The Anguished Dawn Page 5

  The two with spears leveled them to keep Rakki against the rock while the light-skin looked him over. His face behind the hair was twisted and sour, the eyes cold and hard. "Watchoo want comin' aroun' heyah, mud rat?" he demanded.

  Rakki forced his expression to remain firm, fighting back his fear reflex. He raised an arm in the direction of the caves above. One of the dogs growled a warning at the movement. "Come in. Weary of killing land. Live with Cave People. Work hard. Fight for," Rakki said. The crazy-eyed one emitted a screeching laugh and spat at the ground.

  The darker Oldworlder leered, showing spaces among yellow teeth. One of his arms was heavily scarred and hung in an odd, stiff kind of way. "Jus' a kid, Bo. What kind o' work him good for? Mo' food o' ours he eat. Da's all."

  "Bettah use for us if make him dawg food instead, maybe," Lightskin said.

  "Dog meat! Dog meat!" the crazy-eye screeched, obviously finding it hilarious.

  "Juswait! Jusyouwait!" Rakki's chest was pounding. What if he'd misjudged? He felt for the pouch inside his vest. Scar-arm pointed his Oldworld club at him. It made a clicking noise. "Easy now, jus' easy, okay." Rakki's fingers found the four metal fingers that he had brought—yellow-brown at the flat ends, changing to gray where they rounded into points. He brought them out and showed them. "Look, more use than jus' work. Know things and places. Make Cave People strong."

  Scar-arm took one of the fingers and examined it, then handed it to Lightskin. "Look like good bullet there, Bo," he said. If that's what it was called, Rakki didn't know what it meant. But he'd been told that Oldworlders valued them highly.

  "Wheah you get these heah, mud rat?" Lightskin demanded.

  "There's mo' bullet like that, lots mo'."

  "Roun' these part? You tell straight, now."

  Rakki pointed north and east, where dry heights of unclimbable walls and deep canyons gave way eventually to watery lowlands that connected via a roundabout route to the swamp lands south from the caves, where Rakki was from. "Three days, that way. You see, I know things. Know places. Rakki come live with Cave People. Can tell. Good for Cave People too."

  The two Oldworlders looked at each other. "Watch' think, Bo?" Scar-arm asked, eyeing Rakki again dubiously.

  Lightskin seemed to turn the proposition over before coming to a decision. "Maybe is so, could be," he said finally. "Take him back up, talk to Mistameg. He know. He say what we do."

  The screecher took Rakki's weapon and waved him on as the two Oldworlders turned to lead the way back up to the caves. The two Neffers fell in behind, keeping their spears still leveled, while the dogs stayed close by. The screecher seemed disappointed by the outcome.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Vicki Delucey had been enthralled by Kronian science long before Athena erupted out of Jupiter. Originally a radiation physicist at Harvard, she had met Keene when he was engaged in plasma dynamics research there. When he gave up trying to fight the politics that had come to dominate academic science, she had followed him south to Texas and partnered with him in founding a nuclear-space-propulsion engineering consultancy catering to the private sector. Keene's dealings with the space business and his conclusion that Terran Establishment Science had taken on a role comparable to that of the medieval European Church brought him into early contact with Kronian scientists and their nondogmatic approach of following what appeared to be the facts wherever they led, regardless of preconceptions and hoped-for answers.

  Kronian interest in science was general, pervading the culture as a deeply ingrained desire to know about their origins and understand better the nature of the universe they found themselves in. With the old, comforting picture of the heavens as eternally safe and stable now dead, one of their major endeavors was to reconstruct the history of catastrophic changes that had shaped the Solar System within the last ten or so thousand years. Their approach admitted a broader base of knowledge than had been recognized as "science" on Earth, in that it combined the findings of modern-day physics and astronomy with certain interpretations of the mythologies of ancient cultures that the Kronians accepted as attempts by nontechnical peoples to record cosmic events that they had actually witnessed. Along with this, the Kronians also sought new accounts of planetary origins and evolution, for in the chaos brought by Athena, the old notions of slow, gradual change as the guiding paradigm of geology had similarly died. These questions assumed the role of mysteries in what had become, in effect, the Kronian cultural religion. The need to answer them formed a drive of virtually spiritual dimensions, inculcated in the schools and echoed in every reach of working and domestic life.

  Two major upheavals, the Kronians were by now fairly sure, had affected the Solar System in comparatively recent times. The earlier, and perhaps more astounding, of these had been inferred from a discovery that occurred only shortly before Earth's devastation by Athena. For several decades, archeologists had been uncovering evidence of a vanished city-building culture in the region of southwest Arabia and the African Horn. Called the "Joktanian," it had apparently existed long before what were supposed to have been the earliest civilizations. Then, artifacts of indisputably intelligent origin were found by the Kronians in the ice fields of Rhea. The only way they could have gotten there—short of being carried by an advanced technological culture that there was no reason to believe had existed—was through ejection following an impact or some other comparably violent event that had occurred nearby. But when the artifacts were identified beyond doubt as Joktanian, it seemed to follow that the nearby source from which they had come must have been Earth. The implication was so fantastic that Kronian scientists had been scouring the evidence ever since for another interpretation, but the answer always came out the same: At some distant time, but still within the timescale of human experience, the whole system of Sun and planets had been different. Earth was once a satellite of Saturn.

  Theories as to the configuration that had existed at that time differed. Since little remained of any physical signature, the only real guide lay in observations recorded in ancient myths and symbolic accounts, which inevitably drew many alternative interpretations. The proposals being argued ranged from various redistributions of the bodies of the known Solar System—minus Venus—to a capture model in which Earth had formed part of a mini-family accompanying a proto-sun Saturn that encountered and combined with the Sun-Jupiter system. In the latter case, the ensuing turmoil could account for just about any arrangement of orbits found subsequently. But in the less radical models, where Earth and Saturn both formed part of a stable Solar System to begin with, the question then arose of what had caused them to separate. The only plausible mechanism seemed to be either a close encounter with, or impact by, another body—either already-existing, or ejected from one of the gas giants in a process of the kind generally accepted as having originated all the minor planets and other lesser bodies.

  These fissions had at first been attributed to the buildup of instabilities in a rapidly rotating gas-giant core sufficient to shed excess mass, which was theoretically possible and thought to have happened with Athena. However, a rival theory now held them to be rebound ejecta from massive impacts—in which case Athena and Jupiter's "Huge White Blotch," which now surpassed the Great Red Spot, were results of a freak approach that had occurred on the blind side from Earth. But whatever the detailed cause, the time of Earth's detachment to become a solar planet was generally put at around 10,000 years Before the Present, with the consequences for Earth that had included climatic and geological upheaval, biological mass-extinctions, and collapse of the earliest human civilization.

  Regardless of what the final verdict concerning this earlier period turned out to be, nobody any longer disputed that Venus was not something that had orbited the Sun for over four billion years as once taught, but a young, recently incandescent object ejected from Jupiter some time after the Saturn breakup. The reigning Kronian model of what had taken place traced back to heretical challenges to orthodox astronomy that had first been propos
ed in the mid-twentieth century and held that after its violent birth, Venus had careened about the Solar System as a loose cannon, disturbing the orbits of both Earth and Mars and eventually circularizing its own orbit to become the planetary body familiar in modern times. Stories handed down since antiquity from the Middle East, India, and China, from Siberia through Europe to the Americas, described it as appearing in the sky as what could be recognized as a giant comet, seen universally as a wrathful goddess approaching at intervals to bring times of chaos and destruction. Newly-born Venus was believed to have been responsible for the calamities recorded at the time of the Hebrew Exodus, roughly 3500 b.p., also described recognizably by other peoples the world over. Initial reactions from Earth's scientific institutions had been all but universal ridicule at first, then grudging concessions to catastrophic events shaping at least some features of Earth and other bodies—so long as they were confined to happening in the distant past—and eventually full-blooded confrontation with the Kronians. Then Athena repeated the process and settled further dispute.

  After an initial period of adjustment and reorientation on Titan with other Terran survivors, Vicki and her son, Robin, fifteen at the time they came to Kronia, had settled at Kropotkin "city" on Dione, the original base site of the first settlers. Although somewhat glorified in name by the standards that would have designated a city back on Earth, Kropotkin did have the largest residential population in Kronia. After at first feeling as if she were regressing into some kind of human mole in its artificial, machine-supported environment, she had come to accept now that this would probably be home for the rest of her life. Not the home she had planned or imagined she would raise her son in after his father died in the Navy—but at least it was one where Robin would go on, as securely as could be asked for, to lead a full life. The visions of Earth with their midnight sweats and palpitations were fading now, although as with all who had come through it, the nightmare would never entirely be erased. To a large degree, her immersion in Kronian science was also a means of psychological escape.

  She sat with Emil Farzhin and their two visitors in a subsurface room of the Planetary Sciences section of Kropotkin's Polysophic Academy. Vicki had a petite, wiry body that had preserved its leanness despite not working off energy constantly against Terran gravity, a freckled, angular face accentuated by a pointy nose and sharp chin, and light brown, almost orange hair that contracted into curls no matter how she tried to comb or wave it. She was never quite sure how to describe the Academy. It was a mixture of multidiscipline research institute and high school. The classes that Robin had attended for the past three years were held in various parts of it.

  As had been the case with Earth's Moon—now broken up and carried away by Athena—Dione orbited with the same side always facing its primary, and major impacts had so far been confined to the "prow" face. All the same, the surface portion of Kropotkin had suffered considerable damage from secondary ejecta, and the population had moved belowground as far as possible. The lines of the walls and ceiling were visibly off square from distortion of the general structure by shock waves, and sounds of riveting and the intermittent shriek of a metal cutter came from beyond, where a work crew were restoring the corridor outside. Pressure-suit-and-helmet packs hung in a rack by the door, ready for immediate use; but everyone knew that a major strike even in the general vicinity would mean total obliteration.

  Farzhin was a rotund, balding, one-time Iranian who headed a group that Vicki's interests had brought her into contact with at the Academy and eventually joined. His function embraced the roles that she thought of as private researcher and teacher. As Keene had found too, there was less formal structuring here than at the institutions she had been used to in her previous life. She hadn't applied or had to negotiate an obstacle course of bureaucracy, but just attached herself in a helping-out capacity to begin with, been judged acceptable, and ended up part of the team. The main work of Farzhin's group was reinvestigating the theory of Venus's early history based on new interpretations of the Indian Vedas, which constituted some of Earth's most ancient writings.

  "We're not questioning that the Venus encounter happened," Vicki said. "But . . . I'm not sure how to put it. Whatever way we look at it, we can't avoid the conclusion that the timing in the standard account is wrong. We think there were two close passes with Earth, not one, and that they happened somewhere around two thousand years earlier than is generally believed."

  Farzhin explained, "I'm sure that the hymn describing the birth of the mother goddess Aditi from Dyauspitar, which was Jupiter, refers to the ejection of Venus. This clearly parallels the Greek account of Pallas Athene springing from the brow of Zeus. But dating the event that the Greek version talks about has always involved a lot of guesswork. The Vedic records are more precise. The Rig Veda describes two devastating visits by the raging fire deity, Agni, in the years following. Although It doesn't specifically identify Agni as Aditi but calls him Aditya, which means son of Aditi, there are enough clues to link them as the same object. It has to be Venus in its white-hot, protoplanet phase. But the time of menace from Agni ended around 5100 years Before the Present."

  The room had a scattering of chairs around a central table, a worktop along one side equipped with screens and a holo-viewer, and closets and drawers beneath. It was used for meetings and mini-conferences. Sariena sat across the table, still striking with her shoulder-length dark hair, dusky brown skin, and sultry, light gray eyes with their curious hint of opalescence, but looking tired. She was one of the Kronian planetary scientists that Vicki had gotten to know from a distance through working with Keene back on Earth, and then had come to Earth as part of the Kronian delegation sent to plead its case for a more vigorous and wider-ranging space effort.

  Visiting along with Sariena was a former project manager from JPL in California called Charlie Hu. Of Asian origins, in his fifties, with streaky graying hair and trimmed beard, he had come from Earth with the same group that had included Vicki and Keene. These days he was working with Sariena in one of the orbiting observatories on recomputing the changed Solar System dynamics—a risky undertaking in view of the exposure, but there was no other way for the work to get done. Charlie often said that he'd heard all there could be to make him revise beliefs that he had accepted as uncontroversial when he graduated in planetary astronomy long ago. Now, the look on his face was saying that the Kronians had sent his thinking into a whirl once again.

  Sariena and Charlie had come to Kropotkin at Vicki's suggestion to hear more about Farzhin's work. She hoped it would excite their interest sufficiently to bring it to the attention of the people they worked with, who represented the more mainstream view. Although the distances within the Saturnian moon system seemed vast compared to what Terrans had been accustomed to, the small gravity wells and high speeds of Kronian transorbital vessels put journey times about on par with jetting around Earth in former days.

  Sariena regarded Farzhin at some length. Vicki could almost sense her checking over what he had said point by point. Finally, she said, "If Venus goes back that far . . . then it couldn't have been a newly created comet at the time of the Exodus."

  Farzhin nodded. "I agree. But then I don't think that the Exodus event involved a newly created, planet-size comet. For one thing, it wasn't violent enough. Oh, the calamities that the accounts talk about were bad enough, yes—and the others things recorded around the world at that time. But they weren't on the kind of scale you'd expect with an object that hot, almost as big as Earth itself. Agni, on the other hand, was truly terrifying, searing the Earth, destroying whole regions totally. Humanity came close to being wiped out. In fact, I think that could have been what created the great desert belts—they still hadn't recovered, even after all that time. It's more what you'd expect."

  Charlie Hu looked questioningly at Sariena. "You know, after seeing how violent the effects of Athena were compared to Exodus, I've wondered the same thing. This does sound more like proto-Venus." Sariena
nodded but was still far away in thought. Charlie looked back at Farzhin. "So are we talking about later encounters with Venus in a cooled-down phase?" He frowned. "But no—you said there were only two."

  "I tried fitting Venus with various later events that the Vedas describe, but it just didn't work," Farzhin said. "We chewed it over this way and that, trying to make sense of all the different things the ancient Sanskrit records talk about. And the upshot is, we think that the Exodus encounter was one of a different series that happened later."

  "Different?" Charlie repeated. "You mean with something else? Not Venus at all?"

  "Exactly," Farzhin said.

  "What, then?"

  "We think it was Mars."

  Sariena's eyes interrogated him silently. Finally, she said, "That would change a lot of things that we thought we were sure about."

  The current Kronian model had Venus approaching Earth periodically after the Exodus encounter to bring times of turmoil and unrest—but of reducing severity—until around the Roman era, when an interaction with Mars caused it to recede finally to the orbit found in modern times. However, Farzhin was saying that the interaction between Venus and Mars happened much earlier, and it was Mars, not Venus, that had continued to visit the Earth on a repeating basis thereafter. Vicki was impressed that Sariena was able so matter-of-factly to consider a proposition which, if true, would bring tumbling down a whole area of Kronian planetary science that she herself had spent years helping to put together. A comparable reaction from the halls of Terran academia would have been all but unthinkable.

  "What led you to think of Mars?" Charlie Hu asked curiously.

  "Various lines in the Sanskrit texts that fit too neatly to be a coincidence," Farzhin replied. He smiled faintly. "But one of the things that first pointed us in that direction was Robin."