Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Of course,’ she said dutifully.

  ‘Even when I do this … and this.’ Now he nibbled her ear, a move that always seemed to liquefy her internally. ‘Are we all just patterns of electricity in Memory, in some big calculating machine in Denva?’

  ‘If we are, it’s a very good Sim,’ she said, wriggling closer. ‘I don’t care if I’m real or not, as long as you’re here with me.’

  ‘Oh, LuSi -’

  ‘Oh, what rot.’ A light shone in their faces, harsh, dazzling. The voice behind it was unmistakeable: Jennin PiRo, JaEm’s father.

  They pulled away from each other, fixing their clothing. JaEm raised a hand to shield his eyes. ‘Father? What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing from you, son,’ the Jennin said. ‘I need to talk to LuSi. And where she is, you are. You are depressingly predictable, for two of my brightest students. Come on out of there.’

  PiRo, aged about forty Years – ten Years younger than LuSi’s mother - was a tall, habitually severe man dressed in the jet black uniform of a Jennin, a scholar. Severe, and habitually impatient with the flaws and weaknesses of others, particularly of his students, like LuSi, who he seemed to think should be doing better. ‘Sloppy, sloppy,’ he said now, ‘and I don’t mean your kissing technique, son.’ Which made JaEm blush horribly. PiRo turned on LuSi. ‘I mean your sheer emotional immaturity.’

  LuSi bridled. ‘Immaturity?’

  ‘How can it not matter if you are a Sim character, or not? Would it not matter if you were the arbitrary creation of some cold onlooker? Imagine what she or he could do to you. Freeze you. Disorder your life, so that you might leap from death to birth – from my son’s youthful embrace to the bony hug of an ancient. Delete you! He could delete you from this artificial world you believe in, leaving no trace. Does that not appal you?’

  Actually it did, but she felt her privacy had been violated by this pompous man, and she knew the theory enough to argue back. So she shrugged. ‘It would make no difference. Even if the instants of my life were jumbled up in the Memory, I would still experience them in the proper order. From my point of view, my own time line, I could never tell if -’

  ‘Oh, yes, rationalise it away. That kind of circularity of argument is precisely why, I suspect, the mythos of the Sim, and the Controllers in Holy Denva, has lingered as long as human civilisation has persisted on this planet. Do you know how long that is?’

  ‘Well -’ She should know.

  ‘Ten thousand Years! Nearly three quarters of a million turns of Urthen around the Ember! That’s as best as we can reconstruct, given the damage done by the Xaian Normalisation. Four hundred human generations – why, is it really imaginable that the most cold-hearted Controllers could maintain a Sim of whatever complexity for so long? What could possibly be the purpose?’

  She stuck out her chin defiantly. ‘I don’t know. I have no answer. And since this isn’t your classroom, Jennin PiRo, I don’t have to find an answer, do I? You came looking for me, you said. Maybe you should get to the point.’

  JaEm flinched at her defiance.

  But PiRo gave her a kind of wary grin. ‘All right. I suppose I deserved that. Look, you may have an important future. More important than you know. And it’s because of your mother.’

  ‘My mother?’

  ‘You understand why Zaen SheLu is undertaking this decades-long mission to the stars.’

  ‘She has a hypothesis about Denva,’ LuSi said. ‘The Controllers’ base. Denva is the world humanity came from, or maybe a location on that world. She thinks it’s real, has a real location. Or at least -’

  ‘A location that maps onto a site in this “simulated” universe. A place where humans first came from. That’s correct. The difficulty is, she might be right.’

  LuSi was baffled. ‘What do you mean, Jennin?’

  ‘I mean that her arguments are good, intellectually. She might well find some world, some primal site, that matches many of the criteria she has set out in her arguments. And if she does, that will cement the notion of the Sim in the minds of humanity for all time. Because the idea that all of humanity emanates from one single, primal, sacred world is just the kind of mythic element a Sim Designer would build into a fictitious Backstory. It’s a good narrative, and so it appeals to us.’

  She shrugged. ‘But if it’s true -’

  ‘If it’s true, then the notion that we are mere toys in the hands of the Controllers will lock us in us forever. We will lose initiative. We will give up. What other reaction can there be? And this is not a universe in which it is safe to give up, to stop thinking, to become complacent. Not if the stars are going out.’ He glanced up at the Ember.

  The Ember was not a star, like the more distant points of light in the sky. It was called a ‘brown dwarf’ by the astronomers, a term said to go back to the arrival of the Ark itself – if you believed the Ark ever existed. The Ember was not a star but a mere mass of glowing gas, heated by its own infall, and therefore gradually cooling.

  LuSi was only growing more confused. ‘But if it’s true, if Denva ever existed, if the Sim exists and we can prove it, then that’s all that matters – isn’t it?’

  ‘There are many kinds of truth, LuSi. And many uses to which “truth” can be put.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me what you want of me.’

  ‘It’s simple, LuSi. Somebody needs to counterbalance your mother on this crusade of hers. I’ve been invited to join the mission myself …’

  And that brief line electrified both LuSi and JaEm. For if the Jennin came aboard the ship, surely his family would too – surely JaEm would follow his father – and LuSi and JaEm would have Years together, not mere Days.

  The Jennin seemed oblivious to their reaction. ‘I have many responsibilities here, which I am reluctant to shed. I am undecided. But failing that, if I am not there -’

  LuSi felt as if she was groping towards an understanding of all this. ‘Me? You want me to spend the next fifty Years arguing with my mother, about Sim theory and theology?’

  He grinned. ‘That’s the idea. Somebody has to. And I think you have it in you, LuSi, even if you don’t see it yet yourself. Look – I don’t mean to impose on you, in this time you two have left together. Or to order you around. I want to inspire you, and I know I’m not always good at that, am I? A Jennin I may be, but not always a great teacher.’

  ‘Inspire me? How?’

  ‘I’ve secured you a ride on a torchship. You too, JaEm, if you must. We’re going into space! I know our journey will be dwarfed by your jaunt to the stars, but the scenery will be a lot more fun.’

  JaEm gaped, evidently delighted.

  ‘Why?’ LuSi asked, more sceptical. ‘What’s the point? What are we going to be talking about?’

  ‘The Backstory,’ Jennin PiRo said simply.

  The torchship was called the Holy Water. Owned by PiRo’s university, it was a practical, basic design meant for scientists, surveyors, explorers, a small, highly manoeuvrable, all but automated craft, capable of transporting a dozen passengers in comfort between the worlds of the Ember system in a matter of Days. LuSi and JaEm had travelled in such ships many times before; the Holy Water was a trivial achievement for a civilisation capable of routine interstellar travel.

  But as they boarded, as the ship leapt out of another gigantic port facility and into the sky, the Jennin made them think about how the ship worked, the miracle of physics that powered it.

  ‘You are riding a fusion torch,’ he said. ‘And, generous as the Ember is to give us its warmth and light, the Ember is a failed star, it never achieved the mass it needed to allow hydrogen fusion to spark in its core. Until humanity arose here -’

  ‘Or came here,’ LuSi said automatically, correcting his father’s mild multi-origin heresy.

  ‘Before us, fusion had never happened here, in this system, not since the birth of the universe itself. Think what a wonder that is – what power we have! …’

  The first few days of
the voyage were a jaunt. The Jennin took them on a looping tour of the Ember’s planetary system. LuSi knew that compared to some systems out among the stars of the Bubble, this was an impoverished place, with only two large planets, Urthen and Bigmars, a handful of smaller, scattered worldlets, and more distant belts of asteroids, comets and sparse ice moons. Both Urthen and Bigmars orbited so close to the Ember that they were tidally locked, each holding one face permanently to the sub-star’s dim glow – the price they paid for the meagre warmth of the Ember. But that warmth had not been enough to save Bigmars from an endless age of ice; unlike Urthen, which too had its chilly regions, no liquid water could persist anywhere on Bigmars’s surface.

  It was towards Bigmars that Jennin at last pointed the ship’s prow. And as that cold, glittering world approached, he ordered the youngsters to tell him the Backstory.

  The Backstory was the history of the universe and of mankind in it, and every child on Urthen learned it at first school. LuSi said, ‘The Ark was built, by the giants Nimrod, Seba and Halivah, so that their children could flee Denva when the oceans rose. On board the Ark, the Crew struggled to survive, until the Son extracted the Ship’s Law from the Will. And the Ship’s Law remains the basis of our system of justice to this day.’

  Jennin waved a hand. ‘Yes, yes. And then?’

  JaEm went on, ‘And then the Ark split in two, when some of the Crew fell upon the poison ground of a world of false promise, and the rest continued the Journey. Then there was the Blow-Out, when rebel children challenged the parameters of the Sim itself and caused a lethal rupture of the remnant Ark.’

  ‘Which is commonly interpreted as a metaphor for a Sim systems crash,’ said LuSi. ‘According to an analysis by -’

  ‘Don’t analyse!’ the Jennin snapped. ‘Don’t interpret! Just tell me the story.’

  JaEm went on uncertainly, ‘The Ark split in two at one more false world. Then finally its mighty Journey was over, the sacred engines were shut down for the last time -’

  ‘Yes, yes. And humans fell to the ground of Urthen all those Years ago, ten thousand Years. Then what?’

  ‘Then we prospered, and spread, and cultivated our farms,’ LuSi said. ‘Cities rose. Learning spread. At last we heard messages, whispers from other nations out among the stars of the Bubble. We built new ships, not as mighty as the Ark but capable of reaching the stars. And we sent out emissaries to the other worlds and their peoples, and then we found more new worlds and we populated them, until the Bubble was filled with human worlds -’

  ‘And then the Xaians of Windru got hold of starship technology,’ the Jennin said.

  LuSi suppressed a smile. It sounded to her as if PiRo was becoming enthralled by the familiar story, despite his intellectual scepticism. ‘The Xaians,’ she said, ‘seeking to cut mankind free of the burden of history, scoured the worlds of the Bubble and destroyed all traces of the human past, on world after world -’

  ‘Or tried to,’ PiRo said. ‘All they succeeded in doing was making the job of the archaeologists and historians and other Jennins a lot more difficult.’

  ‘On Urthen, even starship technology was lost. But eventually it was recovered …’

  Bigmars was looming close now. Through the transparent hull of the habitable compartment the planet bellied before them, its surface rustred and wrinkled under splashes of ice. Awed or intimidated by the sight, they fell silent.

  The Jennin was the first to speak. ‘The Backstory,’ he said. ‘The whole tangle of it. LuSi, think. Of course it has a storytelling unity. But doesn’t it all sound too complicated? If you were a Sim Designer and you going to invent a history for mankind, why make it so complex and unlikely? All these ships flying around an empty universe … And what about the elements of the Backstory that have nothing to do with mankind at all? What are they for?’

  JaEm frowned. ‘What do you mean, father?’

  The Jennin snorted. ‘Tell him, LuSi.’

  LuSi, embarrassed for JaEm, just said: ‘Look down.’

  They were in orbit now, swooping low over the northern hemisphere of Bigmars. Close to what looked unmistakeably like the shore of a sea, vanished save for glinting salt flats, were rows of dimples in the ground, like craters, small features seen from space but huge if you were down there among them. But they were not craters.

  ‘You know what they are,’ Jennin PiRo said. ‘Even you, JaEm -’

  ‘Evidence of starships.’

  ‘Yes. Construction yards, like on Urthen – maybe. Or at least the marks of the launch of starships. Interstellar technology is always going to be hugely energetic; it is always going to mark any planet on which it takes root. And we know this isn’t evidence of human activity because -’

  LuSi said, ‘It’s all too old. Sealed under water ice and frozen air.’

  ‘More air than water, but yes. What do we think happened to the people who built this?’

  ‘They left in their starships. Or else they died out here, so long ago that their tombs have eroded away …’

  ‘The Ember got too cool,’ said JaEm.

  ‘That’s it,’ said the Jennin. ‘That’s the story – or the Backstory. The Ember is cooling, slowly, but inexorably. At any point in time there is a location in space around the Ember where a planet is warm enough for life – life like ours, life that needs liquid water. Once Bigmars was warm enough. But the habitable radius moved in towards the Ember, and Bigmars froze. Much of its water is probably still there, but locked underground in big aquifers. Useless for life. All this took a long time, billions of Years, but it was inevitable. And, yes, LuSi, the inhabitants of Bigmars must have fled, or died out. Just as we, one day, will have to flee, when Urthen starts to freeze in its turn.’

  LuSi said carefully, ‘Some people think that adds to the authenticity of the Backstory. I mean, the story of the Ark. The crew must have come far; maybe they could go no further, and had to stop here, however imperfect the world is, however inadequate the Ember.’

  The Jennin snorted dismissively. ‘That’s not what I brought you here to see.’

  ‘I know,’ LuSi said. ‘It’s just like the starship yards at home. You argue that there is no need for a human Backstory to include evidence of a vanished alien civilisation.’

  ‘Well, why should it?’

  She faced him. ‘You say you want me to argue with my mother over her interpretation. But she has evidence on her side. At least for the consistency of the Backstory, the logic of the Sim. For instance, the very existence of mankind on the many worlds of the Bubble. How could we have got there if a ship didn’t deliver us?’

  ‘Oh, there are plenty of secondary colonies. We know that. But the primary worlds, including Airtree, Windru, Urthen - mankind arose separately on all these worlds. Convergent evolution. Our form is in some sense optimal for sentient, tool-wielding creatures.’

  ‘But it’s not just mankind. What about the Human Suite? That’s what the ecologists call it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Go on. What is the Human Suite?’

  ‘The creatures on which we rely, the grasses, the animals. Things we eat, or that can eat us. They are always to be found on human worlds – even though we have to share every world with other forms of life. Some quite unlike ours.’

  ‘So what? So on each world there has been a multiple origin of life – more than one tree of life. Why not? Why should the initiation of life be unique? And as for the Human Suite – convergent evolution, once again. What else?’

  ‘There’s the fact that the human worlds share elements of culture. Similarities of language, we all speak something like Anglish. We even use time measures like Years and Days that have nothing to do with the turn and spin periods of a world like ours -’

  ‘All probably imposed by the Xaians in their ideological fervour, much more recently than the flight of any Ark from a proto-world. Certainly that’s a much simpler explanation, and one based on an event we know happened, from the surviving records.’ The Jennin leaned forward. �
��Look, child. I’m not expecting you to swallow my arguments today. Or ever, even. I just believe that your mother needs a countering voice.

  ‘Her pet theory, and the theological orthodoxy on this world and many others - that we are all trapped in some artificial reality - is deadening for the human spirit. The standard Backstory, about the drowning primary world, the Ark, only reinforces the idea. On the other hand the notion that the universe is just as it seems, that humanity evolved independently on all these habitable worlds, is actually simpler; we don’t need an elaborate secret history to explain it all … If the Backstory is confirmed by your mother, the whole Sim hypothesis is strengthened too. Your mother is never going to be convinced by the likes of me, but at least she needs a counter-voice. She must be made to work hard to convince others, no matter what she finds out there among the stars. And that’s what I want of you, LuSi – to be that counter-voice …’

  ‘Or,’ JaEm said, reading a note scrolling on a comms screen, ‘you could do that job yourself, father.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The university has just made an announcement. It is a big project, after all; the journey will take at least a century, there and back. They want a presence on board, to ensure their objectives are met. The College of Zaens is apparently going to mandate it.’

  ‘Mandate what? … Oh. My presence on the ship?’

  ‘You’re going to the stars too.’ JaEm grinned at LuSi. ‘And so are we.’

  They couldn’t resist it. They flung themselves at each other and embraced.

  The Jennin groaned and rubbed his face. ‘Serves me right. Be careful what you wish for, in case you get it. I bet that saying is as old as mankind itself …’

  It took another year before the great starship Reality Dreams was ready to cross the interstellar gulf.

  It took fourteen more years to achieve that crossing.

  LuSi and JaEm were together on the ship; in the course of the journey they were even married. Thanks to their advanced anti-senescence science, the people of Urthen were long-lived; only a fraction of their potential lifetimes was expended.