand your enthusiasm, but nevertheless…” He frowned. “Who’s charting the site?”
“Leroy Chang,” I said.
“Where is he?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I peered up at Jan and she smiled grimly. Her clothes were a little mussed, and she was soaked from her run in the rain, but she winked at me. As I say, Jan can take care of herself.
“Where is Professor Chang?” Dr. Schein repeated.
“He left the site about ten minutes ago,” I said.
Dr. Schein looked puzzled, but shrugged the matter aside and picked up the chartbook. “Let’s go, now,” he said. “I’ll supervise. Finish removing the globe… patiently.”
With everyone watching us and Dr. Schein setting the pace, we completed the job in a more professional way. I felt guilty and embarrassed about that mad rush, and when Dr. Horkkk hopped into the pit for a closer look at the globe, I couldn’t bear to face him. It took another half an hour to free the globe. Pilazinool, Dr. Schein, and Dr. Horkkk conferred about it in the pit; they all agreed it was some kind of High Ones machine and that it was by far the largest High Ones artifact ever found, but they had no more idea than I did of what it was. No one offered congratulations to me for having made the best discovery in this field since the finding of the first site. I didn’t feel awfully proud of myself, considering the chimpo way I had carried on during the excavating work.
When the conference broke up, Mirrik reverently scooped the globe up on his tusks — it weighs about as much as a man, he says — and carried it to the lab. That was three hours ago. Dr. Schein, Dr. Horkkk, and Pilazinool have been in there all this time. With them is 408b; Saul Shahmoon has been going in and out. Each time he comes out he looks more excited than the time before, but he isn’t saying a thing except that nothing definite has been learned yet.