The Carnelian Cube

One:

"Tiridat!" barked Arthur Cleveland Finch. "Don't stand there like the family banshee, letting the bugs in. If you want to see me, come along!"

It was the evening of July 8, 1939, and the old brown bills of Cappadocia were turning grape-purple under a descending sun. Finch sat at a folding table on which were spread out the day's finds: a few undistinguished bits of glass and porcelain, a coin, and a couple of bronze objects that were more oxide than metal. Beyond, Lloyd Owens was bent silently over another collection of ancient artifacts: the parts of a portable radio set that at some time in past history had been in working order.

Tiridat Ariminian let the curtain of mosquito-netting fall into place behind him, and came shuffling forward, his wrinkles deepening as he arranged them in what was apparently intended to be a placatory smile. Finch's heart sank as he contemplated this inevitable prelude to something that would either be trouble or money and probably both. One could count on Tiridat. The long nose under the sheepskin kalpak reminded Finch of a fox's muzzle. Yes, it was a fox's sharp, clever face that peered out from the disguise of sheepskin above and straggly billy-goat whiskers below.

There was no sense in blaming him for it, Finch reflected in the few seconds that it took the old man to make his approach. Armenians were what the conditions of a hard life had made them, and if there was more than a streak of the vulpine in their composition, it was because only a fox stood a chance of survival in a world where wolves were dominant. He shot a glance of exasperation at Lloyd Owens. His assistant was under none of the compulsions that urged Tiridat toward behavior irrational by civilized standards. But in times of stress Owens would wrap himself in an impenetrable shell of introspection. In answer to a remark, he would hold a finger to his lips; one paused with the sentence half uttered, fearing to break in on the inspiration that might solve the relationship between the Hittite and Lydian languages. Later it transpired that Owens had only been trying to decide whether or not he had paid the rent to Ismet Toghrul for the miserable hovel in which they were living.

Tiridat advanced, the smile encircling his countenance, and the blow fell: "The men don't work tomorrow, boss."

"Why—not?" Finch brought out the last word with a rising whip-snap. It had worked before.

Tiridat's smile remained unaltered. "Big celebration last night. Honor of St. Methodius." He made a deprecating gesture. "Too much raki for these men. Now don't feel good. Need a day not work."

"I heard them in the night," said Finch. "It sounded like a reunion between the Kilkenny cats and the bulls of Bashan. But they seemed all right this morning."

Tiridat spread his hands deprecatingly. "Too much tired. Need a day not work."

Finch said: "What they really want is more money. Isn't that it?"

Tiridat's smile showed no embarrassment. He merely nodded, looking coyly over his shoulder in the general direction of Owens.

Finch sighed. "You would give a worse reason than the real one. You can tell them nothing doing. Mr. Push-man didn't allow for it in the budget. He's an Armenian too, so they can figure out for themselves what chance they have."

Tiridat shrugged. "If I am rich Armenian, I help poor people. The men they say it is not Pushman makes them work too hard, it is rich American capitalists—"

"That'll do, Tiridat. I'm running this dig, and if you can't keep the men in line* we'll have to get another foreman." He bent over the coin in sign of dismissal, but looked up as his ear caught the small sound of something dropping on the floor. "What's that?"

"That" was a cube of red stone, about the size of a golf-ball, which had apparently dropped from somewhere in Tiridat's nameless clothes. Finch turned it over in his fingers, saying ominously: "You know, Tiridat, the worst crime a digger on an archaeological project can commit is to keep out finds for himself."

The foreman's face registered nothing but outraged innocence. "That is no find, Mr. Feench. That is private, to me, a dream-stone."

"A what?"

"Dream-stone. You sleep on him, and takes you to heaven. It is mine."

"What do you mean, heaven?"

"Place where everything is like you want. Give me back—"

Finch dropped the red cube firmly among the other objects on the table. "Your philosophical definition of heaven is dubious and I doubt the provenance of the relic. Tell you what I'll do, though—you tell me exactly where you found it, so I can establish its period and I'll overlook the matter this time."

"I don't find it!" cried Tiridat in an anguished voice, "I have it since—since—"

"All right, since when?"

"Since Iblunos of Nigdeh gave it to me. You ask him, he will not lie, by the holy saints."

"Who and where is Iblunos of Nigdeh?"

"Old man. Live at Nigdeh, maybe three hundred years, maybe more."

"I daresay. Am I expected to travel a thousand miles to Nigdeh and dig up this impossible gaffer to verify your silly story?" "But—"

"Tiridat, this is the second time I've had to say that's enough argument. Shake not thy gory locks on me; and you can tell your friends to be on the job tomorrow, or they don't get paid,"

The foreman shrugged again and plodded mumbling to the door. As he reached it, he turned to give Finch a look from under the sheepskin cap. "Banshee? You don't die soon, boss. Maybe you just wish you did."

Finch stared into the darkness where he had gone. "Now how would that old buzzard know about banshees?" he asked the atmosphere.

"Maybe he doesn't," muttered Lloyd Owens from over his pile of parts.

"You heard what he said. It sounded as though he were trying to put the witch's curse on me."

"Well, maybe somebody on a previous dig told him about them," said Owens soothingly.

"Hm," said Finch. He held the red cube up to the lamp. "It's got an inscription, anyway. Very small. Reminds me of that line in Tennyson about letters 'no larger than the limbs of fleas.' " Finch applied a magnifying glass to the object, "Pretty faint, and looks a little like Boeotian Greek. Usil tivik—Hey, Lloyd, will you look at this? It isn't Greek, and I'm not sure I know what it is."

Owens' head came up and he stepped over. There was a long pause; then: "Are your nerves in good shape to stand a shock, Arthur? It's Etruscan."

"What!"

"Certainly. I can't make out all the words, but here's a whole phrase: 'Larth achle velthurush aisarush alpan mi arthialis turke—' Good Etruscan; 'Larth Achilles, son of Velthur, has presented the gods with this something or other.'"

"I still don't believe it. The stone's ordinary carnelian, and you know how common that is around here. Could somebody be putting over a hoax on us?"

Said Owens: "Why and who? I've known practical jokers, but never one who would go to the trouble of incising letters of that size into carnelian—and in Etruscan."

Finch turned the cube over in his fingers. "If it isn't a piece of trade-drift, we may be on the threshold of something important here, Lloyd. Mightn't it just be possible that the Etruscans adopted their alphabet before they left Asia Minor for Italy? Assuming what we always have, that they came from Asia Minor in the first place."

"Possible, but not very probable. Where did they adopt it from?"

"Well, even if improbable, mightn't this be premigration Etruscan work?"

"Let's see—that would put it back before 900 B. C, at least. It's too improbable, Arthur. You'd better accept it as Italiot Etruscan and make the best of it as a trade article. Incidentally, did it occur to you that Tiridat's 'Iblunos' is a passable Turkification of 'Apollonios,' and that his Nigdeh is about ten miles from the site of ancient Tyana?"

Finch laughed. "Now, who's dragging in the improbable? Are you hinting that Apollonios of Tyana is still doing the thaumaturgical business at the old stand after a couple thousand years?"

"I'd hardly go as far as that. It might be a local tradition or a descendant or something of that sort. You know how hard those things die out. I think it would really be worth while to stop off at Bulgunlu on our way in. There's a branch railroad running up past Nigdeh."

"I don't know how I can prevent you if you want to go up there and make a check on Iblunos, myself, I'd rather do something useful, like verifying the medieval idea that griffins put emeralds in their nests to keep snakes away."

"While you're on that subject," said Owens, "has it occurred to you that Tiridat's little pebble fits the medieval description of the Philosopher's Stone pretty well? Remember that some of the schoolmen believed the Etruscans had discovered it. High of St. Victor, for instance, said—"

"Listen," said Finch, "don't treat me to the whole 'Anatomy of Melancholy.' What do you want me to do, pulverize it to see whether it will turn mercury to gold? We'll interpret it as best we can, and if we can't make anything of it, turn it over to old man Pushman, so he'll have a genuine Armenian antique to put under glass in the museum wing of that palace of his in Beverly Hills."

"All right. While we're on that subject, though, I forgot to mention that I picked up another telegram from him while I was in Van this morning." -

"Any more money?"

"Of course not. Just wants to know when we'll have some more relics and something to give to the newspapers."

"Damn all movie magnates with an itch for publicity through culture," said Finch. "Sometimes I wish the old bastard had never read my book."

"In which case there wouldn't be any dig," said Owens. "Cheer up, maybe you'll get another book out of this one, or a feature article in a Sunday supplement, and another money-bags will read it." He closed his eyes and smacked his lips appreciatively: "I can see the headlines —'Poet-Laureat of Archaeology; Author of "Hiawatha in Trebizond."' "

Finch smiled, but a trifle wryly. "I suppose. Damn it, Lloyd, doesn't it strike you there's something unreasonable about a world where the really important things you do can only get attention because you do something unimportant? Maybe I'm just wrong about that confounded volume of verse, but the critics did like it, and it sold 37 copies. And here I am with all expenses paid on an expedition because an unimportant movie man read an unimportant piece of prose I wrote once."

"It's an unreasonable world where they make radios like this, anyway. The one tube for which we have no spares has burned out."

"Can't you—I mean, use a spare for one of the other tubes? Interchange them?"

Owens grinned. " 'Fraid not. These tubes aren't like electric light bulbs. You can't interchange them"

"Why don't they design them with the same size sockets in the first place?"

"It's not a question of sockets. I'll have to write for a new tube, but I doubt whether we'll get it before the end of the season. You know what the Turkish postal service is like."

"In that case we'll just have to suffer along without news. We wouldn't hear anything but wars and rumors of wars anyway."

"Yes, there's something unreasonable, if you like, Arthur. Hitler talks big and everybody backs down. You'd think any rational person could see that the moment they called his bluff he'd go home with his tail between his legs."

Finch sighed. "I suppose the majority of people don't want to be rational, really. By God, if I were a Hitler, I'd fix things so that archaeological work didn't depend on the whims of movie producers, and poetry didn't depend on doing something else, and—"

"Try your Philosopher's Stone."

"My huh?"

"Your carnelian cube. Tiridat said it would take you to heaven in your dreams, and that's what you're asking for, isn't it? Besides, that fits the medieval description, too. The alchemists were always talking about making gold with it, but when you pinned them down, they always had a metaphysical explanation, something about meaning spiritual perfection by 'gold.' You might say it transmutes the base metal of the actual world in»—"

"Another nightmare." Finch grinned. "Maybe I will try it"

Later, a succession of grunts from Arthur Cleveland Finch's bedroom indicated that he was making one of his nightly assaults on the convexity of his belly. Not that it did any particular good to he on his back and raise both feet together a stated number of times, but Finch kept trying. It was humiliating that one of the best coxwains Cornell had ever had should be preceded wither he went by such a pod.

At least Finch had always so considered it. Despite a balding head he had never abandoned the idea that he was fundamentally an outdoor man-of-action. Only accident, he believed had brought him to an early marriage and the inevitable bread-winning by teaching. Only the accident of economic compulsion had kept him at the grindstone till the arrival of this windfall of the Leo Pushman Expedition to Asia Minor. Nobody knew how Finch's book on "The Armenian Deme; a Study of Pontus and Armenia under the Byzantine Empire" had fallen into the hands of a movie magnate with two swimming pools, or why Pushman had read it after he got his hands on it. Finch knew as well as anybody that the book was as dull as a third-rate sermon, but it had urged the egregious Pushman actually to lay out money.

Damn it! Finch thought, history wasn't supposed to entertain. It was unreasonable to expect it to do anything but inform. If—

"Damn!" yelled Finch, in full voice this time, bounding from his bed. A terrific outburst of caterwauling Armenian music had sprung from the other buildings. Evidently the diggers had not found other money inadequate for the purchase of more raid.

He slammed the window, despite the midsummer heat and returned to his insulted bed. The little red cube lay on the table. He hesitated a moment, then picked it up and stuffed it under the pillow, chuckling at his own absurdity, and still chuckling drifted off into slumber, wishing for that unattainable ideal, a perfectly rational world.