Xeelee: Vengeance

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘A tsunami?’

  She pointed. ‘You can see how the wave is diminishing as it spreads out. But it’s going to pile up again when it reaches the coast. The flitter is handshaking with various global systems . . . Only about three dozen news outlets want to talk to us, so far. You want to go up to high orbit? You can imagine the sky is crowded today.’

  ‘High orbit?’ Poole felt distracted. ‘For a better view of the mess we made? No.’

  She nodded. ‘Where, then?’

  Poole turned helplessly back to the softscreen images. It looked as if a wave of cloud was racing ahead of the tsunami front now: wind and rain, he thought. ‘Fifty kilometres up, over the Canary Islands. Tenerife.’

  She nodded. ‘Right. Where our tsunami will make its first landfall.’

  ‘I wonder how many people have died already.’

  ‘Let’s go find out,’ Nicola said. She swept her hands over the controls.

  The flitter descended towards Earth, like a stone thrown into a blue bowl.

  40

  Tenerife, one of a scatter of islands on the breast of the Atlantic, looked from the air like a dusty jewel, green and grey, surrounded by the steel blue of the ocean. Its core was Teide, a volcanic summit, not quite dormant, a cratered mound of ash layers more than three kilometres high that looked very lunar. Teide was, Poole learned, looking it up, the third largest volcano on the planet. And a glittering modern city stood on terraces cut into the broad summit of the mountain, connected by monorail links to the coastal plain, shining threads against grey ash. The mountain city was called Achinet. The coastal plain was, this bright morning, a muddle of structure, of towns, roads, parkland, the detail too fine for Poole to resolve from the air. But that was where the wave would hit first.

  And Poole, on impulse, decided to project a Virtual avatar down to the ground. To a spot on that coastal plain picked at random. He needed to see this.

  Without consulting Nicola, he stabbed a softscreen tab.

  He emerged from the transition crouched over, from his seated posture on the flitter. He stood up, staggering a little.

  He found himself standing on dark sand, near some kind of coastal resort. He wasn’t quite by the ocean itself. Between him and the water stood a line of small huts, some kind of bar, a row of palm-like trees. Beyond, the sea glistened in sunlit glimpses. Inland the ground sloped up to a heavily vegetated parkland, studded with shining glass buildings. Hotels? And beyond that rose the grey slope of the mountain, misted by distance, a smooth-walled cone that reminded him, from this angle, of the Tharsis volcanoes of Mars. Towers of glass stood on its slopes. There seemed to be nobody around. As on Mars, there had been plenty of warnings, and the evacuations had been comprehensive, if, probably, not quite complete; there were always some who refused to move.

  He heard a rustling, cracking noise.

  Clouds were fleeing across the sky, he saw, distracted. Heading for that mountain. And then birds, flying high, calling out. They were heading inland, like the clouds. He heard a kind of crackle, like a distant fire. And there was a breeze, that picked up bits of debris at his feet. Blowing inland, like the birds. Poole could not feel the wind, of course. He was Michael the archangel, descended into hell.

  He turned back to the sea. And he saw those coastline trees falling, one by one. That was the splintering sound he had heard.

  Then, beyond the trees, he made out what looked like a wall of steel, rising up. It was the wave itself, visibly advancing. A ridge of silver water piled up far higher than the huts before it.

  Poole knew the basic physics. As the wave’s leading edge slowed in the shallows the mass of water flowing in from the rear piled up into this looming wall. But to see it in action, only a few hundred metres from where he was standing, was visceral, astonishing, terrifying. For this dyke of water was moving, advancing steadily on the land, almost like some tremendous piece of engineering. Moving with a terrible implacability.

  The last of the trees were overwhelmed. And when the wave’s foot reached the strip of coastal huts, it was as if they exploded, engulfed entirely, erased, with only smashed wood panels and scraps of broken plastic wheeling out. So loud was the roar of the water now that Poole could hear nothing of these small disasters.

  Poole gave in to instinct. He turned and ran, heading inland, making for the higher ground.

  But after a few paces he came across one other person on the beach, and he stumbled to a halt. A woman, dressed in sensible, sunlight-deflecting silvered coveralls. Unlike Poole she stood motionless, looking out to sea, at the approaching wave. He had no idea why she should be here. A first-contact optimist, perhaps.

  He yelled back at her, ‘Get away. Run! I can’t help you . . .’

  She looked at him. Silver-haired, smooth-faced, she was AS-ageless. He couldn’t even tell if she was flesh, or a Virtual witness as he was. Either way there was nothing he could do for her.

  The wave was nearly on them. Yet he hesitated. He couldn’t just leave her.

  He saw the water smash into the woman. Hunched over, she was snatched away like a leaf in a gale.

  Just before the wave engulfed Poole himself. The suddenness of it was shocking. He was picked up, turned around, pulled and pushed. The very breath was driven out of him as if by a huge punch.

  Then, immersed after the initial shock, in the deeper water behind the wave front, he was floating, almost as if he was back in zero gravity, surrounded by debris – bits of panelling, huge splinters from wrecked and uprooted trees – detritus so densely suspended in the water that he was in near darkness, save for glimmers of sunlight through the cloudy murk. He couldn’t even tell where the surface was, whether he was upright or inverted.

  Yet he had a great sense of speed. He imagined himself being dragged far inland.

  His lungs began to ache, as he longed to take a breath the Virtual software wouldn’t allow.

  A tree, ahead of him, not yet uprooted, was rushing at him. A fixed point. Instinctively he made to grab for it; if he could just hold on until the wave passed—

  He was impaled, straight through the heart.

  He fell into blackness.

  And into light.

  He lifted his head. Pain shot through him, his arms, his chest, his throat. He was back on the flitter, loosely strapped to a couch.

  Nicola was in the pilot’s seat, checking softscreens, within which he glimpsed devastation.

  He tried to speak, coughed, and that made his chest ache some more.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ Nicola said.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I said—’

  ‘Just answer me.’

  ‘At our station. Fifty kilometres above Tenerife.’

  ‘How long was I out?’

  ‘Thirty minutes. Hurt yourself enough, did you? You missed Casablanca.’

  ‘Casablanca?’

  ‘The wave got there half an hour after it hit Tenerife. You can get killed in a Virtual projection, you know, if you push the consistency violations too far. If that was what you were trying to do—’

  ‘If I was suicidal, I’d pick a more efficient way. A Poole way. There have been precedents.’ Grunting, he released himself from the couch and drifted forward. He ached all over, but at least there was no gravity to make things worse. ‘Show me.’

  ‘Tenerife? Since your jaunt, the first wave – the one that caught you – has receded. It smashed up a lot of the coastal infrastructure, shoved the debris kilometres inland, and now has scraped it all back out again. You can imagine the damage. And then the second wave came.’

  ‘The second?’

  ‘That’s what a tsunami does, Michael. It – sloshes.’

  She waved a hand. A screen showed a composite recording, a view from space, of the island as it had been before the wave. There was the grey central mountain with its c
rowded terraces, the cities on the strip of coast, and the ocean, in this image a grey, placid sheet of water.

  ‘And then came the first wave,’ Nicola said. She tapped at screens. ‘Before and after.’

  After the passage of the waves, the ocean around the island looked disturbed, foam-flecked, surging, in some places pushing into what had been dry land, in others withdrawing far from the coast. And that neatly inhabited coastal strip had become a blur of smashed buildings, washed-out roads, sheets of mud, broken trees, trapped lagoons of sea water: a band of raw grey-brown, right around the island.

  Yet there was movement. Poole touched the screen, zooming in on detail. All along that coastal strip there were swarms of black dots that Poole at first thought must be rocks, or maybe stranded marine creatures. When magnified they turned out to be people, individuals or groups, struggling in the mud. They were coming together, evidently helping each other. And Poole saw aircraft of many makes and sizes, landing and ascending, like sea birds feeding off worms and crabs, he thought.

  Nicola pointed out a beached ship, huge – perhaps a tanker, or a cruise liner, it must have been the length of the lost Hermit Crab. This great vessel lay tipped over on glistening sea-bottom mud. A stupendous disaster in itself that was just a detail, today.

  ‘Oh,’ Nicola said. ‘And your mother wants to speak to you.’

  ‘My mother?’

  One screen blinked clear blue for a second, then filled with an image of the face of Muriel Poole. ‘Michael.’

  ‘Where are you? I mean—’

  With only a brief time delay, she responded with a smile. ‘Understandable question. I’m safe. I’m being projected from highly protected stores, including some off-planet. I’m going to be fine.’

  ‘I’m thinking of coming down.’

  Muriel nodded. ‘In person? Might be a good idea.’

  Nicola frowned. Without comment she touched controls; the flitter began to descend.

  Muriel said, ‘You may be safer on the ground. This isn’t your fault, but there are plenty of hotheads who are looking for somebody to blame. Of course I can be anywhere. Come down to Tenerife itself. Ground zero. I’ll meet you at Achinet. It’s kind of appropriate, isn’t it?’

  41

  So, once again, Michael Poole descended to Tenerife, this time incarnate.

  They had to wait for landing clearance, delivered by some automated system: artificial sentience talking to artificial sentience. The sky was crowded with rescue craft, every one of which had a higher priority than Poole’s flitter.

  At last they were guided down to a landing pad, high on one of those mountain terraces around Achinet.

  Poole and Nicola climbed out onto a hard, rough pavement. The Sun was high and brilliant; this was a late spring day. Poole’s skinsuit had turned reflective to keep off the sunlight. They were close to the high-altitude centre of this summit city. Nearby, one great Tower stood gleaming, its clean lines rippling in heat haze. And in a noisy, almost chaotic sky, flying vehicles crowded, coming to and from the lowland fringe of the island.

  Poole saw that, in the west, a heavy load of cloud was gathering. Advancing visibly, boiling. It wouldn’t be sunny for long. Another gift of the Atlantic Probe.

  Nicola pointed to a woman standing alone, just outside the fenced-off landing area. Poole thought he recognised the image of his mother, not tall, soberly dressed. Leaving a swarm of bots from the airfield’s maintenance facility to tend to the flitter, Poole marched that way, with Nicola in his wake.

  But as he walked Poole battled dizziness, a slight nausea, a rubbery feeling in his limbs. They had both been some days in zero gravity. When he felt the suit stiffen up to offer him exoskeletal support as he walked, he slapped a console on his chest to shut down its smart functions. The physical weakness only irritated Poole, making him feel self-indulgent given the calamity that was unrolling across the planet, even across this island.

  If Nicola was similarly struggling, he didn’t look back to see.

  They reached his mother. Muriel stood alone before a security gate that led into a terminal building, where no doubt on a normal day customs and security processing would be performed. She wore a plain grey robe that swept to the ground. There was something slightly wrong with her representation today, Poole thought: perhaps the shadow was not quite sharp enough, the play of the strong sunlight on the material of her robe not quite convincing. If resources to support her projection were scarce, he could hardly complain.

  ‘Michael.’ She stepped forward, with a smile that looked forced.

  Poole had no idea what to say.

  ‘And Nicola Emry. You’re proving a good friend to my son. I followed you as you tracked the Probe towards Earth. Well, of course I did – and so did much of mankind. Your assault on the Probe – I understand you had to try. But without you at his side, Nicola, I fear he might have killed himself in the process.’

  Nicola looked away. She never took praise well, Poole reflected.

  But he was irritated himself. ‘Even if I had burned myself up – and even though it hadn’t made a Lethe-drowned scrap of difference to the Probe – wouldn’t it have been right?’

  Nicola faced him. ‘Only if you believe in some kind of atonement. Like Christ on the Cross, giving up His life to save mankind. Is that what you think you are? You know, I’m glad I’m looking up all these old religions. It’s helping me make sense of you.’

  ‘Nicola—’

  ‘She has a point,’ Muriel said. ‘You always were a complicated little boy, Michael, even before you became some kind of avatar of the future. It was not arrogant of you to imagine you might succeed in deflecting the Probe. But if you had self-indulgently thrown your life away – yes, that would have been arrogant, unforgivably so. I’d have grieved, you know that. But I’d have been furious too.’

  ‘So would a lot of people,’ Nicola said. ‘I mean, when this is all over, who else are they going to prosecute?’

  That made him laugh, if bitterly. ‘So,’ he said, ‘why did you call us down here, Mother? You said the location was appropriate.’

  ‘So it is. Walk with me.’

  They followed her through the port terminal building. The power was on in this bright, airy space; bots and automated vehicles passed to and fro. But there was nobody here, flesh or Virtual. And, Poole noticed, the big softscreens that coated the walls were blank, pale, featureless as Xeelee hull plate, he thought.

  Once through the building, in brilliant sunlight once more, Poole was dazzled, and shaded his eyes. He found himself in a kind of square, backed by the terminal, and facing spectacular structures: what looked like a cathedral, a cluster of crystal blocks topped by a slim crucifix, and beyond that a taller Tower. Even the ground underfoot was exotic, a tough floor of what looked like compacted volcanic ash covered by a glassy skin. Almost like a Martian road surface, Poole thought. Overhead, monorails swept on slim trestles across the terraces, even cutting through the interiors of some of the grander buildings. And what looked like the cables of funicular railways ascended in neat straight lines up the side of the sculptured mountain.

  There was no motion on the transport systems. Nobody in sight.

  Muriel led them to a small café, one of several set out along one side of the square. They were all open; none had patrons as far as Poole could see. Muriel found shade, and pointed to chairs. ‘Sit. You need a break, to reorient. Both of you.’

  Nicola shrugged. ‘If you’re paying . . .’ She sat, tugging open the neck of her skinsuit.

  ‘I prescribe orange juice, fresh squeezed,’ Muriel said, sitting opposite them. ‘And still water, iced. I’ll have an unreal equivalent. Are you hungry, either of you? No . . .?’ She snapped her fingers, and a bot came rolling from the interior of the café and began to serve them efficiently.

  ‘Beautiful city,’ Nicola said, between gulps of juic
e. ‘Never been here before.’

  ‘I have,’ Muriel said. ‘The city’s called Achinet, after the name the island was given by the Guanches, its pre-Discovery-era inhabitants. You saw the layout of the island from orbit: the populated coastal fringe around the core of the volcanic mountain? Santa Cruz de Tenerife was once a major city. But the island suffered badly in the Bottleneck sea-level rise. Two million people were displaced from their homes in the lowland. At times the island was abandoned entirely.

  ‘But when the Recovery came, the island became a kind of administrative district for the rebuilding and reclamation of the coastlands of the whole south Atlantic region. The UN built this city, Achinet, as a symbol of a new way of doing things. Eventually, when we Pooles brought the sea levels back down, the lowland was reclaimed. Santa Cruz itself was rebuilt, a homage to the past. You see, these islands have been ground zero before, and have recovered before. Which was why I thought it was appropriate to meet here.’

  ‘Nobody around, though,’ Nicola observed.

  ‘Well, we did have plenty of warning. Most people were evacuated from the endangered zones. There are always some who stay, for reasons of their own.’

  Poole said, ‘I think I met one of them, on the beach.’

  ‘Even to the end, even after Mars, some people believed that the Probe would turn away. It became an article of faith, you see. And it would have been a beautiful gesture if the Probe had not, in fact, fallen as it did.’

  ‘But it did fall,’ Nicola said harshly.

  A shadow crossed the Sun. Looking up, Poole saw curdled clouds rolling across the blue sky, coming from the west.

  Muriel said, ‘We’re nearly a kilometre high here. Achinet itself is under no threat from the tsunami, but—’

  The rain started, a sudden flood coming from the sky. Nicola and Muriel huddled under the table shade: Muriel the Virtual responding to another ancient reflex, Poole thought.

  But Poole stayed where he was, in the rain. He raised his face. The impact of the heavy drops stung his skin, almost painfully. And when he let the water run into his mouth he tasted salt, and sea-bottom mud.