Empress of Eternity Read Free Page A

ruins of two differing cultures on Mars and on some of the asteroids. There’s no hint of the Old Ones, or any technology that could have built the canal.” He glanced skyward, his eyes avoiding the glare of the midday sun and settling momentarily on the Mist Ring, a silver line that arched from horizon to horizon, like a bridge across the sky.
    “That makes my point.”
    Duhyle had no idea what her point even was.
    “Don’t you understand, Kavn? If you were one of the Old Ones, would you have wanted us to know all that now? How many times have technological civilizations arisen and fallen?”
    “All the more reason to leave the knowledge,” he pointed out.
    “With odds at a thousand to one against me, I’d still bet that no preceding civilization, even that of the Old Ones itself, collapsed for lack of technology.” She offered a broad smile.
    “The Tech Paradox?”
    “It makes sense. You can see it at work in our own culture. More technology requires greater interdependence. Greater interdependence creates greater vulnerability, which in turn requires the greater application of technology and more concentrated energy sources—”
    “Now,” he interrupted, “is when we could use help. The ice is advancing an average of four-fifths a kay a year. That rate is projected to increase. We’re losing forests, and the lands that support our biologics. Directed solar energy is too concentrated for effective climatic balance. No one trusts us engineers to deploy green house gases and other large-scale geo-engineering.”
    “Not after the Searing. Besides, I’m not certain knowledge always provides an answer.”
    “Then why are you trying so hard to find it?”
    “Because the alternatives appear worse. The Aesyr are pressing for building breeder reactors and filling the atmosphere with green house gases—anything to stop the glaciation in the short term. We’re here in a desperate attempt to find another alternative before the political unrest turns into chaos and possible revolution.” Her voice held an edged humor. “Even so, I worry. What if the ancients knew their technology wouldn’t be good for us? Technologies don’t always graft to the cultures that didn’t develop them. We don’t even understand some of the biologic records from the Caelaarnan Unity, and they never advanced beyond near-space and a few out-system remote sensing stations.” Her silver irises darkened to almost black, and Duhyle could have sworn that chill radiated from her. “The Hu-Ruche Technocracy rose and almost fell before it rebuilt itself. Along the way they measured everything and left incredible records of those measurements on anomalous permaplate, but almost nothing of their technology, and what little remains is so condensed and cryptic that no one yet has made sense of it, except that after that near fall, there are continuing and puzzling references to what appears to be the rainbow. Neither the Amberian Anarchists or the Saenlyn Federation even attempted colonization or out-system planetary modifications, not so far as we can tell.”
    “You think the Old Ones meant to doom everyone who followed them, unless any successors were bright enough to duplicate what they did? Or did they expect us to find the mysterious technology trove that no one has discovered in millions of years? That assumes it exists.”
    “Then why did they build the canal—the only indestructible canal on Earth?”
    “Maybe that’s all they could do, and the effort wrecked their civilization.”
    “Or maybe the canal itself is the key. Perhaps it’s a bridge.”
    Duhyle laughed. “Don’t you think thousands of other scients have had the same idea over all the millennia? They must have tested every possible approach to determine if there is a key. If it even exists.”
    “Then I’ll have to find another way.” Her curls glittered silver from root to end, if only for a moment.
    “What do you want for dinner?” he asked.
    “Whatever