Jack Mcdevitt - Engines of god

by David Geary

  Rely on Janet and Frank to get out of the way.

  "Stay low," she said. She released the cockpit canopy, and raised it.

  Almost down.

  Carson screamed. She cut off his channel. No distractions. Not now.

  She looked back along the wall. Keep in the middle.

  "I'm here, Janet," she whispered.

  She jounced down, lifted again. With a little luck, the crabs were running for cover. Do it right. No second chance.

  The treads settled.

  Contact.

  She eased off, got a green board, grabbed the pulser, and leaped out onto the wing.

  "Let's go."

  Janet already had hold of the boarding ladder. She was covered with blood and dirt and her eyes were wild. Hutch made no effort to be gentle. She seized her shoulder, yanked her up, and pushed her toward the cockpit. Then she went back for Carson.

  He wasn't visible. But there were crabs down there. Churn­ing, wall-to-wall crabs. Then she heard him, and saw a hand trying to get hold of the port wing, on the other side of the shuttle. "Coming," she said. She took the shortest route, across the cowling rather than back through the cockpit. The hand was gone when she got there. Carson was on the ground, at the edge, trying to beat back the clicking, jabbing horde.

  He called her name.

  The wing stuck out over the abyss. "Jump for it, Frank," she said. She sprawled down flat on her belly and anchored a foot against the hatch to provide purchase. "Do it—"

  He threw a glance toward her. One of the things had fastened onto his leg and was cutting him. Without a word, he leaped, throwing both arms across the wing. She tried to grab his trousers to haul him up but she had to settle for his shirt, his ribs, and she couldn't get a good grip.

  He grabbed wildly at the smooth metal. Hutch was dragged half off the wing. Janet—

  And she was there. She was taller than Hutch, longer, and she scrambled alongside, leaned down, and snatched him back. Snatched them both back.

  For years afterward, I was unable to write, or speak, about that terrible night. This was to have been our shining moment, the peak of all our careers. God knows, I felt safe enough when we started. We were well-armed. And we were in a land that had lately served a great civilization. I did not believe that serious predators could have survived such a period.

  Nevertheless, I failed to take adequate precautions. It cost the lives of two of the finest people I have ever known.

  —Frank Carson

  Quoted in "Overnight on Krakatoa," by Jane Hildebrand, The Atlantic, Oct 11, 2219

  Carson sounds as if he forgot he also managed to lose a shuttle pilot on that trip. His name, for the record, was Jake Dickenson.

  —Harvey Sill, Letter published in The Atlantic, Oct 25, 2219

  25.

  On board NCK Catherine Perth. Wednesday, April 13; 1800 GMT.

  They recovered Maggie's body at about noon, local time. They also found parts of Jake's clothing and equipment. There was no sign of George, other than a few bumed-out areas. The brachyids, if they were still in the neighborhood, kept out of the way of the heavily armed landing party.

  Harvey Sill led the mission. Hutch went along as guide, but she needed tranks to hold herself together.

  On their return to the Perth, Maggie's body was placed in refrigeration, a memorial service was scheduled, and for­mal notifications were sent to Kosmik and the Academy. To Carson's knowledge, it was the first time anyone had been killed in field work by a native life form.

  Captain Morris directed preparations for the memorial with a mounting sense of outrage mixed with satisfaction that he had failed to make his point with his superiors but been proved right. However, he could expect to be held respon­sible by Corporate. He had never before lost a crewman or passenger, and he now had three to account for. Worse, the mission had been unauthorized.

  "I hope you're aware," he told Truscott, "what you've got us into."

  She was aware. She'd assumed the professionals knew what they were doing, and had trusted them. It was a mistake she'd made before, but she didn't know any other way to operate. You have to trust the people who are close to the action. If once in a while things go wrong, you take the heat. "I'm sorry I've created a problem for you, John," she said.

  He missed the quiet irony. "A little late for that. The question is, what do we do now?"

  They were in the captain's conference room. Truscott had followed the progress of the recovery party on the com­mand circuit, had watched the body come back, and felt little patience with Morris, enclosed in his own narrow envelope. How do we get people like you in positions of authority? "I told you," she said, "that if a problem developed, I would see to it that you were absolved of responsibility. And I will."

  "I know you will try." Morris's throat trembled. It was unlike him to stand up to anyone who was in a position to damage him. "Nevertheless," he said righteously, "three people are dead."

  "I understand that."

  "I'm captain here. I expect to be associated with this disaster for the rest of my career. There'll be no escaping it."

  It's a terrible thing to listen to a grown man whine. "I rather think," she said, "that the unofficial culpability, if any, will attach to Dr. Carson."

  Morris was glad to hear that. But he was too smart to show his satisfaction. Instead, he sat for some moments peer­ing sadly off into a corner, as if he were considering the varieties of disaster which can befall even the most capable men.

  Truscott suspected that when she was gone, he would call up a coffee and a cinnamon roll. Emotional encounters, she knew, always left him hungry.

  "You'll need some reconstructive surgery when you get home. Meantime, stay off it as much as you can." The ship's physician, a grandmotherly type with an easygoing, upbeat bedside manner, irritated Carson. He had never much liked cheerful people. "Neither of you will be able to walk for about twelve hours," she told him and Janet. "Afterward, I want you both to stay off your feet for several days. I'll let you know when."

  Janet was sitting up, examining her anesthetized left leg. "When do we get out?" she asked.

  "There's no indication of an infection or complication, but we don't have much experience with this sort of thing. The brachyids injected you with a protein compound that seems to have no purpose. It might make you a little sick, but that will be the extent of it."

  "Venom?" asked Carson.

  "Probably. But you're not a local life form. So you got off lucky. Anyway, I want to keep an eye on you until morning. If nothing develops by then, you can go back to your quarters." She checked her lightpad. "You have a visitor. May we show him in?"

  "Who is it?" asked Carson.

  "Me." Harvey Sill appeared in the doorway. "I've got some information for you."

  The doctor excused herself, while Sill asked how they were doing. "Pretty good," Carson said. Truth was, he hadn't slept since they'd brought him aboard. "What've you got?"

  "A reading on the syzygy."

  "On the whatl"

  "The lunar alignment. Remember? You wanted to know how long it had been since the four moons lined up?"

  A lot had happened since then, and Carson had forgotten. "Oh, yes," he said. It seemed trivial now.

  "It's been a while. We make it 4743 B.C., terrestrial."

  He tried to make the numbers fit, and had no luck. "That can't be the one we're looking for."

  "Why not?"

  "It's too recent. We know they had interstellar travel as early as the twenty-first millenium B.C. The space station is primitive, so it should predate that. Do we have an event that happened more than twenty-three thousand years ago?"

  Sill consulted his pad. "One of the moons has an orbit at a steep angle to the others. Which means that they hardly ever line up. Prior to the one in 4743, you have to go back over a hundred thousand years."

  "That can't be right."

  Sill shrugged. "Let me know if we can do anything else for you." He smiled at Janet,
and left the room.

  "It was worth a try, I guess," said Carson. "The orbiter may have been up there a long time, but not a hundred thousand years."

  "Maybe the photos are simulated."

  "Must be." His eyes slid shut. The room was getting sun­light just then. It was warm and sleep-inducing. Something connected with the station had been bothering him when the business with the crabs started. He needed to think about it, to reach back and find it. "Janet," he said, "think about the ruins for a minute."

  "Okay."

  "We didn't really get to see much of the harbor city. But did it look to you like the kind of city that a high-tech race of star-travelers would have built?"

  "You mean the steel and concrete?"

  "Yes. And the evidence we had of extensive water travel. I thought the collapsed bridge looked like something we might have built."

  "We're star-travelers."

  "We're just starting. These people had been at it for thou­sands of years. Does it make sense they'd still be using brick walls, for God's sake?"

  "Maybe," she said. "What are you trying to say?"

  "I don't know." The air was thick. It was hard to think. "Is it possible the interstellar civilization came first! Before the cities and the space station?"

  Janet nodded. "The evidence points that way. We tend to assume continual progress. But maybe they slid into a dark age. Or just went downhill." She punched a pillow and finished with a rush of emotion: "That's what it is, Frank. It'll be interesting to see what the excavations show."

  "Yes," said Carson. But somebody else will get to do that. I'm sure as hell not going back down there.

  His legs were anesthetized, and he felt only a pleasant warmth in them.

  While Janet slept, Carson withdrew into the back of his mind. The sense of general well-being that should have accompanied the tranks never arrived. He was left only with a sense of disconnectedness. Of watching from a distance.

  He went over his decisions again and again. He'd failed to take seriously the possibilities of attack. Failed to consider any danger other than a single, dangerous predator. Failed to provide adequate security.

  The room grew dark. He watched the moons appear one by one in his view panel. They were cold and white and alive. Maybe everything in this system was alive: the sun, the worlds, the things in solar orbit. Even the continents. The moons aligned themselves, formed up like a military unit, like brachyids.

  Syzygy.

  He was awake. Drenched with sweat.

  Beside him, Janet slept peacefully.

  Syzygy.

  It had last happened in 4743 B.C. And the era of the Monuments had ended, as far as they knew, around 21,000 B.C.

  He picked up a lightpad, and began writing it all down. Assume that the people who had lived in the harbor city had put up the space station. Assume also that the station had ended its useful life shortly thereafter, because it was primitive, and would quickly have become obsolete. But there were no other stations, more advanced ones, so the harbor city and the planetary civilization had ceased activity. Had they perhaps not outlived their orbiter?

  The time span between the last syzygy and the (supposed) end of the Age of Monuments was approximately sixteen thousand years.

  DISCONTINUITIES

  Beta Pac III Quraqua Nok 21.0OOBC 9000 16,OOO BC 4743 BC 1000 400 AD

  Again, there were increments of eight thousand years.

  He stared at the numbers a long time.

  And he thought about the space station. Why had its occupants tied themselves into their chairs and opened the hatches?

  Carson remembered the old twentieth-century story of the cosmonaut who was stranded in orbit when the Soviet Union dissolved. He was circling the Earth, and one day the country that put him up just wasn't there anymore. Maybe these people got stranded too. Something happened on the ground. Something that cut off all hope of return. And out of grief, or desperation, they had let in the night.

  Maybe the discontinuities weren't gradual events. Maybe they were sudden, overnight disasters. Okay, that seemed ridiculous. But where did it lead? What other evidence did he have? How could it connect with Oz?

  Oz was always the final enigma. Understand Oz, he thought, and we understand the whole puzzle.

  Clockwork.

  Whatever it is, it happens every eight thousand years. Had there been an event on Beta Pac III in 13,000 B.C.? And on Nok around 8000 B.C.? Yes, he thought, knowing Henry would not have approved this sort of logical leap. But it seemed likely.

  What kind of mechanism could produce such an effect?

  After a while, he slept again, but not well. He woke to find that daylight had returned. Hutch and Janet were talking, and he got the impression from the way their voices dropped that he had been the topic. "How are you doing?" Hutch asked solicitously.

  "I'm fine."

  Janet pushed her left leg out from under the sheet and flexed it. Tit's coming back," she said.

  Carson felt better, but was content to lie still.

  "Hutch was saying," said Janet, "that there's a memorial service this evening."

  He nodded, and felt a fresh twinge of grief. He knew Hutch had gone back to the surface, and he asked about the trip. She described it briefly, in general terms. Maggie had died in the fall. No predator had got at her afterward. Thank God for that. "It must have been pretty quick," she added. "Sill was all business. He wishes we'd go away, and he blames us for Jake's death. He hasn't said it, but it's obvious." She stopped suddenly, and he realized she was sorry she'd said that.

  He changed the subject. "Here's something you might be interested in." He fumbled around in the bed, found his lightpad, and passed it over.

  Hutch's eyebrows went up. Then she held it so Janet could see. "We've got the eight-thousand-year factor again. I'd say the coincidence is getting pretty long."

  Carson agreed. "I can't even begin to formulate an expla­nation. Could there be something in the wiring of intelligent creatures that breaks out every eight thousand years? Like Toynbee's notions about the cycles of civilizations? Does that make any sense at all?"

  "I don't think so," said Janet.

  Hutch was still looking at the pad. "All three places," she said, "have strange artifacts. The artifacts are obviously related, and they tie things together. Something has to be

  happening. And we have it by the tail."

  "Tail," said Janet. "It's a cosmic horgon that shows up periodically and blows everything away." She was propped up against three pillows, rapping her fingertips against the tray table that stood by the side of her bed.

  "Can I get you," she asked Hutch, "to do a diagram?"

  "Sure." Hutch picked up the remote and opened the wall to reveal a display. "What do we want?"

  "Let's get a look at the relative positions of Beta Pac, Quraqua, and Nok."

  Hutch put them up. Beta Pac floated directly on the edge of the Void. Quraqua lay more inshore, fifty-five light-years away, in the general direction of Earth. Nok was lower on the arm, a hundred fifteen light years distant.

  "Okay," said Janet. "Let's add the dates of the disconti­nuities."

  Carson understood what Janet was looking for: a con­nection between dates and distances. But he couldn't see anything. If their guesswork was correct, the earliest known event had happened on Beta Pac III around 21,000 B.C. But there was no discernible order to what happened after that. A second event on Nok five thousand years later. And a third on Quraqua seven thousand years after that. It was chaos.

  On a whim, Hutch plotted Earth's position. It was far out of the picture. They all looked at it, and it seemed to Carson they were missing something.

  Janet was already gone from the medical facility when Carson, with some help, dressed and prepared to return to his quarters. They gave him a motorized wheelchair, and he was testing it (and grumbling) when an attendant informed him the captain wanted to see him.

  The attendant led Carson to a small examining room. It was fur
nished with two chairs, a gurney, a basin, and a supply cabinet. "He'll be right with you," he said, with­drawing.

  It required little to bring Carson's dislike for Morris to the surface. The symbolic gesture of forcing him to wait, of demonstrating that Carson's time was of less value than the captain's, irritated him. He wondered whether there was any reason he should tolerate this, and was about to leave when the captain strode in, told him pontifically to "be at ease," dropped his hat on the gurney, and pulled up a chair with the air of a man who had important business waiting elsewhere. "Well, Carson," he said, "I guess we really stuck our ass in it this time."

  "I guess we did, Captain." Carson's blood pressure started to rise.

  Morris' gaze had a waxy quality. It slid off Carson's shoul­der. "I wanted to say that I'm sorry about the loss of your colleagues."

  "Thank you. I appreciate that. And I'm sorry about Jake."

  The captain nodded. "He'll be missed." He looked straight ahead, at nothing in particular. Carson's impression was that he was striving for an appearance of stricken contemplation. "You know I was against all this from the beginning. If I'd had my way, none of this would have happened."

  / wish you'd been more forceful, Carson thought, but said nothing.

  "Tell me, did you learn anything of significance down there?"

  Carson was surprised by the question. "Yes," he said. "I think we did."

  "Thank God for that, Doctor. With three people dead, we can at least be grateful the mission had a point." He slightly underscored Carson's title, as if it were something that needed to be stepped on.

  "It had a point." Carson felt old. "That's not the same as saying it was worth the cost."

  "I understand." Morris had a slight wheeze. "I would have you know that the loss of a crewman and two passengers is no small matter. There is paperwork to be done, explanations to be made. And regardless of the fact that the command of this ship is in no way culpable, the incident will nevertheless reflect poorly on me. You have certainly made your presence felt, sir."