Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE STEEL DOOR

The robot tunneller had been working for twenty, days in the damp and gloom before it had finally cleared away the roof fall and bolstered up the ceiling. The road down into the cave was open and could be used as soon as it had been tested for safety. Other robots, small cars on caterpillar tracks, operated by Archimedean screws moved noiselessly down into the depths. At every hundred metres the instruments on the cars sent back reports on temperature, humidity and the content of the air. The cars cleverly overcame all obstacles and went down to a depth of four hundred metres. Following behind them Veda Kong and a group of historians descended into the treasure cave. Ninety years before that, when tests for subsoil waters were being made, indicators had shown a large quantity of metal amongst sandstone and limestone deposits that are not, in general, associated with metallic ores. It was soon discovered that the place coincided with a description of the site of a cave, Halovkul, that had been mentioned in old legends. The name had originally been Hall of Culture in a language now dead. During a terribly devastating war, people who had believed themselves the most advanced in science and culture, hid the treasures of their civilization in a cave. In those distant days secrecy and mystery were very widespread.

Veda was quite as excited as the youngest of her assistants as she slid down the wet, red clay that formed the floor of the sloping entrance tunnel.

Her imagination drew pictures of magnificent halls, hermetically sealed safes containing films, drawings and maps, cupboards of tape recordings or the recordings of memory machines, shelves with jars of chemical compounds, alloys and medicines, stuffed animals, now extinct, in air- and water-tight glass-cases, prepared plants and skeletons put together from the fossilized bones of the past inhabitants of Earth. She even dreamed of slabs of silicoll in which the pictures of the most famous artists had been cast, whole galleries of sculptures of mankind’s best representatives, the most prominent people, skilful carvings of animals… models of famous buildings, inscriptions about outstanding events perpetuated in stone or metal….

Lost in her dreams Veda Kong found herself in a huge cave between three and four thousand square metres in extent. The vaulted ceiling was lost in the darkness and long stalactites glistened in the electric light. The cave was truly magnificent and, in realization of Veda’s dreams, machines and cupboards had been placed in the countless niches formed in the walls by the ribs and ledges of limestone. With shouts of joy the archaeologists spread around the perimeter of the cave: many of the machines standing in the niches, some of them retaining the polish on their glass and metal parts, were motor-cars of the type that pleased our distant ancestors to such an extent and were considered the highest technical achievement of human genius in the Era of Disunity. In that period, for some unknown reason, people built large numbers of vehicles capable of carrying only a few passengers. The construction of the cars reached a high level of elegance, the engines and steering mechanisms were very ingenious but in all else these vehicles were senseless. Hundreds of thousands of them filled the city streets and country roads carrying people who lived far from the places where they worked and hurried every day to reach their jobs and then get home again. The vehicles were dangerous to drive, killed a tremendous number of people every year and burned up millions and millions of tons of valuable organic substances accumulated in the geological past of the planet and in so doing poisoned the atmosphere with carbon monoxide. The archaeologists of the Great Circle Era were very disappointed when they discovered how much room had been devoted to these machines in the cave.

On low platforms, however, there were more powerful steam engines, electric motors, jet, turbine and nuclear motors. In glass show-cases covered with a coating of limestone there were vertical rows of instruments of all kinds, most likely they were TV receivers, cameras, calculating machines and other similar devices. This museum of machines, some of which had quite rusted away but others were in a good state of preservation, was of great historical value as it illustrated the technical level of civilization at a distant date, the majority of whose records had been lost in political and military disturbances.

Miyiko Eigoro, Veda’s faithful assistant who had again given up her beloved sea for the damp and darkness of underground exploration, noticed the black opening of a gallery at the far end of the cave, behind a big limestone pillar. The pillar turned out to be the limestone-covered skeleton of a machine and at its foot lay a heap of plastic dust, the remains of the door that had once covered the entrance to the gallery. Advancing step by step, guided by the red cable of the scouting machines, the archaeologists got into the second chamber that was almost at the same level and was filled with hermetically sealed cupboards of metal and glass. A long English inscription in big letters ran round the vertical walls that had, in places, collapsed. Veda had to stop for a moment to decipher it.

With the boastfulness that was typical of the ancient individualists, the builders of the caves informed their descendants that they had reached the heights of knowledge and were preserving their magnificent achievements for posterity.

Miyiko shrugged her shoulders contemptuously.

“The inscription alone tells us that the Hall of Culture belongs to the end of the Era of Disunity, to the last years of the old type of social order. This foolish confidence in the eternal and unchanging continuation of their civilization, language, customs, morals and in the majesty of the so-called ‘white man’ is typical of the period!”

“You have a clear conception of the past, but it is somewhat one-sided, Miyiko. Through the grim skeleton of moribund capitalism I see those who struggled for a better future. Their future is our ‘today.’ I see countless men and women seeking light in a narrow impoverished life — they had strength enough to fight their way out of its captivity and goodness enough to help their friends and not harden their hearts in the suffocating morals of the world around them. And they were brave, recklessly brave.”

“But it was not they who hid their culture here,” objected Miyiko. “Just look, there is nothing but machines, technology, here. They wallowed in machines, paying no attention to their own moral and emotional degradation. They were contemptuous of the past and blind to the future!”

Veda thought that Miyiko was right. The lives of the people who had filled those caves would have been easier if they had been able to compare that which they had achieved with that which still had to be done before the world and society could be really transformed. Then their dirty, sooty planet, with its felled forests and litter of paper and broken glass, bricks and rusty iron, would have been seen in its real light. Our ancestors would have had a better understanding of what still had to be done and would not have blinded themselves with self-praise.

A narrow well, thirty-two metres deep, led down to the next cave. Veda sent Miyiko and two other assistants back for the gamma-ray apparatus to examine the contents of the cupboards and herself went to examine the third cave that had not been affected by lime and clay deposits. The low, quadrangular plate-glass show-cases were only misty from the damp that had penetrated into the cave. Pressing their faces against the glass the archaeologists saw the most remarkable articles of gold and platinum decorated with precious stones. Judging by the workmanship these ancient relics had been collected at a time when people still had more respect for the old than for the new, a habit that had come into being in very ancient days when people worshipped their ancestors. As Veda looked at the collection she felt the same disappointment in the people of olden days as she had done when she read the inscription on the wall: she was annoyed at the absurd self-confidence of the ancients who believed that their idea of values and their tastes would continue unchanged for dozens of centuries and would be accepted as canons by their descendants.

The far end of the cave merged into a high, straight passage that sloped down to an unknown depth. The instruments on the explorer cars showed a depth of three hundred and four metres from the surface at the beginning of the corridor. Huge crevices divided the ceiling into a number of separate limestone blocks that probably weighed several thousand tons each. Veda felt alarmed: her experience in the exploration of many underground premises told her that the rocks at the foot of the mountain chain were certain to be in a state of instability. The mass of rock may have been shifted by an earthquake or by the general rise of the mountains that had grown at least fifty metres higher in the centuries that had elapsed since the caves had been sealed. An ordinary archaeological expedition had no means at its disposal to strengthen such a huge mass. Only an objective of importance to the planet’s economy would have justified the expenditure necessary for the job.

At the same time historical secrets hidden in the deep cave might be of technical value, they might consist of such things as forgotten inventions that would be of value in modern times.

It would have been nothing more than wise precaution to abandon all further exploration. But why should a historian be so very careful of his own person? When millions of people were carrying out risky experiments and doing risky jobs, when Darr Veter and his companions were working at a height of fifty-seven thousand kilometres above the Earth, when Erg Noor was preparing to start out on a voyage from which there would be no return! Neither of these men whom Veda admired would have hesitated… nor would she!

They would take reserve batteries, an electronic camera, two oxygen apparatuses and would go alone, she and the fearless Miyiko, leaving their companions to study the third cave.

Veda advised her workers to take a meal to keep up their strength. They got out their travellers’ cakes, slabs of pressed, easily assimilated proteins, sugars and preparations destroying the toxins of weariness mixed with vitamins, hormones and nerve stimulants. Veda, nervously impatient, did not want to eat. Miyiko appeared some forty minutes later, she had been unable to resist the temptation of examining the contents of some of the cupboards with her gamma-rays.

The descendant of Japanese women divers thanked her principal with a glance and got herself ready in the twinkling of an eye.

The thin red cables stretched down the centre of the passage. The pale light emanating from the phosphorescent crowns worn by the two women was insufficient to penetrate the thousand-year-old darkness that lay ahead of them where the slope grew steeper. Big drops of cold water dripped steadily and dully from the roof. To the sides and below them they could hear the gurgle of streams of water running in the crevices. The air, saturated with moisture, was as still as death in that enclosed underground chamber. The silence was such as exists only in caves where it is guarded by the dead and inert matter of Earth’s crust. Outside, no matter how great the silence may be, nature’s hidden life, the movement of water, air and light may always be assumed.

Miyiko and Veda were unwittingly hypnotized by the cave that drew them into its black depths as though into the depths of a dead past that had been wiped out by time and lived only as figments of the imagination.

The descent was rapid although there was a thick layer of sticky clay on the floor. Blocks of stone fallen from the walls at times barred the way and had to he climbed over, the women crawling through the narrow space left between the fall and the roof. In half an hour Miyiko and Veda had descended another one hundred and ninety metres into the earth and reached a perfectly smooth wall at the foot of which the two explorer robots lay motionless. One flash of light was enough to show them that the smooth wall was a massive, hermetically sealed door of stainless steel. In the middle of the door were two convex circles with certain symbols on them, handles and gilded arrows. The lock opened when a pre-arranged signal had been selected. The two archaeologists knew of such safes belonging to an earlier period. After a short consultation Veda and Miyiko made a closer examination of the lode. It was very much like those malignantly clever constructions that people once used to keep other people’s hands off their property — in the Era of Disunity people were divided in that way into “us” and “others.” There had been a number of cases when an attempt to open such doors had caused an explosion or the emission of poisonous gases or deadly radiations, killing the unsuspecting investigators. The mechanism of such locks, made of non-oxidizing metals or plastics, was not affected by time: a large number of people had fallen victim to these steel doors before archaeologists had learned to render them harmless.

It was obvious that the door had to be opened with special instruments. They would have to go all the way back from the very threshold of the cave’s main secret. Who could doubt that the locked door would hide the most important and valuable possession of the people of those distant times. Putting out their lamps and making do with the glow of their phosphorescent crowns, Veda and Miyiko sat down to rest and eat in order to be able to repeat their attempt.

“What can there be in there?” asked Miyiko with a sigh, never once taking her eyes off the door and its haughtily gleaming gold symbols. “It seems to be laughing at us… ‘I won’t let you in, I won’t tell you anything!’ “

“What did you see in the cupboards you gamma-rayed in the second cave?” asked Veda, driving away her primitive and useless chagrin at this unexpected obstacle.

“Drawings of machines, books printed on metal sheets instead of on the old-fashioned paper made from wood. Then there was something that looked like rolls of films. some sort of lists, stellar and terrestrial maps. In the first hall there are samples of machines and in the second there are the technical documents belonging to them and in the third there are, well, what can I call them? — historical relics and the valuables of the period when money still existed. It all follows the usual scheme.

“Where are the things that we regard as being valuable? The loftiest achievements of man’s spiritual development — science, art, literature?” exclaimed Miyiko.

“I hope they’re behind that door,” answered Veda, calmly, “but I should not be at all surprised if there were weapons there.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Weapons, armaments, the means of slaughtering masses of people in the shortest possible time. I don’t think that such an assumption is either fantastic or pessimistic!”

Little Miyiko thought it over for a while and then said:

“Yes, that seems to be quite regular if you think of the object of this cache. The chief technical and material values of the Western civilization of those days are hidden here. What did they regard as fundamental? If the public opinion of the planet as a whole or even of nations or of a group of countries did not then exist? The necessity or the importance of anything at any given moment was decided by the ruling group of people who were not always competent to judge. That is why the things here were not really the most valuable possessions of mankind but those things that the given group deemed valuable. They tried to preserve chiefly machines and, possibly, weapons, not realizing that civilization is built up historically, like a living organism,” added Miyiko, thoughtfully.

“Yes, by the growth and acquisition of working experience, knowledge, techniques, stores of materials, pure chemical substances and buildings. The restoration of high civilizations would have been impossible without highly durable alloys, rare metals, machines with a high productivity and great precision. If all these things were destroyed where would they be able to get them from and where would they get the experience and ability to build complicated cybernetic machines capable of satisfying the needs of thousands of millions of people?”

“It would have been just as impossible to return to a pre-machine age civilization, like that of antiquity, although some people did dream of it.”

“Of course. Instead of the civilization of antiquity they would have been faced with a terrible famine. Those were individualist dreamers who did not want to understand that history does not turn back.”

“I’m not insisting that there are armaments in there,” said Veda, “but there is every reason to suppose there are. If the men who devised this cache made the mistake that was typical of their day in confusing culture and civilization and ignoring the absolute necessity of training and developing a man, they would certainly not have seen the vital necessity for preserving works of art, literature or research far removed from current needs. In those days science was divided into useful and useless sciences and no thought was given to their unity. There were branches of art and science that were regarded as being merely pleasant but by no means an essential or even useful accompaniment to the life of mankind. Here, in this cave, the most important things are preserved, that’s why I think of weapons, no matter how foolish and naive that may seem to us today.”

Veda stopped talking and stared at the door.

“Perhaps that’s just a cipher lock and we can open it by listening to it with a microphone,” she said, suddenly, walking over to the door. “Shall we risk it?”

Miyiko jumped between her friend and the door.

“No, Veda, why take such a foolish risk?”

“It seems to me that the roof of this cave is very insecure. We’ll go away from here and we’ll never have a chance to come back. Listen!..”

A diffused and distant sound from time to time penetrated into the cave in front of the door. It came sometimes from below, sometimes from above.

Miyiko, however, was adamant, she stood with her back to the door and her arms outstretched.

“You think there are weapons in there, Veda. If there are they must be well protected. No, no… it’s an evil door, like many others.”

Two days later a portable X-ray reflector screen to study the mechanism and a focussed high-frequency radiator for the molecular destruction of parts of the door were brought into the cave. They did not, however, have time to set their apparatus to work.

Suddenly an intermittent roar resounded through the caves. Strong earth tremors underfoot sent the people who were in the third cave running instinctively to the exit.

The noise increased until it became a dull rumble. The whole mass of fissured rock was apparently settling along the line of the fault at the foot of mountains.

“Save yourselves, everybody get out,” shouted Veda and her people ran to the robot cars, directing them towards the entrance to the second cave.

Hanging on to the cables of the robots they scrambled out of the well. The noise and the tremors of the stone walls followed close on their heels and, at last, overtook them. There came a fearful crash as the walls of the second cave tumbled into the abyss that had formed where the wall had been seconds before. The air blast literally carried the people together with a shower of dust and rubble into the first cave. There the archaeologists threw themselves on the floor and awaited death.

The clouds of dust began to subside. Through the dusty haze it could be seen that the stalagmites and the niches had not changed their form. The former grave-like silence returned to the caves.

Veda came to and stood up, trembling from the reaction. Two of her assistants took hold of her but she shook them off impatiently.

“Where’s Miyiko?”

Her friend was leaning against a low stalagmite carefully wiping the dust from her neck, ears and hair.

“Almost everything has been lost,” she said in answer to an unasked question. “The impassable door will remain closed under a four-hundred-metre thick layer of stone. The third cave has been completely destroyed but the second can be excavated. There and in this cave are the things of greatest value to us.”

“You’re right.” Veda licked her dry lips. “We were wrong in dallying and being over-careful. We should have foreseen the fall.”

“You had only unfounded instinct to go on. But there’s nothing to worry about, we would hardly have tried to prop up those masses of rock for the sake of very doubtful treasures behind that closed door. Especially if it is full of worthless weapons.”

“But suppose there are works of art there, inestimable human creations? We could have worked faster!”

Miyiko shrugged her shoulders and led the depressed Veda in the wake of their companions, out into the magnificence of a sunny day, to the joy of clean water and an electric shower to drown all pain.

As was his habit, Mven Mass strode bade and forth in the room that had been allotted him on the top floor of the History House in the Indian Section of the northern inhabited zone. He had arrived there but two days before after having finished work in the History House in the American Section.

The room, or verandah with an outer wall of polarizing glass, looked out on the blue distance of the hilly plateau. Mven Mass from time to time switched on the cross polarization shutters. The room was plunged into grey gloom and pieces of old cinema films, sculptures and buildings that he had selected appeared on the hemispherical screen. The African watched them and dictated notes for his future book to a robot secretary. The machine printed and numbered the sheets, folded and sorted them according to subject matter, descriptions or generalizations.

When he grew tired Mven Mass switched off the shutters and walked over to the window to stare into the distance with unseeing eyes as he stood for a long time thinking over what he had seen.

He could not help but feel amazed that much of mankind’s recent culture had already passed into the limbo. Verbal finesse that had been so typical of the Era of World Unity, oral and written whimsicalities that had at one time been regarded as the hallmark of a good education, had completely disappeared. Writing for the sake of beauty, so widespread in the Era of Common Labour, had gone and with it the juggling with words that went by the name of witticism. Still earlier the necessity to hide one’s thoughts, an important matter in the Era of Disunity, had ceased to exist. All talk had become simpler and terser and it seemed that the Great Circle Era would become the era of the third system of signals — comprehension without words.

From time to time Mven Mass- turned to the ever wakeful mechanical secretary with new recordings of his thoughts.

“The fluctuating psychology of art had its beginning in the second century of the Great Circle Era and was founded by Liuda Pheer. She first gave a scientific proof of the difference in the emotional perception of men and women and laid bare that sphere that had for centuries been regarded as the semi-mystic subconscious. The proofs she offered for the understanding of her contemporaries, however, constituted the lesser part of her work. Liuda Pheer did more — she indicated the main series of sensual perceptions that made it possible to achieve similarity in the perception of the two sexes.”

A ringing signal and a green light suddenly called Mven Mass to the televisophone. A call that came during working hours meant something very urgent. The automatic secretary was switched off and Mven Mass hurried downstairs to the room where long-distance calls were received.

Veda Kong, with bruised and scratched cheeks and with deep shadows under her eyes, greeted him from the screen. Mven Mass was pleased to see her and held out his huge hands to her, causing Veda’s worried face to break into a faint smile.

“Help me, Mven. I know you’re working but Darr Veter isn’t on Earth and Erg Noor is far away; besides them you’re the only one I have to whom I can turn with any request. I’ve had a misfortune.”

“What? Darr Veter….”

“No, a cave collapsed during excavations.”

Veda gave him a brief description of what had happened in the Hall of Culture.

“You’re the only one of my friends who has free access to the Prophetic Brain.”

“To which of the four?”

“The Brain of Lower Definition.”

“I understand; you want me to calculate the possibility of reaching the door with a minimum expenditure of labour and material.”

“You’re right.”

“Have you got the data?”

“I have them before me.”

“All right. I’m listening.”

Mven Mass wrote down some columns of figures very rapidly.

“Now you’ll have to wait until the machine can accept my figures. If you wait I’ll get in touch with the Prophetic Brain engineer on duty. The Brain of Lower Definition is in the Australian Section of the southern zone.”

“Where is the Brain of Higher Definition?”

“That’s in the Indian Section, where I am, now. I’m changing over. Wait for me.”

As Veda stood before the empty screen she tried to imagine the Prophetic Brain. Her imagination pictured a gigantic human brain with its furrows and convolutions, alive and pulsating, although the young woman knew that they were electronic research machines of the highest class capable of solving any problem that could be solved by the known branches of mathematics. There were only four such machines on the planet and they all had special uses.

Veda did not have long to wait. The screen lit up and Mven Mass asked her to call him again in six days’ time. later in the evening.

“Mven, your help is invaluable!”

“Just because I know something of the rules of mathematics, is that it? And your work is invaluable because you know the ancient languages and cultures. Veda, you’re overdoing it with the Era of Disunity!”

The historian frowned but Mven Mass laughed with such good nature and so infectiously that Veda also laughed, waved him good-bye and disappeared.

At the appointed time Mven Mass again saw the young woman in the televisophone.

“You needn’t speak, I see by your face that the answer is unfavourable.”

“Yes, stability is below the safety limit. If you go straight to it you will have to remove almost a million cubic metres of rock.”

“It will only be possible for us to tunnel to the second cave and remove the safes,” said Veda, sadly.

“Is it a matter of such distress?”

“Excuse me, Mven, but you have also stood before a door that hid an unfathomed secret. Yours are great, universal secrets and mine are tiny little ones. Emotionally, however, my failure is the equal of yours!”

“We’re companions in misfortune. I can tell you that we’ll be knocking our heads against closed doors many times, yet. The stronger and more courageous our efforts the more often we shall come up against doors.”

“One of them will open!”

“Naturally.”

“You haven’t given up altogether, have you?”

“Of course not, we’re collecting fresh facts and the indicants of more correct methods.”

“And suppose you have to wait all your life?”

“What is my individual life compared with such a step forward in knowledge!”

“Mven, what has happened to your impassioned impatience?”

“It hasn’t disappeared, it’s been curbed — by suffering.”

“How’s Renn Bose?”

“He’s better. He’s looking for ways to make his abstractions more precise.”

“I see. Wait a minute, Mven, there’s something important for me!”

Veda disappeared from the screen and when the light flashed on again, she was another, younger and more carefree woman.

“Darr Veter is returning to Earth. Satellite 57 is being completed ahead of time.”

“As quickly as that? Is it finished?”

“No, it’s not finished, they’ve only put on the outer walls of the hull and mounted the engines. The work inside is easier. He is being called back to rest and to analyse Junius Antus’ report on a new form of communication around the Great Circle.”

“Thanks, Veda. I’ll be glad to see Darr Veter.”

“You’ll see him all right. I didn’t finish. Supplies of anameson for the new spaceship Lebed have been prepared by the efforts of the whole planet. The crew invite you to see them off on the journey from which there will be no return. Will you come?”

“I’ll be there. The planet will show Lebed’s crew everything that is beautiful and lovable in the world. They also wanted to see Chara’s dance at the Fete of the Flaming Bowls. She is going to repeat her performance at the central cosmoport in El Homra. We’ll meet there!”

“Good, Mven Mass, my friend.”