“Lan, do join us. Have you two met yet?”
“Oh, we all know who he is,” the woman said.
Keene smiled uneasily for a moment. “Smithsonian,” he managed.
“Catherine Zetl,” the woman said, getting him off the hook. “I’m the historian.”
“Oh, right.”
“Ancient—the history, not me. Well, I hope not too much, anyway.”
“Catherine has been telling me some fascinating things,” Sariena said. “She’s just back from Arabia—involved with the Joktanian discoveries there.”
Keene searched his memory. There had been a stir in the news a couple of years back, and occasional mentions since in the scientific literature. “Some civilization they found from way back, isn’t it? Caused some surprises for the specialists.” Which about exhausted his knowledge of the subject.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Zetl said. “It’s turned all our ideas upside down. The Sumerians and Babylonians were supposed to have been the earliest to settle and build, but these people date from much earlier. Yet some of their architecture and workmanship appears more sophisticated. And there’s no obvious relationship to the cultures that came later. It’s as if they represent some lost age that flourished long before it should have been possible. For some reason it ended abruptly, and then what we’ve always thought was the beginning of civilization was a second start that came much later.”
“Isn’t it fascinating, Lan?” Sariena said again.
“So do we know what ended it?” Keene asked, getting more interested. “Was it your Kronian supercomet again?”
“Oh, I’m impressed by the Kronians’ arguments, but I refuse to be dragged into any of that tonight,” Zetl said, holding up a hand. “In any case, it couldn’t have been the comet, Venus, or whatever. This race existed long before the Egyptian Middle Kingdom and the Exodus. And I use the word `race’ deliberately. They were large—comparable to the Kronians around here.”
“The name Joktanian comes from Noah’s grandson,” Sariena informed Keene. “I didn’t know that.”
“That’s who the ancient Arabic legends say the first people of the southwest peninsula were descended from,” Zetl said, nodding. “Their word is Qahtan.” She glanced away. “Oh, there’s somebody about to leave that I must catch. Excuse me.” She laid a hand briefly on Sariena’s arm. “Sariena, we do have to talk more about all this. Do call me when they give you a moment—if they ever do.”
“I certainly will.”
Zetl excused herself again and hurried away.
Sariena looked at Keene, sighed, and rotated her face slowly to stretch her neck. “Oh my. Is this what it’s like to be what you call a celebrity? You do it all the time? Where do you get the stamina? What’s the secret?”
“Not really,” Keene said. “Most of the time I deal with reactors and engines. This is just temporary, since Friday. Attention spans on this world tend to be short.” He looked at the glass that Sariena was holding. “Want me to get you another? Save your feet.”
“Oh, please. Any kind of fruit juice with a touch of vodka. . . .” She handed him the glass. “Do I look unladylike up here on the arm like a bird on a perch? If I sit down in this couch I can’t get up again. It digests you.”
“I don’t think you could look unladylike in a boiler suit,” Keene replied. “Something more to eat?”
“Thanks, but I’ve had enough.”
He went over to the bar and got a refill, along with a straight Scotch for himself. He wasn’t driving tonight. Might as well make the most of it, he figured. “Anything else for you, sir?” the cocktail waiter tending the bar asked. He peered at Keene more closely. “Say, aren’t you one of those three guys who—”
“You’ve got it,” Keene murmured, covering his mouth and slipping a ten into the glass set aside for tips. “But don’t spread it around.”
He went back, handed Sariena her drink, and looked at her while he sipped his own. There had been so many things he’d listed in his mind that he wanted to ask her when they finally met. He wanted to know about her world and what it was like to live out there; how it felt to be without a planet that automatically self-renewed and replenished everything necessary for life; to be totally dependent for survival itself, every moment, on machines. He wanted to know how a moneyless system could function and still sustain—evidently—all the complexities of a technological society. What motivated people to provide for each other in place of the penalties and rewards that just about every authority on Earth insisted were indispensable? . . . So many things. And now here they were, and suddenly none of it felt appropriate.