Another chime informed them that the transfer was already nearing its end. Penny felt a soft deceleration pressing her against her restraint, and she strained to look ahead through the shuttle’s blister carapace. At last she saw Ceres itself, a small world fast approaching. In the attenuated sunlight, it looked at first glance like the far side of the moon, heavily cratered. But transparent roofs sprawled across swathes of landscape, roofs under which the green of life could be glimpsed. There were towers too, drilling rigs of some kind, so tall that they bristled at this world’s sharp horizon, and a belt of gleaming metal circled what she presumed was the world’s equator.
‘That belt is the mass driver,’ Jiang Youwei murmured, beside Penny. ‘Or one of them. A great electromagnetic sling that hurls sacks of water ice and other volatiles from Ceres all over the asteroid belt, and indeed to Mars. Some asteroids, you know, are virtually pure metal, or metallic ore, with not a trace of water or other volatiles, and so are unable to support human life independently. Because of the water it exports, Ceres has turned out to be the key to the exploitation of the whole belt.’
There was another warning chime. The shuttle tipped up and descended nose down, alarmingly, towards a landing field of what looked like concrete, heavily marked with recognition symbols and surrounded by giant structures. The gravity of Ceres must be so low, Penny thought, that the descent was more like a docking with a huge space station than a landing on a respectable planet, on Mars or Mercury or Earth.
In the last seconds the craft tipped up with a rattle of attitude thrusters, and the descent slowed to a crawl. They landed, feather-soft.
The shuttle rolled towards a tremendously tall, sprawling building, and nuzzled easily up against a wall. A chime, and the passengers began to unbuckle. Once they were out of their seats, Penny stumbled slightly in a gravity so low it was hardly there at all.
There was a clicking of latches, and then the shuttle’s nose section swung back, leaving a round portal through which they could walk. A handful of official-looking types in sober business suits, and a couple of armed soldiers, were waiting beyond the portal. Over their shoulders Penny glimpsed a vast open space, spindly pillars, a high ceiling through which sunlight glinted, and beneath which huge birds flapped – no, she saw, they were people, people flying through the air using some kind of skeletal, bat-like wings. The sunlight was supplemented by the light of huge fluorescent panels that seemed to be suspended from the ceiling. In this vast, cavernous space, lesser buildings clustered on a smooth floor, entirely contained by the great roof. The structure was so huge that Penny thought she could see a slight curvature in the floor, as if the building sprawled over the very horizon. Well, perhaps it did.
Two women waited for Penny, with Jiang and Earthshine. The apparent senior, small, sober, perhaps forty years old and dressed in a sombre black suit, introduced herself as Shen Xuelin. ‘Welcome to the Halls of Ceres. I am deputy director of the colony here, and chair of the Resources Futures conference to which you have kindly agreed to contribute.’ Her English was good, if anything over-precise, her accent a kind of neutral east coast American. She introduced the younger, uniformed woman beside her: Wei Ling, a captain in a dedicated division of the Chinese national army. ‘I apologise for the presence of an armed officer at my side,’ Shen said. ‘And for our inability to offer you the full freedom you requested, sir,’ she said to Earthshine.
Penny, turning, saw that the AI’s cone-shaped host was being hoisted by a couple of the shuttle crew onto a kind of hovering platform. She had to laugh. ‘You’re going to be rolled around like a remote-controlled kid’s toy, Earthshine.’
‘It is purely a routine precaution—’
‘Please don’t apologise, Madam Shen.’ Earthshine’s voice was strong, confident, projected as if a human being was standing here with them. ‘Given the current political situation it is quite understandable. I half expected you to turn me back altogether.’ Shen checked a watch. ‘The morning session of the conference has another hour to run. Would you care to join us?’ Shen led them to a walkway that stretched across the floor of the tremendous building. ‘I would advise you to grab the handrail . . .’
The walkway was a track of some yielding material that rapidly built up speed. Penny found herself tilting forward, disconcertingly, though she had no inner sense of tipping. Glancing down, she saw that the surface of the track had rucked itself up so that it held her at an angle, compensating for the acceleration. A neat low-gravity trick. ‘Clever,’ she said.
Shen said with some pride, ‘An ingenious design but not one that everybody finds comfortable. The mixing up of the vertical and horizontal . . .’
Penny noticed that Jiang had turned very pale. She had to grin. ‘Bearing up, Mars man? If you’re going to vomit I’ll find you a sick bag.’
‘That will not be necessary,’ Jiang said, a little sternly. ‘Madam Shen, I was intrigued by the conference agenda.’
‘Indeed,’ said Shen. ‘We have already had productive sessions on ambitious plans to exploit such resources as the gas giant atmospheres, remote moons like Titan and Triton, even Kuiper belt and Oort cloud objects. With our experience of Ceres and the asteroids we feel confident about approaching the ice moons and dwarf planets of the outer system, even though we must seek alternate energy sources to sunlight.’
‘You mean,’ Earthshine said provocatively, ‘you need the kernels.’
‘That is one possibility,’ Shen said, a little stiffly. ‘There are other energy sources. The mining of gas giant atmospheres for fusion fuel, for example. This will require an industrial effort on a scale of an order of magnitude more ambitious than anything seen in the present day. This is surely a challenge for the next generation, and even then we believe the pooled resources of all our societies, that is of the Greater Economic Framework and of the nations dominated by the UN quasi-government, will be necessary to achieve such a task.’
Earthshine said sadly, ‘But that cooperation looks a lot less likely than it did a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Indeed . . .’
Penny was only half-listening. As she moved deeper into this building she got a deepening sense of its gargantuan scale, the roof far above her like some planetarium sky suspended by needle-slim pillars, the clusters of buildings on the floor like whole villages enclosed by the greater structure. She recognised official buildings, squat military-style bunkers, and refectories, dormitories, hospitals – but there were schools too, around which she saw children playing, leaping, flapping in the air. And bars, games rooms, hotels, and a giant sports arena where, as she glimpsed through a structure of lacy scaffolding, what looked like a low-gravity version of basketball was being played. There was a continual hubbub of noise, reflecting from the hard common floor and from the roof far above, a jumble of human voices, scraps of music, the occasionally whir of air pumps and fans. And around the invisibly slim pillars people flew, many of them young, as Penny might have guessed, gliding easily on extended bat wings strapped to their arms.
‘You need not worry.’
The English words were heavily accented. Penny turned to see that the young soldier had spoken to her, Captain Wei Ling, clutching her remote-control slate. Wei smiled.
‘I’m not . . . Worried about what?’
Wei pointed upwards; her hand was encased in a white glove. ‘That the roof will fall. Even children born here fear that. Our architects take advantage of the low gravity of this small world to create such structures as this, possible on no other world inhabited by humanity. But it seems some primal instinct is violated by the sight of an artificial sky.’
‘You sound proud of all this. Were you born here?’
‘No. I am a native of Earth. But as a Chinese I am proud to witness this, yes. Access to space has unleashed a native genius in my people, I think. Please prepare yourself for the terminus of the track.’
CHAPTER 67
The conference hall to which they were led was itself huge, and neatl
y if conventionally laid out with a large stage, a giant screen, and rows of seats in queasy-looking low-G-steep elevated banks.
But the seats were mostly empty. Something was wrong, Penny saw immediately. The delegates, many arguing loudly, were crowded before big screens filled with a blizzard of images, news channels, science feeds and other updates. Penny recognised some of the delegates, from both China and the UN nations: politicians, scientists, engineers, writers, even a few artists. Such was the noise of raised voices in the room that Penny couldn’t make out a word coming from the multiple talking heads on the screen. A few faces turned to look at the newcomers, especially at Earthshine’s outlandish avatar body, but they soon returned to their frenetic debating.
‘Ah,’ Shen said, glancing at Wei. ‘I see the announcement has been made.’
‘I am hearing it,’ Earthshine said, faintly distracted.
Penny frowned, peering at the screens. ‘What announcement?’
Shen said, ‘I had hoped we would be given a few more hours, that our agenda would not be disrupted . . .’
‘What a dispiriting sight,’ Earthshine said. ‘Even here the delegates have retreated into their respective packs. They came all this way, to this enchanting world in its wan sunlight, to discuss what might have united mankind: a unified expansion into the unimaginable wealth of the outer solar system. Now here we are, huddled in our tribes. And, look, the only place one side is talking to the other is at that island where they’re serving coffee.’
‘Well, at least that’s something,’ Penny murmured.
Shen Xuelin glared at Earthshine with unexpected hostility. ‘You speak as if you are aloof from the fray. The Core AIs have been a force in geopolitical affairs for decades. Indeed, a significant fraction of Earth’s resources is diverted to sustaining you and your brothers. If we are in difficulties now – well, it is because of a situation you have played a hand in shaping—’
‘Never mind that,’ Penny said sharply. ‘What announcement? What’s going on here?’
The upper portion of the cone robot, bristling with manipulator arms, swivelled towards her. ‘Yes, you daydreamed away much of the transit aboard the lightsail ship in your cabin, didn’t you? Typical of you scientists, frankly, while events on Earth and elsewhere have increasingly turned ugly. Colonel Kalinski, even you must have heard of recent incidents that have caused so much concern—’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ she snapped. ‘I know about the Atlantic tsunami, the punctured dome at Terra Sirenum—’
‘Both relatively minor events in themselves,’ Shen said. ‘Unless you were personally involved, of course. The loss of life at our colony at Sirenum was actually greater than that caused by the tsunami. What matters is that specific accusations are beginning to be aired, even in the UN chambers. Such as, maybe the tsunami was triggered by the implantation of a deep bomb, as developed by our own government for exclusive use on Mars in the terraforming project. Colonel Kalinski, the tsunami, the Mars dome break, other incidents, may or may not have been caused by provocative agents on either side. But the incidents did serve to show up our respective vulnerabilities. And I have to tell you that it is New Beijing that feels the more vulnerable. You have the kernels. This situation cannot continue. Our governing councils have therefore determined to take action, leveraging our own strengths, in response to the implicit threat of kernel technology—’
‘I get it,’ Penny snapped. ‘So why all the fuss here today?’
Shen said evenly, ‘Because of what has been announced by our government in New Beijing.’ She pointed to a corner of the big screen where an announcement, in Chinese but subtitled in English, was repeating over and over.
It took Penny a couple of minutes to figure out that the Chinese had ordered their military forces in space to divert a small main-belt asteroid onto a collision course with the Earth.
Even Jiang looked shocked; evidently he hadn’t heard of this.
‘As an engineering problem it was simple,’ Shen said. ‘As you can imagine. And, so I hear, the project has been under development for some years.’
‘You wouldn’t do this,’ Penny said. ‘Your own people – billions of them—’
‘The asteroid could be manipulated to deliver selective strikes.’
Earthshine grunted. ‘Knock out one side of the Earth and not the other, right? That’s a dangerous game, Madam Shen; it’s a small planet.’
‘But we have many years to sculpt this tool,’ Shen said. ‘The rock is on a long-duration orbit; it will take years to reach Earth. We are publishing a detailed timescale, including branch points where it will be possible to divert the rock. This long timetable is deliberate. It contains deadlines by which we insist that certain peaceful measures must be conceded by the UN. Such as, no more monopoly of emigration to Per Ardua. And, most importantly, a full sharing of the kernel and Hatch technology. The intention is not to smash a rock into the Earth, but to force concessions from the UN.’
Earthshine mused, ‘A Cold War weapon with a ticking clock. You are ingenious.’
‘You say “you”,’ Shen said regretfully. ‘I say “we”. I have had no hand in this. Nor anybody else in this room, I imagine. Here, we are all – utopians. Idealists. We would not be here otherwise. We are here to discuss a better future of peace and prosperity, but the present drifts towards war. We can only watch events unfold, and hope.’ Now she looked at Penny with what seemed like a longing for understanding. ‘You can see this is all a bluff. To force the UN to concede—’
‘But if they don’t back down,’ Penny said quickly. ‘Just suppose – if they don’t agree, and they call your bluff – would you drop the rock? Would you really do it?’
But Shen would not reply. Neither Jiang, nor Wei Ling the helpful young soldier, would meet her eyes.
Earthshine, locked in his avatar, spun and whirred. ‘Just think, Colonel Kalinski. If not for the kernels, if not for the damn Hatch, we’d be sitting here now discussing joint missions to Jupiter. Instead we’re facing interplanetary war. I wonder if whoever planted that damn material on Mercury knew it would lead to this.’
Jiang gently touched Penny’s arm. ‘I prescribe coffee. Come . . .’
SEVEN
CHAPTER 68
2213
‘They’ve taken Thursday.’
Liu stood before Yuri’s desk, in an expensive but grimy coverall; he’d evidently been out in the fields. Liu Tao was in his seventies now – nearly two decades older than Yuri, physically, after Yuri’s four-year gaps in the Hatch. Yuri thought he had never seen him so agitated.
Twelve years after Yuri’s return from Mercury they were both rich, both powerful – but only in their own little pond, this small world of Per Ardua, and every so often they were handed a reminder that there were far mightier forces at work in their universe. Here was Liu talking about his twenty-two-year-old daughter being apprehended, probably for little more reason than the crime of being half Chinese. He looked as helpless as he must have been on the day his Chinese rocketplane had fallen out of the sky into a UN-controlled enclave on Mars.
Yuri touched a slate built into the surface of his desk – old mahogany, imported from Earth and carried through the Hatch from Mercury by human beings, fantastically expensive. ‘Stef? I think you’d better get in here.’
‘On the way.’
‘Sit down, Liu.’
‘Damn it, Yuri—’
‘Sit down. Stef’s on the way. We’ll find a way to handle this.’
Stef Kalinski came into the office. She had a redolent scent of builder stem about her; among her other projects, she was trying to extract more details of the builders’ own deep past and their engagement with the exotic technologies of the Hatch. In her sixties herself, Stef was still a multitasker, and it could be difficult to get her to focus. But as soon as she saw Liu standing there, obviously agitated, he was the centre of her attention. ‘Tell me how I can help.’
Yuri went to the coffee pot and poure
d three brimming mugs. This was Arduan coffee, cultivated and processed at the Mattock Confluence. Yuri liked to import treasures from Earth as luxuries, but as a policy he bought local. ‘Liu says Thursday’s been arrested.’
Stef’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What? Who by? I guess the UN—’
Liu said, ‘The security troops at the Hub.’
Yuri tried to make light of it. ‘What did she do, throw a brick at them? They’ve been winding down the detachment there.’
‘Not arrested,’ Liu said, barely holding it together. ‘Confined. They put her in one of their camps.’
‘Ah. Oh, shit.’
The internment camps were a recent, and unwelcome, development, and a sideshow of the war gathering in the solar system.
Since Yuri and Stef Kalinski had returned through the Hatch together twelve years ago to a volcanic winter, things had slowly got better climate-wise on Per Ardua – which was a good thing as the immigrants from Earth through the Hatch had started to arrive almost immediately. But recently, things had evidently been getting worse politically back home. The flow of people through the Hatch had slowed to a trickle, as the inner system’s resources were devoted to the gathering interplanetary conflict rather than to shipping emigrants around the inner planets. Indeed, many of the UN troops stationed here at Per Ardua had been sent back to the solar system.
But some of the UN’s Cold-War type security strictures had been imposed here on Per Ardua, as back home. And, it seemed, there were still enough troops to spare the time to pick up Liu Tao’s daughter.
Yuri grunted. ‘What the hell they think they’ll achieve with internment camps here on Per Ardua I don’t know. This is our country, our world. It’s like an infection of paranoia, spreading through the Hatch. The sooner the last UN trooper drags his sorry arse back through the Hatch the better.’
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