Fritz Leiber - Later Than You Think

OBVIOUSLY the Archeologists study belonged to an era vastly distant from today. Familiar similarities here and there only sharpened the feeling of alienage. The sunlight that filtered through the windows in the ceiling had a wan and greenish cast and was augmented by radiation from some luminous material impregnating the walls and floor. Even the wide desk and the commodious hassocks glowed with a restful light. Across the former were scattered metal-backed wax tablets, styluses, and a pair of large and oddly formed spectacles. The crammed bookcases were not particularly unusual, but the books were bound in metal and the script on their spines would have been utterly unfamiliar to the most erudite of modern linguists. One of the books, lying open on a hassock, showed leaves of a thin, flexible, rustless metal covered with luminous characters. Between the bookcases were phosphorescent oil paintings, mainly of sea bottoms, in somber greens and browns. Their style, neither wholly realistic nor abstract, would have baffled the historian of art.

A blackboard with large colored crayons hinted equally at the schoolroom and the studio.

In the center of the room, midway to the ceiling, hung a fish with iridescent scales of breathtaking beauty. So invisible was its means of support thatalso taking into account the strange paintings and the greenish lightone would have sworn that the object was to create an underwater scene.

The Explorer made his entrance in a theatrical swirl of movement. He embraced the Archeologist with a warmth calculated to startle that crusty old fellow. Then he settled himself on a hassock, looked up and asked a question in a speech and idiom so different from any we know that it must be called another means of communication rather than another language. The import was, Well, what about it?

If the Archeologist were taken aback, he concealed it. His expression showed only pleasure at being reunited with a long-absent friend. What about what? he queried. About your discovery!

What discovery? The Archeologists incomprehension was playful. The Explorer threw up his arms. Why, what else but your discovery, here on Earth, of the remains of an intelligent species? Its the find of the age! Am I going to have to coax you? Out with it!

I didnt make the discovery, the other said tranquilly. I only supervised the excavations and directed the correlation of material. You ought to be doing the talking. Youre the one whos just returned from the stars.

Forget that. The Explorer brushed the question aside. As soon as our spaceship got within radio range of Earth, they started to send us a continuous newscast covering the period of our absence. One of the items, exasperatingly brief, mentioned your discovery. It captured my imagination. I couldnt wait to hear the details. He paused, then confessed, You get so eager out there in spacea metal-filmed droplet of life lost in immensity. You rediscover your emotions... He changed color, then finished rapidly, As soon as I could decently get away, I came straight to you. I wanted to hear about it from the best authorityyourself

THE Archeologist regarded him quizzically. Im pleased that you should think of me and my work,

and Im very happy to see you again. But admit it now, isnt there something a bit odd about your getting so worked up over this thing? I can understand that after your long absence from Earth, any news of Earth would seem especially important. But isnt there an additional reason?

The Explorer twisted impatiently. Oh, I suppose there is. Disappointment, for one thing. We were hoping to get in touch with intelligent life out there. We were specially trained in techniques for establishing mental contact with alien intelligent life forms. Well, we found some planets with life upon them, all right. But it was primitive life, not worth bothering about.

Again he hesitated embarrassedly. Out there you get to thinking of the preciousness of intelligence. Theres so little of it, and its so lonely. And we so greatly need intercourse with another intelligent species to give depth and balance to our thoughts. I suppose I set too much store by my hopes of establishing a contact. He paused. At any rate, when I heard that what we were looking for, you had found here at homeeven though dead and done forI felt that at least it was something. I was suddenly very eager. It is odd, I know, to get so worked up about an extinct speciesas if my interest could, mean anything to them nowbut thats the way it hit me.

SEVERAL small shadows crossed the windows overhead. They might have been birds, except they moved too slowly.

I think I understand, the Archeologist said softly.

So get on with it and tell me about your discovery! the Explorer exploded.

Ive already told you that it wasnt my discovery, the Archeologist reminded him. A few years after your expedition left, there was begun a detailed resurvey of Earths mineral resources. In the course of some deep continental borings, one party discovered a cacheeither a very large box or a rather small roomwith metallic walls of great strength and toughness. Evidently its makers had intended it for the very purpose of carrying a message down through the ages. It proved to contain artifacts; models of buildings, vehicles, and machines, objects of art, pictures, and bookshundreds of books, along with elaborate pictorial dictionaries for interpreting them. So now we even understand their languages.

Languages? interrupted the Explorer. Thats queer. Somehow one thinks of an alien species as having just one language.

Like our own, this species had several, though there were some words and symbols that were alike in all their languages. These words and symbols seem to have come down unchanged from their most distant prehistory.

The Explorer burst out, I am not interested in all that dry stuff! Give me the wet! What were they like? How did they live? What did they create? What did they want?

The Archeologist gently waved aside the questions. All in good time. If I am to tell you everything you want to know, I must tell it my own way. Now that you are back on Earth, you will have to reacquire those orderly and composed habits of thought which you have partly lost in the course of your wild interstellar adventurings.

Curse you, I think youre just trying to tantalize me.

The Archeologists expression showed that this was not altogether untrue. He casually fondled an animal that had wriggled up onto his desk, and which looked rather more like an eel than a snake. Cute little brute, isnt it? he remarked. When it became apparent that the Explorer wasnt to be provoked into another outburst, he continued, It became my task to interpret the contents of the cache, to reconstruct its makers climb from animalism and savagery to civilization, their rather rapid spread across the worlds surface, their first fumbling attempts to escape from the Earth.

THEY had spaceships?

Its barely possible. I rather hope they did, since it would mean the chance of a survival elsewhere, though the negative results of your expedition rather lessen that. He went on, The cache was laid down when they were first attempting space flight, just after their discovery of atomic power, in the first flush of their youth. It was probably created in a kind of exuberant fancifulness, with no serious belief that it would ever serve the purpose for which it was intended. He looked at the Explorer strangely. If I am not mistaken, we have laid down similar caches.

After a moment the Archeologist continued, My reconstruction of their history, subsequent to the laying down of the cache, has been largely hypothetical. I can only guess at the reasons for their decline and fall. Supplementary material has been very slow in coming in, though we are still making extensive excavations at widely separated points. Here are the last reports. He tossed the Explorer a small metal-leaf pamphlet. It flew with a curiously slow motion.