Tales of Majipoor (19 page)

He could not bring himself to voice the fears that came rushing in upon him. But Lutiel did.

“And now to show it to the Skandar,” he said. “Who will steal it from us.”

“We will seal this chamber at once,” Hawid Zakayil announced briskly, when he had completed his inspection of the new gallery two hours later. “This is the most amazing discovery in my entire career, and we must take no risks with it, none whatsoever. Exposure to the outside atmosphere could very well destroy these paintings in a matter of days. Therefore no one is to enter without permission from me, and I mean
no one,
until we complete our plan for preservation of the murals.”

It was not hard for Simmilgord to imagine the things that were going through Lutiel Vengifrons’ mind, but he could not bear to look at his friend’s face just now. The swiftness with which the Superintendent of Antiquities had taken possession of the find was breathtaking. The most amazing discovery in
his
entire career, yes! And no one to enter the site, not even Lutiel, without permission from
him.
It was his site, now. His discovery. His
amazing
discovery.

Quite predictably the Superintendent of Antiquities made it clear that he intended to stay right here in Kesmakuran and take personal charge of the work. And over the next few days, without actually saying so explicitly, he let it be known to Mayor Kyvole Gannivad, to the Hjort Prasilet Sungavon, and, lastly, to Simmigord and Lutiel themselves, that this site was too important to be left in the hands of amateurs or novices. And – quite explicitly, this time – he revealed that he had some truly marvelous ideas for capitalizing on the tomb’s tremendous historical significance.

“This is humiliating, Simmilgord,” Lutiel said, when at last they were alone that evening. “I’m going to resign, and so should you.”

“What?”

“Can’t you see? He’s putting the whole thing in his pocket and reducing us to flunkeys. I’ll have to beg to be allowed to go into the tomb. He’ll bring his own people in to do the preservation work, and they’ll want to continue the dig without me. Whatever you find in the archives will have to be turned over to him, and he’ll claim credit for having found it. We’ll be lucky even to have our names on the paper when he publishes the find.”

Simmilgord shook his head. “You’re taking this much too seriously. He’s behaving exactly as he always behaves when somebody finds an exciting new site, yes, but in a few weeks he’ll lose interest and move on. Something big will turn up on the far side of Castle Mount or maybe even down in Suvrael and off he’ll go to muscle in on it. Or there’ll be a new museum to dedicate at the back end of Zimroel and he’ll head over there for six or seven months. He’ll keep his finger in our work here, sure. But he can’t be everywhere at once, and sooner or later you’ll be back in charge of the dig.”

“This is very naive of you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then you’re actually going to remain here, Simmilgord?”

“Yes. Absolutely. And so should you.”

“And be pushed aside – cheated, abused—”

“I tell you it won’t be like that. Please, Lutiel. Please.”

It took some work, but finally, glumly, Lutiel agreed to stay on for a while. The clinching argument was that for him to resign in high dudgeon now would destroy his career: Hawid Zakayil would understand instantly why he was leaving, no matter what pretext he gave, and would take mortal offense, and no young archaeologist who offended the Superintendent of Antiquities was ever going to do archaeological work on Majipoor again. He might just as well start taking a course in accounting or bookkeeping.

So Lutiel remained in Kesmakuran; and Hawid Zakayil went through the pretense, at least, of sharing responsibility for the project with the two of them. He informed Simmilgord that he was arranging financing so that every document found so far could be copied for the benefit of the archives at the Castle and the Labyrinth, a task that would keep Simmilgord busy for a good many weeks to come. And even though the site remained closed, with no further excavation until further notice, Lutiel himself would be admitted for several hours a day to sort through his discoveries in the outer tunnels and to supervise the work of the technicians who would be dealing with the task of preserving the murals against further decay.

Simmilgord wondered just what the Skandar would be doing during this time. Hawid Zakayil seemed to have allocated no specific aspect of the enterprise to himself, but he was too big and rambunctious and restless a presence to be content for long to sit about quietly in a sleepy place like Kesmakuran while such lesser men as Simmilgord and Lutiel went about their work.

The answer came soon enough. One morning Simmilgord and Lutiel received word that they were summoned to a meeting, and a couple of municipal officials escorted them to a place southeast of town, halfway around the base of the mountains from the site of the tomb. Over here the pinkish-gold stone of the main mountain range was sundered by a huge and formidable mass of black basalt, virtually a mountain unto itself, that must have been thrust up into it by some volcanic eruption long ago. Hawid Zakayil was waiting there for them with Mayor Kyvole Gannivad and Prasilet Sungavon when they arrived. The Skandar pointed at once to the face of the basalt mass. “Here is where we will put the monument. What do you think, gentlemen? Is this not a properly dramatic site for it?”

“The monument?” Simmilgord said blankly, feeling as though he had come in very late on something that he really should have known about before this.

“The monument to Dvorn!” the mayor cried. “What else do you think we’re talking about? Haven’t you seen the sketches?”

“Well, to be completely truthful—”

“We’ll dig the entrance to the cavern here,” Kyvole Gannivad swept his stubby arms about with a vigorous sweep to indicate a zone perhaps thirty feet high and forty feet wide – “and there’ll be a vestibule that will continue onward and downward for – oh, what did we say, Hawid Zakayil, a hundred feet? Two hundred?”

“Something like that,” the Skandar said indifferently. Simmilgord did not understand. A monument? What monument? He had seen no sketches. This was the first he had heard of any of this. “You mean, a kind of historical site, to bring visitors to town? Aside from the tomb itself, I mean.”

“The tomb itself is too fragile to be a proper place of pilgrimage,” Prasilet Sungavon said. The Hjort spoke the way he might if he were explaining something to a six-year-old. “That’s why the Superintendent closed it so quickly, once the murals were discovered. But we need to build something here as a focus of attention on the greatness of the Pontifex Dvorn and on Kesmakuran’s importance in his career. As you say, a kind of historical site that will bring visitors here.”

“Exhibits commemorating the life and achievements of Dvorn,” said Hawid Zakayil. “Plaques that tell his story – no mythmaking, everything placed in accurate historical context.” The Skandar favored Simmilgord with a gaze of such force that he feared he might be burned to a crisp in its glare. “You will be in charge of this part of it, Simmilgord. We will count on you to provide us with all the data, essentially a biography of the Pontifex that can be recreated in graphic form, and to design the exhibits: all the wonder and magic that was the life of Dvorn, set out here in its full glory. I am well aware that this is your special field of expertise. You are precisely the person for the task.” Simmilgord nodded. What could he say? He was overwhelmed by the power of the Skandar’s formidable nature. And what Hawid Zakayil was proposing was so astonishing that in a moment everything was transformed for him. Dvorn had been Simmilgord’s special obsession since his undergraduate days. There was no way he could refuse this assignment. Already he saw the monument taking shape in his imagination, to expand, to flower and grow – the murals, the statuary, the displays of documents and artifacts – the Museum of Dvorn! The
shrine
of Dvorn!
You will be in charge
,
Simmilgord.
Hawid Zakayil was handing him the project of his dreams. Once more he heard that magical soaring music that he had heard atop those little hills in the Vale of Gloyn and again in the archives of Kesmakura, the grand swelling sounds of the symphony of Majipoor. To build a commemorative shrine in honor of the first Pontifex – not just a shrine, though, nor even just a museum, but a research center, a place of study, over which he himself would preside—

“Of course, sir,” he said hoarsely. “What a superb idea!”

He might as well have been talking to himself. Simmilgord realized that the Skandar had already moved on, turning his attention to Lutiel: “And we will want a replica of the tomb chamber, everything in one-to-one correlation, though somewhat restored, of course, for the benefit of the laymen who will want to see it as it was in Dvorn’s time. Those wonderful murals, reproduced exactly, with the colors enhanced and the missing portions carefully reconstructed – who better to supervise the work than you, Lutiel? Who, indeed?”

Hawid Zakayil paused, plainly waiting for Lutiel to reply. But no reply was forthcoming, and after a long moment of silence the Skandar simply looked away, his frenetic spirit already moving along to the next consideration, the hotel facilities that the town would need to provide here, and some highway expansion, and similar matters of municipal concern.

The glory and wonder of it all remained with Simmilgord after they had returned to their lodgings. Already he could see the long lines of visitors shuffling reverently past the great replica of the mural of the smiling Dvorn enthroned, pausing to study the historical plaques on the walls, the murmured discussions amongst them of the visionary brilliance of the first Pontifex, even the multitudes of eager readers for the book on Dvorn that he intended to write.

Then he noticed the furious, glowering expression on Lutiel’s face.

Lutiel was fuming. He was pacing angrily about. And finally his anger broke into words.

“How absolutely awful! A phony ruin – replicas of the murals, very nicely prettied up for the tourists – !”

It was like being hit with a bucket of cold water.

With some difficulty Simmilgord brought himself down from the lofty fantasies that had engaged his mind. “What’s so terrible about that, Lutiel? You can’t expect to let them have access to the originals!”

Lutiel turned on him. “Why do they have to see them at all? What do we need this silly cave for? This shiny fraudulent showplace, this phony historical site? And why should
we
be involved? I told you right at the start, before we even came here, I wasn’t going to hire on as a paid publicist for the town of Kesmakuran.”

“But—”

“You know yourself that most people have no serious interest in what that Skandar wants to put in his museum. They might come and look for five minutes, and move onward, and buy a souvenir or two, maybe a little statuette of Dvorn to put on the mantel, and then start wondering about where to have lunch—” Simmilgord began to feel his own anger rising. It was true, no denying it, that from the very beginning, from the time the head of the department back at the University had broached the Kesmakuran journey, Lutiel had opposed their getting involved. A “career detour,” he had called it then, something irrelevant to the work of two serious young scholars. Yes, Simmilgord had argued him out of that, and had managed to overcome Lutiel’s later doubts about the legitimacy of the project on a dozen occasions, and eventually Lutiel had made the discovery of a lifetime, that gallery of murals that any archaeologist would give his right arm to have found, or maybe
both
arms, and even so he went on grumbling and fretting about the issues of integrity that seemed to trouble him so much. Evidently he had never reconciled himself to the project in the first place. And never would.

As calmly as he could Simmilgord said, “You’re being absurd, Lutiel. Are you telling me that we do all our work purely for ourselves, that we’re like priests of some arcane cult who go through rites and rituals that have no relevance whatever to the real world and the lives of real people in it?”

Lutiel laughed harshly. “And you, Simmilgord? What are you telling
me
? Not a shred of integrity in you, is that it? Ready to sell yourself to the first bidder who comes along?”

Simmilgord gasped. Perhaps, he thought, Lutiel
was
some sort of monk at heart, too pure for this world. But this was going too far.

“When did I ever say—”

“I saw the way you lit up when the Skandar told you you were just the man for the job of putting together the historical side of the new monument.”

“Of course I did. Why shouldn’t I? It’s a tremendous opportunity to put the story of Dvorn across to thousands, even millions of people. And you – when he told you essentially the same thing as he put you in charge of supervising the reconstruction of the murals, the creation of replica that look better than the originals – what did you feel?”

“What I felt was disgust,” Lutiel said. “Indignation. I kept my mouth shut, because I couldn’t bring myself to stand up to Hawid Zakayil to his face, any more than anyone else can. I told you I’m no publicist, Simmilgord, and certainly I’m not a showman either. Or some sort of theatrical impresario. What I am is a scientist. And so are you, whether you want to believe it or not. You’re an historian. History is a science, or should be, anyway. And scientists have no business getting involved in anything as sordid as this.”

Sordid?

Simmilgord’s head was beginning to ache. He wanted to slide away from this discussion somehow. He was ashamed to face Lutiel.

That stinging charge of hypocrisy – of whoring, even – hurt him deeply. Lutiel was his closest friend. For Lutiel to see him as a hypocrite and a whore was painful. But there was a certain truth in it. A flamboyant character like Hawid Zakayil, who was both a scientist and a manufacturer of public entertainments, and probably somewhat more of the one than of the other, would dismiss such an accusation without a thought. Simmilgord, though, was shaken by it. One part of him thought Lutiel might just be right, that they had no business getting involved in something as far from genuine scholarship as this “monument” promised to be. But another part – the part that remembered the boy who had climbed those mountains and tried to cast his gaze from sea to sea – was wholly caught up in its spell.