“Hm,” Falcon said, remembering. “A kiss on a pool table . . .”
“Howard?”
“Sorry. Just a line from an old movie. But what’s this got to do with me?”
“Do you remember what Orpheus said of the First Jovians?”
Falcon remembered that firelit room, the poker in the hearth, the snowman in the armchair. It felt like some sepia-tinted memory from his earliest childhood. “Hard to forget. But we weren’t told much.”
“We have learned a little more, with time. The First Jovians have achieved an expertise with metric engineering beyond anything in our understanding. They have touched the bedrock of reality . . . and felt ghosts, vibrations, singing through it. Whispers and rumours of other realities, other histories, adjoining our own. We can only imagine the paths not taken. The First Jovians—well, they seem to feel those lost worlds in their bones. And in some sense—although this is only my intuition—I think they have the means to nurture the paths they deem most favourable . . . those with the outcomes most useful to them, most favourable to life, the most beautiful. However they measure it.
“Now, along with the Machines, they’ve met—encountered—something, inside that hot Jupiter, something that doesn’t fit into their preconceived framework. Perhaps another order of life, which isn’t playing by the usual rules. It’s got them befuddled—enough that they need a fresh perspective. I think we, you and I, have been brought to this moment, this place, because even gods need mortals. Because the First Jovians need us. Human and Machine. A partnership in curiosity. Because the real work of life, of mind, is still to be done. The question is: are you ready for a new journey?”
“I feel like I’ve done enough journeying for one lifetime.”
“Oh, enough with the self-pity. You’re just getting started.”
Falcon felt a shiver of recognition. That sounded like Hope Dhoni. “I see they left you with the same rough edges.”
“You’d have been disappointed with anything less.” She took a final sip from her glass. “So what’s it to be? A quiet retirement with a view to die for, or something that might stretch you, just a tiny bit?”
He smiled, and turned away. His gaze returned to that kiss of atmosphere below, to the cold, clear envelope enclosing a planet’s worth of seas and islands and weather. He found himself wondering what the ballooning would be like down there.
He said softly, “Astonish me.”
AFTERWORD
The idea for this book came from a chance suggestion by Alastair Reynolds in the course of a nostalgic email exchange.
“A Meeting with Medusa,” the novella by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, was originally published in Playboy for December, 1971. In 1972 it won the Nebula Award for Best Novella, and in 1974 the Japanese Seiun Award for Best Foreign Language Short Story. It was perhaps Clarke’s last significant work of short fiction, and has been reprinted many times since—perhaps most notably as a terrifically illustrated serial in the short-lived magazine Speed & Power (IPC, issues 5–13, 1974), a rendition which made a significant impact on the imagination of a young Reynolds.
The Icarus asteroid-deflection episode of the Interludes was inspired by the results of an interdisciplinary student project in systems engineering run at MIT in the summer of 1967. This was in fact the first serious study of how to deflect an asteroid from an impact with the Earth. The final report (Project Icarus, L. A. Kleiman [ed.], MIT Report no. 13, MIT Press, 1968) was impressive enough to be published, is cited to this day—and was the inspiration for the movie Meteor (1979, dir. Ronald Neame), which did indeed star Sean Connery.
In the 1960s, predictions of temperate conditions of temperature and pressure in Jupiter’s atmosphere, as well as the possibility of the presence of a wide variety of organic molecules, led to speculation about life in the Jovian cloud layers as depicted in “A Meeting with Medusa.” Later, a detailed study by Sagan and Salpeter (Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series vol. 32, pp. 737–755, 1976) led to a famous visual depiction of cloud beasts not unlike Clarke’s in Sagan’s Cosmos TV series.
The notion of using aerostat factories to mine the atmosphere of Jupiter for the rare isotope helium-3 was suggested in the 1970s Project Daedalus starship study conducted by the British Interplanetary Society (see the Final Report, 1978, pp. S83ff). The quantum-mechanical “Momentum Pump” discussed in Chapter 49 is entirely speculative.
All errors and inaccuracies are, of course, our sole responsibility.
—S.B. and A.R.
September 2015
About the Authors
STEPHEN BAXTER is one of the preeminent science fiction writers of his generation. With Terry Pratchett, he has coauthored the Long Earth novels. As a world-renowned bestselling author, Baxter has won many major awards in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, and Japan, including the British Science Fiction Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Born in 1957, Baxter has degrees from Cambridge and Southampton. He currently lives with his wife in Northumberland.
ALASTAIR REYNOLDS was born in 1966 in Barry, South Wales. He studied at Newcastle and St. Andrews Universities and has a PhD in astronomy. He stopped working as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency to become a full-time writer. Reynolds is a bestselling author and has been awarded the British Science Fiction Award, along with being shortlisted for the Hugo Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Locus Award.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
SimonandSchuster.com
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Stephen-Baxter
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Alastair-Reynolds
ALSO BY STEPHEN BAXTER
Ultima
Proxima
Xelee Sequence
Vacuum Diagram
Ring
Flux
Timelike Infinity
Raft
Xeelee
Xeelee: Endurance
The Long Earth Sequence
(with Terry Pratchett)
The Long Earth
The Long War
The Long Mars
The Long Utopia
ALSO BY ALASTAIR REYNOLDS
Revelation Space series
Revelation Space
Redemption Ark
Absolution Gap
Chasm City
The Prefect
Blue Remembered Earth
On a Steel Breeze
Slow Bullets
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www.SimonandSchuster.com * This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. * Text copyright © 2016 by Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds * Originally published by Gollancz, Orion Publishing Group, in 2016 * Jacket photographs copyright © 2016 by Getty Images * All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Saga Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 * Saga Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. * For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected]. * The Simon & Schuster Spea
kers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. * For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. * The text for this book was set in Berkeley Old Style. * CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress. * ISBN 978-1-4814-7967-7 * ISBN 978-1-4814-7969-1 (eBook)
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