«Old,» she said. «At least four hundred years. And expert craftwork, I might add.»
«Lovely,» Keff said, making sure the contact button scanned it in full for his xenology records. «Er, high worker-ship, Chaumel.»
His host was delighted, and took him by the arm to show him every item displayed in the long hall.
Chaumel was evidently an enthusiastic collector of objets d'art and, except for the nauseating pictures, had a well-developed appreciation of beauty. Keff had no trouble admiring handsomely made chairs, incidental tables, and pedestals of wood and stone; more tapestries; pieces of scientific equipment that had fallen into disuse and been adapted for other purposes. A primitive chariot, evidently the precursor of the elegant chairs Chaumel and his people used, was enshrined underneath the picture of a bearded man in a silver robe. Chaumel also owned some paintings and representational art executed with great skill that were not only not uncomfortable but a pleasure to behold. Keff exclaimed over everything, recording it, hoping that he was also gathering clues to help free Carialle so they could leave Ozran as soon as possible.
A few of Chaumel's treasures absolutely defied description. Keff would have judged them to be sculpture or statuary, but some of the vertical and horizontal surfaces showed wear, the polished appearance of long use. They were furniture, but for what kind of being?
«What is this, Chaumel?» Keff asked, drawing the magimans attention to a small grouping arranged in an alcove. He pointed to one item. It looked like a low-set painters easel from which a pair of hardwood tines rose in a V. «This is very old.»
«Ah!» the magiman said, eagerly. «. . . from old, old day-day.» IT promptly interpreted into «from ancient days,» and recorded the usage.
«I'm getting a reading of between one thousand six hundred and one thousand nine hundred years,» Carialle said, confirming Chaumel's statement. The magiman gave Keff a curious look.
«Surely your people didn't use these things,» Keff said. «Can't sit on them, see?» He made as if to sit down on the narrow horizontal ledge at just above knee level.
Chaumel grinned and shook his head. «Old Ones used . . . sit-lie,» he said.
«They weren't humanoid?» Keff asked, and then clarified as the magiman looked confused. «Not like you, or me, or your servants?»
«Not, not. Before New Ones, we.»
«Then the humanoids were not the native race on this planet,» Carialle said excitedly into Kerfs implant. «They are travelers. They settled here alongside the indigenous beings and shared their culture.»
«That would explain the linguistic anomalies,» Keff said. «And that awful artwork in the grand hall.» Then speaking aloud, he added, «Are there any of the Old Ones left, Chaumel?»
«Not, not. Many days gone. Worked, move from empty land to mountain. Gave us, gave them.» Chaumel struggled with a pantomime. «All . . . gone.»
«I think I understand. You helped them move out of the valleys, and they gave you . . . what? Then they all died? What caused that? A plague?»
Chaumel suddenly grew wary. He muttered and moved on to the next grouping of artifacts. He paused dramatically before one item displayed on a wooden pedestal. The gray stone object, about fifty centimeters high, resembled an oddly twisted urn with an off-center opening.
«Old-Old-Ones,» he said with awe, placing his hands possessively on the urn.
«Old Ones—Ancient Ones?» Keff asked, gesturing one step farther back with his hand.
«Yes,» Chaumel said. He caressed the stone. Keff moved closer so Carialle could take a reading through the contact button.
«It's even older than the Old Ones' chair, if that's what that was. Much older. Ask if this is a religious artifact. Are the Ancient Ones their gods?» Carialle asked.
«Did you, your father-father, bring Ancient Ones with you to Ozran?» Keff asked.
«Not our ancestors,» Chaumel said, laying three imaginary objects in a row. «Ozran: Ancient Ones; Old Ones; New Ones, we. Ancient,» he added, holding out the wand in his belt.
«Carialle, I think he means that artifact is a leftover from the original culture. It is ancient, but there has been some modification on it, dating a couple thousand years back.» Then aloud, he said to Chaumel. «So they passed usable items down. Did the Ancient Ones look like the Old Ones? Were they their ancestors?»
Chaumel shrugged.
«It looks like an entirely different culture, Keff,» Carialle said, processing the image and running a schematic overlay of all the pieces in the hall. «There're very few Ancient One artifacts here to judge by, but my reconstruction program suggests different body types for the Ancients and the Old Ones. Similar, though. Both species were upright and had rearward-bending, jointed lower limbs—can't tell how many, but the Old One furniture is built for larger creatures. Not quite as big as humanoids, though.»
«It sounds as if one species succeeded after another,» Keff said. «The Old Ones moved in to live with the Ancient Ones, and many generations later after the Ancients died off, the New Ones arrived and cohabited with the Old Ones. They are the third in a series of races to live on this planet: the aborigines, the Old Ones, and the New Ones, or magic-using humanoids.»
Carialle snorted. «Doesn't say much for Ozran as a host for life-forms, if two intelligent races in a row died off within a few millenia.»
«And the humanoids are reduced to a nontechnological existence,» Keff said, only half listening to Chaumel, who was lecturing him with an intent expression on his broad-cheeked face. «Could it have something to do with the force-field holding you down? They got stuck here?»
«Whatever trapped me did it selectively, Keff!» Carialle said. «I'd landed and taken off six times on Ozran already. It was deliberate, and I want to know who and why.»
«Another mystery to investigate. But I also want to know why the Old Ones moved up here, away from their source of food,» Keff said. «Since they seem to be dependant on what's grown here, that's a sociological anomaly.»
«Ah,» Carialle said, reading newly translated old data from IT. «The Old Ones didn't move up here with the New Ones' help, Keff. They were up here when the humanoids came. They found Ancient artifacts in the valleys.»
«So these New Ones had some predilection for talent when they came here, but their contact with the Old Ones increased it to what we see in them now. Two space-going races, Carialle!» Keff said, greatly excited. «I want to know if we can find out more about the pure alien culture. Later on, let's see if we can trace them back to their original systems. Pity there's so little left: after several hundred years of humanoid rule, it's all mixed up together.»
«Isn't the synthesis as rare?» Carialle asked, pointedly.
«In our culture, yes. Makes it obvious where the sign language comes from, too,» Keff said. «Its a relic from one of the previous races—useful symbology that helps make the magic work. The Old Ones may never have shared the humanoid language, being the host race, but somehow they made themselves understood to the new-comers. Worth at least a paper to Galactic Geographic. Clearly, Chaumel here doesn't know what the Ancients were like.»
The magiman, watching Keff talking to himself, heard his name and Keff's question. He shook his head regretfully. «I do not. Much before days of me.»
«Where do your people come from?» Keff asked. «What star, where out there?» He gestured up at the sky.
«I do not know that also. Where from do yours come?» Chaumel asked, a keen eye holding Keff's.
The brawn tried to think of a way to explain the Central Worlds with the limited vocabulary at his disposal and raised his hands helplessly.
«Vain hope.» Carialle sighed. «I'm still trying to find any records of settlements in this sector. Big zero. If I could get a message out, I could have Central Worlds do a full-scan search of the old records.»
«So where do the Noble Primitives fit in, Chaumel?» Keff asked, throwing a friendly arm over the man's shoulder before he could start a lecture on the next object d'art. He pointed at a male servant wearing a long, white robe, who hurried away, wide-eyed, when he noticed the bare-skinned ones looking at him. «I notice that the servants here have lighter pelts than the people in the farm village.» He gestured behind him, hoping that Chaumel would understand he meant where they had just come from. He tweaked a lock of his own hair, rubbing his fingers
