“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.
“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 ou
t 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.
“How unsafe is this place?” she asked.
The passageway was too small for him. He changed his position, trying to get comfortable. “Normally, we’d have taken time to buttress everything, but we’re on the run. We’re violating all kinds of regulations being in here at all. If something goes, somebody may get killed.” He frowned. “And I’ll be responsible.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“Then close the place down.”
“It’s not that easy, Hutch. I probably should do that. But Henry is desperate.”
Eddie Juliana had no time to waste. “Red tags first,” he said. Hutch glanced around at stacks of cases, most of them empty; and at rows of artifacts: clay vessels, tools, machines, chunks of engraved stone. Some cases were sealed. These were labeled in red, yellow, and blue.
“Okay,” she said, not certain what she was to do with the red tags.
Eddie moved around the storeroom with the energy of a rabbit in heat. He ducked behind crates, gave anxious directions to someone over his commlink, hurried in and out checking items on his inventory.
He stopped and gazed at Hutch. “You were planning on helping, right?”
Hutch sighed. “Tell me what you want done.”
He was thin and narrow with red hair and a high-pitched voice. More than any of the others, he seemed driven by events. Hutch never saw him smile, never saw him relax. He struck her as one of those unfortunate people who see the downside of everything. He was young, and she could not imagine his taking a moment to enjoy himself. “Sub’s waiting,” he said. “There’s a cart by the door, ready to go. Take it over. Carson’ll be there to unload. You come back. I need you here.”
“Okay.”
“You really did come in the Wink, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. I didn’t trust them not to change their minds, try to save a buck, and send a packet for the evacuation.”
She looked around at the rows of artifacts. “Is this everything?”
“There are three more storerooms. All full.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of space. But I’m not sure there’s going to be time.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He stared morosely at a cylindrical lump of corrosion. “You know what that is?”
“No.”
“It’s a ten-thousand-year-old radio receiver.” His fingers hovered over it, but did not touch it. “This is the case. Speaker here. Vacuum tubes back here, we think. It was a console.” He swung toward her, and his brown, washed-out eyes grew hard. “It’s priceless.” His breast heaved, and he sounded very much like a man who was confronting ultimate stupidity. “These cases are filled with artifacts like this. They are carefully packed. Please be gentle with them.”
Hutch did not bother to take offense. She drove the cart to the submarine bay, turned it over to Carson and a muscular graduate student whose name was Tommy Loughery, got Carson’s opinion that Eddie was a basket case, and came back. “We have room on the sub for two more loads,” she said.
“How much can your shuttle carry?”
“About two and a half times the capacity of the sub.”
“And ours will carry about half that much.” He looked around in dismay. “We’re going to have to make a few trips. I’d hoped you’d have more capacity.”
“Sorry.”
Stacks of tablets piled on a tabletop caught her eye. They were filled with symbols, drawn with an artistic flair. “Can we read them?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“How old are they?”
“Six thousand years. They were good-luck talismans. Made by mixing animal fat with clay, and baking the result. As you can see, they last a long time.”
Hutch would have liked to ask for a souvenir. But that was against the rules, and Eddie looked as if he took rules very seriously.
“And this?” She indicated a gray ceramic figurine depicting a two-legged barrel-shaped land animal that resembled a Buddha with fangs. It had large round eyes and flat ears pressed back on its skull like an elephant’s. The body was badly chipped.
Eddie glared at her, angered that she could not see the need for haste. But it was also true that he loved to talk about his artifacts. “It’s roughly eight hundred years old.” The object was intricately executed. He held it out to her. It was heavy. “The owner was probably one of the last priests.” A shadow crossed his pinched features. “Think about it: the Temple, or some form of it, had been there since time immemorial. But somewhere toward the end of the fourteenth century, they closed it up. Locked the doors, and turned out the lights. Can you imagine what that must have meant to that last group of priests?” The ventilators hummed in the background. Eddie studied the figurine. “This is not a sacred object. It had some personal significance. We found several of these in one of the apartments. This one was left near the main altar.”
“Company for the dying god,” suggested Hutch.
He nodded, and she realized at that moment that whatever else he might be, Eddie Juliana was a hopeless romantic.
Two hours later, she was in the air, enroute to Wink.
“Janet, are you there? This is Hutch.”
“Negative, Hutch. Janet’s asleep. This is Art Gibbs.”
“Pleased to meet you, Art.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Uh, nothing. I was just bored.”
“Where are you now?”
“Chasing my ship. But I won’t catch her for another few hours.” Pause. “What do you do with this outfit, Art?”
“Dig, mostly. I’m sorry I missed you today. I hear you’re a knockout.”
Hutch smiled and switched to video. “Dispel all illusions,” she said. “But it’s nice to hear.”
Art beamed at her. “The rumors are short of the mark,” he said gallantly. Art Gibbs was in his fifties, hair gone, a roll of flab around his middle. He asked whether she had been to Quraqua before, what she had done that had so impressed Richard Wald, what her reactions were to the Temple of the Winds. Like the others, he seemed stricken by the impending evacuation.
“Maybe it’ll survive,” she said. “It’s underwater. And the Knothic Towers look pretty solid.”
“No chance. A few hours after they knock the icecap into the ocean, we’ll get huge tidal waves here—”
She had lost the sun now, was gliding through the dark. Her left-hand window looked out on the Void. She caught a glimpse of the Kosmik space station, a lone brilliant star.
“Somebody else,” continued Art, “will be along in a few thousand years to try again. Be an interesting puzzle, I’d think: hi-tech wreckage on a low-tech world.”
“Art, have you been to Oz?”
>
“Yes.”
“What did you think of it?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know what it’s about.”
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that it got burned at the same time that the military post was destroyed?”
“It burned during the same era,” he said gently. “Don’t forget that the fort disappeared during an epoch of worldwide destruction.”
“That’s my point. I think. Doesn’t it seem likely there’s a connection?”
“I don’t see how there could be.” He stuck his tongue in the side of his cheek and frowned. “I really don’t.”
“Frank Carson mentioned the connection between the events at Oz and widespread destruction on Quraqua.”
“What could it be? There’s only a connection in very general terms, Hutch. The discontinuities occurred over long stretches of time. For all we know, so did the damage inflicted on Oz. But they didn’t necessarily happen at the same time. Only during the same era. There’s a difference, and I think we fall into a trap when we confuse the two.” He paused. “Are you interested in the discontinuities?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll tell you something else. It’s coincidence, of course.”
“What is?”
“There’s a poem that we have in translation. Wait a minute, let me find it.”
Art walked off-screen. “Have you ever heard of the Scriveners?”
“No.”
“They dominated this area between approximately 1400 B.C., and the collapse of the Eastern Empire, about four hundred years later.”
“Scriveners?”
“So named because they kept records of everything. Detailed commercial accounts, inventories, medical records, vital statistics. They were quite advanced.” He grinned. “In a bureaucratic way. They were a lot like us. They even seem to have had insurance policies. Now, their demise, the fall of the Eastern Empire, and the Second Discontinuity all seem to have occurred around 1000 B.C.”
“Okay.” Ten lines of text had appeared on Hutch’s monitor.
“Judging from the commercial nature of the writings they left behind, the Scriveners appear to have been neither philosophical nor religious. The Temple was relegated to a historical curiosity during their period of ascendancy. But we did find a book of devotions in one of their cities. Valdipaa. Not far from here. Next stop on the trade route west. The verse on your screen is from the book.”
The Engines of God Page 12