The Engines of God

by Jack McDevitt

  “He can’t do that,” said Harvey.

  “If so,” continued the recording, “we’ll have to be prepared to respond.

  “This is not an easy call. If such an announcement is made, we’ll handle the public relations end of it here. You will not commence operations until you are certain everyone is off Quraqua. I know that creates coordination problems for you, but I do not want anybody killed. If it happens, if Wald states his intention to stay beyond the deadline, you will inform him you have no authority to act at discretion, which is true; and tell him further that Project Hope will proceed on schedule, and that you expect him to leave in accordance with the court order and the terms negotiated with the Academy. Then you will notify me. Please acknowledge receipt of these instructions. And by the way, Melanie, I’m glad it’s you who’s out there.”

  “Could be worse,” said Harvey, sliding into a chair. “He might have told you to pull the switch no matter what.”

  “I’m not sure I wouldn’t have preferred that.” She had been here three years, and the archeologists had used one delaying tactic after another. “It’s the right decision,” she admitted. “But the sons of bitches are going to put it to us again.” She got up, walked toward the viewport. “I just can’t believe this keeps happening to us.”

  Melanie Truscott, Diary

  The whole history of “negotiations” between the Academy and Kosmik has been a chain of demands, lies, threats, and finally the lawsuit that forced the Academy off Quraqua before they were ready to go.

  Nevertheless, if I could, I would grant their request and give them another month or two—it really wouldn’t create insurmountable problems for us—but the legal decisions have come in, and I would be, in effect, setting the court’s decision aside and opening the door for more litigation.

  So I will follow my orders to the letter.

  How does it happen that the most intractable types always rise to the top? No give at all.

  The young woman I spoke with today, on the Academy evacuation vessel, seemed reasonable enough. She and I could easily have worked out an agreement—I believe—avoided a lot of rancor, and saved a lot of money. And maybe even found the way to the Monument-Makers. But it won’t happen.

  June 7, 2202

  7.

  On board Alpha. Monday; 2205 hours, Temple time. (Eleven minutes to midnight.)

  The shuttle fell away from Winckelmann, dropping into a leisurely pursuit of the setting sun. The cloud cover was streaked with pink and purple; storms troubled a narrow belt just north of the equator. Hutch turned control over to Navigation, and tried keying into Kosmik communications. They were scrambled, another measure of the depth to which relations had deteriorated.

  From the Temple site, she could pick up the common channel, listen to them calling one another, directing work, asking for assistance. Occasionally, they vented their frustration. I say we stay put and finish the job. A female voice. Hutch wondered whether remarks like that were being deliberately broadcast for the benefit of Truscott’s people, who would also be listening in. No wonder the woman was getting nervous.

  Atmosphere began to grab at the shuttle. Wisps of cloud streaked past. Navigation cut forward speed. She glided into twilight, passing high above blue mountains, descending into fading light. A wide river wandered into the gloom. The Oz moon, a witch’s crescent, rode behind her.

  She saw occasional reflections, water perhaps, or snow, sparkling in the starlight. Her scanners revealed an uneven sterile landscape, broken by occasional lakes and lava-beds.

  A major ruin lay at Kabal, by a river junction. She went to manual, and took the shuttle to ground level. Her navigation lights flashed across half-buried stone walls. There was nothing else—no wharf, no boats lying inshore, no buildings. No hint of a track through the wilderness to mark the inhabitants’ route to the next town. Kabal was celebrated because it was among the most recently abandoned of Quraquat cities.

  They had been here when Columbus sailed, the remnants of a once-glittering, if loosely connected, global culture. She wondered what their last moments had been like, clinging to their town against the encroaching wilderness. Did they know they were on the edge of extinction?

  She looked for a clear space, found it in the middle of the ruin, and landed. The treads pressed down on tall grass. She started the recycle process, intending to get out and look around. But something whipped through the stalks. It was out near the limit of her lights, and too quick to follow. She turned on the spots: nothing but tall dry grass gradually straightening.

  Hell with that.

  She aborted, and moments later was back in the air, heading southwest.

  Snow fell on the plain. Woody plants began to appear. Their branches were thick and short, covered with green spines and long needles. The flat country gave way to a confusion of rolling hills, populated by grotesque growths connected by ropy, purple webs. The local variant of trees, she thought, until one of them moved.

  Further south, she flew over thick-boiled gnarled hardwoods. They were enormous, bigger even than California’s redwoods, and they stood well apart from each other.

  The air temperature began to drop, and she cruised above a snowstorm. Mountains rose through the clouds, broad rocky summits wrapped in white. Hutch had known a few climbing enthusiasts. These would be an interesting challenge.

  She went higher, across the top of the world, through yet another storm. There was open water beyond, a sea, dark and reflective, veiled in light mist, glass-smooth. The peaks curved along the coastline. She had arrived at the northern end of the Yakata. Where the gods play.

  She opened a channel to the Temple. “This is Hutchins on Alpha. Anybody there?”

  “Hello, Alpha.” She recognized Allegri’s voice. “Good to see you. You are sixty kilometers east of the Temple. Just follow the coast.” Pause. “Switching to video.” Hutch activated the screen, and looked at Allegri. It was hard not to be envious of those blue eyes and perfect features. But she appeared a little too socially oriented for this line of work. This was not the sort of person who would stand up gladly to the rigors of modern archeology.

  “You’re about fifteen minutes out. You want me to bring you in?”

  “Negative. Do you have a first name?”

  “Janet.”

  “Glad to meet you, Janet. My friends call me ‘Hutch.’”

  Allegri nodded. “Okay, Hutch.”

  “What’s the drill? Do you use an on-shore hangar? What am I looking for?”

  “We have a floatpier. Watch for three stone towers in the water, about a hundred meters offshore. The floatpier’s just west of them. Our shuttle will be there. Put down beside it, and we’ll do the rest. It’s the middle of the night here. You want breakfast ready?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself. See you when you get in.” She reached up, above the screen, and the monitor blanked.

  Hutch glided over snow-covered boulder-strewn beaches, over long uncurling breakers and rocky barrier islands. She flew past Mt. Tenebro, at whose base lay a six-thousand-year-old city, most of it now under the sand or in the sea. Its minarets and crystal towers and floating gardens had been recreated in a series of paintings by Vertilian, one of which now hung prominently in the main lobby at the Academy’s Visitor Center. She trained the scopes on it, but could see nothing except lines of excavation ditches.

  She promised herself that when time permitted, she’d come back for a closer look.

  Minutes later, the three towers came into view. They were massive, not mere pillars (as she had expected), but black stone fortresses rising about twenty meters above the waves. The tide rolled over the remnants of a fourth. They were circular, somewhat tapered, wide enough that twenty people could have sat comfortably atop each. A stiff wind blew snow off their crests.

  Hutch unmasked the external mikes, and listened to the rhythmic boom of the surf and the desolate moan of the wind off the sea. She eased close to one of the structures. Some
thing screeched, leaped clear, and fluttered away. Lines of symbols and pictographs and geometric designs circled the towers. Most appeared to be abstractions, but she could see representations of birds and squidlike creatures and other beasts. In a niche just above the water, a pair of reptile legs were broken off at the knees. There must have been a shaft or stairway within. Her lights penetrated two embrasures and she caught a glimpse of stone walls. A Quraquat female with wings and a weapon, a sword probably, stood atop one crest. An arm was missing. The remaining hand shielded its eyes. She knew the Quraquat had not been winged creatures, smiled at the concept of a flying gator, and wondered whether all intelligences dreamt of angels.

  At the water line, the towers were worn smooth by the sea. Wide wakes trailed toward shore, as if the hoary sentinels were on the move.

  The floatpier lay a short distance beyond. It was U-shaped, and big enough to accommodate several vehicles. The Temple shuttle lay on the shoreward side. Alpha’s lights skimmed across its blue-gold lines.

  She drifted in, and slipped into the water. Moonlight fell on the coastal peaks. She opened a channel to the Temple. “I’m down,” she said.

  The shuttle rocked. “Welcome to the Temple of the Winds, Hutch. Frank’s on his way.”

  The outside temperature was 30° below, Celsius. She activated her Flickinger field, opened up, climbed out. The floatpier rolled with the tide, but it had good footing. It was wide, maybe three meters, equipped with thermal lines to keep ice from forming. And it had a handrail. The sea was choppy, and spray flew, but the field kept her dry.

  Alpha’s lights cast a misty glow across the two shuttles and the pier. Beyond, the towers were murky shadows. Lines of waves broke against the shoreline.

  “Look out you don’t fall in.” Carson’s voice came out of her earphones. But she didn’t see him.

  “Where are you?”

  “Look to your left.”

  Lights were rising out of the water. Carson sat inside a bubble housing. It surfaced near Alpha’s prow, followed by a long gray hull. Steam drifted off the deck, and the sea washed over it. The submersible rolled, righted itself, and drew alongside the pier. The bubble opened. Carson paused, tuned his move, and strode onto the planks with a grace born of long experience. “Temple Limo Service,” he said lightly. “Stops at 8000 B.C., Henry’s Hotel, the Knothic Towers, the Yakatan Empire, and points south. What’s your pleasure?” The engines gurgled, and the boat rocked.

  “The hotel sounds good.” The vessel was low in the water.

  Its cargo hatch, located on the afterdeck, swung open. Barrel-shaped containers lined the interior. Carson removed one of the containers, lifting it with surprising ease, and muscled it onto the pier. “I’ve got six of these,” he said. “Can we put them in Alpha? Thought I’d save a trip.”

  “Sure.” She watched him go back for a second barrel. Each of the containers was almost as big as he was. “Don’t break anything,” she said. They were big and awkward, but light. She starting moving them off the dock and into the shuttle’s storage bay.

  “Most of it’s foam,” said Carson. “And artifacts.”

  She felt cozy and safe, wrapped in the warm, dry cocoon of the energy field. The wind sucked at her, and mournful cries floated over the water. “Chipwillows,” said Carson. “Oversized, ungainly carrion-eaters. They raid the beach every morning.”

  “Birds?”

  “Not exactly. More like bats. They like to sing.”

  “Sounds like something lost.”

  “They make the sound by rubbing their wings together.”

  She drank in the night. It was good, after all these weeks, to be out in the open.

  “What’s it been like, Frank? Closing down, I mean?”

  He moved next to her and leaned on the handrail. “We do what we have to. It would have helped if we’d known six months ago we were going to get thrown out. We could have done things differently. But the word we kept getting was that the Academy was going to win. ‘Don’t worry,’ they said.”

  “It’s a pity.”

  “Yeah. It is that.” The pier rode over a wave. The comber broke, rolled toward the beach, and lost its energy against the outgoing tide. “I’m ready to go home. But not like this.” He looked discouraged. “We’ve put a lot of work in here. A fair amount of it will go for nothing.”

  Something luminous swam past, approached the sub, and sank.

  “What will you do next? Where will you go now?”

  “They’ve offered me a division director’s job at the Academy. In Personnel.”

  “Congratulations,” she said softly.

  He looked embarrassed. “Most of the people here are disappointed in me.”

  “Why?”

  “They think it’s a sell-out.”

  Hutch understood. Only the people who couldn’t make it in the field, or who were less than serious professionals, went into administration. “How do you feel?”

  “I think you should do what you want. I’d like regular hours for a change. A clean, air-conditioned office. A chance to meet new people. Maybe watch the Sentinels on Sunday.” He laughed. “That shouldn’t be asking too much. After all these years.”

  She wondered whether he had a family to go home to. “I wouldn’t think so,” she said.

  The western sky was starless. The Void. She looked into it for a few moments.

  He followed her gaze. “Spooky, isn’t it?”

  Yes. Somehow, it looked more arresting from a planetary surface than it did from space. She had noticed the same phenomenon from Nok and Pinnacle, which also floated on the edge of the galactic arm. She could just pick out the dim smear of light from stars on the other side. “According to the Quraquat,” Carson said, “that’s Kwonda, the home of the blessed, the haven for all who have fought the good fight. On nights when the wind is still, you can hear them singing. Kwonda, by the way, means ‘Distant Laughter.’”

  The pier rose and dipped. “That was a big one,” said Hutch. “How old is the Temple of the Winds?”

  “The main temple, what we call the Upper Temple, was built somewhere around the thirteenth—” He stopped. “Difficult to translate time. Around 250 B.C., our calendar. Those”—he indicated the towers—“are not the Temple of the Winds. You know that, right?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “They’re the Knothic Towers. Sacred ground, by the way. Built approximately 8000 B.C. They were used for worship, and were maintained as a historical site, one way and another, for seven thousand years.”

  “So where’s the Temple of the Winds?”

  He looked at the water. “Believe it or not,” he said, “The Temple of the Winds is in the drink.” He tied down the last of the containers. “And we should probably get moving. Where are your bags?”

  “Only one.” She got it out of the Alpha, and allowed him to take it.

  “This area used to be a crossroad between empires,” he said. “It must always have been of strategic importance. And we know settlements thrived here almost right up until the species died out. At the end,” he continued, “the Quraquat had no idea why the Towers had been built, or what they’d meant.”

  “That’s very sad,” she said. “To lose your heritage.”

  “I would think so.”

  “Are we sure the Quraquat are really extinct?”

  “Oh, yes. There was a long-running debate over that for several years. It seemed unlikely that we could have missed them by so short a time. Ergo, they had to be here somewhere. Watch your step.” He planted a foot on the deck of the submarine as if that would steady it, and offered his arm. “There was always at least one team looking for survivors. We got so many false alarms it got to be a joke. Quraquat seen here, seen there. Seen everywhere. But never any living natives.” He shrugged. “They’re gone.”

  They lowered themselves into the cockpit and drew the bubble down. The interior lights dimmed. The sea rose around them. “The Towers are by no means the oldest structures here. T
his was a holy place long before they were built. There’s a military chapel and outpost in the Lower Temple which predate them by millennia. We’re excavating it now. In fact, the artifact that brought Richard Wald out here is from the Lower Temple. And there’s a lot more that we haven’t got close to yet. We know, for example, that there’s an old electric power plant down there.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “That’s what it looks like. It goes back somewhere in the range of nineteen thousand years. There’s not much of it left, of course, and we don’t get very good pictures. But I don’t think there’s any question.”

  The water was dark. The sub’s navigation lamps punched into the general gloom. Lines of yellow light appeared. “They connect the Temple with Seapoint,” Carson explained. “The base.”

  He turned toward the track, and within minutes, they had arrived over a complex of domes and spheres. They were brightly illuminated, but many of the windows were dark. Seapoint looked inactive.

  Carson took them beneath a shell-shaped structure, and undersea doors opened. They ascended, and surfaced in a lighted bay.

  Janet Allegri was waiting with fresh coffee. Hutch disembarked. Carson handed her overnight down and Hutch slung it over one shoulder. She noticed that the walls were lined with containers similar to the ones they’d unloaded. “Is this the cargo?” she asked.

  “This is some of it,” said Janet, passing them cups. “Now, if you like, I’ll show you to your quarters.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” Turning to Carson, she said, “Thanks for the ride, Frank.”

  Carson nodded. “Anytime.” And, with a meaningful glance, he added, “You’ll want to get a good night’s sleep.”

  Janet and Hutch exited into a short passageway, mounted a flight of stairs, and emerged in a plant-filled chamber furnished with chairs and tables. The lights were dim. Two large windows looked out into the sea, and there was a glow in an artificial fireplace. A half-finished jigsaw puzzle occupied one of the tables. “The community room,” Janet said. “If you come here in the morning, we’ll introduce you around, and see that you get breakfast.”