There was a great treasure in that box, my grandfather told me-jewel-encrusted pendants and bracelets and rings, all set with shining stones; small wheels of gold with strange markings on them (my grandfather insisted they were gold, although how he could tell a thing was gold by simply looking at it, I do not understand); figurines of animals and birds made of precious metals and set with precious stones; a half a dozen crowns (the kind kings or queens would wear); bags that split open to loose a flood of coins, and many other things, including some vases, all of which were smashed.
The robots came rushing down the stairs to pick up all the treasure that was scattered and behind them came their master and when he reached the bottom of the stairs he paid no attention to all the other things, but stooped and picked up some of the pieces of a shattered vase and tried to fit them back together, but he could not fit them back together, for they had been broken into too many pieces. But from the few pieces that he did fit together, trying to hold all those broken pieces in their proper places, my grandfather saw that the vase had had painted pictures on it, fired into the glaze-pictures of strange men hunting even stranger beasts, or maybe they only seemed stranger because they were so badly done, with no thought of perspective and without the anatomical knowledge that is basic with an artist.
The man (if it were a man) stood there with the broken pieces in his hands and his head was bent above them and his face was sad and a tear rolled down his cheek. My grandfather thought it strange that a man should weep at the sight of a broken vase.
All this time the robots were picking up the stuff and putting it in a pile and one of them went and got a basket and put it all into the basket and carried it off to be stored with all the other boxes in one of the rock-hewn chambers.
But they didn’t get it all, for my grandfather, with no one seeing him, picked up a coin and secreted it about his person and I now will wrap this coin, which he passed on to me, and put it in this envelope …
Chapter 7
I stopped reading and looked across the fire at Cynthia Lansing.
“The coin?” I asked.
She nodded. “It was in the envelope, wrapped in a piece of foil, a kind of foil that has not been used for centuries. I gave it to Professor Thorndyke and asked him if he’d keep it . . .”
“But did he know what it was?”
“He wasn’t sure. He took it to another man. An expert on old Earth coins and such. It was an uncirculated Athenian owl, probably minted a few years after a battle fought at a place called Marathon.”
“Uncirculated?” Elmer asked.
“It had not been used. There was no wear on it. When a coin is circulated it becomes smooth and dull from much handling. But aside from some deterioration due to time, this one was exactly as it had been the day that it was struck.”
“And there can’t be any doubt?” I asked.
“Professor Thorndyke said there could be none at all.”
The baying of the dogs still could be heard beyond the ridge that rose above our camp. It was a lonely and a savage sound and I shivered as I listened to it and moved closer to the fire.
“They are after something,” Elmer said. “Maybe coon or possum. The hunters are back there somewhere, listening to the dogs.”
“But what are they hunting for?” asked Cynthia. “The men, I mean, the men who sent out the dogs.”
“For sport and meat,” said Elmer.
I saw her wince.
“This is no Alden planet,” Elmer told her. “No planet soft and full of pinkness. The people who live back here in the woods are probably one-half savage.”
We sat listening and the baying of the dogs seemed to move away.
“On this treasure business,” Elmer said, “leave us try to figure out what we have. Somewhere in this country to the west of us someone came fleeing out of Greece and hid out a bunch of boxes, some of which probably contained treasure. We know one of them did and some of the others may have. But the location might be a little hard to come by. It’s indefinite. A river flowing from the north into the old Ohio. There might be quite a lot of streams coming from the north . . .”
“There was a hut,” said Cynthia.
“That was ten thousand years ago. The hut must be long gone. We’d be looking for a hole, a tunnel, and that might be covered over.”
“What I want to know,” I said, “is why Thorney should have thought this strange character out of Greece might be Anachronian.”
“I asked him that,” said Cynthia, “and he said that : Greece or somewhere in that area of the planet would most likely be the place an alien observer would have set up his observation post. The first settled communities of the human race were established in what once was known as Turkey. An observer would not have set up a post too close to what he wished to study. He’d want to be in a position to do some observation and then get out of there. Greece would be logical, Professor Thorndyke said. Such an observer would have had some means of rather rapid transportation and the distance between the first settlements and Greece would have been no problem!’ “It doesn’t sound logical to me,” said Elmer, bluntly.
“Why Greece? Why not the Sinai? Or the Caspian? Or a dozen other places?”
“Thorney goes on hunches as much as evidence or logic,” I told them. “He has a well-developed hunch sense. He is very often right. If he says Greece I’d go along with him. Although it would seem this hypothetical observer of ours could have moved location time and time again.”
“Not if he were picking up loot all the time,” said Elmer. “He’d get weighed down with it. It would be quite a job to move. He probably brought along several tons of it when he moved to the Ohio.”
“But it wasn’t loot,” cried Cynthia. “You have to understand that it wasn’t loot. Not loot in terms of money, or in terms of whatever value the Anachronians might employ. Whatever he picked up were cultural artifacts.”
“Cultural artifacts,” said Elmer, “running very heavily to gold and precious stones.”
“Let’s be fair about it,” I said to Elmer. “It might just have happened that the broken box was filled with that kind of stuff. Some of the other boxes might have been filled with arrowheads or spear points, early woven stuffs, mortars and pestles.”
“Dr. Thorndyke thought,” said Cynthia, “that the boxes my old ancestor saw contained only a small fraction of what the observer had collected. Probably only a few of the more significant items. Back somewhere in Greece, perhaps in other caverns carved into the rock, there may be a hundred times as much as was in the boxes.”
“Whatever it may be it spells out treasure,” Elmer said. “Artifacts of any sort, command a price and I suppose they’d be worth even more if they were artifacts from Earth. But Earth or not, there is a booming trade in them. A lot of wealthy men, and they have to be wealthy to pay the prices asked, have collections of them. But aside from that, I understand it’s chic to have an artifact or two on the mantelpiece or in a display cabinet.”
I nodded, remembering Thorney, pacing up and down the room, striking his clenched fist into an open palm and
fulminating. “It’s getting so,” he’d yell, “that an honest archaeologist hasn’t got a chance. Do you know how many looted sites we’ve found in the last hundred years or so-dug up and looted before we ever got to them? The various archaeological societies and some of the governments have made investigations and there is no evidence of who is doing it or where the artifacts are taken to be hidden out. We’ve found no trace of them or whoever might be responsible. They are looted and warehoused somewhere and then they trickle back into collectors’ hands. It’s big business and it must be organized. We’ve pushed for laws to forbid private ownership of any artifact, but we get nowhere. There are too many men in government, too many men who have special interests, who are themselves collectors. And undoubtedly there are funds available, from someone, to fight such legislation. We are simply getting nowhere. And because of this vandalism we are losing the only chance we have to gain an understanding of the development of galactic cultures.” *