Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  Tomson shook his head sagely. This was indeed a matter for Gano. His brain clicked keenly. After all, he was a chief Technician. He knew something of the history of the world in the dim days before it died, and Hispan was isolated in a protective film. These were primitives of those earlier eras, somehow immured in this underground chamber, overlaid with the rocky accretions of centuries. The radium pellet, the gas that had dissipated, had kept life intact, though static.

  It did not surprise him either that the stranger spoke an archaic variant of the tongue of Hispan. There had been a universal language on earth before it died. As for the curiously fashioned bit of metal in his hand, that was obviously a weapon. Doubtless solid pellets issued from its orifice. He was not afraid. Fear had been bred out of the Technician class. Besides, one touch of the blaster inset at his side, and stranger, weapon and all, would go to feed the energy units of the atom crushers.

  “Masquerade?” he repeated slowly. “That is a word I do not know. But you require much explanation—you, your comrade, and this place in which you have laid as one dead. The questioning I shall leave to Gano.”

  Sam Ward lowered his gun. Surprise at the clipped, curious syllables of this little man with the high, bald forehead and single belted garment of lustrous material gaped his jaw. It was English, in a sense, and understandable, but-

  At this instant Kleon rose lithely to his feet, caught up his short Macedonian sword. He seemed like a god among mortals—his fair blond hair, his calm blue eyes that took them all in with one sweeping glance. This, then, was the future, ten thousand years ahead. The gymnosophists from the Roof of the World had not lied. He was disappointed, a bit contemptuous. Were these the beings of the future? Could a Greek of Alexander’s day, steeped in Aristotle and Aeschylos, find meet companionship with these spindly, feeble creatures who stood before him?

  * * * *

  Then his eyes met those of Sam Ward. Ah, this was a different manner of man. He took in, approvingly, the tall, well-shouldered body, the evidence of power and muscular development, the steady gray of eyes, the level brow. Here was a man who could fight as at a frolic—and judge wisely—a healthy mind in a healthy body.

  Sam was bewildered. Quetzal had come to life. These others—It was getting damned confusing, nightmarish even. He whirled on Kleon. “And who the devil are you—Quetzal, Maya, or what?”

  Kleon stared quietly. This was a language strange to him, a bit barbarous, if the truth must be told, with its harsh consonants and lack of mellifluous vowels. Yet there were two words—Quetzal, Maya. He understood them. Those copper-colored Cimmerians on whose far shore his trireme had been driven had called themselves Mayas, and they had termed him Quetzal, and bowed down in worship.

  “Your tongue is unknown to me, my friend of a future that is now,” he said calmly. “But I recognize the words Quetzal and Maya. The barbarians called me Quetzal; why, I do not know. But I am Kleon of Athens, who had journeyed far with mighty Alexander, and whose ship had been driven to a strange coast. There was no return; Hotep and the Egyptian slaves burned the ship. It was not meet for a Greek to rust out his life with barbarians. I therefore availed myself of certain magic taught me by the gymnosophists and slept into the future, hoping then to meet beings fitter to converse with an Athenian. Ten thousand years should have elapsed. I confess I am taken with your presence, stranger, but these two others are beneath my notice. Are they perchance your slaves?”

  Sam Ward did not even know he had slid his gun back into its holster. This was becoming entirely too incredible. First two weakling creatures who spoke a distorted English, yet were obviously of an advanced civilization. Now the god in shining armor, risen from the dead, speaking in ancient Greek, avowing matters beyond all possibility. For Sam had studied Greek at college and recognized the long surges, the mighty flow of that noblest of all languages.

  He shook his head violently to clear his addled brain. Ten thousand years ahead! That meant eight thousand years for him. Good Lord! Had he slept that long? Were these others representatives of that far-distant future? He opened his mouth to speak, fumbling for the dimly remembered Greek.

  But Tomson had decided that enough time had been wasted. He had understood the tongue of the man in the coarse-fibered clothes, but not this other in shining metal.

  “Enough,” he interrupted peremptorily. “These are matters for Gano, the head of the Olgarchs, to settle. You will come with me.”

  Sam was slowly regaining his poise. His pulses even leaped at the incredible adventure that was opening its doors to him. “O. K.,” he said. “Lead on to this Gano.”

  But Kleon did not move. He had not followed Tomson’s words, but the gesture was unmistakable. He took no orders from a slave.

  Sam read his mind and grinned. “It’s all right, friend Kleon, alias Quetzal,” he translated haltingly into Greek. “These men are from that future you told me about. They are not my slaves. I am from another time myself, some two thousand years after you. Sam Ward is my name, and my country America. It did not exist in your day. I stumbled into your pyramid, and slept along with you. I don’t think they mean us any harm.”

  Kleon’s face lighted with gladness and a certain astonishment. “You speak Greek, Sam Ward, yet you speak it as a barbarian would. The accents are false and the quantities wrong.” Sam grimaced wryly at that. His professors at college had been most careful in inculcating those accents and quantities. They represented the true Attic Greek in all its purity, they had averred.

  “As for fear of harm”—Kleon straightened himself proudly, gestured significantly with sword and javelin—”these, my good weapons, are sufficient protection against such puny things as these men of the future.”

  Sam knew better. He had a hunch that even his own six-chambered revolver, with its fleet spew of death, might not be able to cope with the unimaginable weapons available to the year 10,000 A. D. Brawn, cold steel, meant little in such a case. But, of course, Kleon knew of nothing beyond the sword, the spear and bow.

  Nevertheless, they followed the pair. Tomson and Harri, in spite of appearance, radiated a certain power, a certain feeling that it would be wise not to resist. They came to the great conveyor tube. Sam looked up its circular orifice, stretching almost five thousand feet aloft, and wondered. Were they expected to climb those smooth, coldly glowing walls’?

  Tomson jerked resistor packs from an emergency kit, strapped them on the two strangers. “Do as I do,” he said, “and do not fear.”

  Sam moved the lever over obediently. Kleon understood and followed suit. Sam Ward could not repress a startled cry; Kleon called upon Hermes, the god of swiftness. They were catapulting upward at breath-taking speed.

  Sam caught glimpses of a mighty civilization as he fled smoothly up: platforms which led into levels crowded with swarming humanity; huge machines that glowed and blasted and spun and gyrated; endless quarters; glittering miles of strange sights; laboratories; enormous sectors of fiery tumult, tier on tier, until he grew dizzy.

  Then, new levels—a different world. Underneath lay teeming life, sprawling vastness, machinery, technique. Here were soft green patches shimmering under dewy artificial luminance; flowers of strange blooms and stranger fragrance; a soft, lapping interior lake, blue as cobalt, warmed and perfumed; multicolored buildings, spaciously set, gracious with curves and melting outlines; noble figures who gazed through transparent sections at their upward rush with incurious eyes and returned to their dalliance.

  Then, suddenly, the mighty shaft ended. Tomson gestured and switched the lever to neutral. Sam and Kleon did likewise. Harri had quit them at the level of the lesser Technicians. Only the chief Technicians could converse with the Olgarchs.

  They glided to a halt, whipped over to a landing platform. For an awful moment Sam thought he was slipping, would plummet downward the five thousand feet he had journeyed. The solid stance felt grateful to his muscles.

  Tomson beckoned them on. A frescoed panel opened. They went in.


  A simultaneous exclamation burst from ancient Greek and middle-period American alike. Sam blinked. At first it seemed as if they had come out upon a sky of lambent hue. Above them stretched a vault like that of heaven itself, with glowing stars, a silver moon that swung in slow orbit from side to side. Then he realized what it was. A very cunning and magnificent representation, on a vaulted dome, of an ancient sky, projected by invisible mechanisms, even like the planetariums of the twentieth century. Which meant that this building, or city, or world, whichever it might be, was wholly inclosed from the rest of earth—a cosmos self-contained, unitary.

  He had not long to speculate. Tomson beckoned them into a tear-drop conveyance of white metal. They got in. A pressure on an inset and they darted off, rising low in the air, skimming over the level at a speed that Sam estimated at five hundred miles per hour. Yet there was no motor, no gears, no whirling propeller. Nor did the wind whip through them as it should. Sam could only figure that somehow the strange vehicle carried its own shell of air along with it.

  Kleon pressed close to him, gripped his sword fiercely. This was magic beyond his knowledge. Sam grinned encouragingly at the Greek. “Something like this was in my time also,” he told him. “It is better than horses or chariots.”

  An understanding had arisen between the two. They felt closer akin to each other than to Tomson, who represented the future. And Sam, however lamely, could speak the Grecian tongue.

  Sam leaned over the side, breathless. It was paradise over which they were skimming. Everywhere, up to the dim slope of the domed horizon, were white-glowing dwellings, noble parks, artificial lakes, limpid, pellucid; skimming cars like their own, carrying commanding figures, tall as themselves, nobly proportioned, quite unlike the Technician who guided them. Nowhere was there any sign of machinery, of activating power, of the teeming swarms of the lower levels.

  “Something tells me,” Sam gritted between his teeth, “I’m not going to like this.”

  But there was no time for further observations. The conveyor car dipped, glided to the ground in front of a building gleaming in blue and gold. They were in a great park. Fountains splashed; music played softly; trees festooned with bright orange blossoms waved in an invisible breeze.

  They got out quietly. Tomson stepped upon an oblong section of red metal; bowed toward the blank walls of the building with low genuflection. Sam watched him with narrowed eyes.

  Kleon nodded with a pleased smile. “I knew he was but a slave,” he said to the strange companion with whom he had been thrust into this future. “Only a slave would bend so humbly. Soon we shall meet his lord. I, a free Greek, am the equal of any one.”

  A voice issued from the building. “Enter, Tomson. You have done well.” The wall seemed to roll back on itself. They went in. The wall retracted behind them.

  * * * *

  V.

  Tomson said nervously, “Forgive this unusual intrusion, head of the Olgarchs. But this is a problem which only you can solve.”

  Sam and Kleon stood a little apart, both straight and proudly erect. Of an equal height, the Greek was blond and blue-eyed, chiseled of feature; the American darker-hued, weather-tanned, keen of eye, firm-chinned. Two thousand years of civilization separated them; yet they were both men, in the sense that Tomson, for all his trained knowledge and intellectuality, was not.

  Blue eyes and gray gazed steadily at Gano, head of the Olgarchs, apex of the city of Hispan. Gano did not resemble much the other Olgarchs of whom they had caught fleeting glimpses. He was thickset, sturdy of body and limb, with a massive head and craggy features. His hair was midnight black and his nose boldly jutting. But his eyes were decisive, penetrating, yet impenetrable themselves. He sat on a low divan, his long, thin fingers idling over a desk panel before him on which colored squares glowed and darkened in irregular succession. A signal board, Sam rightly decided.

  Gano nodded. “I know, Tomson,” he said brusquely, as one too busy to waste precious moments. “I have received visor-signals of your find and of your coming.” He turned, surveyed the two men of an older day keenly from under shaggy brows, said, “One speaks the language of Hispan, in a fashion. The other does not. We must remedy that.” He raised his voice slightly. “Beltan, take these creatures whom the foundations of our city have yielded and teach them the proper speech, so that we may converse at ease.”

  From a corner of the long, simply furnished room a figure arose. Sam had not noticed him before. He came toward them casually. He smiled and his whole face lighted with the brightness of his smile. Sam warmed to him at once. “This chap is more like it,” he told himself.

  Beltan was an Olgarch, one of the ruling class, but he did not seem to take his position seriously. He even grinned at Tomson. It made the Technician uneasy. It was not proper. He knew his place in the scheme of things, and Beltan should likewise. But Kleon relaxed his grip on his sword. He, too, recognized a man in this Olgarch of the future, a man after his own heart.

  “Strange,” thought Sam, watching the pair, “how alike they are! Proud poise of head, bright, tawny hair, clean-cut, classical features, a certain arrogance of those who never knew superiors. They’ll hit it off pretty well —even if ten thousand years separate them. As for me”—he shrugged his shoulders—”this Beltan looks all right. But Gano, the others, the whole set-up, I’m afraid that-”

  Beltan said with a certain light mockery, “Come with me, you two who have survived from some remote past. Let me teach you the nice intricacies of our proper tongue. Then you may judge if it were wise for you to leave your own time for the noble hierarchy that is Hispan.”

  “At times,” Gano cut in sharply, “your nonsense bores me, Beltan.”

  The young Olgarch bowed. There was a twinkle in his eye. “At times it bores me, too, noble Gano. That is one of the penalties of having been born an Olgarch.”

  Gano frowned, turned abruptly to the Technician. “Return to your duties, Tomson.”

  * * * *

  The chief Technician muttered submissive words, fled from the room. There was a shocked expression on his face. Sam grinned. Tomson, he felt, had a good bit of a Mid-Victorian Philistine in his make-up.

  Kleon muttered aside to the American. “What do they say?”

  “They say,” Sam told him, “they will teach us their tongue. I know something of it already. But for you it may be hard.”

  Beltan took them out of the council chamber, into a side room on whose walls abstract figures were stamped in gold.

  “How,” inquired Sam, “do you expect to make much headway with my very recent friend, Kleon? He is a Greek before my time, and knows nothing of English.”

  “English?” repeated Beltan with raised eyebrows. “Ah, you mean Hispana. He will learn as fast as you who have a smattering. Perhaps you are not familiar with the Inducto-learner.” He waved toward a metal helmet suspended at the end of a long, transparent tube, whose other end entered the ceiling and disappeared.

  Sam shook his head. “Never heard of it,” he confessed. “In my day we spent half our life learning things and the other half in forgetting them.”

  Beltan laughed. “We Olgarchs waste no time in achieving knowledge. It comes to us ready-made. The Technicians toil and we garner the fruits. It is simple enough. An Olgarch on birth, or you, for that matter, place your head within the reception chamber. Short waves, oscillating at high speeds, and automatically attuned to the wave length of your particular brain, pulse through the tube. The latter leads to the cubicles of the chief Technicians. At the signal, the proper Technician adjusts his own sending unit. He concentrates on the subject of which knowledge is desired. His thoughts, converted into current, are transmitted inside your skull, make the necessary impress on your neurone paths. Behold, you have learned, well and painlessly.”

  Sam was impressed. “And the Technicians, do they learn the same way?”

  Beltan looked surprised. “Of course not. This is for the Olgarchs only. But do you enter, Sam Ward.�
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  Sam hesitated, grinned and placed his head boldly within the helmet. Beltan made the necessary adjustment. Then he pressed buttons on an instrument board.

  At first Sam felt only a gentle tingling, a slight massage of his skull. Then words began to flow into his consciousness, thoughts which he had not originated. His mind was no longer his own; alien speech beat upon him—words that were the same as those to which he had been accustomed, yet strangely distorted, clipped, shorn of unnecessary syllables. Subtly, the feeling grew that this was right and proper, the older speech an anachronism, not fit for present use.

  When Beltan gestured for the removal of the helmet Sam was speaking Hispana, the English of the ninety-eighth century. “There, you see,” remarked the Olgarch approvingly. “It is all very simple. And now, Kleon, who have been called the Greek, do you likewise.”