THEY SPENT THE afternoon trying to analyze how the city functioned. This looks like a public building, probably the seat of government. And that is maybe a courthouse or police station. (Digger had seen a uniformed functionary going in.) I’d say that’s a library over there. And look at this, a Grand Square of some sort, where the citizens probably gather to vote on issues proposed by the town council. “You think they vote here, Digger?”
“Actually,” he said, “I doubt it. Place like this will probably turn out to be run by a strongman of some sort.” Around him, the shops seemed prosperous, the Goompahs content. Other than the one uniform, there was no sign of armed guards. “Still, you never know.”
They peeked through the windows of a two-story building and saw rows of Goompahs sitting on stools, copying manuscripts.
They visited a blacksmith, watched an artisan crafting a bracelet, and got stranded in a physician’s quarters when someone unexpectedly closed a door. They tried to abide by Jack’s dictum that the natives not be allowed to see unexplainable events. So they sat down in the presence of the physician and his patient, and waited for their opportunity.
The patient was a male with a bright blue shirt. He was apparently suffering from a digestive problem. It was then that Digger first noticed the ability of the natives to bend their ears forward. While the patient answered questions, his doctor did precisely that. They left a pickup.
Later, they wandered through the markets near the waterfront. This was the same area that Digger had visited on that first night, when he’d placed the original set of pickups. The shops were decorated with brightly colored linens and tapestries. Pennants flew from rooftops. There were quarrels, beggars, some pushing and shoving, and once they saw a thief get away with what looked like a side of beef. So maybe Athens needed some policing after all.
Barter was in effect, as well as the monetary system.
Several times, Digger brushed up against the creatures. It was hard to avoid. What was significant was that the Goompahs, after they’d bounced off empty space, stared at it in surprise, moved their jaws up and down and muttered the same word. It was always the same. Kay-lo. The same thing the Goompah in the quarrel had said. He filed it away as an expletive, or as strange.
Two buildings on opposite sides of an avenue each contained a raised platform, centered among rising rows of benches. Concert halls? Places for political debate? Theaters in the round? They were empty at the moment.
“I’d like to see the show,” he told Kellie.
“We can come back this evening,” she said, “and take a look.”
IT WAS TIME to go see the temple.
It stood atop a crest of hills on the southern edge of the city, gold now in the approaching sunset. They climbed a road and finally a wide wooden staircase to get to it.
It was bigger up close than Digger had expected, round and polished, without ornamentation other than an inscription over the front entrance. Doric columns. A winged deity guarding the approaches, and watching over an ornate and lovely sundial, as though she were keeper of the seasons.
Walkways curved around the building and arced out to the highest point of the promontory, overlooking the sea. There were a goodly number of Goompahs, some simply strolling along the paths, others wandering among the columns and through the temple itself. There was no mistaking the sacred tone of the place. Voices were lowered, heads bowed, eyes distant. It was there that Digger first felt a serious kinship with the Goompahs.
A young one was being taken to task by a parent for breaking into a run and making a loud noise. A pair, male and female, approached the front entrance hand in hand, drawing closer together. Digger saw one bent with age struggle to kneel on the grass, lift a hinged piece of stone (by a ring installed for the purpose), and put something beneath it. Money, Digger thought.
An offering?
Moments later, a child who’d been with him retrieved the object. Or retrieved part of it.
“What do you think?” Digger asked.
Kellie’s hand was on his arm. “Don’t know. Passing the torch, maybe. Bury in sacred ground and recover. Pass it on beneath the eyes of the gods. Probably leave part of it for the religious establishment.”
The winged deity was about three-times life-size, and, unlike the ones in the park, this one was clothed. The wings were larger, sweeping, regal. She—there was no question it was female—carried a torch which she held straight out from her body. Save the wings, the figure shared all the physical characteristics of the natives, but Digger would never have considered calling her a Goompah.
They mounted the steps. Digger counted twelve. And he thought immediately of twelve months, twelve Olympians, twelve Apostles. Was all this stuff hardwired into sentient creatures everywhere?
The columns were wide, maybe twice as far around as he could have reached. The stone felt like marble.
The interior was a single space, a rotunda. The ceiling was high, possibly three stories, and vaulted. A stone platform, perhaps an altar, stood in the central section. Other statues gazed down at them. None had wings, but all shared a sublime majesty. They wore the same leggings and pullovers and sandals as the locals, but in the hands of the sculptors they’d become divine effects. One male divinity looked past Digger with a quiet smile, a female watched him with studied compassion. Another, more matronly, female cradled a child; a large warrior type was in the act of drawing a sword.
Not entirely without conflict, were they?
An older deity, with a lined face and weary eyes, bent over a scroll. A girl played a stringed instrument. And a male, overweight even for a Goompah, was transfixed in the act of laughing. He seemed somehow most dominant of all, and he set the mood for the place.
“Are you thinking what I am?” Kellie whispered.
That all this was going to be destroyed? That the circular shape of the temple was unlikely to save it because it was much too close to the city? “You know,” he said, “I’m beginning to get annoyed.”
The floor was constructed from ornately carved tiles. There were geometric designs, but he could also see depictions of the rays of the sun and images of branches and leaves. There were more columns in the interior. These were narrower, and they were decorated by the now-familiar symbols of the Goompah language. They moved through the temple, taking pictures of everything.
The worshipers walked quietly. No one spoke; the only sounds came from the wind and the sea and the periodic scream of a seabird. In the west, the sun was sinking toward the horizon.
An attendant passed through, lighting oil lamps. “It’s getting late,” Kellie said. “You ready to go back?”
Digger nodded. He removed a pickup from his vest, kept it carefully hidden in his hands, until he’d inserted it in the shadows between a column and a wall. “Last one,” he said.
“You think there’s much point, Dig? I don’t think anybody here says anything.”
“It’s okay. The atmosphere of this place is worth recording and sending back.”
But he knew they wouldn’t capture the atmosphere on disk. Hutchins, sitting in her office three thousand light-years away, would never understand what this place felt like.
They stood a moment between two columns and watched a ship pass. Digger tried to remember what the ocean looked like to the east. How far was the next major landfall?
“Traffic must all be up and down the isthmus,” said Kellie. “North and south.”
Not east and west. There was no evidence the Goompahs had been around the world. Strictly terra incognita out there.
The visitors to the temple were filing away; Digger and Kellie were almost alone. The lamps burned cheerfully, but their locations seemed primarily designed to accent the statuary.
Digger looked at the flickering lights, at the figure of the woman and child. What was the story behind that? The images were aspects, he knew, of the local mythology. Of the things that the Goompahs thought important. This was information that Collingdale would want to have.
The place was different in some ineffable way from houses of worship at home. Or even from pagan temples.
They paused again before the winged figure at the entrance. “Somebody here studied under Phidias,” said Kellie.
Digger nodded. Creature from another world that he was, he could still read dignity and power and compassion in those features. And the torch that she held spoke to him.
He looked back into the rotunda. At the laughing god.
THE ISTHMUS ROAD seemed unduly long on the return, and Digger was weary by the time they reached the lander. Night had fallen, and he was glad to shut off the lightbender and the e-suit and collapse into his seat.
Kellie gave a destination to Bill, and they lifted off and turned seaward. “How we doing?” she asked, reminding him that his bleak mood was still showing.
“Good,” he said. “We’re doing fine.”
For a long moment he could hear only the power flow. “You going to be all right?” she asked.
He looked out at scudding clouds, bright in the double moonlight. “Sure.” Don’t do it, Digger. He was okay. A little down, but he was okay. “Where are we going?”
“There’s an island. Safe place to spend the night.”
“Alone with Collier on an island,” he said. “Sounds like a dream.”
“You don’t sound as if you mean it.”
“I’m all right,” he insisted. “This island. Does it have a name?”
She thought a moment. “Utopia,” she said.
LIBRARY ENTRY
The great tragedy confronting us here is not that the Goompahs, to use the common terminology, face massive destruction, although that is surely cause enough for sorrow. But what makes me sad is that they may pass from existence without ever having understood the supreme joy that accompanies the life of the spirit. They have lived their lives, and they have missed the heart of the matter.
— Rev. George Christopher
The Monica Albright Show
Wednesday, May 7
PART THREE