Paul Cook - Engines Of Dawn

THE ENGINES OF DAWN

PAUL COOK

-For Tom Smith

and the best years of our lives at Northern Arizona University 1968-1972

"Solitudinum factunt et pacem appellant."

-Tacitus,

speaking through a British chieftain regarding the Pax Romana

Table of Contents

•Chapter 01

•Chapter 02

•Chapter 03

•Chapter 04

•Chapter 05

•Chapter 06

•Chapter 07

•Chapter 08

•Chapter 09

•Chapter 10

•Chapter 11

•Chapter 12

•Chapter 13

•Chapter 14

•Chapter 15

•Chapter 16

•Chapter 17

•Chapter 18

•Chapter 19

•Chapter 20

•Chapter 21

•Chapter 22

•Chapter 23

•Chapter 24

•Chapter 25

•Chapter 26

•Chapter 27

•Chapter 28

•Chapter 29

•Chapter 30

•Chapter 31

•Chapter 32

•Chapter 33

•Chapter 34

•Chapter 35

•Chapter 36

•Chapter 37

•Chapter 38

•Chapter 39

•Chapter 40

•Chapter 41

•Chapter 42

•Chapter 43

•Epilogue

1

Twenty-seven-year-old Benjamin Bennett rolled over in his dormitory bed in the middle of the interstellar

night thoroughly disgusted with himself. His Bombardier friends had often taunted him about his

relationships with various members of the female population at Eos University. "One-Minute Bennett,"

they called him. No relationship he had ever seemed to last long enough to be memorable, let alone

meaningful. Maybe they were right.

"It's not you," Ben told his date, throwing his left arm across his eyes, sunken in despair. "At least I don't

think it's you. Ix! Who knows what it is?"

"Well, it's something," his date, Jeannie Borland, said.

Ms. Borland was a twenty-five-year-old, platinum blond graduate student in atmospheric chemistry

whom Ben had met about a month earlier when Eos University had made its last planetfall. He and his

dorm mates-Eos dropouts called the Bombardiers-had gone kiting in the incredibly blue skies of Ala Tule

4 while the other students of the spacegoing university went about their various field trips down on the

planet's surface. Ben had met Ms. Borland when he and the Bombardiers rested their wings in the

AtChem gondola, lofting in the thermals of a placid mountain range. Ben thought he'd pursue her more

aggressively when the university returned to its circuit through the known stars of the Sagittarius Alley.

And this was what happened.

Young men might reach their sexual peak at the age of nineteen or so, but it rarely tapered off so quickly.

Moreover, Ben was in the best physical condition he had ever known. Though only five feet, ten inches

tall, he was broad-shouldered and muscled enough to have won several wrestling scholarships when he

was an undergraduate back on Earth. He worked out almost daily and theoretically should have been

able to rise to the task.

In the semidarkness of the room, Jeannie Borland's illicit cigarette glowed dully. Her unaugmented

breasts had that still-youthful pear shape to them, and her deliciously long legs should have inspired him

to do something. But they didn't.

He sat up, sweeping his long black hair back into a ponytail, which he banded swiftly.

"Maybe it's the Ennui," Borland said, blowing a ghost of smoke to the ceiling.

"I think they put saltpeter in the food," Ben said.

Borland tapped an ash to the ashtray on Ben's nightstand. "Saltpeter? What's that?"

"Something they used to put in food to keep horny young boys from … getting frisky. Back in the old

days."

"I don't believe it," Borland said. "That's barbaric. No one would do that here. Not on Eos."

"The Grays would," Ben remarked. "And they've got the Ainge behind them. After all, we can't have

Mom and Dad worrying that Sally and Suzie will come home pregnant."

"No chance of that," Borland said listlessly, the tobacco calming her.

Ben eased out of bed, stepping into the gelatinous puddle his clothing made on the floor. Its response

circuits activated at the familiar signature of his feet and his rugby jersey and shorts began flowing up his

legs. When they found themselves back in their default configurations, they solidified. Ben's jersey said:

RUGBY PLAYERS EAT THEIR DEAD. But only, Ben thought, if their testosterone levels were high.

He moved his uncooperative "boys" around to help his underwear settle in.

"Look, this is the first time this has happened to me," Ben said. "You've got to believe me."

"Mmm," Borland said, tugging at her cigarette.

Actually, it had already happened-two weeks ago, with Christine Jensen, a biology student, and two

days later, with Lisa Holdaway, an urban-dynamics sociology major who had been a student in one of

the science classes he taught.

"It's the Ennui," Ms. Borland said with certainty.

She sat up and crashed out her cigarette. Sensing that the heat had gone out of the cigarette, the

nightstand swallowed the ashtray. The room, meanwhile, quickly cleared the air.

Ben thought about the so-called Ennui, said to plague the spread of humanity across the stars. "That's a

fairy tale. It's natural for civilization to slow down as it moves out among the stars. The Alley's a big place

and we've only been traveling it for two hundred years."

"The pace of life in the Alley has slowed down," Borland said, stepping away from the bed. "They've got

statistics and actuarial charts that prove it."

Ben refused to believe that the fabled Ennui was responsible for anything, let alone the apparent lack of

technological advancements in the last two hundred years. It most certainly was not responsible for his

temporary impotence. If, indeed, that's what it was.

Ms. Borland stepped into her clothing puddle and Ben watched as her panties and bra slithered to their

default configurations. He swallowed hopelessly.

When humans left the confines of the Sol system, in 2098 C.E., to colonize nearby star systems, the sky

seemed to be the proverbial limit for scientific advancements of all kinds. Peace had been secured on

Earth; the Human Community formed. Faster-than-light technology was around the corner, and there

was even the real possibility of medical science extending the life of the average human indefinitely. But

sometime early in the twenty-third century, either just before or just after the Enamorati appeared,

technological and cultural advancements seemed to lose steam; there seemed to be fewer of them.

But then the Enamorati appeared, and savants everywhere forgot about the Ennui.

Humans had known that alien civilizations had existed since the early twenty-first century, when

undecipherable signals came from a civilization in the Magellanic Clouds. These were quite accidental

transmissions from a culture, now probably extinct, that was more than 200,000 light-years away. A few

years later, a series of small, very intense gamma-ray explosions near Beta Lyra were picked up. Some

were patterned, intense, and directional, as if weapons were being used. This was the so-called Beta

Lyra Space War, but at 12,000 light-years the H.C. was a mere bystander. When the Enamorati arrived,

humans suddenly found themselves involved in very real space travel with very real alien allies.

The Enamorati were a spacegoing culture from a world located 2,300 light-years toward the galactic

center of the Milky Way Galaxy, deep inside the Sagittarius Alley. The Enamorati were missionaries from

a culture whose planet had been destroyed in an unimaginable ecological disaster. The name "Enamorati"

was the Italian equivalent of the attitude the aliens doctrinally shared toward all beings, sentient or

otherwise, whom they happened to meet in their travels. The Enamorati had no interference clause, no

Prime Directive that kept them out of planetary affairs not their own. Theirs was a mission of a religious

bent, obliging them to offer the Human Community two things that it needed desperately: the location of

habitable worlds and the transportation it took to get them there in a reasonable amount of time.

If the Enamorati had something like a Prime Directive, it came in the form of their staunch refusal to give

humans the technical details of their giant Onesci Engines. The mathematics that led to the development of

their FTL technology had been given to them ten thousand years ago by their greatest Avatar, a physicist

named Onesci Lorii. Humans could use the Onesci Engines as freely as they wished, but they had to

allow the Enamorati to handle the technology. This was a matter of deep seriousness for the Enamorati,

and humans had to respect it if they wanted to ply the spaces between the stars.

Ben checked the time. "It isn't even fourteen hundred yet. Want to see what's going on in the student

commons? Catch an Experience? They're showing Mayberry Agonistes tonight. Andy and Barney

against the aliens?"

The romantic mood, however, had dissipated along with Ms. Borland's cigarette smoke.

"I don't think so, Ben," Jeannie Borland said, adjusting the chevrons of her collar. "Maybe some other

time."

"They say it's the greatest science-fiction movie ever made," Ben said. "Wild Bill Kelso and George

Reeves as Superman?"

"Sorry, Ben," Borland said.

At that moment, a gentle knocking came at the door to Ben's room.

"Are you expecting someone?" Borland asked, checking to see if her clothing had cohered properly.

For a moment Ben thought that his room's AI circuits had smelled Jeannie Borland's cigarettes and

subsequently tattled to campus security. Tobacco was making a comeback on some of the worlds of the

H.C., particularly among young people eager to leave their youth behind and to experience the world of

mature grown-ups. Someone unaligned with the Grays-the university administration-or the Ainge religious

faction on board the ship had apparently smuggled several different brands of cigarettes onto Eos a few

planet stops ago and was now selling them to just about anyone who would buy them. They weren't quite

illegal, but their use was definitely frowned upon.

"Not really," Ben said. "Stand back. Open," he then commanded the door.

"Oh!" Jeannie Borland said, gasping.

Standing in the doorway was an Enamorati. He stood there in his gray-green environment suit and had a

sad expression on his face-routine for an Enamorati.

This Enamorati was different, however, for cradled in his frail, birdlike arms was the body of a little white

polar bear.

"Please forgive me," the being said in slightly inflected English from inside his mist-filled helmet. "I found

your pet. It was right here before your door. I am so sorry."

This just wasn't Ben's day.

2

Eos University had a contingent of about a hundred Enamorati- all castes, their mates and progeny

included. But beyond the often-seen Kuulo Kuumottoomaa- kuulo meant "steward" in their language-the

other Enamorati usually remained in their chambers at the aft end of the four-thousand-foot-long ship,

where they tended their enormous Engine. The lone Enamorati who stood before Ben's door, however,

was not of the Kuulo caste. He was an Avatka, an engineer. And this engineer had a dead bear in his

arms.

"It's not mine," Ben said to the Avatka. "I don't have a pet. Sorry."

The Avatka seemed puzzled, but there was no direct way to confirm this from the being's expressionless

face. "Forgive me. I assumed that it was yours. It was lying before your door."

Ben looked off to his right. The hall was otherwise empty. "I don't think anyone on this floor has a pet. At

least not a polar bear."

Jeannie Borland hovered behind Ben. "I've seen it before. It belongs to a girl in Cowden Hall."

"What's it doing here?" Ben asked.

Jeannie Borland shrugged.

Enamorati generally were no taller than five feet. But bolstered by their environment suits and with

servomechanisms amplifying their shoulders and hips, they often seemed bigger than they actually were,

and far more intimidating. The Enamorati were aware of this impression on human beings, and they often

sought to avoid making it. This Enamorati seemed all too conscious of his sudden impact upon the young

humans and tried to modulate his voice.

"I apologize for the disruption then. Could you help me return it to that person?" he asked of Ms.

Borland.

She backed away. "I don't really know who owns it. Ben will help you though." She turned quickly to

Ben. "Find me at the Museum Club at twenty-one hundred hours tonight, if… things change."

She edged past Ben, pulling a specter of tobacco behind her. She fairly raced to the nearest transit

portal. A second later, she was gone.

The alien, oblivious to the nuances of human speech and social intercourse, hadn't a clue as to what had

just passed between Ben and his erstwhile date. Instead, he gave the small animal to Ben. "If you could

do this for me, I would be deeply in your debt," the alien said. "I do not wish to be of further discomfort."

Ben gently took the little bear from the alien's spindly arms, brushing the e-suit as he did. Ben thought he

could detect a goblin of the air the Avatka breathed, but this, he knew, was impossible. A leak in the

alien's e-suit would mean suffocation for the alien and severe nausea, perhaps even death, for any human

nearby.

Though the little bear was definitely dead, there were no signs of blood on the animal's pelt. Moreover,

no bones seemed crushed or broken. Strangulation did not seem the cause of the animal's passing, either.

For a fleeting moment Ben thought that the Avatka might have been responsible for killing the little bear,

but that, too, seemed unlikely. The Enamorati claimed to have ended their species-wide violent stage

about ten thousand years ago. They did not kill; they did not steal; they did not even lie. They lived

entirely in the shadow of the religious vision of Onesci Lorii and had been doing so for thousands of

years.

A yellowish mist swirled inside the alien's helmet. Pale and desiccated, the Enamorati looked like a race

of mummified corpses with very sad eyes.

"Okay," Ben told the alien. "I'll do what I can."

"Thank you," the being said. "And should the animal's owner wish to speak with me about this, they may

summon me at any time. I am the Avatka Viroo. Summon me directly or consult the kuulo first. I am at

your disposal."

The frail being walked down the hallway, passing the transmission portal that Jeannie Borland had taken,

and stepped into the connecting passageway. The being apparently wanted to walk back to the

Enamorati compound rather than be teleported directly. Some Enamorati were odd that way.

Ben looked around. It was 2:00 P.M. on a Friday afternoon and most of Babbitt Hall was deserted-the

students elsewhere in the ship. Most would be either in the field house or at the cinemas or in the

Museum Club, starting their weekend early. The students who came from deeply religious Ainge families

were probably still in their dorms studying. The polygamous Ainge, descendants from a splinter Mormon

colony on the Isle of Ainge on Tau Ceti 4, still kept to clean, drug- and stimulant-free living. With any

luck, Ben thought, the young woman who owned the bear would be a daughter of the Ainge and would

be in her dorm studying with her suite mates before Friday-night services.

Ben stepped over to the wall. He pressed it with his hand and a luminescent menu for the ship's directory

appeared. Any wall in any part of the ship had this feature. Ben tapped the wall menu command for

FIND. But find who?

He tapped out the letters for the word PETS, then pressed ENTER. Pets were certainly allowed among

the students, support staff, and faculty. But they were also registered with the university.

The word PETS appeared with a listing of two dozen kinds of animals as pets kept on board Eos

University.

"A horse?" he said. "Someone has horse on the ship?" He would have to look up CYNTHIA JENEY

later, just to satisfy his curiosity.

But someone did have a bear, so Ben pressed the glowing word BEAR.

The name that appeared on the wall register read: JULIA WAXWING--COWDEN HALL-ROOM

220. Cowden Hall was the exclusively female dorm in Eos University and it was in the next wing over.

Ben toggled the com/pager at his belt and spoke into the pin at his collar. "ShipCom, open. Ben Bennett

paging Julia Waxwing, please," he said. As he recalled, the nearby wing of Cowden Hall was filled with

young women mostly studying the physical sciences. Whether Julia Waxwing was an undergraduate or a

graduate, he didn't know and the wall menu didn't say.

The automated voice from ShipCom's computer said, "Sorry. There is no response. There is no

forward paging. Do you wish to leave a message?"

"No," he said. "Com, close."

At that time of the afternoon, Julia Waxwing could be just about anywhere on the ship. University classes

were never held on Fridays, but the labs were open, as was the library. Some professors even held office

hours on Fridays.

On the other hand, the fact that there was no forward paging meant that regardless of where she was,

Julia Waxwing didn't want to be disturbed.

"Now what?" he wondered aloud. He could just leave the bear in front of her dorm room, where she

would find it whenever she got back from wherever she was. But that wouldn't do. Just because he'd had

a dismal day didn't mean that he had to make it dismal for someone else.

But he had to do something.

To Ben's left, just a few yards away, the transit portal suddenly came alive with bluish light Almost

instantly, two figures fell from the portal's assembly ring and came crashing to the floor, sputtering with

laughter.

These were friends of his, students he'd bonded with when they met at the beginning of the university's

tour three years ago. One was George Clock, a gregarious ash-blond young man who used to be a

geography major, specializing in satellite mapping techniques. The other boy was Jim Vees. Vees, a

black American, had been an astronomy student until the Ennui-or something-got to him and he dropped

out of his studies. He slept a lot, now. These were the Bombardiers. Only Tommy Rosales was missing

at the moment.

Since George and Jim had bombed out of their programs, all they seemed to do was play as much as

possible. Transit-hopping was one such form of recreation on the ship. Students often transit-hopped in

an attempt to get high off the strange euphoric tingle that occurred when a person's molecules were

stripped for transport over the ship's network of optical cables, then reassembled again. That's what

these two had been doing. Hopping.

Ben stood above the two laughing Bombardiers with the dead bear in his arms. Clock pointed to the

animal. "I'll bet this comes with a real good story," he said. He hadn't yet seen that the animal was lifeless.

"Believe it or not," Ben said, "an Avatka gave this to me a few moments ago. He found it right here, in

front of my door."

"An Avatka? Here in Babbitt Hall?" Clock asked, climbing to his feet.

"Say, that animal looks dead," Jim Vees said. He was slower getting to his feet.

"It is dead," Ben said.

"Did the Avatka kill it?" Vees asked.

"I don't know," Ben said. "He said it was dead when he found it."

"Whose animal is it?" Vees asked, softly caressing its fur.

"It belongs to someone named Julia Waxwing, over in Cowden Hall. She's not answering her com and

she's blocked all forward paging. Ever hear of her?"

The two dropouts shrugged and shook their heads.

Clock then said, "You know, she could be in the student commons, in the student media lounge with

everybody else."

"Let's transit there," Vees said, always looking for an excuse to transit.

"What's going on at the commons?" Ben asked.

Vees smirked. "President Porter is going to release the contents of the last data bullet we snagged, the

one we got right before we jumped into trans-space a couple of weeks ago."

"What's so important about that bullet?" Ben asked.

"Inside sources say that another ship exploded," Clock said. "A really big one this time. The bullet has all

the information on it, but the administration's been debating whether to share the fully decompressed data

with the rest of us. Maybe they think we'll riot if we get the whole story."

"What ship was it?" Ben asked.

"The Annette Haven, outward bound to Ross 154," Clock said. "At least that's the rumor. It's got the

Grays worried."

Ben wasn't familiar with the Annette Haven. There were so many Engine-driven ships now in service

that it was impossible to keep track of them all-freighters, people carriers, cargo vessels of all shapes and

sizes, to say nothing of H.C. exploratory craft looking for new worlds to add to the Alley.

However, space travel had always been hazardous and ships every now and then still succumbed to

systems failures, or even the unseen microparticle that would core a spaceship in a heartbeat. Disasters in

space happened to humans and Enamorati alike.

"Someone at the student newspaper checked the H.C. manifest of ships in our data banks," Clock went

on. "The Haven was a passenger liner. Big. It could transport at least nine hundred humans at a time. It

had an Enamorati crew of twenty. If the Engine blew, there'd be nothing left but a trans-space ripple."

Both the Ainge and the Enamorati happened to believe that trans-space was the actual body of God, and

that their duty was to lead pilgrims through it. Most of the H.C. didn't see it that way, but used the

Engine-run ships anyway. Trans-space, however, did act like the Old Testament Jehovah and saw fit to

remind humans and Enamorati alike of the dangers of space travel. Fiction had made space travel seem

effortless, even safe. But the truth was that faster-than-light travel was just as hazardous as

slower-than-light travel, and many thousands of lives had been lost in the last two and a half centuries of

space travel. Many more would be lost in the future.

"How many Ainge Auditors were on the ship?" Ben asked.

Clock laughed. "The Haven probably didn't have more than one or two. It was just a liner."

"Darn the luck," Jim Vees said soberly, his transit high having worn off. "Our Auditors should be so

lucky."

There was no love lost between Jim Vees and the Ainge. Though Jim had come from Earth, part of his

family had converted to the Ainge religion and had spent much of their efforts trying to get the rest of the

family to join. The Ainge, because of their relationship to the Enamorati, represented the fastest-growing

religion in the H.C. But fifty million followers of Ixion Smith were not enough reason for Jim Vees to

check his brain at the door.

"But get this," George Clock continued. "The student newspaper says that one of our archaeology

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