The Greks Bring Gifts

5

"I'd feel better," said Hackett, "if I could decide whether the Greks were displaying indifference or contempt in that lift-off performance of theirs."

He and Lucy and the others of the tarpaper-shack archaeological group were watching the crowds trying to leave the scene of the Greks' departure. It was an astonishing spectacle. There was a large space in which buses had parked after bringing their loads of onlookers to the lift-off site. The buses were now surrounded by confused groups of people who, having waited through one of the most tedious ceremonies ever conceived by the mind of man, were impatient at the least delay in beginning the almost equally tedious journeys back to where they'd come from.

There were private cars trying helplessly to get through the mobs of people, then trying to get to their cars so they could try helplessly to get through other mobs trying to get to their cars. The attempt at leaving, of course, began at the parts of the parking fields nearest the grandstands, because those car owners reached their vehicles first. It was an arrangement designed for the maximum of confusion.

It seemed that hours passed before even the buses were filled, and the people who had become separated from their traveling companions who had their bus tickets either found them or gathered near information booths set up for the purpose. Traffic police borrowed from six neighboring states began to get things moving, through inexplicable and irrational stoppages still frustrated them. Lost children contributed to the uproar, while the parents they'd lost increased the tumult. Inevitably, anybody who got to his car immediately started its motor while waiting for a chance to move, and a fog of mephitic fuel fumes spread for miles. Only the Grek-designed cars did not burn gasoline, and contributed nothing to the unwholesomeness.

It was quite a spectacle. Underneath the grandstand, where Hackett and Lucy watched, there was a sort of echoing stillness. The ground was Uttered with crumpled paper candy wrappers, popcorn containers, chewing-gum packages and cigarette butts to mark where human crowds had been. Outside, swirling dust arose to mingle with gasoline fumes and the confused murmur of the mob.

"They figured," said Clark, "that there'd be a million and a half people here. I think they guessed wrong. That's too low."

The Army officer from the bulldozer sheds said sourly to Hackett, "Indifference or contempt? How do you mean that?"

"What do they think of us?" asked Hackett. "They've given us all sorts of things we need, but they haven't bothered to be pleasant about it, only polite. That could be indifference. On the other hand, the elaborate gifts we got ready for them, they didn't bother to carry away. And that could be contempt."

The Army officer considered. After a moment he said with some grimness, "I hope it's indifference. I wouldn't mind not getting to know them better. But contempt—"

"I don't think it's contempt," protested Lucy. "They went to a lot of trouble to do us good, to give us things we need and haven't had. They've given us— Why, they've been incredibly generous to us! They wouldn't have done that—"

"Maybe," said Clark blandly, "they felt an obligation to act as technological missionaries to a backward race. They could meet that obligation and still feel bored."

"I don't think that's it," said Lucy again.

She looked very much better now that the Greks were gone. From the instant of the first broadcast call for Hackett and herself to come forward and be rewarded, she'd been uneasy. She couldn't explain the feeling, but it was there. Now the Greks had left and a vast relief filled her. It was as if she'd had an intuition of danger which now was ended.

The slow attempt at exodus from the scene of the ship's departure continued. The morning television news had reported 980 traffic deaths the day before, mostly attributable to the jamming of cars heading for the lift-off. It was feared that the toll would be higher today. Cars moving toward increasing congestion would be slowed as the congestion increased. But cars leaving a crowded area would make higher and higher speeds as they dispersed. The cars in the miles of parking space here, though, moved at the slowest of crawls. It would be hours before any significant clearing-up of this organized disorganization was achieved.

Hackett and the others went back to the tarpaper shed. The atomic bombs under the earth cradle wouldn't be lifted, with hundreds of thousands of people nearby. But the Army officer was greeted by a message from a high echelon of the military. While the Grek ship was aground, tests of the bombs' firing mechanisms had reported that they were dead; that they could not be exploded. But now, since the Greks were gone, the same mechanisms reported go.They could explode now!

Some unguessable principle or device had detected them underground, and some other unguessable device had inactivated them. The Greks had known about them. They'd ignored them—which could be indifference, but could also mean contempt. The point of the message to the Army officer, though, was that there was to be no effort to remove the bombs until the entire area was cleared of people, and volunteer bomb-disposal units could take care of the situation.

Clark frowned. "Ask if we can dig up the garbage pit now. It's nowhere near the bombs, and if we don't dig it out first we—hm—may not have the chance."

The Army man went away. Presently he came back. There was to be no digging within 200 feet of a bomb, but the bulldozers not otherwise being used could strip off the dirt cover of the garbage pit.

Clark was delighted. Two huge bulldozers roared and boomed as they came out of their shed. They went a long way around, and climbed over the excavated dirt that had supported the bottom tiers of seats. The big machine went wallowing into the great scooped-out cradle recently occupied by the ship from space.

Surveyors appeared. They marked off circles that must not be entered—four of them. The bulldozers grumbled and boomed and, under Clark's direction, began to dig out a trench a full bulldozer blade in width. It went down two feet on the first pass, more on the second. Like great, rumbling beasts of metal the bulldozers growled back and forth, and back and forth, while beyond the grandstands people were as fretfully anxious to get away from this now meaningless place as yesterday and this morning they'd been eager to get to it.

A hole appeared at one side of the trench. It was the garbage pit. The bulldozers attacked the side wall of the trench they'd dug. They nibbled delicately here— pushing away cubic yards of earth—and nibbled there to expose the pit.

As soon as the bulldozers were finished Clark and his three graduate student archaeological team moved into action. Carefully and even deftly they removed loosened earth, shovelful by shovelful. The garbage pit was a good twenty feet across. They couldn't guess yet how deep it was. At the top there were masses of wilted, still green vegetation, flung away as useless.

Clark conferred briskly with the Army officer. This green stuff was unfamiliar. It could be the prunings of tank-grown plants used in the air-purifying system of the ship. But it could also be terrestrial, if the Greks had been able to make air voyages of exploration without detection. In any case, it might not be dead. Conceivably it could be rooted and grown for study. Botanists were called for. The Army officer went to ask for them.

Then one of the graduate students turned up something. He had lifted shovelfuls of the wilted vegetation aside. He said in a choked voice, "L-look here!"

Hackett stiffened. Lucy looked, and put her hand to her mouth. There was silence. A shovel had uncovered a furry object, dumped in the refuse of the Grek ship. The furry object was the dead body of an Aldarian. Something unguessable had exploded a hole through his body. He'd been murdered and a shameful disposition made of his corpse.

Hackett felt a sense of shock. His throat went dry. He watched as Clark, very pale, took over the task his helper had begun. People liked Aldarians.

Clark found another furry corpse. And another. And another. They had all been killed with the same weapon. Then Lucy, choking, pointed. There were more bodies still. The supposed student-spacemen had been killed deliberately and partly buried in the ship's waste matter, flung there and remaining there in limp positions as if they'd been dumped out before rigor mortiscould set in—provided they would develop it. They had been lately and violently murdered. Some unknown weapon had exploded or vaporized holes through their bodies. It became evident that they'd suffered other hurts before being killed.

Hackett said in an unnaturally calm voice, "This settles the question of how the Greks felt about the Aldarians. They despised them. They killed them and threw them out in the garbage. I doubt that they re-pect us very much more."

Lucy wrung her hands. She was now a doctor, and during her year as an interne she'd seen much that was unpleasant. But now she said brokenly, "Jim, that's the one we pulled out of the car wreck! See? We took him to the hospital and sent word to the Greks. And a Grek came in a helicopter and brought him here to the ship —and they killed him. Because he was hurt! Like we— might treat an animal that was hurt and—we couldn't cure. . . ."

Hackett said coldly, "No, Lucy. They hurt him some more after they got him back. And the others too. It looks like torture. And they tried very earnestly to get us to come forward and be rewarded for saving his life—they said!"

The sandy-haired Clark got out of the pit, looking very white. His three helpers seemed dazed. They'd spoken irreverently of the Greks, the night before, and they'd been zestful at the idea of learning secrets the Greks hadn't been inclined to tell. But however youthfully disrespectful they'd been, they'd revered the gray-skinned aliens. They'd envied them their intellect and their achievements—the idea of journeying from star to star was glamorous—and though they'd never have said so, they'd believed in the Greks' good-will. There was no other explanation for the benefits they'd conveyed to humanity. The three younger archaeologists, in fact, had idealized the visitors from space.

Now they looked as if they wanted to be ill. Hackett took a deep breath. He said urgently to Clark, "Go find Captain whats-his-name. Have him report this business and get this place guarded so nobody else can see what we've found. We're going to need more than archaeologists to go through this stuff! The Greks have lied to us, and if they were only indifferent they wouldn't have bothered. If anything on Earth ever had to be kept top secret to prevent panic, this is it!"

The sandy-haired man nodded dumbly. He went in search of the Army officer who'd arranged for the use of the bulldozers before the atomic bombs were taken up. Hackett picked up a shovel and began to re-cover what had been exposed to the light. At a curt word from him, Clark's three assistants joined him in hiding from the sunlight what had been revealed.

Outside the grandstands the unparalleled traffic jam continued. One does not move a million and a half people—or any considerable part of them—in minutes, and the crowd present for the leaving of the Greks was even larger than had been anticipated. There was enough dust, now, stirred up by human feet, to make a fog through which it seemed impossible for any movement to take place.

There were collisions between cars fretfully trying to edge their way toward the exits and the complex of temporary highways that had been made for this single day's use. No one dared move faster than a crawl, so casualties were few. But the confusion seemed absolute. Dust-covered pedestrians tried to find the way through the glaring obscurity to their cars. Naturally there were car thieves as work, along with pickpockets and sneak thieves and psychopathic individuals seizing upon this scene of confusion for their private undesirable purposes.

People became separated from one another and considered nothing more important than finding each other again. Children became thirsty and could imagine nothing more important than having something to drink immediately. People lost their wallets and their identifications, and almost their identities, in such a horde of other people as no living man had ever experienced before.

There could be no priorities in such chaos. Police cars could only be used to make barriers by which what traffic did move was forced to move in planned directions. Military vehicles could only try patiently to go where they were ordered, when the crowds permitted it. In the special roofed, glass-enclosed section of grandstand reserved for prime ministers and heads of state and others of high rank, the collapse of minutely detailed plans for their departure had to be acknowledged. It was decided to send helicopters for them.

Then it was realized that the only place where copters could land was where the Grek ship had lain. But that could not be used. The bombs, of course.

The great statesmen of the world graciously accepted the situation, even though the bombs were not referred to. They chatted in the manner appropriate to high officials called on to endure annoyance. And hordes and hordes and hordes of crawling cars inched through miles of stirred-up dust. Some of them emerged with snail-like slowness onto the highways.

Many found it impossible to go where they wanted to, but went anywhere they could, so long as it was away from where they'd been.

But some necessary things did get done. Members of the honor guard protecting the foreign visitors were pulled away from that task and set to guard the re-closed garbage pit. In one place, close to the grandstands, police cars were somehow formed into barriers enclosing an acre or two. The action created even greater confusion, and innumerable dented fenders, but helicopters began to descend into that small space. They multiplied the dust fog around it.

The helicopters brought very curious items of equipment. Canvas and poles to make a huge tent. Refrigerating units. The items needed to equip a biological laboratory for emergency research. Generators. Microscopes. Reagents. Even microtomes and centrifuges.

And there were three large copters which brought already cleared biologists and chemists and nuclear physicists and microscopists to the scene, and went away to bring back personnel tents, cots, food supplies, and such materials as would be needed by men doing highly varied research away from all normal conveniences. There were also FBI men to assist the military in security measures.

By late afternoon the ground was less than completely covered by dust clouds, outside the grandstands. At sundown, limousines previously held back began to carry official visitors away—often only to the nearest available airport. There was still a very great crowd to be moved, but it was possible to move motorcycle-escorted limousines with reasonable celerity. But an unofficial conference had begun in the glassed-in official area, and the prime ministers and/or heads of state a surprising mixture of countries found it possible to discuss certain items of international import under circumstances making for flexibility.

The copter-brought equipment almost seemed to set itself up for use. The lifting of the atomic bombs now rated second in order of importance. A tent spread over the pit. Other tents went up. Equipment joined together. There was power. Generators began to hum, and lights were supplied.

Clark gave instructions on the practices of archaeologists making a dig, but he discovered that much of his information did not apply. It didn't matter how deep these artifacts and other discoveries might be, or how they were placed in the pit. These were matters of great importance in studying ancient cultures. Here they mattered not at all.

Something close to assembly-line expertizing of material brought from the pit established itself. There were nine murdered Aldarians at the top of the pit, including the one Hackett and Lucy had tried to help. They had all been tortured, and all killed, undoubtedly at about the same time. The guess at the weapon which made their wounds was that it was on the order of a laser pistol. Only one Aldarian had the bone fractures which would later make it certain that he was the victim of an accident who had been X-rayed in a human hospital.

Lucy came away from the autopsy tent wringing her hands. "It's probably our fault," she said shakily. "We —made it certain the Greks would have him back. And they tortured and killed him. Why? Was it that—thing —he gave me? Did they suspect—Is it our fault?"

Hackett couldn't guess. He watched the swift and systematic excavation. There were some rags. Some crushed plastic containers which still held traces of foodstuffs. Broken plates, of plastic. Metal oddments— some quite reasonable, like broken knives and the like, and some entirely cryptic. But there were no mechanical items. There was much of the vegetation found at first. It looked as if there had been an excess of green stuff growing to keep the ship's air purified. Probably some part of the ship's food would be grown in the air-purifier tanks, too.

Ten feet down, in deposits of no special informativeness, they found another dead Aldarian. Lucy said evenly, "This is a female."

It was true. The Greks hadn't mentioned that there were Aldarians of both sexes on board the ship. This youthful female had not died naturally, either. She was probably about the same age as the crewmen that men had seen.

Two feet further down was a mass of broken-up crockery. There was also much foodstuff waste. Assorted trash. Three human skeletons, which had been alive when the Grek ship landed. They had been carefully dissected. The dissected-away material was found mixed with assorted culinary wastes. It gave some grisly information. The FBI was angered. The Greks had no right to kill and dissect human beings, however benevolent they might be in other ways. Then there was more vegetable waste, which looked familiar. A botanist immediately pronounced that some of it was terrestrial. They identified tundra grass from the arctic regions. Dwarf willows, also of arctic origin. Kidney ferns. These things did not grow in Ohio. The Greks had made explorations they'd failed to mention to their human hosts. Why?

There was an immature Aldarian, not more than half grown. His head was crushed as if by a violent blow. More trash, more cooking wastes, more broken objects—understandable and otherwise. Almost at the bottom of the garbage pit there were four more Aldarian dead, three male and one female. They'd died violently, too.

The ship had taken off at noon, Eastern Standard Time. At only a little after sundown the pit was emptied. Outside the earthen cradle there were still a great many fumbling or delayed individuals. A fair number had run out of gasoline in the traffic jam, idling their motors for hours while creeping more slowly than a snail toward the highways. But there were others. Important ones. In the brightly lighted glass-enclosed part of the grandstand, informal but detailed negotiations still went on between at least one ambassador from behind the iron curtain and some prominent politician from behind a bamboo screen. They talked with great care, but they talked. Doubtless they agreed on something or other.

But there were still many thousands of ordinary citizens who hadn't left, and some who couldn't. There had been crashes in the traffic jam. There were bent axles and smashed radiators. Some had had to telegraph for money to get home when what they had brought was lost or stolen. And of course there are some people who simply hang around where something important has taken place. Not all of them are admirable.

Hackett went to get his car. It was a mile and a half from the grandstand, and its contents would not be particularly safe overnight. He and Lucy intended to stay on here until something had been decided. The discoveries in the garbage pit couldn't be made public, of course, but something had to be done about them. Since Hackett was responsible for them, he waited to see what action would be taken. It wouldn't be revelation of the discoveries to a waiting world, though! Most people wouldn't believe them. They'd consider the revelations as attempts to rob them of dreams about to come true. They'd rage because such things were said, not even considering whether or not they were true. Yet something had to be done.

For one thing, Hackett needed to sort out his own thoughts. He'd been ashamed of hating the Greks because they classed him as incapable of learning their sciences. But they'd lied about that. They must have! They'd lied about their crew. There'd been many more than forty or fifty Aldarians on the ship. There'd been members of both sexes, and children as well, and they weren't aspiring students. The Greks had lied about them.

They'd lied about being so grateful to Lucy and himself. The crewman on whose behalf they claimed to feel gratitude—they'd tortured and killed him, and then others. The Greks had gone to great pains to try to locate the man and woman who might know something about whatever it was that had made them murder members of what—-it was blindingly clear now— the Greks considered an inferior race.

It was no less clear that the Greks considered men an inferior race, too. Their intentions could not be benign. They could not be philanthropic, as the world believed. It must be that they had some purpose they'd kept humanity from suspecting. It was probable to the point of certainty that they classed humans and Aldarians together. It was now unthinkable that they'd taken so much trouble to enlighten and civilize mankind, only to go away with nothing to show for their trouble.

So Hackett went to get his car while some conclusion was reached on these matters by persons in high positions. He meant to move his car to a better-lighted position where it would be safer. An FBI man went along with him. They crossed the now nearly open spaces that had been used for parking some hundreds of thousands of cars. The ground was inches deep in dust. If there'd been rain today, it would have been knee deep in mud.

"I still don't see how you figured it," said the FBI man. "Nobody else had the germ of an idea there was anything wrong with the Greks, except they were so generous."

"They classed me as a fool," said Hackett tiredly, "and they classed some fools above me. So I suspected that maybe they lied. If they lied about me, they might lie about other matters."

He paused.

"The trouble was to find a test to prove it. It occurred to me that they mightn't really be interested in us at all. And if so, it shouldn't occur to them that we might be interested in them, aside from what we could get out of them. But we were interested. We'd like to know all sorts of things. Even undignified things. And I remembered what Clark had found out about the ancient Britons when he dug up their kitchen middens —which are really garbage heaps. So I thought it might be useful to examine their garbage. I suggested it to Clark. He liked the idea. So now we've all got cold chills running up and down our backs, instead of feeling pious and happy and confident that soon we won't have to do anything useful and can become permanent loafers."

Then he said abruptly, "There's my car."

A man knows his own car even in the darkness, especially if it's a few years old. Hackett's car was practically alone in a great emptiness in which rarely more than one stalled car was visible from any one spot. It was dark now. As Hackett moved toward his car, a figure came out of the dimness. There were no lights except those far away at the grandstand, and here and there headlights or battery lights where a car was being worked on.

The figure called, "Hey! Have you seen a Daimler roadster over that way? I can't find my car!"

The FBI man said, "No, we haven't seen it. It's hard to pick out a car with no lights, though."

"I can do it," said the man's voice. "What're you looking for?"

Hackett named his car's make and year. The nearly invisible man said instantly, "You're almost on top of it. Keep heading the way you are!" Then he said, gratified, "Ah, here's mine!"

He moved away and was lost in the darkness. The FBI man said, "That's queer!"

"What's queer?"

"He knew where your car was."

A car started up. As soon as its motor was running it rolled swiftly away. The FBI man said, "That's not a Daimler, but he drove it away. This is yours?"

Hackett nodded, and then stopped.

"I've got a crazy idea," he said. "It's as crazy as the idea that the Greks aren't nice people, after all the pleasant things they've done for us. Wait here, will you?"

The FBI man, puzzled, remained where he was. Hackett went to the car. It was his, of course. He opened the door, then reached in very carefully and switched on the lights. The instrument board cast some illumination into the front part of the car. Hackett came back. The FBI man heard him tearing cloth. He seemed also to be grinding his teeth.

The FBI man said, "Well?"

"My transmission—my gearshift," said Hackett, "is set in park. And I never use park. I leave my car fixed in low when I get out of it. Have you got a handkerchief?"

"Yes, but—"

Hackett showed him, in the vague reflected light of his car's headlights pointing elsewhere, that he was making a cord out of strips of torn handkerchief. The FBI man hesitated and then handed over his own.

"I think you're—"

"Showing signs of a delusion of persecution," said Hackett grimly. "Yes. But the Greks did want to talk to Lucy and me. I don't know what they'd have done if they'd found us, but I'm glad we stayed hidden out."

"But still—"

Hackett began to tear the second handkerchief into strips.

"In all history," he observed savagely, "there's never been a would-be conqueror who couldn't find men ready to be traitors in the country he meant to overrun. I'm talking wildly, but if you can think of anything wilder than we have to believe after what that garbage pit contained, name it!"

He went back toward the car. After an instant, the FBI man followed him.

He said urgently, "Maybe I can help. I know something about booby traps!"

Hackett said doggedly, "Somebody's shifted the gear lever to park, where it has to be if the engine's to start. Lucy and I would both be in the car with the engine running before I put the transmission into drive. So if anything is going to happen, it'll be when the gear is changed from park to drive."

He reached in and delicately put a loop around the small, fingerlike gearshift lever. He backed away, letting out the cord. He wasn't satisfied. He took off his necktie and used it to lengthen the cord. The FBI man said, "Wait!" in a vexed tone, and added his own necktie. The cord made of two torn-up handkerchiefs and two neckties grew pleasantly long. Hackett pulled. It grew taut.

The gear lever moved. There was a snapping sound. The FBI man tried to throw Hackett to the ground and drop with him. They were both nearly flat in the dust when the car exploded. It made a crater in the dry earth.

Hackett and the FBI man were in that peculiar area of shelter sometimes found around the edge of a crater made by an explosion.

The FBI man had a not very serious cut on his leg from an unidentifiable scrap of flying metal. Hackett had a cut finger. He sucked at it and had the flow of blood practically stopped when squealing state police cars came to a halt around the place where his car had been.