There was a positive side to all this: Helm had built a lucrative, and satisfying, career out of his specialty. He was a planetary engineer, had got his degree in the late sixties, when only astronomers were thinking seriously about the stars. He had done his graduate work on the Venusian problem, where estimates for creating a habitable world ranged into the centuries. (Mars, of course, was out of the question, since there was no way to overcome its crippling light gravity.)
Nok was a second candidate. But it was inhabited. And while there was a movement that favored settlement and exploitation of that garden planet, nonintervention would continue for the foreseeable future.
One more reason why Project Hope had to be made to succeed.
Almost forty percent of Quraqua’s water was frozen at the poles. The initial phase of Project Hope was directed at releasing that water. The oceans would fill, new rivers would spread across the land, and, with proper management, climate modification would begin.
Helm often reflected on the fact that other men had controlled more sheer firepower than he, but none had ever used it. No one had ever made a bigger bang than Ian Helm would deliver when, in three days, he activated his arsenal of nuclear weapons, and on-site and orbiting particle beam projectors. Even Harding, at the other pole, would be outclassed. This was true even though the reconfiguration systems were allocated equally. But the ice sheets in the south were unstable atop their narrow strips of land, and the ocean floor was saturated with volcanoes. Helm believed he could coax some of the volcanoes to contribute their own energy to the effort.
The caps were to be melted simultaneously. No one was sure what might happen to rotation if weight were suddenly removed from one pole and not from the other.
Helm returned to his headquarters from a field survey at about the same time Janet Allegri was taking a wrench to the strider. He was satisfied with his preparations, sanguine that the ice sheets would melt on signal.
He drifted in aboard his CAT, circling the half-dozen red-stained shacks and landing pads that made up Southern Hope. The snowfields rolled out flat in all directions. The sky was hard and clear, the sun beginning to sink toward the end of its months-long day.
He descended onto his pad, climbed out, and cycled through the airlock into the operations hut.
Mark Casey sat alone among the displays and communications equipment, talking to his commlink. He raised a hand in his boss’s general direction and kept talking.
Helm sat down at his desk to check his In box. He could overhear enough of Casey’s conversation to know that his Ops officer wasn’t happy.
Casey was a tall, narrow, spike of a man, hard and sharp, given neither to superfluous gesture or talk. His thin hair was combed over his scalp, and he wore a manicured beard. His eyes found Helm, and signaled that the world was full of incompetents. “Another dead core,” he said, after he’d signed off. “How was your trip?”
“Okay. We’ll be ready.”
“Good. Everybody’s checked in.” Casey scratched a spot over his right eyebrow with an index finger. “If we keep burning up cores, though, we’ll have a problem. We have one spare left.”
“Cheap goddam stuff,” said Helm. “Somebody in Procurement’s making a buck.”
Casey shrugged. “It’s forty-five below out there. Amazes me anything works.”
An electronic chart of the icecap was mounted across the wall opposite the airlock. Colored lamps marked nuke sites, red where weapons had been placed inside volcanoes, white where placed within the ice sheets themselves, and green for those locations where teams were still working. There were five green lights. “Anything else I should know about, Mark?”
“Jensen called in just before you came. They’ve been having equipment problems too, and she says she’s running behind. About eight hours. It’s not on your board yet.”
Helm didn’t like that. His intention was to be set up and ready to go with thirty hours to spare. That would allow time for things to go wrong and still leave a decent safety margin to extract the teams. Jensen directed the 27 group, which was tasked with sinking a nuke into the ice on the far side of the pack. Eight goddam hours. Well, he could live with it. But if it got worse, he would have her head.
He thumbed through his traffic. One message caught his attention:
TO:
DIRECTOR, NORTHCOM
DIRECTOR, SOUTHCOM
CHIEF PILOT
FROM:
DIRECTOR, PROJECT HOPE
SUBJECT: ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES WE ARE INVOLVED IN AN ENDEAVOR THAT IS BOTH UNPRECEDENTED AND COMPLEX. STATUS REPORTS WILL NOW BE UPGRADED AS PROVIDED IN MANUAL SECTION 447112.3(B). REQUESTS FOR SPECIAL ASSISTANCE WILL BE CHANNELED THROUGH OPCOM AS PROVIDED. WE STAND READY TO HELP WHERE NEEDED. IN ADDITION, ALT. DETONATION PROCEDURES ARE TO BE DESIGNED TO PERMIT INTERVENTION UNTIL THE VERY LAST INSTANT. ACK.
TRUSCOTT
Helm read it through several times. “You see this, Mark? ‘The very last instant’?”
Casey nodded. “I’ve already sent the acknowledgment.”
“She knows we built that in as a matter of course. What the hell is this all about?”
“Got no idea. I just work here. CYA, probably.”
“Something’s happened.” Helm’s eyes narrowed. “Get her on the circuit, Mark.”
Melanie Truscott’s image blinked on. She was in her quarters, seated on a couch, a notepad open on her lap, papers scattered across the cushions. “Ian,” she said, “what can I do for you?”
Helm didn’t like Truscott’s regal manner. The woman loved to flaunt her position. It was in her smile, in her authoritarian tone, in her refusal to consult him before formulating policy or issuing directives. “We’re ready to cancel at a moment’s notice,” he said.
“I know.” She closed the notebook.
“What’s going on? Is somebody putting pressure on us?”
“Corporate is concerned that one or more of Jacobi’s people may refuse to leave by the deadline. They want to make sure nobody gets killed.”
Helm’s temper flared. “That’s a goddam joke, Melanie. They might try to bluff, but you can be damn sure none of them wants to be there when that wall of ice and water rolls over the site.”
“That’s not all.” Truscott looked worried. “I talked to their pilot. She says something big is happening, and it sounds as if they may be cutting it too close. We’ve picked up some of their traffic which implies the same thing.”
“Then send them a warning. Remind them what’s at stake. But for God’s sake, don’t back off now. Do that, and we’ll never be rid of them. Listen, Melanie, we can’t just go on forever like this. The climate here is hard on equipment, and the goddam stuff isn’t much good to start with. We put a hold on this operation, even for a couple of days, and I won’t guarantee everything’s going to fire in sequence.” Casey raised an eye, but Helm ignored him.
“Can’t help that.” Truscott rearranged herself, signaled that the interview was over. “We’ll comply with our instructions.”
When she was gone, Casey grinned. “That stuff isn’t top of the line, but it’s not really coming apart.”
“A little exaggeration is good for the soul. You know what’s wrong with her, Mark? She doesn’t know the difference between what management tells her to do, and what they want her to do. Caseway’s covering his ass, just in case. But he wants the job done. If this thing doesn’t go on schedule, Truscott’s not going to look so good. And neither am I.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Helm stared out the window. The sky and the ice pack were the same color. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll make her a good manager in spite of herself.”
Truscott knew Helm was right. The son of a bitch wasn’t worth the powder to blow him to hell. But he was right. She had known it herself, had always known it. They won’t move voluntarily. They will have to be pushed off.
Damn.
She punched Harvey’s button. “When you have a minute,” she
said.
ARCHIVE
PROJECT HOPE
Phase One Projections
We estimate that nine hundred million tons of ice will be melted at either end of the globe within the first sixty seconds after initial detonation. Reaction to heat generated by nuclear devices will continue at a high level in the south for an indeterminate period, based on our ability to ignite the subsea volcanoes. Best-guess projections are as follows:
(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.
(Ian 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 asp
ect. 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?”
The Engines of God Page 11