Maureen considered. “So people will outlive the Earth.”
“Well, they could. For maybe about thirty minutes, until atomic structures get pulled apart. There’s talk of establishing a sort of shelter in Oxford that could survive the end of the Earth. Like a submarine, I suppose. And if you wore a pressure suit you might last a bit longer even than that. The design goal is to make it through to the last microsecond. You could gather another thirty minutes of data that way. They’ve asked me to go in there.”
“Will you?”
“I haven’t decided. It will depend on how we feel about the kids, and—you know.”
Maureen considered. “You must do what makes you happy, I suppose.”
“Yes. But it’s hard to know what that is, isn’t it?” Caitlin looked up at the sky. “It’s going to be a hot day.”
“Yes. And a long one. I think I’m glad about that. The night sky looks odd now the Milky Way has gone.”
“And the stars are flying off one by one,” Caitlin mused. “I suppose the constellations will look funny by the autumn.”
“Do you want some more sandwiches?”
“I’ll have a bit more of that cordial. It’s very good, Mum.”
“It’s elderflower. I collect the blossoms from that bush down the road. I’ll give you the recipe if you like.”
“Shall we see if your Joe fancies laying a bit of concrete this afternoon? I could do with meeting your new beau.”
“Oh, shut up,” Maureen said, and she went inside to make a fresh jug of cordial.
OCTOBER 14
That morning Maureen got up early. She was pleased that it was a bright morning, after the rain of the last few days. It was a lovely autumn day. She had breakfast listening to the last-ever episode of The Archers, but her radio battery failed before the end.
She went to work in the garden, hoping to get everything done before the light went. There was plenty of work, leaves to rake up, the roses and the clematis to prune. She had decided to plant a row of daffodil bulbs around the base of the new pergola.
She noticed a little band of goldfinches, plundering a clump of Michaelmas daisies for seed. She sat back on her heels to watch. The colourful little birds had always been her favourites.
Then the light went, just like that, darkening as if somebody were throwing a dimmer switch. Maureen looked up. The sun was rushing away, and sucking all the light out of the sky with it. It was a remarkable sight, and she wished she had a camera. As the light turned grey, and then charcoal, and then utterly black, she heard the goldfinches fly off in a clatter, confused. It had only taken a few minutes.
Maureen was prepared. She dug a little torch out of the pocket of her old quilted coat. She had been hoarding the batteries; you hadn’t been able to buy them for weeks. The torch got her as far as the pergola, where she lit some rush torches that she’d fixed to canes.
Then she sat in the pergola, in the dark, with her garden lit up by her rush torches, and waited. She wished she had thought to bring out her book. She didn’t suppose there would be time to finish it now. Anyhow, the flickering firelight would be bad for her eyes.
“Mum?”
The soft voice made her jump. It was Caitlin, threading her way across the garden with a torch of her own.
“I’m in here, love.”
Caitlin joined her mother in the pergola, and they sat on the wooden benches, on the thin cushions Maureen had been able to buy. Caitlin shut down her torch to conserve the battery.
Maureen said, “The sun went, right on cue.”
“Oh, it’s all working out, bang on time.”
Somewhere there was shouting, whooping, a tinkle of broken glass.
“Someone’s having fun,” Maureen said.
“It’s a bit like an eclipse,” Caitlin said. “Like in Cornwall, do you remember? The sky was cloudy, and we couldn’t see a bit of the eclipse. But at that moment when the sky went dark, everybody got excited. Something primeval, I suppose.”
“Would you like a drink? I’ve got a flask of tea. The milk’s a bit off, I’m afraid.”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“I got up early and managed to get my bulbs in. I didn’t have time to trim that clematis, though. I got it all ready for the winter, I think.”
“I’m glad.”
“I’d rather be out here than indoors, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I thought about bringing blankets. I didn’t know if it would get cold.”
“Not much. The air will keep its heat for a bit. There won’t be time to get very cold.”
“I was going to fix up some electric lights out here. But the power’s been off for days.”
“The rushes are better, anyway. I would have been here earlier. There was a jam by the church. All the churches are packed, I imagine. And then I ran out of petrol a couple of miles back. We haven’t been able to fill up for weeks.”
“It’s all right. I’m glad to see you. I didn’t expect you at all. I couldn’t ring.” Even the mobile networks had been down for days. In the end everything had slowly broken down, as people simply gave up their jobs and went home. Maureen asked carefully, “So how’s Bill and the kids?”
“We had an early Christmas,” Caitlin said. “They’ll both miss their birthdays, but we didn’t think they should be cheated out of Christmas, too. We did it all this morning. Stockings, a tree, the decorations and the lights down from the loft, presents, the lot. And then we had a big lunch. I couldn’t find a turkey, but I’d been saving a chicken. After lunch the kids went for their nap. Bill put their pills in their lemonade.”
Maureen knew she meant the little blue pills the NHS had given out to every household.
“Bill lay down with them. He said he was going to wait with them until he was sure—you know. That they wouldn’t wake up, and be distressed. Then he was going to take his own pill.”
Maureen took her hand. “You didn’t stay with them?”
“I didn’t want to take the pill.” There was some bitterness in her voice. “I always wanted to see it through to the end. I suppose it’s the scientist in me. We argued about it. We fought, I suppose. In the end we decided this way was the best.”
Maureen thought that on some level Caitlin couldn’t really believe her children were gone, or she couldn’t keep functioning like this. “Well, I’m glad you’re here with me. And I never fancied those pills either. Although—will it hurt?”
“Only briefly. When the Earth’s crust gives way. It will be like sitting on top of an erupting volcano.”
“You had an early Christmas. Now we’re going to have an early Bonfire Night.”
“It looks like it. I wanted to see it through,” Caitlin said again. “After all, I was in at the start—those supernova studies.”
“You mustn’t think it’s somehow your fault.”
“I do, a bit,” Caitlin confessed. “Stupid, isn’t it?”
“But you decided not to go to the shelter in Oxford with the others?”
“I’d rather be here. With you. Oh, but I brought this.” She dug into her coat pocket and produced a sphere, about the size of a tennis ball.
Maureen took it. It was heavy, with a smooth black surface.
Caitlin said, “It’s the stuff they make space shuttle heat-shield tiles out of. It can soak up a lot of heat.”
“So it will survive the Earth breaking up.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Are there instruments inside?”
“Yes. It should keep working, keep recording until the expansion gets down to the centimetre scale, and the Rip cracks the sphere open. Then it will release a cloud of even finer sensor units, motes we call them. It’s nanotechnology, Mum, machines the size of molecules. They will keep gathering data until the expansion reaches molecular scales.”
“How long will that take after the big sphere breaks up?”
“Oh, a microsecond or so. There’s nothing we could come up with th
at could keep data-gathering after that.”
Maureen hefted the little device. “What a wonderful little gadget. It’s a shame nobody will be able to use its data.”
“Well, you never know,” Caitlin said. “Some of the cosmologists say this is just a transition, rather than an end. The universe has passed through transitions before, for instance from an age dominated by radiation to one dominated by matter—our age. Maybe there will be life of some kind in a new era dominated by the dark energy.”
“But nothing like us.”
“I’m afraid not.”
Maureen stood and put the sphere down in the middle of the lawn. The grass was just faintly moist, with dew, as the air cooled. “Will it be all right here?”
“I should think so.”
The ground shuddered, and there was a sound like a door slamming, deep in the ground. Alarms went off, from cars and houses, distant wails. Maureen hurried back to the pergola. She sat with Caitlin, and they wrapped their arms around each other.
Caitlin raised her wrist to peer at her watch, then gave it up. “I don’t suppose we need a countdown.”
The ground shook more violently, and there was an odd sound, like waves rushing over pebbles on a beach. Maureen peered out of the pergola. Remarkably, one wall of her house had given way, just like that, and the bricks had tumbled into a heap.
“You’ll never get a builder out now,” Caitlin said, but her voice was edgy.
“We’d better get out of here.”
“All right.”
They got out of the pergola and stood side by side on the lawn, over the little sphere of instruments, holding on to each other. There was another tremor, and Maureen’s roof tiles slid to the ground, smashing and tinkling.
“Mum, there’s one thing.”
“Yes, love.”
“You said you didn’t think all those alien signals needed to be decoded.”
“Why, no. I always thought it was obvious what all the signals were saying.”
“What?”
Maureen tried to reply.
The ground burst open. The scrap of dewy lawn flung itself into the air, and Maureen was thrown down, her face pressed against the grass. She glimpsed houses and trees and people, all flying in the air, underlit by a furnace-red glow from beneath.
But she was still holding Caitlin. Caitlin’s eyes were squeezed tight shut. “Good-bye,” Maureen yelled. “They were just saying good-bye.” But she couldn’t tell if Caitlin could hear … . end
The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter
ALASTAIR REYNOLDS
Alastair Reynolds is a frequent contributor to Interzone and has also sold to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Spectrum SF, and elsewhere. His first novel, Revelation Space, was widely hailed as one of the major SF books of the year; it was quickly followed by Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, Century Rain, and Pushing Ice, all big, sprawling space operas that were big sellers as well, establishing Reynolds as one of the best and most popular new SF writers to enter the field in many years. His other books include a novella collection, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days. His most recent books are a novel, The Prefect, and two collections, Galactic North and Zima Blue and Other Stories. Coming up is a new novel, House of Suns. A professional scientist with a Ph.D. in astronomy, he comes from Wales but lives in the Netherlands, where he works for the European Space Agency.
Reynolds’s work is known for its grand scope, sweep, and scale. In one story, “Galactic North,” a spaceship sets out on in pursuit of another in a stern chase that takes thousands of years of time and hundreds of thousands of light-years to complete; in another, “Thousandth Night,” ultrarich immortals embark on a plan that will call for the physical rearrangement of all the stars in the Galaxy. Here he takes us somewhat closer to home, in a distressed civilization that’s been set back hundreds of years by war and disaster, for a study of a young girl with an all-too-common problem who finds an extremely unique solution to it.
She stopped in sight of Twenty Arch Bridge, laying down her bags to rest her hands from the weight of two hog’s heads and forty pence worth of beeswax candles. While she paused, Kathrin adjusted the drawstring on her hat, tilting the brim to shade her forehead from the sun. Though the air was still cool, there was a fierce new quality to the light that brought out her freckles.
Kathrin moved to continue, but a tightness in her throat made her hesitate. She had been keeping the bridge from her thoughts until this moment, but now the fact of it could not be ignored. Unless she crossed it she would face the long trudge to New Bridge, a diversion that would keep her on the road until long after sunset.
“Sledge-maker’s daughter!” called a rough voice from across the road.
Kathrin turned sharply at the sound. An aproned man stood in a doorway, smearing his hands dry. He had a monkeylike face, tanned a deep liverish red, with white sideboards and a gleaming pink tonsure.
“Brendan Lynch’s daughter, isn’t it?”
She nodded meekly but bit her lip rather than answer.
“Thought so. Hardly one to forget a pretty face, me.” The man beckoned her to the doorway of his shop. “Come here, lass. I’ve something for your father.”
“Sir?”
“I was hoping to visit him last week, but work kept me here.” He cocked his head at the painted wooden trademark hanging above the doorway. “Peter Rigby, the wheelwright. Kathrin, isn’t it?”
“I need to be getting along, sir … .”
“And your father needs good wood, of which I’ve plenty. Come inside for a moment, instead of standing there like a starved thing.” He called over his shoulder, telling his wife to put the water on the fire.
Reluctantly Kathrin gathered her bags and followed Peter into his workshop. She blinked against the dusty air and removed her hat. Sawdust carpeted the floor, fine and golden in places, crisp and coiled in others, while a heady concoction of resins and glues filled the air. Pots simmered on fires. Wood was being steamed into curves, or straightened where it was curved. Many sharp tools gleamed on one wall, some of them fashioned with blades of skydrift. Wheels, mostly awaiting spokes or iron tyres, rested against one another. Had the wheels been sledges, it could have been her father’s workshop, when he had been busier.
Peter showed Kathrin to an empty stool next to one of his benches. “Sit down here and take the weight off your feet. Mary can make you some bread and cheese. Or bread and ham if you’d rather.”
“That’s kind, sir, but Widow Grayling normally gives me something to eat, when I reach her house.”
Peter raised a white eyebrow. He stood by the bench with his thumbs tucked into the belt of his apron, his belly jutting out as if he was quietly proud of it. “I didn’t know you visited the witch.”
“She will have her two hog’s heads, once a month, and her candles. She only buys them from the Shield, not the Town. She pays for the hogs a year in advance, twenty-four whole pounds.”
“And you’re not scared by her?”
“I’ve no cause to be.”
“There’s some that would disagree with you.”
Remembering something her father had told her, Kathrin said, “There are folk who say the Sheriff can fly, or that there was once a bridge that winked at travellers like an eye, or a road of iron that reached all the way to London. My father says there’s no reason for anyone to be scared of Widow Grayling.”
“Not afraid she’ll turn you into a toad, then?”
“She cures people, not puts spells on them.”
“When she’s in the mood for it. From what I’ve heard she’s just as likely to turn the sick and needy away.”
“If she helps some people, isn’t that better than nothing at all?”
“I suppose.” She could tell Peter didn’t agree, but he wasn’t cross with her for arguing. “What does your father make of you visiting the witch, anyway?”
“He doesn’t mind.”
“No?” Peter asked, interestedly.
“Whe
n he was small, my dad cut his arm on a piece of skydrift that he found in the snow. He went to Widow Grayling and she made his arm better again by tying an eel around it. She didn’t take any payment except the skydrift.”
“Does your father still believe an eel can heal a wound?”
“He says he’ll believe anything if it gets the job done.”
“Wise man, that Brendan, a man after my own heart. Which reminds me.” Peter ambled to another bench, pausing to stir one of his bubbling pots before gathering a bundle of sawn-off wooden sticks. He set them down in front of Kathrin on a scrap of cloth. “Offcuts,” he explained. “But good seasoned beech, which’ll never warp. No use to me, but I am sure your father will find use for them. Tell him that there’s more, if he wishes to collect it.”
“I haven’t got any money for wood.”
“I’d take none. Your father was always generous to me, when I was going through lean times.” Peter scratched behind his ear. “Only fair, the way I see it.”
“Thank you,” Kathrin said doubtfully. “But I don’t think I can carry the wood all the way home.”
“Not with two hog’s heads as well. But you can drop by when you’ve given the heads to Widow Grayling.”
“Only I won’t be coming back over the river,” Kathrin said. “After I’ve crossed Twenty Arch Bridge, I’ll go back along the south quayside and take the ferry at Jarrow.”
Peter looked puzzled. “Why line the ferryman’s pocket when you can cross the bridge for nowt?”
Kathrin shrugged easily. “I’ve got to visit someone on the Jarrow road, to settle an account.”
“Then you’d better take the wood now, I suppose,” Peter said.
Mary bustled in, carrying a small wooden tray laden with bread and ham. She was as plump and red as her husband, only shorter. Picking up the entire gist of the conversation in an instant, she said, “Don’t be an oaf, Peter. The girl cannot carry all that wood and her bags. If she will not come back this way, she must pass a message on to her father. Tell him that there’s wood here if he wants it.” She shook her head sympathetically at Kathrin. “What does he think you are, a pack mule?”
The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007 Page 48
