Chiang Harmon called from project control to announce that the last of the general-purpose probes had been launched. In the background. Marcel heard laughter. And someone said, "Gloria-mundi."
"What's going on?" asked Beekman.
"They're naming the continents," said Chiang.
Marcel was puzzled. "Why bother? It isn't going to be here that long."
"Maybe that's why," said Kellie. Kellie was dark-skinned, attractive, something of a scholar. She was the only person Marcel knew who actually read poetry for entertainment. "You'll have a map when it's over. Seems as^if we ought to have some names to put on it."
Marcel and Beekman strolled over to project control to watch. Half the staff was there, shouting suggestions and arguing. One by one, Chiang was putting locations on-screen, not only continents but oceans and inland seas, mountain ranges and rivers, islands and capes.
The triangular continent over which they'd just passed became Transitoria. The others had already been named. They were Endtime, Gloriamundi, and Northern and Southern Tempus.
The great northern ocean they called the Coraggio. The others became the Nirvana, the Majestic, and the Arcane. The body-of water that separated Transitoria from the two Tempi (which were connected by a narrow neck of land) became the Misty Sea.
They continued with Cape Farewell and Bad News Bay, which pushed far down into northwestern Transitoria; and with Lookout Rock and the Black Coast and the Mournful Mountains.
In time they filled the map, lost interest, and drifted away. But not before Marcel had noticed a change in mood. It was difficult to single out precisely what had happened, even to be certain it wasn't his imagination. But the researchers had grown more somber, the laughter more restrained, and they seemed more inclined to stay together.
Marcel usually wasn't all that comfortable with Academy researchers. They tended to be caught up in their specialties, and they sometimes behaved as if anyone not interested in, say, the rate at which time runs in an intense gravity field is just not someone worth knowing. It wasn't deliberate, and by and large they tried to be sociable. But few of them were capable of hiding their feelings. Even the women seemed generally parochial.
Consequently, most evenings he retired early to his quarters and wandered through the ship's library. But this had been a riveting day, the first full day on station. The researchers were celebrating, and he did not want to miss any of it. Consequently he stayed until the last of them had put their dishes and glasses in the collector and gone, and then he sat studying Chiang's map.
It was not difficult to imagine Maleiva III as a human world. Port Umbrage established at the tip of Gloriamundi. The Irresolute Canal piercing the Tempi.
Even then he was not sleepy. After a while he went back to the bridge. The ship's AI was running things, and he got bored looking at the endless glaciers and oceans below, so he brought up a political thriller that he'd started the previous evening. He heard people moving about in the passageways. That was unusual, considering the hour, but he assigned it to the general electricity of the day.
He was a half hour into the book when his link chimed. "Marcel?" Beekman's voice.
"Yes, Gunther?"
"I'm back in project control. If you've a moment, we have something on-screen you might want to see."
There were about a dozen people gathered in front of several monitors. The same picture was on all of them: a forest with deep snow and something among the trees that looked like walls. It was hard to make out.
"We're at full mag," said Beekman.
Marcel made a face at the screen, as though it would clarify the image. "What is it?" he asked.
"We're not sure. But it looks like-"
"— A building." Mira Amelia moved in close. "Somebody's down there."
"It might just be filtered sunlight. An illusion."
They all stared at the monitor.
"I think it's artificial," said Beekman.
II
Extraterrestrial archeology sounds glamorous because its perpetrators dig up transistor radios used by creatures who've been gone a quarter million years. Therefore, it carries an aura of mystery and romance. But if we ever succeed in outrunning the radio waves, so we can mine their broadcasts, we'll undoubtedly discover that they, like ourselves, were a population of dunces. That melancholy probability tends to undercut the glamour. -Gregory MacAllister, Reflections of a Barefoot journalist
Inside the e-suit, Priscilla Hutchins caught her breath as she gazed around the interior of the reconstructed temple. Late-afternoon sunlight slanted through stained windows in the transepts, along the upper galleries, and in the central tower. A stone dais occupied the place where one might usually look for an altar.
Eight massive columns supported the stone roof. Benches far too high for Hutch to use comfortably were placed strategically throughout the nave for the benefit of worshipers. They were wooden and had no backs. The design was for creatures which lacked posteriors, in the human sense. The faithful would have used the benches by balancing their thoraxes on them, and gripping them with modified mandibles.
Hutch studied the image above the altar. It had six appendages and vaguely insectile features. But the eyes very much resembled those of a squid. Stone rays, representing beams of light radiated from its upper limbs.
This, the experts believed, was intended to be a depiction of the Almighty, the creator of the world. The Goddess.
The figure was female, although how the team had reached that conclusion escaped Hutch. It had a snout and fangs and antennas whose precise function still eluded the researchers. Each of its four upper limbs had six curved digits. The lower pair had evolved into feet, of a sort, and were enclosed in sandals.
The skull was bare save for a cap that covered the scalp and angled down over a pair of earholes. It wore a jacket secured with a sash, and trousers that looked like jodhpurs. The midlimbs were shrunken.
"Vestigial?" asked Hutch.
"Probably." Mark Chernowski was sipping a cold beer. He took a long moment to taste it, then tapped an index finger against his lips. "Had evolution continued, they'd no doubt have lost them."
Despite the odd features and the curious anatomy, the Almighty retained the customary splendor one always found in the inhabitants of the heavens. Each of the four intelligent species they'd encountered, as well as their own, had depicted its assorted deities in its own image, as well as in a few others. On Pinnacle, where for a long time the physical appearance of the inhabitants had not been known, it had been difficult to sort out which representation was also that of the dominant species. But inevitably everyone succeeded in capturing the dignity of divine power.
Hutch could not help noting that the more somber qualities and moods were somehow translatable in stone from one culture to another. Even when the representations were utterly alien.
They moved closer to the altar. There were several other carved figures, some of which were animals. Hutch could see, however, that the creatures were mythical, that they could never have developed on a terrestrial world. Some had wings inadequate to lifting the owner. Others had heads that did not match the trunks. But all were rendered in a manner that suggested religious significance. One bore a vague resemblance to a tortoise, and Chernowski explained that it symbolized sacred wisdom. A serpentine figure was believed to represent the divine presence throughout the world.
"How do we know these things?" she asked. "Plainfield told me that we still can't read any of the script."
Chernowski refilled his mug, glanced at her to see whether she'd changed her mind and would share some of the brew, and smiled politely when she declined. "We can deduce quite a lot from the context in which the images are traditionally placed. Although questions and doubts certainly remain. Does the turtle represent the god of wisdom? Or is it just a symbol of the divine attribute? Or, for that matter, is it just a piece of art from a previous era that no one took seriously in any other sense?"