“Oh?” he said eagerly. “Tell me.”
“I’ve invested heavily in Sony, and through negotiation I’ve arranged for one of your old companies—Intertech of Hanoi—to be placed in charge of overseeing the virtual environment. I would expect you’re soon going to see some changes in your particular part of Heaven.”
He seemed nonplussed, then a look of alarm dawned on his face. “What are you going to do?”
“Me? Not a thing.” I smiled, and the act of smiling weakened my emotional restraint—a business skill I had not yet perfected—and let anger roughen my voice. “It’s much more agreeable to have your dirty work handled by others, don’t you think?”
On occasion, Tan and I manage to rekindle an intimacy that reminds us of the days when we first were lovers, but these occasions never last for long, and our relationship is plagued by the lapses into neutrality or—worse—indifference that tend to plague any two people who have spent ton years in each other’s company. In our case these lapses are often accompanied by bouts of self-destructive behaviour. It seems we’re punishing ourselves for having experienced what we consider an undeserved happiness. Even our most honest infidelities are inclined to be of the degrading sort. I understand this. The beach at Vung Tau, once the foundation of our union, has been replaced by a night on Yen Phu Street in Binh Khoi, and no edifice built upon such imperfect stone could be other than cracked and deficient. Nonetheless, we both realize that whatever our portion of contentment in this world, we are fated to seek it together.
From time to time, I receive a communication from Vang. He does not look well, and his tone is always desperate, cajoling. I tell myself that I should relent and restore him to the afterlife for which he contracted; but I am not highly motivated in that regard. If there truly is something that dies when one ascends to Heaven, I fear it has already died in me, and I blame Vang for this.
Seven years after my talk with Vang, Tan and I attended a performance of the circus in the village of Loc Noi. There was a new James Bond Cochise, Kai and Kim had become pretty teenagers, both Tranh and Mei were thinner, but otherwise things were much the same. We sat in the main tent after the show and reminisced. The troupe—Mei in particular—were unnerved by my bodyguards, but all in all, it was a pleasant reunion.
After a while I excused myself and went to see the major. He was huddled in his tent, visible by the weird flickerings in his eyes… though as my vision adapted to the dark, I was able to make out the cowled shape of his head against the canvas backdrop. Tranh had told me he did not expect the major to live much longer, and now that I was close to him, I found that his infirmity was palpable, I could hear it in his laboured breath. I asked if he knew who I was, and he replied without inflection, as he had so many years before, “Philip.” I’d hoped that he would be more forthcoming, because I still felt akin to him, related through the cryptic character of our separate histories, and I thought that he might once have sensed that kinship, that he’d had some diffuse knowledge of the choices I confronted, and had designed the story of Firebase Ruby for my benefit, shaping it as a cautionary tale—one I’d failed to heed. But perhaps I’d read too much into what was sheer coincidence. I touched his hand, and his breath caught, then shuddered forth, heavy as a sob. All that remained for him were a few stories, a few hours in the light. I tried to think of something I could do to ease his last days, but I knew death was the only mercy that could mend him.
Mei invited Tan and me to spend the night in the trailer—for old times’ sake, she said—and we were of no mind to refuse. We both yearned for those old times, despite neither of us believing that we could recapture them. Watching Tan prepare for bed, it seemed to me that she had grown too vivid for the drab surroundings, her beauty become too cultivated and too lush. But when she slipped in beside me, when we began to make love on that creaky bunk, the years fell away and she felt like a girl in my arms, tremulous and new to such customs, and I was newly awakened to her charms. She drifted off to sleep afterwards with her head on my chest, and as I lay there trying to quieten my breath so not to wake her, it came to me that future and past were joined in the darkness that enclosed us, two black rivers flowing together, and I understood that while the circus would go its own way in the morning and we would go ours, those rivers, too, were forever joined—we shared a confluence and a wandering course, and a moment proof against the world’s denial, and we would always be a troupe, Kim and Kai, Mei and Tranh, Tan and I, and the major… that living ghost who, like myself, was the figment of a tragic past he never knew, or—if, indeed, he knew it—with which he could never come to terms. It was a bond that could not save us, from either our enemies or ourselves, but it held out a hope of simple glory, a promise truer than Heaven. Illusory or not, all our wars would continue until their cause was long-forgotten under the banner of Radiant Green Star.
GREAT WALL OF MARS
Alastair Reynolds
Here’s a relentless, wildly inventive, pyrotechnic thriller, paced like a runaway freight train, that takes us to Mars for a mission of peace that instead leads us ever deeper into the heart of war…
New writer Alastair Reynolds is a frequent contributor to Interzone, and has also sold to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Spectrum SF and elsewhere. His first novel, Revelation Space, is being widely hailed as one of the major SF books of the year; coming up is a sequel, Chasm City. A professional scientist with a Ph.D. in astronomy, he comes from Wales, but lives in the Netherlands, where he works for the European Space Agency.
You realize you might die down there,” said Warren.
Nevil Clavain looked into his brother’s one good eye; the one the Conjoiners had left him with after the battle of Tharsis Bulge. “Yes, I know,” he said. “But if there’s another war, we might all die. I’d rather take that risk, if there’s a chance for peace.”
Warren shook his head, slowly and patiently. “No matter how many times we’ve been over this, you just don’t seem to get it, do you? There can’t ever be any kind of peace while they’re still down there. That’s what you don’t understand, Nevil. The only longterm solution here is…” he trailed off.
“Go on,” Clavain goaded. “Say it. Genocide.”
Warren might have been about to answer when there was a bustle of activity down the docking tube, at the far end from the waiting spacecraft. Through the door Clavain saw a throng of media people, then someone gliding through them, fielding questions with only the curtest of answers. That was Sandra Voi, the Demarchist woman who would be coming with him to Mars.
“It’s not genocide when they’re just a faction, not an ethnically distinct race,” Warren said, before Voi was within earshot.
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know. Prudence?”
Voi approached. She bore herself stiffly, her face a mask of quiet resignation. Her ship had only just docked from Circum-Jove, after a three-week transit at maximum burn. During that time the prospects for a peaceful resolution of the current crisis had steadily deteriorated.
“Welcome to Deimos,” Warren said.
“Marshalls,” she said, addressing both of them. “I wish the circumstances were better. Let’s get straight to business. Warren; how long do you think we have to find a solution?”
“Not long. If Galiana maintains the pattern she’s been following for the last six months, we’re due another escape attempt in…” Warren glanced at a readout buried in his cuff. “About three days. If she does try and get another shuttle off Mars, we’ll really have no option but to escalate.”
They all knew what that would mean: a military strike against the Conjoiner nest.
“You’ve tolerated her attempts so far,” Voi said. “And each time you’ve successfully destroyed her ship with all the people in it. The net risk of a successful break out hasn’t increased. So why retaliate now?”
“It’s very simple. After each violation we issued Galiana with a stronger warning than the one before. Our last was absolute and fin
al.”
“You’ll be in violation of treaty if you attack.”
Warren’s smile was one of quiet triumph. “Not quite, Sandra. You may not be completely conversant with the treaty’s fine print, but we’ve discovered that it allows us to storm Galiana’s nest without breaking any terms. The technical phrase is a police action, I believe.”
Clavain saw that Voi was momentarily lost for words. That was hardly surprising. The treaty between the Coalition and the Conjoiners—which Voi’s neutral Demarchists had helped draft—was the longest document in existence, apart from some obscure, computer-generated mathematical proofs. It was supposed to be watertight, though only machines had ever read it from beginning to end, and only machines had ever stood a chance of finding the kind of loophole which Warren was now brandishing.
“No…” she said. “There’s some mistake.”
“I’m afraid he’s right,” Clavain said. “I’ve seen the natural-language summaries, and there’s no doubt about the legality of a police action. But it needn’t come to that. I’m sure I can persuade Galiana not to make another escape attempt.”
“But if we should fail?” Voi looked at Warren now. “Nevil and myself could still be on Mars in three days.”
“Don’t be, is my advice.”
Disgusted, Voi turned and stepped into the green cool of the shuttle. Clavain was left alone with his brother for a moment. Warren fingered the leathery patch over his ruined eye with the chrome gauntlet of his prosthetic arm, as if to remind Clavain of what the war had cost him; how little love he had for the enemy, even now.
“We haven’t got a chance of succeeding, have we?” Clavain said. “We’re only going down there so you can say you explored all avenues of negotiation before sending in the troops. You actually want another damned war.”
“Don’t be so defeatist,” Warren said, shaking his head sadly, forever the older brother disappointed at his sibling’s failings. “It really doesn’t become you.”
“It’s not me who’s defeatist,” Clavain said.
“No; of course not. Just do your best, little brother.”
Warren extended his hand for his brother to shake. Hesitating, Clavain looked again into his brother’s good eye. What he saw there was an interrogator’s eye: as pale, colorless and cold as a midwinter sun. There was hatred in it. Warren despised Clavain’s pacifism; Clavain’s belief that any kind of peace, even a peace which consisted only of stumbling episodes of mistrust between crises, was always better than war. That schism had fractured any lingering fraternal feelings they might have retained. Now, when Warren reminded Clavain that they were brothers, he never entirely concealed the disgust in his voice.
“You misjudge me,” Clavain whispered, before quietly shaking Warren’s hand.
“No; I honestly don’t think I do.”
Clavain stepped through the airlock just before it sphinctered shut. Voi had already buckled herself in; she had a glazed look now, as if staring into infinity. Clavain guessed she was uploading a copy of the treaty through her implants, scrolling it across her visual field, trying to find the loophole; probably running a global search for any references to police actions.
The ship recognized Clavain, its interior shivering to his preferences. The green was closer to turquoise now; the readouts and controls minimalist in layout, displaying only the most mission-critical systems. Though the shuttle was the tiniest peacetime vessel Clavain had been in, it was a cathedral compared to the dropships he had flown during the war; so small that they were assembled around their occupants like Medieval armor before a joust.
“Don’t worry about the treaty,” Clavain said. “I promise you Warren won’t get his chance to apply that loophole.”
Voi snapped out of her trance irritatedly. “You’d better be right, Nevil. Is it me, or is your brother hoping we fail?” She was speaking Quebecois French now; Clavain shifting mental gears to follow her. “If my people discover that there’s a hidden agenda here, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“The Conjoiners gave Warren plenty of reasons to hate them after the battle of the Bulge,” Clavain said. “And he’s a tactician, not a field specialist. After the cease-fire my knowledge of worms was even more valuable than before, so I had a role. But Warren’s skills were a lot less transferable.”
“So that gives him a right to edge us closer to another war?” The way Voi spoke, it was as if her own side had not been neutral in the last exchange. But Clavain knew she was right. If hostilities between the Conjoiners and the Coalition reignited, the Demarchy would not be able to stand aside as they had fifteen years ago. And it was anyone’s guess how they would align themselves.
“There won’t be war.”
“And if you can’t reason with Galiana? Or are you going to play on your personal connection?”
“I was just her prisoner, that’s all.” Clavain took the controls—Voi said piloting was a bore—and unlatched the shuttle from Deimos. They dropped away at a tangent to the rotation of the equatorial ring which girdled the moon, instantly in free-fall. Clavain sketched a porthole in the wall with his fingertip, outlining a rectangle which instantly became transparent.
For a moment he saw his reflection in the glass: older than he felt he had any right to look, the gray beard and hair making him look ancient rather than patriarchal; a man deeply wearied by recent circumstance. With some relief he darkened the cabin so that he could see Deimos, dwindling at surprising speed. The higher of the two Martian moons was a dark, bristling lump, infested with armaments, belted by the bright, window-studded band of the moving ring. For the last nine years, Deimos was all that he had known, but now he could encompass it within the arc of his fist.
“Not just her prisoner,” Voi said. “No one else came back sane from the Conjoiners. She never even tried to infect you with her machines.”
“No, she didn’t. But only because the timing was on my side.” Clavain was reciting an old argument now; as much for his own benefit as Voi’s. “I was the only prisoner she had. She was losing the war by then; one more recruit to her side wouldn’t have made any real difference. The terms of cease-fire were being thrashed out and she knew she could buy herself favors by releasing me unharmed. There was something else, too. Conjoiners weren’t supposed to be capable of anything so primitive as mercy. They were spiders, as far as we were concerned. Galiana’s act threw a wrench into our thinking. It divided alliances within the high command. If she hadn’t released me, they might well have nuked her out of existence.”
“So there was absolutely nothing personal?”
“No,” Clavain said. “There was nothing personal about it at all.”
Voi nodded, without in any way suggesting that she actually believed him. It was a skill some women had honed to perfection, Clavain thought.
Of course, he respected Voi completely. She had been one of the first human beings to enter Europa’s ocean, decades back. Now they were planning fabulous cities under the ice; efforts which she had spearheaded. Demarchist society was supposedly flat in structure, non-hierarchical; but someone of Voi’s brilliance ascended through echelons of her own making. She had been instrumental in brokering the peace between the Conjoiners and Clavain’s own Coalition. That was why she was coming along now: Galiana had only agreed to Clavain’s mission provided he was accompanied by a neutral observer, and Voi had been the obvious choice. Respect was easy. Trust, however, was harder: it required that Clavain ignore the fact that, with her head dotted with implants, the Demarchist woman’s condition was not very far removed from that of the enemy.
The descent to Mars was hard and steep.
Once or twice they were queried by the automated tracking systems of the satellite interdiction network. Dark weapons hovering in Mars-synchronous orbit above the nest locked onto the ship for a few instants, magnetic railguns powering up, before the shuttle’s diplomatic nature was established and it was allowed to proceed. The Interdiction was very efficient; as well it might be, given
that Clavain had designed much of it himself. In fifteen years no ship had entered or left the Martian atmosphere, nor had any surface vehicle ever escaped from Galiana’s nest.
“There she is,” Clavain said, as the Great Wall rose over the horizon.
“Why do you call ‘it’ a ‘she’?” Voi asked. “I never felt the urge to personalize it, and I designed it. Besides…even if it was alive once, it’s dead now.”
She was right, but the Wall was still awesome to behold. Seen from orbit, it was a pale, circular ring on the surface of Mars, two thousand kilometers wide. Like a coral atoll, it entrapped its own weather system; a disk of bluer air, flecked with creamy white clouds which stopped abruptly at the boundary.
Once, hundreds of communities had sheltered inside that cell of warm, thick, oxygen-rich atmosphere. The Wall was the most audacious and visible of Voi’s projects. The logic had been inescapable: a means to avoid the millennia—long time scales needed to terra form Mars via such conventional schemes as cometary bombardment or ice-cap thawing. Instead of modifying the whole atmosphere at once, the Wall allowed the initial effort to be concentrated in a relatively small region, at first only a thousand kilometers across. There were no craters deep enough, so the Wall had been completely artificial: a vast ring-shaped atmospheric dam designed to move slowly outward, encompassing ever more surface area at a rate of a twenty kilometers per year. The Wall needed to be very tall because the low Martian gravity meant that the column of atmosphere was higher for a fixed surface pressure than on Earth. The ramparts were hundreds of meters thick, dark as glacial ice, sinking great taproots deep into the lithosphere to harvest the ores needed for the Wall’s continual growth. Yet two hundred kilometers higher the wall was a diaphanously thin membrane only microns wide; completely invisible except when rare optical effects made it hang like a frozen aurora against the stars. Eco-engineers had invaded the Wall’s live able area with terran genestocks deftly altered in orbital labs. Flora and fauna had moved out in vivacious waves, lapping eagerly against the constraints of the Wall.
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