Last and First Contacts (Imaginings) Page 17
Maureen thought that on some level Caitlin couldn’t really believe her children were gone, or she couldn’t keep functioning like this. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re here with me. And I never fancied those pills either. Although – will it hurt?’
‘Only briefly. When the Earth’s crust gives way. It will be like sitting on top of an erupting volcano.’
‘You had an early Christmas. Now we’re going to have an early Bonfire Night.’
‘It looks like it. I wanted to see it through,’ Caitlin said again. ‘After all I was in at the start – those supernova studies.’
‘You mustn’t think it’s somehow your fault.’
‘I do, a bit,’ Caitlin confessed. ‘Stupid, isn’t it?’
‘But you decided not to go to the shelter in Oxford with the others?’
‘I’d rather be here. With you. Oh, but I brought this.’ She dug into her coat pocket and produced a sphere, about the size of a tennis ball.
Maureen took it. It was heavy, with a smooth black surface.
Caitlin said, ‘It’s the stuff they make space shuttle heatshield tiles out of. It can soak up a lot of heat.’
‘So it will survive the Earth breaking up.’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Are there instruments inside?’
‘Yes. It should keep working, keep recording until the expansion gets down to the centimetre scale, and the Rip cracks the sphere open. Then it will release a cloud of even finer sensor units, motes we call them. It’s nanotechnology, Mum, machines the size of molecules. They will keep gathering data until the expansion reaches molecular scales.’
‘How long will that take after the big sphere breaks up?’
‘Oh, a microsecond or so. There’s nothing we could come up with that could keep data-gathering after that.’
Maureen hefted the little device. ‘What a wonderful little gadget. It’s a shame nobody will be able to use its data.’
‘Well, you never know,’ Caitlin said. ‘Some of the cosmologists say this is just a transition, rather than an end. The universe has passed through transitions before, for instance from an age dominated by radiation to one dominated by matter – our age. Maybe there will be life of some kind in a new era dominated by the dark energy.’
‘But nothing like us.’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Maureen stood and put the sphere down in the middle of the lawn. The grass was just faintly moist, with dew, as the air cooled. ‘Will it be all right here?’
‘I should think so.’
The ground shuddered, and there was a sound like a door slamming, deep in the ground. Alarms went off, from cars and houses, distant wails. Maureen hurried back to the pergola. She sat with Caitlin, and they wrapped their arms around each other.
Caitlin raised her wrist to peer at her watch, then gave it up. ‘I don’t suppose we need a countdown.’
The ground shook more violently, and there was an odd sound, like waves rushing over pebbles on a beach. Maureen peered out of the pergola. Remarkably, one wall of her house had given way, just like that, and the bricks had tumbled into a heap.
‘You’ll never get a builder out now,’ Caitlin said, but her voice was edgy.
‘We’d better get out of here.’
‘All right.’
They got out of the pergola and stood side by side on the lawn, over the little sphere of instruments, holding onto each other. There was another tremor, and Maureen’s roof tiles slid to the ground, smashing and tinkling.
‘Mum, there’s one thing.’
‘Yes, love.’
‘You said you didn’t think all those alien signals needed to be decoded.’
‘Why, no. I always thought it was obvious what all the signals were saying.’
‘What?’
Maureen tried to reply.
The ground burst open. The scrap of dewy lawn flung itself into the air, and Maureen was thrown down, her face pressed against the grass. She glimpsed houses and trees and people, all flying in the air, underlit by a furnace-red glow from beneath.
But she was still holding Caitlin. Caitlin’s eyes were squeezed tight shut. ‘Goodbye,’ Maureen yelled. ‘They were just saying goodbye.’ But she couldn’t tell if Caitlin could hear.
Afterword
The title of this collection is of course a nod to Olaf Stapledon, but it reflects some of my current interests, shaped by my work with a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) study group which considers the consequences of first contact, and with a British Interplanetary Society study group called Project Icarus which is designing an interstellar probe, in the hope of provoking first contact. And first contact is the subject of ‘Erstkontakt’, original to this anthology.
‘In the Abyss of Time’ was nominated for the Locus Award for best short story of its year. My stories often deal with the big themes, the far future and the destiny of mankind, and this story is an attempt to dramatise the latest cosmological ideas through the classic sf trope of the fantastic voyage.
‘Halo Ghosts’ is an early story, a first attempt at the idea that I eventually worked up into my story ‘Traces’ (1991); I later decided I liked the original version too and reworked it.
‘Tempest 43’ is an attempt to look into the middle term future, when current anxieties have played themselves out.
‘The Children of Time’ is a speculation about a further future, a middle way for mankind between galactic cornucopia and extinction. It uses a Stapledonian viewpoint, appropriately enough given the collection’s title. This was the first story bought by Sheila Williams when she took over the editorial chair at Asimov’s, and won the reader’s poll for that magazine’s best short story of its year.
Another of my long-standing fascinations has been alternate history. One such piece with a rather outlandish alternate-historical hinge is ‘The Pacific Mystery’; it features another fantastic voyage, this time through a non-Euclidian geometry. This story was nominated for the Sidewise Award for best alternate-history short story of its year; I later became a judge on the award.
‘No More Stories’ is quite a personal story, an attempt to root a fantastical idea in a story of human relationships.
‘Dreamers’ Lake’ was the outcome of a specific commission: to deliver a story as a tribute to the movie Forbidden Planet. It contains a nod to Shakespeare, like the movie, but unlike the movie there’s also a nod to Dire Straits.
‘The Long Road’ is an attempt at one of the most difficult forms of fiction, the short-short.
‘Last Contact’ was nominated for both the Hugo and Locus awards. It is another attempt to dramatise the cosmological, this time through a personal story: eschatology and gardening. The story was partly inspired by my reading Nevil Shute, my father’s favourite author.
Stephen Baxter
Northumberland
November 2011
Table of Contents
In Praise of Associations
Ian Whates
Erstkontakt
In The Abyss of Time
Halo Ghosts
Tempest 43
The Children of Time
I
II
III
IV
V
The Pacific Mystery
No More Stories
Dreamers’ Lake
The Long Road
Last Contact
Afterword