Eon

  Eon

  Greg Bear

  First published in the USA 1985 as a Bluejay International Edition by Bluejay Books Inc

  New York

  First published in Great Britain 1986 by Victor Gollancz Ltd

  This Vista edition published 1998

  Vista is an imprint of the

  Cassell Group

  Wellington House, 125

  Strand, London we2R 0BB

  Copyright © 1985 by Greg Bear

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 0 575 60266 X

  Synopsis:

  When an enormous asteroid enters the Earth’s orbit, the remains of a vanished human civilization are discovered within that reveal the asteroid’s futuristic origins and predict a catastrophic imminent Earth war.

  CONTENTS

  Prolog:

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Chapter One: April 2005

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Epilog:

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Acknowledgements:

  For Poul and Karen with much appreciation and love

  Prolog:

  Four Beginnings

  One

  Christmas Eve 2000 New York City

  “It’s going into a wide elliptical Earth orbit,” Judith Hoffman said.

  “Perigee about ten thousand kilometers, apogee about five hundred thousand. It’ll make a loop around the moon every third orbit.” She pulled back from the video screen to let Garry Lanier have a look from where he sat on the edge of her desk. For the time being, the Stone still resembled a baked potato, with no meaningful detail.

  Outside the door to her office, the noise of the party was a distant reminder of ignored social obligations. She had brought him into the office just a few minutes before.

  “That must be an incredible fluke.”

  “It’s not a fluke,” Hoffman said.

  Tall, with close-cut dense, black hair, Lanier resembled a pale-skinned Amerindian, though he had no Indian blood.

  Hoffman found his eyes particularly reassuring—gently scrutinizing, the eyes of a man used to seeing across great distances.

  She did not put her trust in people on the basis of looks, however.

  Hoffman had taken to Lanier because he had taught her something. Some had called him bloodless, but Hoffman knew better. The man was simply competent, calm and observant.

  He had a kind of blindness to people’s foibles that made him peculiarly effective as a manager. He seldom seemed to recognize petty insults, bitchiness or backbiting. He saw people only in terms of their effectiveness or lack of it, at least as far as his public reactions showed; he cut through their surface dross to find the true coin beneath. She had learned some interesting things about several people by observing their reactions to Lanier. And she had adapted her own style, picking up on his finesse.

  Lanier had never been in Hoffman’s at-home work area before, and now, in the video’s cool light, he inspected the shelves of memory blocks, the broad, empty desk with its basic secretary’s chair, the compact word processor beneath the video.

  Like most of the party-goers, he was a little in awe of Hoffman.

  On the Hill, she was called the Advisor. She had acted in official and unofficial capacities as a science expert for three presidents. Her video programs reviving and re-exploring science had been popular in the late 1990s, in a world just recovering from the shock of the Little Death. She had served on the board of directors of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and now ISCCOM—the International Space Cooperation Committee. Though she could not disguise her solid build, her taste in clothes was immaculate. There was a conscious limit to her style, however; her, fingernails were short and unpainted, well-manicured but not elegant, and she wore little makeup. She allowed her brunette hair to find its own shape with a minimum of interference; it tended to make a nimbus of fine curls around her head.

  “You must be on the Drake Hookup,” Lanier said.

  “I am, but this is a Deep Space Tracking picture. The Drale is still locked on the Perseus Gemstar.”

  “They won’t turn it on the Stone?”

  She shook her head, grinning wolfishly. ”Feisty old bastards are on a tight schedule—won’t turn it around even for a look at the biggest event of the twenty-first century.”

  Lanier raised an eyebrow. The Stone, as far as he knew, was just an asteroid. The oblong chunk wasn’t going to hit the earth, but if it was going to orbit, it would be in perfect position for scientific probes. That was interesting, but hardly worthy of so much enthusiasm.

  “Twenty-One isn’t until next month,” he reminded her.

  “And that’s when we’ll be getting busy.” She turned toward him and folded her arms. ”Garry, we’ve been working together for some time now. I trust you a lot.”

  He felt a tightening at the base of his spine. She had seemed tense all evening. He had dismissed the fidgeting as none of his business.

  Now she was making it his business.

  “What do you know about the Stone?” she asked.

  He thought a moment before answering. ”DST located it eight months ago. It’s about three hundred kilometers long, a hundred kilometers across at midsection. Medium albedo, probably a silicate body with a nickel-iron core. It had a kind of halo around it when first spotted, but that’s dissipated, That made a few scientists speculate it was an exceptionally large old comet nucleus. Some conflicting reports on low density revived the old Shklovskii Mars-moon speculation.”

  “Where did you hear the density reports?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “T
hat reassures me a little bit. If you haven’t heard much more than that, probably no one else has, either. DST had a leak, we’ve plugged it now.”

  Lanier had entered her circle while working as a public relations manager for AT&T Orbicom Services. Before being employed by Orbicom, he had spent six years in the Navy, first as a fighter pilot, then flying high-altitude tankers. He had flown the famous Charlie Baker Delta route over Florida, Cuba and Bermuda during the Little Death, refueling the planes of the Atlantic Watch whose vigilance had played such a crucial role in limiting thee war.

  After the armistice, he had received an OK from the Navy to take his expertise in aerospace engineering over to Orbicom, which was tuning up its world-wide civilian Mononet.

  There had been a few calls at first to Orbicom headquarters in Menlo Park, California, then requests for help on position papers, then an abrupt and unexpected transfer to the Orbicom building in Washington, which he later learned had been engineered by Homan. There was no question of romance —how often had he quelled that rumor?—but their ability to work together was remarkable in a Washington atmosphere of perpetual partisan bickering and funding squabbles.

  “Why the secrecy?” he asked.

  “DST has been ordered to mask all data given to the community.”

  By which she meant the scientific community.

  “Why in hell should they do that? Government’s relation with the community has been awful the last few years. This certainly won’t help.”

  “Yes, but I concur this time.”

  Another chill. Hoffman was very dedicated to the community.

  “If there’s a blanket over everything, how do you know?”

  Lanier asked.

  “Connections through ISCCOM. I’ve been put on oversight by the President.”

  “Jesus.”

  “So while our friends are partying out there, I need to know if I can rely on you.”

  “Judith, I’m just a second-rank PR type.”

  “Bullshit. Orbicom thinks you’re the best personnel coordinator they have. I had to wrestle Parker for three months to get you transferred to Washington. You were lined up for a promotion, know that?”

  Truthfully, he had hoped to avoid another promotion. He felt he was getting away from the real work, higher and higher up the tower of power. ”And you got me transferred, instead?”

  “Pulled enough strings to look like the puppet master I’m supposed to be. I may need you. You know I don’t pick candidates unless I’m sure they’ll yank my ass out of the fire later.”

  He nodded. To be part of Hoffman's circle was to be groomed for importance. Until now, he had tried to overlook that as a truism.

  “Do you remember the supernova sighted about the same time as the Stone?”

  Lanier nodded; it had made a brief splash in the journals, and he had been too busy to find that low-profile coverage odd.

  “It wasn’t a supernova. Just as bright, but it didn’t match any of the requirements. In the first place, it was first recorded by DST as an infrared object just outside the solar system. Within two days, the flare became visible, and DST detected radiation of frequencies associated with every atomic transition. The flare temperature started at a million degrees Kelvin and peaked at just over one billion degrees. By that time nuclear explosion detectors on satellites—the new GPS supervel—were picking up thermally excited gamma rays from nuclear transitions. It was clearly visible in the night sky, so DST had to make up a cover story, and that was the discovery of a supernova by space defense installations. But they didn’t know what they had.”

  “And?”

  “The display went out, everything got quiet and then a visual sighting was made in the same portion of the sky. It was the Stone. By that time, everybody knew they weren’t dealing with a simple asteroid.” The video pictures flickered and a chime sounded.

  “Well, here it is. Joint Space Command has taken over the Drake and rotated it.”

  The Drake was the most powerful orbiting optical telescope.

  There were bigger instruments being built on lunar farside, but none yet in operation matched the Drake. It had no Defense Department connection. Joint Space Command legally had no jurisdiction—except in time of national security crisis.

  The Stone appeared on the screen greatly enlarged and cradled in numbers and se4ence data graphs. Much more detail was evident big crater at one end of the oblong, smaller craters all over, a peculiar band running latitudinally.

  “It still looks like an asteroid,” Lanier said, his voice lacking conviction.

  “Indeed,” Hoffman said. ”We know the type. A very large mesosiderite. We know the composition. But it’s missing about forty percent of its mass. DST confirmed that this morning. That chunk’s profile through the center resembles a geode. Geodes don’t occur in space, Garry. The President has already accepted my recommendation that we organize an investigation. That was before the elections, but I think we can push it with the new administration—cracker-barrel mentality or not.

  Just as a precaution, we’re scheduling six orbital transfer vehicle flights before the end of February. And I’m laying my bets down early. I think we’re going to need a science team, and I’d like you to coordinate for me. I’m sure we can arrange something with Orbicom.”

  “But why the secrecy?”

  “Why, Garry, I’m surprised.” She smiled warmly at him. “When the aliens arrive, the government always goes in for secrecy.”

  Two

  August, 2001

  Podlipki Airfield, near Moscow

  “Major Mirsky, you are not concentrating on your task.”

  “My suit is leaking, Colonel Mayakovsky.”

  “That is irrelevant. You can stay in the tank for another fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Now pay attention. You must complete this maneuver.”

  Mirsky blinked sweat from his eyes and strained to see the American-style docking hatch clearly. The water was already up to his knees in the pressure suit; he could feel the stream entering through the seam at his hip. There was no way of telling how copious the flow was; he hoped Mayakovsky knew.

  He had been instructed to wedge the bent metal bar into the two sensor ports. To get the necessary traction to jam it home, he hooked his ankle and fight wrist to the circular lip of the hatch, using the I-shaped attachments on his boots and glove.

  Then with his left hand —(how they had tried to discourage him in school in Kiev, now gone, all of his teachers and their nineteenth-century ideas; how they had tried to get him to use his right hand exclusively, until finally, in his late teens, an edict had come down officially pardoning gauche children)—Mirsky slammed the bar.

  He unhooked his wrist and ankles and pushed back.

  The water was up to his waist.

  “Colonel—”

  “The hatch will pause before opening. Three minutes.”

  Mirsky bit his lip. He twisted his neck around within the helmet to see how his teammates were doing. The five lined-up hatches were manned—two men and Yefremova. Where was Orlov?

  There—pushing his helmet back, Mirsky saw Orlov being hauled to the surface of the tank, three wet-suited, scuba-equipped divers assisting him to shadowy obscurity. The surface, the lovely surface, sweet air and no water streaming in. He couldn’t feel it now. The level was above his hip.

  The hatch began to move. He could hear the mechanism whining.

  Then it stopped, only one-third open.

  “It’s stuck,” he said, stunned. He was reasonably sure the exercise was supposed to be over as soon as he could enter the hatch, and the hatch was supposed to be foolproof, it was supposed to open when properly jimmied. American word, American technology, reliable, no?

  “Loosen it. Your bar is obviously not positioned properly.”

  “It is!” Mirsky insisted.

  “Major—”

  “Yes, yes!” He jammed the heel of his heavily gloved hand agai
nst the bar again. He hadn’t hooked his ankles and right wrist; he floated away from the hatch and had to waste precious seconds reeling in his line and dragging himself back.

  Hook. Pound. Unhook. No result.

  Water up to his chest, cold, slopping past his neck seal into his helmet when his angle shifted. He swallowed some accidentally and choked. There. Colonel will think I’m drowning and show mercy!

  “Jiggle it,” the colonel suggested.

  His gloves were almost too thick to reach into the groove where the bar now resided, held in place by the partly open hatch. He pressed, his sleeves filled with cold and his fingers numbing. He pressed again.

  His suit was no longer neutrally buoyant. He was starting to sink.

  The bottom of the tank was thirty meters below, and all three of the divers had accompanied Orlov. There was nobody between him and drowning if he could not make it to the simulated Soviet hatch on his own power. And if he did not leave now—but he didn’t dare. He had wanted the stars since adolescence, and panicking now would put them out of his reach forever. He screamed in his helmet and slammed his glove tip into the groove, causing a sharp freezing jolt of pain to go up his arm as his fingers crammed into the inner fabric and Casing.

  The hatch began to move again.

  “Just jammed,” the colonel said.

  “I’m drowning, goddammit!” Mirsky shouted. He hooked his wrists onto the lip of the ring and sputtered water from his mouth. The suit’s air entered and exited just above the neck ring of his helmet, and he could already hear the suck and gurgle.

  Floodlights came on around the tank. The hatches were suspended in watery noon brightness. He felt hands under his arms and around his legs and saw the three other cosmonaut trainees vaguely from the corners of his foggy faceplate. They kicked away from the hatch complex and hauled him higher, higher, to his grandmother’s archaic and welcome heaven.

  They sat at their special table away from the two hundred other recruits and were served fine thick sausages with their kasha. The beer was cold and plentiful, if sour and watery, and there were oranges and carrots and cabbage cores. And for dessert, a big steel bowl of fresh-made, rich vanilla ice cream, unavailable for months while they trained, was set before them by a smiling mess officer.

  When dinner was over, Yefremova and Mirsky strolled across the grounds of the Cosmonaut Instructional Center with its hideous black steel water tank half-buried in the ground.