Luna Marine (39 page)

She wondered if it had been worth it.

David Alexander
An Cavern, Tsiolkovsky Base
0600 hours GMT

David knew that it had been worth it.

Quite apart from the capture of the UN ship—which, he'd been assured, would have been more than powerful enough to have ended the war once and for all on the UN's terms if they'd gotten her working before the
Ranger
—
there was
this
, a Cave of Wonders, a
new
Cave of Wonders on the farside of the Moon.

And it was intact. Blessedly, miraculously intact. Ever since he'd first heard of the possibility of alien artifacts on the Moon, he'd dreaded the possibility of what, in fact, had come to pass—another pitched battle among ruins and relics of inestimable importance to humankind's understanding of who and what he was. If this place had been destroyed, if Jack had failed to stop that countdown aboard the UN ship…

Well, none of them would have survived to mourn the loss of the place the Ancients had called Gab-Kur-Ra, the Hidden Place Within the Mountains.

It was nowhere near as large or as mysterious as the Builder facility beneath the battered visage of the Cydonian Face on Mars, but it was far more
personal
. As near as David could tell, this had been some sort of An communications and control center, a series of chambers hollowed out from the solid volcanic rock of Tsiolkovsky's central peak at a time when humankind was just emerging from the last ice age.

One of the French archeologists who'd been stationed at the base had led David to the chamber earlier, with a couple of Marines along as guards. There'd been a fair-sized community of UN scientists at the base; most had been rounded up by now and put aboard the
Ranger
, where they were being debriefed.

David knew he was going to be very interested in those intelligence reports. What they'd found here, several years ago, unguessed at by the rest of the world, was as important in its way as the discovery of the Builder artifacts on Mars.

And, damn it, if it hadn't been for the stupid war, perhaps he could have been brought in on the discovery sooner. He was going to have to have words with Billaud and the others.
He'd
shared his discoveries with
them
…well, some of the discoveries, anyway. But they'd been keeping this one secret.

And now he thought he understood why.

The chairs in the room were too small for a human
frame, especially one clad in a space suit. The An stood perhaps a meter and a half tall and were quite slender, with a lizardlike grace to their movements. He could tell this, now, watching the large screen in the chamber he thought of as the communications center, where touching a series of oddly shaped keys on the oval instrument console called forth a seemingly endless selection of video images.

Scenes recorded on Earth perhaps eight to twelve thousand years ago.

Clearly, the An had once ruled the Earth, dominating the primitive human cultures with their technology as completely as humans dominated their herds of domestic animals. The scenes reminded David vividly of the Sumerian word for human—
lu
—which had the additional meaning of “those who are shepherded.” Human workers were
lulu
, a doubling of the idea that they were creatures needing shepherding.
Slaves
….

He watched the building of a city—his archeologist's digger soul desperately wanted to know just where it was—and the worship of the An, somewhere, he thought, in ancient Mesopotamia. He watched endless processions of naked men and women bringing tribute and laying it at the An masters' feet…and similar processions of men and women bound and collared, led like animals aboard a vast An transport, slaves taken to some unimaginable fate and destination among the stars. He watched other An spacecraft arriving and departing, watched humans arise in revolt only to be burned down by the thousands, watched the creation of the first organized religions, with priests in place as police and intermediaries. And not all of the scenes were in ancient Sumer, either. He saw records that showed the pyramids as they'd
originally
appeared, thousands of years before the age of the pharaohs, encased in gold and white limestone, ablaze in the morning sun.

Through this eerie window onto the remote past, he understood so much more now. The An had six fingers on each hand. He saw there the origin of the twelve-and sixty-based counting systems of ancient Sumer. He saw
the origin of religion and priesthoods, of architecture, of animal and plant domestication, of language, of writing, of science, of Cyclopean monuments, of gold as a medium of exchange, of myths with arcane similarities the world over, of legends of gods who descended from the sky and wielded lightning in battle.

There were answers in these records to hundreds of the greatest mysteries of human history and prehistory. It might take generations more to unravel those mysteries, to uncover and record the real history of Man's past, but they
would
be uncovered.

How small, how
quaint
to assume that the civilizations of Egypt and Sumer had appeared out of nowhere, full-blown and at the height of their glory! How blind to think that the past thirty thousand years were empty of human triumph, accomplishment—and tragedy—simply because no records from that time had survived….

The records stored within the Tsiolkovsky Vault, David knew, were an archeologist's dream, images—sounds too, he was sure, though the chamber was in vacuum and he hadn't heard them yet—made by an extraterrestrial civilization intent on studying the intelligent but primitive beings on the world the An called
Ki
…Earth.

Imagine what there was to be learned….

At the same time, there was terror in that imagining, and in the answers to be found there. David wondered if the human species was ready to learn those answers. Now, after seeing records of humans caught, studied, enslaved—and civilized—by the alien An, he thought he understood why the UN had been so dead set against his revealing what he'd found on Mars.

What he was seeing here might well bring down several of the Earth's major religions, would certainly generate new religions, as indeed some of the leaked information on the An already had. More important, it would yet again bump Man down a step from his perception of himself as the pinnacle of creation, at the center of the universe. As much as Copernicus or Darwin, it would change forever what Man thought of himself.

Once, David knew he would have immediately de
manded the release of this information, and to hell with the consequences. Truth and reality were better than comforting fiction, after all.

Now, he just wasn't sure. There was so much…so much…

Especially when he saw the Hunters of the Dawn.

He watched from the An point of view as someone…or
some
thing attacked in angular, weirdly twisted black craft that were the stuff of nightmares, saw mushroom clouds rise above burning An cities, saw An and their humans slaves alike hunted down and burned from the sky, watched an asteroid impact far out at sea send a tidal wave rolling inland, obliterating the burning colony cities of the An.

Just like Chicago….

Perhaps even humankind's own penchant for destruction had its roots, its heritage of struggle and war, in these ancient, deadly incursions from the sky.

David knew he was going to have to find out, somehow. Teri…she was going to have to see these records. There appeared to be tens of thousands of them. He wondered whether it would be possible to copy them all and send them back to Earth, or whether it would be easier just to bring Teri and a research team out here.

The latter, probably. Man was going to be doing more and more research in space now, especially now that he'd unlocked the secret of the antimatter drive.

He would have to learn all he could, before the Hunters of the Dawn came again.

The thought left David feeling very cold…and very, very small….

SATURDAY
, 27
DECEMBER
2042

The White House Rose Garden
0930 hours EST

“Lance Corporal Jack Ramsey, front and center!”

Trembling inside, Jack strode forward, making the prescribed sharp, right-angle turns to come face-to-face with the president of the United States where he stood behind his podium. Cameras clicked and whirred, and a patter of applause came from the audience, which included as many members of the press, of the Armed Forces, and of the civilian families of the people involved as could fit into the historic Rose Garden area. The word was that this was the first outdoor ceremony held at the White House since the beginning of the war two years before. The truce was holding, and Washington had not suffered a cruise-missile attack for over five weeks, now.

It looked like the New Year would usher in a genuine peace.

Jack stopped in front of President Markham, rendering a crisp salute. He was dressed in his Class-A uniform, full dress, complete with striped pants and white gloves. It was warm—pleasantly so, in the low twenties—as it always was nowadays, even in winter. Global warming and its effects would be here for a long time to come, even with the new technologies being brought home from the Moon and Mars.

“Lance Corporal Ramsey,” President Markham said,
speaking into the thicket of needle mikes on his podium, “for conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty; on or about 10 November 2042, while attached to the First Space Assault Group, United States Marine Corps, then—Private First Class Ramsey was instrumental in the capture of a UN warship at the enemy's base at Tsiolkovsky Crater. Using an artificial intelligence of his own design, Private Ramsey…”

A medal gleamed in the president's hands, hanging from a baby blue ribbon.

Jack was not listening as Markham continued describing the action.
Sam
was the one who deserved the medal…but he still hadn't been able to convince his superiors that she was a self-aware, intelligent being in her own right, worthy of respect…and the traditions and trappings normally accorded only to humans.

Well, they would come around. The mark of any AI was its ability to acquire data on its own, to form new connections, to
grow
, in much the same way that an organic intelligence grew. The same thing must be happening in countless other AI systems around the world. It was unthinkable that Sam was the only one of her kind.

He hoped that his next assignment would let him explore this new frontier, with Sam as his assistant.

But then, it was just as possible that he would be redeployed soon to the Moon, or Mars. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Marines of 1-SAG drawn up in formation, watching as President Markham continued reading the citation. Lieutenant Garroway was there…fully recovered, they said, from the effects of radiation poisoning. Diane Dillon was sitting with the civilians, still bandaged and on light duty, but on her way to recovery. Captain Fuentes was beside her, also recovering. Both women had won the Navy Cross, as had Colonel Avery for his daring landing of the
Ranger
outside the UN base, and his destruction of enemy positions that had threatened the Marines on the beach.

So many others, though, had not recovered. He still had nightmares about Bos…and a nagging guilt.
It could have been
…should
have been me
….

“…and it is, therefore, with pleasure and pride that I present you with this, the Medal of Honor.” Markham reached up and dropped the ribbon over Jack's head.

“Congratulations, son,” Markham added, shaking his hand. He turned and addressed the microphones. “It seems that the United States Marines are destined to go from Earth to the, ah, ocher sands of Mars, to the gray shores of Luna, even to the stars, wherever Man's heritage calls us.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” Jack saluted again, turned, and marched back to the ranks. Diane winked and smiled as she caught his eye. The audience burst into applause.

Man's heritage? As Jack about-faced and resumed his place, the Marine band, “the President's Own,” burst into a rousing rendition of the “Marine Corps Hymn,” but he wasn't listening to the music. There was something his uncle had been talking about the other day, something that worried him, left him with a nagging bit of doubt.

Wars only rarely settled major issues. The UN war would officially end in a few more days, but many of its causes were still unresolved. There were questions still of the distribution of the new-discovered alien technologies, over claims by China on parts of Siberia, over the question of independence for Aztlan in the US Southwest. One of the main causes of the war, though, one rarely stated, had been the UN's desire to unite all of humankind under one rule, one set of laws.
That
issue, at least, had been settled rather soundly. Few observers thought the UN would survive to see its centennial.

And yet, Jack's uncle had said something disturbing the other day, when he and that Dr. Sullivan he worked with had visited Jack and his mother. “Civilization is so damned fragile,” David had said, leaning back in the sofa with his arm around Dr. Sullivan's shoulders. He'd seemed
happier
than he'd been in a long time…and also more thoughtful. “Think how much we've lost already, during the fall of the An colonies. A whole age of civilization, forgotten, save as scraps of myth and religion. All wiped away, as easily, as completely as Chicago. Now, I don't want a UN dictatorship any more than the next man.
But somewhere out there we're going to find the current Hunters of the Dawn. They're out there. Maybe they've already picked up our earliest radio broadcasts, or
I Love Lucy
, or whatever. Maybe they're already hunting for
us
. And we're going to have to face them.

“And I just have the damned, nagging feeling that when we do, it'd be better if we face them
united
, instead of as a hundred separate, squabbling states.”

The Hunters of the Dawn. Jack wondered where they were now…and if they were the same beings who'd destroyed the An civilization on Earth so long ago.

Well, if they tried it again, they would find things a little different here this time, a little tougher than what they'd encountered here last time, six or eight thousand years ago.

Back then, the An and the ancient Sumerians had not possesed
anything
like the United States Marines….