Engines Of God

PART FOUR

THE ENGINES OF GOD

26

On board NCK Catherine Perth. Friday, April 15; 0515 hours

The chime brought Carson out of an uneasy sleep.

He let in an ecstatic Hutch. "I think I've got it," she said, waving a lightpad.

"Got what?"

She threw herself into a chair. "If we go to the right place," she said, "and make an Oz, we can find out what this is all about."

"Make an Oz? Are you serious? We can't make an Oz." He wondered how much she'd had to drink during the night. "Have you been to bed at all?" he asked accusingly.

"Forget bed," she said. "The numbers work."

Carson put on coffee. "Slow down. What numbers? And where's the right place!"

She picked up a remote, and put a star chart on his display. She drew a line along the edge of the Void, and parallel lines through Beta Pac, Quraqua, and Nok. "We always knew we had the eight-thousand-year cycles. But we didn't see any other pattern. Maybe because it was staring us in the face.

"We think we know of two events on Nok, and two on Quraqua. And we may have seen evidence of at least one here."

"Okay," said Carson. "Where does that leave us?"

"If there really is an eight-thousand-year cycle, and we know there was an event here somewhere around 5000 B.C., then there must have been an earlier event somewhere around 13,000 B.C. Right? And at 21,000 B.C." She posted the numbers in a window:

Event Beta Pac Quraqua Nok

1 21,000BC ______ ______

2 13,000 BC ______ ______

3 5000 BC ______ ______

"If we stay with the eight-thousand-year cycle," she said, "and we push it backward in time, then there would have been an event on Quraqua at about 17,000 B.C. Yes?"

Event Beta Pac Quraqua Nok

1 21,000BC 17,000 BC ______

2 13,000BC 9000 BC ______

3 5OOOBC 1000BC _____

"Okay."

"Good. We're sure of the second and third Quraqua events. In both cases, they start four thousand years later. What does that suggest?"

"Damned if I know."

"Frank, the same kind of thing happens on Nok."

"In what way?"

She filled in the last column, rounding the numbers off.

Event Beta Pac Quraqua Nok

1 21,000BC 17,000 BC 16,000BC

2 13,000 BC 9000 BC 8000 BC

3 5000 BC 1000 BC ______0

"This time," Carson said, "there's always a thousand-year difference. I see the pattern, but I don't see the point."

"It's a wave, Frank. Whatever this thing is, it's coming in from the Void. It travels one light-year every seventy-four years. The first one we know about, the A wave, arrived here, at Beta Pac, somewhere around 21,000 B.C."

"I'll be damned," he said.

"Four thousand years later, it hits Quraqua. Then, a thousand or so after that, it shows up at Nok."

Carson thought it over. It sounded like pure imagination. But the numbers worked. "What could it be?"

"The Dawn Treader," she said.

"What?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Remember the Quraquat prayer?" She put it on the screen:

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.

"Whatever it is," she said, "it's co

The room felt cold. "Could they be talismans?" Carson asked. But the prospect of an advanced race resorting to attempts to invoke the supernatural was disquieting.

"Or targets," said Hutch. "Ritual sacrifices? Symbolic offerings to the gods?" She swung around to face him. "Look, if any of this is right, the wave that went through Nok during A.D. 400 has traveled about thirty-five light years since." She drew another parallel line to mark its location. "There's a star system located along this track. I think we should go take a look."

Carson called Truscott early. "I need a favor," he said. "I'd like to borrow some equipment."

She was in her quarters. "What do you need, Frank?" "A heavy-duty particle beam projector. Biggest you have. You do have one on board, right?"

"Yes, we have several." She looked perplexed. "You're not going excavating down there?"

"No," Carson said. "Nothing like that. In fact, we're leaving the system."

She registered surprise. "I can arrange it. What else?" "A pod. Something big enough to use as a command post." "Okay," she said. "We can do that, too. You'll have to sign for this stuff."

"Thanks. I owe you, Melanie."

"I agree. Now, how about telling me what this is all about?" He could see no reason for secrecy. "Sure," he said. "How about breakfast?"

The Ashley Tee was essentially a group of four cylinders revolving around a central axis. It bristled with sensing and communication devices. Hutch had already talked to them before they made the transfer. "We've got a celebrity," she said, with a smile.

The celebrity was its pilot, the near-legendary Angela Morgan.

Angela was tall and trim with silver hair and gray eyes. Hutch had never met her, but she knew about her. Angela had performed many of the pioneer flights during the early days, had pushed the limits of mag technology, and had been the driving force behind many of the safety features now incorporated in FTL deployment.

Her partner was Terry Drafts, a young African physicist not half her age. He was soft-spoken, introspective, intense. He made no secret of his view that riding with Angela was equivalent to getting his ticket punched for greater things.

"If you've really got something, Carson," Angela said, "we'd be happy to help. Wouldn't we, Terry? But don't waste our time, okay?"

Since all starships maintain onboard clocks in correlation with Greenwich, the new passengers suffered no temporal dislocation. It was mid-morning on all the vessels of the various fleets when Angela showed her new passengers to their quarters.

She joined them for lunch, and listened while they talked about their experiences in the system. Eventually, she asked pointedly whether they were certain this was the home world of the Monument-Makers. (They were.) How had the team members been lost? (No one got into graphic details, but they told her enough to elicit both her disapproval and her respect.)

"I see why they wanted me to put the ship at your disposal," she said. "We can stay here. We can take you to Point Zebra. Or we can go all the way back to Earth. Your call." The Point was the staging site for local survey vessels.

"Angela," said Carson, "what we'd like is to take a look at one of the moons in this system. Then we're going to do some serious traveling."

Angela trained the ship's telescopes on the harbor city. It looked serene: white ruins embedded in soft green hills, thick forest spilling into the sea. The broken bridge that led nowhere.

They spent two days at the Oz-like artifact. They marveled anew at its perpendicularity. It was, a

But it too was damaged. Charred. Cratered.

"I've seen the other one," said Angela. "Why would they make something like this?"

"That's what we hope to find out," said Carson.

That evening, Monday, April 18, 2203, at slightly before 1100 hours, they rolled out of lunar orbit.

Two nights later, Carson ceremonially stored his wheel-chair. And Janet added another piece of speculation. She first mentioned it to Hutch. "I was thinking," she said, "about the phrase in that Quraquat prayer—"

" 'The engines of God'?»

"Yes. The engines of God—"

"What of it?"

"We might not be far off. // there's an A wave, the one that touched Beta Pac in 21,000 B.C.: if it kept going, it would have reached Earth."