Obelisk

by Stephen Baxter

  DEDICATION

  For Lloyd

  OBELISK

  STEPHEN BAXTER

  GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Dedication

  Title Page

  PROXIMA-ULTIMA

  On Chryse Plain

  A Journey to Amasia

  Obelisk

  Escape from Eden

  OTHER YESTERDAYS

  The Jubilee Plot

  Fate and the Fire-lance

  The Unblinking Eye

  Darwin Anathema

  Mars Abides

  Eagle Song

  OTHER TODAYS

  The Pevatron Rats

  The Invasion of Venus

  OTHER TOMORROWS

  Turing’s Apples

  Artefacts

  Vacuum Lad

  Rock Day

  StarCall

  Afterword

  Also by Stephen Baxter from Gollancz

  Copyright

  PROXIMA-ULTIMA

  ON CHRYSE PLAIN

  ‘You haven’t even seen a picture of her,’ Jonno said, panting as he pedalled.

  ‘She’s called Hiroe,’ Vikram said.

  ‘Your bride-to-be in Hellas Basin!’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Jonno laughed, wheezing.

  The flycycle dipped, and Vikram had to push harder to bring them back up to their proper altitude. It was always like this with Jonno. At fifteen he was the same age as Vikram, but a few centimetres shorter and a good few kilos heavier, enough to unbalance the cycle. Jonno didn’t have enough breath to talk and cycle. But he talked anyhow.

  Vikram didn’t mind taking the strain for his friend. He liked the feel of his legs pumping at the pedals, his breath deepening, the skinsuit snug around him, the slow unwinding of the crumpled landscape under them, the way the translucent wings above the cycle frame caught the buttery light of the Martian afternoon. He liked the idea that it was his muscles, and his muscles alone, propelling them across the sky.

  But Jonno kept on about Hiroe. ‘You worry too much. Just because you haven’t seen a picture doesn’t necessarily mean she looks like she was hatched by a rock bug.’

  ‘Shut up! Where are we anyhow?’

  Jonno glanced down and tapped his wristmate. ‘That’s Chryse Plain, I think. We just crossed the highland boundary. Wow, look at those outflow channels.’ Where, billions of years ago, vast rivers had briefly flowed from Mars’s southern highlands into the basin of the northern sea, cutting deep valleys and spilling megatonnes of rocks over the plains. ‘What a sight it must have been, once.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You don’t care, do you?’

  Vikram shrugged, pedalling. ‘It’s all about the journey for me. Getting the job done.’

  ‘Checking out those weather stations at Acidalia. Getting the credits for another A-grade. You’ve got no imagination, man.’

  Something distracted Vikram. Odd lights in the sky. He squinted, and tapped his faceplate to reduce the tint.

  ‘Or,’ Jonno said, ‘you’ve got the wrong kind of imagination. Like with Hiroe. You could always wear a disguise in the wedding photos—’

  Vikram pointed. ‘What’s that?’

  The sky was full of shining trails.

  When the plasma glow cleared from around her clamshell, and the gnarly landscape of Mars was revealed beneath her, Natalie whooped. She couldn’t help it. She’d made it. She’d dived down from orbit, lying flat on the broad disc of the clamshell, and had got through the heat of atmospheric entry, and now she was skimming through the air of another world. The air of Mars was thinner than Earth’s, but it was deeper, and she was high, so high the world was curved beneath her. The shrunken sun, off to her left, was low and cast long shadows over the channelled plains.

  And all around her she saw the contrails scratched across the sky by the rest of her school group, dozens of them on their shells.

  Benedicte’s voice crackled in her ears. ‘You stayed on your shell this time, Nat?’

  ‘Yes, Benedicte, I stayed on.’

  ‘Well, we’re over the Chryse Plain, as advertised. Betcha I get the first sighting of the Viking lander.’

  ‘Not a chance!’ And Natalie lunged forward, shifting her weight, so her clamshell cut into the thickening air.

  But she wasn’t used to the Martian air. She didn’t get the angle quite right. She could feel it immediately.

  ‘Natalie, you’re too steep. Pull out … I lost you. Natalie. Natalie!’

  The clamshell dug deeper into the air, and started to shudder.

  This wasn’t good.

  And there seemed to be something in the way.

  ‘Clamshell trails,’ Jonno said. He leaned sideways so he could see the sky, around the edge of the wing. ‘Earthworm tourists.’

  They hit a pocket of turbulence and the flycycle bucked and shuddered, the rigging creaking. Vikram said, ‘Hey, get back in, man. I’m having trouble keeping us on our track.’

  ‘Look at those babies,’ Jonno said wistfully, still leaning out. ‘You know, some day, if I can afford it—’

  It came out of the sky, almost vertically, a bright green disc with somebody clinging to its back. Vikram actually saw a head turned towards him, a shocked face behind a visor, a mouth opened in an ‘O’.

  He hauled at the joystick. The flycycle’s big fragile rudder turned, creaking. It wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough.

  The clamshell cut through the flycycle like a blade through paper. The cycle folded up, crumpling, and started to fall, spiralling down towards the plain of Chryse.

  And Jonno groaned. Vikram saw that the instrument console had jammed into Jonno’s chest. Vikram couldn’t even reach him.

  He tried the controls. Nothing responded, and the machine was bent out of shape anyhow. They were going down. Their best hope was that the cycle’s fragile structure might slow down their fall enough for them to walk away from the crash. But as they descended the spinning increased, and the structure creaked and snapped.

  That clamshell was in trouble too. Vikram glimpsed it tumbling down out of the air.

  And the rock-strewn ground of Chryse loomed beneath them, the detail exploding. Vikram braced.

  Natalie took a step forward, then another. Red dust scattered at her feet. She was walking on Mars, for the first time in her life. In the low gravity, she felt like she was floating.

  She was on a plain of dusty sand, strewn with rocks. The sun was small and low in a deep red sky, and cast long, sharp shadows from rocks that looked as if they hadn’t been disturbed for a billion years. She saw nothing, nobody, no vehicles or buildings. She was alone.

  She wasn’t supposed to be here.

  She didn’t remember climbing out of the clamshell. Just the approaching ground, her fight to bring up the rim of the shell so that at least she’d land at a shallow angle, the punch in the gut as the shell’s underside hit the ground and began to scrape over the dust …

  She turned around. There was the clamshell, cracked and crumpled. And a gully, hundreds of metres long, cut through the dust where she had skidded. The clamshell had a small liquid-rocket pack that should have kicked her back to orbit when she’d finished skimming the air. But the small, spherical fuel tanks were broken open. It couldn’t have got her to orbit anyhow, not from here.

  Her suit was comfortable, warm. She could hear the whir of the fans in her backpack. She tested her legs and arms, her fingers. Nothing broken, and her suit was working, keeping her alive. It was a
miracle she’d walked away from the crash, but she had. Now she just needed to get off this rock.

  ‘Benedicte,’ she called. ‘Doctor Poulson? I’m down. Somewhere on Chryse Plain, I guess …’

  Nothing. No reply. Her suit comms were very short range. The structure of the clamshell contained amplifier boosters and an antenna … But the clamshell was wrecked.

  She was out of touch. She couldn’t talk to anybody.

  The shock hit her like a punch, worse even than the crash. It must have been the first time in her life she had been cut out of the nets that spanned Earth and moon and beyond. It was an eerie feeling, as if she didn’t exist.

  But they would be looking for her. Benedicte had seen her duck down, hunting the Viking. And from orbit they ought to see the clamshell, and the trench she’d cut when she crashed … But Natalie had a habit of shutting up when she was intent on some quest, like finding the Viking. She hadn’t actually reported she was in trouble.

  So even Benedicte probably didn’t know she was missing. It might be a long time before anybody noticed she wasn’t around.

  The clamshell flight hadn’t been supposed to last long. She had no food, no water save in the sachet inside her suit, a few mouthfuls. No shelter, except maybe her emergency pressure bag. The power in her suit wouldn’t last more than a few hours.

  It seemed to be getting darker. How long was a Martian day? How cold did it get on Mars at night? She felt a touch of panic, a black shadow crossing her mind.

  She turned and walked away from the shell, distracting herself. Moving on Mars was dreamlike, somewhere between walking and floating. ‘Well, Benedicte,’ she said, ‘if you can’t hear me now, you can listen to me later, if I’m picked up. When I’m picked up. So here I am, walking on Mars. Who’d have thought it?’ She stopped, panting shallowly. Sunlight shone into her face, casting reflections from the surface of her faceplate. ‘Sunset on Mars. The sky here is different. Oh, I should take some pictures.’ She tapped a control on the side of her faceplate. The sun was small and surrounded by an elliptical patch of yellow light, suspended in a brown sky. It looked unreal. She shivered, although her suit temperature couldn’t have varied. The shrunken sun made Mars seem a cold, remote place.

  She looked back at the crumpled clamshell. A single set of footsteps, crisp in the dust, led to where she stood. Nobody knew she was here. She was walking around, breathing, talking. But was she already effectively dead?

  The land wasn’t completely flat, she saw now. She made out low sand dunes. And she could see something off to the north, on the horizon. Like a pile of rocks. A cairn, maybe? Something made by humans. It didn’t excite her too much. A pile of rocks wouldn’t keep her alive. But there could be a beacon.

  She walked forward, towards the ‘cairn’. It was somewhere to go. ‘Keep walking, Natalie. Walk, don’t think—’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’

  The lone girl whirled around, kicking up dust.

  ‘So did she hear us this time?’ Jonno was leaning on Vikram. They were limping forward, towards the girl and the wreck of her clamshell, step by step through the clinging dust.

  ‘I think so,’ Vikram said. ‘The search system says it got a ping that time. But her comms set-up must be really short range. We were practically on top of her before she heard us.’

  The girl replied, ‘My main comms system is in the clamshell. And that’s smashed up.’

  ‘Funny kind of accent,’ Vikram said.

  ‘That’s Earth folk for you.’ Jonno tried to lift his head. ‘I can’t see her too well.’

  ‘She’s wearing a kind of skinsuit,’ Vikram said scornfully. ‘Bright green stripes. Looks like it’s painted on. Typical Earthworm.’

  They were only metres apart now. The girl put her hands on her hips and glared at them. ‘Martians, are you?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Vikram glanced around theatrically. ‘So who were you talking to? Who’s Benedicte? Your imaginary friend?’

  ‘I’m recording my observations,’ she said defensively. ‘My name is Natalie Rivers.’

  ‘I’m Jonno. This is Vikram,’ Jonno gasped, massaging his chest through his suit.

  Vikram could make out her face, through a dusty, scarred visor. High cheekbones, picked out by the low sun. She was frowning, uncertain.

  She asked, ‘Are you from Eden?’

  Jonno laughed, but it hurt him and he groaned. ‘Why do Earthworms think every Martian is from Eden? No. We’re from Rebus.’

  ‘Another of those domed towns.’

  ‘Yes, another of those domed towns.’

  ‘So what do you want? Have you come to rescue me?’

  Vikram snorted. ‘Do we look like it? I’ll tell you who we are. We’re the two guys you nearly killed with your dumb clamshell.’

  Her mouth opened in an ‘O’. ‘There was something in the way as I came down.’

  ‘That,’ Jonno said, ‘was our flycycle. Now it’s smashed to pieces.’

  Vikram snapped, ‘You Earthworms should keep out of our airspace.’

  ‘And you should have got out of the way,’ she shot back. ‘There was a whole swarm of us. Why didn’t you just—’

  ‘Why didn’t you—’

  ‘Not helping,’ Jonno wheezed. ‘Let’s work out whose fault it is after we’re all safe. Agreed?’

  Natalie stayed silent, and Vikram nodded curtly.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘What’s the plan?’

  Vikram laughed. ‘Plan? What plan?’

  ‘You must have comms. Do your people know where you are?’

  Vikram hesitated.

  ‘Tell her the truth,’ Jonno said.

  ‘We don’t have comms,’ Vikram admitted. ‘Our primary comms system was built into the flycycle.’

  She nodded. ‘As mine was built into the clamshell. So where’s your backup?’

  Vikram took a breath. ‘In my room, back in Rebus.’

  Natalie stared. ‘Why, of all the stupid—’

  ‘Save it,’ Vikram said, chagrined. ‘I’ve been getting that from Jonno since the crash.’

  ‘We all make mistakes,’ Jonno said. ‘What’s important is what we do now.’

  Natalie said, ‘Maybe there’s some kind of beacon at that cairn.’

  Vikram frowned. ‘What cairn?’

  ‘I saw it before.’ She climbed the bank and pointed. ‘Over there. Come on.’ She strode away without hesitation, although Vikram was spitefully glad to see she stumbled a couple of times in the apparently unfamiliar gravity.

  With no better idea, Vikram helped Jonno to his feet and trudged after her.

  ‘I never heard of a cairn,’ Jonno wheezed. ‘Or a beacon.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Confident, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. But she’ll be wrong about the cairn. It’ll just be a pile of rocks.’

  As it turned out, it was more than a pile of rocks.

  Natalie stood there, looking at the ‘cairn’. Vikram helped Jonno sit down in a bank of soft dust.

  The ‘cairn’ was a machine – a big one, topped off by a dust-filled dish antenna about two metres off the ground, above their heads. Its body was a six-sided box that stood on four legs. On the box’s upper surface was a forest of gadgets, and an arm thrust out of the side, with a trenching tool on the end stuck in the dirt. Dust had drifted up against the machine, and its surfaces were yellowed and cracked from long exposure to the sunlight. It had evidently been here a long time.

  A blue plaque stood on a post, a marker left by the planetary preservation authorities. Words in English, French, Indian and Chinese. Vikram didn’t bother to read it. It didn’t matter what it said.

  ‘Here’s your cairn,’ he said to Natalie. ‘Here’s your beacon. A stupid old space probe.’

  ‘Not just any probe.’ Vikram saw she
was taking images with her visor. ‘This is Viking One. The first successful lander.’

  Vikram frowned. ‘You mean, before Cao Xi?’

  ‘Long before him. He was the first human to land here. But the Americans and the Russians sent the first machines.’

  ‘The Americans, and who? Never mind.’

  A thin wind kicked up dust that sifted against the silent carcass. ‘Been here centuries then,’ Jonno said.

  ‘Well – about a hundred and thirty years. Or a hundred and forty. It’s what I was looking for, when I dipped down in the clamshell.’

  ‘Looks like you found it,’ Vikram said. ‘Congratulations. Some kind of robot, is it? So it’s got no water tank or first-aid kit. No use, then.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, dust-digger,’ she said, her cultivated voice full of withering contempt. ‘At least I tried. What have you done but moan and bitch?’

  Vikram would have replied, but Jonno cut him off. ‘She’s got a point. It will be night soon.’

  Natalie frowned. ‘We’ll be found before dark. Surely.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ Jonno said. ‘Does anybody know you’re down here? No? Nobody’s going to miss us either, not for a couple of days until our next check-in time.’

  ‘You only have to check in every couple of days?’

  Vikram shrugged. ‘We “dust-diggers” are self-reliant.’

  ‘You don’t look very self-reliant to me. They’ll see us.’ She glanced up. ‘Surely you have surveillance satellites.’

  ‘Few and far between,’ Jonno said. ‘This isn’t Earth. This is Mars. The frontier.’

  ‘But this stupid little rock of a planet – it’s so small! How can you possibly get lost?’

  ‘It’s a stupid little rock with about as much land area as Earth,’ Jonno said. ‘Most of it unexplored. There are only a few thousand of us, you know. Martians. Plenty of room to get lost in. And besides, just how visible do you think we are from space?’

  She laughed. ‘Look at the colour of my suit!’ But when she looked down she saw that the bright green and blue design was already obscured by rust-coloured dust. She brushed at the dust with her gloved hands, but it stuck.