Creations (18 page)

Max laughed. “Hey, don’t worry about it! It was a long time ago, a lot’s happened since then.”

“I know, but I’ve never had the chance to say it until now. I was under a lot of pressure then, we all were.”

“Now that’s true enough! But don’t worry about it, it really didn’t get to me.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. I never take things to heart if they’re said in the heat of the moment. It’s something you soon learn when you’re married.”

“That’s good.” She leant over to the cooler at the back of the
deck and got a drink out. “Want one?” He shook his head, and she sat back down.

“So how did you and Gillian meet?”

“We were in South Africa. I was there collecting data for my PhD, and she was in the same reserve working as a wildlife artist. The same job she does now. It turned out we had the same itinerary planned, so we hooked up and travelled together. I even used some of her illustrations in my thesis. Things just went on from there.”

“I had wondered,” Safi said. “You seem an unusual match. I don’t mean that in a bad way of course.”

“No, I know what you mean. A lot of people say the same thing. We have a lot in common though, we both deal with the natural world, we have the same fascination with it. And the differences between us just make things all the more interesting.”

“You do seem to have fairly different views of the world. That must be tough.”

“It is and it isn’t. I think my way of looking at things comes across as a bit soulless sometimes, that’s all. You know what I mean?”

“No. Like how?”

“Like, okay, look at those clouds over there.”

He pointed off into the west where the sun was still above the horizon, partially hidden by a bank of clouds. The light was streaming through the gaps, forming distinct sunbeams radiating toward the sea, lighting up the cloud base with shades of red and orange.

“People call that the ‘Fingers of God’ effect, like he’s reaching down from the skies to touch the ground. It can be pretty breathtaking sometimes.”

“You’re right, it can,” Safi said.

“Well, I tried to explain to her once how it actually works, how the perspective makes the rays spread out like that, and
how the dust particles in the air mean that some colours are scattered more than others. But she just didn’t get it. She believed me of course, but she couldn’t see how I could explain it in scientific terms and still see it as beautiful at the same time. It was as if the two ways of looking at it cancelled each other out: you can have one or the other but not both. But for me, the fact that something as amazing as a sight like that can be the result of such simple rules, that just adds to the beauty. And I see things like that everywhere I look in nature, from rainbows to rainforests.” He smiled at the unintentional alliteration.

“I could tell you some similar stories,” Safi said. “My roommate at college was convinced you could prove telepathy was real by looking at how animals behaved. She was an engineer too, the same as me, but she had this one obsession. Whenever she saw flocks of birds going over, all wheeling and turning at the same time, she said there was no way that could be explained rationally. They had to be thinking as one.

“But around the same time, one of the guys in my faculty was researching emergent behaviour in robots — how you can take lots of simple robots following simple rules, put them all together and suddenly they do something clever — and he had a simulation of how flying robots would move in formation. One of them acts as the leader, and the others just follow it but avoid each other. And there it was: the way they moved was identical to the birds. Nothing spooky about it at all.”

“And what did your roommate think of that?”

“She wasn’t convinced. But she didn’t mention it again.”

Safi finished her drink and put the carton in the waste box.

“So what did Gillian think about coming out here? There can’t be much for her to do.”

“This is our chance to start a family, probably our only chance. That’s the real reason we came. It’s been tough for her though, definitely. Especially during the rains when she couldn’t get outside. But she spends a lot of time with Tess, and she’s getting
loads of her own work done. And I try not to talk about my work too much when I’m with her. She’s fine, really.”

“So what have you told her about what you’re doing here? Does she realise how important all the work you’ve done here has been?”

“She knows I needed convincing to even come here. That now I am here all I really want to do is see it done properly.”

“Done properly?”

“Safely, so it doesn’t blow up in our faces. You know what I’m talking about. But that thing out there is your baby more than anyone else’s, so you probably don’t want to hear about that.”

“I know what you’re saying, Max, believe me. I know why you’re concerned. But remember I’ve been through this whole process once before. This isn’t an unknown subject to me the way it is to you or the others. I know what’s possible and what isn’t. You’re right to be cautious but don’t take it to extremes, please. Especially as it’s thanks to you that we’ve got this far at all.”

Max nodded, but didn’t reply.

The sky was darkening rapidly, so Safi got up and went to check on the Prospector again before the light failed completely.

“It’s done it!” she called back. Max went out and joined her.

The completed end cap had been lifted out of the chamber, and lowered into the water behind the right-hand side of the vehicle. It was held in place by an extendable arm that would gradually move it back as more and more sections were slotted in ahead of it. This way the new machine would be built back end first, always held close in behind its parent. The layering chamber was already at work on the next piece, another identical part to form the rear of the left tube.

“I think we can leave it to it now,” Max said. “See how it looks in the morning.”

“I think you’re right,” Safi said. “I’ll let them know back at base.”

Once she’d called in with the news, they sat back down again.

“So let me ask you something,” Safi said. “Where would you be if you weren’t here now?”

“Probably not too far from here, strangely enough. I told you I was a GRACE monitor didn’t I, along with everything else? I was lined up for that Chile trip before this came along, but I might have come out this way, depending on what I found. It’s the shifting ocean currents from this part of the world causing all the problems there right now. What about you? What would you be doing?”

“Still flying, though I don’t know where. It’s getting harder to find jobs these days.”

“I forgot you were a pilot. What got you into that?”

“My father. He was a flyer too. For as long as I can remember it’s all I wanted to do. I learned to fly when I was fifteen, did engineering at the Air Force college, and I was with them for five years after that.”

On first meeting, Safi hadn’t struck him as the military type at all. Even now he knew more of her background she seemed too mild and soft spoken to have coped well in that environment. In her case, however, her obvious self-discipline and organisation were the telltale signs, rather than any outward show of toughness. Whether she was tough on the inside was a different question. Somehow he thought she probably was.

“What made you leave?” he said.

“I’d just finished a tour flying TAVs — excuse me, Trans Atmospheric Vehicles. It was the same plane my dad flew, thirteen years before. Nobody gets two chances at flying something like that, so I decided to go.”

“Those were the U-155s, right?”

“Yeah, you’ve heard of them.”

“And did you ever see any action?” Even as he spoke Max was doing the maths in his head: ten years had passed since the world was so close to GRACE that the China Block’s refusal to back down meant military action against its member states seemed the
only option. Safi would have been in her mid twenties when it happened, when what could easily have been the opening skirmishes of World War Three took place.

“Yeah, I did,” she said. “Three times, all single-orbit bombing runs. We’d dip into the mesosphere over Sumatra then guide the ORAMs onto the Jakarta heavy industry zone. Sixty seconds later we were powering out and heading home.”

“I’d love to go up there. Ever since I heard my dad talking about the things he was designing and what planet or moon they were going to end up sitting on, I’ve wanted to see it for myself. I know you can buy tourist flights now, all the way to the Moon if you’re rich enough, but even a trip to the station would be a stretch.”

“I know what you mean. I saw enough on those flights to know I wanted to see more, so I looked for a job in civil spaceflight. That’s how I ended up on the Earthrise program, but as an engineer.”

Max looked up and noticed the Moon for the first time, high in the northern sky.

“So where’s your bit then?” he said.

“My bit?” she said, looking over her shoulder. “Oh, I see. Okay, you see that roundish area near the edge?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Well, that’s Mare Crisium, and the base is about halfway up, near the right hand side. You should know that, you can see the lights on a new moon. But we were based to the north of there. About fifty miles north.”

“Do you think you’ll ever go back?”

“I’d love to, more than anything, but I doubt it. I’ve already seen more of it than most people get to see. I was lucky, Niall made sure I never forgot that.”

“Niall — he was your boss up there?”

“Kind of,” she laughed. “We were going to get married once we got back to Earth. But yeah, he was in charge of things. It was
his team.”

“And how long ago was this?”

“Seven years. That’s how long it’s been since the accident.”

“So what happened?”

Safi took a deep breath before answering. “They, ah, they were getting ready for an EVA, prebreathing oxygen while they suited up. They’d been sealed in there for an hour almost. As they were putting their suits on, there was a short somewhere in the room. Just a spark from a panel someone hadn’t wired up properly, that’s all it took. It was — it was over pretty fast.”

In fact it had taken twelve seconds from beginning to end, Max would later read: the first glow of the flames as the insulation caught light, the unmistakable sight of plastics and foam composites being consumed, and finally, the searing white inferno as even solid metal began to burn in the pure oxygen atmosphere. Only when the outer skin burst under the pressure and threw the flames out into the vacuum did the fire stop. But through it all, one image had persisted over all others. It was the same image that had haunted spacecraft fires since the very beginning: that of a gloved hand beating on glass, with the flames rearing up behind it.

“I never forgot what we were trying to do up there though, how important it is to give ourselves this capability, us as a race that is.”

“And Niall was the one who started it?”

“John von Neumann started it, but Niall was the first to try to make it a reality. Until now.”

“And that’s why you’re here?”

“Of course, I jumped at the chance. Even before Victor’s offer came along I was writing papers, documenting what we’d managed to achieve. I had to be careful where I sent them — there are more than enough Olivers out there, ready to call us crackpots — but I was looking for any opportunity to try again. That’s how Victor found me. Niall’s the one to thank though. It
was his vision. There was so much we could have achieved.” She stared off into the distance, seemingly lost in memories.

“What would you have done if the accident hadn’t happened? If you’d been able to stay up there?”

“If we’d carried on with the work?” She turned back to face Max. “If we’d been able to turn our facility into an autonomous replicator, the way we’d planned to, and if we’d left it to run, the industrial complex that grew out of it would cover one twentieth of the visible side of the Moon by now.”

“And that’s a good thing?” Max asked, incredulous.

“I don’t see why not,” she said. “There’s nothing else up there. But the Moon was just an experiment, we would have stopped after three replications. The asteroid belt was our real target. We were trying to design seed pods, about a hundred tonnes each, that you would launch at the biggest objects in the belt. The factories that grew out of them would be reprogrammable from Earth, so you could just radio up the plans for anything you wanted built and leave them to get on with it. Even the ships that brought the products back would be built for free. And the low gravity would mean the factories could send out new seed pods, to spread themselves from one rock to another. Within a hundred years the mere idea of being short of materials or power or food would have been something from history. It would be a whole new age for humanity: the stone age, the industrial age, the replicative age. And it’s going to happen too. We may not have got that far when we tried, but it’s going to happen one day.”

“Just because it’s inevitable doesn’t mean it’s right,” Max said.

“That’s true, but it will solve more problems than it creates. There’s no doubt about that.”

“How can you be so sure?”

She looked up and to the side as she answered, the way she always did when recalling memories. “My father told me something once. I think he was joking when he said it, but it’s stayed with me ever since. He said that out of all the things
people have done, out of all of humanity’s achievements that we’re all so proud of, the only thing we’ve ever really done is take things that were already there and move them around. Like the Pyramids: they’re impressive, but all they did was dig up some stones and rearrange them. And the biggest cities in the world are just rock and metal that were hauled out of the ground and put together in the right order. Even space travel, and sending probes to other planets, that’s just moving things big distances instead of short ones.”

Max couldn’t help smiling at the observation. It certainly put things into perspective.

“But this,” she continued. “This is something different. Here we’re taking inanimate matter, and giving it the power to arrange itself. We set it going, but from then on it’s self-sustaining. And if we do it so that we can control it, then we get the physical world working for us for a change, instead of having to work against it. Order out of disorder: that has to be a good thing, doesn’t it?”