Jack Mcdevitt - Engines of god

by David Geary

  She folded them carefully in her clothes, took her three bags out of the closet, and laid them inside.

  The sheets would stay. And the towels.

  She took framed photos from her walls, pictures of her brother, Joel, and his family in their living room at Christmas, of six members of the Temple team walking the beach, of the Zeta Fragment (which Janet had found, and which had provided Maggie's first insights into the Casumel languages). She'd lived a substantial portion of her adult life here. Had established herself professionally. Had experienced several romances. It hurt to know that these spaces would soon be filled with mud and water.

  She dragged her bags into the passageway, and bumped into Richard.

  He gave her a startled look, and she understood his mind had been elsewhere. "May I help?" he asked, after a moment to collect himself.

  She'd had little opportunity to speak with him since his arrival. His reputation rendered him a daunting figure, and she felt intimidated. "Thank you, yes. Please."

  He gazed at her thoughtfully. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

  "You look pale." He glanced at the bags. "It's okay," he said. "There'll be other places."

  They carried the luggage through the community room, down to the lower level, and into the bay. Later, Janet would recall that they had talked during the short walk; she would not remember what he had said. Incidentals, no doubt, the sort of perfunctory remarks to which people freshly acquainted are inevitably limited. But she would always remember that he had seemed kind.

  Maggie Tufu was the Academy's ranking exophilologist. She had a high opinion of herself, but she might have been that good. She'd made her reputation on Nok, where she'd deciphered ancient and modem languages. Unlike most of the outstanding field performers, Maggie was also a gifted instruc­tor. She was a legend at the University of Pennsylvania.

  She'd succeeded at everything in her life that really mat­tered, with two exceptions: her marriage, and her inability to do anything with the few inscriptions that had survived on Pinnacle.

  Now she faced a third potential failure. No one with the Jacobi team had grasped more quickly than she the impor­tance of deciphering Linear C. Like Richard, she believed it might lead eventually to the Monument-Makers, and to the secret behind Oz. Maggie was one of the few who believed there was a secret. Her colleagues by and large shared Frank Carson's view that the lunar artifact was simply alien, and that once one recognized that, there was not much else to say.

  Consequently, when the numbing news arrived that the Academy was abandoning Quraqua, that its archeological treasures were being sacrificed to create a habitable world, she had thrown aside all other projects, and devoted herself exclusively to the Linear C problem.

  They had recovered roughly five hundred writing samples of the target language, mostly from a dozen major sites. Generally, they consisted of only a few clusters of symbols. Context tended to be limited to the knowledge (or assertion)

  that the sample had been taken from a government building, or a library, or a statue of an animal.

  The Lower Temple had major potential. Maggie possessed several tablets of varying degrees of completeness, transcribed in one or another of the Casumel family. These were probably inspirational tales, because they were accompanied by picto-graphs that translated to rainstorms, the sea, military valor, the moon. And so she could make a guess here, and take a stab there. She had reconstructed a primary alphabet, and several alternates, and had started a vocabulary. But she desperately needed more samples.

  The printing press was the answer. That should give her two or three thousand characters of text. A magnificent find. If she could get her hands on it.

  This morning, she was lingering over a tablet which had come in almost two years before from an excavation site sev­eral hundred kilometers inland. She had scanned and indexed it, but had not sent it back to the Academy with her regular annual shipment.

  The piece was an oblong, as wide as her hand, about twenty centimeters long. It depicted the Quraquat hero Malinar as a child, with a dish in his hand, feeding a ferocious ursine animal with tusks and huge eyes, while an infant watched. She knew the myth: the animal was a horgon, a demon beast capable of seeing all things. The horgon was one of the classic monstrosities of local mythology, a creature suggestive of divinity gone wrong, not unlike Satan. No one could hide from it. No one could defeat it. But it traditionally spared children, because this child had fearlessly approached it with a plate of food to divert attention from his sister. The horgon rewarded Malinar's valor, and never after was known to attack the young. The valor ideograph, which consisted of three arrows within a circle, appeared atop the engraving. And there were six lines of text. She believed she had identified several terms: the verbs to see and to offer, and the nouns Malinar and horgon.

  In addition, the text supported some of her syntactical notions.

  She had not sent the tablet on to D.C., because she had recognized the character group for horgon from somewhere else: it was part of the Oz inscription.

  Andi was in the process of powering down nonessential electronics when Karl passed through Ops with his luggage. On the lower level, he saw Art Gibbs and Sandy Gonzalez tarping a digger. Other equipment, pumps, generators, jet-sleds, had been brought in, and were now being laid in stor­age. There was a tendency to behave as if Seapoint were simply being mothballed, as if someone would return and pick up where this expedition was leaving off.

  The Academy would ordinarily have salvaged its equip­ment, the diggers, the sub, Seapoint itself. But the decision to evacuate had been made suddenly, without including Henry in the process. And consequently too little time had been allowed, and it had become necessary for the Temple team (and their managers back on the Second Floor in D.C.) to choose between bringing out expensive gear or rescuing arti­facts of unknown value. The artifacts, of course, had taken precedence. Karl had been on duty when the Second Floor had directed Henry to leave personal luggage at Seapoint, to make extra room aboard the shuttles for storage. Henry had been around long enough to know better than to disagree. But he forgot to implement.

  Karl entered the sub bay. It was empty. He strode along the walkway that bordered the docking pool and dropped his bags beside Janet's, along the boarding ramp. "I'm ready," he said to her. The place was filled with Eddie's containers. There were more than a hundred. "Do we really have to haul all these up to the ship?"

  "There are more coming." Janet smiled wearily. "Karl, what are you going to do when you get home?"

  "I have a position at the Institut von Archaologie." He tried to make it sound casual. But they both knew it was a prestigious appointment.

  "Congratulations." She kissed him. "I have no idea what I'm going to do." There had been a list of vacancy announce­ments around for about a month. The Academy would keep a few of the team on the payroll, and it would try to assist the others. Most, like Karl, would be going back to the classroom. "I want to stay in the field," she said. "But the waiting list for Pinnacle and Nok are both long."

  "Two years, last I heard," Karl said. Allegri was a damned good archeologist. With experience. But it would be like the

  Academy to waste her, to offer her a job teaching undergradu­ates. "Maybe they'll make an exception for people here." The approach lamps came on. "Get Henry to put in a word for you."

  The water began to churn. "Pity about all this," she said. "Henry deserves better."

  "He may not be done yet," said Karl. "He wants Linear C. And I'm not entirely sure he won't get it."

  LIBRARY ENTRY

  Like most mythic heroes, Malinar may have had a remote historical basis. If so, the reality is hopelessly entangled with fable. This hero appears in epochs thou­sands of years apart. This is no doubt due to the extreme length of Quraquat history, and to the lack of tech­nological progress after the exhaustion of the world's nonrenewable natural resources, resulting in a telescop­ing effect upon earlier eras, all of w
hich come to resem­ble one another.

  Although Malinar's time predates the construction of the Knothic Towers by almost ten thousand years, he is nevertheless said to have visited the holy site to consult an aspect of the Deity. The Temple then stood on a rock shelf well above the sea. We possess a tablet thought to depict the event.

  Unfortunately, most of the Malinar cycle is missing. We know neither the reason for the consultation, nor its result. We know only that the Quraquat could not bear the thought that their great hero had not at some point visited the imposing shrine on the north shore.

  —Linda Thomas, At the Temple of the Winds Harvard University, 2211

  11.

  Seapoint. Wednesday; 1418 hours.

  "I'm sorry we found the thing, Hutch." George Hackett was weary, but he managed to look upbeat anyhow. "If I had my way, we'd call the whole business off. I'm ready to go home."

  "How long have you been here?"

  "Four years."

  "Long time."

  "Seems like forever." They were alone in the community room, enjoying coffee and toast. The sea moved against the view panels. "I don't think I'll do any more field trips."

  Hutch enjoyed being with him. She loved the glow of his eyes, and his gentleness. Old passions were reviving. When they were together, she had a tendency to babble. But she curbed it, and maintained a discrete distance, waiting for him to make a move. When he did, if he did, she would have to put him on hold until they got home. Anything else would be unprofessional. She knew from long experience that it was impossible to keep secrets on shipboard. "Why not, George?" she asked, in a detached tone. "Your career is in the field, isn't it?"

  He shook his head. "I'm not an archeologist. I'm an engi­neer. I only came out here because the opportunity surfaced, and 1 thought it was a chance to travel." He laughed.

  "Well," she said, "you've certainly traveled."

  "Yeah. That I have." He looked at her wistfully. "You know. Hutch," he said, "you're lovely. It's been worth the trip just to meet you."

  She, in her turn, glowed. "That's nice of you," she said.

  "I mean it."

  She could see that he did. "What will you do when you get home?" she asked.

  He stared at her. "I'm going to find a place where there are green parks and lots of summer days. And where all the wom­en look like you." He reached out and stroked her cheek.

  Eddie Juliana kept working, kept packing containers. "We'll get everything up," he said. "One way or another, we'll save it all." He urged Hutch to work harder. "These," he said. "These go first. Just in case. Forget the stuff that's down in the bay. In case Truscott decides to drop any more bombs on us." He stared at the ceiling as if observing her attitude on the space station. "Yes," he said, "load these." He indicated a line of red-tags. "I'll get the others." He nodded to himself. "Most definitely."

  Hutch worried about him.

  "By the door," he said, as they entered his workshop, oblivious of her concern. He was indicating three containers. "These are weapons. From the lower level outpost." He went after the first, signaling Hutch to bring over a cart. "Whatever else happens, we don't want to lose them. They're invalu­able." Ordinarily she would have grumbled or gone on strike. But she felt sorry for Eddie, and did what she could. "There's another red-tag next door," he said.

  But the container wasn't sealed. She looked in. "It needs a dash of poly-6," she said.

  "Take care of it." He arrowed off toward the washroom.

  She picked up the gun, aimed it into the container, and pulled the trigger. A thick white stream gushed over the plastene-wrapped artifacts, and the room filled with a faintly acrid aroma. She watched the foam rise, and shut it off. The poly-6 began to inflate, and Hutch hefted the gun and aimed it at an imaginary Melanie Truscott. Eddie reappeared and looked at her impatiently. She pointed the nozzle toward him, and her index finger tightened slightly on the trigger. "Pow," she said.

  Pow.

  He was in no mood for games. He capped the container, and rolled it onto the cart.

  And Hutch had the beginning of an idea. "Eddie, how much of this stuff do we have?"

  "Poly-6? Plenty. Why do you ask?"

  "How does it work?"

  "I don't know the chemistry," he said. "You make it with two barrels." They were in plain sight, labeled "A" and "B." "They're separate compounds. The stuff is inert until it gets mixed. That's what the gun does. When they combine, the urethane expands and hardens. It's been around for centuries. And it's ideal for safeguarding artifacts in shipment."

  "Do you have an extra dispenser? A gun?"

  "Sure." He frowned. "Why?"

  She was calculating storage space on Alpha. "Listen, we may have to cut down the size of this next shipment a little."

  "What?" He sounded wounded. "Why?" he asked again.

  "Because I'm going to take two barrels of poly-6 with me."

  Eddie was horrified. "There isn't room."

  "We'll make room."

  "What on earth for?"

  "I'm going to use it to say hello to Melanie Truscott."

  An hour later, Alpha climbed toward orbit, carrying Hutch, Janet, Maggie, Karl, and Maggie's number one analyst, Phil Marcotti. Also on board were twenty-nine containers filled with artifacts, and two barrels of poly-6 components.

  Maggie Tufu turned out to be younger than Hutch had expected. She'd heard so much about the woman's accom­plishments, that she was startled to discover Maggie was probably still in her twenties. She was tall, taller in fact than either of the men. Her black hair was full and luxuriant, worn in a twist that was probably designed to make her look older. Her eyes were also black, and her features retained much of the Micronesian cast of her forebears. If she'd been able to loosen up, to smile occasionally, she would have been lovely.

  She tended to set herself apart from the others. Hutch did not sense arrogance, but rather simply a preoccupation with work. Maggie found people, and maybe everything except mathematics and philological theory and practice, boring.

  Her colleague, Phil Marcotti, was a beefy, easygoing extro­vert. About forty, he enjoyed his work, and was among those who would have preferred to stay until they'd recovered what everyone was now referring to as "George's printing press." He confided to Hutch that, if he'd had his way, nothing

  short of armed force would have moved the Academy team. Curiously, this amiable, happy man was the most militant among Henry's true believers.

  Maggie took Hutch's right-hand seat. During the ascent she tied into the auxiliary computer and busied herself with rows of alphanumerics. "In one way, we're very lucky," she told Hutch. "We don't get as many Linear C samples as we'd like to. Of course, you never have enough samples of anything. The language is just too old. But a fair amount of what we do get comes with illustrations. We have the beginning of a vocabulary."

  "Really," said Hutch, interested. "Can you show me some examples?"

  "Sure. This"—a cluster of characters appeared on the screen—"is 'sun.' They were letters, not ideograms. And that"—another group—"is 'moon.' " She smiled, not at Hutch, but at the display. "This is 'hoe.' "

  "Hoe" said Hutch. "How did you arrive at that?"

  "The group was used to illustrate an epigram about reaping what you plant. I think."

  Karl stared moodily out at the clouds. His eyes were dis­tant, and Hutch wondered whether he was thinking about his future.

  Janet fell asleep within minutes after their departure. She was still out when the shuttle nosed into its bay on Wink.

  Hutch calibrated the B ring spin to point one gee. They unloaded the artifacts, now only a tenth of their planetary weight, and carried them through double doors into Main Cargo. Here, Hutch passed out footwear that would grip the Teflon deck. The storage area was wide and high, spacious enough to play basketball. They crossed to the far bulkhead, and secured the containers beside the two earlier shipments.

  Main Cargo had been designed to stow heavy excavation equipment, larg
e quantities of supplies, and whatever the Academy teams deemed worth bringing back. Except for the shuttle bay, it occupied the entire ring. It was compart-mented into four sections, each equipped with outside load­ing doors.

  When they'd finished, Hutch conducted a brief tour. She took her passengers to A Deck, pointed out their cabins, showed them the lounge and rec facilities, demonstrated how the food dispensers worked, and joined them for dinner. They drank to their new home. And they seemed to brighten some­what.

  After they'd finished, she took Janet aside. "Are you inter­ested in a little payback?" she asked.

  Janet looked at her curiously. "What are we talking about?" Then she smiled. "You mean Truscott?"

  "I mean Truscott."

  She nodded. "I'm willing to listen."

  "There'll be a risk."

  "Tell me what you have in mind. I'd love to see her get hers."

  "I think we can arrange it."

  She led the way back to B ring. Full ship's gravity, which was a modicum over point five, had been restored. The out­side loading doors were located in the deck. In each of the four cargo sections, they were of different dimensions. She'd picked the No. 2 hold, where they were biggest, large enough, in fact, to accommodate an object twice the diameter of the shuttle.

  Hutch inspected the doors, satisfied herself they were adequate to the task, and explained her idea. Janet listened skeptically at first, and then with mounting enthusiasm. By the time Hutch had finished, she was grinning broadly. "I don't think I'd want you mad at me," she said.

  "If we get caught at it, we'll both wind up out on Massachusetts Avenue with tin cups."

  "Will they be able to figure out who did it?"

  "Maybe. Listen, I owe you. And I wouldn't want to be responsible for your getting into trouble. I'll understand if you want to keep clear."

  "But you can't do this alone."

  "No. I can't."

  "I wouldn't miss it. The only real problem I can see is that we won't be able to brag about it afterward."