Worldmakers

by Gardner Dozois

  It was Far Thinking himself who simmed the final answer. Leave the rogue fragment alone, and it would impact Mars at a precisely knowable point … smack in the southern reaches of Chryse Planitia at the mouth of the Ares Vallis. No cities or habs nearby, thank Life, and the larger impact would actually accelerate what we were trying to do in the long run. The runaway fragment might advance the Plan’s completion by as much as four centuries.

  Historical irony, though, that impact site. The first Martian rover had bounced to a halt at Ares, not far from Wahoo Crater. And the Viking I Memorial was just eight hundred kils to the west. As it happened, though, that part of Chryse, two kils below the arbitrary sea-level datum for the planet, was already underwater, submerged by a pocket-sized sea extending from Ares Vallis almost all the way to the Viking Memorial in the west, and north most of the way to Acidalia. It was currently midwinter in the northern hemisphere and the sea was frozen … but when the major fragment struck, our best calcs suggested that the ice would melt … and catastrophically so for any settlements in lowland regions further south. The wave would sweep through the chaotic terrain of Xanthe Terra and Margaritifer, plunge into the three-kil-deep basin at the far eastern end of the Valles Marineris … then sweep around to the west, entering Eos and Capri Chasmas, a lateral avalanche of high-velocity mud and water.

  And once it hit the narrow confines of the valles, the water would start moving even faster. Injection event.

  3

  “The impact will occur,” I told Paul, “twenty-eight hundred kilometers north-north-west from this spot. Our terraforming efforts have already resulted in a small sea in that region, though it is frozen over at this time of year. The impact will instantly vaporize some two to three thousand cubic kilometers of ice and permafrost and create a tidal wave of immense proportions in the remaining liquid water.

  “That wave will sweep across the chaotic terrain between ground zero and this spot in approximately six hours. We estimate that, at that time, it will be fifty meters high and traveling at three hundred kilometers per hour.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  “We are. Do you doubt our calcs?”

  “Eh? No. No, of course not. I know better than that.” An unreadable expression tugged at his features, and I decided he was reacting to his xenophobia again. The amortals had been designed to handle complex calculations and informational exchanges in ways that transcended the purely organic reach of humans, and sometimes our differences frightened them.

  “Have you ever seen the Mediterranean Sea, Paul?”

  He shook his head. “Grew up in North America. Place called Maine. But I know the place you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Twenty million years ago, the dam walling off the Atlantic from the lowlying Mediterranean Valley beyond crumbled and the ocean came in. That entire valley, four thousand kilometers long and thirteen hundred wide at spots, was filled in a matter of days … though the Gibraltar waterfall must have persisted for centuries after that.

  “And we know there have been similar injection events here on Mars. When the Tharsis Bulge rose a billion years ago, it melted a small ocean of permafrost that came surging down off the new highlands. As the Valles Marineris formed, collapsing with the permafrost melt, they channeled a lot of that water east and north, with floods powerful enough to sweep along boulders the size of small buildings.

  “The problem is that this time, unlike ancient Mars and unlike the Mediterranean Valley of the mid-Miocene, there are humans in the way. We’re here to save you.”

  “And I’m tellin’ you, I don’t care to be saved!” Reaching up, he patted the gimbaled chair and control elements above his head. “I got it all covered, right here.”

  Zet. I wasn’t linking with him. Sometimes, the mental processes of fuzzy-scuzzy saps were all but incomprehensible. All you could do was let them go their own way … but, Life! When that way led to suicide …

  “You cannot survive the coming flood, Paul,” I told him.

  “Mmm. D’you ever hear of Noah? And the ark?”

  “I’m afraid not … .” I shifted focus, drawing on the Marsnet data base. The answer was there, plucked from my link through my flyer to Deimos. “Ah. One of the Judeo-Christian myths. Genesis.”

  “Ayuh. just call me Noah.”

  He walked over to a nearby computer console and typed out an entry on the keyboard. A keyboard! Ancient tech, that, but the flatscreen lit up with a three-D wineframe of the upside-down Mars hut, rotating in space. Six points flashed along the base, three along each long side. “Those are my flotation bags,” he said. “Salvaged ’em off old Conestoga supply pods.”

  “Balyuts,” I offered, naming the heavy, inflatable, and detachable balloons that served as temporary heat shields for aerobraking landers. Paul must have picked some unused reserve units up at a surplus warehouse somewhere, units that were cheaper to sell for salvage than to haul back to orbit again.

  “Ayuh.” He typed another entry and another point of light winked, this on the smaller half-cylinder of the Mars hut’s airlock. “And that there’s my sea anchor,” he said.

  “This is to hold you in place? It is nothing but a reentry parachute. I fear you have underestimated—”

  “Shoot, Cessie, the thing won’t keep me in one spot. I know that! The term’s from sailing days, back on Earth. Used to do some sailing, you know, a long time ago, before I came here. A sea anchor’s like the tail of a kite. Keeps your nose pointed forward.”

  “I have experience with neither sailing nor kites,” I admitted. I watched as his bony fingers clattered once more across the primitive input device. Red lights flashed on around the Mars hut’s perimeter. “And these?”

  “Thrusters,” he said. “Pulled ’em from my lobber.”

  I was struggling to follow his logic … if, indeed, there was any there to begin with. “Wait. Paul, this whole enterprise is preposterous. You really intend to fly … ?”

  He clucked tongue against teeth. “Do you really take me to be that big an idiot? Hell, I’m not gonna fly when that wave hits tomorrow. I’m gonna sail!”

  I blinked. “Sail. In a Mars hut.”

  “Ayuh. Should be quite a ride.”

  Only then did it all come together for me … what this human intended to attempt. At least it did explain the odd name he’d picked for his frail and unlikely craft.

  “You … have a talent for understatement. How do you plan to steer? … Ah!”

  “Yup. The thrusters.” Reaching up high, he patted the control board attached to the gimbaled seat. It mounted two joysticks, each with pressure-sensitive throttle controls. “Got ’em out of my junked lobber. Control ’em from here, by radio. Port and starboard. I figure they’ll let me steer through the worst of it, enough, mebbe, to hold to the center of the channel.”

  “Fuel?”

  “Sixty seconds at full thrust for each. And of course I’ll only be giving ’em short squirts, a second or two at a time, and at low thrust I should have three, mebbe four minutes on each, total. It’ll get me by.”

  I was speechless for a moment, though whether from disbelief or sheer admiration for his cleverness, even I wasn’t certain. “If you run out of fuel, you’ll be helpless.”

  He shrugged. “I just need enough for the rough parts.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, toward the airlock. “My sea anchor’ll keep me headed straight, and I got external cams t’see where I’m goin’. Shouldn’t need much steering at all, really, ’cept in the real tight passes. If I line m’self up right, I should make it through okay.”

  “You plan to ride a tidal wave all the way up the Marineris Valley? How far?”

  He shrugged, bony shoulders heaving beneath the drape of his undersuit padding. “Th’ Valles run about three thousand kilometers, all told.” He grinned. “Not quite as bad as the Med Valley, of course, but long enough. The ground rises pretty sharp at the Noctis Labyrinthus, as it starts climbin’ the Tharsis Bulge. I reckon I’ll c
ome t’ground somewheres close t’Pittsburgh.”

  “Unless you smash head-on into a cliff or a mensa along the way. Or this pressurized can of yours springs a leak. Or the shock wave itself kills you. Or—”

  He gave me a wily grin. “Y’think I’m crazy, don’tcha?

  “When I first came here,” I told him gently, “I thought, just possibly, that you were. It is clear to me now that you know what you’re doing. I still consider this attempt of yours misguided and for no rational purpose. But you are not crazy.”

  “That’s good to hear,” he said. “Sometimes … I wonder.” He blinked, shaking his head. “You could force me, y’know. At my age, I couldn’t put up much of a fight. Knock me out, drag me off to your paradise in space.”

  “And prove what many of you have been saying about us all this time? That we do not respect the rights or beliefs of your cultures, that we have our own long-term agenda, one that does not include sapiens. No. That would serve no one well, neither your people nor ours. Besides, we do respect your species’s right to determine its own future.”

  “Sure. Whatever you say, Cessie.”

  I could tell from his expression that he didn’t believe me. I wondered if there’d been a time when Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalis had regarded one another with this same faintly bemused lack of mutual comprehension.

  How long would Home sapiens survive, even with our care and maintenance? Extinction is inevitable for all species. Some, though, seem by their actions to embrace extinction with the fervor one has for a long-parted lover.

  “And I can’t convince you to come with me?”

  “Nope. Got it all covered.”

  I thought of fossils, remnants of long-dead life, of species that had flowered once, joined Life’s dance, then vanished, leaving nothing behind but traces in rock and ice.

  “And … if you survive. What will you do then?”

  “Find a new place t’stake a claim and set up shop, of course. Started out in Pittsburgh when I first got off the cycler. Probably try the same again. Reckon I can keep prospecting, wherever I end up. Like I say, we’re just starting t’learn about this world. I imagine Mars’ll be providing us with surprises for a good long time to come, even after you people mess it up.” He winked. “And I aim to experience some of ’em.”

  I sighed. “I don’t understand sapiens,” I said. “I don’t understand you.”

  “That makes two of us, Cessie. But it’s the way I want it, y’know?”

  “Will you leave a data feed open? Or better, take a Companion.”

  He made a face at that, but I ignored it. Holding out my hand, I directed an inward thought through my implants, and a golden sphere began growing in the palm of my hand. In seconds, the sphere was ten centimeters across, assembled from the nanocells within my body.

  “It will adapt itself to your communications and monitor circuitry,” I told him, “and allow us to follow you from orbit. If you’re stranded—”

  “Never did like them things …”

  “Nanotechnology is no different from any other technology, Paul. And no more magical than computers would have seemed to Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “Leonardo didn’t have amortal know-it-alls fumbling icebergs on planetary approach.” His eyes narrowed. “How come you people didn’t just nanotech the place, ’stead of dropping rocks on it?”

  “Because,” I replied patiently, “nanotech is not magic. The program matrices for medical nano and Companion technology are well understood and easily controlled. A planet—is an extremely large and variable venue for nanoscale replication, and—”

  “All right, all right. Don’t go all techie on me.”

  “As you wish.” I didn’t add that there’d been considerable debate among the amortals. Many had counseled waiting on Project Eos until our control of nanotech allowed reworking an entire world to spec.

  But I didn’t think Paul would understand.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “I can see how one of them Companion thingies’d be a good idea. A damned good idea, in fact. The one thing I’m not certain about here, y’see, is what happens if I pile into the rocks somewhere so far from civilization that no one knew where I was.”

  “Take a Companion, and we will be riding with you. We will know exactly where you are, and what is happening.”

  “Yeah … but does that mean I have to have it, uh, inside me?”

  I imitated a human shrug. “Not if you do not wish it. It will attach itself to the circuitry of your computer, your cameras, your communications suite.”

  “Well, I guess that’s okay, then.”

  “We will be following your progress with considerable interest. Since it will be uplinked through Marsnet, anyone with net access will be able to watch as well.”

  “Never did care for a big audience. Ah, well. I can live with that, I guess. Go ahead. Let the thing loose, or whatever you do.”

  A further command programmed the golden sphere, which dissolved into a sparkling cloud, then wafted across the compartment to vanish into the Mars hut’s main computer console. Paul stepped aside to let it pass, giving it a glare that told me he did not, could not trust such magical-seeming technologies.

  “This will improve your chances for survival,” I told him.

  “Sometimes,” he replied in that painfully slow speech of his, “I think you amorts worry too much about life, and not enough about living. But then, I reckon immortality makes you folks take a cautious slant on everything y’do, eh?”

  “Life is not something to be wasted.”

  “It’s also something to be enjoyed. I want this, Cessair. I plan to enjoy every damned minute of it. Heh! A free ride, clear back t’Pittsburgh, Mars!”

  “There are safer ways of making that passage,” I told him.

  “Mebbe. But none that’ll be this much fun!” He turned and looked up into the glassy eye of a camera, mounted on what once had been the Mars hut’s floor. “Hey, girls! See ya on the Marsnet!”

  I do not understand sapiens.

  4

  I had more business to conduct in Pittsburgh and Denver-Olympus. By the time I floatered back to Deimos and joined Andr, Dahlen, and the rest of the amortals on the Eos Team in Ops, Impact was minutes away. A last scan from orbit of Norris’s site—using infrared, since it was dark by then—showed his preparations, as near as we could tell, complete. Two major changes outside. He’d brought the cryoboxes inside, though I frankly didn’t know where else inside the hut he’d had room to store them.

  And one thing more. There now was a deep, rectangular trench where his wife had been buried, and the cross-shaped marker had been removed. We assumed at the time he wanted to rebury her somewhere else, on higher ground.

  Impact … .

  We were watching on the big screen inside Deimos Ops when a spark burst into incandescent brilliance above the Martian night. Sliding swiftly across the dark hemisphere, it grew bright enough to illuminate the ground beneath as it crossed the frozen waters covering Chryse, then strobed in a dazzling, silent pulse.

  We all watched then, as minutes dragged by. The big AIs, of course, were recording everything; the data from this impact would provide a wealth of insight into cometary impact dynamics, and their interactions with planetary atmospheres and surfaces. That left us free to … watch. Even after the initial flash died away, the impact site, just across the dawn terminator, continued to glow in infrared, giving a ghostly glow to a fuzzy disk spreading across the Martian surface. From satellites in low orbit, the shock wave appeared two-dimensional, hugging the landscape as it climbed the gentle slopes of Xanthe Terra, submerging the broken and chaotic terrain in a milky cloud that turned gold when the first light of the sun touched it.

  “Time for link in,” Andr chirped at me. I’d slowed my clockspeed again; data flow and conversation snapped and snickered around me, too fast, now, for my slowed senses to comprehend. Is this how we appear to them?

  “Right,” I drawled. A li
nkpod was already prepared. I snuggled down into its embrace, extruding the necessary connections and linklocks. Static crackled behind my eyes … .

  And then I was staring up through a grime-smeared plastic visor at what once had been the Mars hut’s floor. I could hear the whiss-thunk-hiss of his breather unit and the quiet ticking of his PLSS, could feel the bite of the aging pressure-suit’s fittings and the heavy straps securing me to the gimbaled seat.

  Worse, I hurt … with a dull and nagging ache in my joints, my back, my hands. At first, I thought he was sore from the physical work he’d been doing, but a quick taste of a side-channel medband convinced me I was feeling his arthritis.

  Arthritis! In this day and age? Didn’t he know that a microgram or so of medical nano could …

  Humans. So shortsighted. So suspicious. So stubborn. I wondered what else might be wrong with that pain-soaked body.

  I suppose, technically, we were violating his rights under the Tycho Charter, since he’d expressly requested that we not invade his body with the Companion’s nano … but the whole point of this exercise was to find out what Paul Norris was really thinking, why he was taking this awful gamble with existence. The nano had already been programmed to enter not only his equipment, but his body … as an invisible mist of molecule-sized units drawn into him with each breath and filtering through his skin. Once in his circulatory system, it had taken perhaps ten minutes for several grams of nano to assemble itself into receptors, processors, and routers at key points in his brain, all linked to the outside by a tiny radio transmitter riding safely within the cavern of one of his frontal sinuses.