Proxima

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Jim Laughlin, Colonel, ISF.’ He shook hands in his turn. ‘Base commander, here in Caloris. You can see I’m an ISF officer, but I have a political reporting chain into the UN itself, ultimately to the Security Council.’

  ‘My teammate,’ King said. He threw mock boxing punches at Laughlin. ‘Or my sparring partner. We get on famously.’

  Laughlin raised his eyebrows; evidently long-suffering, he said nothing.

  King said, ‘Come. Sit. Have some more drinks. Colonel Kalinski, will you sort that out? You need something to eat?’

  ‘They’ve been feeding us in the decon,’ Mardina said.

  ‘What, barium meals? Ha ha. Look, I know it’s tough, we appreciate all you’ve been through.’

  Beth accepted a glass of water from Kalinski. ‘Sir Michael King?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Mardina burst out laughing. Even Laughlin suppressed an icy grin, Yuri saw.

  King evidently had a sense of humour. He grinned, sat on a couch and faced the group. ‘Good question, young lady. Well, together with my colleague here, we run this place. We make the decisions that count. OK? We both have puppet-masters back on Earth, so does everybody, but here on the ground, we make the decisions. And at the end of the day we will have to make decisions—’

  ‘About us,’ said Tollemache.

  ‘About the consequences of your emergence through the Hatch,’ Laughlin said carefully, ‘and it was a shock as much for us as for you. It’s only been days. We’re still trying to digest the implications. Political, economic, social, technological, scientific. Although I have to say this kind of possibility, that the Hatches are some sort of transit system, was sketched in one of Colonel Kalinski’s papers.’

  ‘Actually the paper was by my twin,’ Stef Kalinski said stiffly.

  ‘That has been some help. I’m sure Colonel Kalinski here will tell you all about the spectacular scientific possibilities.’

  King put in, ‘But big cosmic questions are rather beyond my horizon, and that of my own political masters – and indeed the UEI shareholders. The first reaction from on high, and my comms systems have been buzzing since you arrived in this regard, concerns the potential utility of the thing. If, you see, we can walk through this – this lightspeed tunnel – from one star system to the next, think how we could use it. When we built and launched the Ad Astra, it strained the resources of the UN itself. We were determined to use our kernel technology to plant seeds on the habitable planet of Proxima before the Chinese could reach it. Well, we did it, but we exhausted ourselves. As for the Chinese, they couldn’t do it at all. Oh, they could probably send out some kind of slowboat, a big solar-sail junk. Take them decades to get there. Centuries even. Because, my friends, they don’t have access to what remains an exclusively UN resource: that is, the kernel mines here on Mercury, where we dug up the magical bits of physics that shot your ship off to the stars.’

  ‘But you will see,’ Laughlin said, ‘that the Hatch tunnel, if it can be proven to be safe, stable and so forth—’

  ‘And if it’s two-way,’ Kalinski said drily.

  ‘The Hatch is a way to achieve the mass colonisation of the Proxima system much more rapidly.’

  Mardina stared. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  King grinned. ‘Never more so. All we have to do is ship ’em to Mercury, push ’em through the Hatch, and they’re in business.’

  Kalinski shook her head. ‘But, Sir Michael – it’s just like the way you’ve been using the kernels since they were discovered. We don’t know how these things work. We don’t know what they’re for. And yet we’re digging them up and sticking them on the back of crewed spaceships. Now you have the Hatch, and it’s an obvious artefact of intelligence, but again we don’t know who put it there and what it’s for, let alone how it functions. Can’t you see we’re on the edge of some tremendous mystery here? A mystery into which mankind seems to be walking step by step, blindfold.’

  A mystery – or a trap, Yuri wondered.

  King seemed to take no notice of what Kalinski had said. ‘This, of course, only increases the political tensions surrounding Mercury itself. Suddenly this scrubby planet is even more valuable than before, when it was merely the exclusive source of the kernels. Now that it’s the gateway to Prox c too, Mercury will become the solar system’s prize asset beyond Earth itself, perhaps. That will lead to stresses which—’

  Beth flared. ‘But Per Ardua isn’t some pawn in a game. Per Ardua – and that’s its name, by the way, not Prox c – is a world, with a history of its own, and native life, an ecology, even intelligent life.’

  Laughlin murmured, ‘Good vocabulary. You’re evidently well educated, Ms Eden Jones. Your parents are to be congratulated.’

  Beth just glared at him.

  ‘There’s even a human history,’ Tollemache said now, with relish. ‘Nearly thirty years of colonisation. Tales of abandonment, rape, murder and incest that would make your hair curl, gentlemen. And I watched it all.’

  King ignored that, and waved away Beth’s point too. ‘We already encountered life on Mars, Titan, other places. We know how to handle it.’

  Yuri goggled. ‘ “Handle” it? As I recall from my time there, you’re blowing Mars up to terraform it. How is that “handling” the local life?’

  ‘That’s the Chinese, not us,’ King pointed out. ‘I’m sure we’ll be more careful. There could be parks, for instance. Preserves.’ He leaned forward. ‘In fact, you make a good point, Mr Eden, about the Chinese and their terraforming. We can say that’s why we don’t want to let them loose on Padre, uh . . .’

  ‘Per Ardua.’

  ‘Right. With their aquifer-breaking nuclear bombs. We need to get there first, and preserve it from those rapacious Chinese. We can fix up the language. And you four – and especially you, Ms Eden Jones – will be able to help us do just that.’

  Yuri marvelled at the man’s flexibility of mind. He had to be making all this up on the spot, given how recent their irruption from the Hatch had been. Yet here he was spinning geopolitical strategies on the fly. There hadn’t been much opportunity for politicians to flourish on Per Ardua, or even in the UN enclosures on Mars, and Yuri couldn’t remember much of the Earth of his youth. King was in his element, evidently. Maybe he was the Gustave Klein of the inner system.

  But Beth seemed baffled, perhaps alarmed.

  Mardina took her daughter’s hand. ‘What do you mean, Beth’s going to help you? How?’

  King glanced around at the clean, expansive lounge. ‘Believe me, it’s an oasis of calm in here. Out there it’s a shit storm, and it won’t pass for – oh, days. Until the next scandal comes along. And just now you four are hot properties. Especially you, Beth Eden Jones. Look at you, young, gorgeous, exotic – I’m loving that tattoo – and the first star child to return to the solar system.’

  ‘ “Star child”?’

  ‘Not my headline. We’ll get you back to Earth as soon as we can. There’ll be book offers, movie deals, a scramble for your image rights – you’re probably all over the media already, impersonated by clumsy AI avatars. You will be the human face of Prox c – I mean of Per Ardua. In the end, you may save it, single-handedly. If we handle it right.

  ‘The rest of you too,’ he said to the others, noticing Tollemache’s crestfallen expression, ‘will have opportunities. We just have to find the right angle. “My lonely vigil under Proxima’s red light” for you, Peacekeeper, something like that.’

  ‘Well, Proxima’s not red—’

  ‘I know a few people. And of course, you can resume your ISF career, Lieutenant Jones.’

  Mardina asked, ‘Are they serious about having me back, Colonel Laughlin? For genuine duties, not as some kind of poster figure.’

  ‘I believe so. I can pass your request up the chain of command if that is your choice.’

  King nodded, his heavy jowls compressing. ‘I’ll do my best to move that along too.’
/>   Yuri realised that King and Laughlin weren’t meeting his eyes. ‘And me, Sir Michael? How will you take care of me?’

  Beth looked shocked. As usual she immediately picked up on the implications of his tone. ‘Dad, what are you talking about? I’m not going to Earth if you’re not coming too.’

  Mardina stroked her daughter’s hair. ‘Earth is our home, when all’s said and done, sweetheart.’

  ‘Yours, maybe,’ Yuri said. ‘But not mine. I’m a century out of time, remember?’

  ‘What does that matter, Dad? I was born on another planet altogether. On a world of another star! As long as we’re all together, and we’re free – that’s where home is.’

  Laughlin coughed. ‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Not in the case of Mr Eden . . .’

  ‘I knew it,’ Yuri said.

  ‘The retrospective trials of the Heroic Generation, of which your parents were such prominent members, are continuing. Even after a century or more. And an increasingly assumed legal stance is the inheritance of punishment. That is, the right to punish heirs for the crimes of their parents or grandparents—’

  Tollemache growled, ‘I hate the little shit, but even I can see that that’s unjust.’

  King spread his hands. ‘It’s the mood of the times, Peacekeeper. Some of those heirs got very rich on the backs of their parents’ global crimes. This is the prosecution argument, you understand, not my own position necessarily. Why, because of gen-eng and illegal psych downloads and the like, it’s suspected that some of those heirs are members of the Heroic Generation, effectively. So you can see—’

  ‘If I go back to Earth,’ Yuri said flatly, ‘I won’t be free.’

  ‘There’s no question of imprisonment,’ Laughlin said. ‘Call it house arrest. Surveillance. Your movements will be monitored and curtailed, for as long as the legal process lasts.’

  ‘I’ll be put on trial for some crime deemed to have been committed by long-dead parents who shoved me in an ice box for eighty years.’

  ‘But that itself is an issue,’ King said. ‘Some prosecutors would argue that your parents did that in precisely the hope you would thereby evade any legal process. And . . .’

  Yuri stopped listening. So he would be surrounded by walls of plastic and metal, his every step watched by a suspicious mankind, for the rest of his life.

  He closed his eyes. He remembered that day when the shuttle had landed, and he’d climbed down to the surface of Proxima c for the first time, and there were no fences, no dome walls, just an arid plain, and he had just run and run until he was out of sight of every other human being in the universe. He imagined running, like that, with Beth at his side. I may as well have been left on Mars.

  ‘I’m going to Earth,’ Mardina said flatly. ‘Yuri, I’m sorry. Whatever the implications for you. That’s where my life is, always was. And Beth is coming with me. She’ll have a better life, and a longer one, than she would as a baby factory on Per Ardua. You know it.’

  Beth looked at her father in growing horror. ‘Dad?’

  ‘I can’t follow you,’ Yuri said softly. ‘No matter what the conditions. I wouldn’t survive.’

  ‘Dad, no!’ Beth would have come to him, but Mardina kept a firm hold on her arm.

  They were all watching him now, Laughlin looking embarrassed, King with an assumed expression of sympathy, Colonel Kalinski with what looked like genuine shock and sorrow, even Tollemache showing a kind of gruff respect.

  King spread his hands. ‘Then what will you do, Yuri Eden? Where will you go?’

  ‘There is another option. To go back to the only place I’ve ever been free.’

  ‘Dad—’

  Laughlin leaned forward. ‘You’re going back through the Hatch?’ He glanced at Kalinski. ‘Is that possible? Is it safe?’

  ‘We don’t know, sir. We haven’t tried it yet.’ She glanced at King. ‘Even though we’re dreaming up all these schemes about mass migration through it. I don’t see why not, however. In fact, Mr Eden, if you’re serious about this—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  King snorted. ‘Are you crazy? You’ll end up four light years from home. And, after another lightspeed hop, four more years in the future.’

  ‘I know. I understand that. But there’s a scientific purpose, sir. Somebody’s got to be the first to try it – I mean in a planned, scientific manner. We need to know the link works, that it’s stable. And we need to know how it works. I mean, we’ve had this Hatch under surveillance for years, but we never had the courage, or the imagination, to take the next step, as you did, Yuri. To go through. Well, now’s the time. And who better but me?’

  ‘She is an ISF officer,’ Laughlin pointed out. ‘And the nearest we have to an expert to boot. Along with her sister, of course. This is all rather a rush – but it is a compelling case, Sir Michael.’

  Tollemache shook his head. ‘I just don’t get it. You saw the images I sent back. Prox c is a shithole. And I can tell you these press-ganged colonists they’re talking about sending through are going to be the dregs of the megacities and the slums, scraped up and shovelled through, just like it’s been in Mars. Why would you go there voluntarily, a bright spark like you?’

  Stef glanced at Yuri. ‘Personal reasons. Because it will be better for me there than here. Just like you, sir.’

  For Yuri and his family, that was only the start of an argument that raged for days. But he knew Mardina; from the minute she said she was staying on Earth with Beth, and for all Beth’s tears, he had known that his family was lost. Dead to him. And soon to be cut off from him by a barrier of thick time, just as his parents had cut him off before.

  He, however, was going home.

  CHAPTER 64

  Yuri and Stef Kalinski stood side by side in the chamber of the Hatch on Mercury. A handful of technicians stood around on the surface above, monitoring instruments, gazing down curiously.

  Above Yuri’s head, the great lid was slowly closing.

  None of their families were here. A month after they had all walked through the hatch from Prox, Beth and Mardina were already on Earth, Yuri had been told, and Kalinski’s twin was nowhere around. It was just the two of them,

  Yuri looked over at Kalinski. They were both sealed up in heavy-duty Mercury-standard armoured spacesuits. Yuri had even been shown how to open the cockroach-type radiator wings. This time there was no question of them just wandering through the Hatch system without protection, as they had on Per Ardua; now no chance was being taken. He couldn’t see Kalinski’s face behind her gold-plated visor. Even now he didn’t feel he knew her too well. They had had, ironically, little time to talk since the decision had been made to send them through the Hatch. He said, ‘Last chance to climb out.’

  ‘I’m fine, sir.’

  ‘Don’t call me sir, for God’s sake. And no more goodbyes?’

  ‘I feel like I already left.’

  ‘Yeah. Me too. Kind of unusual for twins to split up, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’re unusual twins. I’ll tell you about it some time.’ She grinned. ‘And I guess there will be plenty of time. And – Beth?’

  He was trying to put out of his head his last encounter with Beth. Neither of them had been able to speak for crying. ‘The last thing I told her was my true name.’

  Kalinski stared at him.

  He glanced up. By the light of the ferocious sun, the last few techs were just visible past the edge of the closing lid. One of them got down to her knees and waved. Yuri waved back.

  And then the lid closed, silent, heavy, and that was that; they were shut off. The light in here, provided by the glowing walls, roof, floor, was bright enough, yet dimmed compared to the glow of the blocked-out sun.

  Yuri glanced at Kalinski. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yes. You?’

  ‘I wonder if we made the jump already. I mean in space. You think we’re already on Per Ardua?’

  ‘Impossible to say,’ Kalinski s
aid. ‘But my feeling is that we make the transfer in the central bridging room, not these antechambers. It was in the central room you said you experienced a gravity shift.’

  ‘Maybe. Who knows? Are you ready?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They had actually worked through the transition process in virtual simulations, real space-programme stuff. You just pressed your hands into the indentations in the inner doorways. Nobody knew if gloved hands would work, or if, as the indentations came in sets of three on each door, one or two or three people would be necessary to work them.

  In the event, two pairs of hands seemed to work just fine. The door swung back.

  Just another door, opening ahead of you, Yuri. Just another door, in a long line of doors.

  They climbed through easily into the central chamber, and faced the second door, complete with its set of hand marks. They glanced at each other, shrugged, and lifted their hands. The door behind them swung closed.

  And when they opened the door before them Yuri immediately stumbled, under heavier gravity. Per Ardua gravity. Was he already back? Had another four years already passed? If so, Beth was gone.

  When he walked out of the middle chamber and climbed through the second hatch, Yuri found himself back in the Per Ardua chamber he remembered. The lid was closed; he couldn’t see the sky. But there was the builder map on the wall, at which Kalinski stared avidly. There was the ladder from Tollemache’s rover, presumably having stood here for more than eight years. There was even scattered mud on the floor, brought in from the surface by their boots, long dried. ‘Like I’ve never been away,’ he said.

  Kalinski leaned with one gloved hand on a wall. Yuri knew she’d been training to cope with Per Ardua’s full Earth-type gravity, but it was going to be hard for a while. ‘I’m relieved it worked. I thought it would, but—’

  ‘I know. At least we’ve not been dropped in the heart of a sun, or something. I don’t think it works that way, this link system. It all seems too – sensible – for that, doesn’t it? Look, we’re not going to need these suits. What say we dump them?’