We Must Distinguish Between Vital, Ongoing Traditions And Mere Survivals
A party promptly formed. Two reporters decided to go, Mr. Aptezor and Miss Bodder, whose personal name turned out to be Erzrasprej, a name unimaginable to Adabans outside of a comedy routine and a definite incentive for them to stick to “Miss Bodder.” The others either ignored the Hwohyesu question as Miss Baozir did or pursued their own ideas.
Taomenk Genarostaf and Gabdirn Haubentlag joined also, the former from an intellectual motive and the latter owing to frustration with Odibink Sharazilk and those theories he advanced with such an irritating combination of anxiety and stubbornness like a puppy which snatches food off the table and retreats under the couch before a word is raised against it. Most surprisingly, Doltandon Yurvitas took some of the leave owed him for the purpose. As to his motives, he offered none, and neither did such seem required; internal processes alone forced Mr. Gabdirn to express his displeasure.
Cowsick Point, as might be expected of such a prominent landmark in local history, showed up on every map purchasable in Ividottlof and those in camp by extension. Gabdirn agreed with Silapobant and possibly Hwohyesu that a location so far out could not possibly be grouped with Iflarent's Hideout as a single site but that the existence of an auxiliary site might be considered. Unlike in the case of Silapobant, someone less learned in Ertithan studies, Gabdirn's conjectures did not begin or end at a village but included such possibilities as a fortress, a tomb, a royal storehouse (the existence of royalty or any details of Ertithan government had not been convincingly established), or a refuse dump where items of a magical nature were discarded in accordance with methods doubtless considered improper today.
Those ideas sounded sensible, but Taomenk held different opinions. “Mr. Gabdirn bases his ideas on what he would do,” he related as he tramped along to Dirant, whose company he preferred because of the kinship he felt with Ritualists, a class of “specialist engineers” as he put it. “Admittedly, what he would do is worth thinking about. He has logic and sense to him. The best logic though has to proceed from premises. You have to get the premises right or it's nonsense. The basis of everything is physical reality. Don't think about what the ancients wanted to build, but what they could build and what they had to.”
“It is a matter of the woods and metals available and such then?”
“It is. This area is good for exactly nothing right now. First, wonder if it was different then.” Taomenk followed that with a discourse on weather patterns, erosion, mountain formation, and the properties of the great plain which constituted most of the state, some of which Dirant followed, and all accompanied by knowing nods and demonstrative gestures. He concluded with his surmise that Cowsick Point and its environs for a good distance likely had been underwater at the period when the ruins of Iflarent's Hideout lacked the quality of being ruined.
“In that situation we must discard most of our ideas to this point and all of Mr. Gabdirn's,” Dirant acknowledged in response to the convincing force of the argument. “With what do we replace them?”
“That is never so easy, but I let myself dig the ground, and so I must continue. Did you know that every Ertith site before now was landlocked? We know nothing about their naval capabilities. I begged for this job when I worked out that the Hideout must be the first port ever discovered. Begged for it, Mr. Dirant, and Mr. Atkosol took me on. A great man. My best guess right now is that the Ertithans were able to work submerged for no more than two hours at a time, but evidence found here might overturn that.”
“No more than two hours?” Dirant hoped he did not sound as startled as he was.
“I admit that is a conservative estimate, but I stand by it as most consistent with the evidence. That's about how long it would take the average swimmer to get through the longest lower passages found, and if we give Ertithans the advantage in swimming over humans as I think we must.” Taomenk shrugged.
For all the speed Dirant had applied to reading up on the topic from his desire to have a firm foundation of Ertith knowledge before he traveled to Ividottlof, missing a fact as momentous as the inhumanity of the ancient Ertithans seemed impossible. Yet Taomenk spoke with equal confidence as before, and as much eloquence as well. Perhaps Dirant had simply overlooked something, as he had all those times when teachers corrected his shallow understanding of a work of literature. The obstacle to accepting that as an explanation was how often the corrections came when he repeated what an earlier teacher had said. “The passages were filled with water formerly? Were they not used for storage and as catacombs?”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“They had to be. They all slant slightly, so little that only with instruments can it be detected. The reason for that is to influence the water flow. The same is true inside each ziggurat. The floor comes to a mound in the center. They poured water and oils there, let the mixture spread over the floor, and made use of the lubricated floor to move stones around easier. Every ziggurat without exception started as a bump. Then they drained more water down the shaft and filled it up. Otherwise papers would be down there. Our most essential archives use underground storage, but the Ertithans were too stupid to think of it? Ridiculous. No papers, no fragile vessels, no fragrant oils, nothing that dislikes water's touch has ever been found below ground. And it never will.”
Dirant peeked to see if anyone else was listening. He wanted to consult someone on these topics, since he had the sense he ought to be objecting yet no grounds for doing so, since his expertise with regard to Taomenk's latest claims ended at slipping on a wet floor once. Further, from a philosophical standpoint, someone who believed wholeheartedly that gods bequeathed class abilities on humans and made them all their priests bore an obligation to refrain from dismissing claims contrary to modern conceptions.
> +1 bonus to Tit-for-Tat gained.
There was support for his stance, though a good deal of argument existed over the possibility one might possess too much of that stat. The Tit-for-Tat controversy notwithstanding, nobody less burdened by reciprocal feeling looked to be available for consultation, since most attention was on Mr. Gabdirn's presumably more orthodox speech or on the countryside, unexceptional as it was. Thus isolated, Dirant decided to embrace the conversation. “Regarding the humanity or otherwise of the Ertithans . . .”
Taomenk nodded. “It's that mischievous presumption which stops us from getting at the truth. Not one in a hundred questions it, and I'll allow I was one of the ninety-nine for too long a time. Think of it, Mr. Dirant. Ponder. Run over all the evidence we have that they were humans who designed these settlements completely unlike what humans made before or since. Are you done yet? You are, because there is none.”
Dirant considered the dimensions of the ruins he had entered himself and began to reply, but Taomenk continued once he was satisfied that Dirant had indeed run over the evidence. “Their statues are amusingly crude. We found them inside edifices no one could reproduce for centuries, and those placed in urban layouts we only recently have started to surpass, in Drastlif you know, but never mind that. They are rough facsimiles of men and women who have always existed as they do today. Suppose any one of those premises isn't so. Now the better explanation is that the Ertithans in their evident superiority of intellect, constrained though it was by material conditions, produced accurate depictions of the human body as it was then before the Ertithans finished their work on the new type of life they crafted to possess every advantage it needed to survive the coming apocalypse, the signs of which can be seen in layers of exposed sediment. Be careful. Once you realize it, you might think all the intellectuals are fools. Admittedly, I did, but now I know they're too frightened by the signs of the next disaster to face it. It's a shame that we don't have the courage our creators did, Mr. Dirant. An outrageous shame.”
As crucial as Dirant considered efforts to find out more about any future calamities in order that he might move his belongings to a vault, a nice thick one, a significant development forced him to break off. “That may be the marker,” he observed, and it was so. An orange-white rock which projected from the ground up to a bit past his knee had been polished on its various sides. It approached an obelisk in form, and as for the discrepancies, either Ividottkolt had erected it after improving it as far as he could with rude skill or later hands wished to suggest such a scenario. It had no cow-like characteristics, proving a local preference for non-representational art. Dirant recalled no men, beasts, or lifeless oaks in bronze or marble from his trips through town, though he had passed through a small part of it and could conclude nothing therefrom.
That uncertainty combined with his brother's exhortations to awaken in him a doubt as to whether he was giving sufficient consideration to his surroundings as a matter of habit. For instance, if he saw a simple landmark such as that without knowing its history, he might have ignored it as irrelevant to his present business. And been right, but business often changes. He dreaded to think what the author of I Was a Captain-Inspector for Thirty Years, a book which he had managed to complete but had not yet fully comprehended, would say about his negligence were he alive and told of it, both prerequisites unlikely to be satisfied.
More ashamed of his deficiency of observation than his failure to anticipate the upcoming cataclysm, Dirant applied his senses to the scene. There was a notable absence of a little tent with a cooking fire beside it to prepare Mr. Hwohyesu's lunch while he set himself to digging, a spade in hand and fervor in his history-loving heart. He had also neglected to leave a note to inform clusters of reporters, engineers, Ritualists, and travelers where he had gone and what discoveries he had made, which revealed him to be an exceedingly inconsiderate expert on Ertith-related subjects, the victim of a sudden imposition, or never there at all.