Creation node, p.11
Creation Node, page 11
And possibly more than one situation, maybe, Elizabeth thought, if you counted the weird quasar-like object that had simultaneously popped up in the centre of the Galaxy – mysteriously simultaneous if you factored in twenty-five thousand years of lightspeed delay. Months on, the ‘quasar’ was brighter, by around one part in four thousand of the Sun’s insolation, it seemed, compared to its first appearance. Already that amounted to the equivalent of two extra hours per year of sunlight for the Earth. That didn’t sound much, but the heating seemed to be increasing faster than the linear, possibly even compounding exponentially – there were traces of that in the data …
After a decade, forty extra hours of sunlight – two days’ worth per year, so said the models. After a century, twenty days’ … Quasi-linear at first, truly exponential later, rising ever faster …
This wasn’t just an esoteric scientific mystery. If this went on, all the worlds of mankind could be imperilled.
It still seemed unlikely to Vasta, but there were some who speculated that the two extraordinary events unfolding – Planet Nine, the disruption at the heart of the Galaxy – could be linked, somehow. If not, the argument went, the timing was a hell of a coincidence. But, she wondered, how could that be, given lightspeed and the remoteness of the quasar?
And the centre of the mystery, Planet Nine with its sole indigenous inhabitant, was in Conserver hands. Which was why Vasta, representing the global government she advised, was here at this Conserver station.
There was a soft shudder. Displays told her that the shuttle had achieved its docking with the station. As gently as you pleased.
Jeorg leaned forward so his smiling face could be seen in the smart screen, and thus in the habitat. ‘North here. We have a contact light. May we proceed?’
A different voice replied. ‘You are welcome. Please come aboard.’
Jeorg grunted. ‘I’m only the pilot. Follow me.’
They passed easily out of the cabin and through a lock into the Conserver habitat, then followed a short connecting corridor through to an open doorway.
The light inside the chamber beyond was bright, evidently sunlight, filtered through some kind of green-tinged glass. Jeorg pushed through the door frame, guiding Elizabeth with a gentle hand in the small of her back.
She tried not to show her discomfort in this situation. She was no veteran of spaceflight, but she knew to keep her motions simple and contained in zero gravity. Never get turned upside down compared to your companions, or the room …
The door folded back behind them. Elizabeth heard fresh air hiss into the sealed chamber. No doubt the air and the visitors were being subtly scrubbed clean of bugs and toxins. They moved forward, towards a shaft of sunlight admitted by a wall window. Here they waited patiently. Good a place as any.
Once various hidden sensors had evidently declared the all-clear, a second door folded back, revealing the wider interior of the Conservers’ habitat.
Vasta’s immediate impression was of openness, of space. People were scattered throughout the volume in three dimensions, in small groups, some holding hands or belts so they didn’t drift apart. Sunlight splashed through transparent panels in a domed roof. Slim pillars, apparently not structural, spanned from floor to ceiling. Windows gave views of the full Earth, several planetary radii away.
The floor was grass, a lawn. There were inner structures, floor to ceiling, that looked as if they were made of wood. Trellises, panels, poles, some wrapped in some kind of fabric.
And, Vasta saw now, off in the distance of this big, roomy volume, there were what looked like trees, growing naturally – or almost. Some had evidently been trimmed to fit under the low roof.
She wondered how the trick was managed. Trees and grass would grow towards the light, but what about the circulation of fluids, of tree sap, without gravity? The trees must surely be trained in some kind of centrifuge to grow healthily, and wheeled out here for display … the lawn too?
Nobody paid any attention to the visitors, not immediately. They were allowed to just float there for a few moments, perhaps for orientation, Elizabeth thought.
At last they were approached by two people, a woman and a man, both dressed in well-fitting but drab outfits: jacket and shirt, trousers, sandals without socks. The jackets especially were much patched – ostentatiously so, Elizabeth thought cynically, presumably to show Conserver thrift. She felt vaguely irritated.
The woman might have been sixty, with tied-back grey hair. The man, maybe a little older, was shorter, stocky – perhaps overweight – with an unruly grey-streaked beard. To Elizabeth they both looked like farmers, or gardeners. The woman even seemed to have dirt, soil, under her fingernails.
Elizabeth introduced herself and Jeorg, briskly. ‘Though you know who we are.’
The woman smiled back. ‘Ancient courtesies. And we have spoken before, though only over a short-delay link to Earth. My name is Ariel Uwins. This is John Smith.’ The man with the grey beard. ‘Our legal counsel.’
‘I’m pleased to meet you … Mister Smith?’
Smith smiled. ‘We Conservers are frugal in all things. When I was born there was a fad for naming babies with the most common names, from various cultures. That fell out of favour; as we grew, we John Smiths found we needed a more practical way of distinguishing ourselves. But when I first travelled to Earth I learned that “John Smith” is a venerable label … So, here I am.’
‘You weren’t always the greybeard, though,’ Uwins said. ‘And he won’t tell me a thing about himself when he was younger. I’ll dig it out of him some day.’ She glanced at the visitors. ‘If we all have time.’
And the feel of the little gathering immediately turned slightly sombre, Elizabeth felt.
‘We have offices we can use – or we can just find somewhere to sit here.’
Elizabeth and Jeorg exchanged glances, shrugged. ‘Why not here?’ Elizabeth said. ‘There’s no need for formality.’
‘And we enjoy being hospitable. Then, please – this way.’
Ariel and John led the way, drifting over that floor of short grass. Those slim pillars served as handholds to aid zero-gravity passage, it turned out.
‘Of course,’ John Smith said as they moved, ‘here in low Earth orbit, we are always aware that while you are the guests in this facility, we are your guests on a larger scale.’
Elizabeth smiled. ‘Well, and we are pleased that you see the necessity of having this embassy here, actually in orbit around Earth. I know that many of your own compatriots and colleagues are light-hours away, off beyond Neptune, and the object called Nine was discovered four light-days from the Sun, wasn’t it? The information lag is always going to impair decision-making across the Solar System ‒ authorised avatars do help – but at least here we representatives of our different communities can speak face to face.’
Uwins said, ‘True enough. And in return we ask only for your help in case of emergency – and to share a little of the sunlight that falls on this satellite.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m familiar with the protocol under which this little base is governed. You’re very welcome here.’
They reached a bank of seats, with lap straps to hold you down in the lack of gravity – all set fronting a huge picture window giving a view of Earth, diminished by distance. It looked as if they were positioned over equatorial Africa. Given this was a stationary orbit, Elizabeth knew that the face Earth presented here would never change, save for the cycling of day and night.
Meanwhile John Smith was looking around at the sky, beyond Earth. ‘Just trying to see Sagittarius. Is it visible from here, just now?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Jeorg said. ‘Looking for the object at the Galaxy core? I guess I ought to know where it is, given the heat that thing is pumping out.’
Smith asked, ‘Are there any fresh observations, theories about that?’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘Some. More observation than theory, though we have some guesses. Its luminosity, its energy output, is measurable. To be so bright in our skies it must at least have the characteristics, the energy profile of a quasar – a galaxy core explosion. Our Galaxy’s core has never been suspected of having the symptoms of a nascent quasar. Yet there’s the evidence, that energy flow, measurable, and measurably increasing. And we think the rise is actually cumulative, exponential, like compound interest. And so it will grow …’
The Conservers glanced at each other.
Ariel Uwins said, ‘And how long will this – heating episode go on for?’
‘Well, we don’t know,’ Vasta said. ‘Possibly it depends on the width of the, the spot, through which the Sun seems to be passing. Like an actor crossing an illuminated stage. How wide that is, given the Sun’s own velocity in its orbit … The minimum guesses are in the tens of thousands of years. Hundreds, maybe.’
‘And if this goes on? The exponential growth—’
‘Worst case?’ She shrugged. ‘A doubling of the Sun’s output after a thousand years, fifteen hundred. Earth then will be as hot as Venus is now. And some models say the atmosphere will be stripped off by twenty, thirty thousand years. You can imagine the interim stages as the process unfolds.’
‘Ouch,’ Ariel said. ‘I hadn’t known we’d learned that much. Although some of our stations had recorded it, analysed the rise too … Thanks for sharing that much. And we’ll share in return; we do have some far-flung observation positions. The Shadow itself, out in the Oort cloud so beyond the solar wind; that might give up a little more data.’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘Thank you. Well, we should share. We don’t actually know what we’re dealing with here. What the Sagittarius object is, or what it will become – or what the anomalous object we are still calling Nine might be – or indeed what the existence of the creature discovered within it might imply …’
John Smith grunted. ‘I know it’s controversial among scientists, but I for one believe there has to be a connection between the various phenomena. The coincidences alone – just as we reach Nine, and discover this creature they’re calling Feathers, along comes the lighting-up of this beacon in Sagittarius.’
Elizabeth said cautiously, ‘Yes, the timing is extraordinary, but actually it’s hard to see a causal connection. Remember that the core lighting-up must have happened twenty-five thousand years ago, as it’s at the Galaxy hub. Twenty-five thousand years before we found this alien in the Oort cloud. So the lightspeed limitation eschews any connection between the two events—’
‘You speak as a scientist,’ John Smith said. ‘Forgive me. I’m a lawyer, of sorts. I got that from my grandfather, who was in the law down on Earth. So I trained up too. Mostly diplomatic and commercial wrangles but some criminal work. The Conservers are a new movement, relatively, so lots of new law to be developed.’
Uwins smiled. ‘Including novel aspects of criminal law. Contrary to popular belief on Earth, we Conservers aren’t all saints.’
‘You speak as a scientist, Doctor Vasta. But I think as a lawyer. And I usually assume that there are aren’t too many accidental coincidences at the average crime scene.’
Elizabeth frowned. ‘This isn’t a crime scene.’
Smith looked up again, seeking Sagittarius. ‘Not yet. So, shall we find somewhere to sit, eat?’
14
As their hosts settled them at a table, Smith went to order food and drink at a central station.
Smith returned with a tray laden with transparent flasks – Vasta saw what looked like coffee, tea, some clear water – and some kind of biscuit. The drinks were covered and equipped with straws; all the food and drink containers and wraps were attached to the tray with some kind of sticky pads.
There was a short, awkward interval as they took drinks, flipped open packets.
Ariel spread her hands. ‘We Conservers live simply, but comfortably, all the way out to the Oort cloud – even if we have to make compromises with technology to survive here, in space. I’m quite sure you are familiar with our philosophy, outlandish or controversial as it might seem—’
Elizabeth waved that away. ‘Most educated people on Earth know about the Conservers, and what their values are, their goals. And appreciate them. To – conserve. Not to waste resources needlessly.’
‘But it’s more than that,’ Ariel said. She looked up at the sunlit windows above their head, shedding light on the vivid green grass. ‘Just a little sunlight is all we ask, and we tap the solar wind, which would likewise disperse into interstellar space. That and what falls into the Solar System, extrasolar comets, the interstellar wind. Everything else we keep, we save, we recycle. Entropy will wear us down eventually – that’s inevitable for all inhabitants of this universe of ours – but that is how we are making our shot at longevity, if not eternity.’
‘And so,’ Jeorg said, ‘you are happy to send out missions like the Shadow’s, which took energy-starved decades to reach its destination. And were the children of the first crew just as happy to accept a life of no-choice servitude aboard that slow little ship?’
Elizabeth covered his hand. ‘Only one child.’
She knew that this question – about the rights of children born during long-duration ship voyages, or trapped for life inside extremely isolated habitats – was one of the most difficult ethical problems of the age. One twenty-first-century thinker had claimed that the pioneer generations born in space would be the first humans to be raised in cages.
It was an irony that since the launch of the Shadow, sleep-chamber suspended animation had come along by leaps and bounds. If they’d waited a few decades, the Shadow crew could have slept through the whole thing. That single child need not have been born …
In this case, anyhow, the experiment had evidently worked.
She said, ‘I do know that it was one of those born on the Shadow—’
‘Actually the only one, I believe,’ Ariel murmured.
‘She was the first to find the – feathered humanoid – when Nine was explored.’
Ariel nodded. ‘And we believe it’s her who is doing the most in terms of making some kind of contact with the creature. Whatever it is.’
Vasta nodded. ‘Anyhow, months on from that first contact, the reports are very encouraging. Good work. But, going forward, maybe we can help each other.’
The lawyer took another biscuit, frowning. He said, ‘So we come to the point of the meeting.’
Ariel, though, seemed sympathetic. ‘Help each other how?’
Vasta said, ‘Why, help each other through the fall-out of the discovery. The encounter with Nine, the revelation of its true nature, the mystery of the feathered humanoid – and the quasar-like object that has suddenly erupted at the heart of the Galaxy.’ She nodded at Smith with a smile. ‘And my thinking mirrors yours, John, scientist versus lawyer regardless. With all respect to my scientific colleagues, the safest thing for the politicians to do for now is to assume these things are connected. And to handle them that way. And there could well be some connection – even aside from the weird synchronicity of the timing.’
John Smith nodded. ‘OK. But I note you say the discovery rather than your discovery. The Conservers’ discovery?’
Careful, Elizabeth. These are righteous people you’re dealing with. And smart. Isolated but not naive. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been sent out to represent their culture. Also Smith is a lawyer.
‘True enough,’ she said. ‘And – for now, I’m speaking for the united governments of Earth – we fully recognise that discovery, and applaud the way you have handled it so far, and the way you have shared the data – beginning with the very fact of the existence, the nature of Nine.’
Smith smiled. ‘But.’
‘But, how are we to handle this going forward? And by we, yes, I mean all of us, all of mankind – for all mankind is going to be impacted by this, even if this bird-like creature, Feathers, is not what she seems to be, even if the quasar object were to switch off tomorrow as mysteriously as it appeared. There will be aftershocks, even if only philosophically. We will all be affected. And meanwhile your brave sail-ship is light-days away from even radio contact. We have to get resources out there to support it, and the ongoing situation.’
Smith nodded. ‘And again, when you say “we”, you mean “you”. Earth.’
Jeorg North smiled. ‘Are all lawyers so cynical?’
Elizabeth touched his arm. ‘It’s OK, Jeorg. This is a difficult situation – but a very important one, clearly. So they sent me, a scientist rather than a diplomat, to start these talks because of the very complexity of the situation in scientific terms alone.’
‘Or,’ Smith said, ‘as a cover for Earth’s true intent.’
Elizabeth was growing irritated, and thought she might as well show it. ‘Well, what would you have us do, John? Nine is a fact. The humanoid is a fact, our encounter with it a strange, unexpected first contact. Even the quasar is a fact, connected to these things or not through the weird coincidence of its timing. And that rapidly increasing heat output, if it goes on, will imperil us all. These are givens. We have to handle this as a species.
‘And what I think you ought to see is that the human race as a whole has a much better chance of handling this well if you allow Earth to help. Again you’ll probably dismiss this as a cynical ploy, but you must see that modern Earth’s values are much closer to yours than, say, the Lunar Consortium’s are.
‘I’ve seen the economic models myself. Even helped develop some of them. There must be growth, economically, with time, and an expansion of resource usage. There we agree with the Lunar Consortium and their industrial-revolution style expansion plans. But we, of Earth, have no ambition to expand endlessly. Our strategy is simple. We want to restore Earth as a living planet, with all its natural sunlight energy fuelling life – a healthy, restored biosphere. But we also want to develop a strong technological civilisation. And so the plan is to build that infrastructure in orbit, using the helium-3 resources of the Solar System—’
