Interstellar Caveman

by Karl Beecher

  “I’m not brooding,” lied Tyresa. “I haven’t given what he said a second thought.” She looked again at the scars on her hand. “I don’t care what he says.”

  “Good.”

  “But maybe he’s right. We all have our talents. Can’t be good at everything. Real scholarship’s probably just not my thing.”

  “That’s a healthy way to look at it,” said Ju-Desh. “I just thought I’d clear that up before giving you this news.”

  Tyresa watched as Ju-Desh reached into her pocket and pull out a slate. “What news?”

  “I have the results of the dating test you requested on Douglass.”

  “Already? That was quick.” Tyresa felt her excitement rise. She sat forward, expectantly.

  “Now, before I tell you the results, I don’t want you doing your usual thing, getting over-excited and charging into action with a second thought.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And remember that Sojawotz was right: this dating is based on some shaky estimates and is not necessarily reliable.”

  “I will.”

  “And keep in mind what you just said: your talent lies in hunting for Predecessor artifacts, not in grand theorising.”

  “I will, I will. Come on, what was the age?”

  Ju-Desh read from the slate. “‘Estimated subject age: Between 1,800 and 1,900 years.’”

  Tyresa could barely believe it. The air rushed from her lungs in astonishment, and she flopped back in her chair. “Near two millennia?” she exclaimed. “Two millennia!”

  Ju-Desh, on the other hand, remained as composed as ever. “Don’t forget what I just told you to keep in mind.”

  Tyresa ignored her. “Two millennia, Professor. That dweeb might just be telling the truth after all. You can’t deny it now, surely he’s worth the investigation. We’ve got to—”

  Ju-Desh cut her off. “Tyresa. There’s one other thing you’ve got to keep in mind: Erd. Do I need to remind you again what happens to people who cast doubt on Erd? I knew this would happen. The tiniest clue and you’d want to go rushing off to follow it up. Admirable, but I don’t want anyone in my department putting themselves at risk like that.”

  “But we can’t just ignore it,” said Tyresa. “This could be the archaeological find of the century.”

  “Or it could turn out to be nothing. We can’t be sure without going back to Solo III and taking proper measurements that confirm this dating. Whoever investigated it might be risking their neck for nothing.”

  “True, but surely that’s their decision to make.”

  “And they might be risking their colleagues’ necks just by association.”

  She was right. It was enough to throw a serious dampener on Tyresa’s enthusiasm.

  Ju-Desh formed her next words diplomatically. “If someone from my department wanted to investigate this Douglass character, I’d say this to them. First, if you do this, you do it in complete secrecy. You say nothing to anybody, least of all me. As far as I’m concerned, I know nothing about it.”

  “Okay,” said Tyresa, playing along with the Professor’s ‘hypothetical.’ “That’d be fair.”

  “Second, I’d tell them you don’t do it here. You do it somewhere else, far away. Preferably another star system.”

  “But what about equipment? I’d need… they would need the university’s facilities.”

  “That’s their problem. I’m sure they’d find substitutes elsewhere. But however it’s done, it’s got to be a solid case, no cracks in it. That means methodical. That means extensive testing, copious evidence. A real work of scholarship you might say.”

  “I understand.”

  “Finally, they’d have to come back to me. We’d evaluate that evidence and decide whether it’s worth going public with it or we just sit on it. Anyway, enough with this hypothetical talk. You’ve got a job to do. Take Douglass to Procya and get him cured. Find the names of any TOS operatives we need to know.” Ju-Desh stood to leave. “From then on, what you do is up to you.”

  “I won’t let you down.”

  Halfway to the door, Ju-Desh said over her shoulder, “Whatever you do, Tyresa, take care of yourself.”

  Tyresa smiled. “I always do!”

  After Ju-Desh left, Tyresa sank back into her chair and gathered her thoughts. Was she really going to do this? After first meeting Colin, she’d have bet the man was a whacko, albeit a convincing one. But then, when forced to defend him in front of Ju-Desh and Phrizbott, she almost managed to convince herself. Now had come the results of the dating test. True, Tyresa might have made a bad estimate somewhere that had inadvertently thrown the date way off…

  … but what if she hadn’t? What if Colin really was a link to humanity’s long-lost past?

  It was risky, she knew that,but if she took the risk, she could end up making the greatest archaeological discovery of all.

  Without really trying, she had set her mind to it. She would do it. That would show she could do more than hunt treasure or carry out dirty jobs. That would demonstrate her to be a true scholar.

  She just had to make sure that neither she nor Colin ‘disappeared’ in the meantime.

  Just then, a bleep from her desk notified her of an incoming call. She tapped the receive button, and a hologram of Ade appeared.

  “Yes, Ade?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but I have urgent news about Mister Douglass. He’s disappeared.”

  21

  “When did you last see him?” barked Tyresa as she paced the hospital corridor.

  “Approximately one hour ago, ma’am,” replied Ade, “when he left the Goldenball Bar.”

  “You took him into a bar?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He was anxious to drink.”

  “He drank alcohol?”

  “Mister Douglass imbibed several glasses of Blithering Berry Wine.”

  “And why didn’t you leave with him?”

  “Mister Douglass desired to return to the hospital alone.”

  “So what? You should have gone with him anyway.”

  “I am programmed to obey humans, ma’am.”

  “Colin’s not a proper human,” said Tyresa exasperated. She rubbed her forehead. “I mean… think of him as a child, okay? When he wants to do something, ask yourself: would you let a child do it. And then, regardless of the answer, don’t let him do it.”

  “As you say, ma’am.”

  “In the meantime, we’ve got to find him.” Tyresa looked around. She spotted a nearby console, a public access point to the planetary interweb. She logged on and up came the information access service, Ogle. Tyresa dismissed the half-dozen advertisements that popped up and ogled access to the public locator service.

  Ade looked over her shoulder. “I take it, ma’am, you plan to locate Mister Douglass based on his translator implant?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “I fear, ma’am, that will be in vain. The implant we inserted was only a primitive version with no transponder built-in.”

  Tyresa stopped. Ade was right. The locator service could only fix on devices that broadcast signals, but Colin’s couldn’t broadcast.

  “Damnit!” she yelled. What other option was there? Think, think. “I know. We can search based on his bio-patterns. It’ll take longer, but it’ll tell us exactly where he is.”

  As she prepared the search, Ade said, “I’m afraid not, ma’am. Mister Douglass’s bio-signatures are not yet in the public database.”

  Tyresa let her head fall heavily against the screen. “For shit’s sake! All this technology. A trillion inter-connected computers worldwide. Sensors in every keyhole, manhole, earhole, and asshole on the planet, and we can’t find a man who sticks out like a dick on a wedding cake!”

  “Eruditely put, ma’am.”

  “There’s only one thing for it,” said Tyresa. “We’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

  The ‘old-fashioned way’ turned out to involve running from room to room
throughout the hospital asking random people whether they’d seen their missing patient. Nobody had. Tyresa even persuaded a hospital guard to let her examine various security footage recorded over the last hour, but Colin couldn’t be seen in any of it. She also learned that the door to Colin’s room hadn’t been opened since Ade left with him earlier.

  As far as Tyresa could find, Colin had never returned to the hospital, so she and Ade interrogated random strangers around the hospital grounds and on the surrounding streets. They looked around nearby shops and bars. Nothing. Dusk was approaching, and the streets were growing busier with folks returning home or going out for the evening.

  Tyresa finally stopped breathless in the middle of the central plaza. Hundreds of people swarmed past her in every conceivable direction. Ade stood resolutely beside her.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “Where could he have gone?”

  In desperation, she shimmied halfway up a nearby signpost and looked out over the sea of bobbing heads.

  Ade watched her. “Do be careful, ma’am.”

  It was futile. Tyresa dropped back to the ground, then started to pace up and down. She’d exhausted every idea. Growing desperate, she started repeating her earlier questions. “Ade, did he say anything about going somewhere other than the hospital?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Did he say anything about going to meet someone?”

  “No, ma’am. He simply said he was going back to the hospital.”

  Tyresa grunted. What else could she do? Technology had failed her. Asking people yielded nothing. Aimless searching had been no good. It was too hard to think. Her head was buzzing. The voices and the footsteps too distracting.

  Finally, she closed her eyes and let her head drop forward. The noise of the crowd melted into a faraway hum. Her heartbeat began to slow down. It was working; she was filtering out the distraction. Before long, she was alone in darkness with her thoughts.

  She concentrated, trying to bring some organisation to that mass of thoughts. As she tried mentally to sort through them, one stuck out. It was a quiet thought that had been too polite to speak up during the chaos of the last hour. But now, Tyresa could ‘see’ it standing at the back of the crowd of louder, obnoxious ideas. It had one hand raised and was mouthing a word over and over.

  Psychology. Psychology.

  Tyresa opened her eyes. “Ade, how did he seem just as he left the bar?”

  “Seem, ma’am?”

  “His attitude, his mood. What was he saying?”

  “I believe the appropriate word is melancholy, ma’am. He was reflecting on the past, having learned about humanity’s fractious history. He also described feeling rather overwhelmed and out of place in modern society, referring to himself somewhat as a relic. ‘Caveman’ was the word he used, I believe.”

  Melancholic. A relic. Reflecting on the past. Tyresa tried to put herself into the mind of someone with feelings like that. Where might they go? What might they do? From where might they imagine they’d get some sort of comfort?

  Tyresa looked up at the signpost that only a moment before had been her climbing frame. One of the signs leaped out at her1.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Come on!”

  The Mylee Sirius Memorial Museum of Human History was located in Palin Square, only a twenty-minute walk away from the hospital (or a thirty-second ride on the hypertube). The grandiose square housed several famed museums, of which the Mylee Sirius was one the better-looking ones, although it had recently undergone a major refurbishment that divided opinion.

  Tyresa and Ade bounded up the thirty stone steps of the museum three at a time. It would soon be closing, and Tyresa didn’t want to miss this chance. Once inside, she gave a description of Colin to the receptionist, who reported having directed such a man to the Pre-Settlement Collection.

  They followed the signs, making their way through displays of Cetian history going back centuries. The place was almost empty. Just a few straggling visitors were making their way out.

  Finally, they reached the Pre-Settlement Collection, an area housing ancient artifacts from around the galaxy, thought to pre-date the settlement of Ceti. Tyresa looked around the room. With its minimalist white decor, bright lights and cabinets made of glass, it was easy to spot the figure standing in the corner, in the shiny blue jacket.

  It was Colin.

  He was standing quietly—not to mention unsteadily—staring at one of the cabinets. When he heard Tyresa approaching him, he looked surprised to see her.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “What do you think?” She was yelling, although doing in that quiet, considerate way one might yell when in a museum. “Looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “You said you were going back to the hospital,” said Tyresa. “But then you didn’t show up. We thought something had happened to you.” As she got nearer to Colin, she noticed his eyes were red and glassy. Either he was drunk, or he’d been crying. Or both.

  “Oh no,” he said. His speech was slurred and tired-sounding. “I got halfway then had the idea of looking in a museum. You know, see if I could find any clues to the past. And also… maybe find some old things I might actually recognise.”

  She sighed. “All right, fine. You’ve seen it now. It’s closing time, let’s go.”

  Colin ignored her. “I thought this place might cheer me up a bit. Not that it did any bloody good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He gestured around the room. “Have you seen some of this garbage? I thought I was going to see Egyptian pottery or Roman swords or something like that. What do I find?” He pointed to a thin sheet of faded red metal in the cabinet before him. It had the word “Cola” written on it. “Coke cans! A piece of a bloody soft drink container!”

  Tyresa looked at it. She was familiar with the piece, but its identity had stumped most experts. “Oh,” said Tyresa, suddenly enlightened, “is that what it is?”

  “And look at this,” said Colin, shuffling over to the adjacent cabinet. He pointed to a shiny metallic cylinder, bent in the middle at a right angle. “The audio guide says that’s an ancient religious fertility symbol.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Colin shook his head. “It’s a bloody door handle.”

  “A door… handle? What’s that?”

  “You know, a door handle. You turn it to open a…” Colin threw up his hands. “Oh, never mind. Every door on this damned planet is automatic, as though turning a handle is too much labour for you people.” He pointed to the other side of the room. “And this is the best one…”

  He led Tyresa towards a tall cabinet, inside which were several thin sticks about waist height and made of rusty metal.

  “Ah, yes, they are good,” said Tyresa proudly. “I was actually part of the expedition that found these on Sirius IV.”

  “The guide says they’re weapons.”

  “That’s right. We surmised that the armies using them were divided into units according to their weapon type,” said Tyresa, switching effortlessly into lecturer mode. “See the one with the big lump on the end? We called the unit that used those the ‘clubbers.’ And the one with the hooked end there? That was wielded by the hackers. Nice, huh?”

  Colin put his head in his hands. “They’re golf clubs.”

  “What?”

  “They’re golf clubs. Golf was a sport on Earth.”

  “Are you sure?” said Tyresa, taken aback. “We found them in situ with a uniform.”

  She pointed to the adjacent cabinet containing a mannequin. Although the cloth was tatty and worn, the items of clothing were unmistakeably a v-neck pullover and a rather tasteless pair of tartan trousers. Next to the mannequin hung a drawing, an artist’s rendition of an ancient ‘battle’ featuring two armies of golf players in the middle of field hacking each other to pieces with drivers and wedges.

  “Unbelievable,” said Colin. “Even the history is all wrong in the future.�
�� The energy seemed to drain from him in an instant. He dropped onto a nearby bench.

  Tyresa looked around at the artifacts on display, flummoxed. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. “You just walk in here and tell me we got all these wrong.” She clicked her fingers. “Just like that.”

  “I don’t belong here,” rasped Colin. “I should have never been revived.”

  “That’s just the drink talking,” she said without looking at him. Tyresa was distracted, still staring at the artifacts, trying to accept that Colin had swept away huge swaths of archaeology in a matter of minutes. “You’ll be fine once you’ve sobered up. You’re alive, aren’t you?”

  “Alive? I’m dying in case you’d forgotten.”

  “Not for much longer. We’ve arranged a cure.”

  Colin didn’t reply.

  Tyresa finally gave him her full attention and saw the unmoved expression on his face. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m taking you to a specialist hospital to get you fixed up, good as new. Great, huh? You’ll get cured, and you can start your life over again.”

  “Start over? Where? Doing what? What’s the point of living now, when I’ve got no place to go, no-one really cares about me, they just treat me like an experiment.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Tyresa impatiently.

  Colin shook his head dismissively. “I didn’t think you’d understand. Everyone treats me like something to study, someone to interrogate, or else like some weird curiosity. Probably, when you’re all finished with me, you’ll have me stuffed and put on display somewhere. And when people aren’t treating me like an artifact, they just think I’m deranged, making out I’m a lunatic or just a plain liar because of the things I say.”

  “Well, there’s where I have some more good news. We carried out a dating test on you, and I just got the results. You know how old the machine says you are? Close to two thousand years! What about that, huh? It’s a provisional date, I need to verify it, but that means there’s a chance you were born before the breakdown. You see what that means? It supports the idea you’re not deranged or a liar.”