Artifact

1 Artifact Gregory Benford The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past. ‘WILLIAM FAULKNER PROLOGUE Greece [ca. 1425 B.C.] They buried the great King as twilight streaked the west crimson. Inside the tomb the holy men were placing the oiled and waxed body. The procession paused. A hawk spiraled overhead, hovered, then plunged toward prey. The village below was a disorderly brown jumble. People stood in its streets, watching the zigzag of torches scale the hillside. Inside, the ritual party was enclosing in the tomb walls the severely fashioned stone. It was a miraculous thing humming, giving an unceasing, eerie glow through the amber ornament. The abode of a god or a demon beast. Some in the procession said it should be kept, worshiped, not buried with the King. But the King had commanded this placing in the tomb. To protect his people from the fevered, blotchy death, he had said. A hollow shout. Commotion from the tomb. Men came running from beneath the high lintel, their eyes white, mouths gaping. ‘Death from the stone!’ one of them shouted. Ragged screams. ‘Close it!’ a high priest called loudly near the entrance. Heavy wooden doors swung inward. ‘No! My son is in there!’ ‘No time!’ the high priest yelled. ‘Those the thing struck down, leave them.’ ‘My son, you can’t!’ ‘Seal it! Now!’ The massive doors banged shut. Priests slammed home the thick iron bars. Then the teams above began to fill in the long entrance hall with sand, as planned, but now they shoveled frantically, driven by black fear. The high priest stumbled down the hillside, wild-eyed, shouting to the milling throng: ‘The men were easing the concealing slab into place when it happened. They hurried, mortared in the slab. But some?’ He gasped. ‘It is for the best. They are all gone from us now. The people are safe. As our King willed.’ The laboring teams above filled the entranceway frantically, tipping reservoirs of sand into the deeply cut passage. Soon it would seem like an ordinary hill, the tomb concealed. 2 ‘No! Please! I beg you, open it for but a moment. I will bring out?’ A tired wisdom filled the priest’s lined face. ‘The thing has gone back to the underworld, where the King found it. We must leave it that way. It will harm men no more.’ PART ONE CHAPTER One Deep inside the tomb they barely heard the snarl of an approaching vehicle. ‘That’ll be Kontos,’ George said, putting down his calipers. ‘It doesn’t sound like his car.’ Claire carefully punched her computer inventory on HOLD. ‘Who else would come out here’ That union moron?’ ‘Possibly.’ ‘Come on, I’ll bet you it’s Kontos.’ ‘Wait a sec.’