Jack Mcdevitt - Engines of god

by David Geary

  (1) Earthquakes up to 16.3 on the Grovener Scale along all major fault lines within 50 degrees of both poles;

  (2) Tsunamis throughout the Southern Sea. These will be giant waves, unlike anything seen on Earth during recorded history. In effect, large areas of the sea will simply leave the basin and inundate the land masses, penetrating thousands of kilometers.

  (3) Rainfall, even if not abetted by the insertion of snowballs, will continue for the better part of a year. It will remain at a high level for ten to fifteen years, before stabilizing at a global mean approximately 35% higher than the current standard.

  It needs to be noted, however, that the presence of volcanoes in the south polar area, joined with our lack of experience in operations of this scale, and the variables listed in Appendix (1), have created a situation which is extremely unpredictable.

  (lan Helm)

  8.

  On board DVT Jack Kraus. Tuesday; 1422 hours.

  The snowball tumbled slowly through the sunlight, growing in his screens. Lopsided and battered, it dwarfed his tug. One end looked as if a large piece had been knocked off. Big son of a bitch, this one. Navigation matched its movement, brought him in over scored white terrain. It stabilized, and the scan program activated. Jake Hoffer slowed his approach, his descent, and chose the contact point. About midway along the axis of rotation. There. A sheet of flat, unseamed ice.

  He watched the readings on his status board. He was, in effect, landing on a plateau whose sides dropped away forever. Quraqua rolled across the sky. The moon rose while he watched, and the sun dropped swiftly toward the cliff-edge "horizon." The effect inevitably induced a mild vertigo. He buttoned up the cockpit, sealing off the view, and watched on the monitors. The numbers flickered past, and ready lamps went on at a hundred meters. Moments later, the Jack Kraus touched down with a mild jar. The spikes bit satisfyingly into the ice.

  Lamps switched to amber.

  The realignment program took hold. Sensors computed mass distribution and rotational configuration, and evaluated course and velocity. The first round of thrusters fired.

  Four hours later, he was riding the snowball into its tem­porary orbit around Quraqua.

  Within a few weeks, he and the other tug pilot, Merry Cooper, would begin the real bear of this operation: start­ing the two-hundred-plus pieces of orbiting ice down to the planetary surface, aiming them just as he was doing now, by digging in and dragging them toward their targets. Once that final descent had begun, they would use particle beams to slice them into rain. It pleased him to know that this massive iceberg would eventually fall as a gentle summer shower on a parched plain.

  His commlink beeped. "Jake?"

  He recognized Harvey Sill's gravelly voice. "You're five-by, Harvey."

  Jake switched to visual. Sill was giving directions to some­one off-camera. Usually, the station chief's post in the com­mand center was quiet. But today there were voices and technicians and activity. Getting close.

  Sill scratched his temple. "Jake, are you locked onto two-seventeen?"

  '"Two-nineteen."

  "Whatever. You got it?"

  "Yes—"

  "Okay. I want you to drop it."

  Hoffer leaned forward, adjusted his gain. "Say again."

  "I want you to put it into the Southern Sea. The Yakata."

  That couldn't be right. "Harvey, that's where the Academy people are."

  "I know. Insert it sixteen hundred kilometers south of the Temple site. Can you do that with reasonable accuracy?"

  "I can." Hoffer was horrified. "But I don't want to."

  Sill's expression did not change. "Do it anyway."

  "Harvey, it'll kill them. What have you guys done over there, lost your minds?"

  "For God's sake, Hoffer, it's only one unit. Nobody's going to get hurt. And we'll see that they get plenty of advance warning."

  "You want me to cut it up?"

  "Negative. Insert it as is."

  Jake was breathing hard. "Suppose they don't get every­body out? Or can't? Son of a bitch, this thing's a mountain. You can't just drop it into the ocean."

  "They're underwater, goddammit. They'll be safe enough."

  "I doubt it."

  "Have you got something smaller, then?"

  "Sure. Damned near everything we have is smaller."

  "Okay. Find something smaller and do it. Don't forget we'll lose a lot of it on the way down."

  "Like hell. Most of this bastard would hit the water. Why are we doing this?"

  Sill looked exceptionally irritated. "Look, Jake. Those peo­ple are playing mind games with us. Right now, it looks as if they'll stay past the deadline. We're sending them a message. Now please see to it."

  Hoffer nodded. "Yeah. I guess so. When?"

  "Now. How long will it take?"

  "Hard to say. Maybe ten hours."

  "All right. Keep me posted. And, Jake—?"

  "Yes?"

  "Get us a decent splash."

  The Temple of the Winds lay half-buried in ocean bot­tom, a polygon with turrets and porticoes and massive col­umns. Walls met at odd angles and ran off in a confusion of directions. Staircases mounted to upper rooms that no longer existed. (The stairs were precisely the right size for humans.) Arcane symbols lined every available space. Arches and balustrades were scattered everywhere. A relatively intact hyperbolic roof dipped almost to the sea floor, giving the entire structure the appearance of a turtle shell. "All in all," Richard told Hutch as they approached on jets, "it's an archi­tecture that suggests a groundling religion. It's cautious and practical, a faith that employs gods primarily to see to the rain and bless marriages. Their concerns were domestic and agricultural, probably, in contrast to the cosmology of the Knothic Towers. It would be interesting to have their history during this period, to trace them from the Towers to the Temple, and find out what happened."

  They shut down their jets and drifted toward the front entrance. "The architecture looks as if it was designed by committee," said Hutch. "The styles clash."

  "It wasn't built in a single effort," he said. "The Tem­ple was originally a single building. A chapel on a military installation." They hovered before the immense colonnade that guarded the front entrance. "They added to it over the years, tore things down, changed their minds. The result was a web of chambers and corridors and balconies and shafts surrounding the central nave. Most of it has collapsed, although the nave itself is still standing. God knows how. It's dangerous, by the way. Roof could come down any time. Carson tells me they were on the verge of calling off work and bringing in some engineers to shore the place up."

  Hutch surveyed the rock walls doubtfully. "Maybe it's just as well we're being forced out. Before somebody gets killed."

  Richard looked at her with mock dismay. "I know you've been around long enough not to say anything like that to these people."

  "It's okay," she said. "I'll try not to upset anybody."

  The top was off the colonnade, and sunlight filtered down among the pillars. They stopped to look at the carvings. They were hard to make out through caked silt and general disin­tegration, but she saw something that resembled a sunrise. And either a tentacled sea-beast or a tree. The Temple of the Winds was, if anything, solid. Massive. Built for the ages. Its saddle-shaped design, had the structure remained on dry land, would have provided an aerodynamic aspect. Hutch wondered whether that accounted for its designation.

  "Who named it?" she asked. She understood that native place names got used when they were available (and pro­nounceable). When they weren't, imagination and a sense of humor were seldom lacking.

  "Actually," said Richard, "it's had a lot of names over the centuries. Outlook. The Wayside. The Southern Shield, which derived from a constellation. And probably some we don't know. 'Temple of the Winds' was one of the more recent. Eloise Hapwell discovered it, and she eventually made the choice. It's intended to suggest, by the way, the transience of life. A flickering candle on a windblown night
."

  "I've heard that before somewhere."

  "The image is common to terrestrial cultures. And to some on Nok. It's a universal symbol, Hutch. That's why churches and temples are traditionally built from rock, to establish a counterpoint. To imply that they, at least, are solid and permanent, or that the faith is."

  "It's oppressive," she said. "They're all obsessed with death, aren't they?" Mortality motifs were prominent with every culture she knew about, terrestrial or otherwise.

  "All of the important things," Richard said, "will turn out to be universally shared. It's why there will be no true aliens."

  She was silent for a time. "This is, what, two thousand years old?" She meant the colonnade.

  "Somewhere in that time frame."

  "Why were there two temples?"

  "How do you mean?"

  "The Knothic Towers. That was a place of worship too, wasn't it? Were they all part of the same complex?"

  "We don't think so, Hutch. But we don't really know very much yet." He pointed toward a shadowy entrance. "That way."

  She followed him inside. Trail markers glowed in the murky water, red and green, amber and blue. They switched on their wrist-lamps. "Did the Temple and the Towers both represent the same religion?"

  "Yes. In the sense that they both recognized a universal deity."

  "No pantheons here."

  "No. But keep in mind, we don't see these people at their beginnings. The cultures we can look at had already grasped the essential unity of nature. No board of gods can survive that knowledge."

  "If I understood Frank, there's an ancient power plant here somewhere."

  "Somewhere is the word. They don't really know quite where. Henry has found bits and pieces of generators and control panels and conductors throughout the area. You prob­ably know there was an intersection of major roads here for several thousand years. One road came down from the interior, and connected with a coastal highway right about where we are now."

  "Yes," she said. "I've seen it."

  "Before it was a highway, it was a river. It would have been lower then than it is today. Anyway, the river emptied into the sea, and the power plant must have been built somewhere along its banks. But that's a long time ago. Twenty-five thousand years. Maybe more." His voice changed subtly. She knew how Richard's mind worked, knew he was feeling the presence of ghosts, looking back the way they'd come, seeing the ancient watercourse, imagining a seaside city illuminated by electric lights. They had paused by an alcove. "Here," he said, "look at this." He held his lamp against the wall.

  A stone face peered at her. It was as tall, from crocodilian crown to the base of its jaws, as Hutch. It stared past her, over her shoulder, as if watching someone leave.

  The eyes were set in deep sockets beneath a ridged brow. Snout and mouth were broad; the skull was flat, wide, smooth. Tufts of fur were erect across the jaws. The aspect of the thing suggested sorrow, contemplation, perhaps regret.

  "It fits right in," she said. "It's depressing."

  "Hutch, that's the response of a tourist."

  "Who is it? Do we know?"

  He nodded. "God."

  "That's not the same as the one in the Lower Temple."

  "No. This is a male version. But it comes a thousand years later."

  "Universal deities—"

  "What?"

  "—never seem to smile. Not in any culture. What's the point of having omnipotence if you don't enjoy it?"

  He squeezed her shoulder. "You do have your own way of looking at things."

  They descended to ground level, picking up a track of green lights. "What happened to the industrialized society?" she asked. "The one with the power plant?"

  "It ran out of gas. Literally. They exhausted their fossil fuels. And developed no replacements."

  "No atom."

  "No. They probably never tried. It might be that you only get a narrow window to do it: you can't run your motors anymore, and you need a major, concerted effort. Maybe you need a big war at exactly the right moment." He grew thoughtful. "They never managed it on Nok either."

  They were still in the central nave. The roof blocked off the light, and it was dark in spite of the trail markers. Occa­sionally, sea creatures touched them. "It's a terrible thing," said Richard, "to lose all this."

  They paused periodically before engravings. Whole walls were covered with lines of symbols. "We think they're sto­ries," he said. "Anyhow, it's all been holographed. Eventually we'll figure it out. And here's what we've been looking for."

  A shaft opened at their feet. The green lamps dived in, accompanied by a pair of quivering tubes, each about as wide as a good-sized human thigh. "Extracting sand," said Richard.

  He stepped off the edge. His weights carried him down. Hutch waited a few moments, then followed. "We are now entering the Lower Temple," he told her. "Welcome to 9000 b.c."

  The shaft was cut through gray rock. "Richard," she asked, "do you think there's really a chance to find a Rosetta stone

  in here anywhere? It seems like a long shot to me."

  "Not really. Remember, this was a crossroad. It's not hard to believe they would have carved a prayer, or epigram, or inspirational story, on a wall, and done it in several languages. In fact, Henry's convinced they would have done it. The real questions are whether any of it has survived, and whether we'll have time to recover it if it did."

  Hutch could not yet see bottom. "The stone wall behind you," Richard continued, "is part of the outer palisade. We're outside the military post." A tunnel opened off the shaft. The green lights and the tubes snaked into it. "This is just above ground level during the military era." He swam toward the passageway. "They're pumping sediment out now. It's a constant struggle. The place fills up as fast as they pump."

  She followed him in. Ahead, past his long form, she could see white lights and movement.

  "George?" Richard was now speaking on the common channel. "Is that you?"

  An enormous figure crouched over a black box. It stirred, and looked up. "Damn," he said. "I thought you were the relief shift. How you doing, Richard?"

  She could hear the soft hum of machinery, and the slush of moving water.

  "Hutch," Richard said, "this is George Hackett. Project engineer."

  Hackett must have been close to seven feet tall. He was preoccupied with a device that was probably a pump, and tried to say hello without looking away from it. It was dif­ficult to see him clearly in the uncertain light, but he sounded friendly.

  "Where's your partner?" Richard asked.

  Hackett pointed at the tubes, which trailed off into a side corridor. "At the other end," he said.

  "We're directly over the military chapel," Richard told Hutch. "They're trying to clear the chambers below."

  "What's in them?" she asked.

  "We don't know yet," said George. "We don't know any­thing, except that they're located at the western limit of the palisade. They were probably a barracks. But they could also be part of the original chapel."

  "I thought you'd already found that," said Hutch. "That's where the Tull tableau was, right?"

  "We've got into part of it," said George. "There's more around here somewhere. There's a fair chance this is it."

  The silt in the passageway was ankle-deep. They stood amid the clutter of electric cables, collection pouches, bars, picks, rocks.

  "Why is the chapel important? Aside from finding samples of the Casumel series?"

  George spoke to someone else on a private channel. The person at the other end of the tubes, Hutch assumed. Then, apparently satisfied, he turned toward her. The pressure in the tubes subsided. "This was an outpost of a major civilization, Hutch. But we don't know anything about these people. We don't know what was important to them, how they thought about themselves, what they would have thought about us. But chapels and temples tend to be places which reveal the highest values of the civilizations they represent."

  "You can't be serious," said Hutch.r />
  "I don't mean directly. But if you want to learn what counts to people, read their mythology. How do they explain the great questions?" He grinned, suddenly aware that he had become pedagogic. She thought his eyes lingered on her, but couldn't be sure.

  "Hutch," said Richard, "Henry is up forward, in one of the anterooms. Where they found the Tull series. Would you like to see it?"

  "I think I'll pass," she said. "I'm out of time."

  "Okay. You know how to get back?"

  "Sure." She watched Richard swim past George, and con­tinue down the tunnel. Moments later, he rounded a bend and was gone.

  Hutch listened to the faint hiss of her airpack. "How are we doing?" she asked.

  George smiled. "Not so good."

  "I expected to find most of the team down here. Where is everybody?"

  "Frank and Linda are with Henry. The rest are at Seapoint. There's really not much we can do until we get things cleared out below. After that, we'll do a major hunt for more Casumel C samples. When Maggie—You know Maggie?"

  "No."

  "Maggie Tufu's our exophilologist. We've got several hun­dred samples of Casumel Linear C from around the area. But

  most of the samples are short, only a few words. When she tells us she's got enough to start reading it, that will be the signal to pull out." He sounded weary.

  "You okay?"

  "I'm fine." He glanced down at the tubes, which had col­lapsed. They were blue-black, flexible, painted with silver strips at intervals of about one meter. The strips were reflec­tive.

  He didn't seem to have anything to do except sit by the device. "I'm just collecting data from Tri's monitor," he said. "Tri holds the vacuum, and I sit here in case the Temple falls in on him. That's so we know right away." He turned toward her, and she got her first clear look at him.

  George had good eyes, dark and whimsical. She could see that he enjoyed having her there. He was younger than she would have guessed: his brow was unfurrowed, and there was something inescapably innocent in his demeanor. He was handsome, in the way that most young men are handsome. But the smile, and the eyes, added an extra dimension. He would be worth cultivating, she decided.