Ark Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE - 2041

  Chapter 1 - AUGUST 2041

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  TWO - 2025-2041

  Chapter 4 - JUNE 2025

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11 - JANUARY 2031

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14 - MAY 2032

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18 - SEPTEMBER 2036

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24 - DECEMBER 2038

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27 - SEPTEMBER 2039

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31 - AUGUST 2041

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35 - NOVEMBER 2041

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40 - DECEMBER 2041

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  THREE - 2042-2044

  Chapter 46 - FEBRUARY 2042

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49 - JUNE 2043

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52 - MARCH 2044

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  FOUR - 2044-2052

  Chapter 57 - SEPTEMBER 2044

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60 - DECEMBER 2046

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64 - MAY 2048

  Chapter 65 - JUNE 2048

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67 - JULY 2048

  Chapter 68 - SEPTEMBER 2049

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70 - DECEMBER 2051

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73 - NOVEMBER 2052

  FIVE - 2059

  Chapter 74 - JULY 2059

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80 - AUGUST 2059

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  SIX - 2068-2081

  Chapter 83 - MAY 2068

  Chapter 84 - JUNE 2068

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90 - MAY 2078

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93 - FEBRUARY 2079

  Chapter 94 - JULY 2081

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96 - AUGUST 2081

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Afterword

  ALSO BY STEPHEN BAXTER FROM GOLLANCZ:

  NON-FICTION

  Deep Future

  FICTION

  Mammoth

  Longtusk

  Icebones

  Behemoth

  Reality Dust

  Evolution

  Flood

  Ark

  THE WEB

  Gulliverzone

  Webcrash

  DESTINY′S CHILDREN

  Coalescent

  Exultant

  Transcendent

  Resplendent

  A TIME ODYSSEY (with Arthur C. Clarke)

  Time′s Eye

  Sunstorm

  Firstborn

  TIME′S TAPESTRY

  Emperor

  Conqueror

  Navigator

  Weaver

  Ark

  STEPHEN BAXTER

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  Copyright © Stephen Baxter 2009

  All rights reserved

  The right of Stephen Baxter to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 by

  Gollancz

  An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin′s Lane,

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 5750 8841 2

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,

  Lymington, Hants

  Printed in Great Britain at Mackays of Chatham plc,

  Chatham, Kent

  The Orion Publishing Group′s policy is to use papers that

  are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made

  from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and

  manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the

  environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  http://www.stephen-baxter.com/www.orionbooks.co.uk

  For Mary Jane Shepherd

  1955-2009

  ONE

  2041

  1

  AUGUST 2041

  Gordo Alonzo and Thandie Jones had rustled up a helicopter to take the Ark Three party back to the ragged Colorado shore. All of them but Grace Gray, who wasn′t going anywhere.

  Grace, her arm held firmly by Gordo Alonzo, watched the bird come down over Cripple Creek, scattering some of the flimsier shanties that crowded the narrow streets. The town had once been a mining settlement, and then a tourist trap. Now, in the age of the flood, with the sea that had swept over the United States lapping at the Rockies, homeless were camped in the streets and parking lots and the forecourts of disused gas stations, and a shanty town of tents and shacks spread far beyond the core of the old settlement. The population didn′t seem scared by the descent of the bird. They just cleared out of the way, dragging their blankets and sheets of cardboard.

  Thandie led the Ark Three people aboard the chopper: Lily Brooke, Nathan Lammockson, and Grace′s own husband, Hammond, Nathan′s son, thirty-five years old, flabby and resentful. But Grace was staying behind with Gordo Alonzo to be taken away into Project Nimrod, into Ark One, whatever that meant. Hammond didn′t even look back at her.

  Gordo, though, spoke to her steadily. ′You know, some parts of this drowning planet have gone back to the Stone Age. But this is the neighbourhood of NORAD. One of the few places in the world where helicopters are still commonplace. That′s why the people aren′t spooked by them. And believe me we do a lot more exotic stuff than flying choppers. You′ll see …′ Maybe in his way he was trying to reassure her.

  Gordon James Alonzo was a former astronaut. He was in his seventies now, and all his hair was gone, but he was just as upright and fit-looking and intimidating, his blue eyes still as bright, as ten years ago when he had shown up with Thandie Jones at a Walker City campsite, when Grace was just sixteen. Well, Gordo had been in a US army uniform then and now he was in the blue of the air force, but none of that was important to Grace. He was a relic of an age she had never known, as alien as the rich folk on Nathan′s Ark-ship had always been to her.

  Grace had spent most of her life on the road with Walker City, fifteen years walking with her home on her back, like a snail or a crab. The time before that, when
she was younger than five years old and a pampered prisoner of her father′s family in Saudi, was a blur, unreal, as were the years she had most recently spent as another kind of prisoner on Nathan′s liner. Now here she was yet again passed from one stranger′s hands to another.

  Only the walking was real, she sometimes thought. Past, future, the vast cataclysm humanity was suffering - none of it mattered if all you could actually do in the world was put one foot in front of another, day after day, kilometre after kilometre. She could just walk away now. Walk off with nothing but the clothes on her back, just as it had been with Walker City. But she had her baby growing inside her, a baby she hadn′t wanted by a ′husband′ she loathed, but hers nonetheless. She didn′t want to manage the pregnancy on her own.

  Gordo said, ′They′re lifting.′

  The wind from the rotors battered Grace′s face. Lily Brooke leaned out of the chopper and stared down at Grace. She mouthed what looked like, ′Forgive me.′ Then Thandie pulled her back into the machine, and the bird lifted smoothly.

  ′Are you OK?′

  Grace was angry with herself for showing weakness, angry at Lily for her manipulation and abandonment. She snapped, ′What do you think?′

  Gordo shrugged. ′They left you behind to give you a shot at getting into Ark One. A chance of a better life than any of them face now, especially if they′re right that their boat has been sunk.′

  ′I don′t even know what Ark One is.′

  ′You′ll find out.′

  ′I′ll never see any of them again.′

  ′I guess not.′

  ′Once again I′m alone, with strangers.′

  He sighed, pushed back his peaked cap, and scratched his scalp. ′So are we all. The whole world is screwed up, kid. At least here we got something to do.′ He looked around. The last dust from the chopper was settling now, and the homeless were pushing back to recolonise the space they had cleared, like water pooling in a dip. In a few minutes there would be no sign that a chopper had landed here at all. ′Well, that′s that. Come on, let′s get you out of here.′ He released her arm and set off back through the town, towards the waiting cars.

  She followed, having no choice.

  2

  They clambered aboard a jeep, and the convoy moved off with a soft whirr of electric engines. This small fleet of cars, emblazoned with Homeland Security and US military logos, had brought the Ark crew here from the coast. The convoy soon broke up, cars peeling off, leaving Gordo′s jeep and one other heading steadily north out of town, skirting the flanks of Pikes Peak.

  Gordo sat with Grace behind the young uniformed woman who drove the jeep. He pointed ahead; the road was a good track through the mountains. ′The drive will take a few hours. This is mountain country, the Rockies. We′re following the old state highway up to US 24 at Divide, where we′ll head west. We′ll turn north at Hartsel and make for Fairplay, and then you′re only a few miles from Alma, which is south of the Hoosier Pass.′

  ′Is that where we′re going? Alma?′

  ′It′s just a little town, an old mining place. Or was. I don′t know if any of these names mean anything to you.′

  ′We never walked this way.′

  ′Right, with your okie army.′

  ′Walker City. We had maps from the old days. But on Ark Three there were computer maps. Up to date.′ The ship′s computers generated maps that showed the consequences of a flood that now approached eighteen hundred metres above the old sea level, maps of the archipelago that was the surviving remnant of the Rocky Mountain states. ′The flooding started just about when I was born. I don′t remember the country the way it used to be.′ You always had to explain that to older people, who clung in their heads to images of what had been.

  Divide, when they reached it, was just another small town. Whatever it had once been before the flood it was now overwhelmed by eye-dees, IDPs, Internal Displaced Persons, as was everywhere else. The road was fenced off by rabbit wire. As the little convoy passed through people came out of their shacks and tents to watch. Grace saw how the troopers in the lead jeep cradled weapons.

  The two jeeps drove steadily west, through Ute Pass that Gordo said was above nine thousand feet. Everything seemed to be feet, inches, miles with Gordo the astronaut. Gary Boyle, the scientist who had raised her, had taught Grace to measure her world in metres and kilometres.

  The mountains had a bare, brown look. It hadn′t snowed here for years. As they passed through a tiny community called Florrisant, Gordo talked about a park of fossil beds nearby, full of petrified red-wood thirty-five million years old. Now, he said, it held more people than fossils.

  Then, at Wilkerson Pass, views of a high-elevation meadow called South Park opened up, and the road seemed to sail off into the air.

  ′God,′ Gordo said suddenly, ′look at that view. You know, it′s just not reasonable that all this can be drowned beneath a mile of fucking seawater. I guess this is why I work so hard at Nimrod - trying to save something of it, the essence anyhow. Bobbing around on some crumbling raft just won′t be the same.′

  Grace stared at him. The driver kept her eyes fixed firmly on the road, as if she hadn′t heard this outburst.

  Gordo relaxed, and laughed at himself. ′Sorry. Am I coming over like a tourist guide?′

  She frowned. ′I′m not sure what a tourist is.′

  ′OK. I′m told you used to be a princess.′

  ′My mother, in captivity, was raped by a Saudi prince. Does that count? If so I still am a princess. You used to be an astronaut.′

  He nodded his bullet head. ′I guess I still am, following your logic. Flew in space once, to ISS.′

  ′To what?′

  ′The space station.′ He pointed up. ′But after that my own career got fucked over by the flood. Well, grounded I may be, but I found something worthwhile to do here.′

  ′It′s got nothing to do with me. And I didn′t ask for it.′

  ′Maybe not. But we didn′t ask for you either. Look, there′s a selection process for newcomers to the project. Like Thandie said back in Cripple Creek, you′re actually a better candidate than your husband would have been, in terms of Nimrod′s criteria. You′ve shown independent survival skills. I saw that for myself. How old are you?′

  ′Twenty-six.′

  ′Well, if you make it you′ll be one of the oldest on the crew. Any religious affiliation?′

  ′Walker City had priests, rabbis, imams—′

  ′I didn′t ask about Walker City. I asked about you.′

  ′No. I′m not religious.′

  ′Good. The social engineers are trying to make the crew an entirely secular society. Lessens the chance of factionalisation and conflict, they think. Well, we′ll see about that. And Thandie was right that the selectors currently like pregnant women, by the way. With a pregnant woman aboard you′re getting two sets of genes in one package. You′ll be an easier sell.′

  ′Lily Brooke planned it that way,′ Grace said, the bitterness welling up again. She had figured all this out in the hours since Lily had delivered her into the hands of Gordo, had re-evaluated everything that had happened to her over the last months and years on Ark Three. All of it had been the product of manipulation by Lily. ′She set up my relationship with Hammond so Nathan would favour me. She even timed my pregnancy, I think, so I′d tick another box on your chart.′

  ′And she did this because—′

  ′Lily was in captivity with my mother. In Barcelona, Spain. I was born there, in some cellar, with my mother manacled to a radiator. Lily feels obligated to me because of that.′

  ′You′re not entirely grateful.′

  ′Lily just controls me. Who would want that?′

  He waved a hand. ′Well, none of that matters now. You′ll never see Lily again. Here you are, here′s the situation you face, however you got here. The only question is where you go from here.′

  ′And if I choose not to go along with your project?′

&nb
sp; Gordo said bleakly, ′Then you′ll have no place with us. You or your kid. We can′t feed you.′

  3

  They drove through one last town, Fairplay, where an open-air museum of old wooden structures from the mining camps had been colonised by refugees. Gordo said the museum had once been much more extensive, but wood to burn was precious.

  Then they followed the signs for Hoosier Pass, driving along a well-maintained highway, and came at last into Alma. The place was overlooked by a broad peak called Mount Bross, on whose flanks sprawled a pine forest, much scarred by logging. The original town was little more than a handful of blocky buildings to either side of the road, clustered between rusting speed-limit signs. But newer, more extensive facilities had accreted around the old stock, blocks of glass and unpainted concrete.