Artifact

by Gregory Benford

  Claire said calmly, opening her door, “We went into Nauplia. When John saw the water, he wanted to get in some diving. By the time we were through, it was too late to reach Mycenae.”

  “I do not think it is wise to go anywhere you are not expected,” Kontos said.

  John said, “What’s ‘expected’ mean?”

  “I called the site officer to see that you were given a special tour.”

  “Very kind of you,” John said. They picked their way along the shadowy path to the camp.

  “Perhaps you saw my speech in Nauplia?”

  Claire blurted, “That was you?”

  “I am a party official as well. A show of a united front was needed, Army plus the people. I went with my brother officers of the town.” He smiled warmly, remembering. “A great evening for our country. I told them of the excitement in Athens.”

  “You certainly got them lathered up,” Claire said coolly.

  Kontos said confidently, “You are unaccustomed to see a country united? Come, have a glass of tea.” He led them to a table outside a nearby tent. Four Greek Army enlisted men accompanied them.

  “Who’re they?” Claire asked.

  “Assistants,” Kontos said casually. “I need help in the difficult business of forging political connections with the countryside.” He pointed out two sedans on the road below. “I am hoping that I can contribute at the Ministry of Culture, to mobilize our society.”

  While he fussed with a small kerosine stove and a pot, Claire described the hostile glares they’d received.

  “What can you expect? You are obvious and foreign. They are poor, they are angry. The major exports of the fields here are oranges, apricots—principally to the Ukrainians and Russians. Yet they too are poor, now. They cut back their buying.”

  “So?”

  “It may be this would not happen, if we could form a united front against the sources of capital.”

  “Uh huh.” John shrugged and changed the subject. “I couldn’t recognize your voice, distorted over the loudspeakers. What was that about the Elgin marbles?”

  “They are beautiful sculptures from our Acropolis. In Athens are the ones I saved.”

  “Oh. I didn’t stop in Athens.”

  “To see the others, you must go to London for that. The British, they take them in 1803, before our independence from the Turks. We demand having them back. Otherwise, we break diplomatic relations with the British.”

  “Isn’t it a little late?” she asked. “After all, the English took care of them while the rest of the Acropolis was falling apart.”

  “They are ours.”

  Claire said, “The Turks vandalized the Parthenon, the Venetians shelled it, and the British saved marbles from it. Don’t they deserve some credit?”

  “The marbles, they are a useful symbol for us, for the party. Against foreign oppression. If we Greeks stand together, demand our birthright, we will be heard.”

  “Sure will,” John observed over the sweet coffee. “You weren’t doing much to calm them down.”

  “They are tired of your factories here, taking their labor and sending the profits to the USA.”

  “Where should the profits go?”

  “To our government. To our people.”

  “Those two aren’t necessarily the same.”

  “Soon they will be. Soon.”

  “You want the profits, why didn’t you build the factories yourselves?”

  “Today, we would. But the banks have all the money. The banks you control.”

  “I sure don’t,” John said to lighten the mood, glancing at Claire. She was staying out of the conversation.

  “I understand,” Kontos said. “You are a victim as well. You devoted your life to a technical area, yes? Only to find when you have to live in the real world that it is not the technical men who rule, eh?”

  “Who does?”

  “The banks, of course.”

  “Come on.”

  “Your films, your television, they do not show it, the truth. But we know. In your country the munitions makers ride in their limousines and prepare their wars, while the workers cannot afford new shoes.”

  “Back where I come from, not wearing shoes is fun. I used to do it all summer.”

  Kontos pursed his lips and stared gravely at John. “I do not joke, you know. That crowd tonight, they were angry at your country’s arrogance.”

  “Let ’em buy back any factories we’ve got over here.”

  “What? Buy what is on our own soil?”

  “Easier to steal it, huh?”

  Kontos slammed his fist to the table. “Our people have paid many times that. With their sweat!”

  Claire said mildly, “What were you saying in Nauplia about obstructionists?”

  “That there should be none. That we must have a single-party state.”

  “Eliminate the opposition, you mean?” John asked. “How?”

  “We must dissolve our parliament for the duration of the present difficulties.”

  John waved a hand in dismissal. “I thought this was the birthplace of democracy.”

  Kontos smiled coldly. “We will be just like the USA. Only we will be more honest.”

  “We’ve got two parties.”

  “No you do not. You have only the party of the banks, of the money men, and they divide it into two pieces for your voting.”

  “Look,” John said earnestly, waving his hand again, “I know you people are having hard times, but all this rabble-rousing—”

  Without warning Kontos grabbed John’s hand and slammed it to the tabletop. “You will not dismiss that ‘rabble’ if they have men to speak for them!”

  John was shocked at the sudden flaring anger. He wrenched his shoulder around and struggled, muscles bulging. Kontos pressed the hand flatter on the table, as if the two men were in the terminal stage of an arm-wrestling contest. He leaned across the table and smiled silently, watching the American grunt with effort. “Try harder,” he said, panting.

  John made a sudden surge, lifting his arm a foot off the table. The arm held there, both men gasping. Slowly Kontos forced it back down, pressing it to the rough wood. John could not get free. “Dammit, let go!”

  “Of course,” Kontos said blandly, releasing him. “I was showing how it feels to be powerless. You see?” Again the cold smile.

  “What the hell—”

  “An illustration, Mr. Bishop, of the mood of my country.”

  John bunched his fists. “I’d like to give you—”

  “Yes?”

  Claire broke in, taking John’s arm. “Back off, both of you. This is stupid.”

  John looked at her, uncertain. “I’m not going to let—”

  “Forget him. Believe me, he’s not worth it.”

  “I’m not afraid of any—”

  “John, please! Come away.” She tugged at his sleeve.

  “Well…” He took a step back and Kontos did too. “Damn fine hospitality you got here, Kontos,” John called.

  The other man gave an ironic salute, still smiling.

  Even hours later, John couldn’t leave the subject alone. It galled him further that he had had to sneak up to the tomb at night.

  “I still say I’d rather have popped the bastard.”

  “And get us thrown out of the country, of course.”

  “So what? Better than—”

  “You’re here as my guest, I’m paying the way, so you do as—”

  “Dammit, woman, that man’s not going to let you stay much longer anyway.” Irritated, John went back to peering at his oscilloscope traces. They’d had this out twice before, and he knew where it led—to his finally having to admit to himself that he’d been intimidated. That at the crucial moment he had known that his own anger was no match for the fury in Kontos. So that when he hesitated, Claire’s words had come through to him and his mind, ever agile, had interpreted her to say, Don’t jeopardize anything. So he had backed down.

  A rational dec
ision, probably. But he didn’t like the reasons.

  “Actually,” Claire said soothingly, “I thought it was a marvelous tactic you were following, getting him onto politics right away. Before he had a chance to ask about your diving.”

  He nodded, jotting down numbers. “Sure, brilliant. Got my face pushed in.”

  They were gathered around the instruments, a single lamp throwing sharp shadows onto the cube face before them. They had gotten up an hour before, just past midnight. It had been silent in the camp and they had slipped away easily, up the hillside. Claire had one of the two keys to the Yale lock. The door was made of fresh wood and creaked awfully when they opened it.

  Claire wanted to be sure his measurements were done by morning, in case they never got back in here again. As he worked on the long routines of analysis and triple-checking each step, she boxed the cube in with standard crating materials, working around him.

  When George had swung it out yesterday, suspended on his system of ropes and straps, they had all been impressed by its bulk. Claire had measured it again and again, surprised that its proportions—94.6 centimeters on each side, with scarcely five millimeters of error anywhere—were so exact. Now it lay on its packing bed, its squat mass relieved only by the delicate amber cone on the forward face.

  “I hope they can’t hear that hammer down at the camp,” John said.

  “The door absorbs most of it…I think.”

  “I don’t like this sneaking around.”

  “Stick with it just a little longer. I don’t want Kontos knowing anything about this piece until I have a chance to think it over and see your results.”

  “He’ll see it back in Athens in a week or so, as soon as they start unpacking.”

  “Maybe not. I think he’s going to be too busy with his politics.”

  “Wishful thinking. Anybody who opens that crate, or reads the manifest carefully—”

  “It’s not on the catalog yet.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m leaving it for last.”

  “Boy, you’ve got this figured down to the second.”

  “All summer Kontos has been making insulting remarks, leering, trying to arrange little tête-á-têtes with me. Plus handing me the dullest, least promising jobs. I’m getting mine back.” She drove a nail in with such fierceness that John started.

  “Hey, easy.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Any results?”

  “Too many, that’s the problem.” He pointed at the curve on the Tracor oscilloscope face, a yellow line interrupted by narrow spikes. “Dozens of little emission peaks. Every damn element in the book.”

  “Metals?”

  “Plenty. Copper, tin, zinc, indium—”

  “An alloy?”

  “If it is, it’s pretty damned sophisticated.”

  “They knew a good deal of metallurgy. Remember, in the Odyssey, how Homer describes Odysseus and his men getting the giant Cyclops drunk? Then they blind him so they can escape. Homer said the hot olive stick going into Cyclops’s eye sizzled the way a piece of iron does when a blacksmith plunges it into cold water.”

  “Uh, nice image,” John said queasily.

  “But see, it means a smithy cooling iron in water to harden it was a familiar experience for Homer.”

  John said nothing, not wanting to admit that he’d never read any Homer. In the sciences there wasn’t time to read a lot, and scientific prose was so condensed that your reading speed slowed through the years. He could remember reading two or three books in an afternoon during rainy days in Georgia; now he spent a week on a respectable-sized novel.

  “Alloys, okay,” he said. “But inside rock?”

  Claire had finished all but the cover of the crate. “So it must be metal-rich stone. Dark limestone can come from sea bed deposits, laid down by river runoff.”

  “I dunno. There are signs of melting. You get a characteristic dendritic pattern if cast alloys cool off, when different components solidify out preferentially.”

  “Come now. That can’t be cast, not down in the chisel marks.”

  “Um. I suppose not.”

  “What more can you tell me, from all this data?”

  He punched in a storage command. “Nothing. I’ve got it all on disk. We’ll have to analyze it back at MIT.”

  “Good. Now help me with this crate lid.”

  He saw she had secured the slab in a cross-lacing to protect against shock. “Yes, against jolts and dolts, both,” she said. “You’d be amazed how some of these—”

  “You hear something?”

  They froze. Silence.

  “Come on,” she whispered.

  They struggled the heavy wooden lid into place. The amber horn was well cushioned; John checked it one last time. The flecks deep inside it were orange motes that in the wan lamplight seemed to float, airy and light. Sparkles of ruby and gold seemed to be lit not by his lamp, but by some momentary inner glow. The radiance came only fitfully, like a spreading warmth within. John moved slightly and lost the right viewing angle; now the cone appeared dulled, passive. A beautiful effect.

  “It’s damn pretty, all right.”

  “Um.”

  “Bet they’ll put it on exhibit right away.”

  “Probably.”

  “Kontos’ll be fit to be tied when he sees it.”

  “Too bad I can’t be there. I’d like to see the look on his face.”

  “He’ll raise a stink.”

  “Let him. He’ll know he can’t claim discovery himself.”

  “True. But he’ll have the artifact to show off.”

  “And I’ll share credit with the National Museum in Athens,” Claire said primly, tightening down the wood screws. “I’d have had to in any case. But this way he doesn’t get to elbow me aside.” She grunted, turning the big screwdriver with both hands.

  “Here, let me do that.” He still disliked seeing a woman struggle with a tool while a man stood around. “So everybody’ll get equal credit, right? Kontos won’t be able to toot his own horn.”

  “Even having our names on a paper together is too much contact for me. I—”

  The entrance door swung open, creaking.

  Kontos stood framed by the massive stones, eyes bright and glittering with excitement, his face creased by an amused sneer. Several enlisted men crowded behind him.

  “A little party?”

  CHAPTER

  Eight

  The gray Greek Army sedan swerved around a slow truck, tires howling, throwing Claire and John violently across the back seat.

  “Dammit, watch out!” John shouted. The soldier sitting on his right watched him steadily, menacingly. The sedan’s driver tromped down on the gas and they surged forward.

  Colonel Kontos turned from his position beside the driver and regarded John coldly. “You are afraid?”

  “Stupidity always scares me,” John said.

  Kontos bridled, his lips drawn back into a thin, bloodless, vindictive line. “It is not too late to take you to headquarters. A few days in the cells.”

  They rocketed along the expressway, heading southeast toward the Athens airport. To the right the island of Salamis shone like a rough marble in the jeweled setting of the sea. Salamis, where the Greeks destroyed the intruders. Though he had seen it only a few days before, it seemed like a long time had passed.

  “You’d have to tell our embassy,” Claire said.

  “So I would. But I could have you transferred from one holding prison to another every twelve hours. Very hard to find such people.”

  “Typical,” John spat out.

  Kontos ignored the comment. “Also, your ambassador has much else to concern him. We have formally announced plans to withdraw from NATO this morning.”

  Claire said, “Gorgeously dumb.”

  “You think we would remain in an alliance with your—”

  “Never mind us, what about the Turks?”

  “We can deal with them,” Kontos said stiffly.

  C
laire sighed. “The same old grudge match, going all the way back to Agamemnon.”

  “You speak of international cooperation?” Kontos laughed harshly. “Concealing your results, carrying out excavations without consent of the director—”

  “Dr. Hampton approved! He gave me the go-ahead before he left.”

  “I became resident director the instant he left. And I am the senior director because I am Greek. You had to get—”

  “The hell I did. Ask you for approval, when the first thing you’d do is invite me back to your tent to discuss the matter?”

  Kontos said blandly, “I am sure I do not know what you are meaning.” He glanced at John. “But I do know what to do with those who violate the international standards. You are leaving Greece—forever, I am sure.”

  Claire paled. “You can’t magnify a thing like this into—”

  “A wise woman holds her tongue. You merely prove how little of a woman you are.”

  “Hold on,” John said. “This is personal enough without—”

  “Shut up,” Kontos said viciously, “or I will bloody your face again.”

  John gritted his teeth and was about to say something when the car shot across two lanes, throwing him against Claire. The soldier on his right held onto the door handle for support. The car shot into the turnoff for the airport. He was glad of the interruption. Getting into another shouting match with Kontos would get him the same result as last time; Kontos was for damn sure right about that.

  They skidded to a halt outside the international terminal, an anonymous steel and glass box. Two soldiers standing guard at the main entrance snapped to attention, hoisting submachine guns. John helped Claire out. A second sedan pulled up immediately behind them, disgorging George and the baggage for all three of them. John walked over to find his carryon bag and diving equipment.

  “Your ticket,” Kontos snapped. John stooped, rolling his diving bag onto his shoulder, and said, “What for? I’m going down into the islands.”

  Kontos took tickets from Claire and George and turned to confront John. “I have changed my mind. I do not believe you had nothing to do with this. Therefore, I declare you non grata.”

  “You can’t do that, I don’t care who you are. That’s a diplomatic function and you’re just some tin-hat Army jerk-off.”