Artifact

by Gregory Benford

  Midway through the sentence he saw Kontos nod slightly to someone behind him, but it was too late. Hands gripped his arms. He might have shaken off the soldier behind him but he was carrying the luggage.

  Kontos expertly backhanded him across the face. John spun away, wrestling with the unseen opponent behind him. Kontos hit him again—a sharp crack, this time square on the nose.

  Pain snapped the world into sharp focus. He felt blood running freely. He said nothing; that would just give Kontos some slimy satisfaction.

  A babble of excited Greek. Kontos was saying something—a grating, insinuating voice, for the benefit of his own men.

  He blinked. Claire came swimming up from the too-bright surroundings, Claire holding a handkerchief. It swelled, a white cloud, and engulfed his face. He pulled away but the hands still held him. Claire was cursing in Greek, too, and Kontos was answering her. She gave up with the handker-chief, turned to shout at Kontos. The soldiers grinned. Slap the American man around, that was good, foreign policy in action. Hit him again, yes. Bloody him, that was even better. He could see they all ached to do the same thing.

  They all stared at Claire and John saw the look come into their eyes. Even better to slap around an American woman. Yes, a pleasure. He could see them wanting it, their eyes jerking from Kontos to Claire, sweat gleaming on their faces, waiting for Kontos to do it.

  “That’s okay, Claire,” he said, voice croaking. “Leave off.”

  She turned. “He can’t—it’s an outrage that—”

  “Leave it!”

  Kontos blinked. He smirked at John and waved a hand in dismissal. “I cannot allow this uniform to be dishonored. I would expect even you to understand that.” Another casual wave. “Escort these three into the terminal.”

  Hands pushed him forward. He nearly stumbled, dropped his carry-on, and picked it up, half expecting a kick from behind. Not as bad as last time, he thought. Maybe I’m getting used to it.

  Kontos had thrown a first-class fit after he’d discovered them. The framing structure was still in place, so he saw instantly that some blocks had been moved, that they’d found something and not informed him. John had expected him to open the crate instantly, but Kontos gave it little attention, preferring to slap the framing bars and kick some of John’s half-packed equipment, ranting loudly in Greek. John shoved Kontos off the equipment and the soldiers grabbed him. He’d thrown one of them down but the others pinned him to the wall. Kontos slugged him in the stomach and then in the mouth. John’s lip opened and the red spattered his shirt. Kontos stopped then and went back to shouting.

  Claire had tried to explain, to put the best gloss on it, but Kontos wasn’t having any. When Kontos calmed down enough to think he fixed on one idea—throwing George and Claire out of the country. He didn’t buy the explanation that John was merely helping Claire out, doing odd jobs because she asked him to help speed things up, that Claire was only trying to get everything done under Kontos’s own deadline. But Kontos couldn’t prove John was guilty of anything, so he contented himself with ordering John off the site.

  Kontos wasn’t a man to negotiate with—not when he had armed men to back him up. John packed up the MIT gear while Claire got her bags together. Kontos wouldn’t let Claire even go back into the tomb, and halfway to the airport she realized she had left several of her notebooks there.

  Kontos had them marched down to the waiting sedans and they drove off, leaving the camp for Kontos to close down. He called ahead and used his rank to get them seats on the first morning flight. Claire and George were booked on American Airlines, Athens to Paris to Boston. John was to fly to Crete.

  George fetched some paper towels and stopped John’s nosebleed as they waited beside the jammed counter. People stared. There were a lot of Army uniforms around, but they weren’t paying much attention. Instead, knots of men talked excitedly to each other.

  Claire said appropriate things, mixing sympathy with a virulent anger. Kontos was at the American Airlines counter, loudly demanding an extra ticket for John. The counter was mobbed with hundreds, many of them wide-eyed, desperate, raising a loud babble of questions and protests. Kontos’s uniform got him attention from the clerks.

  George hadn’t done or said much. He seemed intimidated by the soldiers, watching them, jumping to do whatever they communicated with gestures and pointing and clipped orders. They made him go out and carry all the bags in, and then lift them up for checking on the weighing counter. Kontos snapped his fingers at George to hurry, enjoying it.

  John kept his two bags. He didn’t want anybody throwing around his diving equipment, and he didn’t trust the soldiers to not somehow steal the bags even after they’d been checked on the flight.

  Kontos came back with three tickets. “You leave in an hour. I will have the soldiers stand outside the departure waiting room. Do not come back into the terminal.”

  “Why so suddenly formal, Colonel?” Claire mocked. “Wouldn’t you like to hit me as well?”

  So she caught it, too, he thought.

  “Do not insult this uniform,” Kontos said stiffly.

  Maybe he thinks he’s over-reached, John thought. Even politically influential types can’t get away with everything.

  “Oh, I wasn’t insulting the uniform. I was insulting the little man hiding inside.”

  Kontos glared. “Do not push me.” The voice was dead level and strangely calm.

  John recognized the signs of a barely restrained fury. Kontos was doing what was smart but the man didn’t like it. Break this up.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, edging between the two of them. “Why are those Army men meeting over there?” He pointed to a dozen or more, all talking at once.

  Kontos said slowly, “The Parliament, it is dissolved. Our party declares a special circumstance.”

  “Special…?” While Kontos was looking at him, John surreptitiously waved to Claire to be quiet.

  “We cannot reach an appropriate compromise with some of the reactionary elements, so we are suspending the normal political processes until we can, ah, create solidarity through all our society.” The words came out like a press release.

  “Uh huh.”

  “So—I return to Athens immediately. Great events are happening. I not waste my time on you.” Kontos snorted, pivoting with military polish on one heel, and stalked off.

  Claire sighed. “And to think that man used to be a good archeologist.”

  “So? People aren’t consistent. Hitler was a vegetarian.”

  She peered blearily at him and he saw with a shock that she was close to tears. The tough veneer was only so deep and no more. He put his arm around her. “Come on. We’ll wait for our flight. Maybe rustle up a little breakfast.”

  He nodded to George and they walked slowly through the passport control, numbly watching a sleepy clerk stamp the pages without looking at them. They were coming down from the tension now, worn out by the shouting, the forced packing, the long ride through darkness and dawn. Kontos had prodded and tongue-lashed them at every delay, robbing them of their dignity as scientists, confusing Claire so that she left work behind, using his position to humiliate them.

  He said gently to Claire, “No point in getting into a political fracas here. Could be it’s good we’re getting out.”

  She sniffed and nodded. “Probably a lot of people wanted to be on this flight.”

  “Be good to be back home, after all this.”

  “Yes.”

  They were silent in the waiting room. George went out to fetch coffee and some curious triangles of nuts and sesame seeds held together by honey. John devoured two and felt better. Claire ate looking down at the floor. He knew what she was thinking, but there was nothing he could say to dispel those demons.

  She was going back in defeat. Kontos would make a big thing out of this, feed lurid stories to Hampton at BU, damage her reputation. He might very well be able to get her banned forever from Greek archeological work, her specialty.
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  He sat back, wishing he had something to read. Well, he did, at the bottom of his carry-on bag. Somehow he didn’t have the energy to dig out a book. He closed his eyes, wishing for sleep. Maybe on the plane. No, definitely on the plane.

  Claire shook his arm. “Wake up,” she said. “I need a coin.”

  “Aren’t the johns free here?” He fished in his pockets.

  “No, it’s for a phone call.”

  “To who?”

  “To whom, you mean. Olympic Airways.”

  “Purist.” He gave her a heavy handful of coins. “Why?”

  “Praxis.”

  “What?”

  “Watch.”

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER

  One

  Claire scribbled the flight numbers and departure time on the back of her ticket envelope. She bit the end of the pencil, fretting, and hung up the telephone.

  It was going to be a tight squeeze. She had spent too much time moodily slumped on a chair, rehearsing what she’d say to Hampton at BU, how she would describe what happened, how to put the best face on what was, no matter how she tried, a total defeat. Too much time not thinking, while the minutes until departure slipped by. The classical Greeks spoke of the proper balance between thought, theoria, and action, praxis. But she had been doing neither.

  So she had fretted some more, getting nowhere, eyes roving the jammed waiting room—and abruptly the large Olympic Airways route map on the nearby wall had jumped into prominence. She had stared at it in disbelief, thinking suddenly of the small ivory square, of its markings, wishing she had even a sketch of it to compare. And suddenly she had known that she had to follow this idea. She could not give up now.

  The rest had been easy. She needed a way to stay in Greece. There was only one possible method.

  She chewed the pencil some more and decided. A man puffing energetically on a cigarette caught her eye, smiled. She glared back. He looked affronted.

  As she walked back to where George and John were sitting a monotonous voice announced their flight. John was reflectively feeling his nose and puffed-up cheeks.

  “Come on, let’s get in line,” she said, scooping up her own light bag, thinking furiously.

  “Let the others load first,” George said wearily. “It’ll be a long flight.”

  “Come on.”

  “Okay, okay.” George got up. John eyed Claire speculatively.

  “No, wait,” she said suddenly. The departure lounge was jammed and people were already pushing at the line. She whispered, “George, listen. When I give you a nod, play sick.”

  “What for?”

  John shot a look at her. “Just do it,” she said. “We can’t talk here.”

  George grumbled and got in line. They inched forward. Claire would have told them her idea, but there were too many ears nearby.

  A sleepy clerk collected boarding passes. Claire turned and saw two of Kontos’s men watching her from beyond the glass partition. They didn’t seem very interested but they were still there.

  George in front, they walked out onto the open runway. The big jet waited about a hundred meters away. The brisk, salty air was liberating after the stale cigarette reek inside. Claire waited until the last possible moment, until there were a dozen passengers behind them. George put his foot on the portable stairway and turned back toward her. She nodded.

  George dropped his bag and clutched his right side, sagging to his knees. He groaned believably.

  “Oh, he’s had another!” Claire squealed. “George! Is it the same as before?”

  “Ye…yes,” he wheezed. “Only…worse.”

  Passengers were stacking up behind them. An American Airline officer shoved his way through and kneeled beside George, who grimaced and moaned.

  “He’s had this before,” Claire explained. “We hoped we could get him back to Boston but—”

  “What’s he got?” the officer asked rapidly.

  “Well, that’s the thing you see, we don’t really know, only it hurts him something awful.” Claire babbled on into the officer’s ear while George breathed noisily. “George, you can’t go, that’s what I told you back at the hotel, you just have to see a doctor here, no matter how much you want to get back to Dr. Oberman you have to go to someone now, isn’t that right?” She looked beseechingly at the airline officer.

  The man bit his lip and said, “Well, I suppose…I’ll call an ambulance and—”

  “No no,” Claire said rapidly, “no ambulance. I know how they run the price up in these places. You just tell us where the first aid station is here, okay?”

  The officer shook his head. “Lady, he can’t move, and our policy is—”

  “Sure, sure I can,” George said. He heaved himself up, grasping the railing of the stairway. “See?” He took a step.

  “Don’t you fake with me,” Claire said, “you are in no condition to—”

  “Oh, all right,” George said. “Where’s first aid?”

  The officer looked back at the terminal. “You’re sure you can walk?”

  “Yeah,” George said. “Just lead us to the first aid station. My, uh, she’s right, I’d better not go on this flight.”

  “Give our seats to somebody else,” Claire said.

  The jam behind them now blocked any view of the waiting rooms, so Claire could not see if the soldiers were still there. They crossed the tarmac, George moving so quickly that the airline officer had to work to keep up, explaining airline policy on cancelled reservations and the difficulty of getting another flight right away. As she had guessed, the officer took them through the door with AIRLINE PERSONNEL ONLY stenciled on it. In the office beyond she glanced rapidly around. No soldiers.

  “Could you take us around to one of your carts?” she asked.

  They did. Airlines were careful to avoid involvement in medical problems of their passengers, preferring to shuttle any difficulties to a first aid station in the terminal and forget them. The cart carried them down a narrow alley and across the main street outside. Another airline officer had joined them, carefully explaining that they could not guarantee that the luggage would not go on to Paris, since the flight had to take off immediately. Claire nodded, keeping her eyes straight ahead. She remembered from somewhere that people were more conscious of you if you were looking their way, so she affected indifference to the knots of uniformed men in the street.

  In the antiseptic-smelling first aid station George faked a number of contradictory symptoms. The lone doctor tuttutted over him, poking and peering. John and Claire insisted on staying with him. While a nurse was away with a sample bottle, George chuckled and said, “I played that pretty well, huh?”

  Claire answered, “Perfect. Listen, we’re not clear of them. I called Olympic Airways. I got reservations for two of us on a flight leaving in fifty-five minutes for Crete. Those were the last two seats on the plane. George, you’ve got a reservation for the next flight out after that.”

  “Ah,” John said. “That way we won’t all three be seen together.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. Good.”

  “Hey, what’s this for?” George combed his hair with his fingers, frowning. “I’ve gone along okay, sure, but what the hell are you—”

  “We don’t have to take treatment like this. I’m not leaving Greece until I get justice.” She looked fiercely at the two men. “For all of us.”

  John had said nothing. He began slowly. “Well, I’m not fond of having the bejeesus beat out of me, but Claire—what’re we gonna do?”

  “I’ll…I want to go back to the site. Get those notes of mine. I noticed something just now, in the waiting room. Remember the ivory decoration? The scratches on it might be a map.”

  “Yeah, sure, we talked about that possibility,” George said.

  “I didn’t take it seriously because there are no known maps from the Mycenaean age. But looking at the Olympic Airways map, I saw that I had been unconsciously assuming that if i
t was some crude depiction of Mycenae, then the big land mass had to be at the top, to the north. But that’s just a convention we use today—north is up. From what I remember of the ivory piece, if you turn it upside down, the biggest area vaguely resembles a part of Greece. Not the mainland, no—Crete. The large mass is the Crete coastline, and the smaller object above is an island. Maybe Santorini or Milos.”

  “Um,” George said noncommitally.

  “But I need my notes to really make a case.”

  John asked, “You figure a scholarly paper is worth all that much?”

  “Yes, I do. But mostly I want to get back at Kontos some way. I’ll send a telegram from Crete. Professor Hampton must be told of what has happened. I’m sure Kontos will be filling his ear full of—”

  “You could’ve told Hampton when we landed in Boston,” John said mildly.

  Her eyes flashed. “Yes, and with empty hands, without any results, with nothing to show—”

  “Now, I was only commenting. Me, I’m willing to go to Crete, if that’s what you want. I’m on vacation, you remember.”

  “Yeah,” George added with fresh energy. “Kontos hasn’t taken any official action against us. Yet. I mean, if we can stay away from him and his storm troopers, we’re okay.”

  Claire subsided. She saw that something of the mischievous schoolboy had been aroused in George, something she could play upon. To him this could be a lark, a bit of cops and robbers, better than returning to a Bostonian winter and the university routine. Very well, then.

  “Good. George, you stay here, recover in about an hour, and walk across the street to the domestic air terminal. It’s the one to the left. Here—” she handed him a wad of bills. “Use this to buy your ticket. When you land at Crete, come into the main square in Heraklion. We’ll meet you there.”

  “Okay.”

  “By that time I’ll have had time to telephone Hampton. He can intervene with Kontos. I want permission to go back to the site, see that things are sealed up professionally, and get my notes.”