BETA PAC
15.
The Academy of Science and Technology (HV Simulation Section), Washington, D.C. Tuesday, October 19, 2202; 1700 EOT.
Hutch stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the stars and at Shola’s shimmering rings. The gas giant itself was behind her, low in the sky.
It was unsettling. This was not like climbing around the hull of a ship. She smiled at her reaction, and knelt, partly to examine the lip of the cliff, partly to regain her balance.
It was not the jagged, irregular rim one would expect, but the precision cut of a jewel.
This was a truly alien place, a place without purpose, a place that made neither aesthetic nor functional sense. But certainly, after Oz, a place with an echo. A stone plain, polished and chiseled, spread out behind her. It was pool-table flat, marred only by a few craters and a spread of fissure lines. The limits of the plain were not horizons; rather, at fairly close range, the smooth rock simply stopped, and one knew instinctively that beyond those abrupt summits, the cliff side fell away forever. The sky surrounded her, came at her from all angles. It was full of fire and light and crescents. A great clockwork, its spheres and stars clicked steadily through their rhythms while she watched.
It oppressed her. It was ominous. Frightening in a way she could not quite grasp.
Four of these objects circled the big world the Noks called the Companion. Identical size. Once equidistant. Two of them were badly charred.
Charred. Again, like Oz.
What were they?
There were no cryptic symbols here, as there were in the round tower. But there was a message nevertheless, an outcry, perhaps, in this spartan geometry.
She removed the helmet, and the lights came on. She laid it on the table beside her, and looked out at the Arlington skyline.
Deja vu.
Cumberland, Maryland 10/19/02
Dear Henry,
I have a translation: Farewell and good fortune. Seek us by the light of the horgon’s eye. A horgon is a mythical Quraquat monster. But don’t ask me what it all means.
Maggie
On the anniversary of the publication of Richard Wald’s landmark study, Memory and Myth, his family and friends conducted a celebration of his life. They chose a hilltop in Arlington, a site from which the Academy was visible, and erected a small pavilion. It was a bleak day shortly before Thanksgiving, gray, threatening rain, with the kind of chill that no clothing can deflect.
Hutch received an invitation and considered staying away. She was not one to be taken in by the facade of affirming life when she knew damned well what was really on everyone’s mind. It was all still too painful, too close to the bone. Maybe next year she could sit comfortably and reminisce about him, but for now all she could recall was the limp figure dangling below the shuttle.
When the day came, however, wearing the talisman he had given her, she was there. The event’s sponsors had set up a small platform atop a low hill, and laid out a table beneath a stand of spruce trees. They filled the table with souvenirs and artifacts and photos. There were copies of Richard’s books and tablets from Pinnacle and crossbows from Quraqua and representations of the Monuments. The Academy’s seal and colors were centrally displayed.
Refreshments were in liberal supply. People spotted old friends, and clustered in animated conversations. Hutch stood off to one side, ill at ease and dispirited. At noon, a tall man who looked like a younger Richard climbed onto the platform and waited for the crowd noise to subside.
“Hello,” he said. “I know some of you, but not all. My name’s Dick Wald. I’m—I was— Richard’s cousin. He’d have been pleased to see how many of you came out here today. And he’d have wanted me to say thanks.” He paused, and looked over the crowd. “He often said he was happy with his life, and fortunate in his friends. We used to make a lot of ‘dead’ jokes about him. And there are so many archeologists here today that I know you’ve had to put up with them too. You know how they go, about how everybody he knows has been dead at least eight hundred years. About how he only speaks dead languages. Well, there’s a lot about death in an archeologist’s field of interest, and it seems painful that it should come eventually to the archeologist himself.” He paused, and the wind moved in the trees behind him. “I’d like to invite Bill Winfield to say a few words. Bill taught Sumerian 101 to Richard.”
In turn, people got up and spoke about him. They thanked him for launching their careers, and for helping them with money or advice or encouragement. For setting the example. Several quoted favorite passages from his books, or idle remarks tossed off on windswept evenings:
The difference between history and archeology is the difference between public policy and a coffee table. One is theory and analysis and sometimes even spectacle. The other is a piece of life.
There is a kind of archeology of the mind in which we unearth old injuries and resentments, pore over them, and keep them close to our hearts. Eventually, like thousand-year-old air encountered in a tomb, they poison us. It gives me to wonder whether the value of history is not overrated.
I have always felt a kinship with the gravediggers in Hamlet. They are the first recorded archeologists.
History has nothing to do with reality. It is a point of view, an attempt to impose order on events that are essentially chaotic.
And an observation from an essay on Pinnacle which Hutch wished he had himself taken seriously: The universe has a sense of humor. Two years ago, a man in Chicago was driving to his wedding when a meteor totaled his car. The prospective bridegroom took the hint and left town. When conditions prevent a prudent excavation, archeologists would do well, also, to take the hint.
When the last of those who wished to speak had finished, Dick Wald asked if there were anyone else. Instinctively, Hutch shied away from public appearances. But she could not do that today. Not knowing what she would say, she strode to the platform, and turned to face the crowd. Many knew her, and she heard a smattering of applause.
She groped for the right words. “I’d just like to say,” she said, “that he was always good to work for.” She paused. The sky was clear and blue and very far away. “He died doing what he believed in. He died, I think, the way he would have wanted.” She looked around desperately, and wished for divine intervention. Her mind had gone blank. Reflexively, she took hold of the talisman, and drew it out into the sunlight. “Love and prosperity,” she said. “He gave me this. Its inscription, in one of the Quraquat languages, says love and prosperity will be mine while I wear it. Actually, they were mine as long as I knew him.”
Later, she said hello to Dick. He told her Richard had spoken of her often. Up close, his resemblance to Richard was striking. And there was a trick of speech, a tendency to draw out r’s in the manner of Bostonians, that they shared. She could have closed her eyes and believed he was back.
The Academy was out in force. Henry showed up, an act that must have taken considerable courage because a lot of people, including Hutch, blamed him for Richard’s death. He had aged during the few months since their return. His face was gray in the dull light, and he walked uncertainly.
“How are you?” Hutch asked, offering her hand.
He took it, but his grasp was perfunctory. “Good,” he said. “It’s nice to see you, Hutch.” His eyes traveled between her and the speakers’ platform, which was now empty. “I would have preferred better circumstances.”
An awkward silence followed. Hutch knew a reprimand was in the works for Henry. The whole world knew it. He had announced his retirement, and he faced the prospect of becoming the central figure in a landmark legal dispute over the issue of court jurisdiction beyond the solar system.
“I didn’t thank you, by the way,” he said, “for everything you did.”
“I was glad to help,” she said.
“I wish things could have turned out better.” He was backing away from her, anxious to be gone.
“Me, too,” she said weakly.
Princeton
Saturday, Nov. 27, 2202
Dear Priscilla,
Just a word to let you know that Cal Hartlett got married today. I know we’ve had this conversation before, and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but there’s another good one you could have had. That boy idolized you. I’ve met the bride and she’s pretty, but she isn’t in your league.
Please think about the future. We’re not getting any younger.
Mom
Hutch put her feet up on the hassock, sipped her coffee, and stared out over the rock plain. She was well away from the edge this time, and Shola was off to the right. Although the gas giant dominated the sky, its light was dim. Overhead, there were no stars. She was looking directly into the Void. Look hard enough, long enough, and one could see the other side, the distant flicker of the Sagittarius Arm.
The coffee tasted good.
Portland, Oregon Monday, Nov. 29, 2202
Dear Ms. Hutchins,
The enclosed holo arrived here several weeks ago, before you got back from Quraaua. In fact, it came before I’d heard about Richard’s death. I haven’t been certain who to send it to, and I thought you would know. I thought somebody at the Academy might have some interest in it. Best wishes.
Dick Wald
(ENCLOSURE)
DOWNLINK HOLD Leader marked “PERSONAL FOR RICHARD WALD”
David Emory in a field office. “Richard,” he says, “It’s ironic that you would have been asking about this just a few days ago. We have found Orikon. I thought you’d like to hear what we have, but please keep it to yourself until we publish.
“We’ve known for some time that the ruins were located under a modem city, where they were not accessible to direct investigation. Or, more accurately, I’ve known, but since we couldn’t get an actual physical piece for dating purposes, there was no way to prove anything.
“The scanners showed a metal circumference around the ruins, with lines jutting off. Theory was that it was a defensive structure of one kind or another.” He takes a chair, and crosses his arms over his chest, quite satisfied with the direction events have taken. “This world is subject to enormous tides, because of its proximity to the Companion. There are sea walls here now, to restrain the ocean. But these structures are recent.
“Orikon was located on a cluster of islands which are now hilltops. At low tide, they looked out over swamps. So the question always was: how, under such circumstances, could the inhabitants travel from one section of the city to another? This is no small feat, by the way. We are talking about islands spread over twelve hundred square kilometers. Furthermore, how did they maintain access to an ocean when they had to travel over ground that was sometimes a sea and sometimes a swamp?
“The solution: they had a monorail. This is mountainous country, and we went looking on some of the peaks for evidence. Yesterday we found it: a piece of concrete bolted into the side of a precipice. We now have other evidence as well. They seem to have thrived between 18,000 and 16,000b.c. So it turns out civilization is three times older here than we thought.
“Orikon lives, Richard.”
Henry removed the helmet. Sunlight warmed the room. Hutch looked out at the Morning Pool, the Ivers Museum, elta Park, and, in the distance, the Washington Monument.
“Good of you to bring it by,” he said. “May I make a copy?”
“Of course.” She waited for a sign that he agreed with her assessment of its significance.
“Well.” He folded his arms and pushed back comfortably. “How is everything with you?”
“Fine,” she said.
“Is something wrong?” he asked. “You seem tense.”
“Henry, you don’t seem surprised.”
His leathery face did not change. “What surprises you, Hutch?”
“We’ve got a second discontinuity on Nok. Two on each world. That makes a trend.”
Henry studied her across the broad expanse of his desk. The office was big, crowded with mementoes of his career. “You’re assuming that Orikon suffered one of these events.”
“Of course. How else would you explain the disappearance of a civilization capable of building a monorail?”
“We aren’t talking about established facts, Hutch. We are fully aware of events on Nok. You should be aware that Emory has a tendency to jump to conclusions. However, there is a curious coincidence. He says the most recent artifacts are from about 16,000 B.C.” He looked at her expectantly.
She didn’t see the point.
“The events on Quraqua,” Henry said, “were divided by eight thousand years.”
“—And on Nok by sixteen thousand. Twice as long. But what does that suggest?”
He shrugged. “Multiples of eight. For whatever significance that might have.” He looked old; his movements were stiff and seemed to require conscious effort.
“Multiples of eight? Would we know if there’d been an event on Nok around 8000 B.C.?”
“Probably not. The current cycle of civilization got started three thousand years later.” He studied the top of his desk. “I have no problems with a coincidence. One coincidence.”
“What’s the other?”
“The resemblance between Oz and the cube moons.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I retire,” he said. “And hope I have some money left after the lawyers get finished with me.”
“Henry, you can’t just walk out—”
“I sure as hell can just walk out. Listen—” His face reddened and he leaned across the desk. “Do you have any idea what all this means to me? I’m about to be drummed out. Blamed for the death of an old friend.” His lip quivered. “And God help me, maybe they’re right.”
“But we need you.”
“And I needed you. We went through hell out there, and I made a decision that I’m going to have to live with the rest of my life. You’re taking an accusing tone with me now. Where were you when we were trying to get a few answers? All you could contribute was to hang on the other end of that damned commlink and try to panic everybody. Did you really think we didn’t know what was coming? We went down there with our eyes open, Hutch. All of us.”
And you didn’t all make it back. But she said nothing. He glared at her, and then the energy seemed to go out of him, and he sank back into his chair.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “I did what I had to.”
“As did I.”
They looked at one another across a gulf. Finally, Hutch said, “You will follow up on this. Right?”
“You follow up on it. If you find something, I’ll be in Chicago.”
Henry’s anger hurt. Had the others felt the same way? My God, had Richard gone to his death disappointed in her? A cold wind blew through her soul.
She could not go back to her apartment that night.
She wandered among some of her old hangouts, ending eventually at the Silver Dancer, which was a favorite nightspot for airline types, and which had probably never seen an archeologist. She drank a series of rum-and-cokes that had no effect on her. Somewhere around midnight, she encouraged a shy young flight attendant with good eyes and went home with him.
She gave him the night of his life.
Hutch wanted to let it rest, to put it behind her. But she could not. So, on a crisp, clear evening a week after her conversation with Henry, she met Frank Carson for dinner at an Italian restaurant along the Arlington waterfront.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “Henry tends to get upset, and he’s been through a lot. He told me, by the way, that he’d talked to you.”
Carson was a good guy. He tended to take a paternal line with her, but she could forgive that. She came very close to approving. “He resents me,” she said.
He asked her to explain. When she’d finished, he tried to wave it away. “I did the same thing,” he said. “I was on the circuit to Henry, and I kept pushing them the whole time. It’s not to your discredit that you wanted them out of there. In your place, Henry would have done the same. He’s upset with me, too.”
It was just after sunset. They were drinking Chianti, and watching a boat discharge passengers from Alexandria onto the dock. “What do you think?” she asked. “About the discontinuities?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I don’t think anything’s established yet. If it turns out there was an event on Nok eighteen or twenty thousand years ago, I still don’t think it would mean very much.”
“What about ‘the engines of God’?”
“Beg pardon?”
“ ‘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.’ It’s from a Quraquat prayer book. Art thought it might have been a prediction of the Second Discontinuity on Quraqua. The timing was right.”
“There are always predictions,” he said.
Their dinners arrived, spaghetti and meatballs for both.
“Feel better?” Carson asked, after she’d made inroads.
“Yes,” she said. “I guess so.”
“Good. I’ve got some news for you: we’ve tracked down the horgon.”
She looked up from her plate, delighted. “Good,” she said. “What have you got?”
“Well, it’s kind of interesting. You know the thing was a mythical monster. It was all claws and teeth, it had fiery eyes, it was armored, and it stood on two feet. It had a built-in flame thrower.” He paused.”And it could see three hundred sixty degrees.”
Hutch did a double take. “The horgon’s eye,” she whispered.
“Yes.” Delighted, Carson drew out the aspirate. “That’s what we thought. The beast is associated with the child-hero Malinar, and with Urik, who was a kind of Quraquat Hercules. Malinar rescued his sister when she was threatened by the creature by diverting its attention with a plate of food. The thing pitied the child and spared him. And the girl. We know there was a cycle of Malinar myths, but the horgon story is the only one we have.
“Urik is perhaps the best known of all Quraquat mythical figures. The important point is that he would certainly have been known to the Quraquat of the Linear C era.”
“So we get a fit,” said Hutch.
“Yes.” He speared a meatball and tasted it. “Good,” he said. “Anyway, Urik lived at the beginning of their civilization, in a world filled with enchantment and dark spells and divine retribution for anyone who got out of line. Only one god in this scenario, the usual male deity, with the standard short temper and no-nonsense code of conduct. Monotheistic systems, by the way, were common on Quraqua during that period. There is residual evidence of polytheistic religions, but over thousands of years the original tales must have been rewritten to reflect correct views. And there’s another universal tendency.”
“What’s that?”
“Monotheistic religious systems are usually intolerant.” He smiled warmly at her, and his tone softened. “This is actually quite nice,” he said. “Having dinner with the loveliest woman in Arlington, Virginia.”
Appreciative, Hutch reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
Back to business, he said: “Somebody was having trouble with a horgon. It was terrorizing the countryside and generally raising hell. So they called in Urik.”
“Okay.”
“The only way to kill it was to put a sword into its heart.”
“Seems straightforward,” said Hutch.
“It’s an old story,” he said. “Hermes and Argos.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Greek myth. It’s a hunter’s tale. You are trying to bring down the ultimate prey, a creature that’s exceedingly deadly, and you can’t hide in the bushes. And you can’t take it head-on. So you have to devise a trick.
“In the Urik story, a series of heroes, over the course of a generation or so, have tried to kill the monster. They used all sorts of imaginative schemes to get close to it. They tried to blind it with sunlight reflected from a polished shield; they tried to sneak up on it disguised as a female horgon; they tried to put it to sleep with a magic trombone.”
Hutch smiled.”A magic trombone?”
“Well, not really. But it was a mystical instrument, a pipe of some sort. In any case, things always went wrong. The hero put the pipe down to get a good grip on his sword, the horgon woke up, and the hero got barbecued. That was the technique that Hermes used, by the way. It worked for him.
“There was also an attempt by a female. Her name was Haska, and she brought along an army of pages to keep dousing her with water. The horgon cooked the pages, but Haska was fortunate enough to escape with her life. She was the only hero to do so, until Urik.
“Now—and here’s the point—Urik got involved in all this because his lover, Lisandra, was carried off by demons, and he was advised by a neighborhood sage that he could find her only with the assistance of a horgon’s eye.”
“Bingo.”
“Yes. It would seem that whoever carved the inscription was familiar with Quraquat mythology. Incidentally, the various sources aren’t consistent as to the number of eyes the creature actually had. Anyhow, Urik’s boyhood friend Calipon went with him, and the two planned to distract the horgon by giving it a meal.”
“A cow?”
“The horgon’s diet was apparently limited to people.”
“Oh.”
“Or the hero’s imagination was. Calipon volunteered. The strategy they settled on was that he would deliver a frontal attack. Urik was to stay back until the attack failed, and the creature was half-gorged.”
Hutch tilted her head. “Did this seem like strange behavior to the Quraquat? They weren’t suicidal, were they?”
“Keep in mind, Hutch, that you’re talking as if there were only a single culture. The Quraquat, like us, had a wide range of codes of behavior. Some embraced suicide as a reasonable action. But we know almost nothing about the period that gave rise to the Urik tales. For that matter, we don’t know much about the later civilization that built the Temple of the Winds. So I can’t really answer your question. Calipon, incidentally, was a hero in his own right, but he achieved his immortality through his sacrifice. Eventually, a nation was named for him.”
Her eyebrows rose. “The second-banana hero.”
“Yes. And selfless. Still another universal, Hutch. You see it everywhere. Nok has several variations. So do we. Patroclus, for example.”
“Why didn’t the other guy, what’s his name, Urik, offer to be the main course? After all, it’s his girlfriend they’re after.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be decent to rescue the lady by throwing her lover to the wolves. No, Calipon is in the narrative for the specific purpose of serving as the sacrifice. And doing it willingly. That’s what gives meaning to the tale. It’s the point of the story. Everyone has an obligation to the greater good.”
“It worked, of course, right?”
“Yes, Hutch. It worked. Calipon died, Urik finished off the horgon, and retrieved one of its eyes. Eventually, with the help of a sacred sea bird, a diver, he also retrieved the lovely Lisandra. In celebration of the manner of her freedom, she placed the eye on a gold chain and wore it ever after at her throat. And, in representations, she is said always to have been accompanied by a diver.” He propped his chin on his hand and studied her. “So the question is, where does all this leave us?”
“That’s it?” she asked.
“That’s it.” Carson lifted his glass. The electric candles glittered in the Chianti.
“He rescued her, and they lived happily ever after,” she said.
“No.” He shook his head. “That isn’t the end. It never is. Not for epic heroes. There has to be a final validation of the myth, a recognition by a divinity, and by the community, of the significance of the heroic acts. And it has to be set up. The setup is that, while the hero is away on a quest, raiders attack his home. Lisandra dies protecting their son. Urik catches up with the bandits, and does them in, although he is mortally wounded in the encounter. And the gods have their opportunity to bestow divine honors. The reward for Urik—Calipon is not mentioned—is to be accepted into the company of God’s warriors, a deathless squadron to be called on in time of great need. The members were memorialized by being placed in the sky.”
“That’s interesting,” said Hutch.”Seek us by the light of the horgon’s eye. Are the Monument-Makers showing us where they live?”
“Maybe.”
“If so, the horgon’s eye is a star. Possibly the home star.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” said Carson.
Hutch disposed of some spaghetti. “Could we be looking for a constellation?”
“I would think so.”
“Which one? Do we know the Quraquat constellations?”
“Not from that era.”
She sighed. “We’re still at sea. How do we find one that looks like a big Quraquat with a spear? And then, how do we narrow it down to an individual star?”
“I don’t think we’re looking for Urik. He’s not the one who’s associated with the horgon’s eye. It’s Lisandra. She carried it.”
“Whatever,” said Hutch. “Did Lisandra get a constellation, too?”
“Urik and Lisandra were lovers. In mythical systems, lovers, if they are of sufficient stature, are never separated beyond the physical realm. These two would be closely associated throughout the mythic cycle, and so we should expect to find them together in the heavens.”
“It’s still hopeless.” Hutch threw up her hands. “Have you ever been able to make pictures out of the stars? How would we ever recognize her?”
“Good question. If you have a suggestion, I’d be happy to hear it.”
“I have no idea.”
“Maybe it’s not that hopeless. We’ve got a hole card: the horgon’s eye is red.”
LIBRARY ENTRY
They drink my deeds in the halls of the Ka,
And bless their arms with my name.
Yet I, riding through deep snow,
In the dark of the moon,
Do not pause.
Where, now, is Calipon my comrade?
The pennants ripple atop Master’s outpost,
Brave colors, gray and blue, rock and sea,
My colors,
Bright still in the fading light;
I nod, but do not stop.
And where, at last, Lisandra?
—from Urik at Sunset (Translated by Philip Marcotti)
16.
The Academy of Science and Technology, Washington, D.C. Friday, December 10, 2202; 1545 EST.
Professor Emeritus Eric Kofton of Georgetown was visiting the Quraquat display at the Ivers Museum when he noticed a zodiac carved in a three-legged table. It didn’t take him long to learn he had made a discovery, but he had no idea of its importance. The Academy awarded him a certificate.
The images were idealizations, giving no hint what the constellations might look like. But there were inscriptions identifying the figures. “I don’t know whether it’ll help us,” said Carson, unrolling a poster reproduction. “The table is from the same part of the world as the Casumel culture. Unfortunately, it’s only a few hundred years old. So maybe it’s the same zodiac, and maybe it isn’t. But look at this.” He pointed at a snouted Quraquat with spear, shield, and war helmet. “It’s called the Warrior.”
“Urik, do you think?”
Carson looked hopeful. “We need to stay objective. But he comes complete with a female.”
“The female’s a separate constellation? Or part of the same one?”
“Separate. Its name doesn’t have an English equivalent, but it would translate to the ‘Beautiful Woman Virgin-Mother.’ “
Hutch grinned. “That’s Lisandra. I’d recognize her anywhere.”
He looked down at a notebook. “The constellations are listed by occupation. Or function. There’s a woodsman. A fisherman with a net. A soronghilia plant.”
“A what?”
“The Tree of Life. Symbol of immortality. There’s an axe. Even a strider.”
“We could have used a few pictures of the constellations.”
“They would help.” They were in Carson’s office on the fifth floor. It was filled with memorabilia from both his military and archeological careers. She counted three models of combat aircraft, and the Temple shuttle. Awards and photos covered the walls. A young Carson in Air Force gray posed beside a black Labrador retriever. An older version stood beside a striking brunette.
“Who is she?” Hutch asked.
“Just a friend.” His face clouded briefly. “Used to be.”
Fearing she had intruded, Hutch retreated to the subject at hand. “What are the other.constellations?”
“A bucket, a shield, a couple of animals—”
“No horgon’s eye?”
“No. And something we think was a scales.”
“It’s interesting. But it’s hard to see that we’ve made any progress.”
In answer, he handed her a simmy helmet. She put it on, and a starfield blazed into existence. “View from Oz,” he said. “Circa 9000b.c.” The stars lay across half a sky, the campfires of a distant army. Beyond lay the black heart of the Void. Two crosshairs appeared left and right. “They represent the two towers, Hutch. You’re standing directly in the center of the city. Each crosshair is targeted on a straight line from your position to the corresponding round tower, and angled up parallel to the rooftop.”
The sky rotated, and one of the crosshairs locked on a red star. “That’s from the tower with the inscription,” Carson said. “The star is Orchinda. The Orchid. It’s a red giant, only about nine light years from Quraqua. More violet than red, not that it matters.”
If they had guessed right, when the horgon’s eye appeared in one sight, the target sun would appear in the other. The target—she glanced at the other crosshair—was dim.
“I don’t recall its numerical designation. We’ve never been there. It’s a class G. Sixty light-years from Quraqua, a hundred fifteen from here.”
“Is that it?” Hutch was prepared to respond with an appropriate outburst, but Carson was too reserved. It wasn’t going to be this easy.
“Maybe,” he said. “There are seventeen red stars that appear in one or the other of the crosshairs. Sixteen of those give us a star in, or very near, the opposite sight. The problem is that we have to assume the towers have slipped over the millennia, been affected by quakes, meteor strikes, whatever. So we’re looking at everything within four degrees of the target area.”
“How did you arrive at that figure?”
“By throwing darts.”
“How many suspect stars did we wind up with?”
“About eighty.”
She sighed.
“Hutch, we need to go back and do a complete survey at Oz. Establish the extent to which there’s been ground movement.”
“How long would that take?”
“Years. Right now, nobody at the Academy wants to hear anything about either Quraqua or Oz. And I don’t think there’d be much enthusiasm for sending out eighty expeditions either. Especially when we have no idea whether our margin for error is too conservative. Which it probably is.” He looked discouraged. “At least, we’ve had some movement.”
Hutch was looking at the black Lab in the photo.
“Her name was Spike,” he said.
“Odd name for a female.”
“My nephew named her.” He followed her gaze to the picture. “Something wrong?”
“Animals,” she said.
“Beg pardon?”
“You said there were animals. How about a diver?”
“I’m sorry?”
“A diver. The sea bird that was connected with Lisandra.”
“Damn. I never thought of that.”
The sky moved again. “It had a long beak,” she said.
“You think that’ll help?”
“It’s the diver’s primary characteristic. I looked it up. Like Hercules’ club, or the dipper’s handle. It would be a row of stars. Three or more. Maybe even prominent, if we’re lucky.”
“That’s optimistic. More like two stars, I’d think. Maybe one. You know how constellations are.”
“No,” she said. “Two won’t work. You can draw a straight line between any two stars in the sky. If we don’t have three, we’re wasting our time.”
“Okay,” he said. “What’s to lose? The horgon’s eye, the diver, and the virgin should all be in the same neighborhood. We’ll line up every red star that gets close to either crosshair, and look for the beak.”
This was not the sort of search that was likely to produce a sudden, blinding result. They worked through the afternoon, recording those stars which might possibly have served as the all-seeing eye: Olphinax, forty light-years farther along the shore of the Void; Tulikar, with its dense companion; Kampatta Prime, centerpiece of the Quraquat Pleiades. They added Anapaka to the list, and Hasan and Alpha Qui and three stars whose only designations were their catalog numbers. Each was accompanied by a nearby line of stars that might, by imaginative observers, be classified as a beak. “How do we know,” asked Carson, “that it isn’t curved?”
“Beg pardon?” said Hutch.
“The beak. How do we know it’s supposed to be straight? It could look like a pelican.”
“No,” said Hutch. “I saw a picture of one. It’s straight.”
It was all too inexact. Their margin for error resulted sometimes in multiple hits: a single horgon’s eye candidate produced two, three, and in one case six, targets in the other crosshairs.
The search for the beak proved fruitless. They discovered a basic universal truth: Almost anywhere one looks in the sky, stars line up in threes and fours. Eventually, they cataloged more than fifty candidates and began the process of elimination. All stars that were not class G or M, or that were not at least three billion years old, were excluded. (“A bit arbitrary there,” said Carson. “But Rome wasn’t built in a day.”) Multiple star systems, which are probably too unstable to permit life to develop, were also disregarded. Stars which had already been surveyed were removed.
By the end of the afternoon, the number of candidates was down to thirteen.
“We’ve done pretty well,” she said.
“We’ve done a lot of guesswork. I liked the old days when we could just order up a survey. This isn’t nearly good enough. We have to pin it down, isolate it. And then we have to persuade Ed Horner.”
Hutch felt desperate.
“Let’s quit,” Carson said. “Day’s over.”
It turned into a gloomy, rainswept evening. She wondered whether Carson had already given up, whether he was hoping she would see the futility of continuing, of risking their careers for a cause that most of the Academy people considered ludicrous. And that, it suddenly struck her, was the point. From his perspective, she had nothing to lose. She was a pilot, with no professional career at risk. Whatever happened, no one would laugh at her. It was Carson who was taking the risk, his colleagues who smiled tolerantly, his judgment at issue.
They went to dinner again, in Georgetown. But it was a mistake because they reinforced one another’s discouragement. Afterward, Hutch was glad to get home. She climbed into a simmy and sat with it until she fell asleep.
Somewhere around two, she jerked fully awake. There was another test they could try. The obvious one.
Carson would have to go to the commissioner, and they’d have to pull some strings. But it could be made to work.
The Tindle Array, Farside, Luna. Monday, January 24. 2203; 1130 GMT.
Alexander Coldfield walked into his office, peered through his tinted windows across the vast expanse of Mare Musco-viense, and slid into his seat. Off to his left, a coffee machine perked noisily. The thick columns and spidery dishes of the Tindle Array marched across the lunar plain.
Coldfield loved places that were isolated and hostile. He’d grown up in the Bronx, and had escaped to North Dakota at his first opportunity. He discovered an affinity for fireplaces and barren plains, for good wine and heavy snow. Solitude became his watchword. His affection for a landscape grew in direct proportion to its inconvenience for natives and inaccessibility to travelers.
He was a career government employee. He had worked in outposts from Manitoba to New Brunswick. The break of his life had come when, at thirty-two, he’d been appointed observer and technician at the one-man weather station on uninhabited Kaui Island, two thousand miles west of Hawaii. When he went there, he expected to remain forever, and would have, had not the lunar assignment come up.
The Tindle Array, located in the Tsiolkovsky area, had required a technician / operator. The tour was designed to last one year, and he could take his family if he wished. Of course, Coldfield had no family. That had been a problem at first. One of the busybodies in OHR had wondered about his psychological well-being. But Coldfield was solid if anybody was, and he’d made his case convincingly. The analysts agreed.
The appeal of the assignment was enhanced by the fact that Tsiolkovsky was located on the far side of the Moon. The Earth would never rise over the Array.
None of this should be construed to suggest that Coldfield was a misanthropist. He most definitely was not. In fact he liked people, felt he had been fortunate in his acquaintances over the years, and made good use of the relay circuits to a dozen points on Earth to talk with old friends. The truth about him was complicated. It involved a degree of self-doubt, of discomfort with strangers, and a thoroughgoing dislike for crowds, combined with a genuine love for remote places and a strong meditative inclination. (He would never have admitted to the latter.)
The Tindle was to have consisted of one hundred eleven fully steerable antennas, each sixteen meters in diameter. They would occupy an area forty kilometers across, and be set on individual tracks ranging from eight to sixty meters long. The project was only two-thirds constructed, but the government had run out of money. No one seriously believed that it would ever be finished. But it added up to tens of thousands of moving parts, which had to be kept operational under extreme conditions. It would not have been correct to say there was always work, but repairs were needed often enough to justify Coldfield’s presence.
The tasks were simple enough. When something went down, the systems isolated the problem for him, and usually all he had to do was trek out to the offending unit and substitute a microboard or a crystal.
He had even become involved in the operational side of the Tindle. Harvard-Smithsonian had requested his help in entering values directly into the machines, and had asked him in some cases to execute programs manually. Coldfield understood, despite his operators’ denials, that they wanted to increase his contact with other people. He was the first person to come alone to the Array, and they were watching him closely.
He had passed the evening with a biography of Evelyn Lister, who was enormously popular in her time, but who was now widely perceived as the architect of the catastrophic conditions which had overtaken and ultimately leveled the old United States. The biography showed no mercy, and it warmed Coldfield to read the attacks. He objected on principle to the powerful. Even when they were dead.
The Array was listening to OQ 172, a quasar ten billion light years out. Coldfield took his work seriously, and had acquired some rudimentary astronomy. But he did not understand the peculiar significance of quasars, nor could he make much out of the analytical readouts. Still, he knew it had something to do with creation. And he was curious about that. He had grown up in a family of religious skeptics. But, on the back side of the Moon, the supernatural seemed very possible.
The brief chime of the commlink startled him. He swung away from the windows, stabbed the receiver. “Coldfield.”
Michael Surina’s image blinked on. “Hello, Alex. How are you doing?” Surina was the project coordinator. He made it a point to call once a day. His concern for the Big Array’s lone inhabitant both warmed and touched its subject.
“Fine,” Coldfield said.
“No problems?”
There was a coupling that needed replacing on No. 17, and the plumbing in one of the bathrooms was backing up. (He had three.) But there was nothing that could be described as a problem. “Negative, Mike. Everything’s quiet.”
“Okay. We’re changing the program, so don’t be surprised when things start to happen.”
“What’s going on?”
“We want to listen to a new target. A series of new targets.”
“When?”
“We’ll wrap up the quasar exercise in a little over six hours. At 1922 Zulu. Then we’re going to adjust the entire schedule. The operation will take several days.”
“Several days! There’ll be hell to pay.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll do it.”
“What are we going to tell McHale and Abrams and the rest of them? They’ve been waiting a year and a half for their time.”
“We’re taking care of it. You won’t have to deal with them at all.”
“Damn right I won’t.” Surina was young, but would probably irritate too many people to move up. Now he sat watching Coldfield, and his expression implied that he understood, but that Alex knew how bureaucracies were. It’s no concern of ours if they screw up, his eyes said. Naturally, on an open link he wouldn’t make those sentiments overt. “This is a hell of a way to run an operation, Mike,” said Coldfield.
Surina shrugged. “Somebody at the Academy is pulling strings, and favors are owed.”
Naturally. Surina could say what he liked, but Abrams and the others would bitch at him. “What kind of targets?”
“Short range. Local stars. You’re going to do a search for patterned radio signals.”
That was unusual. The Tindle had never, to his knowledge, examined anything closer than the galactic core. “Why?” he said. “What are we looking for?”
“LGMs.”
“Beg pardon?”
“LGMs. Little green men.”
THE WORLD REVIEW COMMENTARY
The European Commonwealth is informally floating a proposal that we announce our presence to the inhabitants of the earthlike world Inakademeri, and begin negotiations with a view to assisting the natives technologically, and to securing territory which would serve as a homeland for populations of undeveloped nations.
This may be an idea whose time has come. Inakademeri is sparsely populated, wracked by global war, depleted of natural resources. The “Noks” need help. In fact, there are groups among them who claim to know of our presence, who say they have seen our aircraft and shuttles. Whether in fact they have is of no consequence. What is significant is that these unfortunate creatures, who think we may exist, literally pray for our intervention.
There would be some inconveniences. Settlers would have to become accustomed to an eleven-hour day/night cycle. The climate on the whole tends to be wetter than ours. But it is livable.
Biosystems on Nok are sufficiently like our own that we could subsist quite well on that world’s food supply. It may well be that we have a second Earth available, that we need not wait decades for Quraqua to develop.
The World Council should give careful consideration to this proposal. If no more serious objections exist than those already advanced, it should be approved, and action taken within the shortest possible time.
—”The Observer”
Wednesday, January 26, 2203
Carson called her in on her birthday, February 1. “It’s Beta Pacifica,” he said.
NEWSDESK
BAHRAINIS SHELL BORDER TOWNS
Council Threatens Military Action
CORE CASES INCREASE IN AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST
Bone Loss Syndrome May Worsen
Fear Spreads to West Foxtcorth Assures Nation: “No Need to Panic”
SIX DIE IN BLAST IN MANHATTAN BAR
El Corazon Admits Responsibility Demands Repeal of Immigration Ban
EGYPTIAN FERRY CAPSIZES