There was still noise corruption, still untranslatable sounds, but the essential sense of it was there, and now computers rigged in series with gigabytes of capability were sharpening it all the time. There were extrapolations and guesses, but at the end there was a message: Leg-bone shattered I cannot leap. Little time left. May Hero Death be mine! But life is end and time reflection.
Arriragh kharzz uru… Let avenging sons preserve bone in worship-shrine! And Patriarch, I demand, grant Full Name again: Skragga-Chmee! If I not Conquest Warrior High, I have great Conquest discovered. From my nneiierkrew glory for my House and the Patriarch.
The translator stumbled for a moment. The next sound was something like a live power cable dropped into water. Again, it could have been molecular or electronic distortion or an attempted simulacrum of nonhuman speech. Then the translation resumed: Sons know I have drawn off hunt, as plan. Sons will come when torn to pieces usurper Tskrrarr-Nig and regain estates on Skrullai and Name. I details of my course left. Kz'eerkti! The Kzinti come upon you!
I have hunt well. Hot. Riper world for Conquest than any I have heard ancient tales. Great hunting territories each my son. ArrearrrLLaghh Karssht Krrar RsssRRLaghh… Preserve and honor bone Skragga-Chmee.
What hunting has been! I live as Fanged Gold mean kzintosh live, even… I the noble Kzrral'eeAHrawl kill I need no weapon but Sire's w'tsai. Until today. May Fanged God's curse on Tskrrarr-Nig and his seed! May the God vomit forth his Soul!
Sight fail. Moment I trigger self-destruct Distant Prowler. Gravity-motor and armory will not fall to tool-using kz'eerkti's hands.
I do kz'eerkti service, preserving them for Patriarchy. Kz'eerkti population grow fast… Survey before landing I see kz'eerkt-bands fighting in eights of places.
The computer adjusted at this point. It noted that an analogue had been identified and that the sound 'kz'eerkt' was replaced by the word 'monkey'. The translation seemed to be getting better now.
Passing over oceans I see monkey-ships carry primitive guns as though even fight on sea! Toothsome good sport clever slaves, but if discover weaponry Distant Prowler with chemical rifles, the next heroes reach this planet find smoking craters. Should monkeys find gravity polarizer, the God's joke. But they will not.
Red-clad monkeys in white helmets hunters, one who leads chief. He will enter cave, I am sure. If he thinks I already dead, may lure him my claws.
I retreat to program self-destruct. My sons, that why I broke off battle when I knew wounds mortal! Not coward.
No way leave my sons clearer trail this place, they know my route to this system… planet with rudiments of industrialization only radiation signature of self-destruct will bring them to this place. My seed mighty hunters! Dying, I demand Honor's Name Conquest Warrior finds this message convey message sons of Skragga-Chmee, usurped Lord of R'kkia on Skrullai! Demand, too, Honor's Name, sons Warrior reward.
There was another gap. The screen adjusted as a new stream of data was fed in. The next words, the last words, were close to ordinary English.
Much pain. Hear monkeys and slave-beasts approach – I do not think I can say more.
Avenge me. Honor my bones. Warrior's sons…
As I had predicted. It was the only way they could have fitted everything more or less together, once the tiger-man relics were found and identified, as, we now saw, they had been meant to be found and identified by someone like me.
The hoaxers had thought further ahead to get the details right than I had given them credit for. Even the impossible speed and maneuverability of the supposed alien ship had been accounted for, in a sense, by the reference to a technology of gravity control.
Even the Angel's Pencil's supposed fluke destruction of such a supposedly impossibly superior 'enemy' could be explained away according to the scenario the hoaxers had concocted: Such 'enemies', though technologically superior, might be taken by surprise, once, by a reaction-drive used as a makeshift weapon if they themselves had never needed to develop such a clumsy and primitive means of propulsion.
"You've wrapped it up," said Alfred O'Brien. "But tanj! It was a set of twisted minds that packaged this idea.”
And a twisted mind that unraveled it, he didn't need to say.
"What will we do next?" I asked him.
"It'll move to another level for executive action. There'll be no interrogations. Nothing to cause any trouble with the Belt." "Shouldn't they make reparation, if they are parties to it? This must have all cost a lot of time and money." "No! That decision has been made at the highest level and its quite unequivocal. If there is Belt involvement we don't want to know. There must never be an excuse for another conflict! Now that the problem's solved, no incidents." He looked straight at me, and spoke in a voice I had never heard before, a voice gray as ash. "Not when thousands of ships are powered with fusion-drives." I thought I saw him shudder, and when the import of his words sank into me I shuddered too. Perhaps for the first time I truly understood what ARM's work and the program were for.
Then he continued in his normal voice.
"The Vaughn-Nguyens will have total memory-wipes and that will be the end of it. Into the Black Hole. The lot." "The Angel's Pencil?" "Too far away for us to do anything. Well simply block its transmissions. End of story. You've done well, Karl.
"You had better keep your present operating code for a few days," he continued. "You may need to access the records again when you write your report… " He nodded to himself. "You've done well," he repeated. Did I detect a note of doubt in his voice? But, no. I had done well. I thanked him and left. I planned to take a few days off then move back to my usual routine. There was one thing outstanding, a last piece of the puzzle I wondered whether to bother touching it again or not, and decided there was nothing to lose by one small action that would settle forever a tiny voice whispering a final question. It was still day in England. I called Humphrey at the British Museum. "How long," I asked him, "was it since the skull of the Vaughn's Tiger was last examined? Before we saw it the other day.”
He called me back several hours later. "The first part of the search didn't take long," he said, "but I had to go through some very old records for the rest. That part of the vault hasn't been opened since the electronic locks were installed. That's more than a hundred years. And according to the written records, the box itself hasn't been opened since the first time – when the material was sent here from Australia in 1908." The last answer. I recoiled. I felt like a man coming out of a dim cave, and, as he approached the daylight and the exit, placing his groping, overeager hand on a snake. I recoiled, but I forced myself to approach it again, to face at last what that last answer was. And at last I knew why the Angel's Pencil had sent its message. My vague intuition had been right: There had been a simple explanation, before us all the time.
CHAPTER 6
Our predatory animal origin represents for mankind its last best hope… the apes were armed killers -
Alfred O'Brien dumped me in an autodoc. In a 'doc, not at a 'doc. Big-league treatment. They even had a human doc look at me.
I think now that he had guessed some time before what my final report would be and had been waiting for it.
No one could have replicated exactly and in three dimensions the shape of a skull of which no complete drawings existed and which had been locked away before any of us was born.
I went on a holiday. ARM moved me up the waiting list for a permit to hike and camp in the Great Slave Lake Park and dive at Truk Lagoon. I visited Easter Island and the Taj Mahal.