The Engines of God Read online

  The crocodilian image of the god-hero was not without its nobility. In one frieze, he contemplates mortality in the presence of dark-robed Death.

  “Eventually,” said Linda, “he asks that his godhood be restored. Here, look at the supplicating hands.”

  Henry nodded. “I assume it was restored?”

  “Telmon left the decision to him. I will comply with your wish. But you have chosen by far the better part. Continue in your present course, and you will be loved so long as men walk in the world. She didn’t say ‘men,’ of course, but used the Quraquat equivalent.” Linda illuminated the final tableau. Here, he has made his decision, and puts on his armor for the last time.

  “After his death, his mother placed him among the stars.” She turned toward Henry. “That’s the point of the myth. Death is inevitable. Even the gods are ultimately subject to it. Like the Norse deities. To embrace it voluntarily, for others, is the true measure of divinity.”

  The dark, robed figure was disturbing. “Something familiar about it,” said Henry.

  Carson shook his head. “It just looks like your basic Grim Reaper to me.”

  “No.” He had seen the thing before. Somewhere. “It isn’t Quraquat, is it?”

  Art pointed a lamp at it. “Say again?”

  “It isn’t Quraquat. Look at it.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Linda. “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “But take a close look. What does it remind you of?”

  Carson took a deep breath. “The thing on Iapetus,” he said. “It’s one of the Monuments.”

  Dear Phil,

  We got a complete set of the Seasons of Tull today. I have attached details of the design, and tracings of eight wedges with inscriptions in Casumel Linear C. We are exceedingly fortunate: the place is in excellent condition, considering that it was close to sea water for most of its existence, and in the water for the last few centuries.

  Time was, we would have had a major celebration. But we are getting close to the end here. We’ll be turning everything over to the terraformers in a few weeks. In fact, we are the last team left on Quraqua. Everybody else has gone home. Henry, bless him, won’t leave until they push the button.

  Anyway, your wunderkind has struck gold. Henry thinks they’ll name the new Academy library for me.

  Linda

  —Linda Thomas

  Letter to her mentor, Dr. Philip Berthold, University of Antioch. Dated the 211th day of the 28th year of the Quraqua Mission. Received in Yellow Springs, Ohio, May 28, 2202.

  2.

  Princeton. Thursday, May 6, 2202; 1730 hours.

  Hutch killed the engine and the lights, and watched the first wave of office workers spread out through the storm. Most headed for the train station, an elevated platform lost in the hard rain. Some huddled in the shelter of the Tarpley Building, and a few—the more prosperous—dashed for their cars. The sky sagged into the parking lot, its underside illuminated by streetlights and traffic.

  His lights were still on, but the blinds were down. It was a corner office on the top floor of a squat utilitarian building, a block of concrete and glass, housing law firms, insurance agents, and jobbers reps. Not the sort of place one would associate with romance. But for her, just being here again, just seeing it, set her internal tides rolling.

  People were piling up at the main doors, pulling their collars tight, wrestling with umbrellas. Two or three energy fields blinked on. Cars swung into the approaches, headlamps blurred, wipers moving rhythmically.

  Hutch sat unmoving, waiting for the lights to go out, waiting for Cal Hartlett to appear out on the street, wondering what she would do when he did. That she was here at all angered her. It was time to let go, but instead she was hanging around like a lovesick adolescent, hoping something would happen. Hoping he would change his mind when he saw her, as though everything they’d had would come rushing back. But if she didn’t try, she would have to live with that knowledge, and she would always wonder.

  She shrank down into the front seat, and drew the rain and the night around her.

  He had first confessed his love to her in that office. She’d sat in as a systems technician for him one memorable evening, and they’d stayed until dawn.

  How long ago all that seemed now. She had been between flights, and when it all ended everything had seemed possible. We’ll find a way.

  The glide train appeared in the distance, a string of bright lights against the general gloom. A few people hurrying across the lot broke into a run. It approached on a long slow curve, braked, and whispered into the station.

  Cal was a financial analyst with the brokerage firm of Forman & Dyer. He enjoyed his work, loved to play with numbers, had been fascinated by her profession. My star pilot. He loved to listen to her descriptions of distant worlds, had extracted a promise that one day, somehow, she would take him along. At least, he’d smiled, to the Moon. He had gray eyes and brown hair and good laugh lines. And he loved her.

  The lights in his office went out.

  He lived eight blocks away. Cal was a fitness nut, and even in weather like this he would walk home.

  The glide train pulled out, accelerated, and slipped into the storm.

  The steady flow of people thinned to a handful. She watched the last of them, several waving down their rides, two breaking into a run toward the station.

  And then he came through the door. Even at this distance, and in the blurred light, there could be no mistaking him.

  She took a deep breath.

  Cal pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his soft brown jacket and strode into the lot, away from her, with a quick step. She watched him cross the plastene, skirting puddles, plowing steadily ahead through the storm.

  She hesitated, very deliberately shifted to low feed, and switched on the engine. The car moved silently across the pavement, and drew up beside him. Until the last moment, she was uncertain whether or not she would swerve away.

  Then he saw her. Her window was down, rain pouring in. He looked startled, pleased, ecstatic, uncomfortable. The whole range of emotions played across his face. “Hutch.” He stared at her. “What are you doing here?”

  She smiled, and was glad she’d come. “Want a ride?”

  The passenger’s door lifted, but he stood watching her. “I didn’t know you were home.”

  “I’m home. Listen, you’re getting drenched.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” He came around the front of the car and got in. The after-shave was the same. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay. How about you?”

  “Fine.” His voice was flat. “You look good.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But then you’ve always looked good.”

  She smiled again, warmer this time, leaned over, and carefully kissed his cheek. Cal had seemed fairly dull when she’d first met him. And his profession had done nothing to enhance that image. But he’d touched her in some primal way so that she knew, whatever happened tonight, she’d never be the same. His appearance, which had been so ordinary in the beginning, was now leading-man, drop-dead caliber. How and when had that happened? She had no idea.

  “I wanted to say hello.” Swallow. “See you again.” Who were the couple who slept with a sword between them to ensure forbearance? She felt the presence of the sword, hard and dead.

  He was silent, searching. “Hello.”

  Rain rattled on the roof. “I missed you.”

  He frowned. Looked uncomfortable. “Hutch, I have something to tell you.”

  Up front, she thought. That was his style. “You’re getting married.”

  His eyes widened again. He grinned. It was the sheepish, friendly, disingenuous grin that had first attracted her two years before. Tonight, it reflected relief. The worst of this was already over. “How did you know?”

  She shrugged. “People were telling me about it ten minutes after I landed.”

  “I’m sorry. I would have told you myself, but I didn�
��t know you were back.”

  “It’s not a problem. Who is she?” She negotiated a deep puddle at the exit, and turned onto Harrington Avenue.

  “Her name’s Teresa Pepperdil. She’s like you: uses her last name. Everybody calls her ‘Pep.’ She’s a teacher.”

  “She’s attractive, of course.”

  “Again, like you. I always restrict myself to beautiful women.” He meant it as a compliment, but it was clumsy, and it hurt.

  Hutch said nothing.

  He looked past her, avoiding eye contact. “What can I tell you? She lives in South Jersey, and, as far as I know, she plans to stay here.” He sounded defensive.

  “Well, congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  She turned left onto 11th. Cal’s apartment was just ahead, in a condo designed to look like a castle. The pennants hung limply. “Listen,” she said, “why don’t we stop and have a drink somewhere?” She almost added, for old time’s sake.

  “Can’t,” he said. “She’ll be over in a little while. I need to get cleaned up.”

  She pulled in at the curb, short of the driveway. Cut the engine. She wanted to back off, let it go, not embarrass herself. “Cal,” she said, “there’s still time for us.” She spoke so softly she wasn’t sure he’d heard.

  “No.” His eyes turned away. She had expected anger, perhaps bitterness, sadness. But there was none of that. His voice sounded hollow. “There never was time for us. Not really.”

  She said nothing. A man approached with a dog. He glanced at them curiously, recognized Cal, mumbled a greeting, and passed on. “We could still make it work,” she said. “If we really wanted to.” She held her breath, and realized with numbing suddenness that she was afraid he would say yes.

  “Hutch.” He took her hand. “You’re never here. I’m what you do between flights. A port of call.”

  “That’s not what I intended.”

  “It’s what happens. How many times have we had this conversation? I look at the sky at night, and I know you’re out there somewhere. How the hell could you ever settle in to hang around Princeton the rest of your life? And rear kids? Go to PTA meetings?”

  “I could do it.” Another lie? She seemed to be flying on automatic now.

  He shook his head. “Even when you’re here, you’re not here.” His eyes met hers, finally. They were hard, holding her out. “When’s your next flight?”

  She squeezed his hand, got no response, and released it. “Next week. I’m going out to evacuate the Academy team on Quraqua.”

  “Nothing ever changes, does it?”

  “I guess not.”

  “No—” He shook his head. “I’ve seen your eyes when you start talking about those places, Hutch. I know what you’re like when you’re ready to leave. Did you know you usually can’t wait to get away? You could never settle for me.” His voice trembled. “Hutch, I love you. Always have. Always will, though I won’t mention it again. I would have given anything for you. But you’re beyond reach. You would come to hate me.”

  “That would never happen.”

  “Sure it would. We both know that if I said, fine, let’s go back and start again, you call up what’s-his-name and tell him you’re not going to Quraqua, wherever the hell that is, and you’d immediately start having second thoughts. Immediately. And I’ll tell you something else: when I get out of the car, and you wave goodbye and drive away, you’re going to be relieved.” He looked at her, and smiled. “Hutch, Pep’s a good woman. You’d like her. Be happy for me.”

  She nodded. Slowly.

  “Got to go. Give me a kiss for the old days.”

  She managed a smile. Saw its reflection in his face. “Make it count,” she said, and drank deep.

  Moments later, as she turned onto the Conover Expressway headed north, she decided he was wrong. For the moment, at least, she felt only regret.

  Amity Island, Maine. Friday, May 7; 2000 hours.

  Hurricanes had been Emily’s kind of weather. She’d loved riding them out, sitting in front of the fireplace with a glass of Chianti, listening to the wind howl around the central dome, watching the trees bend. She’d loved them even though they were getting bigger every year, hungrier, wearing down the beach, gradually drowning the island.

  Maybe that was why she loved them: they were part of the intricate mechanism of steadily rising seas and retreating forests and advancing deserts that had finally forced reluctant politicians, after three centuries of neglect, to act. Probably too late, she had believed. But she heard in the deep-throated roar of the big storms the voice of the planet.

  Richard Wald was struck by her in their first encounter. That had come in the days when archeology was still earth-bound, and they’d been seated across a table in a Hittite statuary seminar. He’d lost track of the statuary, but pursued Emily across three continents and through some of the dingiest restaurants in the Middle East.

  After her death, he had not married again. Not that he’d failed to recover emotionally from his loss, nor that he’d been unable to find anyone else. But the sense of what he’d had with her had never been duplicated, nor even approached. His passion for Emily had dwarfed even his love for ancient knowledge. He did not expect to find such a woman again.

  It had been her idea to settle in Maine, well away from D.C. or New York. He’d written Babylonian Summer here, the book that made his reputation. They’d been here on Thanksgiving Day, watching a storm like this one, when the announcement came that FTL had been achieved. (At the time neither Richard nor Emily had understood what was so special about FTL, much less how it would change their profession.) That had been just two weeks before she’d died, enroute to visit her family before the holidays.

  Rain blew hard against the windows. The big spruce trees in his front yard, and across the street at Jackson’s, were heaving. There was no longer a hurricane season. They came at all times of the year. Counting from January 1, this was the seventh. They’d named it Gwen.

  Richard had been reviewing his notes on the Great Monuments while preparing to write an article for the Archeological Review. It was a discussion of the current disappointment that we were no closer to finding the Monument-Makers after twenty years of effort. He argued that there was something to be said for not finding them: Without direct contact, they (the Monument-Makers) have become a considerable mythic force. We know now that it is possible to create an advanced culture, dedicated to those aspects of existence that make life worthwhile, and even noble. How else explain the motivation that erected memorials of such compelling beauty?

  It might be best, he thought, if we never know them, other than through their art. The artist is always inferior to the creation. What after all are Paeonius, Cezanne, and Marimoto when contrasted with the “Nike,” “Val d’Arc,” and the “Red Moon”? Firsthand knowledge could hardly lead to anything other than disappointment. And yet—And yet, what would he not give to sit here on this night, with the storm hammering at the door, and Beethoven’s Fifth in the air, talking with one of those creatures? What were you thinking atop that ridge? Hutch thinks she understands, but what was really going through your mind? Why did you come here? Did you know about us? Do you simply wander through the galaxy, seeking its wonders?

  Were you alone?

  The leading edge of Hurricane Gwen packed two hundred-kilometer winds. Black rain whipped across his lawn and shook the house. Thick gray clouds torn by livid welts fled past the rooftops. The metal sign atop Stafford’s Pharmacy flapped and banged with steady rhythm. It would probably come loose again, but it was downwind of the town, and there was nothing the other side of it except sand pits and water.

  Richard refilled his glass. He enjoyed sitting with a warm Burgundy near the shuttered bay window, while the wind drove his thoughts. One was more alone in heavy weather than on the surface of Iapetus, and he loved isolation. In a way he did not understand, it was connected with the same passions that flowed when he walked the halls of long-dead civilizations. O
r listened to the murmur of the ocean on the shores of time…

  There was no purification ritual anywhere in the world to match that of a Force 4 hurricane: Penobscot Avenue gleamed, the streetlights glowed mistily in the twilight, dead branches sailed through town with deadly grace.

  Keep down.

  It was, however, a guilty pleasure. The big storms were gradually washing away Amity Island. Indeed, it was possible, when the ocean was clear, to ride out a quarter mile and look down into the water at old Route One.

  He’d been invited to eat at the Plunketts that evening. They’d wanted him to stay over, because of the storm. He’d passed. The Plunketts were interesting people, and they’d have played some bridge (which was another of Richard’s passions). But he wanted the storm, wanted to be alone with it. Working on a major project, he told them. Thanks, anyhow.

  The major project would consist of curling up for the evening with Dickens. Richard was halfway through Bleak House. He loved the warm humanity of Dickens’ books, and found in them (to the immense amusement of his colleagues) some parallels to the Monuments. Both espoused, it seemed to him, a sense of compassion and intelligence adrift in a hostile universe. Both were ultimately optimistic. Both were products of a lost world. And both used reflected light to achieve their sharpest effects.

  How on earth can you say that, Wald?

  Carton in A Tale of Two Cities. Sam Weller in Pickwick. In Dickens, the point always comes from an unexpected angle.

  Richard Wald was somewhat thinner than he had been when he’d walked the ridge with Hutch five years before. He watched his weight more carefully now, jogged occasionally, and drank less. The only thing left for him seemed to be womanizing. And the Monuments.

  The meaning of the Monuments had been debated endlessly by legions of theorists. Experts tended to complicate matters beyond recall. To Richard it all seemed painfully clear: they were memorials, letters sent across the ages in the only true universal script. Hail and farewell, fellow Traveler. In the words of the Arab poet, Menakhat, The great dark is too great, and the night too deep. We will never meet, you and I. Let me pause therefore, and raise a glass.