Айзек Азимов - Before The Golden Age

Juan had talked of Quetzal. So had the frowning Mayas. That, of course, was ridiculous. Quetzal was a myth, like—like—Zeus and Poseidon and all the Greek Pantheon.

Nevertheless, he must get in, even if he never lived to disclose to the world what he had found. But how? The great stone must weigh over a ton, and there was no way even to get a fingerhold in that thin line of division. It would require patient drilling with high-powered drills. He laughed at that. He might as well as ask for the moon.

Then his eyes narrowed. There had been tales, in Egypt, of cunning artifices, of secret springs that moved stones smoothly. He had never seen one, nor had any one else with whom he had talked. Always it was some vague other, third or fourth removed from the narrator, who had vouched for such finds.

Nevertheless, his sensitive fingers strayed and tapped and probed. With a lilt of exultation he edged a forefinger into a tiny, shallow concavity, discernible only to pressure, not to sight. He jabbed.

The wall seemed to disappear smoothly in front of him. He had not even seen the great stone turn on its pivoting axis. Light glowed beyond.

He jerked through the opening, swung his flash eagerly around. A short exclamation throttled his throat, died queerly on his lips. He was in a rough-hewn chamber, walled with blocks of solid stone. A strange radiance streamed from a tiny niche in the opposite wall, danced past him in a direct beam toward the way he had entered. This was in itself exciting enough. But in the farther corner, dimly illuminated by the queer, crackling luminance, ensconced in a recess carved out of the solid rock, a figure stretched motionless.

Dead, of course, but queerly lifelike, queerly fresh and untouched by the countless years of immurement. He seemed as if he were merely asleep, awaiting some last trump.

Sam pressed forward. His limbs were strangely sluggish, his breathing heavy. There was a curious yellow smoke within the chamber, glowing with an inner light, that stirred clammily about him. Sam paid no attention, attributing his thudding heart to the excitement of his find.

For the man on that bed of rock was blond of hair and white of skin. His features, composed in the embalmment of death, were regular, classical, as if chiseled on a medallion. Armor incased his limbs, still untarnished, still bright.

Unbidden, wild theories flashed through Sam. This was no swarthy Maya chieftain. This was—Quetzal? The legend of that bright, blond god who had come out of the Pacific, blue-eyed, bringing civilization to the Mayas. Could it possibly be—

Then, and then only, did Sam Ward feel the choking sensation in his throat, the nightmare clogging of his limbs, the electric prickling of his skin. The gas! An embalming gas, whose secret had been lost in the mists of time, whose preservative influence was doubtless responsible for the incredible condition of the blond-haired mummy. He must get out quickly —give it a chance to dissipate—

The cry that welled from his lips was strangely thin. The pivoted stone through which he had come had disappeared. In its place was a solid, blank-seeming wall. He had not heard it close behind him. Yet he could have sworn there had been a guttural chuckle, the stealthy pad of naked feet. The Mayas had crawled soundlessly after him, had immured him for all eternity!

He stared at the fluorescent disk that glowed uncannily on the stone. His thought processes were becoming curiously fogged. He tried to laugh. The sound was dull, far-off. Irony! He had made the greatest find of modern times, and he could not shout it from the housetops. Quetzal had taken his revenge. Perhaps, in some future time, remote archaeologists would break into this chamber, find an incredible sight. A fair-haired god in bright armor—and another mummy, dressed in rough khaki, obviously of the twentieth century. He could envisage their bewilderment, their learned explanations.

The flash dropped from his paralyzed fingers; his limbs swayed pendulously. He tried to breathe, couldn’t. His heart no longer pounded. He was floating on a huge, yellow sea. His brain fought on a moment, failed. He fell, sprawled out on his back.

The flash sent its aimless beam along the stone floor, died out eventually. But the glow from the leaden pellet persisted, as it had for more than two thousand years before. Time ticked on wearily in the outside world. Civilizations rose and fell; wars decimated the earth; incredible events took place.

But within the chamber silence reigned and the radium clock burned on with ceaseless energy. Two figures lay, side by side, motionless, untouched. Outside, storm and sun and air-carried seeds built up over the low pyramid layer on layer of soil. The Mayas were forgotten. The last priest, descendant of one Hotep, prayed for the last time with bleared, hopeless eyes. Juan rotted into mother earth, a tiny poisoned dart between his shoulder blades. Sam Ward, too, was forgotten. For a few weeks there had been a flurry in San Felipe. But the search was halfhearted, and there was no way to determine where he had been lost in the jungle.

Kleon—a Greek—and Sam Ward—an American—heirs of different ages, united eternally in subterranean death, while the world wagged on to a fantastic future!

Tomson was curiously near to the vulgar emotion of anger as he stepped into the conveyor tube that would drop him to the lowest subterranean level of Hispan. He did not like to leave his cubicle on the middle level. There was home, his laboratory, his equipment, his calculation chamber. The atmospheric pressure was carefully attuned to his delicate body; the temperature did not vary by a hundredth of a degree from the warmth that was best adapted to the efficient working of his mind. In all the fifty years of his life he had not stirred more than half a dozen times from his level, and never this far down to the lowermost diggings of the Worker caste.

Why should he? He held his ordered niche in the system of Hispan. It had been fixed from birth, was comfortable, unalterable. Any other mode of existence was inconceivable. There had always been Olgarchs, there would always be the need for his class, the Technicians; and as for the Workers—well, no one paid much attention to them. They worked out their lives in the bowels of the earth, tended the mighty machines that made Hispan possible, dug and bred and died in humble anonymity.

Tomson dropped steadily down the conveyor tube that ran the vertical length of Hispan. A field of force hummed always in the tube. Travelers regulated the speed of ascent or descent by resistor packs attached to their belts. A slight shift to the right or left of the rheostat lever and positive or negative resistance to the field of force built up quickly in the required degree, and determined the speed and direction of flight.

Tomson passed the secondary levels of the lesser Technicians and his bald, bulging forehead wrinkled. It had been Harri who had respectfully but insistently begged his presence in the subterranean diggings. Damn the fellow, with his twitching face and excitable gesticulations of hands and legs. Why couldn’t he have handled this alleged new situation himself and not have disturbed Tomson’s intellectual concentrations? Didn’t he know how highly organized and easily disrupted the delicate body and brain case of a chief Technician was? Down here in the Worker levels were crude pressures, fit only for hulking creatures, and temperatures that fluctuated by as much as a whole degree either way.

He shivered as he dropped, was tempted to return to his quarters and let Harri struggle with the problem himself. But Harri was obviously floundering, frightened even; and if anything went wrong the Olgarchs would hold him, Tomson, responsible. He sighed, and sped up the tempo of his fall.