“Bill’s doing a complete sweep in all directions. He’ll give us a yell if he sees something.”
THE CYGNI MONUMENT was the largest known. It reminded MacAllister, from a distance, of a temple, complete with Doric columns. It stood (if that was the correct term for an object in orbit) atop a platform, and was accessible on all sides by stone steps. It was polished and graceful, unmarked by fluting, or sculpture, or triglyphs. It did not look like a structure that had been assembled so much as one that had been poured. It possessed a power and majesty that was stunning.
It was believed to be about eleven thousand years old, making it slightly older than the self-portrait on Iapetus. It had picked up a couple of dents where it had been hit by pieces of debris.
Temples all seemed to be alike, regardless of the culture from which they sprang, regardless of the sweep of the roof, or the general design of molding rings and parapets. Whether a temple was from one of the various terrestrial eras, or whether it had been built by Noks, or by the long-gone inhabitants of Quraqua, or by the Monument-Makers themselves: They were always large and spacious with high overheads, everything oversized to ensure that the visitor understood at the deepest levels how insignificant and utterly inconsequential he was, except that the powers that ran the universe gave him meaning by allowing him into their sanctuary.
Everybody’s psychology is going to turn out to be the same.
The monument was thirty-one and a half meters wide at the entrance, 126 meters front to rear. A factor of four. The same proportion could be found throughout. The columns were four times as high as they were wide. The roof was four times as thick as the base. (Ratios of one kind or another were found in almost all the monuments.)
There was a contradistinction of good order in the presence of those steps, out where there was no gravitational pull. He looked beyond them into the great gulf, toward the stars, and it seemed as if they were awaiting a visitor. That they’d been placed for a specific purpose. He wondered if anyone had ever walked on them.
Some people read the general design of the monument as a statement of defiance against a hostile and chaotic universe. Others saw it as a symbol of harmony, forever absorbed in the dance of worlds around 61 Cygni, and permanently afloat in the moonlight.
MacAllister had sat in his Baltimore apartment and taken the virtual tour, had ridden his armchair onto the platform. But this was different.
The Salvator was making its approach. Valya got on the link. “Everybody belt down.”
MacAllister punched a button and the harness slid over his shoulders. He checked to make sure Amy was secure. Found her doing the same for him.
Braking rockets fired. He was pushed forward against the harness.
The monument was on both displays. He watched it grow larger. Watched it move into the sunlight.
“Beautiful,” said Amy.
MacAllister agreed. If the race that put it there had never done anything else, it was sufficient.
“Okay,” said Valya. “We’re in business.” She shut the engines down.
“Valya,” he asked, “any chance of getting out onto it? Of going inside?”
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s illegal.”
Nobody would ever know. But it was just as well. He hadn’t really meant it. But it seemed like the thing he was supposed to say. He’d have liked very much to climb those steps, to go into the temple. But the prospect of exiting the ship out here was a little scary. Still, it was nice to have everybody—especially Valya—think he would do it if he could.
“If you folks would like to come forward and look out the viewport, you might find it worthwhile.”
Amy led the way. “Oh, yes,” she said, squeezing Valya’s shoulder. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Her voice was up a few decibels.
The temple floated in the night sky, bright with reflected light. MacAllister had been impressed by the architecture at Rheims and Chartres and Notre Dame, but here was a true seat for a deity.
“It was carved from an asteroid,” said Amy.
The moon, desolate and airless, lay below. The nearby planet, Alpha II, was a narrow gleaming crescent near the horizon. Valya saw him looking in its direction. “From here,” he said, “it looks magnificient.”
“Where do we put the monitor?” asked Amy.
“Our instructions are to leave it right where we are now. In orbit around the moon.”
“That’s sacrilege,” said MacAllister.
She allowed herself to look shocked. “That has an odd sound coming from you, Mac.”
“Kidding aside,” he said, “this place should be left exactly as it is. Why don’t we just nail it to the monument?”
“This is where the sightings have been concentrated,” said Eric. “I think we should follow the plan.”
MacAllister ran his hand through his hair. “The sightings have been concentrated here because this is where the tours come.” Idiot.
“If we have aliens,” said Valya, “this is likely to be one of the places they’d want to visit. It’s the logical place to put the thing.”
“Put it somewhere else,” said MacAllister.
Eric was unhappy. “You’re asking her,” he said, “to put her job at risk. She can’t just disobey the director’s instructions.”
MacAllister waved all concerns away. “I’ll take responsibility for it.”
Valya turned an amused glance in his direction. “Okay,” she said. “But first I need to know where you fit in the chain of command, Mac.”
“Hutchins is a close friend.”
“Well, I’m sure that’ll cover things.”
Eric laughed. “I suggest we just follow the instructions.” He produced a cup of coffee and took a long sip. “I wonder if anyone’s ever thought about bringing this one home? Think how nice it would look in Jersey.”
MacAllister needed a moment to realize he was joking.
“Okay,” said Valya. “If everybody’s seen enough, let’s go do what we came for.”
VALYA CHANGED COURSE. Amy stayed up front so she could watch through the viewport, or maybe simply to be close to the pilot. It was hard to know which. MacAllister liked the child, but her enthusiasm was wearing on him. It was a pity, really. She believed that people were intrinsically good, and that most knew what they were doing. He wondered what she’d be like after another twenty years. It had been his experience that the worst cynics all started out as idealists.
After a few minutes, the sense of acceleration went away.
MacAllister couldn’t remember a time of innocence in his own life. He’d always known civilization for what it was: an illusion. There was never a day he didn’t understand that institutions were out primarily to take care of themselves, and that only individuals were ever worthy of trust. And damned few of those.
He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. Bill’s voice woke him. “Launch in two minutes,” he said.
He checked the time, was surprised to discover he’d been out more than an hour.
Eric made a crack about his sleeping through the day and added that he wished time machines were possible. “I’d love to have been able to come here when the Monument-Makers were putting that thing in place.”
“You’d probably have found,” MacAllister said, “they were a lot like us.”
“How do you mean?”
“Unsure of themselves.”
“How can you say that, Mac? Honestly? They had an advanced civilization. They had FTL, for God’s sake. You don’t get that from people who are unsure of themselves.”
“Of course not. They had an occasional genius to show the way. Just like us. But they were trying to make a mark here. What is this other than something to let us know they were here. Admire us, it says. Remember us.”
“One minute,” said Bill.
The monument was on one display; the other provided a close-up of one of the monitors mounted on the hull. Presumably the one scheduled for launch.
MacAlliste
r looked beyond the monitor and the monument, half expecting to see moving lights in the sky. There were countless stars, and like everybody else he wanted to believe that somewhere out there civilization lived and prospered. Civilization as it should be. With the day-to-day necessities taken care of, and intelligent creatures sitting around discussing philosophy. Or attending ball games.
“Thirty seconds.”
Then Valya’s voice, from the bridge. “When I tell you, Amy, press this.”
MacAllister sat up straight so he could get a better look at the display.
“Now,” said Valya.
Good for you, Valentina. But I hope we stop short of having the kid pilot the ship.
The monitor detached itself and began to drift away.
“Now this one, Amy.”
And a masculine voice: “Salvator One fully functional.”
Moments later Amy came into the common room and looked sternly at MacAllister. “If she gets in trouble for this, Mac,” she said, “it’s your fault.”
“My fault? For what?”
Valya appeared behind her. “We did a compromise positioning. The monitor will be orbiting Alpha II instead of the moon.”
How about that? The woman’s got something going for her after all.
ERIC ENVIED VALENTINA. The mere fact that she was a pilot earned his respect. Amy was delighted to be helping her. Even MacAllister took her seriously. He, on the other hand, did public relations. It was one of those professions that people always made jokes about and instinctively distrusted. And why would they not? His job, after all, had nothing to do with truth; it emphasized instead an ability to put the best possible face on things. Presumably on mediocrity.
The truth about Eric, the reality that he kept hidden even from himself, was that he had never committed a courageous act in his life. He’d never needed to. Nobody had ever challenged him, other than in the ordinary give-and-take relations with the media. He’d grown up sheltered and protected. Was given the best education. Got his start through his father’s influence. And coasted. When he entered a room, no one noticed. When he spoke, people’s eyes glazed over. (This in spite of the fact that he handled the spoken word quite well. Had in fact mastered the techniques of persuasion.)
But it was he himself, the person, who commanded no respect.
He saw how MacAllister was treated when he came to the Academy, how people’s voices changed in his presence, how they stood straighter. Literally came to attention when he walked in. The same was true with the pilots. And with Hutchins. She’d been a bureaucrat for a couple of years now, one of the most contemptible professions, but people still remembered who she was. Eric, though, was another Asquith. But without the authority.
Though they never said anything to him, he sensed how Valya and MacAllister felt. He was just extra baggage. A friend of Hutch’s, to be taken care of. But of no real consequence on his own merit.
LIBRARY ENTRY
To date we have not found a world with a high-tech functioning society. We have however seen remnants of nine technological civilizations. At least one of these, the so-called Monument-Makers, achieved interstellar flight. There is evidence of one other such species, the creatures who helped evacuate Maleiva III when it fell into a brutal ice age several thousand years ago. But we don’t know where they came from, or where they went.
The overall picture for long-range survival by a civilization is, therefore, historically, not bright.
Our most recent evidence indicates that many societies experience an industrial revolution, followed by exponential technological development, followed by rapid growth, followed by a general collapse. None that we know of, other than the Monument-Makers, seem to have lasted more than three hundred years beyond the development of the computer.
This is not to say there is a cause and effect relationship between technology and extinction. But Colm Manchester, in his monumental Study of Civilization, points out that societies with limited technology tend to be more durable and far harder to destabilize.
It is now more than three and a half centuries since we started using computers. Let us hope the trend does not apply to us.
—Tokyo Daily, Saturday, April 4
RHINE: HELLFIRE SERMONS AFFLICT MANY
“Constitute Child Abuse”
STUDY: RELIGIOUS EDUCATION MAY CLOSE MIND
“Hell Invented by Dante”
chapter 19
There’s not much to be said for sightseeing. You go somewhere that has a waterfall. You have a beer, watch the water go over the edge, and move on. Tours are all the same. In the end, the only thing that matters is the beer.
—Gregory MacAllister, “Endgame”
The monument needed a name. Something other than the Cygni Temple, which was how it was commonly known. When it had first been discovered, decades before, religious organizations had pointed to it proudly as proof that even alien societies recognized the Creator. It might have been true, but the reality was that nobody had any idea what the structure had meant to the creatures who’d put it into its lonely orbit.
MacAllister had begun to realize that, even if he did not get close to the moonriders, there was decent potential on this flight for a good story. He put aside his notes on Dark Mirror and was thinking instead that he might, in visiting these various sites, record his own insights and reactions. It was easy to wax philosophical about places like the temple. So he began a journal.
Before leaving the system, they took pictures. Of the captain and passengers gathered on the bridge, of Amy with the monument behind her, of Eric studying the monument while taking notes. Valya transposed images, so they had shots of Eric leaning against one of the columns, and Amy standing at the foot of the steps, inches from infinity. Even MacAllister allowed her a degree of latitude, and she superimposed his features over the monument, as if he were the resident deity.
“You’re sending me a message,” he said.
They were alone in the common room. “Not at all.” She had a smile that could penetrate his own inner darkness, and she used it, showing him, yes, of course it reflects you, the real you, the guy who thinks he knows everything. But she softened it somehow.
At home, MacAllister was a constant target for attack. Usually it was just people hitting back after he’d delivered a well-deserved criticism. He routinely accepted the reactions as part of the job. Fleabites from persons of no consequence. But when he saw reproach in Valya’s eyes, and for reasons he did not understand, it hurt. He wanted to explain to her that he wished the Academy well, wished her well. That he wasn’t the jerk she so plainly thought he was.
“Did you volunteer for this?” he asked.
“In a manner of speaking. I could have refused.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Is there a reason I should have?”
“I thought you might have preferred not to have me aboard.”
“To be honest,” she said, “I was reluctant when Hutch first told me you were coming. Look, Mac, since you ask, you’re not exactly one of my favorite people. It’s not personal; it’s political. But it’s okay. We can make it work while we’re out here.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.”
She shrugged. “I know. But you’re on the other side. It’s not easy to be friendly with the enemy.”
“I’m not an enemy, Valya.”
“Sure you are.” She lowered her voice. “You and Amy’s father. And four or five other nitwits on the committee. No. Let me finish. I understand about the seas and the duck problem and all the rest of it. But you’re behaving as if this is an either-or situation. If we close down, if the Academy goes away, we won’t get serious starflight up and running again probably during my lifetime.
“And I know what you’re going to say. This isn’t about one person. And to be honest I’m not sure about that. Maybe it is me. I like to be out here, and if the day comes they shut us down, shut everybody down, Orion and Kosmik and everybody else, then my life is ove
r. And if you think the human race is doing just fine sitting on its front porch, as long as the evenings are cool, then I think you need to ask yourself what goddam good we’ll be to ourselves or anybody else.”
Had she just called him a nitwit? “Valya, I never said we should shut down the Academy.”
“Sure you did. Not verbatim, maybe. But you’re aiding and abetting. Look, I can understand you don’t want to support us. But you owe Hutchins a lot. If it weren’t for her, you wouldn’t be walking around. The least you could do is stay out of the fight. Just don’t say anything.”
“I can’t do that, Valya. I’m an editor. The National has an obligation to its readers.”
“Do your readers agree with you? About the Academy?”
“Some do.” He hesitated. “Most do. We’ve taken a reasonable position. Head off the imminent danger first. Then put money into starflight. Anything else would be irresponsible.”
She changed the subject. Talked about 36 Ophiuchi, and the Origins Project beyond.
TIME TO GO.
When the warning came to buckle up, MacAllister was ready. So was Amy, who’d lost interest in the monument and was doing a history assignment with Bill. But as they were pressed back into their seats, and the temple began to recede, she took a last look and smiled at MacAllister. “I’ll be back,” she said.
Acceleration continued several minutes, then went away. The green lights came on. It was okay to release the restraints and walk around. The lights were intended for those so feeble-minded they couldn’t tell when it was possible to stand up without getting thrown against the aft bulkhead.
Valya asked MacAllister to come up front.
“No problems, I hope,” he said as he slid into the right-hand seat.
“We’re fine, Mac.” She released her own harness and rotated her shoulders. “I wanted to ask a favor.”
“Sure,” he said. “What do you need?”
“While we’re out here, I’d like to take Amy to see the supernova.”
The statement puzzled him. “How do you take somebody to see a supernova?” He looked at the quiet sky. “Where is it?”
Odyssey Page 17
