story1

Working Title: XMA-1

Arrivals

    DoctorAndrea Gamble looked out over her work, and found it good. Shading hereyes against the setting sun, she surveyed the dig site with its neatgrid of stakes and cords, checkered by test pits that already seemed topromise unusually rich finds. She remembered wondering why thesepeople, so deeply time-lost that no hint of what they had calledthemselves survived, had chosen to live on this sere, ungenerous WestTexas hardpan, until that wonderful day when she had uncovered thatfirst, unmistakable Clovis point, twin to those found at the famousGault site. She had been almost sick with excitement. It incidentallyanswered her question – when that piece of chert had been dropped,these had been fertile grasslands, watered by the retreating Wisconsinglaciation – and also pushed the dating of the site at least tenthousand years into the past. And she, with a nearly new doctorate andundeniably limited field experience, was the principal investigator! Sofar, her luck was almost beyond belief, and she was willing to overlook some perplexing details as long as the miracle continued.
    There was areal chance that she would jeopardize her career by some mistake thatgreater experience might have avoided, a challenge she met in part bybeing very procedurally doctrinaire, and otherwise by trying to notfret over it too much. As she was doing now. Her thoughts returned tothe site. So meagre was the knowledge won by the hard and exactinglabor of herself and her peers that even willful fantasy could raiselittle more than the shadows of the shades of these people. They hadleft little more than a litter of often ambiguous stone tools, charcoalfrom their fires (valuable charcoal, she reminded herself) and ofcourse their bones, such as the skeleton at the bottom of the pit ather feet. Something about the iliac crest of the partially uncoveredpelvis, the wear on the teeth scattered around the collapsed skull andthe gracile form of an exposed femur said young female to her trainedeye, an all but unconscious twitch of her analytical mind as she sought to know the truth of these nameless people.
    Thelowering sun slowly filled the pit with shadow, and the western sunsetbreeze cooled her brow and stirred her unbound chestnut hair as shestood musing over the bones. The site was on the low, broad south bankof an ancient, silted up dry wash, oriented almost perfectly in aneast-west direction, which tended to channel the winds somewhat. Fineiron-bearing Saharan dust, lifted by African storms and katabaticwinds, picked up by the easterly Trades and sifted down over aresentful world made toxic algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico, killedhecatombs of marine life and aggravated asthmatics. Here, it made thesunset a garish display, and she briefly imagined it as the result of acelestial traffic accident, perhaps the chariot of impetuous PhoebusApollo T-boning the barque of Ra and filling the western sky with fireand blood. She shivered. Suddenly she was startled from her abstraction by the crunch of an approaching step.
    As sheturned, she felt a stone beneath her right foot shift and give way,falling into the pit. After a brief, futile flailing for balance, sheagain felt the familiar sensations of a fall, a sort of complicatedexasperation. There was not enough time to recover, but there seemedplenty of time to wonder how she would hit, to make a swift catalogueof the injuries possible from a two meter fall, and a sudden worryabout how she might damage the skeleton, and even the surprisingdiscovery that she had somehow conceived an irrational sympathy for theyoung lady below. But before she was fairly started down, she felt abrawny arm lock around her chest and heard a grunt of masculine effortclose by her ear. Whoever it was seemed uncommonly strong. She was nosylph, and loaded with a good forty pounds of gear besides, but after abrief and ponderous dance with gravity and inertia he drew her back from the pit and set her on her feet.
    Her saviorregarded her with a curious, tentative smile. He seemed almost thesomatic antithesis of the people she was studying. He overtopped herown five feet eight by a good ten inches, with a mop of curlygold-blonde hair and pale blue eyes, and the painful-looking sunburnthat was unavoidable with naturally fair skin under the merciless Texas sun immediately engaged her sympathies.
    “Are you alright?” he asked, with just a hint of a German accent.
    “Fine,thanks to you,” she replied. “Your arrival was very . . timely.” He bobbed his head, smile growing fractionally wider.
    “Ahh - who are you?” she asked.
    “Klaus vonNeumann, at your service” he said, and sketched a half-bow. He seemedalmost a Teutonic caricature, even wearing lederhosen and a BundeswehrT-shirt, all quite over-the-top if it was conscious affectation, andabsurd desert wear. She felt an unaccustomed difficulty in findingsomething to say, still somewhat shaken by her near-fall, and a silencefell which began to feel awkward. He seemed not at all put out. Hecalmly took a small leather case from a pocket and removed a monoclefrom it, which he solemnly screwed into one eye. Then he clicked hisheels, producing a surprisingly loud pop from his Nikes, and bowed stiffly from the waist.
    She hadalways found self-parody an engaging trait, and at this she lost it,and burst into gales of laughter, which he joined after a brief attemptto keep a straight face. Her initial reserve seemed to have blown away with the breeze.
    “You mustbe the observer from Leipzig,” she said. “We expected you to get here yesterday.”
    “And so Iwould have,” he replied, putting his monocle away, “had I not damagedthe display of my GPS. Without it, this place is not easy to find.” Hehad the studied, almost stilted-sounding lack of regional accent common in educated Europeans.
    “Well, ourday is done here,” she said, “and you might as well bunk in the maintent for tonight. There’s plenty of room, and you won’t be cramping anyone tomorrow when the shovelbums come back. We lost a couple today.”
    “Lost? Nothing serious, I hope?”
    “Not very.One lady got a broken finger, and by coincidence the oaf who was responsible got tagged by a diamondback soon after.”
    “A diamondback?” he asked.
    “Arattlesnake.” Because she had noticed that Europeans often had anexaggerated idea of the lethality of crotalids, she added “He’ll bepretty sick for a while, but he’ll survive.” Some impish impulse made her add “Probably.”
    Klausfrowned briefly, and then said “It may be that I could use a quick course on the dangers of this place.”
She smiled slightly and said,“There really isn’t much. The most likely danger is sunstroke.” She hadbeen peripherally aware for some time of the furtive scuttling of thetarantulas along the ground, something they did every sunset for someunknown spidery reason, and one ran almost across her feet, like a giftfrom the gods of cheap drama. She bent down and scooped it up with apracticed motion, and displayed it to him on her palm. They were notfriendly, cuddly creatures, but properly handled they usually didn’t bite, and it was no big deal if they did.
    “Theseguys, for instance, are almost harmless.” The tarantula played its partperfectly, shifting with sudden, jerky movements, big black fangsshuttling like some sort of lethal sewing machine, looking asun-harmless as possible. The oblique rays of the setting sun caught itseight clustered eyes, making them glow a chatoyant, baleful red. Klaussaid “Gott – “ stared at it in horrified fascination, and backed up a step, and quickly glanced down around his own feet.
    Suddenlyembarrassed by her own theatrics, Andrea set the spider down and turnedaway. It had not occurred to her that he might be an arachnophobe.
    “You haveto check for scorpions in your sleeping bag every evening, and in yourboots before you put them on. They fluoresce green under ultraviolet,and you can borrow one of the geologists’ black lights for that, if youwish. Most of the snakes around here are not poisonous, but any of themmight bite, so you’d best stay away from all of them. Anyway, the tent is over here.”
    Theystarted on the pathtoward the tents and temporary buildings down on the wash, where it wasat least reasonably level, with the parking lot beyond. Most of thepersonnel preferred to stay in the nearest town, Xebico, sixty milesaway. A tiny town, but it had an air-conditioned motel and a fairlygood Mexican restaurant. They passed a bulky, cylindrical device thatlooked like an oil drum standing on end, with a complicated assembly oflenses, mirrors, antennas and less identifiable structures on top. Itwas making an eerie, high-pitched keening noise. She gestured at it in passing, and said, “I guess that's the main reason why you’re here.”
    “Ah,” hesaid, stopping andstudying it with the rapt expression of the gadget-happy male. “If what I’ve read is correct, it is an amazing device. Can you demonstrate it?”
    “Sure” shesaid. She removed aheadband-like device from one of her many pockets, and said “Bring your head down here.” She quickly fitted the band and inserted the earplug.
    “Now stand,and look toward the dig site, and say “quix.”
    “Quix?” hesaid, and startedas the headband extruded a transparency over his left eye, like a hightech version of his monocle. “I see a point of green light - ah. A virtual image.” No dummy here, she thought.
    “’Quix’ isa control word,selected because nobody is likely to say it in conversation, tellingthe system that the next words will be a command sequence” she said.“Now say ‘Quix full view.’” He dutifully repeated the words, andgasped. She smiled slightly, remembering her own first exposure to the gadget.
   He wasseeing the site overlaid with a grid of thin, bright red lines, whichmade the cords and stakes seem a crude approximation. Tiny beads oflight on the grid lines would expand into text blocks when regarded formore than a second, giving GPS coordinates to eight places. Across thetop of his field of vision were the icons for the clock/calendar, noterecorder, communicator, emergency beacon, several calibration functionsand others which she had never had occasion to remember. The wholepicture was overlaid by complex, rippled surfaces of pale pink, cyanand green, indicating the vector and intensity of local geomagnetic andgravitational fields and tentative isochrons. Atop all of this were theyellow curves and loops of the local topography, automaticallymaintained and adjusted by the system. The one function which sheprivately considered truly indispensable was represented by a smallblock of digits giving the local temperature and humidity, cumulativeultraviolet exposure and the user’s core body temperature, measured byinfrared radiation from the eardrum and monitored by the earplug. Thiswas by no means all the information available for display, but eventhis much tended to create visual confusion. It was dazzling, brilliant- but it had an overwhelming downside, which she, almost regretfully, had to tell him.
    “Amazing!” he said.
    “Yes, itis,” she replied,“But unfortunately, it’s largely useless. Think about it. What do thosefunctions actually add to what we’re doing here?” This was all a bitmuch for him to cope with - it had, after all, taken her several daysof hands-on experience to arrive at her opinions, and he was stillrather distracted by the fantasia he was looking at, so she added“Never mind. You’ll have plenty of time to think about it. You can talk to the designer tomorrow, if you like.”
    “Very muchso” he replied,then thought a second and tried “Quix off.” The headband obedientlyretracted the visor and switched itself off. She knew that wassomething of a downer, as the colorful, mentally engaging dataworlddisappeared and was replaced by this dreary stretch of desert, nowalmost completely dark. Almost regretfully, he removed the headband andhanded it to her. “Don’t worry,” she smiled, “you’ll be fitted withyour own tomorrow.” He seemed slightly cheered by this. They continueddown one of the beaten paths leading to the wash, bottoming out withits own small alluvial fan onto a narrow plain tessellated by curledplates of dried mud, with the cracks between them drawn in bold relief by the low sun.
    “And now,the tent is overthere,” she said, pointing, “and the, ahem, sanitary facilities areover there, and you want to keep a watch on the water level if you takea shower. We have a tank truck that comes in and tops off the waterevery morning. Just take any bunk that looks unoccupied. You’re toolate for dinner, but I’ve got a few MREs, and you’re welcome to pickone. And, some annoying busybody will get you up in the morning a long time before you’re ready.”
    “Ah,” hesaid, and looked offinto the darkness. Then he looked at her with a curious intentness forseveral seconds, and then seemed to relax. She vaguely wondered whatall that was about. “I believe I’ll pass on that MRE,” he said,suddenly merry, “and I believe I now know enough to get on with. Goodnight.” Again he bowed and clicked his heels, softly, leaving her chuckling as he strode off to the tent, picking his way with a new care.
    Andrea wentto her own nest,the Executive Palace, a dilapidated Airstream trailer clearlyconstructed in some remote era when Americans were much smaller thanthey are now. As she luxuriously scaled off layers of gear and clothes,she vaguely wondered what sort of changes were coming with Klaus, andwhy she felt an elusive unease; ‘Coming events cast their shadowsbefore them,’ as Shakespeare, or maybe Scott, had said. But all that was soon lost in sleep.

Under the Sun

    As usual,she did not awakensweetly as some woman in a Nytol commercial, but to the smell of hotmetal, hot fabric, hot ground, and her own sweat. There was thechunking of car doors, a gabble of talk, the jingle and clank of gear,and some sadist had started the generator, a hulking Russian surplusitem of unclear provenance, driven by a four-cylinder diesel enginewith pistons almost the size of gallon buckets. It was monstrouslyoverpowered for their requirements, but it was acquired for littlemoney in some sort of swap which she prudently made a point of notknowing about. The shell of her trailer trembled with the violence ofits operation, and she was glad that it was no closer than it was to the dig site. For alltheir noise, theshovelbums wouldn’t seriously start to work until she motivated them.Sighing, but with some pleasurable anticipation, she gathered up hershower togs and headed out for the first, last, and all too brief time in the day when she would feel clean.
    Ten minuteslater, she was ina puppy-stomping mood. Julio Jimenez, who was supposed to keep thewater tank filled, was a no-show and she would have to start the dayhot and sweaty. At least she could get some satisfaction from reamingout the supply company, and then remembered that they could only becontacted by the ruinously expensive satellite phone, since thisdesolate area was too remote to be covered by a cellphone repeater.Scowling, she stalked back to her trailer, and jerked her clothes on,while mentally savoring what she was going to say. She felt a savagepleasure that Julio’s irritating “No habla Ingles” act wasn’t going to work, since her own Spanish was, if anything, better than his.
    Savoring afew smoking phrasesin her mind, she headed out to the machine, which integrated thesatellite phone along with almost all of the other electronicnecessities. As she drew near, she saw that the machine’s designer, Mr.Tradescent, (“Call me Mike”) had arrived and was running some sort of maintenance on a laptop plugged into the machine.
    He lookedup and said “Goodmorning” in his mellifluous bass-baritone. He was a large, bearded man,with perhaps the most perfect natural poker face she had ever seen. Hewas an odd one. A superficial affability and a small range of learnedsocial behaviors concealed a level mind that seemed to look at theworld and could not look away, and his affect was too intent, toodirect. Many, especially women, seemed to find him obscurelythreatening, but Andrea liked and trusted him. He had originally shownup with the device at the behest of the Wilmarth Foundation, which waspaying the bills, and he was somehow instrumental in procuring thegenerator. He had thrown himself into the chores of pulling cables andwiring fuse-boxes with such cheerful abandon that she had originallytaken him for a happy idiot, a mere technician, and it had taken her acouple of weeks to see that he was more than that, though it was notclear what. He wore cargo pants and a tech vest, and all of his manypockets were loaded. Topping off his anti-fashion statement was agimme-cap embroidered with the words “Hapi Man,” probably another example of his often cryptic sense of humor.
    He added,“You will be pleasedto know that the water truck should be along shortly. We passed him onthe way here, and were able to render some assistance with a mechanicaldifficulty.” At his use of the word “we,” she noticed, or was allowedto notice, that he was not alone. He was normally self-effacing to an extraordinary degree, but he held center stage as long as he wanted it.
    “DoctorAndrea Gamble, allowme to introduce Eamonn Duffy, from Dublin. My understudy, one mightsay, who is bringing some interesting new techniques with him. I leaveit to you two to thrash out the familiars and honorifics. Perhaps you can make anagrams from all of your combined degrees.”
    Eamonn gaveMike an irritatedglance, which was ignored, and said to Andrea “I am very pleased tomeet you.” He had a rich, musical brogue, which she found immediatelyattractive. He was, she supposed, what was called black Irish, dressedin cords and with very fair skin and dark hair, now in rather untidybangs. As Andrea and Eamonn began the tentative overtures of smalltalk, Mike returned to tapping on his keyboard, and then looked upagain as Klaus came trotting up, now more reasonably dressed in jeans.
    Andrea said, “Ah, Klaus, this is Michael Tradescent,the designer of this device,” she began.
    Mike added“I’ve decided to call it a polysector, for now. Call me Mike.”
    Andrearesumed, “Designer ofthe polysector, then. This is Eamonn Duffy. Mr. Tradescent, Eamonn, this is Klaus von Neumann.”
    “Is it,now?” said Eamonn, shaking his hand.
    “Gut’Morgen, Herr Doktor”said Mike. Oddly, he did not offer to shake hands, and Klaus did notappear to notice the omission. The three men fell into a technicaldiscussion and Andrea soon began wondering how to escape, when she sawJulio pulling up in the water truck. She hoped that none of the othershad noticed her rather ripe condition - especially Eamonn. She excused herself and went for her shower togs.
    As she wasdressing, after along, luxurious shower, there was a rap at the palace door. “Come in!”she called, and the door opened a crack. “Are you decent?” Mike’s heavyvoice asked, and she replied “No, but I’m clothed.” He let himself inand stood looking around at her bric-a-brac as she speed-laced herboots. Abruptly, something in one of his pockets caught his attention,and he removed a small device with a flashing point of light on it andstood frowning at it while she finished dressing. She stood up and said “Well?”
    For thefirst time since she had known him, he seemed uncertain about something. He said “Ah. Umm, there’s something outside that you need to see.”
    “Well,let’s go,” she said,and followed him out, grabbing her fedora in passing. He forbore anyremarks about Indiana Jones, and led her a few yards from the trailer,away from the main camp, while he peered at his gadget. Then hestopped, and ignored the interrogative lift of her eyebrows as helooked around. His headband, which looked something like a stainlesssteel crown a good deal bulkier than the standard model, extruded its visor and he scanned their surroundings.
    “Too hot for thermal imaging” he said, apparently to himself, and his headband retracted its screen.
He looked at her and saidgravely “There are a couple of things you need to know.” She interrupted, “How do you do that?”
    “Do what?” he said, frowning.
    “Controlyour headband without speaking.”
    “Brainwaves.” He removed thecrown and showed her the electrodes set into the plastic liner of theband. “It’s a peculiar discipline, which I had to pick up for - anotherproject. You don’t need it, and we don’t have time for this. Listen. Your trailer is bugged.”
    “Bugged?”She was rathersurprised by her own lack of reaction. “So far as I know there’snothing going on there of the slightest interest to anybody.” Havingsaid this, she immediately thought of a couple of uncomfortablepossibilities, but they were of a personal nature, and probably not anything that Mike would care about one way or another.
    “That wasthe idea,” he saidcryptically. He replaced the crown and took several seconds seating itto his own satisfaction, then took another, longer look around,apparently running through several sensor modalities and producingsound effects which she smiled to recognize as Star Trek originals, then shut down everything but an irritating, pulsing whine.
    “Perhapsyou have wondered at certain curious features in the funding for this dig,” he said quietly.
    “Nokidding,” she said. Themoney apparently came from a small, obscure school in Arkham, nearInnsmouth in Massachusetts, which had almost no name for archaeology.There were strange rumors of an Antarctic expedition back in the 1930swhich had ended in some mysterious disaster, but she had been unable tounearth any details. Just another fireside tale, perhaps, and not thestrangest one. The actual amount of money provided was no more thanadequate, and yet they had supplied this polysector, which reeked ofmoney. It was all very peculiar, but under the circumstances she was naturally loath to make any prying inquiries.
    “This sitewas ‘suggested’ bythe funding organization as one of exceptional interest, but theirinterests are not entirely the same as yours,” he said. “They believe,for reasons we need not go into, that there is a certain artifact herethat is of extraordinary importance, and one which they must have. Forwhat it’s worth, I will tell you that they are the good guys, though ofcourse you’ll have to make up your own mind on that. ’By their worksshall ye know them.’ However, there is another party interested, andyou know their agent here as Klaus von Neumann. The real von Neumann is dead. A great loss.”
    “All thiscloak and daggercrap is irrelevant,” she said hotly. “Any artifacts found will beproperly catalogued, described and curated, and any poaching or theftwill be reported to the proper authorities, no matter who’s paying for this operation.”
    He nodded, and said “The sentiment is natural andhonorable, and one of the reasons you were selected for this job.However, it’s not as big an obstacle as you might imagine. If thisartifact is at all what we think it is, your reporting it will make youthe laughingstock of your profession, and cast strong doubts on all ofyour previous contributions. How would it feel to have your name publicly linked to that of, say, Erich von Däniken?”
    As shefumed, he did somethingrare for him, and reached out and clasped her shoulder gently.“Understand, this is not something that I or anyone else is doing toyou,” he said in a conciliatory tone, his face sincere. “It’s simply inthe nature of the situation.” She said nothing, and he went on “And youmust admit, even aside from this funny business, the site is worthwhile in itself, eh?”
    “Yeah, Isuppose” she saidgrudgingly. “And I’ll just make up my own mind about this whatsit, when and if we find it.”
“Of course” he said. “For now,it would be best and safest to treat ‘Klaus’ just as if he were who he says he is. You may as well get some work out of him, if you can.”
    “I’ll justdo that,” she said,and strode away to motivate the serfs. Mr. Tradescent called after her,“Wait a minute.” He walked to her and handed her a small disc ofgreenish-grey stone, perhaps olivine, about four centimeters indiameter, with a design like a five-pointed star with broken tipscrudely engraved. “For luck,” he said, and smiled. She looked at himdoubtfully, dropped it in a pocket and walked off. Mr. Tradescent shutoff the anti-surveillance whine his headband was making, and staredafter her for a few seconds, his face becoming expressionless. Then he turned and walked to his utility truck. There were things to do.

    The nextfew days proceededsmoothly enough, with only the drama normal to a dig. There werepersonality clashes and one fight, and a lot of griping, a recognizedprerogative of diggers. Small but interesting finds continued to turnup, and there was one work-stopping moment of excitement when animalbones with what looked like tool marks were found, and Andrea wasrequired to make the determination. If they were tool marks, the wholematter would suddenly be exponentially more important, and thedeliberate pace of the work would become dead slow, as toothpicks, softbrushes and low-pressure jets of canned air replaced trowels. Andreabrought out one of her most prized possessions, a fine old Zeiss-Ikonstereomicroscope on a complicated, multi-legged mount which could be adjusted in any plane to give a firm footing in situ.
    From herinitial examinationwith a loupe, She was almost sure that it was a false alarm, but it wasalways necessary to be sure, and she thought it might be a valuablelesson to some of the newbies about how careful one had to be, and howto see the subtle differences. Some people, she knew, never would learnto see it. She took nearly a day examining the marks before concludingthat they were chance scars from stones in the matrix, and the deliberate pace of work resumed, but with a noticeably better morale.
    For severaldays, nothingstrange happened, and Mike’s vague warnings receded in her memory,seeming ever more remote and unreal. He came and went at odd times,often fiddling with the polysector or conferring with Eamonn, but hadlittle more than ordinary pleasantries for Andrea. Once he had askedher if she were still carrying the good luck talisman, and she wassomewhat surprised to find that she was. Apparently she had gotten into the habit of dropping it in a pocket while gearing up.
The polysector itself wentthrough various changes during this time, acquiring some sort ofoptical device that looked like the compound eye of a giganticdragonfly. Another addition looked almost like a Christmas treeornament, an insubstantial-looking glass ball housing what appeared tobe a small, twisted bar of quartz which had an odd twinkling effectabout it, as if it were some sort of optical illusion, or was in somewayunreal. Andrea had no real idea of the function of most of the thingson the polysector, but she was a child of technology and she had a distinct impression that the style of the thing was pretty damnedstrange, to such an extent that it was subtly reassuring to see ordinary bolts and pop rivets holding it together.
    Several newpits were begun,and she was beginning to get some feeling for how this Paleolithicsettlement had been laid out, though still no hint of why this placehad been selected. The usual explanations, she knew, were that theplace had some religious importance, and if so, she might neverunderstand it. Nevertheless she felt a slow fulfillment, fully engaged in her life’s work.
    Eamonnproved an intelligentand helpful observer, not least because he had added greatly to themusic library stored in the polysector, which many of the workerslistened to through their headbands. He assured her that it hadalmost unlimited storage, and had added a large variety of pop, showtunes and light classical music, but greeted suggestions of rap andhip-hop with a sort of fastidious disgust. All that Mike had stored init was a collection of bizarre “ambient noir” and funereal-soundingRussian Orthodox liturgical music, grumbling that he wasn’t sure thatlistening to music during work was a good idea. Aside from thismerciful act, Eamonn was cheerfully willing to pitch in with the grunt work, and seemed to get along well with everyone.
    Klaus, onthe other hand,remained distant but vaguely affable, and could often be seen observingand taking pictures, though rarely turning a hand in labor. Andreabegan to find him rather irritating, but that was his privilege, andshe felt that academic courtesy was one of the marks of the true professional.

Shall These Bones Speak?

    As workprogressed, Andreabegan to have an intuitive feel for the arrangement of the site, whichwas like a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces hidden or lost. Itslowly coalesced into the realization that there was a sort of focalpoint, and she began to bend the team efforts in that direction. Also,her curiosity about this mysterious artifact began to nag at her. Shetook advantage of one of Mike’s erratic visits to learn more. He seemed to expect her questions.
    “Look atthe site,” he said,and narrowed his eyes in concentration. The results of were not tooexciting. Her visor cleared, and then there were two new grids imposedon the visual scene, a more or less flat red one rising to a sharpspicule over one point in the site, and a green one seeming to diveinto the earth at the same point, which was pretty close to where sheimagined the site’s “focal point.” His facility for communion with thepolysector was sometimes a bit disturbing. She knew that the whole sitewas permeated by the low-power microwave and infrared laser radiationthat the polysector used to measure its surroundings and communicatewith the headbands, an alien sea which only he could perceive, letalone navigate. What information, what visions, awaited only herknowledge of invocation? Then she smiled and snorted quietly at her ownimaginings. All this was, after all, the ordinary human condition. And it wasn’t as if Mike hadn’t tried to teach them.
    He went on,“This is not inreal time. It took a lot of number-crunching to produce this image.What you’re seeing is – hmm. Well, you might say that the geomagnetic field is being distorted in a certain way at that point.”
    “You mean,there’s a lump of iron or something there?”
    “No, thisis the opposite ofthat. Something in the earth is refusing to be permeated by the localfield. The Meissner effect, or something analogous. It is only seen insuperconductors, so far as I know. I call it ‘Xebico Magnetic Anomaly One.’”
    “Why one?Is there more than one?”
“No,” he said, and a smilebriefly flickered across his face. Even his simplest expressions oftenseemed to carry a hint of mockery or bitterness. “I think that it’spretty safe to say that there’s only one, but it still needs an ordinal number. Tradition, you know.”
    “Ah. And the green grid?”
    “That’ssome sort of temporal distortion.”
    “Temporal?You mean, timedistortion? How is that possible? And how would you measure a thing like that?”
    “Hmph.Taking the second question first, by the production and decay of strange particles.”
    “Strange?Like the quantum number, strange?”
    “Why, yes,”he said, lookingpleased and slightly surprised. “As to your first question, beats me,”he said. Unlike many confessing ignorance, he seemed happy and excitedby it. “If I may make a suggestion, dig there. You’ll find the topmeter or so of overburden essentially sterile, so you need take no moretrouble with it than you feel you must. And, I would suggest about a ten-by-ten excavation.”
    “Ten by tenmeters? Do you have any idea how much dirt moving that involves?”
He looked at her withoutexpression, and she began to feel slightly embarrassed by her ownquestion. “Anyway, since you’re a representative of this mysterious Wilmarth Foundation, I suppose that’s more than a mere suggestion.”
    Again helooked slightlysurprised. “Not at all. This is your dig. If you were to becomeincapacitated, or decide to walk away, we would find someone to replaceyou, but we would regret the necessity. Until then, it’s all yours. Nosecond-guessing, no nudging, no cannibal accountants. Dig wherever youwant. Use whatever methods seem best to you. That’s the way it has to be.”
    She lookedat himdistrustfully. She had never known him to lie, even by misdirection,but maybe he was just really good at it, or was saving credibilitypoints for a real whopper, and his expression offered no hint one wayor another. She sometimes felt that a less intelligent person might bemore knowable, more trustworthy. Then, on second thought, it occurredto her that a less intelligent person would also be a lot less useful,and that this was probably all just nerves, and nobody was going topull on her leash. There was no leash. It was just that she stilldidn’t fully believe her own incredible luck. And, he was suggestingthat she do more or less what she had already decided on anyway. Her own desire and ambition were more than enough to drive her.

    Again shestood overlookingthe dig, but this time she was barely aware of the setting sun. Thelast five months had been all that Mike had promised, or threatened.The weirdness had begun with an urgent communication from Ian Wren, one of the shovelbums.
    “Hey, Andy,I think you mightbe interested in this.” Her visor showed a diamond-sharp relayed imageof an exposed ridge of apparent bone. He was one of the few who hadbothered to learn some of the more arcane possibilities of the system,and occasionally liked to show it off. She gratefully abandoned theprobably futile attempt to piece together one of the chert cores fromthe debitage littering the site, separating with the speed of longexperience the primary, secondary, reworked and cortex pieces, and trotted over to the Big Pit where he was working.
    Wren lookedup at herhopefully. He had a curiously British face, broad and fleshy, with asmall, censorious-looking mouth, now slightly open with anticipation.She could see at a glance that the bones were not human, and with allthe buildup of the last few months, she felt an urge that she hadthought herself superior to, to grab a shovel and dive in like a pothunter. On the other hand, the correct method had its own rewards, likeforeplay indefinitely prolonged. Really, of course, there were onlysmall choices in the basic procedure, and she began to mentally assemble the necessary resources. This was going to be interesting.

    Which, shelater reflected,was a fantastic understatement. Perhaps the defining moment was whenMike drifted by and looked over what they had uncovered, and observed mildly “That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?”
    Silencespread to everyone inearshot like ripples in a pond, and Andrea stared at him with starkdisbelief. It had never occurred to her that he might have large gapsin knowledge – by her reckoning, apparently gigantic gaps. What theyhad found was so unprecedented, so wrong, that she would not havebelieved it without seeing it herself. Taking a moment to control the incredulity in her voice, she said, “Yes, it’s very unusual.”
    “Ah,” hesaid, and wanderedoff. The first thing they had uncovered, the ridge of bone, had provedto be a spinous process, an attachment point for the heavy muscles andligaments on a massive lumbar vertebra of a Columbian mammoth.Further excavation revealed a complete ring of vertebrae, clearlyassembled from several individuals but fairly matched for size. Asidefrom these, no other mammoth bones were found on the site. Outside thisring, of about three meters in diameter, was another ring composed offour human skeletons, provided with a trove of Clovis points and boneatlatls. There had undoubtedly been wooden projectile shafts and otherimplements, but they had long since disintegrated. Looking down on thisarrangement from the edge of the pit, it seemed to Andrea that thebodies had been buried on their sides, placed at more or less ninetydegrees apart and facing outward, although she was familiar with the ways that burial could distort human remains.
    Taking thecomposition as awhole – with one exception – she felt a kind of sorrow which she couldnever have articulated. These people would be completely and finallydead and lost when she failed, as she must fail, to figure out whatthis extraordinary construction had meant, and this site would bedestroyed in the attempt. Could the reams of paper, the hundreds ofsketches and photographs, preserve it as well as the patient Earthhad? Would the wisdom of the future condemn her actions? This was thefundamental dilemma of all archaeology, and it was one that each field worker had to come to terms with as best she could.
    The oneexception to theseconsiderations was the Artifact. As much as her mind shied away fromcoming to grips with it, it seemed obvious that it had been ofcentral importance here. It was a disc of about 1.5 meters in diameter,slightly convex on its upper surface, composed of some unknown purplishmaterial that felt like polished ceramic. For all its having beenburied under tons of sand and rock for millennia, it seemed to have animmaculate, optically perfect surface. Obviously whatever it was made of was extremely hard. Ithad an embedded pattern ofwhite swirls and sinuous curves which reminded her of something thatthat she couldn’t quite recall, until she had it under her microscope.The patterns revealed fuzzy edges under low magnification, whichrevealed still more patterns, similar but different, under highermagnification and so on to the limits of her microscope, where therewas still a tantalizing hint of pattern. Then she remembered an oldScientific American offprint. She was looking at actual examples ofsomething that she had thought to be a purely mathematical whimsy,fractals, or fractional dimensions. She was disappointed when Mikeseemed only mildly surprised by this, but he also didn’t claim to know what it meant. She laid plans for closer access.
    The fourskeletons, clockwisefrom the northernmost one, were dubbed Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.After innumerable photographs and a demand for sketches which almostcaused red mutiny from Mary, their best sketch artist, she resolved toremove Alpha. And, she thought that she would use a new technique that Eamonn had been telling her about. She assembled a team.

    “Alright,listen up. We’regoing to remove Alpha, and we’re going to try this new technique thatEamonn showed us. Do you pole people feel up to it?” As the ones whowould have to perform the trickiest operation, the pole people hadpracticed for a couple of days under Eamonn’s guidance, and there wereno objections now. “Okay, as the Principal Investigator and headhoncho, I get to run the zap gun.” This produced a stir and a fewsmiles from her audience, but aside from a few quiet chuckles, nobodyspoke up. She clapped her hands and said, “Alright, timber pimps,rustle timbers!” This miner’s expression was not really appropriate,but she thought it had a stirring sound. Most of the hangers-onretreated to the awning to get out of the sun, waiting for the show tostart, while the working party trudged down to the storage tent, soonreturning with the poles, several lengths of rough board, a roll ofsilvery plastic film and other gear, including the zap gun, which was trailing a heavy black cable back to the generator down on the wash.
    The “timberpimps” quicklybuilt a rough box of a size to contain Alpha, with eye bolts screwed inalong the top and sides, while the pole people chose their locationscarefully and limbered up their insulating poles, actually lengths ofPVC pipe. Eamonn eyed the box that the pimps were building, andunrolled and cut a sheet of the silvery plastic film on the ground of asize to cover it with some overlap. While this was going on, Andrea seta red plastic milk crate in the center of the square of the four polehandlers and set the zap gun on it, then went to get the rod driver.She used this simple tool, little more than a piece of heavy iron pipewelded closed at one end, to drive a piece of steel rebar about half ameter into the ground within half a meter of the milk crate, and thenborrowed somebody’s canteen and poured a pint or so of water around it.She then picked up the zap gun and stepped atop the crate, and waited.Eamonn had affixed the corners of the plastic sheet onto the ends ofthe poles by simple clips that could be released by the handlers, and after a quick look over the setup he took up one of the poles himself.
After a brief hesitation –this was the real deal, and a lot was riding on it – he said “Ready.”He and the other three pole handlers lifted their poles in carefulunison, holding the plastic sheet more or less flat in front of Andrea.She lifted the zap gun. It was a simple device, containing a high-speedfan, a set of heating coils and a high voltage power supply feeding aset of ionizing points, each controlled by a switch on the side of thehousing. It got its name from the fact that the metal housing was alarge, chrome plated affair with vaguely Art Deco styling which wouldhave looked at home on the cover of a 1940’s “Amazing Stories.” Thenshe said “Wait a minute,” and set the gun down, to the frowns of thepole handlers, which changed to smiles as she unbound her hair and picked up the zap gun again.
    “Zap!” shecried, and turnedon the first two switches, for the fan and high voltage. The gunreplied with the high-pitched scream of the fan, propelling a cloud ofions at the plastic sheet. The plastic was coated with a conductive buthighly resistive film, and was taking on an enormous static charge asshe swept her stream of ions slowly back and forth, and the sharp,musty smell of ozone soon became oppressive. Of course she was takingon an equal and opposite charge, and she felt her hair stirring andfinally standing straight out from her head, like a brown dandelionseed. She visualized what she must look like now, and repressed agiggle. Finally, she felt her clothes begin to stand out from her body,and a rather unpleasant sensation as if ants were crawling on her skin.
    “Now!” shecried, and turnedoff the high voltage. The pole handlers, moving with carefulcoordination, maneuvered the sheet over the remains of Alpha and,keeping it as level as possible, let it down. The electrostatic chargeforced the sheet into close conformity with the bones, as if it weresucked down by a vacuum, but with a gentle insistence that eased off asthe charge bled away on contact. Andrea turned and touched the zap gunto the grounding spike beside her crate, and as her charge neutralizedwith a vicious snapping spark, her hair tumbled down around hershoulders and her clothes settled around her body. She shook the hairout of her eyes and turned on the third switch, the heating coils. Thedistant racket of the generator now picked up an emphatic note, as itwas called on to deliver real power. She stepped off the crate andwalked up to where Alpha now looked as if he had been silver-plated.The zap gun was now like a giant hair dryer, and as she swept it backand forth over Alpha the plastic softened and shrank slightly. The heatwas almost unbearable, but it was soon done. “Well done,” as someself-appointed wit among the spectators muttered. It may have beenMike. She turned off the zap gun, and the fan whined down into silence,accompanied by the crinking sounds of cooling metal. Then the timberpimps came up with their box, and set it down around Alpha, then pickedit up again by the eye bolts and roughly trimmed the bottom edge withmachetes for a better fit to the ground. They laid it back down again,and Eamonn came on with the foam pack, two pressurized cylindersconnected together through a mixing valve to a length of pipe. Heinserted the pipe into a hole which had been left in the box for thispurpose, and triggered the valve. With a muted hiss, the box began tofill with rapidly expanding plastic foam, extruding blobs of pearlywhite like whipped cream through the cracks and gaps in the box. Thesesmall losses didn’t matter, so long as the box was filled, and indeedthere was enough to push a billow of the stuff out through a gap in theend of the box. The cylinders were a one-shot, and once triggered,there was no way to shut them off. After they had emptied, Eamonnremoved the tube and said, “Well, it’s done. We’ll let it set overnight, and see what we’ve got tomorrow.”
    There was asmattering ofapplause led by Mike. It seemed to her that he had somehow contrived toput a sarcastic note into his applause, but thinking about it later, itoccurred to her that sarcastic clapping would have required a truemiracle of expressiveness, never one of his strong points. She feltuncomfortable about something, vaguely apprehensive. Almost alarmed, infact. She tried to shake the feeling. Things seemed to be going verywell. After a few hours of setting time, the foam would harden enoughto allow them to lift Alpha intact, and the chemical reaction thatgenerated the gas that made the foam expand also produced a photolyticagent, so that the foam would crumble into inert dust when exposed tointense ultraviolet light. The plastic film could be stripped off afterthe application of moderate heat. Altogether an ingenious system, shethought, far superior to the old cheesecloth and plaster of Paris method. She was proud of Eamonn.

    Early thenext day, theaudience had gathered again for the liftoff. It went off perfectly,with anticlimactic ease, showing Alpha completely intact when the boxwas turned over, looking as if he had been submerged in a pool of dirtymercury. A layer of ordinary foam rubber was rolled over the exposedsurface, and boards were attached across the bottom of the box with athick, gummy, quick-setting adhesive from a caulking gun. There wouldbe no hammering on this box. After the adhesive had set, four of theteam picked it up and carried it down to the base camp, looking for allthe world like litter bearers, and indeed there did seem to be a common feeling of triumphal procession as the rest of the crew followed.
    Eamonn andAndrea had remainedbehind, turning attention to the artifact, which was at last easilyaccessible. It sat on a base of solid granite, so that there was noapparent chance of disturbing anything else below. She ran her handover the polished surface, feeling its incredible smoothness, and something else, a strangely persistent sense of déjà vu.
Eamonn asked, “May I borrowyour hammer?”, took the proffered Estwing and inserted the pick endunder the edge of the disk and levered it up with surprising ease.Whatever it was made of seemed much lighter than stone or metal, and itrevealed what looked like a vertical shaft descending into darkness.The surface of the shaft looked glassy and fused, as if it were a lavatube. But of course, they were within the bounds of the Stable InteriorCraton, various odds and ends of Mesozoic sedimentary material laidover primordial plutonic granite, and there had been no volcanicactivity around here for at least sixty million years. Even if therehad been, some freakish, unprecedented hot spot in the mantle beneath,such a fragile structure would not have survived erosion so long in any case. The bones of the land were close here.
    As shepeered under the edgeof the disc, Andrea felt a more powerful, disorienting rush ofdéjà vu, almost as if some sort of hallucinogenic gas hadbeen released from the shaft. It was all she could do to rememberwhether or not she was standing, and she swayed on her feet. Eamonn wastoo intent on his examination to notice her reaction, and after a fewseconds he let the disc back down again, to her great relief. Sheimmediately felt better, although the nagging sense of temporal dislocation she had felt on first touching the disc seemed to persist.
    She asked,“Aren’t you afraidof damaging the thing with a steel tool?” He gave her a sidelong glanceand a crooked smile, and made a shocking answer by twirling the hammerso that the square face was down, and striking the disc a sharp blow.She half expected it to shatter, or boom like a gong, but the discitself seemed as oblivious to this rough treatment as it had tomillennia of burial; there was only the high, ringing impact of thesteel hammer head itself. “No,” he said. As she considered this, andbit back on what she was tempted to say about the irresponsibility ofrisking damage, therecame a click and whir from the edge of the pit, and they both looked upsharply to see Klaus taking pictures. He waved at them, smiling blandly, and walked away.

    As theylooked at each otherin speculative surmise, her headband began tweedling at her, a signalshe had never heard before. She hadn’t even known that it was capableof turning itself on. Donning the headband, she was immediatelyconfronted with a new, flashing red icon at the top of the visor. Shestared at it for a second, and it expanded into a page of text, aweather alert from NOAA. This area normally had about five inches ofrain per year, but now it looked like it was going to get all five ofthem, and more, within twelve hours. A quick mental estimate reassuredher that it wouldn’t actually be dangerous, but it would certainlyinterfere with operations. The headband had begun showing her satellitepictures when she shut it off. “Bloody hell,” she said, and then added“Shit!” after mentally reviewing just how ill-equipped they were for this. Well, nothing to do but get to it.
“Smith! Korzybski! Carnap!Huynh! Steiner! Get out the tarps!” she shouted, then repeated it onthe headbands’ general alert channel, and charged up out of the Big Pitto boss the work gangs spreading the tarps over the excavations andweighting down the edges with rocks. It looked aggravatingly like it would leak all over, but it was all they could do.
    After afinal look over thepreparations, she told everyone to head on out. There was no point intheir all sitting around in the rain. Eamonn and Klaus both volunteeredto stay on, which she found rather disquieting, but their differenceswere none of her business, and she had certainly never volunteered to get between them.
    As thefirst fat drops beganlanding in tiny explosions of dust, soon turning to mud, they adjournedto one of the sorting tables, covered by a nylon canopy against thesun. Andrea shared out the last of her MREs, which left her stuck withthe pasta with vegetables entrée, her least favorite. She pickedat it for a while and then abandoned it, too distracted to eat, but shedid eat the pound cake, which was really excellent. She wondered, notfor the first time, why military rations had pound cake better thanSara Lee’s best efforts. The other two ate with good appetite, andafter they had made an end to the meal, there seemed nothing to do butsit and watch the rainfall, and wait for the sunset. Afterwards, they could sit and listen to the rainfall.
    Andreasupposed that she couldcollate notes or something, but that would involve an extended sessionwith the polysector since the field notes on this dig were now spoken,interpreted as text by the machine, and stored. Without the disciplineenforced by written notes the text files tended to be wildly chaotic,and the polysector’s text to speech conversion program interacting withsloppy pronunciation and regional accents had stopped being funny along time ago. She just couldn’t force herself to take an interest. She stared out at the darkening rain, feeling apprehensive and depressed.
    AbruptlyEamonn said, “We cando better than this. Just a minute.” He dashed out into the rain in thedirection of the bunk tent, leaving an uncomfortable silence betweenAndrea and Klaus. It seemed far too long before he came sprinting back,carrying something wrapped in a length of his special plastic sheet,which he unwrapped to reveal a pressure lantern and an odd-shapedwooden item, shaped something like an autoharp, with six plastic vanes,almost like a ventilator grille, and an array of knobs and buttons onone surface.
    As theothers watched, hepumped up and lit the lantern, and set it on the ground so that its hotglare would not be in anyone’s line of sight. He took up his instrumentand said, “I call this a sonodor. It’s mostly my design, though Mikehelped with some of it.” He adjusted the knobs and swept a hand overthe vanes, strumming them like strings, and the sonodor responded withthe sound of something like a harpsichord, but with a higher, moretinkling sound. A virginal, Andrea thought, or maybe a clavichord. Itreally wasn’t her field. He began playing something intricate andBaroque sounding, but soon gave up on it. Andrea guessed that hethought the sound too delicate to compete with the drumming of the rainon the canopy. He reset the sonodor to a good, loud bodhran, andimmediately launched himself into a series of Irish jigs and reels,with great brio and a clear, sweet tenor voice, often dipping into thebaritone range with no loss of control. It was one of the medium-sizedregrets of Andrea’s life that she could not sing well, but she knew enough to know that she was listening to something extraordinary.
A few minutes into thisrecital, Klaus excused himself and said that he wanted to turn in forthe night, his accent seeming thicker and more guttural than usual, andthe others barely noticed his leaving. Andrea leaned back against apacking case and enjoyed the show, fingering Mike’s good luck charm inher pocket and wondering if Eamonn knew that she knew that he was, inhis odd way, coming on to her. She also wondered if he knew that he wasmaking a pretty good job of it, and began to consider how she might rearrange things in the Executive Palace to make room for him.
    As shesank into these pleasant thoughts, a rather curious idea crept in. Shewas, she supposed, more or less as empathetic as the usual run ofhumanity, but never before had her impressions of someone else’sthoughts been so distinct, so strangely assured. She idly ran afingernail along the grooves in the talisman in her pocket as sheconsidered this, but the thought seemed to have come from nowhere and lead nowhere, so she dropped it; still, the assurance somehow remained.
    Thedrumming roar of the rainbegan spasmodically tapering off, with occasional violent gusts, andEamonn glanced up at the canopy, gave her a small, crooked smile andsaid, “It sounds like Tlaloc might be having prostate problems.” Shesnickered at this. Soon it stopped entirely in the midst of a wailingsong in thick dialect about the Great Hunger, a central feature of longIrish memories. The silence after the rain, which might be a fruitfuland growing time in richer land, here brought only a dead feeling,seeming to echo the grief and loss of the song. After it was finished,Eamonn remained bent over his instrument, then looked up and offeredher a half-smile while knuckling a tear from the corner of one eye, andAndrea realized that the past was alive for him in a way that it could never be for her. A real romantic ,she told herself, with the reflexivedisdain of a rationalist, but also with the realization that that was by no means entirely unattractive.
    He adjustedhis sonodor,finally settling on a sound something like a plucked bass viol, andsaid “Last song tonight. This song is the oldest song in the world,from Sumer. It was found on cuneiform tablets at Ugarit – oops. My apologies. You’re the archaeologist here.”
    She smiledand said, “I’venever heard of Ugarit-oops, so maybe there are still a few things for me to learn. Play on.”
The song sounded more like aGregorian chant than anything else she was familiar with, aside fromone odd bit near the beginning with a rapid alternation of notes,almost a warble, which was rather distracting to one who knew only theWestern musical traditions. The language itself suggested nothing atall to her, which was not surprising, and she became distracted fromthe song by the ancient riddle of Sumer. Nineteenth century historians,she knew, had often remarked how the complex Sumerian culture hadseemed to come out of nowhere, while later scholars professed to findplausible origins here or there. The actual physical findings of theselater scholars, however, Andrea privately considered too fragmentary topoint anywhere definite, and she thought that they were perhaps not so much better informed as less willing to admit their own ignorance.
These musings were interruptedby the headbands’ emergency person-to-person signal, in both her andEamonn’s pockets. They looked at each other in surprise, then scrambled to put them on.

Under the Moon

    Mike’sheavy voice said, “Well, hello there.”
    “What’sup?” said Eamonn, all business now.
    “FriendKlaus is absconding tothe parking lot, and he’s taking a rather large souvenir with him.”Their visors showed a relayed picture in tints of rose and scarlet, aclear enough infrared image of Klaus dragging something bulky wrapped in a tarp. “He doesn’t know I’m here yet.”
    “Shit!”said Eamonn, sounding for the moment remarkably American. “Can you delay him?”
    “Oh, I cantemporize the sun up,” Mike said, “but will he listen? Don’t dally.”
    “We’recoming,” Eamonn said,and charged into the darkness. For reasons which she could never beginto explain, feeling pretty sure that she was making a bad mistake,Andrea sprinted after him. A gibbous moon, invisible before in thelantern glare, peered down intermittently through the driving cloudwrack, and it was enough to keep them going in the right direction. Asfor the mud and water, there was nothing to do but plunge on through,and try to have faith that there wouldn’t be an ankle-breaking hole orloose rock beneath their feet. It was the better part of half a klickto the parking lot, and they arrived gasping for breath while trying tobe stealthy and make as little noise as possible. It was wasted effort.Just as they saw Mike standing in the moonlight, Klaus’ voice saidbehind them “Go and join your friend.” They turned to see him holding apistol on them. He followed them about a meter back as they slowly wentto stand beside Mike. The disk, still wrapped in its tarp, lay in the mud nearby.
    “Well,well,” Klaus said.“We’re all together now, but I fear that I must soon take my leave ofyou. The Herald comes, and soon the Master. He will be pleased in whathe sees of me.” He appeared to be almost in ecstasy. Andrea and Eamonn stared at him in puzzlement, and Mike looked grim.
   Klauspointed his pistol at Mike and said, “You’re first, Frater Michael Tradescent.” Frater? Andrea thought.
Klaus raised his pistol, andthen lowered it. “Remove your headband! Try to say a control word, andit will be your last, and I will not be merciful.”
    Mike closedhis eyes for amoment, and seemed to concentrate. For the first time she couldremember, Andrea saw him make what looked like nervous gestures,holding both fists near waist level and then opening them outward,closing one fist and leaving the other hand with fingers pointingdownward, then closing his right hand with the thumb outside and makinga circular gesture over his stomach. All this was flickeringly fast,and she saw Eamonn nod infinitesimally out of the corner of her eye.Then she realized that the gestures were Ameslan, the gestural languageof the deaf, with which she had a nodding acquaintance. As far as shecould remember the gestures were depart, five, and regret. Quickly andsloppily executed as they were, and displaced downward, they couldperhaps be taken for some sort of nervous tics, and Klaus did not seem to react to them.
    Michaelremoved his headband andtossed it in the mud. Klaus raised his pistol again, smiling, and Mikestared at it intensely. At this range Klaus could not miss, and he didnot. In the muzzle flash Andrea saw Mike’s head snap back, and he fell into the mud to lie very still.
    Andrea puther arm aroundEamonn and turned her face away, pressing against his side, seekingwhatever human comfort she could before the end, and he put his armaround her and held her tight, still facing Klaus. As she grappled withher emotions, she felt a light, bristly touch on her arm aroundEamonn’s back, and knew instantly what it was, a tarantula flooded outof its burrow and seeking high ground. An idea sprang into her mind asif ready-made. From the feel of the spider’s progress, she made thebest guess she could about its location and seized it by the pedicel, the narrow area between the abdomen and cephalothorax.
The spider did what theyusually did when challenged and reared up its front two legs, afearsome display to another tarantula, which only made it easier to detach from Eamonn’s sweater.
    She turnedand gentlyunderhanded the spider, like a black, bristly softball, into Klaus’face. Perhaps it was that very gentleness which did not cause Klaus toreact instantly. The sac of its abdomen plopped neatly into his mouth,and the tarantula, an irascible creature at all times, enraged by beingflooded out of its burrow and still more by being handled in such amanner, seized what it could with all sixteen tarsal claws and bitwhatever it could reach. Klaus shrieked and whirled madly, apparentlytrying to dislodge it without touching it, and Eamonn reacted instantly. He shoved Andrea violently aside and leapt on Klaus. I guess I should have expected that she thought, as her butt spatteredintothe mud and she went rolling, and she heard two sharp blows and acracking crunch. Immediately, Eamonn was at her side, helping her to her feet.
    “Sorryabout that, but Ididn’t want to take any chances with stray bullets,” he said, speakingquickly. “Good riddance to bad rubbish. And now, we need to seek cover.That ‘polysector’ contains a bomb, and Mike set it to go off in fiveminutes. Four now, I guess. I don’t know what kind of bomb, but I don’tthink it’ll be anything trivial. I suggest that we, as you Americanssay, make tracks.” He looked around at the moonlit desert, as if seeingit for the first time, and his face fell. “Damn.” It was not absolutelyflat, of course, but there was nothing suggesting cover against a majorexplosion. He sighed, and took up the Artifact, stripping off itscovering tarp, and said “Well, let’s see what we can do with this. Thisis sort of what it’s for, I think.” He found a crack in the rock underthe mud which would accept some of it and hold it upright, and hastilyhammered it down with another rock, apparently giving no thought to how he might be damaging it.

    He gestured for her to joinhim behind the shield, when something like a gigantic shaft of greenfire exploded from the Big Pit, thrusting up through the restless clouddeck and flattening into an umbrella shape of dim green flame anunguessable distance above. Andrea screamed and fell to her knees, futilely pressing hands against her ears.
   Overwhelmingly powerful andalien thoughts seemed forced into her head, and she was not sure where,when or what she was. This compared to her previous déjàvu as a match compared to a volcano, and she seemed to come adrift intime, screaming with memories of future pain and eternities of tortureendured. She was aware of Eamonn seizing her and dragging her behindthe shield as something that would happen / was happening / hadhappened, or maybe the other way around. The shadow of the shieldseemed to have some ameliorating effect, gave her a partial sense oftime’s direction, but she still knew that she was somehow experiencingthe smallest fraction of the agony of a Titan, the full apprehension ofwhich would blow her life from her body like a flake of ash loftingfrom a bonfire. Then the desert lit up with supernal white light ten times brighter than the day, and she knew no more.

Departures

    Sheawakened in a white roomfull of sunlight and a with a lively breeze ruffling the curtains atthe open window, but the smell and the institutional television setmounted on the wall said hospital. She seemed to feel empty, light andcheerful, and wondered if she hadn’t had a little pharmaceutical helpwith that, and found that she didn’t care. There was a still figure inthe other bed with a heavily bandaged head, apparently somebody of someheft. She didn’t even care that she felt a little too empty. Eamonn was sitting by her bed, asleep.
    “Hey,” shesaid, and begancoughing. He started awake, grabbed a cup imprinted with “Xebico CountyHospital” from the bedside table, andsupported her head very gently with his other hand as she took a drinkof cool water through the straw. She smiled at him and said, “To ask an original question, what happened?”
    He smiled into her eyes for afew seconds, and said “I think that first, you ought to know thatyou’re going to be all right. I am told that you might feel as if partof your mind is gone, or something like that?” For the first time, shebegan to feel vaguely alarmed. “Well, don’t worry about it. The partthat is gone wasn’t really yours anyway. You’re all here, and you’re going to be all right.”
    She smiledagain and saidsimply, “Okay.” She had also felt a bit disturbed that the logo on thewater cup, from the corner of her eye, had seemed to be a rendering ofa single staring eye; but with Eamonn’s reassurance, she forgot about it.
“As to other events, if youwant long-winded explanations, why not ask him?” hooking a thumb toward the occupant of the other bed.
    “Damn you,”Mike said dispassionately, “I was almost asleep.”
    “I thoughtyou were dead,”Andrea said in a small voice. She felt that she should be glad, and perhaps later she would be glad; but now she just felt stunned.
    “Well,perhaps in somemetaphorical sense,” he began, then took a good look at her face. “Never mind,” he said.
Mike sighed, making a noisyproduction out of it, and said “Well. First, it’s not commonly known,but being shot in the head is not as certain as one might think. Thereare several cases on record of the bullet striking the skull andactually traveling around the head under the scalp, and I did what Icould to encourage it in my case. I tried to anticipate the moment offiring, and snapped my head back to take it at an oblique angle. It wasa one in ten thousand chance, but that’s infinitely better thannothing. This time it worked, leaving me with authentic-looking headwounds, a bad concussion and a lot of blood loss. At that point, youmight say that I lost interest in further proceedings. And speaking of which, very well done, both of you.”
    He regardedthem with graveapproval, and Andrea felt as if she had been knighted by her liege lordand consecrated to some high purpose, rather than idly complimented byan odd acquaintance. A ridiculous, irrational feeling, which nonetheless brought a blush to her cheek. Perhaps it was the drugs.
    “Now, thebomb was, as youmust have surmised, a small nuclear device, but it was only the powersource for the real bomb, which was a – Hmph. Call it a Planck shear.Or to be a bit more poetic, a reality pinch. Its shielding accountedfor most of the mass of the polysector. Its effect was to remove everything within about a hundred meter radius.”
    “Remove?” Eamonn asked.
    “Yes. Idon’t mean vaporize, orirradiate, or anything like that. What was there is simply gone,fortunately taking the fireball and most of the fallout with it. Thereare some fascinating side effects,” he went on, showing a little moreanimation. “For example, the value of pi is probably about three pointseven at the epicenter, which will normalize as the surroundingmetrical frame reasserts itself. All you’d see if you were to look atit now is distortion, as if you were looking through a warped lens, butthe distortion is in fact and matter, not merely image. And, maybe someCerenkov radiation, but that’s just blue light. If anyone were toblunder into it for the next couple of weeks it would literally turnthem inside out, but it’ll be safe in a couple of weeks, andundetectable in a month. Then we’ll have gotten away with it. We were damned lucky to be outside its range.”
    “And whatabout that – thing?” Andrea asked.
    “Ah yes,that.” Mike fell backon his pillow, scientific enthusiasm gone. He looked old and ill. “Callit a Kalend, if you like.” This seemed to amuse him briefly, and thenhe sighed again. “What we did – what I did - was really a mercy.Normally they have a necessary role in what might be called themetaphysical ecology, and they almost never have direct contact withhumans. You might say that they are the “and” in cause and effect, theseparators of dichotomies, the guardians of the one impossibility thatmakes all else possible. For all that, they are of the Earth, just aswe are.” He made an odd, ritualistic circular gesture. “But that onewas trapped somehow, tormented into insanity, controlled by somethingelse trying to get into the world from outside. As to what was controlling it – I will not give a name to that which can have none.”
    A few daysago Andrea wouldhave dismissed all this as mystical rubbish, but now a cold wind fromnowhere seemed to blow through the room, chilling the sunlight, stirring tenebrous, half-formed thoughts like dry leaves.
    Then Mikesmiled tiredly, andsaid “So. What are your plans?” which seemed to dispel the darkling mood, and everything seemed almost normal again.
    Andreasaid, “I take it that the site I was working is no longer workable?”
    “Correct,alas” Mike said.“But, you need not fear for employment. You have greatly indebted us,and made some powerful allies, as well as piled up a lot of good karma,which might express itself in surprising ways.” He winked at her, butshe had no idea what he meant by it. “All of your surviving gear hasbeen retrieved and decontaminated, and you’ll find the ‘ExecutivePalace’ parked outside. Also, we did save Alpha, though you won’t beable to get any meaningful radiocarbon dates from him. You may find,however, that now you’ve been sensitized to it, there’s more funnybusiness going on than you might have imagined. And speaking of that, I must apologize for something.”
    He seemedto put aside hisbrief spate of levity, and said, “I’m afraid that all that pain youendured was partially my fault. That ‘good luck charm’ was an amplifierof sorts, and rendered you susceptible to influences to which you wouldnormally be immune. I had hoped that it would help you somehow.” Hemade another curious gesture, crossing his wrists and pressing his armsagainst his chest, like a pharaoh holding crook and flail. “I am deeplysorry. I think that you may yet find the amplifier useful, and you canhave it back if you want it. As to our late dust-up, don’t worry aboutit. The cover story is in place and the evidence is being manufacturedright now. Someone will brief you on it later, and hand you a nicechunk of change. The Foundation will pick up your medical bills here,Miss Smith.” His smile became sardonic, then he winced. “Ach. Anyway,by necessity, we’ve really gotten very good at that sort of thing. Fornow, you say nothing, you know nothing, and I promise you that it will all soon blow over.”
    “All right,one big question,” Andrea said. “What is this ‘Foundation?’ Who the hell is ‘we?’”
    Mikesighed. “I’m gettingtired of the sound of my own voice,” he said, “Believe it or not. Ask him,” nodding at Eamonn.
    Eamonncleared his throat and said, “Screw that. I want to take a sabbatical.”
    Mike smiledlazily and said“Surprise, surprise. It’s not a good time for it, but it probably never will be. I’ll handle the paperwork. Go, with my blessing.”
    Andreasaid, pulling thecovers over her head with childlike pleasure, “I’m tired. As soon as I get out of here, I’ve got a trailer I’d like to show you.”
   Eamonn bentover her bed, and very gently brushed his lips over her forehead, theonly part of her still exposed. He sat beside her bed and watched her quietly. Mike watched this without expression, and then turned away.

                                    The tale is told.

Notes

Saharan dust:
http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOP_5UAFB5?OpenDocument&g=NWO&n=ACPP_4WMESE&rc=1

Polysector’s “compound eye”:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/12/031212075348.htm

“Stable Interior Craton”:
“We had come into thecontinent’s province of supreme tectonic calm, the Stable InteriorCraton, where a thin veneer of sediment lies flat upon the stolidfundament, where the geology – even by geological standards – is exceptionally slow.”

“There are roots oflong-gone mountains deep in the rock of the stable craton, but it has not had an orogeny in a thousand million years.”
- John McPhee, “In Suspect Territory”

Tarantula Eyes:
In the last revision, Ireferred to compound eyes on a tarantula. Oops. Spiders have from twoto eight eyes, but they’re all simple eyes, which can see little butlight and shade. Their main sensory modality is the setæ, the “hair.” It’s not true hair, but is extremely sensitive to vibrations.

“. . . a small, twisted bar of quartz . . . “

  The thing theTime Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic framework,scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline substance.

  The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism.
`Well?' said the Psychologist.

  `This littleaffair,' said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon the table andpressing his hands together above the apparatus, `is only amodel. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time. You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is anodd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some wayunreal.' He pointed to the part with his finger. `Also, here is one little white lever, and here is another.'

H. G. Wells, “The Time Machine.” A little joke on my part.

“Xebico”
http://www.saviodsilva.net/life/horror/3.htm
Another little joke.

   End.