"No. We got the machine working last night and ran off some of the
Martian stuff. Clear as a bell. But I saved the main attraction for
when you got here." Thwaite turned to a side door, fishing a key from
his pocket. "The playback machine's in here."
The apparatus, squatting on a sturdy table in the small room beyond,
had the slightly haywire look of an experimental model. But it was
little short of a miracle to those who knew how it had been built--on
the basis of radioed descriptions of the ruined device the excavators
had dug up on Mars.
Even more intriguing, however, was the row of neatly labeled boxes on
a shelf. There in cushioned nests reposed little cylinders of
age-tarnished metal, on which a close observer could still trace the
faint engraved lines and whorls of Martian script. These were the
best-preserved specimens yet found of Martian record films.
Sound and pictures were on them, impressed there by a triumphant
science so long ago that the code of Hammurabi or the hieroglyphs of
Khufu seemed by comparison like yesterday's newspaper. Men of Earth
were ready now to evoke these ancient voices--but to reproduce the
stereoscopic images was still beyond human technology.
Dalton scrutinized one label intently. "Odd," he said. "I realize how
much the Martian archives may have to offer us when we master their
spoken language--but I still want most to hear _this_ record, the one
the Martians made right here on Earth."
Thwaite nodded comprehendingly. "The human race is a good deal like an
amnesia patient that wakes up at the age of forty and finds himself
with a fairly prosperous business, a wife and children and a mortgage,
but no recollection of his youth or infancy--and nobody around to tell
him how he got where he is.
"We invented writing so doggone late in the game. Now we get to Mars
and find the people there knew us before we knew ourselves--but they
died or maybe picked up and went, leaving just this behind." He used
both hands to lift the precious gray cylinder from its box. "And of
course you linguists in particular get a big charge out of this
discovery."
"_If_ it's a record of human speech it'll be the oldest ever found. It
may do for comparative-historical linguistics what the Rosetta Stone
did for Egyptology." Dalton grinned boyishly. "Some of us even nurse
the hope it may do something for our old headache--the problem of the
origin of language. That was one of the most important, maybe _the_
most important step in human progress--and we don't know how or when
or why!"
"I've heard of the bowwow theory and the dingdong theory," said
Thwaite, his hands busy with the machine.
"Pure speculations. The plain fact is we haven't even been able to
make an informed guess because the evidence, the written records, only
run back about six thousand years. That racial amnesia you spoke of.
"Personally, I have a weakness for the magical theory--that man
invented language in the search for magic formulae, words of power.
Unlike the other theories, that one assumes as the motive force not
merely passive imitativeness but an outgoing will.
"Even the speechless subman must have observed that he could affect
the behavior of animals of his own and other species by making
appropriate noises--a mating call or a terrifying shout, for instance.
Hence the perennial conviction you can get what you want if you just
hold your mouth right, _and_ you know the proper prayers or curses."
"A logical conclusion from the animistic viewpoint," said Thwaite. He
frowned over the delicate task of starting the film, inquired
offhandedly, "You got the photostat of the label inscription? What did
you make of it?"
"Not much more than Henderson did on Mars. There's the date of the
recording and the place--the longitude doesn't mean anything to us
because we still don't know where the Martians fixed their zero
meridian. But it was near the equator and, the text indicates, in a
tropical forest--probably in Africa or South America.
"Then there's the sentence Henderson couldn't make out. It's obscure and
rather badly defaced, but it's evidently a comment--unfavorable--on
the subject-matter of the recording. In it appears twice a sort of
interjection-adverb that in other contexts implies revulsion--something
like _ugh_!"
"Funny. Looks like the Martians saw something on Earth they didn't
like. Too bad we can't reproduce the visual record yet."
Dalton said soberly, "The Martian's vocabulary indicates that for all
their physical difference from us they had emotions very much like
human beings'. Whatever they saw must have been something we wouldn't
have liked either."
The reproducer hummed softly. Thwaite closed the motor switch and the
ancient film slid smoothly from its casing. Out of the speaker burst a
strange medley of whirrings, clicks, chirps, trills and modulated
drones and buzzings--a sound like the voice of grasshoppers in a
drought-stricken field of summer.
Dalton listened raptly, as if by sheer concentration he might even now
be able to guess at connections between the sounds of spoken
Martian--heard now for the first time--and the written symbols that he
had been working over for years. But he couldn't, of course--that
would require a painstaking correlation analysis.
"Evidently it's an introduction or commentary," said the archeologist.
"Our photocell examination showed the wave-patterns of the initial and
final portions of the film were typically Martian--but the middle part
isn't. The middle part is whatever they recorded here on Earth."
"If only that last part is a translation...." said Dalton hopefully.
Then the alien susurration ceased coming from the reproducer and he
closed his mouth abruptly and leaned forward.
For the space of a caught breath there was silence. Then another voice
came in, the voice of Earth hundreds of centuries dead.
It was not human. No more than the first had been--but the Martian
sounds had been merely alien and these were horrible.
It was like nothing so much as the croaking of some gigantic frog,
risen bellowing from a bottomless primeval swamp. It bayed of stinking
sunless pools and gurgled of black ooze. And its booming notes
descended to subsonic throbbings that gripped and wrung the nerves to
anguish.
Dalton was involuntarily on his feet, clawing for the switch. But he
stopped, reeling. His head spun and he could not see. Through his
dizzy brain the great voice roared and the mighty tones below hearing
hammered at the inmost fortress of the man's will.
On the heels of that deafening assault the voice began to change. The
numbing thunder rumbled back, repeating the pain and the threat--but
underneath something crooned and wheedled obscenely. It said,
"_Come ... come ... come...._" And the stunned prey came on stumbling
feet, shivering with a terror that could not break the spell.
Where the squat black machine had been was something that was also
squat and black and huge. It crouched motionless and blind in the mud
and from its pulsing expanded throat vibrated the demonic croaking. As
the victim swayed helplessly nearer the mouth opened wide upon long
rows of frightful teeth....
The monstrous song stopped suddenly. Then still another voice cried
briefly, thinly in agony and despair. That voice was human.
Each of the two men looked into a white strange face. They were
standing on opposite sides of the table and between them the playback
machine had fallen silent. Then it began to whir again in the locust
speech of the Martian commentator, explaining rapidly, unintelligibly.
Thwaite found the switch with wooden fingers. As if with one accord
they retreated from the black machine. Neither of them even tried to
make a false show of self-possession. Each knew, from his first
glimpse of the other's dilated staring eyes, that both had experienced
and seen the same.
Dalton sank shivering into a chair, the darkness still swirling
threateningly in his brain. Presently he said, "The expression of a
will--that much was true. But the will--was not of man."
* * * * *
James Dalton took a vacation. After a few days he went to a
psychiatrist, who observed the usual symptoms of overwork and worry
and recommended a change of scene--a rest in the country.
On the first night at a friend's secluded farm Dalton awoke drenched
in cold sweat. Through the open window from not far away came a
hellish serenade, the noise of frogs--the high nervous voices of
peepers punctuating the deep leisured booming of bullfrogs.
The linguist flung on his clothes and drove back at reckless speed to
where there were lights and the noises of men and their machines. He
spent the rest of his vacation burrowing under the clamor of the city
whose steel and pavements proclaimed man's victory over the very grass
that grew.
After awhile he felt better and needed work again. He took up his
planned study of the Martian recordings, correlating the spoken words
with the written ones he had already arduously learned to read.
The Martian Museum readily lent him the recordings he requested for
use in his work, including the one made on Earth. He studied the
Martian-language portion of this and succeeded in making a partial
translation--but carefully refrained from playing the middle section
of the film back again.
Came a day, though, when it occurred to him that he had heard not a
word from Thwaite. He made inquiries through the Museum and learned
that the archeologist had applied for a leave of absence and left
before it was granted. Gone where? The Museum people didn't know--but
Thwaite had not been trying to cover his trail. A call to Global Air
Transport brought the desired information.
A premonition ran up Dalton's spine--but he was surprised at how
calmly he thought and acted. He picked up the phone and called
Transport again--this time their booking department.
"When's the earliest time I can get passage to Belem?" he asked.
With no more than an hour to pack and catch the rocket he hurried to
the Museum. The place was more or less populated with sightseers,
which was annoying, because Dalton's plans now included larceny.
He waited before the building till the coast was clear, then, with
handkerchief-wrapped knuckles, broke the glass and tripped the lever
on the fire alarm. In minutes a wail of sirens and roar of arriving
motors was satisfyingly loud in the main exhibit room. Police and fire
department helicopters buzzed overhead. A wave of mingled fright and
curiosity swept visitors and attendants alike to the doors.
Dalton, lingering, found himself watched only by the millennially
sightless eyes of the man who lay in state in an airless glass tomb.
The stern face was inscrutable behind the silence of many thousand
years.
"Excuse me, Oswald," murmured Dalton. "I'd like to borrow something of
yours but I'm sure you won't mind."
The reed flute was in a long case devoted to Earthly specimens.
Unhesitatingly Dalton smashed the glass.
* * * * *
Brazil is a vast country, and it cost much trouble and time and
expense before Dalton caught up with Thwaite in a forlorn riverbank
town along the line where civilization hesitates on the shore of that
vast sea of vegetation called the _mato_. Night had just fallen when
Dalton arrived. He found Thwaite alone in a lighted room of the single
drab hotel--alone and very busy.
The archeologist was shaggily unshaven. He looked up and said
something that might have been a greeting devoid of surprise. Dalton
grimaced apologetically, set down his suitcase and pried the wax plugs
out of his ears, explaining with a gesture that included the world
outside, where the tree frogs sang deafeningly in the hot stirring
darkness of the near forest.
"How do you stand it?" he asked.
Thwaite's lips drew back from his teeth. "I'm fighting it," he said
shortly, picking up his work again. On the bed where he sat were
scattered steel cartridge clips. He was going through them with a
small file, carefully cutting a deep cross in the soft nose of every
bullet. Nearby a heavy-caliber rifle leaned against a wardrobe. Other
things were in evidence--boots, canteens, knapsacks, the tough
clothing a man needs in the _mato_.
"You're looking for _it_."