Robert Silverberg: The Artifact Business

The Voltuscian was a small, withered humanoid whose crimson throat-appendages quivered nervously, as if the thought of doing archaeological fieldwork excited him unbearably. He gestured to me anxiously with one of his four crooked arms, urging me onward over the level silt.

“This way, friend. Over here is the Emperor’s grave.”

“I’m coming, Dolbak.” I trudged forward, feeling the weight of the spade and the knapsack over my shoulder. I caught up with him a few moments later.

He was standing near a rounded hump in the ground, pointing downward. “This is it,” he said happily. “I have saved it for you.”

I fished in my pocket, pulled out a tinkling heap of arrow-shaped coins, and handed him one. The Voltuscian, nodding his thanks effusively, ran around behind me to help me unload.

Taking the spade from him, I thrust it into the ground and began to dig. The thrill of discovery started to tingle in me, as it does always when I begin a new excavation. I suppose that is the archaeologist’s greatest joy, that moment of apprehension as the spade first bites into the ground. I dug rapidly and smoothly, following Dolbak’s guidance.

“There it is,” he said reverently. “And a beauty it is, too. Oh, Jarrell-sir, how happy I am for you!”

I leaned on my spade to recover my wind before bending to look. I mopped away beads of perspiration, and thought of the great Schliemann laboring in the stifling heat of Hissarlik to uncover the ruins of Troy. Schliemann has long been one of my heroes—along with the other archaeologists who did the pioneer work in the fertile soil of Mother Earth.

Wearily, I stooped to one knee and fumbled in the fine sand of the Voltuscian plain, groping for the bright object that lay revealed. I worked it loose from its covering of silt and studied it.

“Amulet,” I said after a while. “Third Period; unspecified protective charm. Studded with emerald-cut gobrovirs of the finest water.” The analysis complete, I turned to Dolbak and grasped his hand warmly. “How can I thank you, Dolbak?”

He shrugged. “Not necessary.” Glancing at the amulet, he said, “It will fetch a high price. Some woman of Earth will wear it proudly.”

“Ah—yes,” I said, a trifle bitterly. Dolbak had touched on the source of my deep frustration and sorrow.

This perversion of archaeology into a source for trinkets and bits of frippery to adorn rich men’s homes and wives had always rankled me. Although I have never seen Earth, I like to believe I work in the great tradition of Schliemann and Evans, whose greatest finds were to be seen in the galleries of the British Museum and the Ashmolean, not dangling on the painted bosom of some too-rich wench who has succumbed to the current passion for antiquity.

When the Revival came, when everyone’s interest suddenly turned on the ancient world and the treasures that lay in the ground, I felt deep satisfaction—my chosen profession, I thought, now was one that had value to society as well as private worth. How wrong I was! I took this job in the hope that it would provide me with the needed cash to bring me to Earth—but instead I became nothing more than the hired lackey of a dealer in women’s fashions, and Earth’s unreachable museums lie inch-deep in dust.

I sighed and returned my attention to the excavation. The amulet lay there, flawless in its perfection, a marvelous relic of the great race that once inhabited Voltus. Masking my sadness, I reached down with both hands and lovingly plucked the amulet from the grave in which it had rested so many thousands of years.

I felt a sudden impulse to tip Dolbak again. The withered alien accepted the coins gratefully, but with a certain reserve that made me feel that perhaps this whole business seemed as sordid to him as it did to me.

“It’s been a good day’s work,” I told him. “Let’s go back, now. We’ll get this assayed and I’ll give you your commission, eh, old fellow?”

“That will be very good, sir,” he said mildly, and assisted me in donning my gear once again.

We crossed the plain and entered the Terran outpost in silence. As we made our way through the winding streets to the assay office, hordes of the four-armed, purple-hued Voltuscian children approached us clamorously, offering us things for sale, things they had made themselves. Some of their work was quite lovely; the Voltuscians seem to have a remarkable aptitude for handicrafting. But I brushed them all away. I have made it a rule to ignore them, no matter how delightful a spun-glass fingerbowl they may have, how airy and delicate an ivory carving. Such things, being contemporary, have no market value on Earth, and a man of my limited means must avoid luxuries of this sort.

The assay office was still open, and, as we approached, I saw two or three men standing outside, each with his Voltuscian guide.

“Hello, Jarrell,” said a tall man raucously.

I winced. He was David Sturges, one of the least scrupulous of the many Company archaeologists on Voltus—a man who thought nothing of breaking into the most sacred shrines of the planet and committing irreparable damage for the sake of ripping loose a single marketable item.

“Hello, Sturges,” I said shortly.

“Have a good day, old man? Find anything worth poisoning you for?”

I grinned feebly and nodded. “Nice amulet of the Third Period. I’m planning on handing it in immediately, but if you prefer I won’t. I’ll take it home and leave it on my table tonight. That way you won’t wreck the place looking for it.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Sturges said. “I came up with a neat cache of enameled skulls today—a dozen, of the Expansion Era, set with platinum scrollwork.” He pointed to his alien guide, a dour-looking Voltuscian named Qabur. “My boy found them for me. Wonderful fellow, Qabur. He can home in on a cache as if he’s got radar in his nose.”

I began to frame a reply in praise of my own guide when Zweig, the assayer, stepped to the front of his office and looked out. “Well, who’s next? You, Jarrell?”

“Yes, sir.” I picked up my spade and followed him inside. He slouched behind his desk and looked up wearily.

“What do you have to report, Jarrell?”

I drew the amulet out of my knapsack and handed it across the desk. He examined it studiously, noticing the way the light glinted off the facets of the inset gobrovirs. “Not bad,” he said.

“It’s a rather fine piece, isn’t it?”

“Not bad,” he repeated. “Seventy-five dollars, I’d say.”

“What? I’d figured that piece for at least five hundred! Come on, Zweig, be reasonable. Look at the quality of those gobrovirs!”

“Very nice,” he admitted. “But you have to understand that the gobrovir, while attractive, is intrinsically not a very valuable gem. And I must consider the intrinsic value as well as the historical, you know.”

I frowned. Now would come the long speech about supply and demand, the scarcity of gems, the cost of shipping the amulet back to Earth, marketing, on and on, on and on. I spoke before he had the chance. “I won’t haggle, Zweig. Give me a hundred and fifty or I’ll keep the thing myself.”

He grinned slyly. “What would you do with it? Donate it to the British Museum?”

The remark stung. I looked at him sadly, and he said, “I’ll give you a hundred.”

“Hundred and fifty or I keep.”

He reached down and scooped ten ten-dollar pieces from a drawer. He spread them out along his desk. “There’s the offer,” he said. “It’s the best the Company can do.”

I stared at him for an agonized moment, scowled, took the ten tens, and handed over the amulet. “Here. You can give me thirty pieces of silver for the next one 1 bring in.”