PAGE 8
Omnilingual
by
“What I mean is that you’re trying to find something that any archaeologist, yourself included, should know doesn’t exist. I don’t object to your gambling your professional reputation and making a laughing stock of yourself; what I object to is that the blunders of one archaeologist discredit the whole subject in the eyes of the public.”
That seemed to be what worried Lattimer most. She was framing a reply when the communication-outlet whistled shrilly, and then squawked: “Cocktail time! One hour to dinner; cocktails in the library, Hut Four!”
* * * * *
The library, which was also lounge, recreation room, and general gathering-place, was already crowded; most of the crowd was at the long table topped with sheets of glasslike plastic that had been wall panels out of one of the ruined buildings. She poured herself what passed, here, for a martini, and carried it over to where Selim von Ohlmhorst was sitting alone.
For a while, they talked about the building they had just finished exploring, then drifted into reminiscences of their work on Terra–von Ohlmhorst’s in Asia Minor, with the Hittite Empire, and hers in Pakistan, excavating the cities of the Harappa Civilization. They finished their drinks–the ingredients were plentiful; alcohol and flavoring extracts synthesized from Martian vegetation–and von Ohlmhorst took the two glasses to the table for refills.
“You know, Martha,” he said, when he returned, “Tony was right about one thing. You are gambling your professional standing and reputation. It’s against all archaeological experience that a language so completely dead as this one could be deciphered. There was a continuity between all the other ancient languages–by knowing Greek, Champollion learned to read Egyptian; by knowing Egyptian, Hittite was learned. That’s why you and your colleagues have never been able to translate the Harappa hieroglyphics; no such continuity exists there. If you insist that this utterly dead language can be read, your reputation will suffer for it.”
“I heard Colonel Penrose say, once, that an officer who’s afraid to risk his military reputation seldom makes much of a reputation. It’s the same with us. If we really want to find things out, we have to risk making mistakes. And I’m a lot more interested in finding things out than I am in my reputation.”
She glanced across the room, to where Tony Lattimer was sitting with Gloria Standish, talking earnestly, while Gloria sipped one of the counterfeit martinis and listened. Gloria was the leading contender for the title of Miss Mars, 1996, if you liked big bosomy blondes, but Tony would have been just as attentive to her if she’d looked like the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz.” because Gloria was the Pan-Federation Telecast System commentator with the expedition.
“I know you are,” the old Turco-German was saying. “That’s why, when they asked me to name another archaeologist for this expedition, I named you.”
He hadn’t named Tony Lattimer; Lattimer had been pushed onto the expedition by his university. There’d been a lot of high-level string-pulling to that; she wished she knew the whole story. She’d managed to keep clear of universities and university politics; all her digs had been sponsored by non-academic foundations or art museums.
“You have an excellent standing: much better than my own, at your age. That’s why it disturbs me to see you jeopardizing it by this insistence that the Martian language can be translated. I can’t, really, see how you can hope to succeed.”
She shrugged and drank some more of her cocktail, then lit another cigarette. It was getting tiresome to try to verbalize something she only felt.
“Neither do I, now, but I will. Maybe I’ll find something like the picture-books Sachiko was talking about. A child’s primer, maybe; surely they had things like that. And if I don’t. I’ll find something else. We’ve only been here six months. I can wait the rest of my life, if I have to, but I’ll do it sometime.”