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any area. Of the
Oryx itself, there was no sign. Its preliminary assessment was the last to be
heard from it.
* * *
Lydian skies could be spectacular, mixing a palette that ventured from the
palest of streaky greens unveiling the sun at daybreak, to full-bodied
violets, lilacs, and lavenders that turned the western clouds
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into towering castles of light in the evening. One of the biologists with the
Kermes had put forward a theory attributing the displays to photodissociation
in the upper atmosphere of exotic molecules produced by the planet's lush and
varied flora, which made even the tropics of Earth seem unassuming in
comparison. The biologist had been challenged by the mission's head physicist
and head climatologist, both of whom claimed the subject as belonging
rightfully to their domain, and a motion was already being filed back on Earth
for the issue to be brought before a scientific arbitration court.
Chelm was seldom drawn into such things. As an archeologist, his field was
more self-contained and defined, and territorial disputes with other
disciplines tended to be rare. Colleagues warned him that invisibility equated
to obscurity, and having a low political profile was tantamount to committing
career suicide. Wilbur Teel, his section head, would come poking around,
looking for possible areas of overlap that could be used to pick a fight with
the linguists or paleosociologists, maybe, and hinting that Chelm could help
his future promotion prospects by taking a more aggressive stance himself.
Chelm sometimes wondered if perhaps he was too accepting and passive. But the
thought of a future supposedly broadened by getting involved in the perennial
rivalries and infighting that went on among the upper administrative echelons
back on Earth simply didn't excite him. He wasn't, he supposed, if he was
honest with himself, really that competitively disposed by nature not that he
would have admitted it to the ship's psychocounselor. The fact of the matter
was that he liked his work and its challenges, especially when it took him out
in the field and among the natives. Times like right now, for instance. . . .
He sat on the end of one of the log pilings supporting the boat dock that
formed the lower level of
Ag-Vonsar's house, watching the old man scrape an upturned wherrylike craft
that had been hauled up for cleaning and repair. The house was built on stilts
like the rest of the settlement at the bottom end of the lake, with storage
space immediately overhead, the general living area above, and sleeping rooms
above that again. The houses were all interconnected by stairways and bridges
to form what was essentially a village over the water. The workmanship was
rich, ornate, and precise, bringing to mind a combination of ancient
Mesoamerican pattern work and colorful Chinese intricacy. Besides making
boats, Ag-Vonsar also constructed sluice gates for the system of water
channels and locks that irrigated the surrounding area and allowed the level
to be controlled during the season when the river feeding the lake was in
flood. The dry dock and shop that he maintained for this heavier work were
part of a boatyard built along the shore.
What had first attracted Chelm's interest to this place was a long, low,
square-formed block protruding from a hillside and into the water to provide a
breakwater and jetty bounding the upper end of the yard.
He had assumed it was cut natural rock, until closer examination showed it to
consist of an artificial material similar to concrete. Some Lydian structures,
such as temples, aqueducts, and bridges in cities and other locations that
Terran exploration teams had visited did, it was true, use forms of concrete.
But the type was invariably reminiscent of the kind the Romans had developed:
tough, virtually immune to demolition in some instances, deriving strength
from the filiform binding of carefully blended minerals. The block at the
upper end of the lakeside yard, however, was of coarser composition,
reinforced internally by metal ties in the style of Terran patterns that had
come into use millennia later as if the arrival of heavier industry had
rendered the earlier reliance on finer-grain chemistry superfluous. Could it
be that an advanced culture had existed at one time on Lydia, and then
vanished practically without trace? If so, what kind of calamity could have
overtaken it?
This was the kind of once-in-a-lifetime occurrence that sent an
archaeologist's blood racing with excitement, and unless Chelm was truly
missing something relegated such alternatives as chairing a peer-review
committee in some academy or university, or becoming a familiar face on the
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academic social and cocktail-party circuit, to the depths of irrelevancy and
tedium.
And then had followed the seismic images showing broken outlines of even more
massive and extended
structures deeper down. The mission's steering group had higher priorities
than archeological searches, however, and the possibility of even a pilot
excavation was on hold indefinitely at that stage. Chelm had made overtures to
see what the chances of recruiting native labor might be. The Lydians seemed
amiable and willing enough in principle but he had to be careful of the ship's
sociologists and psychologists, who considered any activity of that nature to
be part of their turf.
"They suggest structures like levees," Chelm said. "As if this might have been
part of the river before the lake formed. They look like bits of levees."
"Levees?" Ag-Vonsar repeated, without looking up. The exchange took place via
the transvox channel in Chelm's wristpad, but the process had become so
familiar that he barely registered it. He was making an effort to learn the
local Lydian tongue, but the number of languages identified already, each with
endless dialects, made it a daunting business. The transvox was trained
primarily in the speech of a region about the size of Europe's Iberian
province, centered on a city called Issen, fifty miles or so from the lake
settlement. Landers from the
Hayward Kermes had established a Terran surface base just outside Issen.
"Artificial embankments built along the sides of rivers," Chelm said. "To stop
them flooding over low-lying land."
Ag-Vonsar peered at the strip of the boat's underside that he had cleaned,
running a finger along a seam that was showing signs of opening up. He had a
surprisingly muscular and well-contoured body for what
Chelm judged from his grizzled, crinkly hair, craggy features, and veined
hands to be by Terran standards sixty or even seventy-plus years of age. As [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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