Semper Mars(49)

“I suppose so.” He didn’t sound happy. Garroway thought that Joubert’s comment about his professional mistakes had touched a very raw nerve.

“Everybody?” Graves asked, addressing the table. “It’s late, and we’re all tired. Is there a problem with waiting two days before announcing this discovery?”

There were murmurs from the others, mostly in the negative. Colonel Lloyd raised his hand.

“Colonel?” Graves said.

“I just wanted to say that…this isn’t a scientific comment, but I do find the fact that the members of an American expedition are deferring to UN personnel with no jurisdiction…disturbing. It sets an unfortunate precedent.”

“In the first place, Colonel,” Joubert replied, “I’m not asking for you to defer to me. I just want a little time to consult with my superiors. Most likely, they will agree with Dr. Alexander, but if there is a problem, they should be allowed to share with us their views, no? As for precedent, I will only remind you that there is every possibility that future expeditions to Mars will be internationalized and, therefore, will come under direct UN jurisdiction and supervision. Your cooperation with my superiors could indeed set a precedent. A good one.”

The meeting broke up shortly afterward. After Joubert and the other UN people had left, Garroway turned to Alexander. “I thought you had something going with Joubert?”

“Not anymore,” the archeologist replied. “That woman is bad, bad news.”

“Looked like you were about to slug her there, for a second.”

“No. I wish…but, no.”

“What was that crack about mistakes? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t—”

Alexander looked up at the doorway through which Joubert had just left. “Oh, there’s nothing secret about it, but nothing really important, either. Let’s just say I’ve crossed swords with some highly placed people before over discoveries that they’d rather didn’t see the light of day. I guess she’s done her research and found out whose toes I’ve been stepping on. I think she’s looking for leverage, some way she can manipulate me.”

Garroway chuckled. “I’ve heard it said that archeologists dig up other people’s garbage. I didn’t know that included skeletons in closets.”

“Quite true. Very old garbage, usually, and you never know where the skeletons are going to turn up. Archeologists are diggers, Major. But sometimes, the things they dig up are inconvenient. Or culturally embarrassing.”

“I’m still not sure I understand why she’s so bent out of shape about this.”

“Mmm. Hard to say, really. She’s right that there are people back home who won’t like what we’ve found here. And others who’ll seize on it as proof that God was an astronaut.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that. What was that thing about ancient astronauts?”

“Oh, various writers, late twentieth, early twenty-first century, developed the notion that a lot of the strange artifacts and buildings and monuments on Earth couldn’t have been built by primitive peoples…or at least, not by primitives working by themselves. They must have had extraterrestrials helping with antigravity or whatever.”

Garroway laughed. “Seriously?”

“Oh, yes. Quite a few writers jumped on that particular wagon. Erich von Daniken was one of the noisiest. His willingness to attribute every cultural oddity or mystery to aliens pretty well soured the scientific community on the whole idea. Unfortunately, well, the discovery that the Face was an artificial structure of some kind gave an extra boost to his theories, gave them greater credibility. Probably spawned half a dozen star-child religions.”

“You believe this stuff?”

“Mostly, no. Most reputable scientists don’t. The idea was popularized in a number of books, but the information was never scientifically presented, much of it was hearsay, and a lot of the facts were just plain wrong. Hell, back in the seventies, von Daniken’s stuff gave the whole subject such a bad taste that most real archeologists stayed clear of the whole subject for fifty years.”

“No science, all air, huh?”

“Well, the trouble with most of those books was that they usually ignored the simple answer, even ignored the people right there on the spot who could still demonstrate how their ancestors built the whatever-it-was. The Easter Islanders are a great example.”

“I’ve heard about them. Big, stone heads on the beach. I didn’t think aliens were supposed to have anything to do with them. They’re big, yeah, but not so big you need antigravity to explain them. I thought the biggest mystery there was why the things were raised in the first place.”