“We can’t show the damage or the ground action in a space-based simulation, of course,” Bernhardt said. “But it will be severe. Wally, you’re still working on the ground sims?”
“Yes, sir,” Wally said. “Course, the infosets are pretty vague. I won’t be able to give you much detail, and some of it’s going to be speculative.”
“I am sure it will be up to your usual high standards,” the director said.
Sianna shut her eyes and cursed herself for an idiot. Of course. At this scale, with Earth the size of a basketball, what would there be to see? But of course the disaster would still come.
“So it’s finally going to happen,” Sakalov said. “I had been hoping I wouldn’t live to see it.”
“We’ll all live to see the start of it,” said Bernhardt. “You’ve seen the images from the Solar System, what just a handful of Charonians were able to do to Mars. These SCOREs are a different type of Charonian, of course, and they will probably behave quite differently.
“But I have no doubt they will do quite a bit of damage. The Charonians hunted our world down, and brought it back here, to the Multisphere, to their larder. Now they are ready to dine. They will land on Earth, and breed, and breed and breed and breed. They could wreck the planetary ecosphere completely. We can see other Captive Worlds where that has happened. Even if things don’t go that badly, they could still do some very serious damage.”
“So what do we do?” Sianna asked.
Wolf Bernhardt looked at her, then at Wally and at Dr. Sakalov. “First, we do all we can to resupply NaPurHab and the Terra Nova. We launch as many loads of spares and equipment at them as we can. If Earth is severely enough damaged, it is possible that they will be all there is left of us. We must do all we can to make sure they are in as good condition as possible. Then we use the interceptor missiles and the ground attack forces and all the other weapons we have built against this day,” he said. “We shoot down as many of them as we can, and kill as many of them as we can on the ground. Maybe we can drive back the first wave, and maybe the Charonians will conclude Earth is not a good place for a Breeding Binge. But I have no doubt that, if it chooses to do so, Charon Central can keep sending SCOREs—Breeders—long after our defences are overwhelmed. And then the Breeders will land, and go about their business.
“And as to what we do then—I haven’t the faintest idea, except for one thing.” Wolf Bernhardt put his hands in his pockets, looked toward the simulation, and let out a deep sigh. “I expect,” he said, “that a lot of us will die.”
chapter 9: Death of the Past
“There are times when I don’t much mind being called a Leftover—but other times when I find it bloody infuriating. Why mark me out because I was one of the ones left behind? Haven’t we all lost someone? Is there anyone in the Solar System who didn’t lose someone, or some part of their past, when Earth vanished? And is there a single one of you lot who wasn’t lost by someone back on Earth?
”And if you weren’t lost to someone, if there is no one on the other side who cares a sausage for you, then dearie, I feel sorry for you.“
—Dr. Selby Bogsworth-Stapleton, letter to the editor, Lunar Times, May 3, 2431
Aboard the Terra Nova
Deep Space
THE MULTISYSTEM
Gerald MacDougal, second-in-command of the Terra Nova, lay awake in his bunk, staring at the overhead bulkhead. He knew he should be trying to sleep, but this was one night when sleep would not come.
Gerald missed his wife.
Marcia. He could turn over on his side and look at her picture, taped on the bulkhead next to his bed, but there was no need. He had spent endless hours in the last five years staring at that photo. It was the only one of her that he had, and it was his most prized possession.
It was a quite ordinary flat photo, no three-dee, no animation. She smiled out at the camera, her two elbows resting on the picnic table, with her chin balanced on the palms of her hands, her long fingers hidden under her frizzy black hair, though the tip of her left index finger peeked through, just by her ear.
Her dark brown eyes were half-hidden by her bangs, but they shone with love and happiness. She was grinning, ear to ear, gleaming white teeth showing, with one tooth just a little crooked, and a tiny little scar on one cheek where she had caught a chip of flying rock in some childhood accident, before she had escaped Tycho Purple Penal.
No, he didn’t have to look at the picture.
She had been off-planet when the Abduction struck, working at the VISOR station orbiting Venus, while he worked on his own projects back on Earth. Even then, they had been forced to settle for video messages sent from so far away the speed-of-light delay made conversation impossible. Back then, that distance seemed impossibly wide. Now, it seemed trivial. What were a few tens or hundreds of millions of kilometres, compared to the unknown number of light-years between them now?
At last he did turn his gaze toward the picture, but he was seeing through it, rather than looking at it. How had five-plus years changed her? Had her hair gone grey? Were there a few more laugh lines around her eyes?
He didn’t even want to contemplate the other disasters that might have befallen her. One of the last messages relayed by the Saint Anthony had confirmed that Marcia had survived at least that long, and to know that much was a great blessing. Gerald offered a silent prayer of thanks for that. Many aboard ship, and back on Earth, had no way of knowing if their loved ones in the Solar System had survived the disaster. All they knew was that the much smaller population of the Solar System had suffered more casualties than all of Earth.
But what of the five years since? He believed firmly, because he had to, that she still lived—but suppose she did not? Suppose she had died five minutes after sending that last message? Suppose she was dying now, this moment, while he lay here, safe and warm, and he did not know?
He calmed himself. No. She lived. He knew that. He had always felt that he would know if she died. He would be able to feel it, and never mind the distance and the logical impossibility of the idea. He could feel her being alive, the way he could feel his own heart beating. He would know if she died, the way he would know if his right arm were cut off.
But what of himself? Dear God, how had five years changed him? How much had he aged? Five years cooped up in this oversized tin can—he had gained weight, lost muscle tone. That happened in space, no matter how much one exercised. And what about his soul, his spirit? Had five years of fruitless effort and failure soured him, embittered him? He did not believe so, but there was no way to tell.
He swung his feet around to the floor and sat up in bed. Enough. It was foolish to think that he was so changed that she would no longer love him, no longer be attracted to him. He had more faith in her—and confidence in himself—than that. But, still, he did not want to be a disappointment to her.
And she would be disappointed indeed to see him moping around in his quarters. There was work to be done. Even if the launch had been delayed for the time being, the second stealthship, the Highwayman, still needed to be prepared for its flight, prepared for the next attempt on a CORE. He got up, left his cabin, and made his way down toward the flight deck. There were stores to check, systems to test, hardware to inspect.
Gerald, of course, took a special interest in preparing the Highwayman.
He was going to command her. No matter how much Dianne Steiger protested, he was going to be aboard the little ship.
Gerald MacDougal had had his fill of sending others out to die. He would go himself, next time.
And would hope that Marcia would understand, and forgive him.
Multisystem Research Institute
New York City
EARTH
Sianna made her way back to the Main Ops building and her cubicle, sat down in her chair, leaned back and sighed. What a bloody disaster of a morning! The news from Bernhardt was bad by itself, but that was only part of it. She had wasted the morning and made a fool of he
rself in front of the big boss. The fate of the planet, the idea of universal doom, was a bit too much to deal with. The excellent odds that she would get fired seemed a little closer to home, a bit more tangible, plenty all by itself to bring on the storm clouds.
She might as well give up on the day before depression, guilt, and frustration had their chance to feed on each other.
With a supreme effort of will, she stood up, shoved her chair in behind her desk, and left.
Sianna made her way aboveground without even being aware of the elevator’s terrors. She stepped out into the bright June sunshine, blinking miserably at the perfect robin’s-egg blue sky. She trudged home, unaware of the fresh, clean smell in the air and the playful little breezes that chased each other around the city streets. She dragged herself home to her apartment building, aware of little more than being miserable.
How much worse a morning could it possibly have been? she asked herself as she waited for the elevator. The elevator arrived. She got in and rode to her floor. She stepped out of it to clomp down the hallway to her apartment.
Incredible that she had started the day with her subconscious hinting that she was on the verge of a discovery, a breakthrough! She had actually thought that Wally—Wally—was going to inspire her. So much for the subconscious. Wally telling her something that would unlock the doors to the knowledge hidden inside her? The only real piece of new, solid, information he offered up was that a silly little worldlet orbited the Sphere all by itself. She might as well wait for her toaster to reveal the secrets of the Universe.
To hell with it. She reached the door to her apartment, and waited the infuriating ten seconds it took for the door to recognise her, unbolt, and open up. Damned-fool old-fashioned door. When was the landlord going to install something that didn’t take all day to let her in?
At last the door came open, and she flounced her way into the apartment. She marched straight to her room, hurled her handbag down onto the floor, and flung herself at the bed, landing with a satisfyingly loud if muffled thud.
If only she could learn to grow up. Or maybe the trouble was that she already had grown up, and was forever doomed to retain all the foolishness of childhood. Sometimes it seemed to her that the foolishness was all that remained of her—as if she were the Cheshire Cat, and her foolish smile was lasting quite a while after the rest of her—career hopes, academic standing, maturity—had faded away.
She frowned, shook her head, and hugged her arms around her pillow, burying her face in it.
Suddenly, two other images popped into her head, quite unbidden. Epicycles, as she herself has described them—like a satellite going around the Moon while the Moon goes around the Earth—except the Earth and Moon aren’t there. And the Sphere, the Sphere as she had first seen it in Wally’s simulation, glowing red, a huge thing with stars and worlds in orbit about it; the Sphere’s circumference bigger around than Earth’s old orbit—
Sianna spun around until she was lying on her back, staring at the pulsequake cracks in the ceiling. Her lips moved silently. Her heart started to pound. Suddenly she sat bolt upright in bed.
She had it. She had it. She knew. In half a minute she was out the door, headed back toward the lab. She had to find Wally and get to work on this.
◊ ◊ ◊
Sianna paced eagerly up and down the sim room, rubbing her hands together. She had it. She knew she had it. If there were ever a moment in her life where she knew the right answer, this was it.
Wally fed the last of Sianna’s instructions into the simulator system and stared at his setup screens. “Well, it’s all in there,” he said. “Now what?”
Sianna stopped in her pacing at the far side of the room from Wally, then turned and faced him. “Throw it up on the main display system,” she said. “Show it to me. Give me a minute-a-year time rate, starting ten years ago.”
The room darkened, and the Solar System appeared. Not the Multisystem, but Earth’s own home system, the way it had been before the Charonians. Sianna stepped out into the midst of the worlds, marvelling at their tiny perfection. Wally had set the system to run in enhanced imagery mode, the planets and other bodies scaled up, made larger and brighter so they were easy to see. Even so, the worlds were little things, delicate jewels set in a vast, velvet darkness.
All was as it should be, all was as it had been and was no longer. The nine worlds orbited the gleaming Sun, the dust motes of the asteroids moved in their myriad paths in the emptiness between Mars and Jupiter. Comets hovered in the outer depths of the Oort Cloud. Pluto hung in the outer reaches of the system, with his moon Charon still in attendance.
The Ring of Charon, the only human-made object large enough to be visible in this scale, was there, a wheel in space wrapped around the circumference of Charon. It looked like an oversized wedding band with a black ball floating at its center. There was Jupiter with all his moons, and his Red Spot, and his modest rings. There was Saturn, with that grand and gaudy ring system, and Mars with both moons.
All the planets still had the satellites and ring systems they were supposed to have. All was well.
Except that it wasn’t, of course. The Lunar Wheel slumbered in the depths of the Moon, and soon it was to awaken. Sianna had not realised how hard it was going to be to watch it all happen again. Even in a simulator, even in pursuit of a breakthrough, there was nothing pleasurable in watching the disaster all over again.
One year a minute, starting ten years back. Sianna turned and found the Earth, close in by the Sun, the Moon wheeling steadily about the blue-white marble that floated in the darkness. There, on that world, ten years ago, she had been growing up, perhaps just a little too fast. She imagined a submicroscopic nine-year-old version of her self back in a miniature France on the simulated world in front of her. She remembered being teased by the other children over her funny name and its funnier spelling, desperately hoping her mother’s job in America would come through and Sianna could move away from the cruel taunts.
A year a minute, and the tiny Earth swung once around the Sun. A ten-year-old with frizzy hair, skinned knees, and easily hurt feelings learned that children in New York, children everywhere, could be cruel—but also learned that she was brave enough to endure it, and that in enduring the taunts came acceptance.
Another minute, and a second year went past, and a third, and Sianna remembered kissing a boy for the first time. A tall, gawky boy with a forgotten name and a half-remembered, sharp-featured face. It shocked her that she could not bring his name to mind. Her whole world had revolved about him! Now all she could remember about him was the kiss itself, out on the hill behind the school, and the clumsy, tingly, exciting feel of it all. For some reason, she associated a distinct smell of butterscotch with the event, though she couldn’t imagine why.
She smiled to recall that gentle moment in her confused adolescence, the mad crush she had had on the boy, the silly romance they had shared for an eyeblink-short span of spring days. It was all over in real life nearly as fast as she imagined the time rushing past on the simulated miniature Earth.
Four minutes, four years gone by, and the Sianna-that-was on the miniature Earth was discovering a larger world than boys and giggling, was looking up at the busy night sky and wondering if perhaps there was a place in it for her.
She was starting to plan, to think, to map out what she imagined was a sensible route through life. Left too much on her own by her always-working parents, never quite sure where she stood with them, thirteen-year-old Sianna had set out to put everything in its proper place. Her room was always neat, her homework always perfect, her world always in order. She had worked out her future as well, in relentless detail. She would go to this school, get that degree, work at this job, meet and marry that sort of man, have this number of children by that age.
Sianna shook her head, remembering, marvelling at the sensible, orderly, rigid future she had worked out for herself. Looking back from here, from just a few years on, it all seemed so si
lly. Even if the Charonians had not come, if everything hadn’t changed, no life could be mapped out that tidily. You couldn’t always do what was sensible. More often you just worked with what you had, dealt with the situation in front of you. Even if you were a Charonian.
The mini-Earth swung round the imaginary Sun in its comfortable orbit, making something like its four billion, seven hundred and fifty millionth revolution about the Sun. Its last revolution. Sianna stood there in the dark, watching, remembering, knowing what was about to happen, crying in the darkness for the loss she was about to watch.
Four and a half, five minutes, four and a half years gone by, and her parents were happy and well, though perhaps not as attentive as other kids’ parents. Both of them had always been more intent on their work than their child. Always friendly, always there with a smile, and maybe even a brief hug or a pat on the arm, but somehow never very approachable. They never had time now, but they would make it up to her later. Except the Charonians came, and they could never, ever, make it up to her.
Five minutes. Five years. She glanced at the time-date display, and knew it was about to start. “Slow up here, Wally,” she said. “A minute a day here.”
The planets slowed abruptly, and time seemed to freeze for a moment before Sianna could detect the motion in the slowed-down rhythms. Now, she told herself. Just about now.
Wally had programmed the gravity beams to appear as bright red lines, even though they were as invisible as gravity in real life. A slush of red light stretched out across the darkness, reaching from Pluto, from the Ring of Charon. The first test beams, sent to all of the major test facilities on the inner planets and moons.
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