Manhattan in Reverse

by Peter F. Hamilton

  I waited for Bethany Maria Caesar at one of the refectory tables in the gallery, staring straight out at the volcano through the gritty, smeared windows, hoping I would get to see an eruption. The only evidence of any seismic activity was the occasional tremor which ran through the compartment, barely enough to create a ripple in my teacup.

  ‘Hello, Edward, it’s been a long time.’

  I would never have recognized her. This woman standing before me bore only the faintest resemblance to that beautiful, distraught girl I’d sat with through innumerable interviews eight decades ago. She looked, for want of a better word, old. Her face was lined with thick wrinkles that obscured the features I once knew; nor was there any more of that flowing blond hair – she’d had a crew cut so severe it barely qualified as stubble, and that was greyish. The tunic she wore was loose-fitting, but even that couldn’t disguise her stooped posture.

  She put both hands on the table and lowered herself into a chair opposite me with a slight wheeze. ‘Quite a sight, aren’t I?’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, appalled. No briefing file had mentioned any sort of accident or chronic illness.

  ‘Low gravity happened, Edward. I can see your face is all puffed up with fluid retention, so you already know a fraction of the suffering possible. Content yourself with that fraction. Low gravity affects some people worse than others, a lot worse. And after thirteen years constant exposure, I’m just about off the scale.’

  ‘Dear Mary! I don’t know what you Caesars want with Jupiter, but nothing is worth abusing yourself like this. Come home, back to Earth.’

  Her smile alluded to a wisdom denied me. ‘This is my home. Jupiter is the frontier of humanity.’

  ‘How can you say that? It’s killing you.’

  ‘Life!’ The word was spat out. ‘Such a treacherous gift.’

  ‘A precious gift,’ I countered.

  ‘Ah yes. Poor old Justin. I was quite surprised when I saw you were the representative the Raleighs were sending. You caused me quite a little trip down memory lane.’

  ‘I won’t lie to you, you’re not my primary reason for being here.’

  ‘Ha. The great mystery of our time. What can those wicked Caesars want with Jupiter? Had any luck working it out yet?’

  ‘None at all. But we’ll get there in the end.’

  ‘I’m sure you will. Devote enough processing power to any problem, and ultimately it will be solved.’

  ‘That’s more like the Bethany I remember.’

  ‘I doubt it. This is experience talking. We have more AIs per head of population up here than anywhere on Earth. Every scrap of research data is analysed and tabulated – our knowledge base is expanding at a rate we can barely keep track of. And we can devote so much of ourselves to understanding it. We don’t have to worry so much about our physical requirements. The AIs take care of that for us; they run the food-synthesis plants, the cybernetics factories, administration. I consider my life here to be my liberation, Edward. I don’t have to concern myself with the mundane any more. I can use my mind full time.’

  ‘Then I’m glad for you. You’ve found something new out here. AI utilisation on Earth is causing no end of problems. They can take over the running of just about all mechanical operations and do it with increased efficiency. Industry and utility provision are discarding more and more human operatives. We’re seeing large-scale patterns of unemployment evolving. And it brings a host of social unrest with it. There’s more petty crime than there ever used to be; psychologists need counselling, they have such a heavy workload these days. People are starting to question the true worth of introducing AIs.’

  ‘I’m sure there will be temporary problems thrown up by AI integration. You never get smooth transitions of this magnitude. Moving to a leisure-based society is going to be hard for a people who are so set in their ways. The penalty for a long life is the increasing resistance to change. The familiar is too easy and comfortable for it to be discarded quickly. And the families are very familiar with their life as it is. But the change will happen. If we have a purpose it is to think and create; that’s our uniqueness. Any non-sentient animal can build a nest and gather food. Now this march through progress has finally started to relieve us of that physical distraction. I mean, that’s what we were doing it for in the first place, right? Once you set out to determine how the universe works, then as a species there’s no turning back. We’re freefalling to the plateau, Edward.’

  ‘The plateau?’

  ‘The moment at which science has explained everything, and machines are perfect. After that, human life becomes one long summer afternoon picnic. All we do then is think, dream, and play.’

  ‘I can’t quite see that myself.’

  ‘That’s a shame. You must adapt or die, Edward. I took you as someone bright enough to surmount that last hurdle and climb up there to the plateau. Perhaps the Sport of Emperors wasn’t the blessing we like to believe, at least, not for everyone. The original Caesars were so certain they were doing the right thing with their gift for all of the Empire. They’d bred stables of gladiators for generations, evolving their speed and strength until they were invincible in the arena. Only age slowed and weakened them. It was such a short leap to breed for longevity, and what a political weapon that was. The one thing everybody always wants. But the life they bred for in the children of the Empire was longer than nature ever intended. And messing with nature however crudely is always dangerous. Humans change their environment. That is our true nature. The cycle of life and death, of constant renewal, is nature’s way of adapting us as a species to the freshness we create for ourselves.’

  ‘Are you saying I’ve outlived my usefulness?’

  ‘I don’t know, Edward. Can you give up everything you’ve lived for in order to face the unknown? Or are you going to watch trees grow as the same old seasons wash past you to no effect?’

  ‘That’s what you believe you’re doing by living out here, is it?’

  ‘I enjoy change. It’s the most magnificent challenge.’

  ‘You have the luxury of enjoying it.’

  Her laugh was a fluid-clogged cackle. ‘Oh Edward, so single-minded. You and I are alive, which is more than can be said for Justin. I have to admit, I’m very curious. What can you possibly have to add to the matter at this stage?’

  I waved a hand at the curving windows, with their slim reinforcement mesh of carbon strands. That particular carbon allotrope was the reason the glass could be so thin, one of the new miracles we took so much for granted. ‘Carbon 60.’

  ‘How the hell can pentaspheres possibly be connected to Justin’s murder? We only discovered the stuff ten years ago . . . Oh. Mary, yes! It was Alexander, wasn’t it? He was the one who found it.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Hope?’

  ‘Carbon 60 is an awesome substance. There are so many theoretical applications, from ultrastrength fibres to superconductivity. It’s being incorporated into just about every process and structure we use. And they’re still finding new uses on a daily basis.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I need to know about Justin’s great project, the one he was working on when he was killed. Was he studying supernovae for carbon signatures?’

  ‘Heavens.’ She sat back and gave me an admiring look. ‘You really don’t give up, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We only found out that carbon 60 existed in stellar nebulae after we – or rather Alexander – produced it in a laboratory. What you’re saying is that it could have happened the other way round, aren’t you? That some astronomer found traces, proof that it physically existed, and chemists worked at synthesising it afterwards.’

  ‘It’s certainly possible. The existence of carbon 60 has been postulated for a long time; I traced an early reference back to 1815 – it was some very speculative paper on theoretical molecular structures. Justin might have had the idea carbon 60 could be produced by stellar events, and found the spectral signat
ure.’

  ‘And Alexander, who was a chemist, immediately realized the practical use such a find would have, and killed him for it. Then when a decent interval had passed, in this case, ninety years, he miraculously produces the elusive substance in his lab, to the enormous benefit of his family who have lauded him ever since. Who would possibly suspect any connection with a tragic murder all that time ago? And . . .’ She gave a start. ‘Alexander never had an air-tight alibi for that night, plus he was working on carbon at the time. Yes, I can see why you’ve invested so much effort into this.’

  ‘I’ve never been able to find out what Justin was working on,’ I said. ‘Even you said you weren’t sure. But considering the state you were in after his murder, you weren’t even sure what day it was. And you’ve had a long time to reflect on everything he ever said to you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Edward, you’ve had a wasted trip.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice. It had been a desperately long shot. But it was the first possible lead I’d got in sixty-seven years.

  ‘I know exactly what Justin was working on,’ she said sorrowfully. ‘I just didn’t want to tell anyone at the time.’

  ‘Why?’ I demanded, suddenly furious. ‘Information like that was critical to the investigation.’

  ‘No it wasn’t. Don’t you understand anything? I loved him, I really did. And he had a crazy theory. He thought there might be life in space. Bacteria that floated through the void like interstellar dust clouds, propelled by solar wind. That’s the spectral signature he was looking for, not carbon 60. He said it was possible all our plagues came from outer space – that was why our immune system always takes time to respond, because each one was new to our planet. He believed all that back in the 1830s. Holy Mary, what a brilliant mind.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Yes I know,’ she snapped at me. ‘He was right, damnit. He was absolutely right. And I was on the mission which proved it beyond any doubt. We’re convinced the bacterial life we found on Ganymede and Europa originated from space – there’s evidence for it all over the Jovian system. Do you have any idea how painful that was for me after so many years? It’s not an irony, it’s a tragedy. And I can’t tell anybody he thought of it first, because there’s no proof. He’ll never get the credit he deserves, and that’s my fault.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell us at the time?’ I asked.

  ‘To protect his memory. I didn’t want people laughing at my beautiful lover. He was too precious to me for that. I wouldn’t have been able to stand it. And they would have done, the newspapers would have ridiculed him, because it was all too fantastic back then. Invasion of the space flu! I wanted to give him some dignity. He deserved that much.’

  I sighed in defeat. She was right, I’d put a lot of hope on her confirming my theory. ‘I don’t suppose I can blame you for protecting him. In fact, I’d probably do the same thing.’

  She rested her hand on mine as another little tremor ran through the gallery. ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘Me? Complete the Kuranda mission, then go home and get on with my life. My changeable life, that is.’

  Her heavy, wrinkled cheeks lifted in a melancholy smile. ‘Thank you, Edward. It’s nice to know that someone else cared about him.’

  FOUR

  RALEIGH FAMILY INSTITUTE AD 1971

  The lone oak tree was over two hundred years old, its upper half broken long ago, leaving just an imposing stump to support several sturdy boughs. Rich emerald moss was creeping into the wrinkly bark around the base. I settled down in the cusp of a forking root and looked back down the sloping grassland towards the lake. My FAI shrank to a discreet soap bubble beside my head, emission functions on standby, isolating me from the digital babble of family business. It left my own thoughts free to circulate quietly in my head. It was a lovely day, the sun rising above the valley walls, already warm enough to burn off the dew. Buttercups and daisies starred the thick grass, their tiny petals already fully open, receptive. As always, the vista allowed me considerable serenity.

  I made a point of taking a walk around the institute grounds every day, unless the weather was truly awful of course. And it could be on occasion. Climate control was one thing we hadn’t got round to implementing. I was glad about that – there should be some unpredictability in our lives. I suppose that’s why I enjoyed the grounds so much. They were wholly natural. Since I was appointed to the senior family council eight years ago, I’d made damn sure that the only trees planted in the institute valley had been genuine genotypes – same went for the rest of the flora.

  A folly, perhaps. But on the rare occasions when anyone questioned me about it, I maintained that it was a valid cultural enclave, and what I was doing was essential preservation. Now that our urban areas were depopulating, everyone wanted to enjoy their own little piece of the rural idyll. Farming had been in a solid decline ever since food synthetics became available at the start of the century. The individual farms which carried on were run by cantankerous old conservationists, or simply families who were determinedly clinging to the old ways. There weren’t many such anachronisms – they didn’t take up much land area, so it didn’t affect the joint council’s overall habitation development strategy. As a result, abandoned farmland right across the country was being reinvented as the kind of pastoral woodland that only ever existed in the most romanticized notions of pre-First Era history. Everybody who left the city wanted their own forest, complete with a glade that had a pool fed by a babbling brook, where their mock First Era villa could be sited. Nobody wanted to wait a hundred years for the trees to grow, so reformatted DNA varieties were the grande fashion, taking just a couple of years to grow sixty or seventy feet, then slowing into a more natural growth model. It struck me as strange, as if our new biononic technology had infected us with different mental patterns; as society matured we were slowly reverting to a Short mentality. Everything had to be now, as if there were no tomorrow rather than the awesome potential future which Bethany Maria Caesar established for us in nineteen sixty-three.

  My FAI expanded, chiming melodically. I still used the old interface mode, despite the ease of modern direct sensory linkages. It was, I suspected, a quiet personal admission that Bethany Maria Caesar had been right those many years ago back on Io when she claimed that resistance to evolution was derived from age. None of my great-great-great-great grandchildren had shown any recalcitrance in being fitted with interfaces, nor demonstrated any psychological harm resulting from them. Not that I could hold my own childhood up as any kind of template to the modern world. However, I remained aloof. When you’ve had to upgrade through as many different types of interfaces and operating programs as I have you remain profoundly sceptical as to how long the latest is going to last before it achieves obsolescence. Best you stay with the one you found most comfortable for a few decades.

  It was Rebecca Raleigh Stothard’s face which filled the FAI. I might have guessed. There weren’t many people my AI would allow to intrude on my private time. Her holographic image grinned at me, conjuring up a host of most pleasurable memories. Rebecca had undergone DNA reset five years ago, reverting her physiological age to her mid-twenties. She’d been an attractive woman when we had our first dalliance a hundred years ago; now she was simply angelic.

  ‘I thought you’d like to be the first to hear,’ she said. ‘The Neuromedical Protocol Commission have cleared the procedure, effective from twelve thirty pm Rome meantime today.’

  ‘Yes!’ The word hissed out from my lips. Given what turbulent times we were living in, it was wholly unjustified for me to feel so elated at such a small piece of news. Yet that didn’t prevent me from laughing out loud. ‘I’ve finally brought it to an end.’

  ‘The Borgias are still in the Vatican,’ she said primly.

  ‘Show a little confidence. It has to be the pair of them.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said. There was a note of concern to her voice. ‘I’d ha
te to think you were becoming obsessional.’

  ‘You know as well as I do the percentage of my time which this case occupies is so small it can’t even be measured. This is simply the satisfaction of a job seen through to its end. Besides, I owe it to Francis.’

  ‘I know. So what’s next?’

  ‘I’ll start the ball rolling, and haul her in. Is the system on-line here?’

  ‘Give me three days to complete installation.’ She winked, and her image vanished. The FAI remained on active status.

  The light right across the valley suddenly and silently quadrupled in intensity, turning a vivid violet hue. My iris filters closed, and I looked straight up. A brilliant star was burning in the eastern quadrant of the sky, the backwash of energy from a starship initiating its compression drive. Violet drifted into turquoise which in turn began the shade into emerald. I still think the spectral wash from a compression drive is among the most wondrous sights we have ever created, even if it is an accidental by-product. It wouldn’t last, of course. The first generation of faster-than-light starships were crude affairs, creating their own individual wormhole down which to fly. The families were cooperating on the project to construct exotic matter, which would be able to hold wormholes open permanently. That had to qualify as one of the more favourable signs of recent years – even at the height of the crazed sixties we managed to retain enough sense to see the necessity of such collaboration. Even the Caesars joined with us.

  Every time I thought of the negotiations I was involved in to revamp the old Joint Families Astronautics Agency I also remembered my trip to Jupiter, and marvelled at how we were so incapable of seeing the utterly obvious. Size hid their goal from us. But how could we have possibly known we had to think so big?