"You say you couldn't budge it?" Webster asked Leopold.
"It weighs five or six hundred pounds. It can move of its own volition,
but I couldn't move it myself."
"Maybe the five of us--" Webster suggested.
"No," Leopold said. An odd smile crossed his face. "We will leave it
here."
"What?"
"Only temporarily," he added. "We'll save it--as a sort of surprise for
Mattern. We'll spring it on him the final day, letting him think all
along that this planet was worthless. He can rib us all he wants--but
when it's time to go, we'll produce our prize!"
"You think it's safe to leave it out here?" Gerhardt asked.
"Nobody's going to steal it," Marshall said.
"And it won't melt in the rain," Webster added.
"But--suppose it walks away?" Gerhardt demanded. "It can do that, can
it not?"
Leopold said, "Of course. But where would it go? It will remain where
it is, I think. If it moves, we can always trace it with the radar.
Back to the base, now; it grows late."
We climbed back into our halftracks. The robot, silent once again,
planted knee-deep in the sand, outlined against the darkening sky,
swivelled to face us and lifted one thick arm in a kind of salute.
"Remember," Leopold warned us as we left. "Not one word about this to
Mattern!"
* * * * *
At the base that night, Colonel Mattern and his seven aides were
remarkably curious about our day's activities. They tried to make it
seem as if they were taking a sincere interest in our work, but it was
perfectly obvious to us that they were simply goading us into telling
them what they had anticipated--that we had found absolutely nothing.
This was the response they got, since Leopold forbade mentioning
Ozymandias. Aside from the robot, the truth was that we _had_ found
nothing, and when they learned of this they smiled knowingly, as if
saying that had we listened to them in the first place we would all be
back on Earth seven days earlier, with no loss.
The following morning after breakfast Mattern announced that he was
sending out a squad to look for fusionable materials, unless we
objected.
"We'll only need one of the halftracks," he said. "That leaves two for
you. You don't mind, do you?"
"We can get along with two," Leopold replied a little sourly. "Just so
you keep out of our territory."
"Which is?"
Instead of telling him, Leopold merely said, "We've adequately examined
the area to the southeast of here, and found nothing of note. It won't
matter to us if your geological equipment chews the place up."
Mattern nodded, eyeing Leopold curiously as if the obvious concealment
of our place of operations had aroused suspicions. I wondered whether
it was wise to conceal information from Mattern. Well, Leopold wanted
to play his little game, I thought; and one way to keep Mattern from
seeing Ozymandias was not to tell him where we would be working.
"I thought you said this planet was useless from your viewpoint,
Colonel," I remarked.
Mattern stared at me. "I'm sure of it. But it would be idiotic of me
not to have a look, wouldn't it--as long as we're spending the time
here anyway?"
I had to admit that he was right. "Do you expect to find anything,
though?"
He shrugged. "No fissionables, certainly. It's a safe bet that
everything radioactive on _this_ planet has long since decomposed. But
there's always the possibility of lithium, you know."
"Or pure tritium," Leopold said acidly. Mattern merely laughed, and
made no reply.
Half an hour later we were bound westward again to the point where
we had left Ozymandias. Gerhardt, Webster and I rode together in one
halftrack, and Leopold and Marshall occupied the other. The third, with
two of Mattern's men and the prospecting equipment, ventured off to the
southeast toward the area Marshall and Webster had fruitlessly combed
the day before.
Ozymandias was where we had left him, with the sun coming up behind him
and glowing round his sides. I wondered how many sunrises he had seen.
Billions, perhaps.
We parked the halftracks not far from the robot and approached, Webster
filming him in the bright light of morning. A wind was whistling down
from the north, kicking up eddies in the sand.
"Ozymandias have remain here," the robot said as we drew near.
In English.
For a moment we didn't realize what had happened, but what followed
afterward was a five-man quadruple-take. While we gabbled in confusion
the robot said, "Ozymandias decipher the language somehow. Seem to be a
sort of guide."
"Why--he's parroting fragments from our conversation yesterday,"
Marshall said.
"I don't think he's parroting," I said. "The words form coherent
concepts. He's _talking_ to us!"
"Built by the ancients to provide information to passersby," Ozymandias
said.
"Ozymandias!" Leopold said. "Do you speak English?"
The response was a clicking noise, followed moments later by,
"Ozymandias understand. Not have words enough. Talk more."
The five of us trembled with common excitement. It was apparent now
what had happened, and the happening was nothing short of incredible.
Ozymandias had listened patiently to everything we had said the night
before; then, after we had gone, it had applied its million-year-old
mind to the problem of organizing our sounds into sense, and somehow
had succeeded. Now it was merely a matter of feeding vocabulary to the
creature and letting it assimilate the new words. We had a walking and
talking Rosetta Stone!
Two hours flew by so rapidly we hardly noticed their passing. We
tossed words at Ozymandias as fast as we could, defining them when
possible to aid him in relating them to the others already engraved on
his mind.
By the end of that time he could hold a passable conversation with
us. He ripped his legs free of the sand that had bound them for
centuries--and, serving the function for which he had been built
millennia ago, he took us on a guided tour of the civilization that had
been and had built him.
Ozymandias was a fabulous storehouse of archaeological data. We could
mine him for years.
His people, he told us, had called themselves the Thaiquens (or so
it sounded)--they had lived and thrived for three hundred thousand
years, and in the declining days of their history had built him, as an
indestructible guide to their indestructible cities. But the cities had
crumbled, and Ozymandias alone remained--bearing with him memories of
what had been.
"This was the city of Durab. In its day it held eight million people.
Where I stand now was the Temple of Decamon, sixteen hundred feet of
your measurement high. It faced the Street of the Winds--"
"The Eleventh Dynasty was begun by the accession to the Presidium
of Chonnigar IV, in the eighteen thousandth year of the city. It was
in the reign of this dynasty that the neighboring planets first were
reached--"
"The Library of Durab was on this spot. It boasted fourteen million
volumes. None exist today. Long after the builders had gone, I spent
time reading the books of the Library and they are memorized within
me--"
"The Plague struck down nine thousand a day for more than a year, in
that time--"
It went on and on, a cyclopean newsreel, growing in detail as
Ozymandias absorbed our comments and added new words to his vocabulary.
We followed the robot as it wheeled its way through the desert, our
recorders gobbling in each word, our minds numbed and dazed by the
magnitude of our find. In this single robot lay waiting to be tapped
the totality of a culture that had lasted three hundred thousand years!
We could mine Ozymandias the rest of our lives, and still not exhaust
the fund of data implanted in his all-encompassing mind.
When, finally, we ripped ourselves away and, leaving Ozymandias in the
desert, returned to the base, we were full to bursting. Never in the
history of our science had such a find been vouchsafed: a complete
record, accessible and translated for us.
We agreed to conceal our find from Mattern once again. But, like small
boys newly given a toy of great value, we found it hard to hide our
feelings. Although we said nothing explicit, our overexcited manner
certainly must have hinted to Mattern that we had not had as fruitless
a day as we had claimed.
That, and Leopold's refusal to tell him exactly where we had been
working during the day, must have aroused Mattern's suspicions. In
any event, during the night as we lay in bed I heard the sound of
halftracks rumbling off into the desert; and the following morning,
when we entered the mess-hall for breakfast, Mattern and his men,
unshaven and untidy, turned to look at us with peculiar vindictive
gleams in their eyes.
* * * * *
Mattern said, "Good morning, gentlemen. We've been waiting for some
time for you to arise."
"It's no later than usual, is it?" Leopold asked.
"Not at all. But my men and I have been up all night. We--ah--did a
bit of archaeological prospecting while you slept." The Colonel leaned
forward, fingering his rumpled lapels, and said, "Dr. Leopold, for
what reason did you choose to conceal from me the fact that you had
discovered an object of extreme strategic importance?"
"What do you mean?" Leopold demanded--with a quiver taking the
authority out of his voice.
"I mean," said Mattern quietly, "the robot you named Ozymandias. Just
why did you decide not to tell me about it?"
"I had every intention of doing so before our departure," Leopold said.
Mattern shrugged. "Be that as it may. You concealed the existence
of your find. But your manner last night led us to investigate the
area--and since the detectors showed a metal object some twenty miles
to the west, we headed that way. Ozymandias was quite surprised to
learn that there were other Earthmen here."
There was a moment of crackling silence. Then Leopold said, "I'll have
to ask you not to meddle with that robot, Colonel Mattern. I apologize
for having neglected to tell you of it--I didn't think you were quite
so interested in our work--but now I must insist you and your men keep
away from it."
"Oh?" Mattern said crisply. "Why?"
"Because it's an archaeological treasure-trove, Colonel. I can't
begin to stress its value to us. Your men might perform some casual
experiment with it and short circuit its memory channels, or something
like that. And so I'll have to invoke the rights of the archaeological
group of this expedition. I'll have to declare Ozymandias part of our
preserve, and off bounds for you."
Mattern's voice suddenly hardened. "Sorry, Dr. Leopold. You can't
invoke that now."
"Why not?"
"Because Ozymandias is part of _our_ preserve. And off bounds for you,
Doctor."
I thought Leopold would have an apoplectic fit right there in the
mess-hall. He stiffened and went white and strode awkwardly across the
room toward Mattern. He choked out a question, inaudible to me.
Mattern replied, "Security, Doctor. Ozymandias is of military use.
Accordingly we've brought him to the ship and placed him in sealed
quarters, under top-level wraps. With the power entrusted to me for
such emergencies, I'm declaring this expedition ended. We return to
Earth at once with Ozymandias."
Leopold's eyes bugged. He looked at us for support, but we said
nothing. Finally, incredulously, he said, "He's--of military use?"
"Of course. He's a storehouse of data on the ancient Thaiquen weapons.
We've already learned things from him that are unbelievable in their
scope. Why do you think this planet is bare of life, Dr. Leopold? Not
even a blade of grass? A million years won't do that. But a superweapon
_will_. The Thaiquens developed that weapon. And others, too. Weapons
that can make your hair curl. And Ozymandias knows every detail of
them. Do you think we can waste time letting you people fool with that
robot, when he's loaded with military information that can make America
totally impregnable? Sorry, Doctor. Ozymandias is your find, but he
belongs to us. And we're taking him back to Earth."
Again the room was silent. Leopold looked at me, at Webster, at
Marshall, at Gerhardt. There was nothing that could be said.
This was basically a militaristic mission. Sure, a few anthropologists
had been tacked onto the crew, but fundamentally it was Mattern's men
and not Leopold's who were important. We weren't out here so much to
increase the fund of general knowledge as to find new weapons and new
sources of strategic materials for possible use against the Other
Hemisphere.
And new weapons had been found. New, undreamed-of weapons, product of a
science that had endured for three hundred thousand years. All locked
up in Ozymandias' imperishable skull.
In a harsh voice Leopold said, "Very well, Colonel. I can't stop you, I
suppose."
He turned and shuffled out without touching his food, a broken, beaten,
suddenly very old man.