Proxima
Page 28
Yuri had no patience for this. ‘Tell it to the UN,’ he would say, marching on.
With time, the country became more unstable. They would be woken from their sleep by earth tremors, violent enough to shake Yuri on his pallet. Sometimes they passed hot mud pools, scummy with purple-green bacteria, mud that hissed and bubbled – even geysers in one place, fountains of steam and hot water that erupted with great chuffing noises like a faulty steam engine. The elders fretted about getting caught in an eruption or quake, while the children told each other stories about the ghost of Dexter Cole turning over in his rocky underground bed. The ColU said they should expect this kind of activity at this, the planet’s closest point to Proxima, where the star’s gravity was deforming the world’s very shape.
The temperature continued to rise as they plodded ever further south. People didn’t wear much nowadays; on the trek or around the camp they wore shorts and loose tunics, and many of the kids ran around naked. But the trucks suffered more mechanical breakdowns as they overheated, and the number of the ColU’s complaints increased.
And the giant low-pressure system that dominated the whole province increasingly filled the sky before them, a permanent bank of cloud hundreds of kilometres wide.
The ColU explained the science to anyone who would listen. ‘Warm air is drawn in towards the hot substellar centre, rises and cools, and dumps its water vapour as clouds, rain, storms. The falling water gathers in rivers and streams that flow radially away from this central point – no doubt in all directions, not just to the north, the track of the rivers we have followed. This must be the essential water cycle over this Proxima-facing continent . . .’
But no amount of understanding helped when the fringe of the great storm reached out to lash the plodding migrants with wind and rain, and freakish showers of hail, even snow, despite the heat. Some of the migrants coped with this better than others, Yuri observed. Older folk who had spent too long in the dome-hovels of Mars or in space habs found it difficult to deal with any natural weather. The children, though, ran around in the heat or the cold, the rain or the snow, accepting it all.
Progress slowed. As the temperatures rose ever higher there were increasing arguments about the wisdom of going on at all.
Yet they persisted. The occasional glimpses of tyre tracks were lures, Yuri sometimes thought, drawing them ever deeper into the navel of the world. And if there were ISF people anywhere on this planet, where else would they be but the most geographically significant point of all?
Then, two years after leaving the Mattock Confluence, they reached a lake that sprawled across their path, and could go no further.
CHAPTER 51
2197
Penny Kalinski was summoned to the latest international interplanetary summit. More reconciliation talks between the UN and China, this time to be held at the Chinese capital on Mars.
Her first view of the capital, as she descended from space, was extraordinary. The Chinese name for their city meant something like ‘City of Fire’. This was because in Chinese tradition there were five elements, each associated with a season, a cardinal direction, and a planet. Mercury, for instance, was associated with water. Fire was associated with summer, the south, and Mars: hence, City of Fire. But the informal western name for the place, based mostly on images from orbit taken long before anybody other than a Chinese citizen had been allowed near the place, was Obelisk. And as the shuttle descended gently through the thin air of Mars – the craft was like a pterosaur, its great wings webbing on a lightweight frame – even from altitude Penny could see why the name was appropriate.
Terra Cimmeria was a chaotic landscape scribbled over by crater walls and steep-sided river valleys; from the high air it reminded Penny of scar tissue, like a badly healed burn. The Chinese settlement nestled on the floor of a crater called Mendel, itself nearly eighty kilometres across, its floor incised by dry channels and pocked by smaller, younger craters. She glimpsed domes half-covered by heaped-up Martian dirt, the gleaming tanks and pipes of what looked like a sprawling chemical manufacturing plant, and a few drilling derricks, angular frames like rocket gantries.
And at the centre of it all was the Obelisk itself, a sculpted finger of Martian stone and concrete and steel and glass – a tower an astounding ten kilometres high, a product of the low Martian gravity and human ingenuity, far higher than any building possible with such materials on Earth.
On its way in the lander sailed around the flank of the monument.
Sir Michael King, sitting beside Penny, looked over her shoulder. ‘They always do this,’ he said. ‘Make sure you notice the damn thing. But you have to allow them their gesture of pride.’
‘Yes. The very place where Cao Xi made the first landing on Mars, all those years ago.’
‘Well, he didn’t live to see Earth again. But look at all they’ve achieved here since, out in the asteroid belt as well as on Mars. All without kernel technology too . . .’
And the issue of access to kernel technology was, of course, the reason why this UN delegation had come to Mars.
The shuttle glided down to a landing with remarkable grace, given its size and evident fragility, on a landing strip some distance from the main domes. The shuttle was quite a contrast to the heavily armed kernel-driven hulk ship in which the UN party had crossed the inner system. But there had been something about the slim, elegant, almost minimalist design of the Chinese-designed shuttle that impressed Penny; the delicate craft seemed a perfect fit to its environment, the tall air of Mars – an adaptation derived from generations of living here. Coming to Chinese Mars was like entering some parallel universe, where technological choices had been made differently from the UN worlds.
As soon as the shuttle was still, rovers hurried out to greet the craft, some nuzzling up against the hull to transfer cargo, fuel and passengers, and others, robots with long, spidery manipulator arms, to begin the elaborate process of folding up the shuttle’s wings, in anticipation of a missile-like launch back to orbit.
The passengers transferred to a well-appointed bus, a blister of some tough transparent material. The driverless vehicle rolled swiftly, heading along a smooth, dust-free road towards one of the big domes of the central settlement. These were huge structures of brick and concrete in themselves, but mere blisters at the feet of the great monument. Chinese staff moved gracefully through the bus cabin offering the passengers cups of water, melted from authentic Martian polar ice, so they were told.
They were in the southern hemisphere of Mars, some thirty degrees below the equator, and it was close to local noon. Seen through the bus windows the sun was high, round, faint but well defined, and the sky was an orange-brown smear – the colour of toffee maybe, Penny thought, remembering home-cooking experiments she and Stef had made as kids, under the kindly but ham-fisted supervision of their father. Experiments of which, Penny supposed sadly, Stef would have no memory.
It was already, incredibly, seventeen years since the sisters’ conceptually stunning encounter with Earthshine, and his revelation of the gravestone of their father in Paris. They had continued to keep in touch with Earthshine about the central mystery of their lives, to little avail.
And the careers of the twins, now in their fifties, had, at last, diverged. While, thanks to King and Earthshine, Penny had been gradually drawn into long-term diplomatic efforts to avert war in an increasingly polarised solar system, Stef was down on Mercury working on more studies of the Hatch. Right now the sisters were separated by something like two hundred million kilometres. It was scarcely possible for two human beings to be further apart, short of shipping one of them out to Proxima Centauri.
The bus rolled smoothly up to an airlock set in one dome’s curving wall. The uniformed staff, all smiling, ushered the guests off the bus.
Penny followed the crowd into the dome. The interior was crowded with low secondary buildings, but the dome roof itself was visible overhead, its brick and concrete reminding Penny of some great R
oman ruin. Big strip lights hung from the roof, and there were screens with scrolling slogans in a Chinese script Penny couldn’t read. Meanwhile the surface space was evidently only part of this installation. Massive staircases, escalators and elevator towers invited the newcomers to descend to wide, brightly lit underground galleries, which looked like hives of industry and habitation. The design of the place, like a cross between a classical pantheon, a shopping mall, and some tremendous high-tech factory, was clearly constrained by the environment of Mars, but it seemed to have been achieved with a sense of vision that was lacking in too many offworld UN installations Penny had visited. She was hugely impressed, as she was no doubt meant to be.
Just inside the entrance plaza, an official party lined up in neat rows to meet the UN delegates. Military stood on guard, wearing Mars-colour-camouflage lightweight pressure suits. There was even a rank of children dressed in some traditional costume, swirling ribbons in fantastic low-gravity transitory sculptures that seemed to hang in the air. Drone cameras hovered overhead, capturing the moment.
The focus was on the seniors, of course. Sir Michael King as CEO of UEI, now eighty-two years old, had been a major facilitator of this conference, and he and his equally elderly colleagues were greeted individually by Chinese officials. But more Chinese came forward, some in military uniform, many in civilian clothes, closing in on the visitors. Penny saw that at least one guide had been assigned to every member of the visiting party.
Sure enough, one young man broke from the rest and approached her. ‘Colonel Kalinski?’
Penny tried not to flinch; even now, aged fifty-three, she tended to recoil from individual attention. ‘That’s me.’
‘My name is Jiang Youwei.’ He offered a hand, and she shook it. He was tall, slim, dark, composed. He wore a one-piece jumpsuit, utilitarian but smart, even elegant. She thought it made her own sparkly ISF uniform seem kind of obvious, gaudy. ‘I am twenty-four years old; I am a graduate student in theoretical physics here at our university, and I have been assigned as your personal guide during your stay here.’
His English was flawless, with a trace of an Australian accent, she thought, maybe tutored by natives of a nation now firmly embedded within the Greater Economic Framework back on Earth. And – for God’s sake – he was nearly thirty years younger than Penny.
‘Thanks, but I’m kind of self-reliant. I don’t really need—’
‘You are free to choose another companion, though I would be personally disappointed. In fact I volunteered. I have studied your and your sister’s work and career path, as much as has been made available to us. I am afraid the option of no companion at all is not available. There are, after all, security issues.’ He smiled easily. ‘Sooner me than one of those fellows with the guns, Colonel.’
She had to laugh, and gave in. ‘All right. So what’s on the agenda?’
‘We have twenty-four hours before the formal sessions begin. There are dinners later, and so forth. Some of your party are required for preliminary press conferences—’
‘Not me, thank the Great Galactic Ghoul,’ Penny said. King had warned her off; the public events would be formal dances of protocol and etiquette with no serious content, and as a mere science adviser she wouldn’t be needed.
‘Then you are free.’
‘Do I need to go and unpack?’
‘If you wish. Your bags are being transferred to your rooms, in the Cao Xi Obelisk itself, in fact. I can take you there if—’
‘Believe me, I’m fine. We flew out on a hulk ship like a fancy hotel. Not exactly what I’m used to. They even served coffee on the shuttle. I guess I’ve had enough pampering for now.’
He nodded. ‘Then would you like the guided tour?’
She patted his arm. ‘If I can’t get rid of you, I may as well make use of you.’
He laughed, and she decided, tentatively, that she liked him.
Jiang led her down an escalator into an underground level. From here, more walkways and cargo ramps descended even deeper into the Martian ground.
This seemed to be basically an industrial area; through glass walls she saw gleaming manufactories where robots and white-suited humans worked side by side to assemble impressive-looking machinery. People walked everywhere, bright, busy, or they rode smart-looking robot carts, and the halls were noisy with their chatter. There were few residences on this level, no dormitories or schools or hospitals, though she did spot a few shops and restaurants, and noodle bars where workers lined up patiently. She saw no obvious signs of security.
Jiang Youwei discreetly observed her. ‘You walk easily, though you are new to Mars.’
‘You say you know about me.’
He smiled. ‘I know you are a seasoned interplanetary traveller. That much is public knowledge. You have visited the moon, Mercury, and now Mars. I myself was born and raised on Mars, here in this city in fact, though my parents were originally from New Beijing. I have never left this planet.’
‘Well, you learn to adapt to the gravity, wherever you go. On the moon, you don’t so much run as bounce kangaroo style.’
‘Children discover these things for themselves, as I did. The human frame instinctively reaches for a minimal-energy solution to each mode of ambulation, though these solutions are quite different on each world.’
‘ “Minimal energy”, huh. I guess you really are a physicist.’
They paused by a window where robots and humans laboured to assemble a gadget, a long, heavy tube plastered with warning labels, like a finless missile.
‘An aquifer bomb,’ Jiang said. ‘Or at least the delivery system. The fissile material will be loaded into it away from the public areas.’
‘I should hope so. Part of your terraforming programme, right? The extraction of water from the aquifers.’
‘Indeed. No detonations are scheduled for the period of your stay. And in any event, none are allowed close enough to cause any risk to the monument.’
She peered in through the glass. ‘Golly gosh. All this heavy stuff right in the shop window – and right where dignitaries like me are going to come rolling in off the bus to see it! What a coincidence.’
He laughed. ‘One must put on a show. In fact the city’s primary product is more abstract.’
‘You mean the software and AI technology you export to Earth . . .’
They walked on.
‘You must understand this is a deliberate strategy. It was once a truism that interplanetary trade would forever be impractical because of the cost of transport. Not so. Our miners in the asteroid belt are already selling raw materials to UN nations on Earth, as well as to your colonies on the moon, as you know. But here at Obelisk we have created a hub of excellence in software and AI development. Of course, the transport costs to ship such products off-planet are minimal, merely a question of data transfer.
‘This was planned. Despite the priorities of survival, resilience and protection, from the beginning the city was built on a top-quality information technology infrastructure. Excellence in the education of the young was a priority; we have a system of rewarding achievement which – well . . .’ He smiled modestly. ‘You might call it social engineering, although I understand that term has negative connotations in the West. I can only say that it benefited me hugely, and this community, which has grown rich in intellectual capital.’
She spotted a crocodile of schoolchildren, evidently visiting the area, walking in pairs hand in hand, boys and girls in bright green uniforms: green, of course, for visibility on Mars, with its palette of rusty red and brown. They stared openly at Penny – there were few Western faces to be seen here – and she took care to smile back.
She said, ‘I’d be interested in a discussion on the nature of freedom here before I leave.’
‘I would enjoy that.’
CHAPTER 52
2193
Beth, Freddie and some of the other youngsters loaded backpacks and set off west to attempt a circumnavigation of the lake.
The ColU itself, meanwhile, rolled down to the lake, where there were wide stem beds, and communities of builders with their usual nurseries, middens, dams, weirs and traps. It was almost like the builder projects around the jilla lake, Yuri thought. But there was no evidence that these builders were making any effort to manage this lake as a whole. The ColU watched the builders patiently, inspecting their structures, even communicating with them with its manipulator-arm hand-puppet builder talk.
When Beth and the rest returned from the lake, Mardina gave them a camp night off to recover, feed, wash. Then she called a council of war.
The core group were Mardina, Yuri, Delga, Liu Tao, Mattock. They gathered around a hearth, unlit but with its base slabs of basaltic rocks still hot enough to warm a pan of nettle tea. Other adults gathered close by to listen, a dozen or so, dozing, doing chores, with kids running around at their feet. The rest stayed away, working, napping in the heat. The ColU rolled up too, silent, massive, its hull and manipulator arms grimy from the soil it had been working.
At last Beth and Freddie showed up, all but naked save for strips of stem-bark cloth at breasts and groin, and well-worn bark sandals on their feet.
Beth gracefully helped herself to a mug of tea. She was twenty years old now, and as she moved Yuri noticed how the men in the group reacted to her slim grace. Her tattoos showed up on her dark, sweat-streaked skin: on her face was etched a mask something like Delga’s but less severe, more stylised, and there was a kind of sunburst design on her back, a Proxima-like star poised over an upturned human face. She had had almighty battles with her mother about getting these done; Mardina the ex-astronaut associated tattoos with gangs and drugs and criminality. But most of the kids, especially those from the mothers’ group who had started the fashion, wore tattoos of one kind or another. It was about the only kind of art they could practise, and for sure the only kind they could carry as the group continued its endless migration. Yuri had stayed out of the argument. Delga, poster model of the tattooed crowd, had just laughed.