The Engines of Dawn (21 page)

Holcombe stood up. He removed his helmet and scratched his head. "I wonder if the other study teams are finding the same things we are."

Just then, behind them, one of the female students cried out.
"Help!"
she shouted.

Everyone turned. One of the undergraduates had fallen up to her waist in a hole that the ivy had concealed.

"Mark this guy," Holcombe said again to Gessner. The rest of the group ran over to the girl who had sunk through the ivy-grass.

She was in no immediate danger, however. She had simply been surprised to have stepped into a hole when she had been expecting solid ground underneath. She shucked off her backpack and launched it out ahead of her. Two male undergraduates helped her out of the hole.

"I almost broke my leg," the young girl said, trying to calm herself.

The rest of the troupe gathered around the depression in the ivy. Holcombe called back to Gessner. "Bobby, bring the grapple. The pole, not the hook. I want to look at this."

Bobby Gessner unslung the grappling pole from the side of the hovering field kit and hurriedly brought it over.

Holcombe sunk the hooked end of the pole deep into the ivy where the student had fallen in, then carefully pulled the green curtain back.

"Oh, my God!"
shouted the girl who had fallen into the hole.

"Jesus!"
someone else said.

Another said,
"Ix!"

Underneath the ivy was layer upon layer of what were clearly bodies, many of which had already become clusters of bones.

And by the look of it, they had been there for a very long time.

The students immediately looked around them. To their horror, they discovered that they were standing in the middle of a field that contained the composted remains of tens of thousands of Kiilmistians.

The students ran like crazy for a nearby ridge. Apparently, they had been walking on a cemetery that covered that whole part of the continent.

25

In a moment of uncharacteristic foresight, Ben thought it wise not to press their luck with probing the Enamorati compound. The evidence from the photos they had so far suggested that at the very least the Engine's destruction may have caused-or have been caused
by
-deadly factionalism among the aliens. George Clock thought that since humans didn't know anything about the Enamorati, maybe it was possible that they
always
fought among themselves. The blood, the bodies, the debris
could
have been normative behavior for them. They were
aliens,
after all.

Ben told Clock that he was an idiot. Even if hand-to-hand fighting in the corridors
was
normal for the Enamorati-and the humans found out about it-they'd risk the wrath of all the moms and dads back home who wouldn't take very well to their kids flying around the Alley with a boatload of warring aliens. This
had
to be an aberration. The Enamorati
were
fighting among themselves, and it was quite likely the Bombardiers were the only humans who knew about it.

So the Bombardiers hastily broke down their probe projector and, in the tradition of the former student newspaper, hid the various parts at different locations in the ship. Each Bombardier hid a component in a location the others knew nothing about, so they could plead ignorance if caught.

Ben, though, soon came to realize that they had to show the photos to someone in authority whom they could trust. Certainly their pilot, Captain Cleddman, would need to see them eventually. Before that, however, Ben thought he'd take them to Eve Silbarton. First, she was on better terms with the captain and could probably account more easily for the mere existence of the photos. Secondly, Eve-or someone else among the stardrive team-might have a better perspective on the meaning of the photographs.

Construction personnel were still at work on the gap in the floors of the physics department. Only this time they were under the watchful eye of campus security. This, however, was Eve's doing, given the security breach the other day. Still, the presence of the police only heightened Ben's uneasiness. They were just
waiting
for him to slip up. And any little thing would do.

But the guards let him through and they made no attempt to search him. Had they done so, they would have found a data tile in his tunic pocket and about forty-five photographs in the leg pockets of his pants, which he would have a hard time explaining.

Eve soon managed to assemble more than two dozen faculty and staff to hear Ben's story and examine the photographs laid out on a long table. Ben pointed out the ripped metal of the wall decorations and the dangling strips from the ceiling.

"This is incredible," said a professor from computer sciences. "I thought it was just a rumor the students were passing around. The Enamorati really are fighting each other in there."

"They were supposed to have given up actual physical combat ten thousand years ago," Dr. Israel Harlin said, his thin arms folded across his chest. "I guess they didn't."

"Unless the Accuser caste turned against everyone else," Ben said. "Look at what they wear. I've seen their body armor up close. It's more than just an environment suit."

" 'Accusers'? What are Accusers?" someone else asked.

Apparently information about this new class of Enamorati hadn't reached Eve's stardrive army in the physics department. At the very least, they hadn't occasion to use the ship's main computer and thus get
The Alley Revolutionary.
The
Revolutionary
had put that little item on page one. It would have been hard to miss.

Avoiding certain incriminating details, Ben told them of his little adventure in the astronomy observation pod.

Dr. Cale Murphy, standing beside Dr. Harlin, asked, "What are these Accusers supposed to do? Did it accuse you and your friends of anything?"

"Not really," Ben said. "It just stood there. But the e-suit it was wearing looked just like the one in these photographs. It might not make much difference if we get a new Engine or not, if they're still fighting in there."

Eve Silbarton rubbed her eyes. She looked as if she hadn't slept in days. "A civil war," she said. "That's all we need."

"Then," Ben went on, "there was all that blood Julia and I saw in the 'dynamo' room the other day when we got into the Inner Temple."

"Wait," one professor interrupted. "Blood in the 'dynamo' room? What's that all about?"

Since that little adventure hadn't been made public, Ben had to tell them about the carnage they witnessed in the "dynamo" room, adding that he did not know what the giant machine's purpose was on the other side of the Inner Temple's glass wall. He did say that the Ainge Auditors were also horrified by what they saw. So, in his mind, the destruction had to have been recent.

"Ixion's blood," one of the older professors swore. "You sure have been nosing around in all the wrong places lately."

"Sorry," Ben said.

One of the other professors said, "Revolt among the Enamorati had to happen sometime. Jack Killian's equations of fractal dynamics in social systems said they would. They're not immune. Maybe it's time we did the same."

Eve Silbarton held up her hand. "Let's not sound the call for revolution just yet. We've got to decide what to do about Ben's photographs. No matter who we show these to, someone's going to ask where we got them. They could incarcerate everybody with knowledge of these photographs. They'd close down the lab, probably disavow the whole department, and that's something I don't want to happen."

Dr. Cale Murphy then said, "And that's assuming that they think the scans are real and not a hoax. They come from the Bombardiers, after all. How likely is it that Porter or the Governors' Council would believe them?"

"Why wouldn't he?" Ben asked. "Our Engine malfunctioned when we were in trans-space and we were forced to return to real-space. That has
never
happened before to a starship fitted with an Onesci Engine. Usually, ships are retired and scrapped, or-"

"Or they retire themselves by blowing up in trans-space," Dr. Harlin said.

One of the senior space-science engineers, Dr. Mike McCollum, spoke up just then. McCollum was a man who knew everything there was to know about conventional propulsion engines in star-ships. When McCollum spoke, everyone listened. He said, "I think we should show these photographs to Captain Cleddman as soon as possible. There are governance protocols that can come into play if the situation is truly dangerous. Porter won't have any authority if Cleddman thinks we're in danger. The overrides can only respond to his voice."

"And then what?" a female graduate student in structural engineering asked. "We get fitted with a new Engine and fly around with them still fighting each other in there?"

McCollum frowned. "Unless we can persuade him to head back to the Earth or the nearest safe port so we can unload our kids and families."

"Ix," someone then said.

Cale Murphy scratched the stubble of new beard on his chin. "I guess this might explain a few things."

"What sort of things?" Ben asked.

"Do you remember the tampering that was done to our drive system the other day?" Eve asked.

"Yes, and I remember that you thought / did it."

"My mistake," Eve said. "Sorry."

"So what about it? Did they come back and finish the job?"

"It may not have been an attempt at sabotage."

"Then what was it?"

"It looks now like an act to get us to make sure of the calibration settings for the system's residual energy net. Israel saw that the drive might work more efficiently if we could harvest the residual energies from the C-graviton pump to the projection points rather than just dump the excess in trans-space."

Ben nodded. "This would mean a more accurate focus of the C-gravitron stream to the coordinate points."

"We would, theoretically, get to the projected destination with greater efficiency and accuracy," Cale Murphy said.

"And we wouldn't have even known we could do that," Eve said, "if we hadn't taken a second look at our original calibrations for the residual energy net."

"So they
improved
it?"

"I don't know if even
they
knew what they were doing," Eve said. "We would have discovered it eventually, in about a year. Maybe sooner. But they jump-started us."

Ben held the photograph taken of the Accuser in the gas-filled hallway where he stood holding a bloody sword over the two halves of his countryman.

"What is going on back there?" he said in a low voice.

"Maybe we should ask them," Cale Murphy suggested.

"I'd talk to an Avatka," Dr. McCollum said. "Forget the Kuulo. Go to someone who has hands-on experience with Engines."

"I'd like to talk to the Avatka we captured on the transit-portal record. He'd have to know something," Eve said.

"The Avatka Viroo is dead," Ben then said.

"How do you know?" Eve asked.

"A historian told us."

Dr. Harlin shook his head. "Well, we can't risk calling attention to ourselves right now. The work is more important than knowing who's fighting whom back there."

"Except," Ben said, "there might be an
army
back there just waiting to get out. If Mom and Dad knew that, Eos University would lose its charter and we'd be out of jobs."

"Or dead," Dr. McCollum said.

"There's that," Ben agreed.

"Then our best course of action," Dr. Harlin said, "is to stick to our plan. With any luck, we can get back to Earth in one piece. Then if the rebel faction wants to fight, we'll cripple the ship and let the Space Marines have a go at them."

"I agree," Eve said. "We've got to follow through on our original plan and hope that nothing slows us down."

"What plan?" Ben asked.

"I don't know how much of a plan it is. It's just come together. But we think it can work. So does the captain."

"What is it?"

Eve walked over to her stardrive as it hovered above its anti-gravity plate. She said, "As soon as we get our units installed and calibrated, we're leaving. Captain Cleddman doesn't want to be anywhere near Kiilmist 5 when the Engine and its escort arrives."

"You make it sound as if that might happen soon," Ben said.

The entire room, filled with twenty-five or so of the most gifted physicists, engineers, and mathematicians anywhere in the Human Community, became deathly quiet.

Eve said, "Our sources tell us that Kuumottoomaa has convinced Nolan Porter to forestall our Alley circuit once the Engine is installed and head back into Enamorati space, perhaps to Virr, the Enamorati home world itself, or some other destination."

Ben recalled the accidental reference the Tagani Veljo Tormis made to a world called Wolfe-Langaard 4.

"Why?" Ben asked.

"Word has it," Eve said, "that Porter's worried that we've broken the Enamorati Compact and he wants to argue the case himself before the Enamorati Council. Taking Eos University there would be an enormous show of faith."

"Can Porter
do
that?" Ben said.

"He's done it," Eve said. "He says he's received a data bullet giving him full authorization from the H.C. to let the Enamorati Council conduct an investigation into the possibility that some humans might have violated the Enamorati Compact. They want to put those people on trial. They think it's the only way to salvage the E.C."

The eyes of the physics department were upon Ben. He suddenly didn't feel very well.

26

The discovery that the archaeology team had probably been walking over mashed alien bodies ever since they had left the gondola cast their undertaking in an entirely different light. The students scrambled to a stony outcrop that rose above the fields and sat on it as if washed ashore on a desert island.

The one positive outcome of the race to the stony outcrop was the animal skull Bobby Gessner found by falling into an ankle-deep hole. Withdrawing his boot, he pulled up the skull of a beast that might have been a horselike creature. It had a long narrow skull but also had a horn-tooth?-where its nose might have been had it been an Earthly Pliocene mammal. The Ainge boy left the skull where he found it, flagging it for possible analysis later. They had enough to deal with at the moment.