Maya Bohnhoff: The Secret Life of Gods

They were moving now, beneath the great stone arch and into the embrace of the ruins. Rick Halfax, falling in beside Yoshi, caught her eye and made a face. “Look at ’em, Yosh. Two peas in a pod and happy as clams. I think the professor has found a soul mate.”

Yoshi, to whom colloquial English was a third language at best, and who had always thought of herself as Rhys Llewellyn’s soul mate, gave her companion a wrinkle-browed look of puzzlement. “Isn’t that a mixed metaphor?”

“They’re not metaphors; they’re cliches. Mixed? I dunno. I’d eat peas with clam.”

“Well, I’ve never understood that saying. How can you tell a clam is happy?”

Rick rolled his eyes. “Never mind.” Yoshi shrugged and lengthened her strides so she could hear what the professors clam were discussing.

“The Leguini are rather an odd bunch of philistines,” Dr. Burton was saying as he led the way among the lichen-encrusted buildings. “They don’t seem to care two figs for their distant past. Anything over 500 years old is completely uninteresting to them. Scott—that’s our master digger—insists that’s pragmatism. I personally think it’s laziness. I suppose I ought to consider us fortunate; if they weren’t so ‘pragmatic’ the Leguini would probably be out here making our lives hell.”

Yoshi doubted Rhys even heard him. He was turning in a slow, unsteady circle, an expression of complete rapture on his face, his eyes drinking in the ruins that now surrounded them. The tower was the most outstanding feature in the group. It sat at the locus of the cluster of buildings, its spiral rising, vine-draped and majestic, out of a hill of detritus which was still being cleared away by a team of grimy diggers. Though the top several tiers had crumbled, it stood high above the surrounding walls, a veil of steamy mist cloaking its highest levels. A huge tree had grown up right through the middle of it, and spread its branches out over the mountain of masonry like a fantastic parasol. To Yoshi it looked like a many-tiered cake with green and burgundy icing and a giant florette ornament. She grimaced at the lack of professionalism in that comparison—her anthropology professor father would despair of her.

Flanking the tower on either side were two low, massive structures —two, maybe three stories tall. They were windowless, but had several huge doors apiece set at regular intervals along the facades. They appeared to be identical. A glance back toward the gate showed the one apparent difference; the building to the east had a square annex at its northern end that had tall, rectangular windows and a door of normal proportions. Only now did Yoshi notice the accouterments of archaeology—the ranging pegs, the spades, the finds trays and canisters that she suspected would always clutter a dig no matter how much technology evolved.

“This is incredible!” Rhys’s voice oozed out in hushed awe.

Burton was nodding, smiling. “Isn’t it, though? Reminds one a bit of Caracol. Except, of course, for the burgundy foliage. We call it Sper-ets —that’s Temple of the Moon, in the local parlance.”

They took a whirlwind tour of the major features of Sper-ets—whirlwind, because Leguin was sinking toward the horizon of its fourth planet, and night, according to their host, was not a safe time to be poking about among the stones.

“Nocturnal nasties,” he explained. “Leguin 4 is home to a lovely assortment of poisonous creepy-crawlies. An entomologist’s paradise.”

“So, everything just closes up around here at night?” Rick asked.

“Around here, yes. Rural Leguini wear ‘night suits’—hip-waders made of some tough but flexible synthetic; a cowling that reaches almost to the waist. Of course, we’ve taken the precaution of connecting all the tents and cabins in our camp complex with slatex tubing.” He glanced at Rhys. “I hear you’re partially responsible for the increased availability of that commodity.”

Rhys smiled, pleased that Burton knew of his previous year’s coup in the slatex market. His pleasure was immediately dampened by the regret that the coup hadn’t been archaeological instead of commercial. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the recent developments on Tson?” he asked hopefully.

“No, sorry, I haven’t. But you can catch me up over supper.”

They dined in the camp commons, a large portable cabin that would, Dr. Burton assured them, be proof to the local fauna. There they sat at a table with Burton’s associate, Nyami Deer-Walks-Here; his dig master, Scott Buchanan; his apprentice, Wayne Bell; and a Xthni named Tzia of Qltrel, a specialist in restoration who also served as finds assistant. There were others, as well, diggers and apprentices (mostly students from Collective universities), scientific specialists from a variety of disciplines. But Sir Drew Burton was undisputedly the crowned head of the gathering, and Rhys felt rather like the starry-eyed traveler who finds himself assigned to the captain’s table for a galactic cruise.

The only sour note of the evening played when Yoshi stopped Wayne Bell in the middle of a joke to say, “I notice you keep referring to the aboriginal population as the ‘Linguine.’ Why is that?”

Bell shrugged and smiled, eyes kindling in a manner that made Rhys suspect Yoshi was the only person at table he’d not resent for interrupting a punch line. “Leguini—linguine. You can see how it sort of lends itself to the word play.”

Yoshi, missing both the humor and the humorist’s intent expression, shook her head. “Leguin is what we called the star before we realized there was anybody here. They call it Etsa, which means ‘light-giver.’ And they call their planet Etsat, meaning ‘child of Etsa,’ and themselves Etsatat, meaning children of the child of Etsa.’ ”

Bell’s brows raised. “You’ve certainly done your homework.”

Yoshi toyed with her braid. “I find the Etsatat culture interesting. It has striking parallels to nineteenth century Earth. Of course, on Etsat, there are no significant subcultures to compare with Earth’s aboriginal groups. In some ways that makes it all the more fascinating. A singularly unfragmented global society.”

“Yes, well, I fail to find them the least bit engaging,” interjected Burton. “They’ve lost touch with their past. So much so that they’re absolutely useless as guides. They’ve no knowledge of the way their ancestors lived, how they thought, what they loved.” He shook his head, obviously finding that a difficult thing to grasp.

Nyami Deer-Walks-Here nodded in agreement. “Drew’s right. The Etsatat are a singularly future-oriented people. What’s past is past, what’s buried might as well stay that way. I have to admit, I found that very disconcerting when we first arrived. ” She chuckled. “When we told the regional governor what we wanted to do out here in the wildy woods, he thought we were insane. Just a bunch of rusticating lovers of antiquity, eh, Drew? I sometimes think we’d be content to live life backwards.”

Burton harrumphed. “Well, there’s to be a balance, I’m sure, but dammit, Nyami, these people have been so bloody unhelpful. Can’t tell us anything, because they’ve never bothered to explore.” He leaned toward Rhys across the table. “Do you know, we’ve never found the slightest evidence of latter-day looting? No one has been in these buildings since they were abandoned.”

“Except for the vermin,” amended Bell.

“Except for that. And this is by no means the only site we’ve been working. There’s a village about five klicks from here, and temple complexes like this one—” He thumbed toward the dig, “—are all over the map. But the Leguini have absolutely no record of any of them.” His eyes wandered to the dark outside the cabin windows—a dark lit by plasma torches on tall poles. “The treasures that have lain buried here for countless centuries…”