by Neal Asher
Eon
by Greg Bear
Synopsis: When an enormous asteroid enters the Earth's orbit, the remains of a vanished human civilization are discovered within that reveal the asteroid's futuristic origins and predict a catastrophic imminent Earth war.
For Poul and Karen
with much appreciation
and love.
Prolog: Four Beginnings
One/Christmas Eve 2000 New York City
"It's going into a wide elliptical Earth orbit," Judith Hoffman said. "Perigee about ten thousand kilometers, apogee about five hundred thousand. It'll make a loop around the moon every third orbit." She pulled back from the video screen to let Garry Lanier have a look. For the time being, the Stone still resembled a baked potato, with no meaningful detail.
Outside the door to her office, the noise of the party was a distant reminder of ignored social obligations.
"That must be an incredible fluke."
"It's not a fluke," Hoffman said. She had brought him into the office just a few minutes before. Lanier sat on the edge of her desk. Tall, with close-cut dense, black hair, Lanier resembled a pale-skinned Amerindian, though he had no Indian blood. Hoffman found his eyes particularly reassuring—gently scrutinizing, the eyes of a man used to seeing across great distances. She did not put her trust in people on the basis of looks, however.
She had taken to Lanier because he had taught her something. Some had called him bloodless, but Hoffman knew better. The man was simply competent, calm and observant.
He had a kind of blindness to people's foibles that made him peculiarly effective as a manager. He seldom seemed to recognize petty insults, bitchiness or backbiting. He saw people only in terms of their effectiveness or lack of it, at least as far as his public reactions showed; he cut through their surface dross and found what true coin might lie beneath. She had learned some interesting things about several people by observing their reactions to Lanier. And she had adapted her own style, picking up on his finesse.
Lanier had never been in Hoffman's at-home work area before and now, in the video's cool light, he inspected the shelves of memory blocks, the broad, empty desk with its basic secretary's chair, the compact word processor beneath the video.
Like most of the party-goers, he was a little in awe of Hoffman. On the Hill, she was called the Advisor. She had acted in official and unofficial capacities as a science expert for three presidents. Her video programs reviving and re-exploring science had been popular in the late 1990s, in a world just recovering from the shock of the Little Death. She had served on the board of directors of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and now ISCCOM—the International Space Cooperation Committee. Though she could not disguise her solid build, her taste in clothes was immaculate. There was a conscious limit to her style, however; her fingernails were short and unpainted, well-manicured but not elegant, and she wore little makeup. She allowed her brunette hair to find its own shape with a minimum of interference; it tended to make a nimbus of fine curls around her head.
Lanier had entered her circle while working as a public relations manager for AT&T Orbicom Services. Before being employed by Orbicom, he had spent six years in the Navy, first as a fighter pilot, then flying high-altitude tankers. He had flown the famous Charlie Baker Delta route over Florida, Cuba and Bermuda during the Little Death, refueling the planes of the Atlantic Watch whose vigilance had played such a crucial role in limiting the war.
After the armistice, he had received an OK from the Navy to take his expertise in aerospace engineering over to Orbicom, which was tuning up its world-wide civilian Mononet.
There had been a few calls at first to Orbicom headquarters in Menlo Park, California, then requests for help on position papers, then an abrupt and unexpected transfer to the Orbicom building in Washington, which he later learned had been engineered by Hoffman. There was no question of romance—how often had he quelled that rumor?—but their ability to work together was remarkable in a Washington atmosphere of perpetual partisan bickering and funding squabbles.
"You must be on the Drake Hookup," Lanier said.
"I am, but this is a Deep Space Tracking picture. The Drake is still locked on the Perseus Gemstar."
"They won't turn it on the Stone?"
She shook her head, grinning wolfishly. "Feisty old bastards are on a tight schedule—won't turn it around even for a look at the biggest event of the twenty-first century."
Lanier raised an eyebrow. The Stone, as far as he knew, was just an asteroid. The oblong chunk wasn't going to hit the earth, but if it was going to orbit, it would be in perfect position for scientific probes. That was interesting, but hardly worthy of so much enthusiasm.
"Twenty-one isn't until next month," he reminded her.
"And that's when we'll be getting busy." She turned toward him and folded her arms. "Garry, we've been working together for some time now. I trust you a lot."
He felt a tightening at the base of his spine. She had seemed tense all evening. He had dismissed the fidgeting as none of his business. Now she was making it his business.
"What do you know about the Stone?" she asked.
He thought a moment before answering. "DST located it eight months ago. It's about three hundred kilometers long, a hundred kilometers across at midsection. Medium albedo, probably a silicate body with a nickel-iron core. It had a kind of halo around it when first spotted, but that's dissipated. That made a few scientists speculate it was an
exceptionally large old comet nucleus. Some conflicting reports on low density revived the old Shklovskii Mars' moon speculation."
"Where did you hear the density reports?"
"I don't remember."
"That reassures me a little bit. If you haven't heard much more than that, probably no one else has, either. DST had a leak, we've plugged it now."
"Why the secrecy?" he asked.
"DST has been ordered to mask all data given to the community." By which she meant the scientific community.
"Why in hell should they do that? Government's relation with the community has been awful the last few years. This certainly won't help."
"Yes, but I concur this time."
Another chill. Hoffman was very dedicated to the community.
"If there's a blanket over everything, how do you know?" Lanier asked.
"Connections through ISCCOM. I've been put on oversight by the President."
"Jesus."
"So while our friends are partying out there, I need to know if I can rely on you."
"Judith, I'm just a second-rank PR type."
"Bullshit. Orbicom thinks you're the best personnel coordinator they have. I had to wrestle Parker for three months to get you transferred to Washington. You were lined up for a promotion, know that?"
Truthfully, he had hoped to avoid another promotion. He felt he was getting away from the real work, higher and higher up the tower of power. "And you got me transferred, instead?"
"Pulled enough strings to look like the puppet master I'm supposed to be. I may need you. You know I don't pick candidates unless I'm sure they'll yank my ass out of the fire later."
He nodded. To be part of Hoffnum's circle was to be groomed for importance. Until now, he had tried to overlook that as a truism.
"Do you remember the supernova sighted about the same time as the Stone?"
Lanier nodded; it had made a brief splash in the journals, and he had been too busy to find that low-profile coverage odd.
"It wasn't a supernova. Just as bright, but it didn't match any of the requirements. In the first place, it was first recorded by DST as an infrared object just outside the solar
system. Within two days, the flare became visible, and DST detected radiation of frequencies associated with every atomic transition. The flare temperature started at a million degrees Kelvin and peaked at just over one billion degrees. By that time nuclear explosion detectors on satellites—the new GPS super-Vela—were picking up thermally excited gamma rays from nuclear transitions. It was clearly visible in the night sky, so DST had to make up a cover story, and that was the discovery of a supernova by space defense installations. But they didn't know what they had."
"And?"
"The display went out, everything got quiet and then a visual sighting was made in the same portion of the sky. It was the Stone. By that time, everybody knew they weren't dealing with a simple asteroid." The video pictures flickered and a chime sounded.
"Well, here it is. Joint Space Command has taken over the Drake and rotated it."
The Drake was the most powerful orbiting optical telescope. There were bigger instruments being built on lunar farside, but none yet in operation matched the Drake. It had no Defense Department connection. Joint Space Command legally had no jurisdiction—except in time of national security crisis.
The Stone appeared on the screen greatly enlarged and cradled in numbers and sequence data graphs. Much more detail was evident—a big crater at one end of the oblong, smaller craters all over, a peculiar band running latitudinally.
"It still looks like an asteroid," Lanier said, his voice lacking conviction.
"Indeed," Hoffman said. "We know the type. A very large mesosiderite. We know the composition. But it's missing about forty percent of its mass. DST confirmed that this morning. That chunk's profile through the center resembles a geode. Geodes don't occur in space, Garry. The President has already accepted my recommendation that we organize an investigation. That was before the elections, but I think we can push it with the new administration—cracker-barrel mentality or not. Just as a precaution, we're scheduling six orbital transfer vehicle flights before the end of February. And I'm laying my bets down early. I think we're going to need a science team, and I'd like you to coordinate for me. I'm sure we can arrange something with Orbicom."
"But why the secrecy?"
"Why, Garry, I'm surprised." She smiled warmly at him. "When the aliens arrive, the government always goes in for secrecy."
Two/August, 2001 Podlipki Airfield, near Moscow
"Major Mirsky, you are not concentrating on your task."
"My suit is leaking, Colonel Mayakovsky."
"That is irrelevant. You can stay in the tank for another fifteen or twenty minutes."
"Yes, Colonel."
"Now pay attention. You must complete this maneuver."
Mirsky blinked sweat from his eyes and strained to see the American-style docking hatch clearly. The water was already up to his knees in the pressure suit; he could feel the stream entering through the seam at his hip. There was no way of telling how copious the flow was; he hoped Mayakovsky knew.
He had been instructed to wedge the bent metal bar into the two sensor ports. To get the necessary traction to jam it home, he hooked his ankle and right wrist to the circular lip of the hatch, using the L-shaped attachments on his boots and glove. Then with his left hand—(how they had tried to discourage him in school in Kiev, now gone, all of his teachers and their nineteenth-century ideas; how they had tried to get him to use his right hand exclusively, until finally, in his late teens, an edict had come down officially pardoning gauche children)—
Mirsky slammed the bar. He unhooked his wrist and ankles and pushed back.
The water was up to his waist.
"Colonel—"
"The hatch will pause before opening. Three minutes."
Mirsky bit his lip. He twisted his neck around within the helmet to see how his teammates were doing. The five lined-up hatches were manned—two men and Yefremova. Where was Orlov?
There—pushing his helmet back, Mirsky saw Orlov being hauled to the surface of the tank, three wet-suited, scuba-equipped divers assisting him to shadowy obscurity. The surface, the lovely surface, sweet air and no water streaming in. He couldn't feel it now. The level was above his hip.
The hatch began to move. He could hear the mechanism whining. Then it stopped, only one-third open.
"It's stuck," he said, stunned. He was reasonably sure the exercise was supposed to be over as soon as he could enter the hatch, and the hatch was supposed to be foolproof, it was supposed to open when properly jimmied—American word, American technology, reliable, no?
"Loosen it. Your bar is obviously not positioned properly."
"It is!" Mirsky insisted.
"Major—"
"Yes, yes!" He jammed the heel of his heavily gloved hand against the bar again. He hadn't hooked his ankles and right wrist; he floated away from the hatch and had to waste precious seconds reeling in his line and dragging himself back. Hook. Pound. Unhook. No result.
Water up to his chest, cold, slopping past his neck seal into his helmet when his angle shifted. He swallowed some accidentally and choked. There. Colonel will think I'm drowning and show mercy!
"Jiggle it," the colonel suggested.
His gloves were almost too thick to reach into the groove where the bar now resided, held in place by the partly open
hatch. He pressed, his sleeves filled with cold and his fingers numbing. He pressed again.
His suit was no longer neutrally buoyant. He was starting to sink. The bottom of the tank was thirty meters below, and all three of the divers had accompanied Orlov. There was nobody between him and drowning if he could not make it to the simulated Soviet hatch on his own power. And if he did not leave now—
But he didn't dare. He had wanted the stars since adolescence, and panicking now would put them out of his reach forever. He screamed in his helmet and slammed his glove tip into the groove, causing a sharp freezing jolt of pain to go up his arm as his fingers crammed into the inner fabric and casing.
The hatch began to move again.
"Just jammed," the colonel said.
"I'm drowning, goddammit!" Mirsky shouted. He hooked his wrists onto the lip of the ring and sputtered water from his mouth. The suit's air entered and exited just above the neck ring of his helmet, and he could already hear the suck and gurgle.
Floodlights came on around the tank. The hatches were suspended in watery noon brightness. He felt hands under his arms and around his legs and saw the three other cosmonaut trainees vaguely from the corners of his foggy faceplate. They kicked away from the hatch complex and hauled him higher, higher, to his grandmother's archaic and
welcome heaven.
They sat at their special table away from the two hundred other recruits and were served fine thick sausages with their kasha. The beer was cold and plentiful, if sour and watery, and there were oranges and carrots and cabbage cores. And for dessert, a big steel bowl of fresh-made, rich vanilla ice cream, unavailable for months while they trained, was set before them by a smiling mess officer.
When dinner was over, Yefremova and Mirsky strolled across the grounds of the Cosmonaut Instructional Center with its hideous black steel water tank half-buried in the ground.
Yefremova came from Moscow and had a fine eastern slant to her eyes; Mirsky, from Kiev, could as easily have been German as Russian. Still, coming from Kiev had its advantages. A man without a city: this was something Russians could sympathize with, feel sad about.
They spoke very little. They thought they were in love but that was irrelevant. Yefremova was one of fourteen women in the Space Shock Troops program. Her femaleness kept her even busier than the men. She had trained as a pilot in the Air Defense Forces before that, flying Tu 22M training bombers and old Sukhoi fighters. He had come into the
military after graduating from an aerospace engineering school. His deferment had been most fortunate; instead of being inducted into the army at eighteen, he had qualified for a New Reindustrialization scholarship.
In the engineering school, he h
ad gained excellent marks in political science and leadership, and they had earmarked him immediately for the difficult position of Zampolit in a fighter squadron in East Germany, but then had transferred him to Space Defense Forces, which had only been in existence for four years. He had never heard of it before the
transfer, but such a stroke of luck ... He had always wanted to be a cosmonaut.
Yefremova's father was a high-ranking Moscow bureaucrat. He had put her into what he thought would be a safe military training program rather than let her run wild with Moscow's infamous Young Hooligans. She had turned out to be very capable and very bright; her future was promising, though not what her father had expected.
Their backgrounds were worlds apart, and chances were they would never even have a chance to date, much less conduct an affair or get married.
