World Engine Page 4

  ‘I’ve thought it through before making my decision to come here, to see you.’

  Bartholomew coughed. ‘That’s all fine. But you will have to convince your mother of that, Deirdra. Who has been in contact.’

  Deirdra looked exasperated. ‘Already?’

  ‘Along with Prefect Morrel, yes.’ He spread his hands. ‘Look, I had to alert them when Malenfant finally woke. They’re going to have to meet him themselves.’

  ‘Ah.’ Malenfant drew back, releasing Deirdra’s hands. ‘So there are impacts on your life after all. Your folks aren’t sure about this, right? And the cops too – what was the word you used, prefect?’

  ‘Prefects aren’t cops, in the sense you mean,’ Bartholomew said. ‘They are all temporary volunteers, for one thing. But they are the nearest we have.’

  ‘So what is it your mother is concerned about? Is it your schooling?’

  ‘No.’ She seemed irritated, frustrated.

  He was left baffled again, trying to feel his way into a future society of which he had no knowledge whatsoever. ‘Then what harm might it do? What harm can I do?’

  Bartholomew said, ‘I can give you a hint.’

  ‘What hint?’

  And Bartholomew pointed up at the wall.

  The countdown clock. It was as if Malenfant had forgotten that key, chilling detail. The Destroyer.

  He faced the others grimly. ‘Then, while we have time, before the feds get here, let’s talk.’

  4

  Deirdra fetched him another cup of broth and a cup of water for herself, and sat back down before him. ‘OK. Let’s talk.’

  Where to begin?

  ‘Look – the last I remember, of my old life, is wrestling the wreck of the Constitution away from the Cape Canaveral facilities.’

  ‘And you did it, Malenfant,’ Deirdra said. ‘The most famous thing you ever did – that was easy to research. And Canaveral is still there. Behind the sea wall, of course.’

  ‘A sea wall? Park that. OK. So they scraped me up.’

  Bartholomew barked laughter. ‘Pretty much.’

  Deirdra was frowning again. ‘You said you didn’t have coldsleep pods back then?’

  Bartholomew slapped the hide of the machine which had, Malenfant reflected, so recently spat him out. ‘I looked that up too. Not like these, no. But the doctors of the day were well aware of the effect of cold on the body. Had been for centuries. “No one is dead until they are warm and dead” – that summed it up. And they were beginning to experiment with the technology – primitive cryogenics, essentially – especially in the context of the space programmes of the day. Even for a mission of a few months, to Mars or Jupiter say, to be able to freeze your crew, or most of them, would reduce the strain on your spacecraft’s plumbing considerably.’

  Deirdra nodded. ‘I guess all this was before the Homeward movement.’

  Homeward. Malenfant didn’t like the sound of that. Park that.

  ‘I do know the last deep-space missions were the Last Small Step flights. Stunts, really. And the furthest anybody got was to Persephone—’

  ‘Whoa,’ Malenfant said. ‘I never heard of that.’

  Bartholomew looked briefly abstracted, as if hearing distant voices. ‘You would not have. Ninth major planet from the Sun, discovered in the late twenty-first century. A thousand times as far from the Sun as the Earth.’

  Malenfant felt pleased, in a theoretical kind of way, to have it confirmed that such discoveries had continued after his own time. Persephone. What kind of world must it be, out in the dark?

  But Bartholomew’s topic was still coldsleep. ‘Soon after your time the technology was developed for the general health market – the wealthy end, anyhow. The idea being to preserve an untreatable patient until medical techniques advanced enough to make recovery plausible. It was a kind of fad in the time of Peak Data, when people still believed in progress, in a better future. London, Bart’s – this hospital – became a significant centre. Which was why you were initially moved here from the US facilities, Malenfant.’

  ‘So how come I ended up on the Moon?’

  ‘Safe haven,’ Bartholomew said. ‘That was a century later, Malenfant. A century after your accident. You were sleeping through history. By then things were changing fast – soon after that, the coastal cities were being abandoned. London, in particular.’ He eyed Malenfant. ‘I keep forgetting you know none of this.’

  ‘I’ll catch up. Keep talking.’

  ‘So, for those who could afford it, caches were established on the Moon. A safe, stable environment. Well, after Homeward, the Planetary AIs took over the Moon colonies, and Mars, Venus, Mercury, of course.’

  The Planetary AIs?

  ‘But they preserved any human colonies until they could be evacuated – and on the Moon they kept open the coldsleep vaults. Where you, Malenfant, were slumbering peacefully. The AIs aren’t human, but they are evidently humane. And that was essential, of course, during the Chaos.

  ‘After Common Heritage got things stabilised – oh, maybe a century ago – contact with the Moon was re-established. And every so often some of the sleeper pods are shipped back to Earth. We work closely with the AIs on this – which is why tests were run on you on the Moon, Malenfant. Which you seem to remember.’

  ‘Tests, you say. By Karla. It was like a conversation. I thought it was a conversation.’

  ‘So it was, in a way.’

  ‘Common Heritage.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Karla said it was funny I should happen to use that phrase. It’s the name of some kind of government, right? And Karla is – what? One of the Planetary AIs? I thought she was some kind of therapist. Probably appointed by NASA.’

  Bartholomew shrugged.

  Malenfant had the sudden intuition that he might have to talk to Karla some more. Maybe there was stuff a Moon-based AI would know that he wouldn’t find down here, on a much-transformed Earth.

  Maybe he would have to go back to the Moon, then, he thought vaguely.

  But if this ‘Homeward’ thing had been what it sounded like, some kind of shut-down of the space programmes, getting to the Moon might be problematic. Still, his carcass had been shipped down here somehow. And if that was so, there had to be a way to get back again.

  He stowed that, and tried to focus on the present.

  Deirdra was saying, ‘Malenfant, a lot of the sleepers were children. They were all, every one of them, cherished enough by somebody to be put into a vault like this. Generally at huge expense.’

  ‘And they are revived according to – what? Medical capability?’

  Bartholomew shrugged. ‘Essentially. Why, here we are in drowned London, which ought to give you a clue about the scarcity of the facilities.’

  ‘But you chose to use those facilities to save me,’ Malenfant said. ‘Why? And why now? If I’m famous, I guess I’ve been famous for four hundred years.’

  Bartholomew took on an expression of professional concern. ‘You know why. The message from Emma.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Deirdra looked at Malenfant, wide-eyed. ‘Who is Emma?’

  ‘Emma Stoney. She is – was – my wife.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her voice was small. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know about that.’

  ‘Privacy, Deirdra,’ Bartholomew said gently. ‘If Malenfant hadn’t wanted to work with you—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Malenfant said.

  Deirdra was still staring at him. ‘Your wife? And you lost her, you left her behind when you got frozen?’

  ‘No,’ he said, with patience, but it took him an effort. This kid wasn’t to know. ‘Long story. And a complicated one . . . Michael.’ He looked at Bartholomew in a kind of horror that he had forgotten to ask, before now. ‘Our son. My son with Emma. What happened to Michael? Did he have kids, descendants? . . . I did ask Karla. I think . . .’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ Bartholomew said. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘But—’
But he’s my son. Park that too, Malenfant. ‘Never mind. For now. Look, Deirdra – Emma was in NASA too. The space agency. There was some kind of puzzle with Phobos. Moon of Mars, right? So NASA mounted a hasty reconnaissance mission. Turned out it was easier to send a dedicated mission from Earth to that dumb little moon than to have the Mars base colonists do it from the ground. And Emma was on that mission. Well, in June 2005 her ship reached Phobos, and—’

  ‘And was lost,’ Bartholomew said simply.

  ‘Nobody knew what had happened. There was no meaningful data . . . I had a hell of a time explaining to Michael; he was only ten years old. Anyhow that led me to join NASA myself, belatedly, three years later. It was what she would have wanted, I thought.’

  They were both staring at him.

  ‘Emma is dead,’ Malenfant said firmly. ‘She died even before I got thrown into the freezer. So she can’t be sending me messages now.’ He turned on Bartholomew. ‘Yet that’s what Karla told me. That’s the reason I was revived now, is it? But it can’t be her. It’s impossible.’

  Bartholomew smiled. ‘As impossible as you surviving a spaceship crash, and four centuries in a sleeper tank?’

  And Deirdra put in, ‘As impossible as the dreams you had, Malenfant? I read up about you – the biographies, such as they are. It was difficult, the language is so quaint. Voices from a different age . . . Dreams of expanding the human presence in space beyond the Solar System, to the stars . . .’

  She sounded moved. Entranced, even. Malenfant stared at her in surprise. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But, I’m guessing, those dreams didn’t come true. Right? If this Homeward programme you spoke of was what it sounded like.’

  Bartholomew said, ‘People discovered they belonged on Earth. Space was impossible, as a realm for extended survival. People evolved on Earth, and that’s where they need to stay. As was realised, belatedly. You can look it all up.’

  Malenfant winced. ‘In the history books, right? Where I will find my name, alongside the names of a bunch of dead people I used to know.’

  Deirdra seemed pained. ‘But the dreams, Malenfant. The dreams were magnificent.’

  Bartholomew stood and walked smoothly to Malenfant’s side. ‘Maybe they were. But I’ll tell you what else is impossible, and that’s for you to do any more today, Malenfant. Besides, this conversation is getting a little too . . . wide-ranging. Let’s get you to bed – a bed without a lid this time. The ward is just through this door. Deirdra, maybe you could put off your mother for a few more days. I’ll give you a medical authority slip if you need it.’

  She stood. ‘I’ll let you know. My mother is pretty reasonable, really. I’ll see you soon, Malenfant.’

  When she had gone, Malenfant stood, still feeling groggy, and leaned on the arm Bartholomew offered. ‘I feel like I could eat steak and French fries. And a pile of pancakes on the side.’

  ‘Your stomach would probably disintegrate. Baby steps, Malenfant.’

  ‘Baby steps, sure. That is the kind of thing a nurse would say. This place is pretty much automated, isn’t it? You know, even in my day we had a lot of AI in medicine. Smart diagnostic programs. Even some surgical procedures were automated. But you could never replace a nurse with a robot. Right? The human touch.’

  ‘If you say so, Malenfant,’ Bartholomew said. But he winked. ‘Just through this door . . .’

  ‘OK. I’ll be good. But do one thing for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Play me Emma’s message. Before you put me to sleep again. It was meant for me, correct? So I have the right.’ With one hand, he gripped Bartholomew’s arm as hard as he could. He met extraordinary resistance, like Bartholomew was wearing skin-tight armour, but he pressed even so. ‘You said you have a copy here, yes? I have the right . . .’

  5

  This is Emma Stoney. NASA astronaut. The date is – well, hell, I have my mission clock but that means nothing now, I don’t know the date. Nothing makes sense since we emerged from our trial descent into Phobos. The ship, the hab module, is gone. We can’t pick up anything from Earth.

  Damn it, Jupiter is in the wrong place, and from Martian orbit you can’t miss Jupiter, believe me. I don’t know the date, I don’t know the time.

  Come on, Stoney, be professional. What do you know?

  I know our ship, thrown together to go inspect the Phobos secular-descent anomaly, is – was – called Timor. The mission was international, cooperative. Even before we crew had begun training, there had been preparatory launches. Three heavy-lift Energias, up from Baikonur, lifting fuel tanks and our cargo module up to the Bilateral Space Station, where it was assembled and fired off. Safely delivered to Martian orbit, waiting for us, with supplies, fuel for the return flight – all in place before we even left the Earth.

  Then three more Energias to haul up the components of our mission, the propellant tanks and injection stages, our hab module – a beefed-up BSS module – and the experimental little lander craft, just an open frame really, that we would use to explore Phobos.

  We crew were lifted by space shuttle orbiter Endeavour, flight STS-89.

  We left Earth orbit on 21 November 2004. Two Americans, one Russian. My companions were Tom Lamb, once a Moonwalker, and Arkady Berezovoy, very experienced cosmonaut. We arrived in Martian orbit 3 June 2005. We should have departed for Earth on 1 September 2005. Well, we didn’t. And the date today is – was, according to my mission calendar anyhow – 14 June 2006.

  And this is a message for Reid Malenfant. If you can hear this, come get me . . . If anybody can, you can. I don’t know why I believe that, but I do—

  That was all, before it was drowned in static.

  And it made no sense. The dates sounded right, but that was about all.

  Emma’s mission had been crewed by Americans, not a mixed Russian–American crew.

  The heavy lifting to Earth orbit had been made, not by some Russian booster, but by Saturn V derivatives, America’s workhorse since the 1960s.

  The space station was called Freedom. Not the Bilateral Space Station.

  There was no shuttle orbiter called Endeavour.

  Not even that mission name made any sense. Timor.

  And how the hell could she be here, now, reporting from Phobos, more than four centuries after she flew?

  He listened to the message again, with mounting disbelief. And a deep, fundamental, existential fear. Yet – he knew the voice – even though it couldn’t possibly be—

  It was her.

  6

  Bartholomew insisted on keeping Malenfant in his undersea-hospital shelter for a full week, before releasing him into the wider world. No more visitors for now, he said. Not even Greggson Deirdra, whose brave visit to a near-death four-hundred-year-old relic Malenfant retrospectively found oddly moving. It was all about recuperation, Bartholomew said.

  And that meant a lot of that vegetable broth, and a few treat meals, which Malenfant learned to ask for. He tested the boundaries, for instance by asking for chicken-fried steak – he got what he wanted if he made himself understood, and it wasn’t actively harmful – and Malenfant started to understand that this new age really did have food printers, a technology not unlike the Star Trek replicators of his youth, when it came to producing food anyhow. But the broth was evidently his staple right now, and Bartholomew threatened to withdraw the treats unless Malenfant took the healthy stuff first.

  Exercising, too. Gentle sit-ups at first. Then more subtle stretching and balancing exercises, something like yoga perhaps. Jogging on a treadmill by day four, which Bartholomew, not remotely understanding the psychology of an astronaut, insisted Malenfant should not treat as a challenge. And so on.

  While they went through these rituals Bartholomew would engage in a kind of bantering conversation, and would listen to whatever Malenfant chose to talk about. But Bartholomew refused absolutely to tell Malenfant anything of the outside world. Anything, from the broad sweep of history across the four centuries since Malenfant’
s crash, to the detail of Emma’s mysterious, impossible message from Phobos. ‘Not my function,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t even tell you if I did have the permissions, not until you’re strong enough to take it. Which you aren’t. Time for the treadmill.’

  With so little feedback from Bartholomew, Malenfant’s unanswered questioning sounded to himself like whining. And anything he did say about his own past seemed self-obsessed, even self-pitying. So Malenfant quickly learned to shut up, accepted his lot, and got through the seven days.

  It was, after all, he thought in low moments, no worse than some dumb aspect of astronaut training. He remembered the rituals he had endured as one of a class of ascans – astronaut candidates. When you were first inducted, it was terrific. You were measured up for your blue flight suit, with ‘NASA’ taped to the right breast alongside your astronaut wings, and the Stars and Stripes on the left shoulder, and the boots and the watch and the Randolph aviator sunglasses. Yeah, a regular ritual. And there was the sense that you were joining a team, a family, and that was what he had wanted to be a part of. Always had. Even before he had lost Emma.

  But after the fun stuff there had been those desolate stretches when the shrinks at Houston would get hold of you, you, a mature adult and experienced military pilot, and hit you with word association quizzes and Rorschach ink blot tests, and bizarre group exercises with your peers that were even more embarrassing, when you had to open up about phobias you had when you were three years old. You learned to play along, and give them the minimum they wanted, and otherwise shut up.

  Just like now.

  There was one detail that was unlike anything Malenfant remembered from his time with the Air Force or NASA, though. And that was the countdown clock on the wall: counting down, it seemed, to AD 3397 and some kind of doom. Bartholomew would no more talk about that than about any other detail of the world beyond this little complex of treatment rooms. Still, Malenfant thought, if such a gadget was down here in a hospital ward, it was surely going to be all over the planet. What would it do to a society to be confronted by the precise date of its end the whole time? ‘Well, I guess you’re going to find out, Malenfant,’ he muttered to himself.