World Engine

by Stephen Baxter

  Deirdra said eagerly, ‘And that’s why, Malenfant, Stavros Gershon said it was obvious that if he could be reconstructed, so could Ralph, the Mars guy, further back in time. All it needs for either of them is for there to be, if not a direct personal sample, then living descendants who are prepared to present their DNA.’

  ‘Right. Right. And if Stavros has such descendants, they are obviously descendants of Ralph too . . . But there are a hell of a lot of people in the world who die childless. What about them? The very young, for a start. Babies who die in the womb.’

  We can’t do it all, Malenfant. We are not gods. Every technology has limits. Sometimes we may retrieve evidence, records without the DNA. And sometimes, indeed, we retrieve DNA of some kind without a full record. Such as, yes, from the remains of a long-dead child. Or, even if there are no samples from the principal and their direct line is absent, we may attempt a partial reconstruction of DNA from samples of close relatives and their descendants. But there must be many who have left no trace at all. Places in the family tree, theoretically predicted by the genetic and historical analyses, that will never be filled. We can never reach perfection. But we aim to keep approaching that goal.

  ‘Historical records and DNA.’ He mused. ‘So if you only have half of the story—’

  ‘You only get half the person you’re looking for,’ Bartholomew said sadly.

  ‘I understand. So show me Emma.’ He glared at the air. ‘That’s what I came for. You know who I am. I’m her husband. Surely that’s all the authority you need. Bring her back.’

  He was answered by silence.

  Deirdra avoided his gaze.

  He felt confused. ‘Well? What’s the problem? Records and DNA, you said. Emma must be one of the most famous people in history – you have the records. As for the DNA – why, we were NASA astronauts. They took swabs all the time.’

  We have the records, of course. But no such samples of Emma Stoney have survived, Malenfant.

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  Bartholomew murmured, ‘Canaveral was barely saved from the flooding, Malenfant. There were losses of all kinds.’

  That was frustrating, but he took it on the chin. ‘OK. NASA never was too good at archiving its past anyhow. But, so what? I had a descendant – so did Emma – our son, Michael. So there must be family, out there in the world. And you said you can reconstruct an individual’s DNA from descendant traces.’

  That is correct. We hold DNA records for them, of course, as well as identity information. But we prize privacy highly, Malenfant, in this age. They have chosen not to come forward. You know that. Always noting that our use of the word ‘they’ does not imply the existence of more than one surviving descendant—

  ‘You really are a cousin of the Answerers, aren’t you?’ Malenfant tried to absorb that. ‘Right. Right. So you don’t have the descendant DNA. But you said you can extrapolate from samples from the descendants of relatives. Emma had a sister, Joan, a little younger than her. And I know for a fact that she had kids – four of them. Big Catholic family, right? Teenagers when I was lost. I refuse to believe not one of them left any descendants. And all those descendants will share some of their DNA with Emma. Isn’t that so?’

  Yes, Malenfant. That is so. And an extrapolation of an individual based on such data is generally far richer than based on records alone. But it can never be complete. And possibly never satisfactory.

  Malenfant thought it over. Then he said, ‘OK. So let’s try this. Just as an experiment.

  ‘Show me Nicola Mott.’

  21

  To her credit Deirdra understood the reference immediately. ‘Your co-pilot on the Constitution.’

  ‘Right. There must be records of her, as much as there would be of me. She was NASA too . . . No personal DNA samples, though, I’m guessing. Correct?’

  Yes.

  ‘And no descendant DNA. Mott was forty-nine years old when she died, right?’

  Correct.

  ‘I met her spouse. I gave Nicola away at her wedding, actually. She married Siobhan Libet, another astronaut. Long, happy marriage – no kids. So—’

  ‘Malenfant.’ Deirdra frowned. ‘You said, experiment. You want to bring this Nicola back as a kind of test, don’t you? To see what it would be like to bring Emma back without the DNA record. If it’s worthwhile for you. That seems – cruel.’

  Bartholomew said quickly, ‘I concur.’

  Malenfant, thinking of Gershon, that revenant’s eerie apparent longing to persist, felt himself flush. But he pushed back. ‘Why? Because I’m not strong enough to take in the results?’

  ‘Well, possibly not. Mott was a woman of your own time. A close companion, obviously. If she is brought back as an imperfect replica – Malenfant, I’m strongly advising you—’

  ‘Bring her back, Kleio. I guess there’s no family to refuse access in this case, right?’

  True. But I, we, are not irresponsible, Malenfant. We do have a duty of care to those who consult us—

  ‘I take full responsibility. Look – if you’ll show a seventeen-year-old kid the image of her dead father, you can show me the woman whose life I failed to save, in July 2019. Just do it.’

  . . . And she was there.

  Standing.

  In a blue NASA flight suit.

  Small in stature, her dark hair cropped short and neat.

  Just as he remembered, and presumably extrapolated from photographic records.

  She looked around, shocked, then fixed on his face. ‘Malenfant? Where the hell?’

  He stood, rushed to her, longed to hold her. But he could not. ‘Hey. Take it easy. It’s me, I’m here. Kleio, can she sit down?’

  Use any of the chairs in the room. The simulations overlap the reality. This is to enhance the authenticity of—

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Sit here, Nicola.’

  Nicola’s frown deepened. But she followed his lead to a chair, sat cautiously.

  Malenfant tried not to hover like a mother hen. He was aware of Bartholomew and Deirdra standing back, watching him anxiously, he thought.

  As anxiously as he was watching Nicola.

  There had always been something about the way she walked. Nicola Mott had had the ghost of a limp, from a childhood injury, a break that took a long time to heal. A limp that was more a habit, an over-compensation that had stuck with her all her life. Part of Nicola Mott.

  Now the limp wasn’t there.

  Unease gnawed at Malenfant. Subtle flaws, he thought. Extrapolation from incomplete records. It was still Nicola. It looked like Nicola. But part of his deep-frozen heart broke.

  He pulled himself together. ‘So. You OK? You want something to eat, drink?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘That can be arranged, right, Kleio?’

  Of course.

  ‘No.’ Nicola looked down at her hands. ‘I’m not thirsty. Not hungry. I’m not . . . How did we get here, Malenfant?’

  ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’

  ‘The Constitution. We were coming down . . . The spin.’

  Which is probably the moment when the last records of her terminated: when she blacked out during the booster’s flat spin. All else is extrapolation, Malenfant.

  Deirdra looked surprised at Nicola’s accent. ‘You’re British.’

  ‘English.’ Mott smiled vaguely. ‘Do I know you?’

  Malenfant pressed, ‘The Constitution, Nicola. Stay with me here. We kept working. Even as the damn bird plummeted out of the sky. Kept talking, kept working together, almost to the end. You remember?’

  She looked at him, and asked more firmly, ‘Where are we?’

  ‘In the future, Niki,’ he said softly. ‘The future.’

  She was blank, again.

  He said, ‘They managed to stabilise me, put me in suspended animation. You remember those trials, for the deep-space missions? They knew just enough to save me, but not to – well, bring me back. That took until now.’

  Again she looke
d blank. ‘When is now?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Niki. Let’s just talk, OK?’

  She just looked back with that disturbing passivity.

  He started with questions of fact. The log number of their last shuttle flight – ‘STS-719’ – that kind of factual stuff was fine. But every time his questions moved away from the high-profile, publicly visible stuff to her personal life – her home, her long-term partner – she was forgetful, vague, even evasive, as if she was embarrassed.

  Even when Kleio dug out an image of her partner, her reaction seemed subdued. Still, she smiled. ‘Sure. That’s Siobhan. Next weekend, after the flight, we were going to . . . umm . . .’

  Again, this reflects the imperfection of the records. Perhaps, for example, Siobhan Libet, in some interview after the crash, mentioned vague plans for a weekend Nicola did not live to see. She is unable to extrapolate. She’s not really remembering.

  Malenfant whispered, ‘So why does she smile?’

  For you, Malenfant. It’s what she thinks you want.

  In the end, it was Nicola who terminated the conversation. ‘I’m sorry, Malenfant. I guess this just isn’t working.’

  Malenfant felt a kind of desperation to hold on, not just to Nicola, but to what she represented. A thread of hope. ‘Sure it is. If we try just a little more . . . Oh, hell. Look, do you know who you are? I mean—’

  She is self-aware, Malenfant. After a fashion. But she is incomplete. And she knows it.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  Nicola looked away. ‘This person you call Kleio is speaking to me now, too. Explaining.’ A pause. ‘So that’s what is going on. That’s why . . .’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘I don’t feel – complete. Like I hurt my head. Or, that feeling you get when you faint? Everything seems remote, like you’re floating. I don’t feel anything, Malenfant. Not inside.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you back. Not like this.’

  ‘I guess you weren’t to know.’

  Deirdra started crying, softly.

  Bartholomew shook his head. ‘You had to find out for yourself, Malenfant, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s me, got to get my meddling hands under the hood. But I never meant to hurt you, Niki.’

  She smiled. ‘No. I know it. And I know you’ve brought me back for me, as well as for her. Emma. Not just to see if you could, right? But as for Emma – don’t do it, Malenfant. Not if the avatar isn’t complete. It will only break your heart, all over again.’ She looked at the screen. ‘Can I go now?’

  Malenfant, that’s your prerogative. As only a partial copy, she doesn’t have the right to self-determination—

  ‘Let her go.’

  Nicola smiled. ‘I’m glad to have seen you, Malenfant. Just for a few minutes. You thought of me. No regrets.’

  ‘Yeah . . .’ His eyes brimmed, for the first time, he thought, since he’d come out of the sleep pod. Angrily he brushed away the tears.

  By the time he’d completed that brusque gesture, she was gone.

  22

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘How can you people put yourselves through experiences like that?’

  ‘Generally,’ Bartholomew said reprovingly, ‘people don’t.’

  ‘Kleio. Tell me why the hell you are doing all this? All of it. The Codex, this endless collection of data. Filling in your two-hundred-billion-window Advent calendar.’

  Deirdra asked, ‘What’s a—’

  ‘Never mind. What’s the point of it all?’

  I can only tell you my interpretation, Malenfant. Of the motives of the society that created this programme, and asked the AIs for support – for it was a human societal goal. They called it the Restitution. The generations who established the Common Heritage, which sought to assure the human future, also sought to reclaim the past. To at least recognise the great wounds the species had suffered, or inflicted on itself, or inflicted on its world. Look at this place. Chester. The history preserved in the stone: waves of conquest and war, one overlapping the next.

  ‘Is that why you built this centre here?’

  Malenfant, it could have been almost anywhere. We cannot go back and correct the errors of the past. Clearly. But we can at least remember, with our modern tools. Or try.

  Malenfant was dissatisfied. ‘So you’re putting all this effort into a kind of hologram of the past, which you will probably complete, perfect as a snowflake, just about when the Destroyer comes along and melts it, and melts you.’

  I have my duty, Kleio said. And that’s enough for me.

  Bartholomew said drily, ‘It’s remarkable how few people are interested, frankly. Deirdra here is an honourable exception. I don’t think this is a shallow age, particularly. Probably every generation is the same. You make the most of your own time in the sunshine. What else is there to do?’

  ‘What else? Design pompous talking mannequins like you, maybe. So, anyhow. I’ve learned my lesson here. I can’t bring Emma back this way. I won’t. Not like poor Niki.’

  Deirdra once more took his hand. ‘Not like that. You’d hate it.’

  ‘Yeah. More to the point, so would she.’ He smiled. ‘In fact she’d probably tear me a new one before she popped out of her unsatisfactory existence. OK. And we can’t do any better unless my descendants give their approval to let Kleio use their DNA, with its traces of Emma? Then that’s what I’m going to have to work on. Look, Deirdra, you go on home. We don’t want to cause your mother any more trouble. Or wake up the Prefect.’

  Deirdra, predictably, was reluctant. ‘So you have a plan?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not really. More of a strategy. If you keep pushing, I’ve always found, doors usually open in the end. That’s what got me into NASA, ultimately. And I’m guessing there are plenty more doors to push in this Pylon. Literally, in fact. So that’s what we have to do. Come on, Bartholomew. I think we need to do a little exploring.’

  Bartholomew glowered at him – as much, Malenfant thought, as an Asimovian android could glower. ‘Malenfant—’

  ‘No, Bartholomew, this probably isn’t wise, and yes, I could very well be putting myself at some kind of risk here, but I’m doing it anyhow. So are you with me or agin me?’

  ‘Do I have any choice?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Lead me.’

  Malenfant grinned.

  And, as Deirdra reluctantly made her way out of the building and back to the flyer, Malenfant prowled around the chamber, looking for exits.

  23

  He soon found a way out of the central chamber, and emerged into a kind of lobby, the walls lined with elevator doors. An example of an obvious, generic layout that had probably been a century old in his day.

  He picked one of the elevators at random, found a set of directions on a plate by the door – the names of various kinds of archives, it seemed – ignored them all, and pushed the top square of an illuminated panel. No doubt there was voice control, even thought control, which he also ignored.

  When the doors slid open, Malenfant strode inside.

  Followed by Bartholomew, hurriedly.

  The elevator car rose with a slight jolt, then in smooth silence.

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing, Malenfant?’

  ‘Yeah. In principle.’

  ‘And do you understand where we are now? I mean – these lower floors are given over to study areas, open to the public, to scholars, anybody who wants to know.’

  Malenfant glanced at the board, and saw that, indeed, the various floors they were rising past seemed devoted to public displays of materials from different eras. He read the tags – or rather, he thought, his bangle mediated between his eyes and brain to read them for him. ‘Looks like we’re going back in time as we rise. Establishment of Common Heritage. The Chaos. The Anthropocene, 1950 to 2300 . . .’

  ‘Displays of research results, Malenfant. Overviews of what’s been salvaged of the past. I think you can use Kleio as a guide, or there are witness
es.’

  ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘Specialist Retrieved. Reconstructed witnesses of the past. Once created for some other purpose – a relative’s request – they volunteer to stay around, some of them. They talk to school parties, students at the beginning of their courses, amateurs who take an interest in particular epochs.’

  ‘I’d volunteer,’ Malenfant said now.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I were a Retrieved. To be a volunteer in one of these weird dioramas you’re describing. Telling people the story of STS-719, I guess, over and over. Sooner that than be trapped in a crystal limbo for all time. Jeez. I mean, if there is any trace of consciousness in those things—’

  Bartholomew nodded seriously. ‘That’s not an uncommon fear, Malenfant. You can make a will to that effect, you know. To refuse ever to be Retrieved. Just say the words and it will be recorded. I can advise you on any legal caveats.’

  ‘Let’s park that for now. I have a feeling that wherever I end up it ain’t going to be on display in some Pylon.’

  ‘And why does that give me a sinking feeling in my artificial stomach?’

  Malenfant grinned. ‘Probably a flaw in this crummy old elevator. Speaking of which . . .’

  The elevator drew to a smooth, almost imperceptible halt, and the doors slid open.

  Twentieth floor.

  Malenfant led the way out into a broad hall, empty, glowing with the same sourceless light as in Kleio’s chamber down below. And more elevators, metallic directory cards beside each door. This was some kind of interchange, then.

  He walked around at random. He barely recognised many of the terms on the directory cards: NEOGENETIC ARCHAEOLOGY, for example. His bangle whispered baby-talk interpretations in his ear, until he shut it down with a snapped command. He didn’t care; he wasn’t here to explore. He just picked the shaft with what looked like the longest directory list, and so, he hoped, access to the highest floors.