Engines Of God к-1 Page 5

  "I understand." Caseway looked genuinely regretful. "I envy you. I don't know anyone who has a more interesting line of work. And I would oblige you in a moment, if I could."

  "It would be to everyone's benefit." He wished they were somewhere else, away from the glare. He would have preferred being able to see Caseway's eyes. He took his own glasses off to emphasize the gravity of the moment. "The last of the natives on Quraqua died off probably about the middle of the seventeenth century. They were all that was left, scattered in dying cities around their world, of a prosperous and vital web of civilizations that spanned their globe only three thousand years ago. We don't know what happened to them. They collapsed, over a short period of time. Nobody knows why. They were technologically backward, by our standards. Which should have helped them survive, because they were still close to their roots, and not vulnerable to the kinds of problems we've experienced."

  "It wasn't all that sudden," Caseway said. "It happened over centuries."

  "No." Richard took the initiative. "Those are assumptions, put out by people who think it had to happen that way, because some of these civilizations were not connected, and should not all have gone down at the same time. But it's as if someone turned off a light."

  Caseway thought it over. "Epidemic."

  "Maybe. Whatever it was, the old order went to its knees, and never recovered. Twenty-five hundred years later, the species became extinct."

  "Well." Caseway crossed one knee over the other, and scratched an ankle. "Maybe it's the Toynbee factor. Their species exhausted itself."

  "That's a non-explanation."

  "Richard—" Caseway paused. "I would like to know what happened on Quraqua as much as anyone. But the deluge is upon us. We have no time left for academic niceties."

  "What deluge?"

  Caseway looked momentarily startled. "Tell me," he said, "what you see in the future for us? For mankind?"

  "We've always blundered through. I'm optimistic."

  "I fear I have the advantage of you: I've read your books, and you speak often of the future. Unusual in an archaeologist, I would think. No, no; no protest please. I'm less sanguine than you are. And perhaps more of a realist. We have virtually unlimited power now. And we have the experience of the convulsions of the last two centuries. What good has it done us? You and I live well. But people continue to starve in frightful numbers; much of the damage to the environment has proved remarkably intractable; population is approaching the levels that preceded the Collapse." He stared pensively into his wine. "We have eliminated active warfare, but only because the League has the weapons. The Poles still hate the Russians, the Arabs hate the Jews, the People of Christ hate everybody. It's as if we've learned nothing."

  "And the only solution is your Utopia on Quraqua."

  "Yes. We select a small group. Leave the old animosities behind. Start over. But start over, knowing what we know now. That way, we may have a future. Earth surely does not."

  Richard shrugged. "It's an old idea, Norman. But even if I grant you the premise, why the big hurry? Why not take the time to see what we can team from Quraqua? Then terraform away."

  "Because it may already be too late."

  "Nonsense."

  "Not at all. Listen: the first step, which will happen in a few weeks, is to melt the icecaps. From that moment, it will be a half-century, at best, before the first member of the pilot colony sets foot on Quraqua. Fifty years, Richard. Middle of the century. What do you suppose will be going on by then?"

  "Who knows?"

  "Who indeed? Will political conditions be stable? Will there be money? Will the technology still exist?" Caseway shook his head. "Our experts predict a second Collapse within thirty years. Time is very much against us. Even today, we will be fortunate to bring this off. To create and populate a new world. But if we don't, I suspect we'll end very much like your Quraquat."

  "It's a scheme. Leave the old animosities behind. You can't do that unless you find a way to leave their human nature behind. And you're prepared to sacrifice a major source of knowledge to this aberration." Damn the man and his arrogant smile. "Granting your premise, there will be other worlds. Why not be patient? Why not wait for a world you won't have to terraform?"

  "Can you guarantee the discovery of a reasonable habitat within the next half-century?"

  "Guarantee? Of course not. But there's a good chance."

  "Perhaps you wouldn't object if we settled on Inakademeri? And kicked the Noks off?"

  Richard stood. "I'm sorry to find you so determined."

  "And I to find you so obtuse. But you're right: I am determined. Determined to see that we get another chance. And you must understand, this may be the only window. Delay, back off to save your pots on Quraqua, and someone may find a better way to spend the money. Once that happens, the game is over."

  "It is not a game." He banged the glass down, shattering it. Gingerly he released the broken stem and mumbled an apology.

  Caseway laid his handkerchief on the spilled wine. "It's quite all right," he said. "You were saying—?"

  Richard plunged ahead: "Norman, there is potentially explosive information at the Temple of the Winds."

  Caseway nodded. "And what is the nature of this information?"

  "We have evidence there was a contact between the Quraquat and the Monument-Makers."

  His eyebrows rose. That had hit home. "What sort of evidence?"

  Richard showed him a copy of the Tull bas-relief.

  "It's hard to be sure," Caseway said. He pointed over Richard's shoulder and the desert vanished. They were seated in a modest wood-paneled room, bare save for the two chairs and the coffee table. "Not that it matters. There are always good reasons to delay." His eyes narrowed. "Money. Political considerations. The promise of better technology next year. Did you follow the debates over whether we have the moral right to destroy an extraterrestrial ecology? The Committee for Common Decency almost got us canceled because we are subverting God's plan for Quraqua. Whatever that might be." His brow creased. "I know what you're saying. I even agree with you, up to a point. I should tell you that if I had my choice, I would go to Nok, take it over, and leave the Temple to you."

  Later, when Richard replayed the conversation, the final remark chilled him, because it came from a man he had begun to like.

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  4

  NCA Winckelmann. Wednesday, May 12; 1410 GMT

  Earth and moon fell behind.

  Hutch sat on the bridge of the Johann Winckelmann, watching the familiar globes fade to bright stars. Once more into the breach, dear friends. Already Cal was receding, growing hazy, as if his existence were a Schrodinger effect, dependent on her presence. Maybe he was right about her.

  Richard was moving around in back, unpacking, getting settled. She was grateful for the last-minute change in plans, which had saved her from a solitary ride out to Quraqua. In her present mood she needed a diversion. And her passenger was the perfect prescription: she knew him well enough to tell him everything, and he would tolerate no self-pity.

  They'd had breakfast before departure, and then he'd disappeared into his notebooks. He was excited about something, which was another reason she was delighted to have him aboard. Richard was always on a crusade. He did not come forward after launch, but that was not unusual behavior either. At some point he'd wander up, probably when he got hungry, because he didn't like to eat alone. And he'd explain everything.

  She knew about the enigma on Oz, of course. She was pleased that Richard was going to take a look at it, and she looked forward to hearing his ideas on the subject.

  But seven hours out he still hadn't appeared, and she informed him they were about to make the jump. "Ten minutes," she said, over the ship's comm. And added: "Estimate twenty-five days to Quraqua."

  "Thanks, Hutch." He sounded disgusted. That would be because he was anxious to get started. By the second day he would begin to prowl the ship and challenge her to chess matches and bemoan his inability to get around more quickly. He'd stand on the bridge and watch the Tran dimensional mists drift past while Wink proceeded with the apparent velocity of a flatboat.

  He came forward carrying a package of cinnamon buns. "How we doing?" he asked.

  "Fine. Buckle in."

  He sat down, secured the web, and offered her one of the pastries. "Good to see you again."

  The wraparound view panel was open. The stars were bright and lovely. Their soft glow suffused the bridge. The interior lights were off, save for a few of the status lamps. They might easily have been outdoors on a terrace.

  Richard made small talk for a few minutes. And then, when she saw an opportunity, Hutch wondered aloud about Oz. "It's not really a product of the Monument-Makers, is it? I mean, it's not at all like the other stuff."

  His expression clouded. "Until a few days ago, I wouldn't have thought so. Now I'm not so sure." He passed her Henry's transmission.

  The similarity was quite clear. "They found this in an eleven-thousand-year-old excavation?"

  "Yes. What do you think?"

  "It's one of them." She chuckled. "They went down and got their picture taken. I'll be damned."

  Hutch went through her checklist prior to insertion. "I always thought it had to be them," she said. "That built Oz, I mean. Who else is there?"

  Richard looked disappointed. "We don't really know, do we, Hutch? Anyway, to be honest with you, Oz is a place that I've preferred to ignore. It doesn't fit any kind of rational scenario I can think of."

  Hutch looked back at the Death-image. It touched something deep in her soul.

  "Well," said Richard, "I'm sure Henry's people will have some ideas."

  An amber lamp began to glow. "Insertion coming up," she said quietly. Power couplings activated. "Ten seconds."

  Richard settled back into his web. "If it's really them, it might mean they suffered some sort of precipitous decline." His eyes drifted shut. "1 hope not."

  The engines fired, and the stars went out. That was the only physical effect of the leap into Tran dimensional space. There was not even a sense of motion. Some claimed to feel a slight vertigo, but Hutch thought they were generally overwrought types anyway.

  It was a little like passing through a tunnel. When the tunnel faded, a process that might require anywhere from half a minute to almost an hour, it had given way to the gray mist.

  Systems went green, and she closed off the forward view.

  "— I'd hate to think that, in the end, they went mad."

  "Isn't that a little strong?" She had waited on the pastry. Now she poured fresh coffee and helped herself.

  "Mad? You won't think so when you've seen Oz."

  LIBRARY ENTRY WHERE IS THE PAYOFF?

  … The wealth that was to accrue from interstellar flight has never materialized. We have had minor tech-nological advances that might have been achieved any-way, at a fraction of the cost. We have learned that intelligent species existed on two remote worlds, and that they exist no longer; and that, on a third world, another species is currently waging a global war. One might argue that these results (combined with our own failure to respond to deteriorating conditions on Earth) suggest that what we have really learned is that intelli-

  gence is rarer than we thought. There is some reason to suppose it has yet to evolve. Anywhere. The annual cost of maintaining the interstellar pro-gram at its current level would feed every man, wom-an, and child in India and Pakistan. Currently, there are eighteen thousand researchers in extrasolar stations.

  Many of these stations have been in place for thirty years, since the dawn of the Interstellar Age. And we thave reams of esoteric material describing climatic con-

  ditions and tectonics on other worlds. The Globe has no quarrel with this acquisition of scientific knowledge. But it is time, and more than time, to strike a balance. We are in deep trouble. We cannot feed, or house, or care for, a substantial portion of the global population, Those who smirk at the Noks and their World War I-style conflict might note that the daily toll from famine and malnutrition in China is higher than the total dead in the Nok War last year.

  Meantime, PSA lobbies for more funds to build more ships. It is time to call a halt.

  — Editorial, The Boston Globe

  May 22, 2202

  5

  Qumqua's Moon. Sunday, June 6; 0734 hours

  Quraqua had a single satellite, roughly half the size of the Moon, ash-gray, scarred, airless. Tonight it was a bright yellow crescent, friendly, luminous. Inviting. But it was a moon with a difference. Six years ago, the pilot of an incoming packet had noticed what he thought was a city high in its northern quarter. "Richard?"

  He was absorbed in a hand-drawn chart spread out on his knees and across a sizable portion of the instrument panel. He waggled his hand to indicate he'd heard. "Let Henry know we're here," he said. "And make for Oz."

  Beneath the red sun Bellatrix, and cloud-shrouded Quraqua, Winckelmann's shuttle Alpha (there was no Beta) glided over the moonscape. Peaks and gorges and craters merged with glare and shadow. The shuttle crossed a low mountain range and hurtled out over a sea of flat polished rock. Richard sat quietly, as he always did at such times, leaning forward against his restraints, gazing placidly out the window. Hutch was uncomfortable with his insistence on coming here first. She would have preferred to complete preparations for the evacuation before they undertook any side adventures. There would be cargo to load, and last-minute problems, and she wanted all that worked out well in advance. Instead, she could imagine Richard getting caught up in the anomaly, and adding complications.

  His attitude did nothing to dispel those fears. "Plenty of time," he said. "We have until the eleventh." Five days.

  A ridge appeared, swept toward them, and vanished. The mare was heavily pocked. The Guide Book, which she had posted on her overhead display, indicated it was the oldest surface area on the moon. "Some of these craters," she said, "are two billion years old."

  Richard nodded, not listening. He wasn't interested in geology.

  A sensor lamp blinked on.

  "Ship on the scope. Henry's shuttle."

  "Good." His expression warmed.

  "It's about twenty minutes behind us." Hutch switched to manual, noted her position on the navigational displays, and throttled back.

  "Be good to
see him again." His eyes brightened. "This has to be a hard time for him. We thought we had forever to excavate Quraqua. Nobody believed we'd be ordered off. It turns out we were too cautious. Should have plowed right in. Like Schliemann."

  Hutch had met Henry twice. He was an odd, rumpled little man who had given a lecture she'd attended when she was trying to learn enough archeology to persuade the Academy that she could be an asset. Two years later, when they'd shared passage on the Moon relay, he'd surprised her by remembering who she was. He even knew her name. Priscilla.

  The ground began to break up into canyons. A range of needle peaks swept past.

  "What were they like?" she asked. "The Quraquat?"

  "They lived a long time. Individually, I mean." He fumbled in his jacket. "I should have a sketch here somewhere—must have left it in my room. Or" — sheepishly—"at home." He kept searching pockets. "They looked like furry gators. But they were warm-blooded—"

  "No: I mean what were they like? What did they do? I know they had two sexes, and they had long life spans. What else?"

  "They had a lot of dark ages. Not as barbarous as Earth's, not as military. But stagnant. Sometimes nothing would happen for a thousand years. No political development. No science. Nothing. They also had a talent for losing things. For example, we know of three different occasions on which they discovered Quraqua was not the center of the universe."

  "Why? Why all the dark ages?"

  "Who knows? Maybe we'll go through them too. We just haven't been around very long. In the case of the Quraquat,

  they might have been victims of their life spans. The wrong people succeed to power and don't die. Not for a long time." He tried unsuccessfully to brush his hair out of his eyes. "Think about that. Imagine having to deal with Hart for the next sixty years." (Adrian Hart was the current chairman of the Academy Board of Trustees. He was fussy and vindictive, a micro manager with no ideas.) An amber lamp started to blink. "Coming up," she said. Sunlight danced off the rocks ahead. The reflection splintered, and raced in both directions across the plain. They might have been looking at an illuminated highway, bright, incandescent.