The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction Megapack(r)

by Robert Silverberg

  “He thinks we’re dead weight on the expedition,” Gerhardt insisted. “What better way to get rid of us?”

  The halftrack breasted a hump in the desert. I kept wishing a vulture would squeal somewhere, but there was not even that. Life had left this world ages ago. I said, “Mattern doesn’t have much use for us, sure. But would he blast off and leave three perfectly good halftracks behind? Would he?”

  It was a good point. Gerhardt grunted agreement after a while. Mattern would never toss equipment away, though he might not have such scruples about five surplus archaeologists.

  We rode along silently for a while longer. By now we had covered twenty miles through this utterly barren land. As far as I could see, we might just as well have stayed at the ship. At least there we had a surface lie of building foundations.

  But another ten miles and we came across our city. It seemed to be of linear form, no more than half a mile wide and stretching out as far as we could see—maybe six or seven hundred miles; if we had time, we would check the dimensions from the air.

  Of course it wasn’t much of a city. The sand had pretty well covered everything, but we could see foundations jutting up here and there, weathered lumps of structural concrete and reinforced metal. We got out and unpacked the power-shovel.

  An hour later, we were sticky with sweat under our thin spacesuits and we had succeeded in transferring a few thousand cubic yards of soil from the ground to an area a dozen yards away. We had dug one devil of a big hole in the ground.

  And we had nothing.

  Nothing. Not an artifact, not a skull, not a yellowed tooth. No spoons, no knives, no baby-rattles.

  Nothing.

  The foundations of some of the buildings had endured, though whittled down to stumps by a million years of sand and wind and rain. But nothing else of this civilization had survived. Mattern, in his scorn, had been right, I admitted ruefully: this planet was as useless to us as it was to them. Weathered foundations could tell us little except that there had once been a civilization here. An imaginative palaeontologist can reconstruct a dinosaur from a fragment of a thighbone, can sketch out a presentable saurian with only a fossilized ischium to guide him. But could we extrapolate a culture, a code of laws, a technology, a philosophy, from bare weathered building foundations?

  Not very likely.

  We moved on and dug somewhere else half a mile away, hoping at least to unearth one tangible remnant of the civilization that had been. But time had done its work; we were lucky to have the building foundations. All else was gone.

  “Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away,” I muttered.

  Gerhardt looked up from his digging. “Eh? What’s that?” he demanded.

  “Shelley,” I told him.

  “Oh. Him.”

  He went back to digging.

  * * * *

  Late in the afternoon we finally decided to call it quits and head back to the base. We had been in the field for seven hours and had nothing to show for it except a few hundred feet of tridim films of building foundations.

  The sun was beginning to set; Planet Four had a thirty-five hour day, and it was coming to its end. The sky, always somber, was darkening now. There was no moon. Planet Four had no satellites. It seemed a bit unfair; Three and Five of the system each had four moons, while around the massive gas giant that was Eight a cluster of thirteen moonlets whirled.

  We wheeled round and headed back, taking an alternate route three miles east of the one we had used on the way out, in case we might spot something. It was a forlorn hope, though.

  Six miles along our journey, the truck radio came to life. The dry, testy voice of Dr. Leopold reached us:

  “Calling Trucks Two and Three. Two and Three, do you read me? Come in, Two and Three.”

  Gerhardt was driving. I reached across his knee to key in the response channel and said, “Anderson and Gerhardt in Number Three, sir. We read you.”

  A moment later, somewhat more faintly, came the sound of Number Two keying into the three-way channel, and I heard Marshall saying, “Marshall and Webster in Two, Dr. Leopold. Is something wrong?”

  “I’ve found something,” Leopold said.

  From the way Marshall exclaimed “Really!” I knew that Truck Number Two had had no better luck than we. I said, “That makes one of us, then.”

  “You’ve had no luck, Anderson?”

  “Not a scrap. Not a potsherd.”

  “How about you, Marshall?”

  “Check. Scattered signs of a city, but nothing of archaeological value, sir.”

  I heard Leopold chuckle before he said, “Well, I’ve found something. It’s a little too heavy for me to manage by myself. I want both outfits to come out here and take a look at it.”

  “What is it, sir?” Marshall and I asked simultaneously, in just about the same words.

  But Leopold was fond of playing the Man of Mystery. He said, “You’ll see when you get here. Take down my coordinates and get a move on. I want to be back at the base by nightfall.”

  Shrugging, we changed course to head for Leopold’s location. He was about seventeen miles southwest of us, it seemed. Marshall and Webster had an equally long trip to make; they were sharply southeast of Leopold’s position.

  The sky was fairly dark when we arrived at what Leopold had computed as his coordinates. The headlamps of the halftrack lit up the desert for nearly a mile, and at first there was no sign of anyone or anything. Then I spotted Leopold’s halftrack parked off to the east, and from the south Gerhardt saw the lights of the third truck rolling towards us.

  We reached Leopold at about the same time. He was not alone. There was an—object—with him.

  “Greetings, gentlemen.” He had a smug grin on his whiskery face. “I seem to have made a find.”

  He stepped back and, as if drawing an imaginary curtain, let us take a peek at his find. I frowned in surprise and puzzlement. Standing in the sand behind Leopold’s halftrack was something that looked very much like a robot.

  It was tall, seven feet or more, and vaguely humanoid; that is, it had arms extending from its shoulders, a head on those shoulders, and legs. The head was furnished with receptor plates where eyes, ears, and mouth would be on humans. There were no other openings. The robot’s body was massive and squarish, with sloping shoulders, and its dark metal skin was pitted and corroded as by the workings of the elements over uncountable centuries.

  It was buried up to its knees in sand. Leopold, still grinning smugly (and understandably proud of his find) said, “Say something to us, robot.”

  From the mouth-receptors came a clanking sound, the gnashing of—what? Gears?—and a voice came forth, oddly high-pitched but audible. The words were alien and were spoken in a slippery singsong kind of inflection. I felt a chill go quivering down my back.

  “It understands what you say?” Gerhardt questioned.

  “I don’t think so,” Leopold said. “Not yet, anyway. But when I address it directly, it starts spouting. I think it’s a kind of—well, guide to the ruins, so to speak. Built by the ancients to provide information to passersby; only it seems to have survived the ancients and their monuments as well.”

  I studied the thing. It did look incredibly old—and sturdy; it was so massively solid that it might indeed have outlasted every other vestige of civilization on this planet. It had stopped talking, now, and was simply staring ahead. Suddenly it wheeled ponderously on its base, swung an arm up to take in the landscape nearby, and started speaking again.

  I could almost put the words in its mouth: “—and over here we have the ruins of the Parthenon, chief temple of Athena on the Acropolis. Completed in the year 438 B.C., it was partially destroyed by an explosion in 1687 while in use as a powder magazine by the Turks—”

 
“It does seem to be a sort of a guide,” Webster remarked. “I get the definite feeling that we’re being given an historical narration now, all about the wondrous monuments that must have been on this site once.”

  “If only we could understand what it’s saying!” Marshall exclaimed.

  “We can try to decipher the language somehow,” Leopold said. “Anyway, it’s a magnificent find, isn’t it? And—”

  I began to laugh suddenly. Leopold, offended, glared at me and said, “May I ask what’s so funny, Dr. Anderson?”

  “Ozymandias!” I said, when I had subsided a bit. “It’s a natural! Ozymandias!”

  “I’m afraid I don’t—”

  “Listen to him,” I said. “It’s as if he was built and put here for those who follow after, to explain to us the glories of the race that built the cities. Only the cities are gone, and the robot is still here! Doesn’t he seem to be saying, ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair’?”

  “‘Nothing beside remains,’” Webster quoted. “It’s apt. Builders and cities all gone, but the poor robot doesn’t know it, and delivers his spiel nonetheless. Yes. We ought to call him Ozymandias!”

  Gerhardt said, “What shall we do with it?”

  “You say you couldn’t budge it?” Webster asked Leopold.

  “It weighs five or six hundred pounds. It can move of its own volition, but I couldn’t move it myself.”

  “Maybe the five of us—” Webster suggested.

  “No,” Leopold said. An odd smile crossed his face. “We will leave it here.”

  “What?”

  “Only temporarily,” he added. “We’ll save it—as a sort, of surprise for Mattern. We’ll spring it on him the final day, letting him think all along that this planet was worthless. He can rib us all he wants—but when it’s time to go, we’ll produce our prize!”

  “You think it’s safe to leave it out here?” Gerhardt asked.

  “Nobody’s going to steal it,” Marshall said.

  “And it won’t melt in the rain,” Webster added.

  “But—suppose it walks away?” Gerhardt demanded. “It can do that, can’t it?”

  Leopold said, “Of course. But where would it go? It will remain where it is, I think. If it moves, we can always trace it with the radar. Back to the base, now; it grows late.”

  We climbed back into our halftracks. The robot, silent once again, planted knee-deep in the sand, outlined against the darkening sky, swivelled to face us and lifted one thick arm in a kind of salute.

  “Remember,” Leopold warned us as we left. “Not one word about this to Mattern!”

  * * * *

  At the base that night, Colonel Mattern and his seven aides were remarkably curious about our day’s activities. They tried to make it seem as if they were taking a sincere interest in our work, but it was perfectly obvious to us that they were simply goading us into telling them what they had anticipated—that we had found absolutely nothing. This was the response they got, since Leopold forbade mentioning Ozymandias. Aside from the robot, the truth was that we had found nothing, and when they learned of this they smiled knowingly, as if saying that had we listened to them in the first place we would all be back on Earth seven days earlier, with no loss.

  The following morning after breakfast Mattern announced that he was sending out a squad to look for fissionable materials, unless we objected.

  “We’ll only need one of the halftracks,” he said. “That leaves two for you. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “We can get along with two,” Leopold replied a little sourly. “Just so you keep out of our territory.”

  “Which is?”

  Instead of telling him, Leopold merely said, “We’ve adequately examined the area to the southeast of here, and found nothing of note. It won’t matter to us if your geological equipment chews the place up.”

  Mattern nodded, eyeing Leopold curiously as if the obvious concealment of our place of operations had aroused suspicions. I wondered whether it was wise to conceal information from Mattern. Well, Leopold wanted to play his little game, I thought; and one way to keep Mattern from seeing Ozymandias was not to tell him where we would be working.

  “I thought you said this planet was useless from your viewpoint, Colonel,” I remarked.

  Mattern stared at me. “I’m sure of it. But it would be idiotic of me not to have a look, wouldn’t it—as long as we’re spending the time here anyway?”

  I had to admit that he was right. “Do you expect to find anything, though?”

  He shrugged. “No fissionables, certainly. It’s a safe bet that everything radioactive on this planet has long since decomposed. But there’s always the possibility of lithium, you know.”

  “Or pure tritium,” Leopold said acidly. Mattern merely laughed, and made no reply.

  Half an hour later we were bound westward again to the point where we had left Ozymandias. Gerhardt, Webster, and I rode together in one halftrack, and Leopold and Marshall occupied the other. The third, with two of Mattern’s men and the prospecting equipment, ventured off to the southeast towards the area Marshall and Webster had fruitlessly combed the day before.

  Ozymandias was where we had left him, with the sun coming up behind him and glowing round his sides. I wondered how many sunrises he had seen. Billions, perhaps.

  We parked the halftracks not far from the robot and approached, Webster filming him in the bright light of morning. A wind was whistling down from the north, kicking up eddies in the sand.

  “Ozymandias have remain here,” the robot said as we drew near.

  In English.

  For a moment we didn’t realize what had happened, but what followed afterwards was a five-man quadruple-take. While we gabbled in confusion the robot said, “Ozymandias decipher the language somehow. Seem to be a sort of guide.”

  “Why—he’s parroting fragments from our conversation yesterday,” Marshall said.

  “I don’t think he’s parroting,” I said. “The words form coherent concepts. He’s talking to us!”

  “Built by the ancients to provide information to passersby,” Ozymandias said.

  “Ozymandias!” Leopold said. “Do you speak English?”

  The response was a clicking noise, followed moments later by, “Ozymandias understand. Not have words enough. Talk more.”

  The five of us trembled with common excitement. It was apparent now what had happened, and the happening was nothing short of incredible. Ozymandias had listened patiently to everything we had said the night before; then, after we had gone, he had applied his million-year-old mind to the problem of organizing our sounds into sense, and somehow had succeeded. Now it was merely a matter of feeding vocabulary to the creature and letting him assimilate the new words. We had a walking and talking Rosetta Stone!

  Two hours flew by so rapidly we hardly noticed their passing. We tossed words at Ozymandias as fast as we could, defining them when possible to aid him in relating them to the others already engraved on his mind.

  By the end of that time he could hold a passable conversation with us. He ripped his legs free of the sand that had bound them for centuries—and, serving the function for which he had been built millennia ago, he took us on a guided tour of the civilization that had been and had built him.

  Ozymandias was a fabulous storehouse of archaeological data. We could mine him for years.

  His people, he told us, had called themselves the Thaiquens (or so it sounded)—had lived and thrived for three hundred thousand local years, and in the declining days of their history had built him, as indestructible guide to their indestructible cities. But the cities had crumbled, and Ozymandias alone remained—bearing with him memories of what had been.

  “This was the city of Durab. In its day it held eight million peop
le. Where I stand now was the temple of Decamon, sixteen hundred feet of your measurement high. It faced the Street of the Winds—”

  “The Eleventh Dynasty was begun by the accession to the Presidium of Chonnigar IV, in the eighteen thousandth year of the city. It was in the reign of this dynasty that the neighboring planets first were reached—”

  “The Library of Durab was on this spot. It boasted fourteen million volumes. None exist today. Long after the builders had gone, I spent time reading the books of the Library and they are memorized within me—”

  “The Plague struck down nine thousand a day for more than a year, in that time—”

  It went on and on, a cyclopean newsreel, growing in detail as Ozymandias absorbed our comments and added new words to his vocabulary. We followed the robot as he wheeled his way through the desert, our recorders gobbling in each word, our minds numbed and dazed by the magnitude of our find. In this single robot lay waiting to be tapped the totality of a culture that had lasted three hundred thousand years! We could mine Ozymandias the rest of our lives, and still not exhaust the fund of data implanted in his all-encompassing mind.

  When, finally, we ripped ourselves away and, leaving Ozymandias in the desert, returned to the base, we were full to bursting. Never in the history of our science had such a find been vouchsafed: a complete record, accessible and translated for us.

  We agreed to conceal our find from Mattern once again. But, like small boys newly given a toy of great value, we found it hard to hide our feelings. Although we said nothing explicit, our overexcited manner certainly must have hinted to Mattern that we had not had as fruitless a day as we had claimed.

  That, and Leopold’s refusal to tell him exactly where we had been working during the day, must have aroused Mattern’s suspicions. In any event, during the night as we lay in bed I heard the sound of halftracks rumbling off into the desert; and the following morning, when we entered the messhall for breakfast, Mattern and his men, unshaven and untidy, turned to look at us with peculiar vindictive gleams in their eyes.