Newton's Aliens: Tales From the Anti-Ice Universe

by Stephen Baxter

  Cedric hesitated, recoiling from the enclosure of the machine.

  Verity touched his arm. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said gently. ‘Nobody will think worse of you.’

  Her words gave him vigour. ‘I know. Thank you, Verity. I am ready.’

  Merrell grinned. ‘Good man! All aboard now – watch your heads when you come through the hatch …’

  The interior of the Stoat was stark. The walls, crudely welded together, were dense with pipes and ducts which bore hydraulic fluids to the moving parts. Above their heads, dimly glimpsed, were the heavy shapes of anti-ice Dewar flasks.

  The three of them had to lie on canvas slings almost on top of each other, with their feet in the direction of motion, towards the cutting blade. Cedric could barely move a muscle. And when Merrell reached over his head to manipulate the vehicle’s crude controls, his knees unconsciously thumped into Cedric’s chest, increasing his misery. But Verity lay still, a warm, calming presence.

  ‘All set?’ Merrell called at last. ‘Then let’s be off!’ He raised a wrench and slammed it down on a valve.

  There was a hiss of hydraulics, and the Stoat’s mighty drill-bit started to turn. There was a brief grind as the bit chewed through the workshop’s concrete floor. Then the screw blades dug into the soft ground beneath, and the Stoat lurched precipitately downwards. The noise in the metal hull was cacophonous.

  Cedric thought that after a short descent the machine levelled off, to carve itself a tunnel running parallel to the ground surface, but the noise and vibration were so disorienting he could not be sure. The heat rose inexorably, waste energy from the drilling trapped by layers of earth.

  Verity called over the noise, ‘I suppose you do know where you’re going this time, Master Merrell?’

  There was a thought that hadn’t occurred to Cedric. What if the Stoat lost its way altogether? He could finish up wandering in the deep caverns of the earth forever.

  But Merrell said only, ‘I set the gyroscopes with care. Oh ye of little faith!’

  And in truth the journey was not so very long before there was a lurch, and a howl of high revolutions as the drill bit dug into empty air. Merrell slammed on the brakes and pulled levers. ‘That’s the rock anchors dropped. Good! Now to see where we are. If you’ll excuse me, madam …’ He wriggled along his canvas shelf until he reached a handle.

  The hatch popped open. Cedric, trying to see past his own feet, glimpsed only a curved metal wall, and smelled smell hot solder and rubber. Merrell led the way, and one by one they wriggled around and got their heads out of the hatch.

  Cedric saw that the Stoat had stuck its iron nose out of the wall of a cylindrical shaft that must have been thirty feet deep, or more. They were perhaps half-way down. Astonished faces popped out of windows cut into the wall. Cedric recognised a bemused Fitzwilliam, and an outraged Mister Godwin.

  And the well was occupied by a mighty cylindrical form, its metal walls sleek, its base adorned with flaring fins. Its nature was obvious. Deep in this silo, dug into the Welsh earth not two hundred yards from the school, it was a missile.

  Chapter VIII

  The Conscience of Percy Fitzwilliam

  Godwin predictably sent the three of them straight to the Reverend’s office.

  As they waited Fitzwilliam came by, curious. He hooted. ‘You’re for it, Merrell, you idiot!’

  ‘Oh, leave us alone, Fitz.’

  And Verity said, ‘Have a heart, sir. Master Merrell only did it because he’s jealous of you, and he can’t help that.’

  Merrell exploded at that. ‘Jealous! Of that pre-Darwinian ape!’

  Fitz absently boxed his ear, and sat down, thoughtful. ‘Jealous? Really? Of me?’

  Merrell subsided. ‘Oh, all right. I had to know what you were doing down there, Fitz – what’s so special that doesn’t involve me.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it was special if you were dragged down the Hole every day by old Godwin. Look, you saw what we’re building -’

  ‘A Gladstone Shell,’ said Verity, surprising them all.

  ‘Well, that’s right. A new sort of anti-ice weapon. You know we’ve dropped ice shells and bombs on a few fuzzie-wuzzie types in the past, from the Russians in the Crimea to the Boers in Africa. But now they want to make the use of anti-ice weaponry more, more -’ Fitz searched for the word.

  ‘Systematic?’ Verity offered.

  ‘That’s it. So they’re sticking rockets tipped with anti-ice bombs in silos like this one all across the country – buried underground so the other lot can’t get at them, you see. The aim is to have one missile for each major European city. Yes, they’re called Gladstone Shells, named for the old Prime Minister who first dreamed up the idea. This is what King Ted is coming here to announce at New Year.’

  Merrell said, ‘So what has all this got to do with you, Fitz?’

  ‘I’m working on ballistic computations. It’s no good just firing the thing up in the air, you know. You have to work out how it will pass through the thick lower atmosphere, how gravity will tug at it, and then how the air will resist its fall once more – and all the while the rocket itself is blazing, its mass diminishing as the water it uses as reaction matter is used up. It’s a pretty problem.’

  ‘Ah,’ Cedric said. ‘Which is the sort of thing that’s your forte, Fitz, I gather.’

  Fitz said that under the overall control of Godwin, a squad of boys had broken the mathematical problem down into components; the rocket’s trajectory was to be computed step by step to take account of the various forces acting on it. These components were reduced to a numerical form, then the sub-problems set out on printed forms. At the bottom of this pyramid of calculation were junior boys, ‘computers’, who performed columns of simple arithmetic and passed their results up the line to be integrated with others, the total eventually summing to make a smooth calculated trajectory for the Shell. This in turn could then be loaded into a system of gyroscopes and levers which would guide the Shell in its flight, by tipping the rocket nozzles this way and that.

  ‘The little lads generally don’t know what their numbers are for, and don’t need to know. And I’m only a step up from them. I’m a comparator. We have teams running all the calculations in parallel, and I have to check them and weed out errors, before passing the results up the line. A comparator, me! I’m capable of far more.’

  Verity asked, ‘And where are you sending your rocket, Master Fitzwilliam?’

  ‘Our particular rocket will be fired off at the stroke of New Year, aimed harmlessly with a dozen others at some jungle or other – a pure demonstration, you see.’ He hesitated, looking uneasy. ‘But the next missile installed in that silo will be aimed at Berlin.’

  That took them all aback.

  ‘Berlin!’ Verity said.

  Cedric said, ‘You can see the idea. With such weapons in place no nation will dare raise a hand against Great Britain. A peace imposed through fear is better than no peace at all, I suppose.’ But he wasn’t sure if he believed that even as he said it.

  ‘But if the missile were ever fired, though,’ Verity said. ‘Would it actually destroy Berlin, Master Fitzwilliam? A whole city? All the old people and children -’

  ‘Down to the last sausage-dog.’

  Merrell said uncertainly, ‘Doesn’t quite seem sporting, does it?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Fitz said grimly. Suddenly Cedric saw that beneath his bullying bluster there was a conscience, of sorts.

  Verity said, ‘The Reverend Cook is a man of the cloth. But my own father went to church all his life. I think he would have said it is wrong to employ children on building such terrible weapons.’

  Fitzwilliam snorted, his pride evidently stung at being called a child. But he did not contradict her.

  Cedric said, ‘But what is to be done about it? We don’t have a solution to this problem, it seems to me, any more than to the issue of the Phoebean chick -’ His hand flew to his mouth.

  Merrell groa
ned. ‘Oh, Stubbs, you ass.’

  Fitz hadn’t missed the slip. ‘The what? What have you been hiding from me, you slug?’

  Before any of them could answer the Reverend threw open his office door. His face was thunderous. ‘You three – in here – now!’

  They could only meekly obey.

  Chapter IX

  A Plan

  The boys were both flogged. In addition Harry Merrell, who did not have Cedric’s excuse of newness, was forced to pay for repairs to the workshop floor, and was subject to gatings, lines, removal of privileges, and various other punishments. And they were threatened with expulsion if they did not keep the secret of the Gladstone Shell until its unveiling by the King on New Year’s Eve.

  Verity Fletcher would have been summarily dismissed if Merrell had not forcibly argued her case. As it was, her pay was docked and she was demoted. After that she was more often to be seen swilling out the Academy pigs than dealing with the boys.

  Still, she, Cedric and Merrell continued to watch over their Phoebean chick. Sometimes Fitz joined them, but even he wasn’t so cruel as to harm the little beast of ice, or to reveal its existence to the masters. But the chick, trapped in the shadows of the cold store, stunted and deprived, filled them only with an inchoate sadness.

  One morning the Reverend varied the brisk routine of assembly by producing a couple of letters, delivered by rocket post. The boys seemed to know what the letters signified, and fell silent, shedding their usual restlessness.

  The Reverend read out names: ‘Miller, Arnold D. Left us in ’97. Killed in action, Shanghai Province. Petrie, Nigel M., ’96. Missing in action, same province. Wilson, Jerome W., ’98. Killed in action, Pretoria.’

  One boy near Cedric sobbed at that last name, his cry loud in the still hall; Cedric knew him as Wilson Minor.

  The Reverend studied the rows of boys before him. ‘Let us remember those who have gone before us from this place into that valley that awaits us all, the valley of the shadow of death. Let us remember them in the words of the twenty-third psalm.’ He bowed his great head. ‘“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want …”’

  As the school joined in the verses, Cedric murmured to Merrell, ‘Do you remember those boys?’

  Merrell seemed abstracted. ‘Hmm? Oh, yes. Knew Jed Wilson quite well. Captain of the soccer team in his last year.’ He shook his head. ‘And it was his last year too, wasn’t it? …’ But his voice tailed off. His mind was evidently on other issues.

  When the psalm was done, the assembly broke up in the usual clamour, and nobody seemed very distressed. Cedric learned that at this school it was not uncommon to hear eulogies about the deaths of old boys, many only a year or two ahead of the current crop of sixth formers; it was the nature of the place.

  And as they headed for class Harry Merrell seemed to come to a focus. He grabbed Cedric’s arm. ‘Stubbs, listen. I’ve been thinking. Now I have it! A way to solve both our problems, at a stroke.’

  ‘What problems?’

  ‘Why, the Phoebean chick, of course, and this unpleasantness about the Gladstone Shell. I’ve been brooding on that, you know. I mean, how would even a lout like Fitz feel if his Shell were ever used in anger? And all those little boys too who don’t even know what their numbers are to be used for - no, no, we can’t have it, that’s all. And sitting there just now, listening to the Reverend burbling on, I suddenly saw it – put two wrongs together and make a right, that’s the way of it – oh, you clever chap, Harry!’

  ‘Keep your voice down!’

  ‘I’ll tell you the most difficult part, however. We’ll need to rework those calculations Fitz has been making to guide the Gladstone Shell. And to do that we’re going to have to find a way of recruiting that oaf Fitz himself …’

  ‘Tell me what you’re on about.’

  And, more soberly, Merrell talked him through his plan.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Cedric said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It will never work.’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘But we must try anyway, mustn’t we?’

  Merrell grinned. ‘That’s the spirit.’

  Cedric said quickly, ‘Bags I not work with Fitz.’

  Merrell slammed a fist into his palm with frustration. ‘You’re too fast, you bounder! But we haven’t much time. We’ll do well to get it done by the deadline of New Year.’

  ‘Then let’s get started.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  From Merrell’s expression later, it looked as if Fitz had extracted a tithe of some sort for his cooperation. Fitz was still Fitz! But cooperate he did.

  In the days after that, Cedric saw little of his fellow conspirators, who got their heads down quickly.

  Fitz purloined a good deal of Godwin’s completed ballistic analyses as well as the raw numbers behind them, and he and Merrell began to take them apart and rework them for their own purposes. In the figuring Fitz showed his mind to be fast and nimble, while Merrell was certainly a more effective computer than the juniors on Godwin’s official project.

  The sheer volume of the work caused them to grow increasingly agitated, but still their minds turned quickly to the next stage of Merrell’s scheme, which would be to implement their trajectory solution, making sure it and not Godwin’s official path was loaded in the spinning of the missile’s guidance gyroscopes.

  As for Cedric, his assignment with Verity was to develop Merrell’s egg-shaped Dewar flask into ‘a kind of gentle bomb’, as Merrell put it. They would put the Phoebean chick back in the flask. But the flask was to be modified so that, if dropped, the flask would open automatically, and gently release the chick without harm from its chill embrace, wherever it landed.

  Cedric and Verity tried out a number of designs before hitting on one that worked. They surrounded the flask with a series of spines, each of them connected to a spring-loaded latch. On landing at any angle, one or two spines would be pushed into the carcass of the flask, the latch would pop, and more springs attached to the hinges ensured the flask fell open.

  They dare not test their contraption using the Phoebean chick itself. So they mocked up a copy of the infant using a kind of flattened snowball, and icicles to represent the delicate limbs. Fitz and Merrell assured them that the dropping of the egg would be no worse than a fall from a few yards. So Cedric climbed up into the rafters of the workshop, and dropped the modified flask over and over. They repeated the experiment in the chill of the cold store, for they feared their delicate mechanisms might seize up at low temperatures. Merrell warned them too of experience from the moon, of ‘vacuum welds’ where the very airlessness could cause metal surfaces to stick together. So Cedric stuck bits of paper between the plates of the hinges and the latch.

  They tested their work again and again, until they could think of no way of improving it. As they worked, the evident care Verity lavished on a fundamentally alien creature warmed Cedric’s heart, and convinced him they were doing the right thing.

  Christmas came all too soon for the conspirators, who rushed to finish their various tasks.

  The scholars were dismissed from the Academy, under strict instructions that all must return by New Year’s Eve to be present for the occasion of the King’s speech. Cedric endured a long, crowded journey back to Northumberland, this time without the company of Verity Fletcher.

  Christmas itself was a trial. The family tried to make merry in the dismal surroundings of a tent community, while the roar of the huge strip-mining machines continued unabated, even on Christmas Day. His father had yet to find gainful employment; he was a sad, deflated man. And Cedric’s family, his aunts and cousins, seemed suspicious of a young man who had been elevated from their community. It was as if he had come back changed, as alien here on the strip-mined Northumbrian ground as was the Phoebean chick in the cold store at the Academy.

  The days of the holiday wore away too slowly. It seemed not a moment too soon when Cedric once again submitted himself to the day
-long journey back to the south of Wales, and the Academy.

  Chapter X

  31st December, 1899

  The King journeyed in his royal air carriage down from Balmoral, landing on the playing field on New Year’s Eve. Only a few boys were selected to meet him; after their antics with the mechanical Stoat Harry Merrell and Cedric Stubbs were not among them.

  But as midnight approached, all the boys were shepherded by the praepostors to the frontage of the Academy, all eight hundred of them standing to attention in their forms like cadet soldiers. It was a cold, crisp night, quite cloudless, and both moons were high in the sky, banishing the stars save for the unblinking lights of the observer platforms. A stage had been set up, brightly lit by electric arc lamps, on which the staff in their gowns stood waiting, a few of them shivering. The smaller boys yawned, longing for the warmth of their beds.

  And Verity slipped out of the shadows and came to stand between Cedric and Merrell. She wore a blue coat and hat that blended into the Academy uniforms around her.

  Merrell gasped at her nerve, but he was evidently delighted to see her. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I couldn’t miss the climax of our experiment, sir, whether it goes well or ill.’

  ‘No,’ Cedric said. ‘But we’ve done all we can. We finished the project …’ Before the holiday, Fitz and Merrell had gone into the silo, using Merrell’s Stoat tunnel, to load the package prepared by Cedric and Verity into the missile – and, even more important, to store the results of Fitz’s new trajectory calculations in the banks of gyroscopes. ‘We’ve been back to check since, but -’

  ‘Too late now, as you say, Stubbs,’ Merrell said. ‘Well, we’ll soon know what’s what. Ooh, I’m freezing. I wish the blessed King would get on with it.’