Most of us try to cover for Mirrik when he comes into camp loaded. We walk him sober, or steer him away from the bubbleshacks if he tries to enter, or otherwise protect him against himself. But we aren’t fooling anyone. Dr. Schein and Dr. Horkkk are both worried about this business. And when those two agree on anything, it means trouble.
Leroy Chang thinks I’m having a love affair with Jan, by the way. That’s pretty funny.
I did take a long walk with her one night, I admit. And several shorter walks. Can I help it if I like her company? She’s the only female human being here — whoops, I mean, not counting Kelly Watchman! Anyway, she’s the only person here of my own age except Steen Steen, for whom I don’t care very much, and she’s the only girl here, Kelly being past ninety and android besides, and I have more in common with her than I do with, say, 408b or Dr. Horkkk. So I naturally tend to spend time with Jan.
But a love affair?
Leroy is jealous of phantoms. He’s one of these twitchy bachelor types who chases girls compulsively, usually without much luck, and his score with Jan is zero. She regards him — pretty accurately — as a creep. Since he can’t accept that as his explanation for his lack of success with her, he has made up a better one, which is that since I am younger and taller and dumber than he is, Jan in her postadolescent shallowness has fallen for me.
His way of expressing his resentment is to poke me in the ribs and leer and say, “You two had a hot time last night, huh? I bet you did! You’re a real biology artist, eh, kid?”
“Get sposhed, Leroy,” I tell him amiably. “Jan and I aren’t in the same orbit.”
“You say it with a straight face, too. But you don’t fool me. When you bring her back, she’s got that steamy, excited look on her face — a man of the worlds like me, I know right away what you’ve been up to.”
“Usually we’ve been discussing the day’s finds.”
“But of course! Of course]” He lowers his voice. “Listen, Tommo, I can’t blame you for doing all the passionating you can, but have a heart! There are other men on this expedition, and females are in short supply.” A coarse wink. “Mind if I take her behind the rockpile one of these nights?”
That’s me, Tom Rice, villainous monopolizer of women! Would you believe it? There isn’t any tactful way that I can explain to Leroy that he’s his own worst enemy, so far as his relationship with Jan goes: that if he weren’t so pushy and possessive and grabby and raw, she might be able to tolerate him a little. Certainly it isn’t that I’ve locked up her affections, because, no matter what Leroy thinks, my dealings with Jan have been those of brother to sister.
Well… more or less.…
She is still totally tickled toward Saul Shahmoon, and I blush to confess that most of the time when I’m alone with Jan she talks about how wonderful Saul is and how terrible it is that he won’t fall for her. She praises his clarity of mind, his neatness, his suave Mediterranean good looks, his cool self-possessed manner, and his other virtues. She laments that his strange obsession with philately leaves him too busy for love, and asks my advice on how best to win him over. Honest!
And Leroy Chang keeps insisting that Jan and I hold orgies back of the rockpile…
Maybe I’ll make a cough in her direction the next time we go strolling, you know? I mean, if Leroy has already tarnished our reputations with his insinuations and sniggerings, what’s there to lose? She is an attractive girl. I have not taken any vows of chastity on this expedition. Besides, I’m getting awfully cranked about hearing her sing the splendors of Saul Shahmoon.
FIVE
September 5, 2375
Higby V
I personally discovered something of major importance this morning. And almost got myself fired for doing it. We still don’t exactly understand what it is I found, but we know it’s big. Possibly the biggest thing in High Ones archaeology up till now. Here’s what happened —
After breakfast, five of us went out to the site to dig: me, Jan, Leroy Chang, Mirrik, and Kelly. At the present stage of things a five-man team is about as big as is efficient. The rest were in the lab, processing artifacts, dating things, running computer analyses, and doing other sorts of backstage work.
We are now pretty deep into the hillside, and the zone of High Ones occupation has widened considerably. Artifacts are thickly strewn about; we have more than a hundred inscription nodes already and a huge carton of plaques and puzzle boxes. All standard items, though; just more of them than usual.
It was a cool, rainy morning. They all are. We huddled under our weather shield and got to work. First Mirrik scooped out the backfill of soil that we had used to cover the actual excavation level. Then Kelly moved in with her vacuum-corer. The way we organized things, I got down in the hole to direct the work; Kelly crouched above me, drilling cores from the rock where I told her to; Mirrik stayed to my side, scooping up the debris with his tusks and carting it away; Jan ran the camera, filming everything in three dimensions; and Leroy, as the senior archaeologist of this particular team, kept a chart of all that went on.
For an hour the work was uneventful. Then we started coming around a zone of soft pinkish sandstone in which a batch of puzzle boxes were embedded. When you work hard enough and intensely enough, you start to become a kind of machine, sometimes, moving mechanically in an automatic rhythm, and that’s how Kelly, Mirrik, and I were functioning. I’d point, Kelly would core, Mirrik would clear away; that exposed an artifact, which Jan photographed, Leroy charted, and I lifted carefully from its place to go into the collection box. Point, core, clear; photograph, chart, lift. Point, core, clear; photograph, chart, lift. Point, core, clear-Something strange gleamed at me out of the sandstone.
It was a curved metal mass, gleaming brightly. From the gentleness of its curve I estimated that it was a globe of some kind at least one meter in diameter. It was fashioned of one of the customary gold alloys used by the High Ones for larger mechanisms; its surface was smooth in some places and covered with centimeter-high ridges in others.
“Bring that corer in here, Kelly!” I called. “Let’s see what we’ve got!”
I guided her to the edges of the embedded artifact. Beautifully, delicately, she cored it free, exposing another few centimeters, and then a little more, and then still more. I scrabbled at the sand with my fingers, pushing it out of the way. Leroy didn’t pay any attention to what we were doing; he was busy charting, or perhaps he was trying to get a little biology going with Jan. In any case both of them were well up above me on the rim of the pit and I was too involved in my digging to stop and see it Leroy had any special instructions for me.
“Here we go,” I said to Kelly. “Follow the curve. See? Get the corer under here, and then—”
Kelly nodded. She looked tense and keyed-up with excitement, and when an android gets excited, it has to be something special. She gripped both handles of her corer and started drilling in from the side. The corer tip found a huge mass of sandstone and split it neatly. I started to heave debris, but Mirrik said, “That’s too much for you, Tom. Get back.” And jammed his tusks into the opening and pitched a half-ton of rubble out of sight.
Point, core, clear. Point, core, clear. I was drenched in sweat. Kelly, who doesn’t sweat, somehow seemed flushed and sticky too. For ten minutes we went at it in a frenzied way, until half the globe was uncovered. I began to see a control panel and a variosity of knobs and buttons.