The Engines of God

by Jack McDevitt

  Ace books by Jack McDevitt

  A TALENT FOR WAR

  THE ENGINES OF GOD

  THE HERCULES TEXT

  The line from “Mending Wall” is from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1930, 1939. © 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Copyright © 1958 by Robert Frost.

  Copyright © 1967 by Lesley Frost Ballantine.

  Reprinted by courtesy of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

  This Ace Book contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition. It has been completely reset in a typeface designed for easy reading, and was printed from new film.

  THE ENGINES OF GOD

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace hardcover edition / October 1994

  Ace mass-market edition / December 1995

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1994 by Jack McDevitt.

  Cover art by Bob Eggleton.

  Map by Judy McAdams.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

  by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group.

  a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street. New York. New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-441-00284-6

  ACE®

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

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  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks

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  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6

  For Maureen

  with love

  I would like to acknowledge the technical assistance of James H. Sharp and Geoff Chester of the Albert Einstein Planetarium at the Smithsonian Institution; David Steitz and Charles Redmond of NASA; and George B. Hynds, Jr., of GBH Fabricating & Packaging, Inc. Dr. Charles Stanmer filled in the gaps in my chemistry, which were considerable. Douglas Myles’s excellent The Great Waves (McGraw-Hill, 1985) was a valuable source. I hope I got it all straight. And Patrick Delahunt was dead right. Bob Melvin and Brian Cole provided timely help. Mark Van Name was there when I needed him. Thanks also to Ralph Vicinanza, and to Ginjer Buchanan and Carol Lowe at Ace. I am also grateful for the encouragement and understanding of my children, Merry, Scott, and Chris, to whom it must seem as if they were fathered by Lamont Cranston.

  Dates are rendered in the standard language of the Christian epoch, out of respect for everyone’s sanity.

  In the streets of Hau-kai, we wait.

  Night comes, winter descends.

  The lights of the world grow cold.

  And, in this three-hundredth year

  From the ascendancy of Bilat,

  He will come who treads the dawn,

  Tramples the sun beneath his feet.

  And judges the souls of men.

  He will stride across the rooftops,

  And he will fire the engines of God.

  —Uranic Book of Prayer (Quraqua)

  (Translated by Margaret Tufu)

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: MOONRISE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART TWO: TEMPLE OF THE WINDS

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  INTERLUDE

  PART THREE: BETA PAC

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  PART FOUR: THE ENGINES OF GOD

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  AFTERWORD

  PROLOGUE

  Iapetus. Sunday, February 12, 2197; 0845 GMT.

  The thing was carved of ice and rock. It stood serenely on that bleak, snow-covered plain, a nightmare figure of gently curving claws, surreal eyes, and lean fluidity. The lips were parted, rounded, almost sexual. Priscilla Hutchins wasn’t sure why it was so disquieting. It was more than the carnivorous aspect of the creature, the long slow menace of talons, the moonlight stealth of the lower limbs. It was more even than the vaguely aggressive stance, or the position of the figure in the center of an otherwise lifeless plain beneath the October light of Saturn’s rings.

  Rather, it seemed to flow from its interest in the ringed world which was forever frozen above a tract of low hills and ridges in the west. Stamped on its icy features was an expression she could only have described as philosophical ferocity.

  “I keep coming back.” Richard’s voice echoed in her earphones. It was filled with emotion. “Of all the Monuments, this was the first, and it is the centerpiece.”

  They stood on a ramp, designed to preserve the tracks of the original expedition. Here was where Terri Case had stood; and there, Cathie Chung. The heavy bootprints circling the figure, up close, those belonged to Steinitz himself. (She knew because she’d seen the ancient video records countless times, had watched the astronauts clumping about in their awkward pressure suits.)

  She smiled at the memory, pushing her hands down into her pockets, watching Richard Wald in his rumpled gray jeans and white sweater, his Irish country hat pressed down on his head. (It didn’t quite fit within the bubble of articulated energy that provided breathing space.) He was slightly out of focus, difficult to see, within the Flickinger field. Much as he was in ordinary life. Richard was one of the great names in archeology. He would be remembered as long as people were interested in where they’d come from, as long as they continued to send out explorers. Yet here he stood, as awed as she, momentarily a child, in the presence of this thing. Around them, the silence and the desolation crashed down.

  Hutchins, on first glance, might have been one of those diminutive women with finely chiseled features and a beguiling smile who seemed more akin to the drawing room than to a bleak moonscape. Her eyes were dark and good-humored, and an initial impression might suggest that they reflected empty conviviality. But they were capable of igniting.

  Her black hair was cut short. It peeked out from beneath a broad-brimmed safari hat. Everyone who knew her believed that it was her slight stature that had fueled her various ambitions; that she had chased men, and professional success, and eventually the stars, all out of the same drive to compensate.

  She knew it wasn’t true, or believed it wasn’t. The reality was far simpler, but not the sort of thing she would tell anyone: her father had taken her to Luna when she was eight, and she had felt the full force of the enormous age of the place. It had occupied her dreams and overwhelmed her waking hours. It had driven a sense of her own transience into her soul. Live while you can, indulge your passions. Make it count. The ancient storm stirred again while she looked into the frozen emotions of the ice creature. And recognized them.

  Richard Wald folded his arms and pressed them against his sweater, as if, inside his energy envelope, he was cold. He was tall, and embodied the kind of self-conscious dignity one finds in those who have achieved a degree of fame and never quite come to terms with it.


  Despite his sixty years, Richard was a man of remarkable vitality. And exuberance. He was known to like a good drink, and a good party; and he loved the company of women. He was careful, however, to maintain a purely professional demeanor with Hutchins, his pilot. There was something of the Old Testament prophet in his appearance. He had a thick silver mane and mustache, high cheekbones, and a preemptive blue gaze. But the stem appearance was a facade. He was, in Hutchins’ amused view, a pussycat.

  He had been here before. This was, in a sense, where he had been born.

  This was the First Monument, the unlikely pseudo-contact that had alerted the human race two hundred years ago to the fact they were not alone. Explorers had found thirteen others, of varying design, among the stars. Richard believed there were several thousand more.

  The Great Monuments were his overriding passion. Their images decorated the walls of his home in Maine: a cloudy pyramid orbiting a rocky world off blue-white Sinus, a black cluster of crystal spheres and cones mounted in a snowfield near the south pole of lifeless Amis V, a transparent wedge orbiting Arcturus. (Hutchins’ throat mike was a cunningly executed reproduction of the Arcturian Wedge.) Most spectacular among the relics was an object that resembled a circular pavilion complete with columns and steps, cut from the side of a mountain on a misshapen asteroid in the Procyon system. (“It looked,” Richard had told her, “as if it were awaiting the arrival of the orchestra.”) Hutchins had only seen the pictures, had not yet visited these magic places. But she was going. She would stand one day in their presence, and she would feel the hand of their creators as she did here. It would have been difficult to do on her own; there were many pilots and few missions. But Richard had recognized a kindred spirit. He wanted her to see the Monuments, because in her reactions he could relive his own. Besides, she was damned good.

  Of all the artifacts, only the Iapetus figure could be interpreted as a self-portrait. The wings were half-folded. The creature’s taloned hands, each with six digits, reached toward Saturn. Clearly female, it looked past Richard, arms open, legs braced, weight slightly forward. It was almost erotic.

  Its blind eyes stared across the plain. It was set on a block of ice about a third its own height. Three lines of sharp, white symbols were stenciled within the ice. To Hutchins’ mind, the script possessed an Arabic delicacy and elegance. It was characterized by loops and crescents and curves. And, as the sun moved across the sky, the symbols embraced the light, and came alive. No one knew what the inscription meant.

  The base was half again as wide as Hutchins with arms out-spread. The creature itself was three and a half meters high. That it was a self-portrait was known because the Steinitz expedition had found on the plain prints that matched the creature’s feet.

  The ramp was designed to allow visitors to get close enough to touch the artifact without disturbing anything. Richard stood thoughtfully before it. He pressed his fingertips against the base, nodded, and unhooked a lamp from his belt. He switched it on and played it across the inscription. The symbols brightened, lengthened, shifted.

  “Nice effect,” Hutchins said.

  Each of the Monuments had an inscription. But no two seemed to be derived from the same writing system. Theory held that the objects were indeed monuments, but that they had been constructed during different epochs.

  Hutchins stared into its blind eyes. “Kilroy was here,” she said.

  She knew that all the Monuments were believed to date to a five-thousand-year period ending roughly at 19,000 B.C. This was thought to be one of the earlier figures. “I wonder why they stopped,” she said.

  Richard looked up at the stars. “Who knows? Five thousand years is a long time. Maybe they got bored.” He came over and stood by her. “Cultures change. We can’t expect them to do it forever.”

  The unspoken question: Did they still exist?

  What a pity we missed them. Everyone who came here shared the same reaction. So close. A few millennia, a bare whisper of cosmic time.

  One of the landers from the Steinitz expedition had been left behind. A gray, clumsy vehicle, with an old U.S. flag painted near an open cargo-bay door, it lay two hundred meters away, at the far end of the ramp. Lost piece of a lost world. Lights glowed cheerily in the pilot’s cabin, and a sign invited visitors to tour.

  Richard had turned back to the inscription.

  “What do you think it says?” she asked.

  “Name and a date.” He stepped back. “You had it right, I think. Kilroy was here.”

  She glanced away from the figure, out across the plain, sterile and white and scarred with craters. It ascended gradually toward a series of ridges, pale in the ghastly light of the giant planet, (Iapetus was so small that one was acutely conscious of standing on a sphere. The sensation did not bother her, but she knew that when Richard’s excitement died away, it would affect him.)

  The figure looked directly at Saturn. The planet, low on the horizon, was in its third quarter. It had been in that exact position when she was here, and it would be there when another twenty thousand years bad passed. It was flattened at the poles, with a somewhat larger aspect than the Moon. The rings were tilted forward, a brilliant panorama of greens and blues, sliced off sharply by the planet’s shadow.

  Richard disappeared behind the figure. His voice crackled in her earphones: “She’s magnificent. Hatch.”

  When they’d finished their inspection, they retreated inside the Steinitz lander. She was glad to get in off the moonscape, to kill the energy field (which always induced an unpleasant tingling sensation), to dispose of her weights, and to savor the reassurance of walls and interior lighting. The vessel was maintained by the Park Service more or less as it had been two centuries earlier, complete with photos of the members of the Steinitz team.

  Richard, buoyed by his excitement, passed before the photos one by one. Hutch filled their cups with coffee, and lifted hers in toast. “To Frank Steinitz,” she said.

  “And his crew.”

  Steinitz: there was a name, as they say, to conjure with. His had been the first deep-space mission, five Athenas to Saturn. It was an attempt to capture the public imagination for a dying space program: an investigation of a peculiar object photographed by a Voyager on Iapetus two decades earlier. They’d returned with no answers, and only a carved figure that no one could explain, and film of strange footprints on the frozen surface of the moon. The mission had been inordinately expensive; political cartoonists had loved it, and an American presidency had been destroyed.

  The Steinitz group had borne permanent scars from the flight: they had demonstrated beyond all further quibble the devastating effects of prolonged weightlessness. Ligaments and tendons had loosened, and muscles turned to slush. Several of the astronauts had developed heart problems. All had suffered from assorted neuroses. It was the first indication that humans would not adjust easily to living off-Earth.

  Steinitz’ photo was mounted in the center. The image was familiar; he’d been overweight, aggressive, utterly dedicated, a man who had lied about his age while NASA looked the other way. “The bitch of it,” Richard said solemnly, turning toward the windows and gazing out at the ice figure, “is that we’ll never meet them.”

  She understood he was referring to the Monument-Makers.

  “It was,” he continued, “Steinitz’ comment when he first saw her. And he was right.”

  “Right for his age. Not necessarily for ours.” She didn’t exactly believe that, since the Monument-Makers seemed to have vanished. Nevertheless it was the right thing to say. She examined her coffee mug. “I’m amazed that they were able to get that kind of articulation and detail into a block of ice.”

  “What do you think of it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It is disquieting. Almost oppressive. I don’t really know how to describe it.” She swung the chair around, turning her back to the plain. “Maybe it’s the desolation.”

  “I’ll tell you what it is for me ,” he said. “It’s
her footprints. There’s only one set.”

  Hutch didn’t quite understand.

  “She was alone.”

  The figure was idealized. It watched Saturn with unmistakable interest, and there was nobility and grace in its lines.

  Hutch read something else at the juncture of beak and jaw, and in the corners of the eyes: an amalgam of arrogance and distrust laced with stoicism. Tenacity. Perhaps even fear.

  “The inscription,” she said. “It’s probably the thing’s name.”

  “That’s the position Muncie takes. If in fact it’s a work of art and nothing else, it could be the title of the work. ‘The Watcher.’ ‘Outpost.’ Something like that.”

  “Or,” said Hutch, “maybe the name of a goddess.”

  “Possibly. One of the members of the original mission suggested it might be a claim marker.”

  “If so,” she said, “they’re welcome to this rock.”

  “They were thinking more of the solar system.” The plain lay flat and sterile. The rings were knife-edge bright. “Are you ready to take a walk?”

  They followed the ramp out onto the plain. Off to one side they could see the booted tracks of the astronauts. Approximately a kilometer and a half west, her prints appeared.

  There were two sets, going in opposite directions. She wore no shoes, and the length of both the foot and the stride, measured against the anatomy of the ice figure, suggested a creature about three meters tail. They could distinguish six toes on each foot, which was also consistent. “Almost as if,” Hutch said, “the thing climbed down and went for a walk.”

  Chilling thought, that. They both glanced reflexively behind them.

  One set of tracks proceeded west into the uplands.

  The other wheeled out across the plain, on a course well north of the artifact. Astronaut prints, and ramps, followed in both directions. Richard and Hutch turned north.

  “The bare feet shook them up,” said Richard. “Now, you and I could match the trick, if we wanted.”

  After about a quarter-kilometer, the prints stopped dead in the middle of the snow. Both sets, coming and going. “There must have been a ship here,” Hutch said.