Have they changed? Alex wondered. Every time he looked, the pattern of interlaced strands seemed different, captivating.

A tone startled him, but the watch officer only glanced over from his own console, reassuringly. “New Guinea’s about to fire in tandem with Africa, tohunga. Don’t worry. We’re off line ourselves for another four hours.”

Alex nodded. “Uh, good.” Internally he sighed. June is right. I’m running myself straight into the ground.

He was grateful she stayed with him, despite his moodiness and hesitant libido. Theirs was a wartime comradeship of course, to be lived moment by moment, without playing “push me, pull you” over intangibles like permanence or commitment. People tend to worry less about such things when the world itself seems a makeshift, temporary place. One was grateful for what one got.

Among other things, June had at least given him back his sexuality.

Or maybe it’s the gazer, Alex wondered. For all the machine’s potential destructiveness, he still felt a thrill whenever it suddenly cast beams of titanic power. No one had ever created anything so mighty. Those brief rays were powerful enough to be detected a galaxy away… provided someone looked in the right direction, at the right moment, tuned to an exact frequency.

He touched a key and saw the computer had finished reworking his design for the next-generation resonator — this one a sphere only a little over a meter across. Spiderweb domain traceries laced an otherwise flawless crystalline structure. Even in simulation it was beautiful, though probably they’d never have time to use it.

He entered a few slight modifications and put the file away again. Alex yawned. Perhaps he might sleep now.

Still he lingered a few minutes to watch the next pulse-run. Seconds ticked down. Beta’s image passed beneath a channel of pulsing blue. Suddenly, as Alex watched, yellow lines lanced inward — George Hutton’s New Guinea resonator casting its triggering beam inward simultaneously with the one in Southern Africa. The lines met deep within the core, right on target.

Beta throbbed. Blue threads pulsed. And from the combination something flickered like a fluorescent tube coming to life. Suddenly a beam, white and brilliant, speared outward at a new angle, through all the layered shells and into space beyond.

Alex read the impulse generated, compared the recoil coefficients with those calculated in advance and saw they matched within twenty percent. Only then did he check for point of exit, and blinked.

North America. Right in the middle of a populated continent. He sighed. Well, it had to begin sometime, somewhere.

He wasn’t masochistic enough to sit and wait for damage reports. There’d be guilt enough for later. Right now his duty was to rest. At least he wouldn’t be alone. And June didn’t seem to mind if he occasionally moaned in his sleep.

Halfway back to his hut, however, negotiating a slippery, narrow path through the wet, waving grass, Alex was caught suddenly in a glare of lightning.

The flash didn’t startle him entirely, since bursts of rain still rolled like traffic across the plateau and the air tingled with the scent of ions. Nevertheless he jumped, for the sudden light brought figures out of the gloom — stark, tall shapes whose shadows seemed to reach like grasping fingers toward him. During that first stroke, and the black seconds that followed, Alex felt abruptly cornered. His heart raced. The next burst only reinforced that impression of encirclement, but cut off too soon to show what or who was really there. Or, indeed, if anything was there at all.

Only with the third stroke did he make out what company of things stalked the dim slope. Alex exhaled through nostrils flared by pumped adrenaline. Lord. I must be keyed up, to jump half out of my knickers at the sight of those things.

It was only the statues, of course… more of the eerie monoliths constructed long ago by the native folk of Rapa Nui, in their pessimistic, manic isolation.

They saw the end coming, he thought, looking down the file of awful figures. But they were dead wrong about the reasons why. They assumed only gods had the power to wreak such havoc on their world, but people caused the devastation here.

Alex felt compassion for the ancient Pasquans — but a superior sort nevertheless. In blaming gods, they had conveniently diverted censure from the real culprit. The designer of weapons. The feller of trees. The destroyer. Man himself.

More rain pelted him, finding entrance under his hat and collar to send chill rivulets down his spine. Still he watched the nearest of the great statues, pursuing a reluctant thought. Lightning flashed again, exposing stark patterns of white and black underneath those brooding brows. The pouting lips pursed in sullen disapproval.

For more than a hundred years we’ve known better. No outside power can approach human destructiveness. So we managed not to fry ourselves in nuclear war? We only traded in that damoclean sword for others even worse…

Something was wrong, here. Alex felt a familiar nagging sensation — like the tension just before a headache — that often warned him when he was on a false trail. He could sense the brooding stares of the ancient basalt figures. Of course it was the night and the storm, encouraging superstitious musings — and yet still, it felt as if they were trying to tell him something.

Our ancestors used to see all disasters originating

outside themselves, he thought. But we know better. Now we know humanity’s the culprit. We assume…

Alex grabbed at the idea before it could get away. Lightning struck again, this time so close the pealing thunder shook his body.

… we assume…

He knew it was only static electricity, crackling and pounding around him. The atmosphere’s equilibration of charge, that was all. And yet, for the first time Alex listened… really listened as his ancestors must have, when they too used to stand as he did now, under a growling sky.

The next crackling stroke shook the air and bellowed at him.

… Don’t assume!

Alex gasped, stumbling backward, staggered by a sudden thought more dazzling and frightening than anything he’d ever known. All at once the great statues made horrifying sense to him. And within the thunder, he now heard the angry voices of jealous gods.