Last and First Contacts (Imaginings) (8 page)

I took a step forward; the bazooka twitched. ‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘It’s okay; you can take the ship.’

‘No tricks, Slater!’

‘But you’ll have to let me train you. You’ll never fly it otherwise. Now let me back in and –’

Another bolt; my shoulder exploded into a spray of crimson. I slapped a patch onto my suit and felt the cold wash through me.

‘You made me do it!’ he screamed. ‘You made me!’ And the port slammed shut.

After a few seconds, vapour began to pool around the drive tubes.

I squeezed at the pain in my shoulder, staring at my shadow on the nucleus crust. He’d never make it…We’d both die in this wilderness…

What shadow?
How the hell was I casting a shadow?

I whirled, wrenching my shoulder and tumbling into the ice.

The alien craft came over the horizon like a fantastic dawn. Out of its thousand-mile walls floated a shoal of sky-blue pillars.

I laughed. ‘Bead – look! They’ve survived!’

The pillars clustered around me, fine as wedding veils. Their kindness bathed me. Their ship must have been the ‘ghost’ our sensors picked up – the source of the energy that wrecked us. ‘Bead! Shut down the drive and come out. It’s – it’s delightful!’

Through the pale figures I saw our ship lumber from the comet’s surface.

‘Bead! Bead! Listen to me. It’s not a trick!’ I pushed through an ancient body – it crackled like old paper – and tried to run to the ship. ‘Bead! Don’t kill yourself! They’ll save us!’

A blast of reaction gas knocked me into the slush.

The ship rose, blurred –

– and blossomed into the harsh light of a fusion explosion.

The cerulean pillars lifted me like a child. We swam through space towards their ship, and home.

Tempest 43

From the air, Freddie caught the first glimpse of the rocket that was to carry her into space.

The plane descended towards a strip of flat coastal savannah. The land glimmered with standing water, despite crumbling concrete levees that lined the coast, a defence against the risen sea. This was Kourou, Guiana, the old European launch centre, on the eastern coast of South America. It was only a few hundred kilometres north of the mouth of the Amazon. Inland, the hills were entirely covered by swaying soya plants.

Freddie couldn’t believe she was here. She’d only rarely travelled far from Winchester, the English city where she’d been born, and Southampton where she worked. Hardly anybody travelled far. She’d certainly never flown before, and she had a deep phobic sense of the litres of noxious gases spewing from the plane’s exhaust.

But now the plane banked, and there was her spaceship, a white delta-wing standing on its tail, and she gasped.

Antony Allen, the UN bureaucrat who had recruited her for this unlikely assignment, misread her mood. Fifty-something, sleek, corporate, with a blunt Chicago accent, he smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

The plane came down on a short smart-concrete runway. Allen hurried Freddie onto a little electric bus that drove her straight to a docking port at the base of the shuttle, without her even touching the South American ground, or even smelling the air.

And before she knew it she was lying on her back in an immense foam-filled couch, held in place by thick padded bars. The ship smelled of electricity and, oddly, of new carpets. A screen before her showed a view down the shuttle’s elegant flank to the scarred ground.

Allen strapped in beside her. ‘Do you prefer a countdown? It’s optional. We’re actually the only humans aboard. Whether you find that reassuring or not depends on your faith in technology, I suppose.’

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s so – archaic! I feel I’m locked into an AxysCorp instrumentality.’

He didn’t seem to appreciate the sharpness of her tone. Perhaps he’d prefer to be able to patronise her. ‘This shuttle’s got nothing to do with AxysCorp, which was broken up long ago.’

‘I know that.’

‘And you’re a historian of the Heroic Solution. That’s why you’re here, as I couldn’t find anybody better qualified to help resolve this problem on Tempest 43. So look on it as field work. Brace yourself.’

With barely a murmur the shuttle leapt into the air. No amount of padding could save Freddie from the punch of acceleration.

The ground plummeted away.

Tempest 43 was a weather control station, one of a network of fifty such facilities thrown into space in the 2070s, nearly a century ago, by the now maligned AxysCorp geoengineering conglomerate. An island in the sky over the Atlantic, Tempest 43 was locked into a twenty-four-hour orbit, to which Freddie would now have to ascend.

But before proceeding up to its geosynchronous rendezvous the shuttle went through one low-orbit checkout. For Freddie, snug in her theme-park couch, it was ninety magical minutes, as the cabin walls turned virtual-transparent, and the Earth spread out below her, bright as a tropical sky.

The ship sailed over the Atlantic towards western Europe. She wished she knew enough geography to recognise how much of the coastline had been bitten into by the risen sea. At the Spanish coast Freddie saw vapour feathers gleaming white, artificial cloud created by spray turbines to deflect a little more sunlight from an overheated Earth. Southern Spain, long abandoned to desert, was chrome-plated with solar-cell farms, and studded with vast silvered bubbles, lodes of frozen-out carbon dioxide. The Mediterranean was green-blue, thick with plankton stimulated to grow and draw down carbon from the air. On the far side of the Gibraltar Strait, the Sahara bloomed green, covered in straight-edged plantations fed by desalinated ocean water. And as she headed into evening she saw the great old cities of southern Europe, the conurbations’ brown stain pierced by green as they fragmented back into the villages from which they had formed.

Asia was plunged in night, the land darker than she had expected, with little waste light seeping out of the great metropolitan centres of southern Russia and China and India. The Pacific was vast and darkened too, and it was a relief to reach morning, and to pass over North America. She was disappointed that they travelled too far south to have a chance of glimpsing the camels and elephants and lions of Pleistocene Park, the continent’s reconstructed megafauna.

And as they reached the east coast they sailed almost directly over the Florida archipelago. Freddie was clearly able to see the wound cut by the hurricane. She called for a magnification. There was Cape Canaveral, venerable launch gantries scattered like matchsticks, the immense Vehicle Assembly Building broken open like a plundered bird’s egg. The hurricane was the reason for her journey – and, incidentally, the ruin of Canaveral was the reason she had had to launch from Guiana. Hurricanes weren’t supposed to happen, not in 2162. Stations like Tempest 43 had put a stop to all that a century ago. Something had gone wrong.

Antony Allen spent most of the orbit throwing up into paper bags.

At last the shuttle leapt up into deeper space, silent and smooth, and Earth folded over on itself.

‘Tempest 43, Tempest 43, this is UN Space Agency Shuttle C57-D. You ought to be picking up our handshaking request.’

A smooth, boyish voice filled the cabin. ‘C57-D, your systems have interfaced with ours. Physical docking will follow shortly.’

‘I’m Doctor Antony Allen. I work on the UN’s Climatic Technology Legacy Oversight Panel. With me is Professor Frederica Gonzales of the University of Southampton, England, Europe. Our visit was arranged through –’

‘You are recognised, Doctor Allen.’

‘Who am I speaking to? Are you the station’s AI?’

‘A subsystem. Engineering. Please call me Cal.’

Allen and Freddie exchanged glances.

Allen growled, ‘I never spoke to an AI with a personal name.’

Freddie said, a bit nervous, ‘You have to expect such things in a place like this. The creation of sentient beings to run plumbing systems was one of the greatest crimes perpetrated during the Heroic Solution, especially by AxysCorp. This modern shuttle, for instance, won’t have a consciousness any more advanced than an ant’s.’

That was the party line. Actually Freddie was obscurely thrilled to be in the presence of such exotic old illegality. Thrilled, and apprehensive.

Allen called, ‘So are you the subsystem responsible for the hurricane deflection technology?’

‘No, sir. That’s in the hands of another software suite.’

‘And what’s that called?’

‘He is Aeolus.’

Allen barked laughter.

Now a fresh voice came on the line, a brusque male voice with the crack of age. ‘That you, Allen?’

Freddie was startled. This voice sounded authentically human. She’d just assumed the station was unmanned.

‘Glad to hear you’re well, Mister Fortune.’

‘Well as can be expected. I knew your grandfather, you know.’

‘Yes, sir, I know that.’

‘He was in the UN too. As pious and pompous as they come. And now you’re a bureaucrat. Runs in the genes, eh, Allen?’

‘If you say so, Mister Fortune.’

‘Call me Fortune…’

Fortune’s voice was robust British, Freddie thought. North of England, maybe. She said to Allen, ‘A human presence, on this station?’

‘Not something the UN shouts about.’

‘But save for resupply and refurbishment missions the Tempest stations have had no human visitors for a century. So this Fortune has been alone up here all that time?’ And how, she wondered, was Fortune still alive at all?

Allen shrugged. ‘For Wilson Fortune, it wasn’t a voluntary assignment.’

‘Then what? A sentence? And your grandfather was responsible?’

‘He was involved in the summary judgement, yes. He wasn’t
responsible.
’

Freddie thought she understood the secrecy. Nobody liked to look too closely at the vast old machines that ran the world. Leave the blame with AxysCorp, safely in the past. Leave relics like this Wilson Fortune to rot. ‘No wonder you need a historian,’ she said.

Fortune called now, ‘Well, I’m looking forward to a little company. You’ll be made welcome here, by me and Bella.’

Now it was Allen’s turn to be shocked. ‘By the dieback, who is Bella?’

‘Call her an adopted daughter. You’ll see. Get yourself docked. And don’t mess up my paintwork with your attitude rockets.’

The link went dead.

Shuttle and station interfaced surprisingly smoothly, considering they were technological products separated by a century. There was no mucking about with airlocks, no floating around in zero gravity. Their cabin was propelled smoothly out of the shuttle and into the body of the station, and then was transported out to a module on an extended strut, where rotation provided artificial gravity.

The cabin door opened, to reveal Wilson Fortune, and his ‘adopted daughter’, Bella.

Allen stood up. ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about, Fortune.’

‘That we do. Christ, though, Allen, you’re the spit of your grandfather. He was plug-ugly too.’ His archaic blasphemy faintly shocked Freddie.

Fortune was tall, perhaps as much as two full metres, and stick thin. He wore a functional coverall; made of some self-repairing orange cloth, it might have been as old as he was. And his hair was sky blue, his teeth metallic, his skin smooth and young-looking, though within the soft young flesh he had the rheumy eyes of an old man. Freddie could immediately see the nature of his crime. He was augmented, probably gen-enged too. No wonder he had lived so long; no wonder he had been sentenced to exile up here.

The girl looked no more than twenty. Ten years younger than Freddie, then. Pretty, wide-eyed, her dark hair shoulder-length, she wore a cut-down coverall that had been accessorised with patches and brooches that looked as if they had been improvised from bits of circuitry.

She stared at Allen. And when she saw Freddie, she laughed.

‘You’ll have to forgive my daughter,’ Fortune said. His voice was gravelly, like his eyes older than his face. ‘We don’t get too many visitors.’

‘I’ve never seen a woman before,’ Bella said bluntly. ‘Not in the flesh. I like the way you do your hair. Cal, fix it for me, would you?’

‘Of course, Bella.’

That shoulder-length hair broke up into a cloud of cubical particles, obscuring her face. When the cloud cleared, her hair was cropped short, a copy of Freddie’s.

‘I knew it,’ Allen said. He aimed a slap at Bella’s shoulder. His fingers passed through her flesh, scattering bits of light. Bella squealed and flinched back. ‘She’s a virtual,’ Allen said.

Fortune snapped back, ‘She’s as sentient as you are, you arsehole. Fully conscious. And consistency violations like that
hurt.
You really are like your grandfather, aren’t you?’

‘She’s illegal, Fortune.’

‘Well, that makes two of us.’

Two suitcases rolled out of the shuttle cabin, luggage for Freddie and Allen.

Allen said, ‘We’re here to work, Fortune, not to rake up the dead past.’

‘Be my guest.’ Fortune turned and stalked away, down a metal-plated corridor. Bella walked after him, looking hurt and confused. Her feet convincingly touched the floor.

Freddie and Allen followed less certainly, into the metal heart of the station.

To Freddie, the station had the feel of all the AxysCorp geoengineering facilities she’d visited before. Big, bold, functional, every surface flat, every line dead straight. The corporation’s logo was even stamped into the metal walls, and there was a constant whine of air conditioning, a breeze tasting of rust. You could never escape the feeling that you were in the bowels of a vast machine. But the station showed its age, with storage-unit handles polished smooth with use, touch panels rubbed and scratched, and the fabric of chairs and couches worn through and patched with duct tape.

Fortune led them to cabins, tiny metal-walled boxes that looked as if they’d never been used. A century old, bare and clean, they had an air of staleness.

‘I don’t think I’ll sleep well here,’ Freddie said.

‘Don’t fret about it,’ Allen said. ‘I’m planning to be off this hulk as soon as possible.’