Jack Mcdevitt - Engines of God

THE ENGINES OF GOD

Jack McDevitt

In the streets of Hau-kai, we wait. Night comes, winter descends. The lights of the

world grow cold. And, in this three-hundredth year From the ascendancy of Bilat, He

will come who treads the dawn, Tramples the sun beneath his feet. And judges the

souls of men. He will stride across the rooftops. And he will fire the engines of God.

—Uranic Book of Prayer (Quraqua) (Translated by Margaret Tufu)

PROLOGUE

lapetus. Sunday, February 12, 2197; 0845 GMT.

The thing was carved of ice and rock. It stood serenely on that bleak, snow-covered

plain, a nightmare figure of gently curving claws, surreal eyes, and lean fluidity. The

lips were parted, rounded, almost sexual. Priscilla Hutchins wasn't sure why it was so

disquieting. It was more than the carnivorous aspect of the creature, the long slow

menace of talons, the moonlight stealth of the lower limbs. It was more even than the

vaguely aggressive stance, or the position of the figure in the center of an otherwise

lifeless plain beneath the October light of Saturn's rings.

Rather, it seemed to flow from its interest in the ringed world which was forever

frozen above a tract of low hills and ridges in the west. Stamped on its icy features

was an expression she could only have described as philosophical ferocity.

"I keep coming back." Richard's voice echoed in her earphones. It was filled with

emotion. "Of all the Monuments, this was the first, and it is the centerpiece."

They stood on a ramp, designed to preserve the tracks of the original expedition.

Here was where Terri Case had stood; and there, Cathie Chung. The heavy

bootprints circling the figure, up close, those belonged to Steinitz himself. (She knew

because she'd seen the ancient video records countless times, had watched the

astronauts clumping about in their awkward pressure suits.)

She smiled at the memory, pushing her hands down into her pockets, watching

Richard Wald in his rumpled gray jeans and white sweater, his Irish country hat

pressed down on his head. (It didn't quite fit within the bubble of articulated energy

that provided breathing space.) He was slightly out of focus, difficult to see, within the

Flickinger field. Much as

he was in ordinary life. Richard was one of the great names in archeology. He would

be remembered as long as people were interested in where they'd come from, as

long as they continued to send out explorers. Yet here he stood, as awed as she,

momentarily a child, in the presence of this thing. Around them, the silence and the

desolation crashed down.

Hutchins, on first glance, might have been one of those diminutive women with finely

chiseled features and a beguiling smile who seemed more akin to the drawing room

than to a bleak moonscape. Her eyes were dark and good-humored, and an initial

impression might suggest that they reflected empty conviviality. But they were

capable of igniting.

Her black hair was cut short. It peeked out from beneath a broad-brimmed safari hat.

Everyone who knew her believed that it was her slight stature that had fueled her

various ambitions; that she had chased men, and professional success, and

eventually the stars, all out of the same drive to compensate. She knew it wasn't true,

or believed it wasn't. The reality was far simpler, but not the sort of thing she would

tell anyone: her father had taken her to Luna when she was eight, and she had felt

the full force of the enormous age of the place. It had occupied her dreams and

overwhelmed her waking hours. It had driven a sense of her own transience into her

soul. Live while you can, indulge your passions. Make it count. The ancient storm

stirred again while she looked into the frozen emotions of the ice creature. And

recognized them.

Richard Wald folded his arms and pressed them against his sweater, as if, inside his

energy envelope, he was cold. He was tall, and embodied the kind of self-conscious

dignity one finds in those who have achieved a degree of fame and never quite come

to terms with it.

Despite his sixty years, Richard was a man of remarkable vitality. And exuberance.

He was known to like a good drink, and a good party; and he loved the company of

women. He was careful, however, to maintain a purely professional demeanor with

Hutchins, his pilot. There was something of the Old Testament prophet in his

appearance. He had a thick silver mane and mustache, high cheekbones, and a

preemptive blue gaze. But the stem appearance was a facade. He was, in Hutchins'

amused view, a pussycat.

He had been here before. This was, in a sense, where he had been born.

This was the First Monument, the unlikely pseudo-contact that had alerted the human

race two hundred years ago to the fact they were not alone. Explorers had found

thirteen others, of varying design, among the stars. Richard believed there were

several thousand more,

The Great Monuments were his overriding passion. Their images decorated the walls

of his home in Maine: a cloudy pyramid orbiting a rocky world off blue-white Sinus, a

black cluster of crystal spheres and cones mounted in a snowfield near the south

pole of lifeless Amis V, a transparent wedge orbiting Arcturus. (Hutchins' throat mike

was a cunningly executed reproduction of the Arcturian Wedge.) Most spectacular

among the relics was an object that resembled a circular pavilion complete with

columns and steps, cut from the side of a mountain on a misshapen asteroid in the

Procyon system. ("It looked," Richard had told her, "as if it were awaiting the arrival of

the orchestra.") Hutchins had only seen the pictures, had not yet visited these magic

places. But the was going. She would stand one day in their presence, and she

would feel the hand of their creators as she did here, Itwould have been difficult to do

on her own; there were many pilots and few missions. But Richard had recognized a

kindred spirit. He wanted her to see the Monuments, because in her reactions he

could relive his own. Besides, she was

damned good.

Of all the artifacts, only the lapetus figure could be interpreted as a self-portrait. The

wings were half-folded. The creature'S taloned hands, each with six digits, reached

toward Saturn. Clearly female, it looked past Richard, arms open, legs braced,

weight slightly forward. It was almost erotic. Its blind eyes stared across the plain. It

was set on a block of ice about a third its own height. Three lines of sharp, white

symbols were stenciled within the ice. To Hutchins' mind, the script possessed an

Arabic delicacy and elegance. It was characterized by loops and crescents and

curves. And, as the sun moved across the sky, the symbols embraced the light, and

came alive. No one knew what the inscription meant. The base was half again as

wide as Hutchins with arms out-spread. The creature itself was three and a half

meters high, That it was a self-portrait was known because the Steinitz expedition

had found on the plain prints that matched the creatures's feet.

The ramp was designed to allow visitors to get close enough to touch the artifact

without disturbing anything. Richard stood thoughtfully before it. He pressed Jus

fingertips against the base, nodded, and unhooked a lamp from his belt He switched

it on and played it across the inscription. The symbols brightened, lengthened,

shifted.

"Nice effect," Hutchins said.

Each of the Monuments had an inscription. But no two seemed to be derived from

the same writing system. Theory held that the objects were indeed monuments, but

that they had been constructed during different epochs.

Hutchins stared into its blind eyes. "Kilroy was here," she said.

She knew that all the Monuments were believed to date to a five-thousand-year

period ending roughly at 19,000 B.C. This was thought to be one of the earlier

figures. "I wonder why they stopped," she said.

Richard looked up at the stars. "Who knows? Five thousand years is a long time.

Maybe they got bored." He came over and stood by her. "Cultures change. We can't

expect them to do it forever."

The unspoken question: Did they still exist?

What a pity we missed them. Everyone who came here shared the same reaction. So

close. A few millennia, a bare whisper of cosmic time.

One of the landers from the Steinitz expedition had been left behind. A gray, clumsy

vehicle, with an old U.S. flag painted near an open cargo-bay door, it lay two hundred

meters away, at the far end of the ramp. Lost piece of a lost world. Lights glowed

cheerily in the pilot's cabin, and a sign invited visitors to tour.

Richard had turned back to the inscription.

"What do you think it says?" she asked.

"Name and a date." He stepped back. "You had it right, I think. Kilroy was here."

She glanced away from the figure, out across the plain, sterile and white and scarred

with craters. It ascended gradually toward a series of ridges, pale in the ghastly light

of the giant planet, (lapetus was so small that one was acutely conpious of standing

on a sphere. The sensation did not bother her, but she knew that when Richard's

excitement died away, it would affect him.)

The figure looked directly at Saturn. The planet, low on the horizon, was in its third

quarter, It had been in that exact position when she was here, and it would be there

when another twenty thousand years bad passed, It was flattened at the poles, with a

somewhat larger aspect than the Moon. The rings were tilted forward, a brilliant

panorama of greens and blues, sliced off sharply by the planet's shadow.

Richard disappeared behind the figure. His voice crackled in her earphones: "She's

magnificent. Hatch."

When they'd finished their inspection, they retreated inside the Steinitz lander. She

was glad to get in off the moonscape, to kill the energy field (which always induced

an unpleasant tingling sensation), to dispose of her weights, and to savor the

reassurance of wails and interior lighting. The vessel was maintained by the Park

Service more or less as it had been two centuries earlier, complete with photos of the

members of the Steinitz team.

Richard, buoyed by his excitement, passed before the photos one by one. Hutch

filled their cups with coffee, and lifted hers in toast. 'To Frank Steinitz," she said. "And

his crew."

Steinitz: there was a name, as they say, to conjure with. His had been the first deep-

space mission, five Athenas to Saturn. It was an attempt to capture the public

imagination for a dying space program: an investigation of a peculiar object

photographed by a Voyager on lapetus two decades earlier. They'd returned with no

answers, and only a carved figure that no one could explain, and film of strange

footprints on the frozen surface of the moon. The mission had been inordinately

expensive; political cartoonists had loved it, and an American presidency had been

destroyed. The Steinitz group had borne permanent scars from the flight: they had

demonstrated beyond all further quibble the devasting effects of prolonged

weightlessness. Ligaments and tendons had loosened, and muscles turned to slush.

Several of the astronauts had developed heart problems. All had suffered from

assorted neuroses. It was the first indication that humans would not adjust easily to

living off-Earth. Steinitz' photo was mounted in the center. The image was similiar;

he'd been overweight, aggressive, utterly dedicated, a man who had lied about his

age while NASA looked the other way. "The bitch of it," Richard said solemnly,

turning toward the windows and gazing out at the ice figure, "is that we'll never meet

them."

She understood he was referring to the Monument-Makers.

"It was," he continued, "Steinitz' comment when he first saw her. And he was right."

"Right for his age. Not necessarily for ours." She didn't exactly believe that, since the

Monument-Makers seemed to have vanished. Nevertheless it was the right thing to

say. She examined her coffee mug. "I'm amazed that they were able to get that kind

of articulation and detail into a block of ice."

"What do you think of it?" he asked.

"I don't know. It is disquieting. Almost oppressive. I don't really know how to describe

it." She swung the chair around, turning her back to the plain. "Maybe it's the

desolation."

"I'll tell you what it is for me," he said. "It's her footprints. There's only one set."

Hutch didn't quite understand.

"She was alone."

The figure was idealized. It watched Saturn with unmistakable interest, and there was

nobility and grace in its lines.

Hutch read something else at the juncture of beak and jaw, and in the corners of the

eyes: an amalgam of arrogance and distrust laced with stoicism. Tenacity. Perhaps

even fear.

"The inscription," she said. "It's probably the thing's name."

"That's the position Muncie takes. If in fact it's a work of art and nothing else, it could

be the title of the work. "The Watcher.' 'Outpost.' Something like that."

"Or," said Hutch, "maybe the name of a goddess."

"Possibly. One of the members of the original mission suggested it might be a claim

marker."

"If so," she said, "they're welcome to this rock."

"They were thinking more of the solar system." The plain lay flat and sterile. The

rings were knife-edge bright. "Are you ready to take a walk?"

They followed the ramp out onto the plain. Off to one side they could see the booted

tracks of the astronauts. Approximately a kilometer and a half west, her prints

appeared.

There were two sets, going in opposite directions. She wore no shoes, and the length

of both the foot and the stride,

measured against the anatomy of the ice figure, suggested a creature about three

meters tail. They could distinguish six toes on each foot, which was also consistent.

"Almost as if," Hutch said, "the thing climbed down and went for a walk."

Chilling thought, that. They both glanced reflexively behind them.

One set of tracks proceeded west into the uplands.

The other wheeled out across the plain, on a course well north of the artifact.

Astronaut prints, and ramps, followed in both directions. Richard and Hutch turned

north.

"The bare feet shook them up," said Richard. "Now, you and I could match the trick, if

we wanted."

After about a quarter-kilometer, the prints stopped dead in the middle of the snow.

Both sets, coming and going. "There must have been a ship here," Hutch said.

"Apparently." The snow beyond the prints was untouched.

The ramp circled the area, marking off a space about the size of a baseball diamond.

Richard walked completely around the circle, stopping occasionally to examine the

surface. "You can see holes," he said, pointing them out. "The ship must have been

mounted on stilts. The prints show us where the creature first appeared. It—she—

walked off the way we've come, and went up into the hills. She cut a slab of rock and

ice out of a wall up there. We'll go take a look at the spot. She fashioned the figure,

put it back on board, and flew it to the site." He looked in the direction of the ice

figure. "There are holes back there, too."

"Why haul it at all? Why not leave it up in the hills?"

"Who knows? Why put something here and not there? Maybe it would have been too

easy." He tapped the ramp with his toe. "We're in a valley. It's hard to see, because

the sides are low, and the curve of the land is so sharp. But it's there. The ice figure

is located precisely in the center."

After a while they went back the other way, and followed the tracks into the hills. The

walkway plunged through deep snow and soared over ravines. The prints themselves

twice went directly up to sheer walls and stopped. "They continue higher up," said

Richard.

"Anti-gravity?"

"Not supposed to be possible. But how else would you explain any of this?"

Hutch shrugged.

They entered the ravine from which the ice and stone for the figure had been taken.

A block had been sliced cleanly out of one wall, leaving a cut three times the visitor's

height. The prints passed the place, continued upslope, and petered out on thick ice.

They reappeared a little farther atop a ridge.

The ground dropped sharply away on both sides. It was a long way down.

Richard strode along the ramp, submerged in his thoughts, not speaking, gazing

neither right nor left. Hutch tried to caution him that the energy field provided fair

traction at best, that the light gravity was treacherous. "You could sail off without

much effort. You'd fall kind of slow, but when you hit bottom, there would be a very

big splash." He grunted, and went a little easier, but not enough to satisfy her.

They continued along the crest of the ridge until the tracks stopped. It was a narrow

place. But with a rousing view of Saturn, and the breathless falling-off of the

worldlet's short horizon.

Judging from the confusion of tracks, the creature might have been there for a time.

And then of course she had doubled back.

Richard gazed down at the prints.

The night was full of stars.

"She came up here before she cut the ice," said Hutch.

"Very good. But why did she come here at all?"

Hutch looked out across the plain, luminous in Saturn's pale light. It curved away

from her, giddily.

The stars were hard and cold, and the spaces between them pressed on her. The

planet, locked in place, had not moved since she stood here. "The image on the

plain," she said, "is terrifying, not because it has wings and claws, but because it is

alone."

She was beginning to feel the cold, and it was a long way back to the ship. (The

Flickinger fields do cool off, in time. They're not supposed to, and there are all kinds

of tests to demonstrate they don't. But there you are.) Half a dozen moons were in

the sky: Titan, with its thin methane atmosphere; Rhea and Hyperion and some of

the smaller satellites: frozen, spinning rocks like this one, sterile, immeasurably old,

no more capable of supporting a thinking creature than the bloated gasbag they

circle.

Richard followed her gaze. "She must have been very much like us." His lined

features softened.

Hutch stood unmoving.

The universe is a drafty, precarious haven for anything that thinks. There are damned

few of us, and it is a wide world, and long. Hutch wondered about her. What had

brought her so far from home? Why had she traveled alone? Long since gone to

dust, no doubt. Nevertheless, I wish you well.

PART ONE

MOONRISE

Quraqua. 28th Year of Mission, 211th Day. Thursday, April 29, 2202; 0630 hours

local time.

Almost overnight, every civilization on this globe had died. It had happened twice:

somewhere around 9000 B.C., and again eight thousand years later. On a world filled

with curiosities, this fact particularly disturbed Henry's sleep.

He lay awake, thinking how they were running out of time, thinking how the Quraquat

had known after all about the anomaly on their moon. They were unaware of the two

discontinuities, had lost sight of them toward the end, and remembered them only in

myth. But they knew about Oz. Art had found a coin which left no doubt, whose

obverse revealed a tiny square on a crescent, at the latitude of the Western Mare.

Precisely where Oz was located

He wondered whether Linda's surmise that the Lower Temple era had possessed

optical instruments would prove correct. Or whether the natives had simply had good

eyes.

What had they made of the thing? Henry buried his head in his pillow. If the Quraquat

had looked at their moon through a telescope, they would have seen a city occupying

the center of a vast plain. They would have seen long airless avenues and rows of

buildings and broad squares. And a massive defensive wall.

He turned over. Eventually Oz would surface in Quraquat mythology and literature.

When we've collected enough of it. And mastered the languages.

His stomach tightened. There would not be time.

The anomaly was only rock, cunningly hewn to create the illusion of the city. There

was the real puzzle. And the explanation for Oz lay somehow with the race that had

inhabited this world. This was a race that had built complex cultures

and developed philosophical systems that had endured for tens of thousands of

years. But its genius did not extend to technology, which had never risen much

beyond a nineteenth-century level.

The door chimed. "Henry?" The voice in the speaker was tense with excitement. "Are

you asleep?"

"No." He opened the door. "Did we get in?"

"Yes—"

Henry threw back his sheet. "Give me two minutes. I didn't think it would be this

quick."

Frank Carson stood in the corridor. "You have a good crew down there." In the half-

light, he looked pleased. "We think it's intact."

"Good. That's goddam good." He turned on his table lamp. Beyond the window,

sunlight filtered down from the surface. "Did you see it?"

"Just a peek. We're saving it for you."

"Yeah. Thanks." The traditional lie amused Henry. He knew they had all stuck their

heads in. And now they would pretend that the boss would make the grand entrance.

If there was anyone with the Academy's archeological teams homelier than Henry

Jacobi, he would have been a sorry sight. In Linda Thomas' memorable phrase, he

always looked as if a load of scrap metal had fallen on him. His face was rumpled

and creased, and his anatomy sagged everywhere. He had slate-colored hair, and a

permanent squint which might have derived from trying to make out too many

ideographs. Nevertheless, he was a master of social graces: everyone liked him,

women married him (he had four ex-wives), and people who knew him well would

have followed him into combat.

He was a consummate professional. Much like those paleontologists who could

assemble a complete brontosaur from a knee bone, Henry seemed able to construct

an entire society from an urn.

He followed Carson through the empty community room, and down the stairway into

Operations. Janet Allegri, manning the main console, gave them an encouraging

thumbs-up.

Creepers and stingfish moved past the wraparound view-panel. Beyond, the sea

bottom was crisscrossed by trail marker lamps. The sunlight was fading from the

water, and the Temple was lost in the general gloom. They passed into the sea

chamber, and put on Flickinger harnesses and jetpacks. Henry rubbed his hands

together in pure pleasure.

Carson straightened his shoulders in his best military bearing. He was a big man with

a square jaw and intense eyes that saw the world in sharp colors. That he was a

retired colonel in the army of the North American Union would surprise no one. "This

is just the beginning, Henry. I still say we should hang on here. What are they going

to do if we refuse to leave?"

Henry sighed. Carson didn't understand politics. "They would put a lot of heat on the

Academy, Frank. And when you and I went home, we would find ourselves back in

classrooms. And possibly defending ourselves in court."

"You have to be willing to take risks for what you believe, Henry."

He had actually considered it. Beyond Earth, they knew of three worlds that had

given birth to civilizations. One of the civilizations, the Noks on Inakademeri, still

survived. The inhabitants of Pinnacle had been dead three-quarters of a million

years.

And Quraqua.

Quraqua, of course, was the gold mine. Pinnacle was too far gone, and since the

Noks were still in the neighborhood, the opportunities for investigation were limited.

Nonetheless, there was hardly a graduate student who hadn't found a buried city,

uncovered the key to a mass migration, tracked down a previously unknown

civilization. It was the golden age of archeology. Henry Jacobi understood the

importance of saving this world. But he had no inclination to risk anyone's life in the

effort. He was too old for that sort of thing.

"Does Maggie know we're in?"

"They're getting her now. The poor woman never gets any rest, Henry."

"She can rest when we're out of here." Maggie was his chief philologist. Code-

breaker, really. Reader of Impossible Inscriptions. The lamp on his left wrist flashed

green. He activated the energy field.

Carson punched the go pad, and the lock cycled open. Water sloshed in over the

deck.

Outside, visibility was poor. They were too close inshore: the marker lights always

blurred, the water was always full of sand, and one could seldom see the entire

Temple.

The Temple of the Winds.

A bitter joke, that. It had been submerged since an earthquake somewhere around

Thomas Jefferson's time created a new shoreline. The Temple was a one-time

military post, home for various deities, place of worship for travelers long before

humans had laid bricks at Ur or Nineveh.

Sic transit.

Fish darted before him, accompanied him. Off to his left, something big moved

through the water. Carson turned a lamp in its direction, and the light passed through

it. It was a jelly. Quite harmless. It rippled, blossomed, and swam leisurely on its way.

A broad colonnade masked the front of the Temple. They settled onto the stone floor,

beside a circular column. It was one of ten still standing. Of an original twelve. Not

bad, for a place that had been through an earthquake.

"Frank." Linda's voice broke in on his earphones. She sounded pleased. And with

good reason; she had planned this aspect of the excavation. She'd taken a couple of

chances, guessed right, and they'd broken in well ahead of schedule. Under the

circumstances, the time gained was critical.

"Henry's with me," said Carson. "We're on our way."

"Henry," she said. "We're open as far back as we can see."

"Good show, Linda. Congratulations."

The Temple entrance gaped wide. They swam into the nave. Lines of colored lights

trailed off through the dark. It always seemed to Henry that the lamps exaggerated

the size of the place.

"Blue," said Carson.

"I know." They followed the blue lamps toward the rear. Only vestiges of the Temple

roof remained. The gray light from the surface was oily and thick against the cheerful

glow of the markers.

Henry was in poor condition. Swimming tired him, but he had declared jets too

dangerous to use inside the excavation. He had to live by his own rules.

The glowing blue track angled abruptly off to the left, and plunged through a hole in

the floor.

He could hear Linda and Art Gibbs and some of the others on the common channel.

They were laughing and cheering him on and congratulating one another on the find.

He swam down the labyrinthine approach tunnel. Carson stayed to his rear, advising

him to take his time, until Henry

finally lost patience and asked him to be quiet. He rounded the last bend and saw

lights ahead.

They stood aside for him. Trifon Pavlaevich, a husky Russian with a giant white

mustache, bowed slightly; Karl Pickens beamed; and Art Gibbs floated proudly

beside Linda.

Linda Thomas was a redheaded dynamo who knew what she was doing and didn't

mind sharing credit with her colleagues. As a result, they loved her. She stood over a

shaft, waving him forward. When he reached her, she shook his hand, and their fields

glimmered. "All right," he said briskly. "Let's see what we've got." Someone pressed a

lamp into his hand. He lowered it into the darkness, saw engravings and bas-reliefs,

and descended into a chamber whose dimensions reached beyond the limits of the

light. The walls were busy, filled with shelves and carvings. There were objects on

the shelves. Hard to see precisely what. Maybe local sea life, accumulated before the

room was sealed. Maybe artifacts.

His team followed. Trifon warned them not to touch any thin. "Got to make a chart

before anything gets moved." We know, Tri.

Lights played across the wall-carvings. He could make out animals, but no likenesses

of the Quraquat. Sculptures of the intelligent species were rare, except in holy

places. In any age. And among most of their cultures. There seemed to be an

imperative that prohibited capturing their own image in stone. There would be a

reason, of course, but they had not yet found it.

The floor was covered with a half-meter of silt. Other chambers opened beyond. And

voices echoed happily in his phones:

"This used to be a table." "The symbols are Casumel series. Right?" "Art, look at

this." "I think there's more in back." "Here. Over here."

And Linda, in the room on the north side, held a lamp up to a relief which depicted

three Quraquat figures. Trifon delicately touched the face of one of the images,

trailing his fingers across its jaw, along the thrust of its mouth. The Quraquat had

been warm-blooded, bipedal, furred creatures with a vaguely reptilian cast. Alligators

with faces rather than long jaws and mindless grins. These were robed. A four-

legged beast stood with them.

"Henry?" She motioned him over.

The figures were majestic. They radiated power and dignity. "Are they gods?" he

asked.

"What else?" said Tri.

"Not strictly," said Linda. "This is Telmon, the Creator." She indicated the central

figure, which was dominant. "She is the Great Mother. And these are her two

aspects: Reason and Passion."

"The Great Mother?" Henry sounded surprised. The Quraquat at the time of their

demise had worshipped a supreme male deity.

"Matriarchal societies have been common here," she said. Tri was taking pictures,

and Linda posed beside the figure. For perspective, more or less. "If we ever get a

decent analysis on the Lower Temple," she said, "we'll discover that was a

matriarchy. I'll bet on it. Moreover, we'll probably find Telmon in that era as well."

Carson's voice came in on Jacobi's personal channel. "Henry, there's something here

you'll want to see."

It was in the largest of the chambers, where Carson waited before another bas-relief.

He waved Henry nearer, and raised his lamp. More Quraquat figures. These seemed

to be set in individual tableaus. "There are twelve of them," he said in a significant

voice. "Like the Christian stations."

"Mystical number."

Henry moved quietly around the room. The figures were exquisitely wrought. Pieces

had broken away, others were eroded by time. But they were still there, frame after

frame of the Quraquat in that same godlike dignity. They carried rakes and spears

and scrolls. And, near the end, a fearsome creature with partially hooded features

appeared.

"Death" said Linda.

Always the same, thought Henry. Here or Babylon or New York. Everybody has the

same image.

"What is this? Do you know?"

Linda was glowing. "It's the story of Tull, the Deliverer. Here—" She pointed at the

first tableau. "Tull accepts the wine of mortality from Telmon. And here he is behind a

plow."

Quraquat mythology wasn't Henry's specialty. But he knew Tull. "Christ figure," he

said. "Osiris. Prometheus."

"Yes. Look, here's the visit to the armorer." She drifted along the friezes, pausing

before each. "And the battle sequences."

"There's a problem here somewhere," said Carson. "The myth is later than this

period, isn't it?"

"We're not sure of very much yet, Frank," said Linda. "And maybe this place isn't as

old as we think. But that doesn't matter as much as the fact that we have a complete

set of tableaus."

"Marvelous," said Henry. "They'll put these in the West Wing and hang our name on

them."

Someone asked what they represented.

"Here," said Linda. "It begins here. Tull is an infant, and he's looking down at the

world."

"It's a globe," said Art. "They knew the world was round."

"That knowledge was lost and recovered several times during their history. Anyway,

Tull envied the people on the world."

"The Quraquat."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It's not clear. The Quraquat apparently thought it was obvious why an immortal

would behave this way, but they didn't explain it. At least not in any of the records

we've been able to find.

"Over here, he's assumed a devotional attitude. He is requesting the gift of mortality

from his mother. Look at the universal outstretched hands.

"And here"—she moved past Henry, pointing—"here, he is a teacher."

And here, caught up in war. Arm raised. Expression fierce. His right hand was broken

off. "He would have been holding a weapon," she said. "He was at a disadvantage,

because when they gave him mortality, they did not deprive him of all his divine

attributes. He understood the suffering of his enemies. And he could see the future.

He knew that death in battle awaited him. And he knew the manner of its coming."

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. / 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 lapetus," 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.

Jack Mcdevitt - Engines of God

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