Cemetery World Read Online Free PDF Page B

many abilities which it bypassed or missed along the way. It would seem, this being true, that it would have been worth the while of even our great galactic culture to learn about and have at hand for study those cultural developments it had missed, perhaps had never even thought of. Probably not more than one in ten of these missed developments would be applicable to their culture, but that one in ten might be most important. It might give a new dimension, might make them a more well-rounded and more solid culture. Let us say, which is not true, of course, that Earth had been the only culture that dreamed up the wheel. Even the great galactic culture had missed the wheel, had gone on to its greatness on some other principle that left the lack of the wheel unnoticed. Still, would it not seem likely that knowledge of the wheel, even at a much later date, might be of value? The wheel is such a handy thing to have.”
    I came back to the present. I still clutched the letter in my hand. The car was nearing the shed. The funeral ship stood on its pad, but there was no sign of the vehicles that had been unloading the cargo. The work must all be done.
    “Thorney says that you are expecting to go with us,” I said to Cynthia Lansing. “I don’t know if that’ll be possible. We’ll be roughing it. Camping out in all kinds of weather.”
    “I can rough it. I can camp.”
    I shook my head.
    “Look,” she protested, “I gambled everything I had on this, to be here when you landed. I scratched up every credit that I had to pay the outrageous fare on a Pilgrim ship …”
    “Thorney said something about some funds. A grant.”
    “I didn’t have quite enough for the fare,” she said. “I used part of it for that. And I’ve been waiting for you to arrive, staying at the Pilgrim Inn, which isn’t cheap. There is very little left. Really, nothing left …”
    “That’s too bad,” I said. “But you knew it was a gamble. You had no reason to believe …”
    “But I did,” she said. “You are as broke as I am.”
    “Meaning what?”
    “Meaning you haven’t got the money to get back to Alden once you have your composition.”
    “I know that,” I said, “but if I have the composition …”
    “No money,” she said, “and Mother Earth not about to make it easy for you.”
    “There is that,” I said, “but I can’t see how taking you along …”
    “That is what I have been trying to tell you. This may sound silly to you …”
    Her words ran out and she sat there looking at me. Her face no longer looked as if it were about to smile.
    “Damn you,” she said, “why don’t you say something? Why don’t you help me just a little? Why don’t you ask me what I have?”
    “All right. What is it that you have?”
    “I know where the treasure is.”
    “For the love of Christ, what treasure?”
    “The Anachron treasure.”
    “Thorney is convinced,” I told her, “that the Anachronians had been on Earth. He wanted me to watch for any possible clues to their being here. It was a fool’s errand, of course, as he spelled it out to me. The archaeologists aren’t even sure there was such a race. Their planet never has been found. All that had been found are fragments of inscriptions on half a dozen planets, fragmentary inscriptions found among the inscriptions and the shreds of the native culture. Some evidence, although it seems to me shaky evidence, that at one time members of this supposedly mysterious race lived on other planets—perhaps as traders, which is what most archaeologists believe, or as observers, which is what Thorney believes, or for some other reason, neither as traders or observers. He told me all of this, but he never mentioned treasure.”
    “But there was a treasure,” she said. “It was brought from olden Greece to olden America in the Final War. I found an account of it and Professor Thorndyke …”
    “Start making some sort of sense,” I said. “If Thorney is right, they weren’t