World Engine

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Yes. And, once there, it looks like they encountered the same anomalies I did.’

  ‘What anomalies, though?’

  She sighed. ‘There I can’t help you, Malenfant. I told you. My memories end when the radio transcript runs out.’

  Malenfant said slowly, ‘You think this message – Emma II – she comes from some different history? Our history and hers, lying side by side like pages in a book, in some – manifold – of all possible realities. Manifold: my dad used to use that word.Like that novel you loaned me once, where the Nazis won their war.’

  Emma smiled. ‘Philip K. Dick. I don’t think Hitler needed to win to make this happen. Just for Richard Nixon to wake up in a better mood one morning.’

  Malenfant looked at her. ‘But what’s this got to do with the Phobos anomaly? Which is what you were sent to find out about in the first place.’

  She smiled, tiredly. ‘And the other me, in the Timor. Well, I don’t know, Malenfant. But now it’s all got thoroughly bound up with our own complicated lives, hasn’t it? And the end of the world. Of this world, anyhow.’

  ‘The Destroyer?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know. But everything else is interconnected, why not that?’

  He tried to think all this through. ‘So what should I do?’

  She spread her hands. ‘Do what I would do if I were – incarnate. Go find out more. Do something about it.’

  ‘The memory stores here are limited. Damaged. The Answerers—’

  ‘The solar flare, I know. Well, hell, Malenfant, you’re a smart guy. Look for other stores of data, that weren’t so fritzed by the solar flare.’

  By which, Malenfant guessed, she had to mean the Planetary AIs . . . She seemed to have found out almost everything else; she was probably aware of those off-world caches of wisdom too.

  But he glanced over at Bartholomew. ‘How, though? I’m practically under house arrest.’

  ‘You got this far, didn’t you? You’ll figure it out. You always do. Eventually. One step at a time, maybe.’

  ‘Big me up, why don’t you?’

  ‘And above all you need to go out there to save her.’

  ‘Emma II?’

  She smiled, sadly. ‘I know how much you love me, Malenfant. Or loved me. My God, it’s impossible not to know. And I know that if I was lost you’d come get me.’

  ‘I did come get you.’ He held out his arms. ‘I made the Codex bring you back.’

  ‘But I’m not – here, Malenfant. I never was.’ She snapped her fingers.

  Emma II’s voice sounded again. If you can hear this, come get me . . . If anybody can, you can. I don’t know why I believe that, but I do—

  ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘She’s calling you. Go get her.’

  ‘No. Emma—’

  ‘I’m not Emma. Get your bald head out of your butt, Malenfant. I’m not real. I never was. She is. Go to her.’ She stood up. ‘Kleio. I want to end this now. Do I have the right to ask?’

  You do. If you are sure—

  ‘Emma!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Malenfant. I won’t come back. This is too, too . . .’

  Her voice was fading. She seemed to grow pale.

  Malenfant lunged forward. It was like trying to embrace smoke.

  She was gone.

  Malenfant collapsed, then, on the floor, on the space where she had been, and wept as he hadn’t since 2005 itself.

  After an unmeasured time, once again he felt Bartholomew’s hand on his shoulder.

  28

  Back in Birmingham, Malenfant wasted a week.

  Wasted: he knew it. He did nothing constructive, didn’t speak to anybody unless he had to, didn’t watch a movie through to the end – definitely didn’t read a book from the apparently infinite electronic library available to him – barely stirred from his room.

  He tried not to snarl at Deirdra when she came to call.

  He was frostily polite to Mica – well, he was still in her home. Even when she passed on a message from Kapoor Thera, the pastor at the diocese office, that his stipend was being impounded to pay for the repairs to the Chester Pylon, still he was polite.

  He did snarl at Bartholomew. He didn’t even keep up his physio and yoga routines.

  But, so what? What was he supposed to do with his time? With this useless post-life that he had somehow been gifted by an accident of technology, and a message from another corner of some bullshit multiverse . . .

  He spent hours staring at his dumb Shit Cola can.

  The problem was that he had achieved his goal, in a way. The single goal he had clung to since he had woken up in the coldsleep tank. He had hung himself out to dry in front of the whole of this future world in order to force it to give him his single desire, Emma. But she had proved as evanescent as a late frost on a spring morning.

  OK, she had instructed him to follow the siren call of that other Emma, off-planet at Phobos. But that was all too strange – more mystery, in a world that was already mysterious to him. Hell, he didn’t even understand what motivated Greggson Deirdra, let alone begin to comprehend the mysteries of a manifold of different histories.

  A manifold containing another Emma.

  He didn’t need a robot shrink like Bartholomew to tell him that he was working through some kind of trauma.

  Maybe this was all delayed culture shock, in the end. He was the man out of time, the sleeper. Any which way he looked he encountered the unfamiliar, the people, the places – products of four centuries of history he still knew barely anything about – and, all the time, he missed the simple texture of his old life. He felt like a reluctant tourist stranded abroad. Very often he missed family, Emma, Michael – and his rejection by Michael’s descendants had hurt more than he wanted to admit, he knew.

  Hell, he knew he could sit and watch every Superbowl from 2019 onwards. But it wouldn’t be real. He would be like a giant panda in a San Diego zoo chewing on imported bamboo stalks – and knowing about it.

  He had no escape, from this place, this time, this culture.

  Well, one escape, theoretically.

  Which probably wouldn’t work. Bartholomew watched him all the time, he was sure, even when they weren’t physically in the same room together. And if they had managed to revive his four-hundred-year-old spaceship-crashed corpse, they could probably reverse any attempt he made to render himself irrevocably dead.

  Which would leave things even worse than before.

  This was the mood he was in when, a full week after the Codex stunt, the Answerer asked to speak to him.

  29

  The Hall of the Answerer, in the Walsall Pylon, was just as it had been before: the oddly formal, old-fashioned stone courtyard, the wall, the screen.

  But this time it felt crowded to Malenfant. Because here, in addition to himself, Deirdra and Bartholomew, with whom he had driven over, were Greggson Mica and Prefect Morrel.

  And as Malenfant and his party arrived, Mica and Morrel were standing over some kind of diorama, glowing with light, hanging in mid-air in the hall. Malenfant glimpsed ocean blue.

  Malenfant walked up without hesitation. ‘Wasn’t expecting you two.’

  Morrel glared, his grey formal gear as immaculate and formidable as ever. ‘And I, Malenfant, have far better things to do with my time than waste more of it on you.’

  Malenfant spread his hands. ‘So why did you come here?’

  I asked him to, Colonel Malenfant. As part of your support network.

  ‘Support network?’ He barked laughter, looking at Morrel. ‘Seriously?’

  They are all you have, Malenfant. And they must be involved in the decision facing you.

  ‘What decision?’ Malenfant turned to Bartholomew. ‘This is unusual, isn’t it? For an Answerer to request an interview? Surely it’s the other way round, customarily.’

  Bartholomew nodded. ‘It is the way. After the Planetary AIs withdrew, saying they wanted no involvement with human affairs – and, I unders
tand, the feeling was mutual – that seems to have become the stance taken by the ground-based algorithmic AIs also. They want to support human culture, not interfere with it. They don’t volunteer. At least that is the custom.’

  Malenfant grunted. ‘You’re an AI, and you “volunteer” like hell.’

  Deirdra was captivated by the diorama. ‘Never mind the banter, you two. Come and see this. It’s beautiful, Malenfant.’

  They gathered around the display. It was a seascape, he saw now. A three-dimensional image of ocean and land, as if viewed from the air. An exquisite rendering.

  And immediately, naggingly familiar.

  Malenfant saw an island, set in ocean blue, separated from a mainland by what looked like the mouth of a broad river. The mainland itself had been heavily encroached upon by the sea; Malenfant saw scattered buildings, even small towns, all drowned, the stumps of roads and rail links rising from remnant scraps of dry land. The island itself was a triangle, with a long side running roughly north–south, its shorter sides pointing east. Much of the island seemed to have been kept clear of the ocean water by walls and barriers, and he saw a network of roads, causeways and bridges linking the island to the mainland, many broken.

  And a distinctive, unusual feature: blocky structures set out in a regular row down the eastern coastlines.

  He knew what they were. Pads and gantries. He’d seen this sight from the air, many times. He knew what this place was.

  ‘It can’t be. But that’s Merritt Island. Cape Canaveral.’

  Deirdra’s eyes shone. ‘Where you flew the shuttle from. And where they launched the Moon missions from too, and the Mars missions. Wow.’

  Morrel said, almost reluctantly, ‘And they kept it working as a space launch site for decades after much of Florida had had to be abandoned.’ He pointed. ‘That sea wall was one of the more heroic feats of the late twenty-first century. Even I visited once, to see how they had saved the island, the monuments.’

  Malenfant picked out one spot on the image, a location just to the west of the river, a white speck. ‘Can we enlarge this?’

  Of course.

  As the image expanded it felt as if Malenfant was plummeting to Earth once more. But he saw that white speck turn from a point to a child’s brick to a monumental rectangular block, painted brilliant black and white. Surrounded by its own flood walls, he noted.

  ‘The Vehicle Assembly Building,’ he said. ‘As we called it then. Where we assembled the stacks, the Saturns and the shuttles, to be wheeled out to the launch pads. Once the largest building on Earth, by enclosed volume.’ He held a hand up. ‘And don’t bother to tell me if that’s not true any more.’

  One strikingly unfamiliar feature, right at the centre of gravity of the island, was a giant structure oddly like a tremendous sundial, a leaning tower that protruded from a broad expanse of white concrete.

  He pointed. ‘That didn’t used to be there, before. Like a sundial gnomon?’

  But on a huge scale. Colonel Malenfant—

  ‘I know,’ Deirdra said eagerly. ‘That’s where they anchored the space elevator.’

  Morrel grunted. ‘A twenty-second-century folly. Abandoned, dismantled before the Homeward movement began. Couldn’t afford to maintain it.’

  Malenfant shook his head. ‘And never rebuilt when the recovery came, because you people decided you didn’t need access to space any more, right?’

  Not quite.

  There was a mountain of implication in those two words. Malenfant felt electrified.

  ‘Answerer, where are you going with this?’

  We have followed your progress in this new age, Colonel Malenfant. We and our cousins of the Codex.

  ‘Is that a joke? . . . My progress? Towards what?’

  We do share information, you see. Kleio sends her regards. And we have come to certain conclusions. In your inchoate and ill-informed way you are asking good questions.

  And with that vague but startling reply, Malenfant saw a glimmer of hope. As if a door he’d assumed to be locked had opened, just a crack. Trying to control his eagerness, he said, ‘And these are questions to which you’d like an answer.’

  Yes. We—

  ‘Never mind that,’ Deirdra burst out. ‘Why are you showing us Cape Canaveral?’

  Malenfant suppressed a sigh. He sensed that the Answerer had been on the verge of saying something profoundly interesting. But on the other hand he had the feeling that Deirdra had been bottling up her own questions for too long. And maybe all roads they travelled here would lead, in the end, to the same destination.

  He said, ‘OK, good question. Answerer?’

  During your encounter with Emma Stoney, she hinted that you should go and speak to the Planetary AIs, Colonel Malenfant. To interrogate their greater, more complete, less damaged knowledge set. You may know that the AIs do not communicate readily with mankind, or indeed with us.

  ‘Their policy of non-interference with our culture, and blah blah. So?’

  So if you want information from them, you have to go seek it.

  Malenfant held his breath and looked at a wide-eyed Deirdra. ‘In person? And the nearest of these planetary brains is—’

  On the Moon.

  ‘Yes!’ Deirdra jumped up and down and clapped her hands, suddenly looking ten years old.

  Malenfant tried to stay relatively calm. ‘It took you electronic geniuses a week to come up with all this? I thought your brains worked at the speed of light.’

  We consulted relevant human authorities also, Malenfant. Including Common Heritage councils.

  ‘Right. That would take a week. OK. But I thought you disapproved of spaceflight. Your Homeward movement purposefully killed it off.’

  Morrel coughed. ‘Well, not entirely, Malenfant. There are working spacecraft – if only in museums and so forth. And there is an infrastructure in space, ageing, but still functioning, some of it. It was always felt best to keep some kind of working capability, in case of contingencies.’

  ‘Yeah. Such as when you need to ship corpsicles down from the Moon, right?’ Malenfant looked over the Canaveral diorama. ‘And all this? I had the impression that the Cape was an open-air museum behind its sea walls. Now, are you telling me that they still fly ships to the Moon from the Cape?’

  Mica sighed. ‘Well, yes. When necessary.’

  Bartholomew grinned. ‘Not like the barely upgraded V-2s you rode, Malenfant.’

  Malenfant was trying to suppress his own excitement, a sense, he suspected now, that had been growing since he had first heard that the Answerers wanted to see him. He had the feeling that if he wished for this too hard he would make it go away again. Maybe that was scar tissue from the years he had spent suffering crew rotations in the NASA Astronaut Office, a super-competitive environment where you could blow your chances just by looking too enthusiastic.

  ‘So what about these fashionable theories that humans aren’t meant for space? I thought that was why leaving Earth to escape this Destroyer wouldn’t work.’

  Bartholomew said, ‘Well, it’s pretty much proven, Malenfant. One thing we did learn when we ventured into space is that in the long term, humans need the Earth to sustain them.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Malenfant said bluntly. ‘Even by the time I got coldsleeped, people had survived on Mars, for instance, for decades.’

  ‘Just barely,’ Bartholomew said. ‘Remember that Neil Armstrong, first to set foot on another world, died up there. You and your peers were supremely brave, but sadly ignorant. Down here we – well, you – have evolved to swim in a sea of other life forms, Malenfant, from viruses up to other people, or rather you all co-evolved. And it all works together to sustain itself, and sustain you. That’s not to mention your adaptation to Earth’s gravity, and the way you are shielded from cosmic radiation by the atmosphere and magnetic field . . . Humans need Earth, Malenfant. That’s the understanding now.’

  Morrel said, ‘And those basic facts, by the way, Malenfant, shaped the Heritage�
��s policy to the Destroyer. We can’t escape. All we can do is to live as well as we can, before an inevitable end. We can reduce the population, stage by stage . . .’

  ‘Jesus,’ Malenfant muttered. ‘While everybody does what in the meantime? Cultivates their garden?’

  Mica said wearily, ‘There are worse ways to spend your life, Malenfant.’

  ‘OK. Park that. Let me get this clear. Despite the fact that space is so lethal, you want me to fly to the Moon anyhow. Alone?’

  Your medical attendant should travel with you.

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Bartholomew drily.

  Deirdra broke in, ‘Is there room for a passenger?’ Her longing was palpable.

  Morrel just glared.

  And Mica was visibly unhappy – she must have expected something like this, as far as Deirdra was concerned – but the arguments weren’t done yet.

  ‘OK,’ Malenfant said with a sigh. ‘Now we get to the horse-trading. Maybe we should all go sit down . . .’

  Bartholomew and Deirdra brought in furniture from outside, a table, chairs. Prefect Morrel fetched a tray of drinks from the nearest printer.

  They sat in a circle, in the little courtyard, beside the Answerer screen. The Answerer was silent now. It struck Malenfant that they weren’t being disturbed by other petitioners; the Answerer must have subtly shut up shop for the day.

  ‘So,’ Malenfant said. ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here today.’

  Nobody laughed.

  Malenfant sipped his drink, a decent coffee. ‘You start, Morrel. Tell me why I shouldn’t go to the Moon. Even though those in authority above you have given the go-ahead.’

  Morrel growled, ‘Yeah, well, they didn’t ask me.’ He took a slug of his own drink, plain water. Then he looked up at Malenfant.

  Malenfant saw honest doubt on those blunt features.

  ‘Malenfant. I don’t know what you think of me. Frankly I don’t care. But sometimes I think you’re acting towards me the way a rebellious kid would to their father or mother. I mean, you’re older than me biologically, in body as well as in time, in history . . .’