We picked out about sixty worlds, all overrun with carnivores, some of them that would have gobbled down a T-rex as an appetizer. Abe had a technique that allowed him to reach in and influence events. Not physically, by which I mean that he couldn’t stick a hand in there, but we had some electromagnetic capabilities. I won’t try to explain it because I’m not clear on it myself. Even Abe didn’t entirely understand it. It’s funny, when I look back now, I suspect Mac was the real genius.
The task was to find a species with potential and get rid of the local carnivores to give it a chance.
On some of the worlds, we triggered major volcanic eruptions. Threw a lot of muck into the atmosphere and changed the climate. Twice we used undersea earthquakes to send massive waves across the plains where predators were especially numerous. Elsewhere we rained comets down on them. We went back and looked at the results within a few hours after we’d finished, our time. In most cases we’d gotten rid of the targets, and the selected species were doing nicely, thank you very much. Within two days of the experiment we had our first settlements.
I should add that none of the occupants looked even remotely human.
If I’d had my way, we would have left it at that. I suggested to Abe that it was time to announce what he had. Report the results. Show it to the world. But he was averse. Make it public? he scowled. Jerry, there’s a world full of busybodies out there. There’ll be protests, there’ll be cries for an investigation, there’ll be people with signs. Accusing me of playing God. I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to reassure the idiots that there’s no moral dimension to what we’re doing.
I thought about that for several minutes and asked him if he was sure there wasn’t.
He smiled at me. It was that same grin you got from him when you’d overlooked some obvious detail and he was trying to be magnanimous while simultaneously showing you what a halfwit you are. “Jerry,” he said, “what have we done other than to provide life for thousands of generations of intelligent creatures? If anything, we should be commended.”
Eons passed. Tens of thousands of subjective years, and the settlements went nowhere. We knew they were fighting; we could see the results. Burned out villages, heaps of corpses. Nothing as organized as a war, of course. Just local massacres. But no sign of a city. Not anywhere.
Maybe they weren’t as bright as we thought. Local conflicts don’t stop the rise of civilization. In fact there’s reason to think they’re a necessary factor. Anyhow, it was about this time that Mac’s plane went down. Abe was hit pretty hard. But he insisted on plunging ahead. I asked whether we would want to replace him, but he said he didn’t think it would be necessary. For the time being, we had all the capability we needed.
“We have to intervene,” he said.
I waited to hear him explain.
“Language,” he added. “We have to solve the language problem.”
“What language problem?” I asked.
“We need to be able to talk to them.”
The capability already existed to leave a message. No, Phil, we didn’t have the means to show up physically and conduct a conversation. But we could deposit something for them to find. If we could master the languages.
“What do you intend to do?” I asked.
He was standing by a window gazing down at Crestview, with its single large street, its lone traffic light, Max’s gas station at the edge of town, the Roosevelt School, made from red brick and probably built about 1920. “Tell me, Jerry,” he said, “Why can none of these creatures make a city?”
I had no idea.
One of the species had developed a written language. Of sorts. But that was as far as they’d gotten. We’d thought that would be a key but even after the next few thousand local years, nothing had happened.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Abe said. “They haven’t acquired the appropriate domestic habits. They need an ethical code. Spouses who are willing to sacrifice for each other. A sense of responsibility to offspring. And to their community.”
“And how would you propose to introduce those ideas, Abe?” I should have known what was coming.
“We have a fairly decent model to work with,” he said. “Let’s give them the Commandments.”
I don’t know if I mentioned it, but he was moderately eccentric. No, that’s not quite true. It would be closer to the mark to say that, for a world-class physicist, he was unusual in that he had a wide range of interests. Women were around the lab all the time, although none was ever told what we were working on. As far as I knew. He enjoyed parties, played in the local bridge tournaments. The women loved him. Don’t know why. He wasn’t exactly good-looking. But he was forever trying to sneak someone out in the morning as I was pulling in.
He was friendly, easy-going, a sports fan, for God’s sake. You ever know a physicist who gave a damn about the Red Sox? He’d sit there and drink beer and watch games off the dish.
When he mentioned the Commandments, I thought he was joking.
“Not at all,” he said. And, after a moment’s consideration: “And I think we can keep them pretty much as they are.”
“Abe,” I said, “what are we talking about? You’re not trying to set yourself up as a god?” The question was only half-serious because I thought he might be on to something. He looked past me into some indefinable distance.
“At this stage of their development,” he said, “they need something to hold them together. A god would do nicely Yes, I think we should do precisely that.” He smiled at me. “Excellent idea, Jerry.” He produced a copy of the King James, flipped pages, made some noises under his breath, and looked up with a quizzical expression. “Maybe we should update them a bit.”
“How do you mean?”
“‘Thou shalt not hold any person to be a slave.’”
I had never thought about that. “Actually, that’s not bad,” I said.
“‘Thou shalt not fail to respect the environment, and its creatures, and its limitations.’”
“Good.” It occurred to me that Abe was off to a rousing start. “Maybe, ‘Thou shalt not overeat.’”
He frowned, ignoring my contribution, and shook his head. “Maybe that last one’s a bit much for primitives. Better leave it out.” He pursed his lips and looked again at the leather-bound Bible. “I don’t see anything here we’ll want to toss out. So let’s stop with twelve.”
“Okay.”
“The Twelve Commandments.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s try it.”
“For Mac,” he said. “We’ll do it for Mac.”
The worlds had all been numbered. He had a system in which the number designated location, age, salient characteristics. But you don’t care about that. He decided, though, that the world we had chosen for our experiment should have a name. He decided on Utopia. Well, I thought, not yet. It had mountain ranges and broad seas and deep forests. But it also had lots of savages. Smart savages, but savages nonetheless.
We already had samples of one of the languages. That first night he showed them to me, slowed down of course. It was a musical language, rhythmic, with a lot of vowels and, what do you call them, diphthongs. Reminded me of a Hawaiian chant. But he needed a linguistic genius to make it intelligible.
He called a few people, told them he was conducting an experiment, trying to determine how much data was necessary to break in and translate the text of a previously unknown language. Hinted it had something to do with SETI. The people on the other end were all skeptical of the value of such a project, and he pretended to squirm a bit but he was offering lots of cash and a bonus for the correct solution. So everybody had a big laugh and then came on board.
The winner was a woman at the University of Montreal. Kris Edward. Kris came up with a solution in five days. I’d’ve thought it was impossible. A day later she’d translated the Commandments for him into the new language. Ten minutes after he’d received her transmission, we were driving over to Caswell Monuments in the next
town to get the results chiseled onto two stone tablets. Six on each. They looked good. I’ll give him that. They had dignity. Authority. Majesty.
We couldn’t actually transport the tablets, the Commandments, physically to Utopia. But we could relay their image, and their substance, and reproduce them out of whatever available granite there might be. Abe’s intention was to put them on a mountaintop, and then use some directed lightning to draw one of the shamans up to find them. It all had to be programmed into the system, because as I said the real-time action would be much too quick for anyone to follow. I didn’t think it would work. But Abe was full of confidence that we were on track at last.
We had a flat on the way back with the tablets. The spare was flat too. Maybe we should have taken that as a sign. Anyhow, by the time we’d arranged to get picked up, and got the tire changed, and had dinner, it had gotten fairly late. Abe was trying to be casual, but he was anxious to start. No, Jerry, we are not going to wait until morning. Let’s get this parade on the road. So we set the tablets in the scanner and sent the transmission out. It was 9:46 p.m. on the twelfth. The cylinder flashed amber lamps, and then green, signaling success, it had worked, the package had arrived at its destination. Moments later we got more blinkers, confirming that the storm had blown up to draw the shaman into the mountain.
We looked for results a few minutes later. It would have been time, on the other side, to build the pyramids, conquer the Mediterranean, fight off the Vandals, get through the Dark Ages, and move well into the Renaissance. If it had worked, we could expect to see glittering cities and ships and maybe even 747’s. What we saw, however, were only the same dead end settlements.
We resolved to try again in the morning. Maybe Moses had missed the tablets. Maybe he’d not been feeling well. Maybe the whole idea was crazy.
That was the night the quake hit.
That’s stable ground up in that part of the world. It was the first earthquake in Crestview’s recorded history. Moreover, it didn’t hit anything else. Not Charlie’s Bar & Grill, which is at the bottom of the hill on the state road. Not any part of the Adams Ranch, which occupied the area on the north, not any part of the town, which is less than a half mile away. But it completely destroyed the lab.
What’s that? Did it destroy the cosm? No, the cosm was safely disconnected from the state of Colorado. Nothing could touch it, except through the cylinder. It’s still out there somewhere. On its own.
But the whole thing scares me. I mean, Mac was already dead. And two days later Sylvia drove into a tree at about sixty.
That’s okay, you can smile about it, but I’m not sleeping very well. What’s that? Why would God pick on us? I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of someone doing minor league creations. Maybe he resented our monkeying around with the Commandments.
Why do you think he didn’t say anything to Moses about slavery? What, you’ve never thought about it? I wonder if maybe, at the beginning, civilization needs slaves to get started. Maybe you can’t just jump off the mark with representative democracy. Maybe we were screwing things up, condemning sentient beings to thousands of years of unnecessary savagery. I don’t know.
But that’s my story. Maybe it’s all coincidence. The quake, the plane crash, Sylvia. I suppose stranger things have happened. But it’s scary, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I know you think I’m exaggerating. I know the God you believe in doesn’t track people down and kill them. But maybe the God you believe in isn’t there. Maybe the God who’s actually running things is just a guy in a laboratory in another reality. Somebody who’s a bit less congenial than Abe. And who has better equipment.
Well, who knows?
The scotch is good, by the way Thanks. And listen, Phil, there’s a storm blowing up out there. I don’t like to impose, but I wonder if I could maybe stay the night?
ELLIE
If the lights at Bolton’s Tower go out, the devil gets loose. At least, that was the story. The idea spooked me when I was a kid and even years later on those rare occasions when I traveled into its general neighborhood, which was well north on the Great Plains, far off the trading routes.
The Tower put out a lot of light, so much that it could be seen from the Pegborn-Forks road. In a world illuminated mostly by kerosene and candles, it was unique, and it was easy to believe there might be a supernatural force at work.
I’d been away from the Dakotas for years, and had long since forgotten about the thing, when the press of business and a series of unseasonal storms drove me north into my old home grounds. The weather had been overcast for a week, had cleared off during the course of a long cold afternoon, and when the sun went down, Bolton’s star rose in the east. I knew it immediately for what it was, and I knew I was close.
There’s something else odd about Bolton’s Tower.
It’s just inside the southern rim of a long, curving ridge. The ridge isn’t high. It seldom exceeds thirty feet, and sometimes it’s no more than a ripple in the grass. But it’s a strange ridge: if you follow it far enough, you discover it forms a perfect circle. You can’t see that from any single place; the ring is too big. More than sixty miles around. I’ve heard tent preachers explain that the circle symbolizes God, because it’s endless, and cannot be improved on. Just the thing to imprison Satan, they add darkly.
I crossed the ridge on foot, leading my mount. Snow was beginning to fall again, and the wind was picking up. The Tower rose out of a cluster of dark, weatherbeaten buildings and a screen of trees. These structures were low and flat, dreary boxes, some made of clapboard and others of brick. Their windows were gone; their doors hung on broken hinges or were missing altogether, A roof had blown off one, another lay partly demolished by a fallen tree. A small barn, set to one side, had been kept in reasonable repair, and I heard horses moving within as I drew near.
The Tower soared above the ruin, seven Stories of bone-white granite and thick glass. Porches and bays and arches disconnected it from the prairie, as if it belonged to a less mundane reality. The roof melted into banks of curved glass panels capped by a crystal spire. Its lines whispered of lost power and abandoned dreams, passion frozen in stone.
I released the straps on my crossbow and loosened it in its sheath.
Several windows on the second and third floors were illuminated. The Tower lights themselves, red and white signature beams, blazed into the murky night.
In the windows, no one moved.
The base of the Tower culminated in a broad terrace surrounded by a low wall, elevated from the road by about twenty wide stone steps. The steps were flanked by dead hedge.
I rode past, down a grass-covered street, and dismounted in front of the barn. Max made some noises to indicate he was glad the day was over. I hoped he was right.
The barn had sliding doors. I opened one and we went inside. Three horses moved restlessly in their stalls. The place smelled of them, warm and pungent. I tied Max up but did not remove his saddle. Just in case. I debated whether to take the crossbow, but in the end left it on the ground that guests arriving with weapons were a lot more likely to be turned away.
Wind shook the building, and snow rattled against it like sleet. On the plains, the stuff has the consistency of rock salt. And when the wind is up the way it was that night, it can beat you down pretty good. I burrowed into my coat, pulled my hat low to protect my eyes, and strode back out into the storm.
I climbed the steps and crossed the terrace. There was a statue of someone out there, in an old dried-up fountain, a rumpled woman in Old World clothes, with the name Margaret Hanbury, and the inscription: FROM THIS NARROW SPACE, WE TOUCH THE INFINITE.
Six heavy glass doors guarded the entrance. I looked up at the Tower, cold and remote, its aspect growing and shifting in the changing texture of its spectral lights.
The doors had no give. Beyond them lay a dark lobby. I could see furniture, wall-hangings, a stairway illuminated from above. I banged on the glass.
For seve
ral minutes nothing happened. I tried again, and was thinking about moving in with the horses when the terrace lit up. A man descended the staircase, came to a stop midway across the lobby, and stood for a time studying me. Finally, he came forward, threw a bolt, and pulled the door open.
“Good evening,” he said, in a rich baritone. “Sorry to leave you standing out here, but I’m inclined to be careful these days.”
He was a half-foot taller than I, with lean, almost cruel features, and dark intelligent eyes. His buckskin jacket covered a white denim shirt. His black trousers were creased. He was a dark and somber man, and his manner suggested he was accustomed to command. He wore a neatly-trimmed beard, and his hair was black and quite thick.
“Thank you,” I said, moving past him. It was good to be in out of the wind. More lights went on. The interior was quite long, perhaps two hundred feet, although it was only as wide as an ordinary room. It was decorated with Indian art, totems, weavings, pottery, and a few oils depicting teepees by sunset and young braves in canoes. Chairs were scattered about in no particular order, and with no effort to match their styles. There were rattans, fabric of a half-dozen different colors, a wooden bench, and several small tables.
He extended a hand. “This is not a good day to be on the road.”
“No,” I said. “It’s downright brisk out there.” I shook the snow off my shoulders. “I’m Jeff Quincey.”
“Edward Marsh. Where are you headed, Quincey?” His voice changed texture, not precisely softening, but rather growing consciously more amiable.
“I’m bound for the Forks. I’d expected to spend the night in Sandywater, but I got off to a late start this morning. And the weather—.”
He nodded. Snow whipped across the glass. “You’ll want to stay the night with us, of course.”
“If it’s no trouble, I’d be grateful.”
“None at all. We don’t get many visitors here.” He turned on his heel and led the way to the staircase.
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 53