The Engines of Dawn (20 page)

Ben scrolled through the photographs. It was more of the same. But there were no bodies, no Enamorati wandering the halls-at least in this part of their compound.

"Did the breakdown of the Engine do
thisl"
Rosales asked.

"Unless they live this way," George Clock said.

"Enamorati are supposed to be fastidious," Rosales asked. "Look at the mess!"

"Yes," Ben said. "And where is everybody?"

"Maybe most of them are dead, because of the Engine," Clock said. "Remember that the Tagani said we were going to take on new Avatkas when we got our new Engine."

"And Kaks," Ben added.

"Right," Clock said.

Then Rosales said, "What about those ships that went with the Engine into the sun? If they were manned, they could have taken dozens of then- kind with them."

"Even so, there's still plenty of room back there for several hundred Enamorati," Ben said.

They printed out forty digitally enhanced photos of astonishing clarity and laid them in a line along the floor. Taken together, the photographs gave them a 360-degree scan of a corridor intersection.

"Let's do another scan," Ben said. "This time thirty feet farther in."

They prepared the probe for its next journey, then sent it off with another POOF! as it disappeared.

It came back almost immediately.

The second set of photographs, of another corridor in the Enamorati compound, showed the same kind of destruction. Except this time there were bodies.

They printed out the second set of photographs and laid them out on the floor as well.

"Look at this!" Rosales said. "These guys are wearing environment suits."

"So?" Clock said. "They always wear their e-suits."

"Except that it's in their own territory," Rosales pointed out. "Why are they wearing e-suits in their own quarters?"

Ben crouched above the second set of photos. "They're wearing body armor," he said. "The same armor that Accuser wore."

Ben noticed that several of the photographs showed pockmarks or gouges in the walls. Ben looked at Jim Vees. "You've heard loud bangs back there. Could it have been gunfire?"

"Some of the Auditors think so," Jim said darkly.

"This
looks like the results of a hand grenade," Rosales said.

"Let's go in deeper," Clock suggested. "Let's go in three corridors farther aft, and laterally about a hundred yards."

"I'm game," Ben said.

They immediately reset the machine. Once they calculated the next nexus location-approximatley 90 feet farther aft and 280 feet to the port side of the grand ship-Ben pressed the Engage button.

The pearl-like probe vanished in a puff of air. A few heartbeats later, it reappeared. They downloaded the data into the computer and started the printing process once again.

The probe this time had manifested very close to a wall-inches from it, in fact. The first set of frames were of that wall where a long, slender, scimitar-like tile had fallen out of place and was, presumably, on the floor just beneath the probe.

The next set of images showed more of the same kind of destruction they'd seen in the first set. But here the walls and ceiling looked as if they had been shredded. Several lighting fixtures dangled, though some were still functioning.

They moved to the next set of ten, where the probe was looking fully down one corridor-and they nearly jumped out of their boots.

"Whoa!" said George Clock.

"Jesus Christ!" said Jim Vees.

An Enamorati-apparently a Tagani, a historian-stood squarely in the center of frame 26, from the elbows up, standing, staring right at the camera. The alien couldn't have missed it. The rest of the frames were shots of him standing there, staring, perhaps not sure that he had seen what he
thought
he had seen.

Tommy Rosales stood up from where he had been kneeling on the floor and stretched magnanimously. "Well, I guess that's it. Break out the suntan lotion. I hear it's hot on the surface of Tau Ceti."

Ben wasn't ready to give up. Though the lone Enamorati seemed to be staring at the probe, not much else was happening in the corridor. Moreover, the Enamorati did not appear overly alarmed by the probe's nosy presence.

"Let's send another probe to the other end of the same hall. I want a different perspective on this guy."

"What difference does it make?" George Clock said. "We're all going to jail. I can't believe you talked us into this."

"It will take them a while to figure out it's us,
if
they figure it out," Ben said. "We've got some time yet. Let's make use of it. If we're really fast, we can get these pictures to the student newspaper. They'd love this."

"We can read it when we're in jail," Clock said.

Ben swiveled around in his chair, reset the probe, reset the nexus to a position just twenty yards down the hall, then launched it. When it returned Ben immediately downloaded the probe's data, printing them instantly.

Privately, Ben had expected to see nothing but an empty hallway. Enough time had gone by for the armored Enamorati to have gone off to tell the Kuulo Kuumottoomaa what he had seen.

However, what
had
happened in that span of time-probably no more than ten minutes-was that the first Enamorati, the one who had seen the probe, was now leaning against the far wall in a position that suggested violent death.

But now there was a second Enamorati. This being, also in body armor, held what appeared to be a sword in its right hand-one of the wall "decorations," a graceful slice of composite material approximately four feet long. Not only was he using it
like
a sword, the decoration had all the look of a
real
sword. And the halls had been decorated with hundreds of them!

"I guess we don't have to worry about the first guy," Clock said.

The newcomer had just slain the first Enamorati when the probe had appeared and scarfed its sequence of forty photographs. The attacker was just turning around when the probe caught him, but had vanished before it could have been seen.

Been looked closer at photo 40, the last containing a discernible profile of the alien.

Ben turned back to the computer, jumped to frame 40, then magnified and enhanced it.
"This
is an Accuser," Ben said emphatically. "He's in full battle armor and those things on his belt look like weapons to me!"

"Then they
are
soldiers," Tommy Rosales said.

"And we've been carrying them around in space with us for a while now," Ben said. "Question is, how many of them are there?"

None of the Bombardiers could answer that. None wanted to.

24

Through the phalanx of the magnificent flesh-colored trees, Julia saw a Mound to the north of their position. It was easily within walking distance, so she set out for it. Its flattened pyramid shape seemed to beckon her, reminding her of the jungle-covered ruins the Maya had left behind in old Mexico. Even in their desolation, those stone edifices still had power to evoke forgotten eras. So, too, did the Mound in the distance.

Julia recognized quickly that it was artificial, not just another hill rising above the ivy-covered plain. Its walls were too steep, too angular
not
to have been constructed.

Holcombe brought the other students to Julia's position at her call, and everyone paused to examine the distinctive structure.

Bobby Gessner took out his high-powered field binoculars and zeroed in on it. "It looks like there's a series of low buildings just to the west of that Mound," he announced. "They're covered with the same ivy or grass or whatever it is. It looks like there might be hundreds of buildings underneath the stuff."

"Dr. Holcombe," one of the students asked, "is this the city we saw on the landsats?"

Holcombe was just catching his breath from the brisk walk. "I believe so."

The Mound itself wouldn't have shown up on any of the landsats. The green ivy-grass was everywhere and Kiilmist had been close to the zenith when the landsat photos had been taken two days ago, so the Mound would have cast only the barest of noon shadows. Only the strange, crumbling roads and long-abandoned agricultural fields and drainage ditches pointed to a civilization of moderate evolution in this region.

"It looks like one of the Wessex burrows near Stonehenge," Julia said. "The way it's shaped, it looks like it could be a burial mound of some kind. Maybe it's a ceremonial pyramid."

"We'll make our base camp near that Mound," Holcombe told them as he wiped his brow with a handkerchief, "The way the buildings and the fields have been organized around it, I'd say it's the geographical center of the town."

Julia had turned off her personal shield. She wanted to feel the wind on her face and smell the aromas of this new world.

But the very air smelled of death, and she frowned.

"Your thoughts," Professor Holcombe asked, coming up to her.

Julia felt slightly embarrassed to answer with so many undergraduates looking on. "We talked earlier about flowers and insects or their equivalents being missing from this Gaia-system."

"We did," Holcombe said.

"The air should be filled with odors of all sorts of riving things," Julia said. "Especially microorganisms, pollens, and spores. There would be by-products of both plant and animal life. But I don't smell a thing."

"And our biohazard scanner back in the gondola registered nothing," Bobby Gessner chimed in. "Remember?"

Holcombe faced the Ainge boy. "Our scanner only indicated that there was nothing in the air that was hostile to us. It didn't say there was
nothing
in the air. It's not even programmed to do that."

Marji Koczan came over. "You mean there's only
air
in the air?"

"What would be wrong with that?" a young female asked.

Holcombe looked at Julia and she felt a slight peak of pride. Holcombe seemed to be handing her a baton of some kind, a public acknowledgment that she was already maturing as a field archaeologist.

"It would mean," Julia told them, "that something has scoured the ecosphere clean, taking out the smaller life-forms, leaving only the plants."

The students were becoming somewhat more agitated the farther they got from the gondola. Julia noticed that while she, Marji Koczan, and Professor Holcombe had switched their personal shields off, the other students had turned theirs up several notches. Fortunately, the Mound was not that far away and a pitched camp with the field kit's perimeter shield up and running would go a long way toward easing the minds of the younger students.

The distance was a little more than Holcombe had estimated and he slowed his march toward it, mostly to make sure that young Gessner and the floating field kit did not fall too far behind.

Julia was walking beside him, her eyes on the Mound that seemed the center of the world, so much did it dominate the landscape.

"So what do you think of the Ennui?" Holcombe asked after a few moments. "Do you think it's real?"

"I don't know. I've never thought much about it. Why do you ask?"

Why
did
he ask? Holcombe's mood had gone from blithe melancholy to a darker shade of depression. He wasn't his usual self.

"The sky is full of stars," he said. "You'd think that once humans got off the Earth, civilization would have spread like wildfire."

"Civilizations come to an end," Marji Koczan said, having pulled up to Holcombe's left side. "Nothing lasts forever."

"You think this planet suffered from the Ennui?"

"Something like it," Holcombe said.

"I'd say it's just entropy," Marji Koczan said. "Civilizations can get
tired.
In 700 C.E., at the very beginning of the Dark Ages, southern Italy was virtually deserted because of the barbarian invasions of the previous three centuries. Everybody moved away, tired of being run off their farms and orchards."

"That's not entropy," Bobby Gessner responded. "History is a flow of forces. To us it only looks like they ran out of steam. The barbarians must have thought they were riding high on their good fortune. It depends on where you're standing."

"Unless there is a larger force moving through history," Holcombe said.

"The Ennui is a force?" Marji Koczan said.

"Or fate," Holcombe said.

"Nobody knows what it is," Julia said, "or even if it's real."

"Entropy is real," said Bobby Gessner.

"Right," said Holcombe. "But notice how when humans don't understand why something happens, we call it fate. However, if we understand it, then it's destiny at work. We're in control."

"Are you saying destiny is an illusion?" Koczan asked.

"Perhaps."

"Then you're saying that
someone
is responsible for the death of this planet's ecosystem?" Julia asked.

"Or
something,"
Holcombe told her. "I'm just very suspicious of entropy and 'accidents' and the Ennui. They make complicated historical processes seem easy to understand."

Some of the students had begun branching out in their walk rather than simply following Holcombe and the two graduate students. Here, the ivy-grass was somewhat more spongy but offered no real obstacle. The Mound ahead of them seemed to lie in a shallow valley just over the next ridge.

"Found one!" a female student shouted off to their right.

The students gathered around a patch of loose ivy in a depression in the field. A dried-out forearm of a Kiilmistian stuck partially out of the ground like a strange plant. It was clutching some sort of wooden rod with a set of leather bindings attached at the top.

Holcombe crouched down. He carefully took hold of the exposed arm and attempted to move it. But it held firm. The body had been there so long that it had become petrified.

"Bobby," Holcombe called.

"Right here!" the Ainge youth said, coming forward.

Holcombe pointed. "Flag this guy. And you'd better call the deadman. Have him bring the gondola to this location. We'll set camp just over this rise."