Proxima

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Messy business,’ Martha murmured. ‘Like butchering a carcass by running at it with chainsaws. Bits flying everywhere.’

  ‘Yeah, but look,’ Onizuka said, pointing.

  From nowhere, it seemed, smaller creatures were appearing, some ground-based spinners like the larger scavengers, some flapping flyers like the downed canopy beast, though much smaller. They were all put together from rods and sheets of webbing, as far as Yuri could see. They fell on the big corpse, a cloud of tiny workers processing the remains of the flyer in smaller and smaller fragments.

  ‘They didn’t break off when they came running towards us,’ Lemmy said. ‘Maybe they don’t see us.’

  Martha said, ‘We must look strange, smell strange – if they can smell at all. They don’t recognise us as a food source. And not as a threat either.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Onizuka said, hefting his crossbow. ‘Give them time. You know, I’ve got some experience of the deep ocean. No rich daddy for me, Martha. I made my money from the reclamation trade, deep-diving for precious metals and such from the drowned cities of mainland Japan. I got a taste for the ocean . . . When you get down deep enough, you go beneath the layers where light can reach and stuff grows, plankton and so forth. If you live deeper than that, down in the dark where nothing can grow, you spend your whole life waiting for stuff to come sailing down from above. Scraps, whatever. And when something big comes down, a whale carcass or such, you get a feeding frenzy.’ Onizuka glanced up at the canopy, the huge static leaves. ‘Same principle here. Down on the ground you must get years of darkness, no light to grow. That’s why there’s no undergrowth to speak of, no saplings. Most times it’s just like the deep ocean. And so you get these very efficient scavenger types, just waiting for their moment when something comes falling down from the light.’

  The cluster of scavengers was breaking up now, those big waist-high spinning-tripod types departing first with a hum of whirled limbs, and then the cloud of flyers and the little runners polishing off the scraps, before fleeing too. When they had done, Yuri saw, you’d never have known the fallen flyer had been here at all, save for some scuffed forest-floor debris, and a few patches of hardening marrow.

  The group pressed on.

  CHAPTER 16

  They reached the forest fringe, pushed through a last screen of skinny saplings – some of which, barely grown, looked just like the stems back in the Puddle – and emerged into a clearing, centred on some kind of big rock-jumble hollow in the ground, with the forest continuing as a drab green wall on the far side. Out of the forest’s shade the air was hotter, more humid, and Yuri felt sweat prickle.

  They moved forward more cautiously, some instinct, Yuri supposed, prompting them to stick together in the open. Both Martha and Onizuka hefted their crossbows. Yuri had expected to find evidence of fire, something that would produce a clearing like this – the aftermath of a lightning strike maybe, and there were plenty of those on this stormy world.

  Instead the land fell away into the hollow, its edge ragged, the floor littered with boulders. As he climbed down Yuri found himself walking on life: a green undergrowth of what looked like lichen, something like mosses, a kind of crisp furry grass-analogue that was like lots of skinny stems crowded in clumps, and a few young trees, none more than a few metres high. The green was the green of the different photosynthesis of Per Ardua, duller than Earth’s palette.

  At the lowest point of the hollow they found a mud pool, bubbling, smeared with purple and green – bacteria perhaps. Around the inner slopes Yuri made out more stromatolites, a bunch like huge toadstools over there, another crowd like slim pillars, all with greasy-looking carapaces but in a variety of colours, green, golden-brown, even crimson. To Yuri it was as if they had walked into a lost world, where everything familiar was distorted.

  ‘Sulphur,’ Martha said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Smell that? That’s why this clearing is here, the trees can’t grow. Maybe this is some kind of volcanic caldera.’

  Yuri said, ‘Or it might be another of those collapsed features, like the Cowpat.’

  Onizuka snorted. ‘What does it matter? Who cares about geology?’

  ‘We should care, bonehead,’ Lemmy said sharply. ‘We know there’s some kind of geological uplift going on here. The ColU’s been measuring it. Like a volcano waiting to blow. If this becomes a live caldera not five kilometres from the camp—’

  ‘ “Bonehead”?’ Onizuka raised the crossbow and again pointed it at Lemmy’s face. ‘You don’t get to speak to me like that, you little prick.’

  ‘Hey, hey.’ Martha moved in, standing between them, glaring at Onizuka. ‘Take it easy, hero.’

  But Onizuka glared at Lemmy, who returned his stare more or less bravely, and Yuri thought he could see the shadow of Pearl Hanks standing between them. Yuri turned away. If he got involved it would only increase the tension.

  Onizuka backed off. ‘Christ, I could do with a drink.’ He shucked off his pack. ‘Let’s take a break.’

  They sat, opened their packs. As they ate, Yuri saw movement on the far side of the bowl. He got up, food in hand, and walked forward to see better.

  More tripods were moving over there, more structures of stem-like rods centred on densely woven basket-like core bodies. But these were huge, heavy, graceful creatures, very tall, maybe three, four metres, and they towered over the stromatolite garden through which they glided. They were much slower-moving than the kite flyer, or the scavengers that had consumed it, and Yuri had a chance to see how their bodies worked. They were like construction kits made up of those stems, of all lengths it seemed, from twigs shorter than his own fingers to big stout pillars like elephant bones, combined at joints that allowed them to move in a variety of complex ways. And the joints were being made and unmade in a fluid fashion as the beast progressed, as if the creatures were being rebuilt on the move.

  Yuri watched one particularly large beast approach a stromatolite, impossibly balancing on its three fat legs.

  Lemmy came to stand beside him. ‘Quite a sight. The stromatolites standing around like that, like a rocket park, like one I saw at Hellas once, on Mars, the big Chinese base there. And these critters – wow. Look at that.’

  That big beast had now produced a kind of appendage, curling over the top of its upright body, like a scorpion sting – and it plunged the sting into the carapace of a stromatolite; Yuri could hear the crack. Evidently the big tripod started to feed, sucking out mushy material from the stromatolite.

  Now Yuri saw another creature of a different kind, a bundle of stems that moved with a stealthy roll rather than the usual spinning-stool movement: smaller, more graceful, faster, quietly approaching the big feeder – quietly watchful, it seemed to Yuri, though he could see nothing like eyes.

  ‘Food chain,’ Lemmy said. ‘The stromatolites grow in the light of the sun, like vegetation on Earth. Those big slow things with the stings are herbivores, browsing the stromatolites. And then—’

  ‘Here come the carnivores.’

  ‘Yeah. A whole hierarchy of them, probably.’

  A shadow passed over them, filmy, complex, and they both looked up. A flyer was crossing the sky, triple vanes turning languidly with soft rustles, a huge structure even compared to the kite Onizuka had shot down in the forest. As its shadow passed over the pit, creatures of various sizes fled from the stromatolite garden, or hid out of sight.

  Yuri grunted. ‘What a sight. Like a pterosaur.’

  ‘What’s a pterosaur?’

  Yuri felt oddly sorry for Lemmy. He suspected Lemmy was a hell of a lot brighter than he was, the way he kept figuring stuff out. But, after a shit life, he knew a lot less. ‘Earth stuff, Mars boy. Come on, we ought to take some samples for the ColU.’

  Together they walked into the hollow, tucking samples into sacks at their waists.

  CHAPTER 17

  They got back to the camp late, after around twelve hours away.

  The explorers delivered their samples to the Co
lU. The colonisation unit immediately began to pick apart the bags of green muck and greasy marrow with murmurs of satisfaction that even to Yuri’s ears were intensely irritating. It said it intended to put together a family tree of life on this planet of Proxima, the better to exploit it – not exterminate it, it was no threat, it couldn’t eat you or infect you, but to push it aside and use its remains as feedstock for human farming. So samples like this were food and drink to the ColU. When it began to speculate about predator-prey interactions – on Earth the predators hunted mostly at dawn or dusk, but maybe they would strike at any time here on timeless Per Ardua, a difference that would have effects that would ripple down through the whole biosphere, and blah blah – Yuri just walked away.

  After another few hours, following a meal of ship’s rations and desultory talk around the fire, most of them began to drift to bed. Lemmy, Onizuka and Harry Thorne stayed up. They had started a poker school, or rather had continued it from their days on the ship. When Mardina forbade them to bet ration packs they had started to use tokens made of stems, taken from around the lake and broken up to different lengths to give multiples of ten, a hundred.

  Yuri, trying to settle in his own small one-man fold-out tent, heard Lemmy laugh. ‘I’m a stem millionaire tonight! The richest guy on Per Ardua.’

  ‘You’re still a little prick, you little prick.’

  The game soon broke up, and the couples went off, Martha with John Synge, Abbey with Matt Speith, Pearl with Lemmy, leaving the rest high and dry, as Onizuka put it. Yuri could hear it all, tell who was going where and with whom.

  Tonight Matt stayed up, however, for it was his turn on sentry watch. In his tent, Yuri listened to Matt whistling through his teeth.

  He kind of liked Matt Speith. Matt was an artist; as a child he had been a refugee, with his similarly arty family, from a terminally flooding Manhattan. He was vague, ineffectual, not particularly strong or attractive: ‘Neither use nor ornament,’ he said of himself. He seemed to have stumbled into poverty, and into the UN sweep that had taken him first to Mars and now to Proxima, without really noticing it, like he was sleepwalking into disaster. But he was quiet, unassuming, resilient in a calm kind of way, and always prepared to talk about anything – anything that wasn’t to do with Mars, the Ad Astra, or Prox c, anyhow.

  He was the best artist on Per Ardua, probably. Every world needed an artist. Matt was a lousy sentry, however. That night he didn’t even call the alert until Pearl’s scream had already woken everybody up.

  Even before he was fully awake Yuri pushed out of his tent, barefoot, wearing only his trousers. As usual when his sleep was disturbed he blinked in the full daylight, surprised to find Prox high in the sky when his body told him it was three or four in the morning.

  He saw there was a commotion around the tent Lemmy shared with Pearl. Yuri ran that way, trying to take in the scene as he went in.

  The tent had been pulled away, evidently by main force, leaving a heap of groundsheets, blankets, clothes in the dirt. Lemmy was lying on his back, and even from a distance Yuri could see the pool of blood around his head. Pearl, naked, was sitting up, knees to her chest, hands clamped to her cheeks. Her bare legs were slick with Lemmy’s blood. She was silent, eerily so.

  And Onizuka stood over her, pulling at her upper arm, trying to make her stand. Harry Thorne stood beside him, looming over Pearl as well. Yuri saw that both men had their crossbows in their hands.

  The others came running, in shorts, T-shirts. Only Matt wore his daytime jumpsuit, and even he didn’t have his boots on. Yuri checked his own back; he always kept a knife in his belt, even when asleep. Now he slipped the knife into his right hand, concealed.

  Soon Matt, Yuri, John Synge with Martha, Mardina, Abbey, stood in a wary circle, the whole of the little colony gathered around the central tableau, the ruined tent, the screaming girl, the body, the looming men.

  Mardina strode forward now, as if taking command. Yuri saw she had her eyes on the crossbows, but the men didn’t raise them, or stop her approaching. Mardina knelt by Lemmy, and felt for a pulse at his wrist, neck, bent to listen for breath. She sat back on her haunches. ‘Well, he’s dead. Crossbow bolt to the throat, another to the temple.’

  Onizuka grunted. ‘Little prick won’t have known what hit him.’

  ‘We were merciful.’ Harry Thorne sounded more conflicted than Onizuka.

  ‘Merciful,’ Mardina said. ‘Why did he have to die at all? Don’t tell me. So you two could get at Pearl, right?’

  Onizuka, clinging to his crossbow, pulled at the girl’s arm again, but, silent, passive, she wouldn’t move. Onizuka was sweating, angry. ‘That and the little prick beating me at poker again. Final straw,’ he snarled.

  ‘And now you’re just going to take her for yourselves. What will you do, share her?’

  Harry Thorne spread his hands. ‘Come on, Mardina.’ Now he sounded miserable. ‘You know me. I’m no killer, I’m a farmer.’

  ‘You’re a killer now.’

  ‘You can’t expect a man to live without a woman. I mean, you’re talking about the rest of our lives. And Pearl, well—’

  ‘She’s used to putting out. Is that your logic?’ Mardina glanced around. ‘Otherwise you might have come for one of the rest of us. Me or Abbey or—’

  ‘We got rights.’ Onizuka, struggling with Pearl, tried to raise his crossbow at Mardina. ‘We’re taking what we’re entitled to. Cross me, you bitch, and—’

  Yuri let fly with his knife.

  It was from the culinary gear left behind in the dump from the Ad Astra, easier to conceal than the big heavy hunting knives they’d been issued with by the astronauts. And he’d been practising too, alone at the edge of the forest.

  The knife caught Onizuka in the right eye. Onizuka fired the crossbow wildly, and the bolt sailed away, harmlessly. He fell back, dead.

  ‘That’s for Lemmy,’ Yuri muttered. He found his heart hammering, the world tunnelling as if he were under heavy acceleration. He’d never before killed anybody.

  Now, in front of him, it was all kicking off. Pearl was pulling away from Harry Thorne. Abbey Brandenstein came in from the other side, trying to get to Onizuka’s dropped crossbow. Harry was panicking, waving his own weapon around like an idiot. ‘No – please – it wasn’t meant to be like this—’

  Abbey had the crossbow. She raised it. ‘Then how was it meant to be, asshole?’

  Mardina, on the ground, scrambled back out of the way. ‘No – Abbey—’

  But Abbey, cold and clinical, shot Harry Thorne clean in the heart.

  It was only in the aftermath, after Yuri and Mardina had taken the crossbows away, and the others had moved in to inspect the carnage, that they discovered that Pearl Hanks had taken Yuri’s knife from out of Onizuka’s skull, and neatly slit her own wrists, overwriting old, half-healed scars.

  Lemmy was gone, his shit life terminated in a shit way. And after six months on Proxima c, just six were left alive.

  CHAPTER 18

  2159

  ‘This is Angelia 5941. As usual this voice message accompanies a more technical download. I am in an excellent state of health and all subsystems are operating nominally. Good afternoon, all my ground crew . . .’

  The million sisters slept. But their sleep was not dreamless. And they were fewer than a million now, fewer each time they woke.

  ‘As you are aware I have now been travelling for over four years. I am some one point eight light years from the solar system, and still have more than two light years to travel; even now I am not yet halfway through this journey. In my reporting intervals, when I emerge briefly from cruise mode, I continue to make scientific observations of my surroundings. As you know, the space between Earth’s sun, Sol, and Alpha Centauri happens to have a fascinating structure of its own; before reaching Proxima I will pass through no less than three distinct clouds of interstellar material, each of which I intend to sample and survey. Interim results downloaded.

  ‘I am
also participating with observers in the solar system on long-baseline studies of interstellar navigation techniques, tests of the predictions of relativity and quantum gravity, searches for gravity waves emanating from distant cosmic events, a mapping of the galactic magnetic field, a study of low-energy cosmic rays not detectable from the vicinity of the sun, and similar projects. Interim results downloaded . . .’

  She was suspended in a vault of stars, all apparently stationary despite her tremendous velocity. The Doppler effects even at this speed were still subtle, and there was no way even of telling, just by a visual inspection with quasi-human senses, which of these silent points of light was her origin, which her destination. Nothing changed, visibly, from waking to waking.

  ‘I am disappointed that Dr Kalinski is no longer allowed to serve with you. I do not feel qualified to comment on his prosecution by the Reconciliation Commission, for breaches of the laws passed retrospectively after the crimes of the Heroic Generation . . .’

  Something distracted her. A faint murmur of distress. Faint yet familiar, an echo of nightmare. Irritated, she tried to focus on her message to Earth.

  ‘I am disappointed also that the decision has been made not to send further vessels after me, and to decommission my launch infrastructure. However, without Dr Kalinski’s “crimes” I would not even exist, let alone be out here flying between the stars. He is like a father to me. I hope you will pass on this message to him if you can, and please be assured he may use my missives as testimony in any trial he faces. If they are of use. In the meantime . . .’

  That cry of distress was becoming more prominent now. Angelia 5941 could feel the reaction, the unease it caused, rippling through the near-million-strong throng united in the craft’s main body. It came from one of the castaway siblings, she saw now, who was breaking formation from the extended antenna-dish shape that the rest had formed, ahead of the cloud. It was impossible, Angelia 5941 saw, but she was trying to bank in the starlight – trying to descend back to the main body.