Creation node, p.36
Creation Node, page 36
‘Including all the stuff I didn’t dare tell the authorities?’
Zaimu smiled, reached for her hand, pulled back a little clumsily. ‘Especially that. You first …’
They talked for hours.
And when the recording was done, when she found herself back in her cell-cabin on the Cronus, she wept, alone.
47
A few weeks after that first showdown on the Cronus bridge – a few days after her projection’s visit, and before Vasta had submitted her full report for Earth – John Smith called another meeting.
They returned to the bridge: Smith himself, Oliver Mason, Tiff North.
Without Vasta, this time.
‘I’ve had more briefings from Earth,’ Smith said, in his rasp of a voice. ‘There are deeper currents here to consider, I think. Deeper than Vasta understands, at least.’
‘Maybe more than we can understand too,’ Oliver said.
Tiff nodded. A sensible enough remark. She had always found Oliver – once out of the majestic shadow of his grandmother – to be pragmatic. If one-dimensional, maybe. You couldn’t spend almost all your life in an isolated place like this without missing a certain depth of experience. But he had run this stationary liner for decades now, without significant disasters. She could trust his judgement, as much as anybody’s.
Meanwhile John Smith was a deeper thinker, still a Conserver, but an angry one now, Tiff realised, and – perhaps – a plotter.
Uneasily, Tiff wondered what might come out of this meeting.
John Smith began without preamble.
‘It’s the theological allegories that trouble me most.
‘God like aliens promising us eternal life – literally? Scientifically? If we can only survive the ruin of the Earth in the process! … And the paradox is that it was we Conservers, with a mission to protect the worlds of the Sun, who gave humanity the opportunity to initiate the biggest cultural dislocation conceivable.
‘We went out to take a look at Nine, just for the sake of it. And look at what has nearly followed. The ripping-up of the Galaxy, the universe! That’s even if these godlike aliens in their black holes know what they’re doing, and don’t screw it all up. And given that they are god-like rather than gods, I very much doubt that they do know.’
‘OK,’ said Oliver carefully. ‘So you’re glad these eternals are willing to leave us alone, because you want humanity to find its own destiny – even if that means going back to Earth and leaving the universe untouched.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Tiff said. ‘That’s the standard Conserver creed. You know that we of the Moon have the opposite ambition – to spread humanity as far and as wide as we can, across the Solar System anyhow. What greater purpose is there than to bring to life a dead universe? And we believe the Eternals when they claim that’s true of their thinking too. But if our corner of the universe is to be remodelled, we can do the damn job ourselves.’
Oliver held up a hand. ‘While making unholy fortunes in the process. Look, let’s stick to the point. Unlike my grandmother, I’m not empowered to speak for Earth, or even the government. But I am the moderator here. And it’s Elizabeth Vasta who is on trial here. Correct?’
That seemed to quiet them for a moment.
Smith, the lawyer, shook his gaunt head. ‘Not that. This isn’t a trial. Not in any legal jurisdiction. But we do have to decide what to do with her. We three, at this moment, are in a position to influence future events, for all mankind, quite profoundly. That is the issue – what steps we must take, here and now. What is for the best.’
‘OK,’ Oliver said. ‘But I am on the spot here in terms of the chain of command. That’s been made clear to me.’
Made clear, Tiff knew, in several long, time-delayed briefings from the government of a still unstable world, a government scared of some kind of wild reaction to all this, the strange aftermath of the quasar crisis that had been the main challenge for Earth for decades. Tiff had a pang of pity for Oliver, who was surely too young, too inexperienced – despite his pedigree – for this.
Yet here he was, on the spot. Just as Vasta and her colleagues had been, Tiff supposed, when selected for their own extraordinary multiversal adventure.
Now John Smith scowled, Tiff thought – though his face was so lined it was hard to tell.
‘Then bless us with your wisdom, O boy king,’ he said.
‘Yeah, yeah. Look – you Conservers are like the conscience of the race. You keep nagging us to do things efficiently, to use things lightly. While you of the Consortium are expansive, ambitious – you are interplanetary capitalists. And there’s nothing wrong with that, intrinsically. And you want that system to keep working without disruption, as long as feasible.
‘And Earth is – government.’
‘The seat of empire,’ Tiff said sourly.
Oliver didn’t reject that, though it seemed to make him think.
‘An empire? If you like. Actually I’ve been reading up on empires and other institutions of the past, thanks to John.’
Smith nodded stiffly.
‘What does an empire want? Peace. Order. Commerce. Economic growth, in an orderly way. And whether you like it or not Earth still does control the Solar System, legally, economically. I suspect that most of its citizens still welcome that, and the order a central authority brings.’
‘“Most”,’ John Smith said. ‘Except the ones that might choose to worship the gods in the sky. And even an interplanetary empire might fall because of a prophet. Or a holy book.’ He glared at them. ‘There. I said it out loud. That’s what you’re thinking, especially you, Oliver. And that’s what we need to discuss. Right?’
‘Right,’ Oliver said reluctantly. ‘That is one reading of my briefing from the President and his advisers. Not to mention my grandmother’s old team.’
‘Well, then,’ said John Smith. He dug into a pocket, and produced a Bible.
With bookmarks.
Oh shit, Tiff thought.
Smith opened the pages with a soft rustle.
A lawyer’s rustle, Tiff reflected. Theatrical. Attention-drawing.
‘You see,’ Smith said softly, ‘I for one do wonder if the implanting of such a figure as Feathers in our society was by chance. You’ll know there have been religious interpretations of these events and discoveries from the beginning. The virgin birth! Matthew, one twenty-three. Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us … Not a virgin mother this time – no mother in our universe at all.’
Tiff frowned. ‘That always seemed a stretch to me. That the Eternals would deliberately echo a human myth. How would they know? Why would they need to use it?’
Oliver said, ‘We do have this testimony that the entity Vasta and the others encountered out there called itself after a Roman god. Terminus …’
Smith shrugged. ‘So it knows us well enough to play that kind of card. And besides, a virgin birth might be a version of a universal myth, across any culture developed by a species with a form of procreation even vaguely similar to our own. You can imagine them repeating that kind of stunt over and over – the Eternals, I mean. The Madonna and Child, over and over, on world after world …
‘But there’s more warning to be dug out of our own experience, our own past. Listen to this … Ah, yes. Matthew, twenty-five, twenty-nine: Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other …’
Oliver said, ‘Wow.’ His voice was small.
Smith closed the book. ‘I could find such resonances in most major religions, even more. Again, maybe there are universals in all mythologies, even among non-humanoids, among any creatures with finite intelligences trying to understand the means and motives of apparently infinite entities above them. Gods of the Sun, the stars, gods of the weather. Gods of creation, of life and death.
‘And I would wager that’s what the Eternals play on. On world after world – in universe after universe.’ He looked at them, each in turn. ‘Now, you know why I’ve raised this. Here and now, while the situation is still … contained. Before some kind of messianic cult of the alien develops from the scraps of evidence that have already leaked into the public domain. A cult that might destabilise us for good – given that we now know that aliens with godlike powers do actually exist, and can cause such “tribulations” …’
Tiff frowned. ‘Isn’t it already contained? Feathers and her entourage are off in another universe. On her home world, if you want to believe what Vasta says. They won’t be coming back here, so far as we know. Nine itself seems inert. In a few generations – if the quasar effects do fizzle out, if humanity survives – all this may be just a curiosity for astronomers and physicists to play with – and historians—’
‘Except that there’s one link left,’ Oliver said.
John Smith turned to Tiff. ‘He’s right. One link. If it’s all word of mouth, all these mysteries can be – debunked. But not if there’s one person left in this whole damn universe who knew Feathers. One person who travelled to these other realms, or claimed they did. One witness who saw – what was it Matthew said? – the powers of heaven? Saw those powers exercised at first-hand. Who touched Feathers. Who spoke to her. Who heard the trumpet …’
Tiff felt she was missing something. ‘You don’t mean Vasta? You don’t mean she’s going to be this kind of witness to these events? The Gospel According to Elizabeth. Ha! …’
But, she saw, the others weren’t laughing.
John Smith leaned forward, and Oliver copied him, almost unconsciously, Tiff thought.
Smith said, ‘It must end here. It must end now. Or we will be saddled with these new gods for ever in our heads, even if the aliens do not return. And if they were to return, we would bow down before them rather than resist … It must end here. This – quasi-faith. Before it begins.’
Oliver’s frown was ferocious, a scowl that lined his still-young face. ‘Yes. You’re right. The link must be broken, now.’
And they both turned to Tiff, waiting for her agreement.
She could not refuse – not that her refusal would have carried any weight.
When the discussion moved on to how it should be done, she left the room.
48
They came for Elizabeth in the dark.
She was in her sleeping pouch.
She was easily immobilised. Without words, they just pulled the pouch up around her body, trapping her limbs, so she would have had to cut her way out.
But she didn’t struggle. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all right. I won’t fight you. I – ah.’
She felt a needle press at a vein in her neck. Fumbles in the dark, a scratch.
‘A little higher. You need to raise the needle a little higher … Whoever you are. It’s all right. I forgive you. Remember I said so.’
She tried to raise her arm. Her exploring hand, inside the pouch, found her black pearl pendant, the chain already broken.
‘It’s all right. I came here for this. I came here for you, Feathers. So they would not go after you – so they could not blame you. It stops here. I – ah.’
A sharper jab in the neck. An instant of pain, and then a wash of a kind of warmth, spreading through her body. It was like falling asleep, softly.
‘This is why I came home.
‘To finish this.
‘I came here for this … But … Joe …’
Joe the comms guy. What was it he had said to her avatar, on Nine?
‘You know, you don’t have to – leave. Not permanently. We can take a backup copy of you as we go along. A copy that’s independent of the original … You’ll still be here. A part of you at least. Or would have been part of you … Here for us, anyhow. And that’s all that counts, isn’t it …?’
She smiled. That’s all that counts …
And stars exploded behind her eyelids.
Elsewhere,
Elsewhen
49
After their first step without Elizabeth Vasta, they found themselves under a still astonishing, but familiar, sky. Still they were on Feathers’ world, it seemed.
But now under the gaudy sky of the creation node once more.
Watching Feathers tentatively exploring, Salma smiled to herself.
And under it all, hanging halfway to the sky, the drab charcoal-black ball that was Terminus, as still and enigmatic as ever. Ancient world under brand new stars. Under the light of creation. Brought together by Terminus and the powers behind him, just to impress.
‘Looks like Terminus delivered, huh?’ That was Meriel, gamely lugging kit out of the lander within which they had made this final, pancosmic journey.
There was no reply.
The others were concentrating on the unloading. After all this was to be their final destination – their final encampment.
Away from the lander a heap of gear was building up on the ground already, Salma saw, thanks to Meriel and Doria working steadily together. Habitat wall, floor and roof panels, to be assembled in due course. Dried food packets. The components of a closed-loop life-support system to be put together, activated and tuned up, at which point they could put away the ration packs for emergencies. Water tanks, full, with recycling filters already attached.
Eventually, Salma knew, and though it might take years to finish the job, they were going to dismantle the lander itself. Oh, they might save a propulsion unit or two, maybe the smaller attitude thrusters, so they could go explore more of this ball of rust and dirt Feathers called home.
But, as far as travel went, this far and no further. When they were settled, when Terminus finally abandoned them – or at least when they finally told it goodbye – this little world was going to be their home. For good.
They’d talked it through, over and over. Even so, Salma suspected some of them still had doubts.
Now Meriel called again. ‘So, Salma, did you get what you want? This dirt ball, that frozen firework display of a sky?’
‘I got what I wanted. What she wanted. Look at her.’
She meant Feathers, who was tentatively exploring, one cautious footstep at a time. Right now she was slowly making her way away from the centre of their chosen landing site, their home, as if following tracks Salma couldn’t see.
She seemed to thrill at the touch of the very dirt under her booted feet.
It is as you wished it.
Meriel looked up. ‘So it is, Terminus, buddy. I guess you did your best. Thanks …’
They had all decided they had no greater purpose than enriching Feathers’ life. At least the three humans had each other – even if in Doria’s case they had met as strangers only a few weeks back.
And the ultimate dream, Salma knew, had been somehow to deliver Feathers to her home world. Ideally, not her world as it was now – whatever ‘now’ meant – not to this relic, a world several times older than any in Salma’s home universe. Well, why couldn’t Feathers be taken back through some fancy wormhole to her world’s richer past? Just as Terminus and the entities behind him, on receiving the Hawking-radiation trigger that had activated Planet Nine, had evidently reached back into the deep past of humanity’s own Galaxy to kick off the proto-creation-node quasar, an event twenty-five thousand years deep.
But Terminus had wheeled out an excuse it had used before. Universes were not all alike; not all could be manipulated in such a way. A young cosmos like mankind’s, still awash with the fading glow of its Big Bang birth, was easily connected. But some universes – old, gnarly cosmoses like this one, apparently – resisted such violations. Somehow, in this universe, it had been possible to snatch Feathers out of her proper time and place, presumably in the deep past of this world, when it was young. But now it was impossible to return her – to her world, yes, but not her time.
None of them could see any point arguing. So the humans had decided to make the best of it.
After all, under the creation node, they had lost the past, but had gained an infinite future.
‘We can fix this world,’ Doria said now, walking up. Her face was obscured a little by a layer of grime on her faceplate, her gloves dark with it. ‘To an extent.’
Salma said, ‘You’ve been exploring.’
‘And prospecting. Figuring stuff out. One good outcome, I guess, of the anal-retentive interplanetary politics of Earth governments has been that my people on the Moon have had to find new ways. Right from the beginning we have had to learn to extract what we need to survive from what’s before us, from the most unpromising of sources – and to make a living out of it too. You might think Earth’s Moon is just a ball of rusted iron and aluminium oxides. Well, yes, but you can use sunlight power to split those oxides to get usable metals for space industry, and oxygen for a variety of purposes including life support. Point is we can do the same here. Point is, this place is Nirvana compared to Luna. For a start, just like on the Moon, with enough power you can split all this rusty dirt back into iron and oxygen—’
‘What power, though?’ Meriel asked. ‘Not geothermal. We know that this world is so old its very core is frozen solid.’
‘Not that, no. Don’t need it. We just use—’ She waved a gloved hand at the glowing sky. ‘That.’
‘The light of the creation node?’
Meriel smiled. ‘Why not? Seems ironic, I know. Even disrespectful? But it would work. It’s not as strong as sunlight on Earth, but we’ve got room to spread out some big solar panels.’
Meriel glanced at the imperturbable Terminus. ‘That would seem – fitting, somehow. To use the energy of those young stars, being born in the sky, to bring this ancient world back to life.’
