Artifact Read online

  Artifact

  Gregory Benford

  The past isn’t dead.

  It isn’t even past.

  —WILLIAM FAULKNER

  Contents

  Prologue

  They buried the great King as twilight streaked the west…

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Deep inside the tomb they barely heard the snarl of…

  Chapter Two

  Just before noon they found something odd.

  Chapter Three

  The Greek laborers didn’t turn up the next day, though.

  Chapter Four

  She found Kontos ordering workmen about. They were loading crates…

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  John Bishop felt unnatural carrying an umbrella. Bostonians had told…

  Chapter Two

  He didn’t get the full story until they were driving…

  Chapter Three

  George met their car before the dust of its arrival…

  Chapter Four

  John backed the ’scope away from the Linear A lines.

  Chapter Five

  That night Claire made another important discovery. John had come…

  Chapter Six

  As they drove toward Nauplia, John said to Claire, “I…

  Chapter Seven

  When they returned to the site Kontos and his men…

  Chapter Eight

  The gray Greek Army sedan swerved around a slow truck,…

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  Claire scribbled the flight numbers and departure time on the…

  Chapter Two

  John settled back contentedly. A short order of garlic-laden souvlaki,…

  Chapter Three

  As the Attika pulled out of Heraklion harbor Claire pointed…

  Chapter Four

  After midnight you got a feeling for the different densities,…

  Chapter Five

  Claire turned the lamp fully on George’s bared right leg.

  Chapter Six

  He felt the first dizzying sensation as he gripped the…

  Chapter Seven

  The sudden rattling at the door startled her. She was…

  Part Four

  Chapter One

  John Bishop belted up his coat outside the Pratt Building,…

  Chapter Two

  When John came into Building 42 the next morning he…

  Chapter Three

  Claire came into the bay with an air John had…

  Chapter Four

  Professor Hampton was barricaded behind a formidable oak desk, which…

  Chapter Five

  Abe Sprangle said defiantly, “It’s damn well right, I tell…

  Chapter Six

  “Come on, get up.”

  Chapter Seven

  The next morning was tense. They all braced for the…

  Chapter Eight

  They opened the plug in late afternoon. There was a…

  Part Five

  Chapter One

  The most important lesson of modern Einsteinian physics was the…

  Chapter Two

  The battle between the BU and MIT administrations was short,…

  Chapter Three

  Sergio Zaninetti said, “Dio mio! You are sure?”

  Chapter Four

  As Claire left the Boston Museum of Fine Arts she…

  Chapter Five

  John’s ribs ached. The doctor said they weren’t cracked, just…

  Chapter Six

  Sunday’s silence was oddly unsettling in the streets John knew…

  Chapter Seven

  Mr. Carmody from Washington was a good dresser. His thick…

  Chapter Eight

  At least his sore ribs were better, John reflected ruefully…

  Chapter Nine

  Claire stared down at the dirty gray waters of the…

  Chapter Ten

  The helicopter’s rotors went whunk-whunk-whunk-whunk, blotting out conversation. With an…

  Part Six

  Chapter One

  Mediterranean night wrapped the ship in fog. John Bishop stood…

  Chapter Two

  When Claire came into the rec room of the Watson…

  Chapter Three

  The Watson had deployed a steel side stairway and hoist.

  Chapter Four

  Claire crouched over the comm console in the helicopter control…

  Chapter Five

  John squirmed upward, flashlight thrust ahead, shoulders scraping rock. Exhaled…

  Chapter Six

  The white flare faded. “Their fuel caught,” Hale said hollowly.

  Chapter Seven

  John stared for a long moment at the tiny, virulent…

  Chapter Eight

  Claire struck at Kontos. The heel of her hand smacked…

  Chapter Nine

  John had had a bellyful. He cast his flashlight beam…

  Chapter Ten

  Kontos held a submachine gun cradled in his left arm,…

  Chapter Eleven

  Claire pressed back into the wet stone as the bluegreen…

  Chapter Twelve

  Cold that cut bone deep, robbing the body of its…

  Epilogue

  She was going to be late.

  Parise

  Other Books by Gregory Benford

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Greece

  [ca. 1425 B.C.]

  They buried the great King as twilight streaked the west crimson.

  Inside the tomb the holy men were placing the oiled and waxed body. The procession paused. A hawk spiraled overhead, hovered, then plunged toward prey. The village below was a disorderly brown jumble. People stood in its streets, watching the zigzag of torches scale the hillside.

  Inside, the ritual party was enclosing in the tomb walls the severely fashioned stone. It was a miraculous thing—humming, giving an unceasing, eerie glow through the amber ornament. The abode of a god or a demon beast.

  Some in the procession said it should be kept, worshiped, not buried with the King. But the King had commanded this placing in the tomb. To protect his people from the fevered, blotchy death, he had said.

  A hollow shout. Commotion from the tomb. Men came running from beneath the high lintel, their eyes white, mouths gaping.

  “Death from the stone!” one of them shouted.

  Ragged screams.

  “Close it!” a high priest called loudly near the entrance.

  Heavy wooden doors swung inward.

  “No! My son is in there!”

  “No time!” the high priest yelled. “Those the thing struck down, leave them.”

  “My son, you can’t!”

  “Seal it! Now!”

  The massive doors banged shut. Priests slammed home the thick iron bars. Then the teams above began to fill in the long entrance hall with sand, as planned—but now they shoveled frantically, driven by black fear.

  The high priest stumbled down the hillside, wild-eyed, shouting to the milling throng: “The men were easing the concealing slab into place when it happened. They hurried, mortared in the slab. But some…” He gasped. “It is for the best. They are all gone from us now. The people are safe. As our King willed.”

  The laboring teams above filled the entranceway frantically, tipping reservoirs of sand into the deeply cut passage. Soon it would seem like an ordinary hill, the tomb concealed.

  “No! Please! I beg you, open it for but a moment. I will bring out—”

  A tired wisdom filled the priest’s lined face. “The thing has gone back to the underworld, where the King found it. We must leave it that way. It will ha
rm men no more.”

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER

  One

  Deep inside the tomb they barely heard the snarl of an approaching vehicle.

  “That’ll be Kontos,” George said, putting down his calipers.

  “It doesn’t sound like his car.” Claire carefully punched her computer inventory on HOLD.

  “Who else would come out here? That union moron?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Come on, I’ll bet you it’s Kontos.”

  “Wait a sec.”

  Claire shut down the inventory program. She was checking the last catalog numbers of potsherds against the printout manifest, a tedious job. The computerized field inventory was a marvel, neatly organizing six months of archeological data. It could be hypertexted and correlated with a single keystroke. Scarcely the size of a water glass, it carried six months’ worth of archeological data.

  She brushed off her hands and walked out under the lintel of the huge stone doorway, into the midmorning sun. Every day was slightly cooler now and she thought fondly of the green bowers along the Charles River, the silent glassy water and crisp red brick. She was tired of the colors of Greece, however sharp and exotic. Inland, young cypress trees speared the pale sky. The heat haze of summer was gone and she could make out distant dry canyons that sloped toward the Aegean. Empty stream beds carved bone-white curves down the spine of each canyon, shimmering like discarded snake skins.

  High above, a hawk lazed on thermals rising from the sea. Shading her eyes against the glare, she pondered how irrelevant the narrow valley would look from up there—tawny hills crisp from the drying winds, a gray grid of the Greek-American excavation, brown rutted paths worn by the digging crews, all bordering a sweep of steel-blue sea. Or perhaps the hawk glided above such signs with indifference, much as when the stone walls sheltered a living, vibrant race. Man’s strivings would seem like mere background noise from up there, compared to the squeak and rustle of prey.

  The hawk banked and began a descending gyre, intent on essentials.

  She started down the rocky path. A jeep braked noisily to a stop several hundred meters away, where the dirt road met the work camp. A plume of tan dust enveloped it.

  “So he’s got a dapper little jeep now,” she said.

  “Very fashion conscious, is the Colonel.”

  As they descended she heard quick, agitated talking. From his tone she identified Doctor Alexandros Kontos, the Greek co-director of the dig, well before she could recognize him standing beside the jeep. He was speaking rapidly and angrily to the “camp man”—a weathered brown figure who stood and took the abuse without blinking.

  Kontos did not glance up at Claire and George as they wound their way down the hill among the few remaining tents of the camp, and approached the jeep. Claire could not follow all the colloquialisms and rapid-fire slang that tumbled out of Kontos, but it was clear that he blamed the camp man for the absence of the manual laborers. His target merely shrugged, explaining that the men were either involved in the spreading political meetings and demonstrations, or afraid to work for Americans out of fear of disapproval by their friends, or both.

  Kontos slapped his hand on the jeep in exasperation. “Get them back!” he shouted in Greek. Then he saw Claire and his manner abruptly changed.

  “Ah! The lovely Claire. I hope the absence of these ignorant peasants has not perturbed you.”

  “Not at all. We didn’t have a great deal of work left when—”

  “Excellent. Great things happen in Athens and I will not have time for this site now. It is well you be on your way.”

  “What things?” George asked.

  Kontos’ face altered as he turned to George, the strong jaw jutting out more. “Nothing you would approve, that I am sure.”

  George grinned wryly. “Try me.”

  “The divisive times, they are finished. The center parties, they come over to our side.”

  “What’ll you end up with? A one-party state?”

  “True socialism.”

  “And the other parties?”

  “In time they follow.”

  Kontos was wearing a smartly tailored Army uniform that showed off his thick biceps and bulging chest very well. His hat, with freshly shined braid, adorned a full head of gleaming black hair. The long, somewhat sallow face was saved from thinness by the interruption of a bushy moustache. His tan almost concealed the fine webbing of lines at the eyes that gave away his age—mid-forties, Claire guessed—better than anything else.

  George said blandly, “No doubt.”

  “This is why I must break off my stay here with you.” He turned to Claire and his face brightened again. “It will be a sad thing to be parting. Very sad.”

  Claire said, “But there’s still work to finish!”

  “I will get the laborers back. This lizard”—he jerked a thumb at the camp man—“will stop lying in the sun. He will go to the village, round them in.”

  “There’s chemical analysis, some soil studies, on-site metallurgy—”

  “Ohi, ohi.” He shook his head violently. “That we do in Athens.”

  “Who will? I know—Ministry lab techs. But they haven’t visited the site, they don’t know everything to do.” Claire defiantly put her hands on her hips.

  “You will write instructions.”

  “There are always idiosyncratic features, samples that have to be treated differently. There’s no replacement for being—”

  “Your Greek is excellent,” Kontos said smoothly in Greek, smiling. “They will understand.”

  George put in, “Come on, Alex, soil analysis is in the schedule, you can look it up.”

  “A secondary consideration now, this schedule.”

  “It was agreed!” Claire said. “We have nearly a month left.”

  “Ohi!” Kontos narrowed his heavy-lidded eyes-the expression, Claire saw, that had produced the crescent lines that fanned back from his eyes almost to his ears. In English he said sharply, “These are not treaties or contracts, these schedules. They can be withdrawn.”

  Claire began, “The soil sampling is—”

  “I never like that sort of thing, me. Seldom it yields anything in digs of this sort.”

  George began, “Well, so much you know. There’s plenty here you don’t—”

  “I fail to understand, Alexandros.” Claire overrode George’s rising tone, trying to keep the discussion within bounds. It always helped to call him by his full name, for one thing; Greeks were funny that way. “Why the speed?”

  Kontos leaned against the jeep, and noticed the camp man again. He waved a hand of dismissal. “We are trying to, you say, pedal softly this kind of thing.”

  “What sort of thing? Archeology?”

  “No no. Co-operative endeavors.”

  George said sourly, “Uh huh. So the Ministry is putting the same hustle on the French down in Crete and those Germans up north?”

  Kontos looked stonily at George. “Not precisely.”

  Claire said, “So this policy, this soft-pedaling, it’s especially with Americans.”

  “I did not say that.”

  George said hotly, “It’s what you mean.”

  “The Ministry has sent a tilegraphima, a cable, to Boston University—”

  “What!” Claire stepped back.

  “It asks, to terminate quick as possible this dig.”

  George said sarcastically, “Gee, I wonder who asked the Ministry to do that.”

  Kontos reddened—but not with embarrassment, Claire saw—with anger. “Decisions are made collectively!”

  “Uh huh. Who decided you’d come back in a jeep?” George asked.

  “I was issued it. I am an Army officer, I am entitled.”

  George drawled, “Interesting, how they’re making all the Ministry staff Major This and Cap’n That.”

  “Our society, we mobilize. The depression your country and the others, the Japanese, the British, brought on—we respond to
that.”

  Kontos stood rigidly erect, moving his body consciously to confront George—arms slightly forward of the chest, chin up to offset George’s two inch advantage in height. Claire decided to step in and deflect the two men, who were now staring fixedly at each other with growing hostility. She said brightly, “George, get back to closing up the tomb, would you? I hate leaving it open like that, nobody around.”

  George looked at her blankly, still wrapped in his tit-for-tat with Kontos. “Close…up?”

  “Yes, right. I want to show the Colonel some of that pottery.”

  George said nothing. In the strained silence a bird suddenly burst into full-throated song from a nearby oleander bush. Claire lowered one eyebrow in what she hoped was a clear signal to George. He saw it, and swallowed.

  “I think we’re gettin’ the bum’s rush here,” he said bitterly. He stalked off, occasionally glancing back over his shoulder at the two of them.

  Kontos murmured urbanely, his composure returned, “That one, he has a hot head.”

  “You weren’t the soul of reason yourself.”

  He sighed heavily. “I am subject to pressures. You understand, you speak our language, that must bring some knowledge of the way we think. Come.” He gestured and they walked into camp. “This cable, it is necessary to—how is it? In diplomacy, they say—to send a signal.”

  “To whom? You could tell us right here.”

  “To the people who rule you, though you may not know it, Claire.”