Century Rain

by Alastair Reynolds

  “There was something in the cargo he needed,” Tunguska said. “But he knew what he was looking for. We don’t. It would be difficult enough trying to find it even if we still had the cargo, or if Cassandra had had enough time to scan the contents at a higher level of resolution.”

  “Wait,” Floyd said, turning the record over again. “If she didn’t have time to examine the cargo in detail, where did this copy come from?”

  “Cassandra did the best she could, which means that the books and magazines and other journals haven’t been subjected to the kind of scrutiny she might have wished. But the recordings? It was actually a rather simple matter to make a holographic scan of the groove. A lot easier than scanning a paper document at microscopic resolution, looking for some hidden message.”

  Floyd tilted the sleeve this way and that. “But if there was a hidden message here, you’d have missed it as well.”

  “A hidden message like the co-ordinates of the ALS? Yes. But you already know that it would only take a tiny amount of data to specify that position. A few digits… easily hidden anywhere.”

  “Then it’s useless.”

  “I just thought the recordings might help the time pass. Given how much you like music—”

  “Yes,” Floyd said. “Very much so. And the gesture’s appreciated. But without something to play these on…”

  “Come, now,” Tunguska said, with a playful gleam in his eye. “You don’t think I’d have forgotten that, do you?”

  He was looking at something behind Floyd, on the bedside table next to the sunrise wireless. Floyd turned around. There stood a phonograph set, a good one, where there had definitely not been one a minute ago.

  “That’s a pretty good trick, Tunguska,” he said, smiling.

  “Enjoy the music, Floyd. I’ll return when I have some news.”

  After he had gone, Floyd slipped the disc on to the phonograph turntable and lowered the diamond-tipped needle into the groove. It crunched on to its track and then became quiet, except for the occasional click of static. Then the music began, Armstrong’s trumpet filling the room effortlessly, Lil Hardin’s piano bright and clear and cool, like rain on a hot day. Floyd smiled—it was always good to hear Satchmo, no matter the time or place—but there was something about the music that couldn’t rescue his spirits. Perhaps he was too worried about Auger and the rest of it to let the music have its intended effect. But even his scratched old Gennett copy had a life to it that was missing from this version. Somewhere between Paris and Cassandra’s ship, some essential spark had been bled from the music. Floyd pulled the platter off the turntable and returned it to its sleeve. He leafed through the box, finding the other jazz recordings and trying some of them, before abandoning the exercise. Maybe it wasn’t the recordings so much as the player, or the acoustics of the room, but something was wrong. It was like listening to someone almost whistle a tune.

  Nice try, Tunguska, he thought.

  Floyd leaned back on the bed, hands crossed behind his head. He turned on the wireless again, but the news was still the same.

  “You can speak to her now,” Tunguska said. “But please—take things easily. She’s been through a great deal in the last couple of days.”

  “I’ll treat her with kid gloves.”

  “Of course. By the way, Floyd—how are you getting on with those recordings?”

  “They’re a real nice thought,” Floyd said.

  “As in—‘it’s the thought that counts?’ ”

  “I’m sorry, Tunguska, but there’s something off about them. Maybe that phonograph needs a new needle. Or maybe it’s just me.”

  “I just wanted you to feel at home.”

  “And I appreciate the gesture. But don’t worry about me, all right? I’ll cope.”

  “You put a brave face on things, Floyd. I admire that.”

  Tunguska led him into the bright white chamber of the recovery room.

  “I’ll leave you alone with her,” Tunguska said. “The machines will let me know if she experiences any difficulties.”

  He stepped back through the white wall, which sealed itself tightly behind him, like blancmange.

  Auger was in a state of drowsy wakefulness, sitting up in bed with a fog of silver machines twinkling around her head and upper body. She saw him walking towards the bed and—despite her evident weariness—managed a smile.

  “Floyd! I thought they were never going to let you see me. I began to wonder if you were really all right.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, sitting on a toadstool-shaped pedestal next to the bed. He took one of her hands and stroked the fingers. He expected her to pull away, but instead she tightened her grip on him, as if she needed this moment of human contact. “Tunguska wanted you to have some peace and quiet while you got your head together.”

  “It feels as if I’ve been here for a hundred years, with my head ringing all the while.”

  “Is is better now?”

  “A bit. It still feels as if there’s a small debating society holding their annual meeting in my skull, though.”

  “Cassandra’s machines, I suppose. You remember what happened, don’t you?”

  “Not everything.” She pushed a strand of sweat-damp hair from her eyes. “I remember Cassandra dying… but not much else.”

  “Do you remember her machines asking permission to set up camp in your head?”

  “I remember feeling very frightened about something, but knowing I had to say ‘yes,’ and that I didn’t have long to think it over.”

  “You did a very brave thing,” Floyd said. “I’m proud of you.”

  “I hope it was worth it.”

  “It was. For the time being, anyway. Do you know where you are?”

  “Yes,” she said. “At least, as soon as I realise there’s something I don’t know, the information seems to pop into my head. We’re back on Cassandra’s ship, except that Tunguska’s running the show now.”

  “You think we can trust him?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” she said firmly, as if that should have been obvious. Then she frowned, just as suddenly less sure of herself. “No. Wait. How could I know him that well? That must be one of Cassandra’s memories…” Auger shook her head, as if she’d just taken a bite from a lemon. “This is strange. I’m not sure I like it.”

  “Tunguska said that Cassandra’s machines seem to have taken a shine to you,” Floyd said.

  “Don’t tell me I’m stuck like this for ever.” She said it in an off-hand way, but not quite convincingly enough.

  “Probably just until the crisis is over,” Floyd said, doing his best to sound reassuring. “Do you remember that escape craft Cassandra was confident they were going to shoot down?”

  “Yes,” Auger said, after a moment.

  “Well, it got away. Made rendezvous with a bigger, faster ship. According to Tunguska, the evidence trail points to Niagara.”

  This, at last, seemed to push Auger towards full alertness. She sat up straight in the bed, pushing her hair back. “We have to stop that ship before it reaches a portal. Nothing else matters.”

  “We tried,” Floyd said.

  “And?”

  “No one could catch up with Niagara. And he’d already taken control of the portal.”

  “I thought you said we were still chasing him.”

  “We are. Tunguska sent reinforcements to regain control of the portal. His boys kept it open for us. We’re in the hyperweb at this very moment.”

  She looked around, perhaps doubting his words. Floyd, too, had found it difficult to believe that a portal transition could be this smooth, this unexciting. It was like a ride in a well-oiled hearse.

  “So where is Niagara right now?” she asked.

  “Somewhere ahead of us, further along the pipe.”

  “I didn’t think they ever put two ships in at the same time,” Auger said, frowning.

  “I don’t think it’s exactly routine.”

  “Does Tunguska think we’ll
catch up with Niagara’s ship, or maybe get close enough to shoot it down?”

  “I don’t know. I think he’s more worried about what will happen when Niagara pops out the other end. There’s a danger we’ll lose the trail.”

  “That can’t be allowed to happen,” Auger said. “If we lose the trail, then we lose everything. Your whole world, Floyd—everyone you know, everyone you ever loved—will die in an instant.”

  “I’ll tell Tunguska to throw a few more chairs in the furnace.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, sinking back into the hollow of her pillow, as if drained of energy. “I don’t know why I’m making this any more difficult for you than it already is. Tunguska’s bound to be doing all he can.” Then she looked at Floyd sharply, some random dislodged memory slotting back into place. “The ALS co-ordinates,” she said. “Did you figure them out?”

  “No. Tunguska’s still chewing on that one. He says we may never find them.”

  “We’re missing something here, Floyd. Something so damned obvious it’s staring us in the face.”

  Tunguska came to see her a little later. He was a huge man, but he moved and spoke with such unhurried calm that Auger couldn’t help but relax in his presence. His mere existence seemed to assure her that nothing bad would happen.

  “Have you come to let me out of bed?” she asked. “I feel as if I’m missing all the excitement.”

  “In my experience,” Tunguska said, making himself a temporary seat, “excitement is always better when it happens to other people. But that’s not why I came. I have a message for you. We intercepted it shortly before entering the portal.”

  “What kind of message?”

  “It’s from Peter Auger. Would you like to see it?”

  “You really should have told me sooner.”

  “Peter specifically asked that you not be disturbed until you were feeling better. Anyway, there was no possibility of replying. We told Peter that you would be unconscious until we were already in the hyperweb.”

  “Then he knows I’m safe?”

  “He does now. But why don’t I just play the message?” Without waiting for an answer, Tunguska cast a hand towards one wall and conjured a screen into being. It filled with a flat, static image of Peter, looking a bit more harried and rough around the edges than usual.

  “I’ll leave you to view the message in private,” Tunguska said, standing and gesturing for his seat to dissolve into the floor.

  The image came to life as soon as Tunguska left the room.

  “Hello, Verity,” Peter said. “I hope that this reaches you safe and sound. Before you start worrying, I want you to know that the kids are all right. We’re in the protection of Polity moderates—friends of Cassandra’s—and they’re taking very good care of us. Tunguska will make sure we’re all reunited once this madness is over.”

  “Good,” Auger mouthed.

  “Now let’s talk about you,” Peter continued. “I still don’t have all the facts—and I don’t expect to get them until we’re face to face—but I’ve heard enough to know that you’re basically intact and that you’re in excellent hands. I’m sorry about what happened to Caliskan and Cassandra. I know you’ve been through quite an ordeal since you returned from E2, never mind what actually happened at the other end of the link. All I can say is—and I know this is going to sound strange coming from me—but I’m proud to know you. We would have been satisfied if all you’d done was complete the mission that was assigned to you. But you did so much more than that. You lived up to the memory of Susan White. You made sure her death was not in vain.” Peter paused and held up a flat display screen upon which a complex three-dimensional form—like a metallic snowflake or starfish—twisted and tumbled. “You probably won’t recognise this. It’s a single replicating element of Silver Rain—the same strain that Cassandra’s people think Niagara has got his hands on.”

  He was right: she shouldn’t have recognised it. But she had felt a glimmer of familiarity when she first saw the rotating form. Cassandra’s machines recognised it, even if Auger didn’t.

  “Officially, it never should have been possible,” Peter went on. “All stocks were supposed to have been incinerated twenty years ago. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. In blatant violation of the treaty, the Polities held on to a strategic reserve. They even dedicated a small team to making improvements in the weapon.”

  “Bastards,” Auger said.

  “But don’t be too harsh on them,” Peter said with a glint in his eye, as always knowing exactly what her response would be. “We did just the same. The only difference is that our research teams weren’t quite so inventive. Or, perhaps, clever.” He tilted the display screen so that he was able to look at it for himself. “Really, what the Polity scientists did was very simple. The original Silver Rain was a broad-spectrum anti-biological agent. It couldn’t discriminate between people and plants, or any kind of micro-organism. It infiltrated itself into all living organisms and killed them all at the same preprogrammed moment: that’s why we still have the Scoured Zone on Mars. Very good for destroying an entire ecology… not so good for surgically removing one element of it. But the new strain is able to do just that—it’s human-specific. When it’s done its work, there will be nobody left alive anywhere on E2. In a few weeks there won’t even be corpses. Yet in every other respect the ecosystem will remain untouched. To the rest of nature, it will feel like a brief, bad fever has just ended. A million-year fever called Homo sapiens. The cities will crumble and decay. The dams will crack and collapse. The wilderness will reclaim what was rightfully its own. The animals probably won’t even notice the difference, except that the air will taste a little cleaner to the birds, and the oceans will sound a little quieter to the whales. There won’t even be any nuclear power stations or ships to run out of control, poisoning the world when their masters depart.”

  Peter cleared the panel with a flex of his wrist and placed it aside. “Why am I telling you all this, when Niagara already has the weapon? Simply because you are our only hope of stopping this from happening. If that weapon is released into the atmosphere of E2, understand that it will work. There is no realistic probability of failure. No antidote we can release later, and hope that it mops up the replicators before they trigger. The only way to stop this happening is to intercept Niagara before he reaches Earth. If he isn’t intercepted, the murder of three billion souls in E2 will be bad enough. But that’s not the end of it. If the aggressors fail, then I believe we have a hope of ending this insane war before it escalates any further. We may have lost the Earth, but we don’t have to lose the entire system. But if Silver Rain reaches E2, the hardliners on our side will never consent to any ceasefire, even with the moderates. It will go all the way. It will be the end of everything.” He shrugged. “We’ll lose, of course. I just felt you needed to be absolutely clear about that, so that you know what’s at stake.”

  “I know,” Auger said. “You didn’t have—”

  “I know, I know,” Peter said, nodding. “After all that you’ve gone through, all that you’ve done for us, to have to ask this much more of you… it’s neither fair nor reasonable. But we simply have no alternative. I know you have the strength, Verity. More than that, I know you have the courage. Just do what you can. And then come home to us. You have more friends than you know, and we’re all waiting for you.”

  Later, she had another visitor. The dark-haired girl walked into the room without invitation, then stood demurely at the foot of her bed with her hands clasped behind her back, as if awaiting some mild reprimand for late homework.

  “I could make myself transparent, if you thought that might help,” Cassandra said.

  “Don’t bother. I know you’re not real.”

  “I felt it best to appear in person. You don’t mind, do you? Compared to what I’ve already done to you, altering your perceptual feeds seems rather tame.”

  “What is this about, Cassandra?”

  “It’s about
you and me. It’s about what happened to us, and what we do about it.”

  “I’m under no illusions,” Auger said. “You hijacked my body to save us in Paris.”

  “I also saved myself in the process. I can’t deny that there was a degree of self-interest involved.”

  “Why? I’m sure those machines of yours could have hidden themselves out of harm’s way until the danger was over.”

  “They could have, but I wouldn’t have survived very long without a host mind. A personality is a fragile thing at the best of times.”

  Auger felt some chill sense of what Cassandra had endured. “How much of you…” But she couldn’t find it in herself to finish the question.

  “How much of me survived? More than I could have hoped for. A lot less than I would have liked. Mentally, I had time to write a message in a bottle. You’re talking to that message.”

  “And your memories?”

  “In principle, the machines would only ever have been able to encode and transfer a tiny fraction. My memories feel complete… but thin, like a sketch for a life rather than the thing itself. There’s no texture to them, no sense that I actually lived through those events. I feel as if my life is something that happened to someone else, something I only heard about at second-hand.” She composed herself, looking down at her shoes. “But perhaps that’s what life always feels like. The trouble is, I can’t remember if there was a difference before I died.”

  “I’m sorry, Cassandra.”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong—it’s better than being dead. And when we sort out this mess, there’ll always be a chance that I can reintegrate backed-up memories from the Polity mnemonic archives. If they survive.”

  “I hope they do.”

  “We’ll see. The main thing is that I’ve made it this far. I have you to thank for that, Auger. You could have refused me.”

  “I don’t remember a discussion taking place.”

  Cassandra gave a half-smile. “Well, it didn’t take very long, I’ll admit. And in the process of me storming your brain, you probably lost the last few seconds of your short-term memory. But I assure you I had your permission to do what needed to be done.”