Waking Gods recap

Ten years after Themis was assembled, it is operated publicly by the Earth Defense Corps, with Rose Franklin heading its science division and Kara Resnik and Vincent Couture as its pilots. Then a second giant machine appears overnight in London and stands silent for days before releasing a substance that kills everyone for miles around. More of them appear in cities across the world and do the same, and the dead are counted in the tens of millions and then far higher. Rose works out why they have come, and the answer turns on ancestry: some humans carry the visitors' genetic inheritance, which is also what decides who can pilot. A girl in Puerto Rico, Eva Reyes, proves to be the biological daughter of Kara and Vincent, conceived without their knowledge by the project's geneticist. Kara is killed, and Vincent trains his daughter to pilot Themis with him. The confrontation ends the attack at a cost of roughly a hundred million lives, and Rose, Vincent and Eva are taken off Earth by the machines' builders, along with Themis.

Previously: as a child, Rose Franklin fell through the ground outside Deadwood, South Dakota and landed in the palm of a giant metal hand buried in a lighted chamber. As an adult she led the research into it, funded and directed by an unnamed man of unexplained wealth and influence. The remaining pieces were located by the interference they caused in electronics and magnetic readings, and were recovered from sites around the world. The assembled figure, roughly two hundred feet tall and made of an alloy nothing on Earth can produce, was named Themis. It is operated by two people standing in a control room inside it, whose movements it copies, and the controls answer to only a small number of humans, who were found to carry genetic sequences the rest of the population does not: whoever left the machine on Earth also left descendants here. Kara Resnik, a United States Army helicopter pilot, and Vincent Couture, a linguist from Montreal, became its pilots and its couple. Rose was killed during the project and was replaced by a woman identical to her, who remembers being Rose and cannot explain where she came from. Ryan Mitchell, who flew with Kara before the project, stayed close to her; the geneticist Alyssa Papantoniou ran the work on the markers. By the end of the first book Themis was whole, publicly known and used, and switching it on had effectively announced to its builders that humans had found their machine.

Ten years on, Themis is a public institution. It is operated by the Earth Defense Corps under Brigadier General Eugene Govender, with Rose Franklin heading the science division and Kara Resnik and Vincent Couture still its only pilots, doing demonstrations and appearances as much as anything else. Then a second giant appears overnight in the middle of London, standing in a park: the same kind of machine as Themis, but not Themis. It does nothing at all. It does not respond to contact, broadcast or approach, and no government can establish what it is waiting for. Crowds gather to look at it, parts of the city empty and other parts fill, and the world's governments argue over whether to negotiate with it, evacuate around it or attack it. Themis is sent to London to stand in front of it, partly as a show of force and partly because Rose wants to know whether the two machines register each other at all. Rose's own attention is on what the arrival implies: if this one came, it came from whoever built Themis, and it did not travel that far to be photographed.

The machine in London kills. Without warning or demand it releases a substance into the air that kills everyone within miles of it, and the centre of the city is emptied of the living in minutes. Themis is present and can do nothing useful about it. The dead are counted first in the tens of thousands and then far higher, and the survivors are the people who happened to be outside the radius or shielded from it. In the days that follow, more of the same machines appear in cities across several continents, each standing silent where it lands, and the world waits to learn whether every one of them will do what the first one did. Governments demand an immediate military response; the Earth Defense Corps argues that nobody yet understands what they are dealing with. Rose Franklin works on what the substance is, how it disperses and whether anything can be done to counter it. Meanwhile a girl in Puerto Rico, Eva Reyes, is behaving in ways her family cannot explain, and she comes to the attention of people who have been keeping records about exactly that kind of thing.

Eva Reyes turns out to be the biological daughter of Kara Resnik and Vincent Couture, conceived without their knowledge or consent from material taken during the project's medical screening and carried to term by another woman. Alyssa Papantoniou arranged it years earlier, as an experiment in whether the ability to pilot could be inherited and concentrated. The revelation lands on Kara and Vincent in the middle of a global emergency, and on a child who has to be told what she is and why it matters. Militarily, nothing works: conventional strikes on the machines fail, and every attempt risks provoking another release. Rose Franklin's work turns from what the substance does to why the visitors are doing it at all, and the answer keeps returning to the same genetic inheritance that decides who can operate Themis. The worldwide death toll climbs into the tens of millions and keeps rising as more machines act. Jacob Lawson, who was reporting from London when its machine released the substance, is among the survivors and describes what the attack looked like from inside it.

Kara Resnik is killed. Themis is left with one pilot and no obvious replacement, because the number of people the controls will answer to is very small and Eva Reyes, ten years old, is one of them. Vincent Couture begins training with his daughter, which is the only option available and which nobody involved is comfortable with, least of all him. Kara leaves a letter for Vincent that he reads afterwards. Govender takes the situation to the United Nations General Assembly, because the machines are no longer a British or an American problem and the Earth Defense Corps cannot act without agreement it does not have. Rose Franklin's conclusions harden: the visitors came because of the ancestry a portion of humanity carries, an inheritance that should not exist and that the builders of these machines did not intend to leave behind. Monitoring stations begin registering activity that suggests the situation is about to change again, and the Corps starts planning for the possibility that the machines will not simply keep standing where they are.

With the machines still standing in the world's cities and the death toll rising each time one of them acts, the remaining options are all bad ones. Nuclear release is openly under discussion and the assets to carry it out are moved into position. Vincent Couture and Eva Reyes have trained far enough to operate Themis together, although Eva is a child and the physical demands of the controls were never designed with one in mind. Rose Franklin settles on a course of action based on what she now believes the visitors want rather than on anything a military plan can deliver, and it requires Themis to be used in a way that will not be forgiven if she has misread them. The Earth Defense Corps commits to her plan over the objections of the governments that would rather see the machines bombed, and Govender spends what authority he has left to make it happen.

Themis, piloted by Vincent Couture and his daughter Eva Reyes, is used against the visitors' machines, and the confrontation brings the attack to an end. The cost is enormous. The substance released in the world's cities has killed on the order of a hundred million people, whole districts of major capitals are dead ground, and humanity now knows that part of its own population descends from the people who sent the machines, a fact that will shape everything that comes afterwards. Kara Resnik is dead. What follows the fighting is not a victory but a judgement: Rose Franklin, Vincent and Eva are taken off Earth altogether, along with Themis, by the people who built it. Eugene Govender, Ryan Mitchell and the rest of the Earth Defense Corps are left behind with a changed planet, no machine and none of the three people who understood it best. Rose, Vincent and Eva arrive on a world that is not theirs, with no way home and no idea how long they will be held there.

The attack is brought to an end, but not as a victory. Themis, piloted by Vincent Couture and his ten-year-old daughter Eva Reyes, is used against the visitors' machines in the final confrontation. By then the substance released in the world's cities has killed on the order of a hundred million people, whole districts of major capitals are dead ground, and humanity has learned that part of its own population descends from the people who sent the machines. Kara Resnik does not survive the book; she is killed before the end, and the letter she leaves for Vincent is read after her death. What follows the fighting is a judgement rather than a settlement: Rose Franklin, Vincent and Eva are taken off Earth altogether, along with Themis, by the people who built it. Eugene Govender, Ryan Mitchell and the rest of the Earth Defense Corps are left behind on a planet permanently altered by what has happened, without the machine and without the three people who understood it best. Rose, Vincent and Eva arrive on a world that is not theirs, with no way home, no idea how long they will be kept there, and no assurance that Earth's reprieve is permanent.