Another stiff professor’s joke. Bisesa laughed politely.
“Madam Dutt, I suppose you know that Jacob Rice is looking for you. He’ll wait until the procession is underway. But he wants you to come see him in his carriage. He has Abdikadir at his side already.”
“He does? I had hoped Abdikadir would be with you.” Abdi had been working on astronomy projects with Oker and his students.
But Oker shook his head. “What the mayor asks for, the mayor gets.”
“I suppose it might be worth a ride in the warmth for a bit. What does he want?”
Oker cocked an eyebrow. “I think you know. He wants to drain your knowledge of Alexander and his Old World empire. Sarissae and steam engines—I admit I’m intrigued myself!”
She smiled. “He’s still dreaming of world domination?”
“Look at it from Rice’s point of view,” Oker said. “This is the completion of one great project, the migration from the old Chicago to the new, a work that has consumed his energies for years. Jacob Rice is still a young man, and a hungry and energetic one, and I suppose we should be glad of that or we surely wouldn’t have got as far as this. Now he looks for a new challenge.”
“This world is a pretty big place,” Bisesa said. “Room enough for everybody.”
“But not infinite,” Oker said. “And after all we have already made tentative contacts across the ocean. Rice is no Alexander, I’m convinced of that, but neither he nor the Great King are going to submit to the other.
“And, you know, there may be something worth fighting for. Rice has accepted what you and Abdikadir have said of the future. He has demanded of his scientists, specifically of me, to explore ways to avert the end of the universe—or perhaps even to escape it.”
“Wow. He does think big.”
“And, you see, he suspects that the dominance of this world may be a necessary first step to saving it.”
Rice might actually be right, Bisesa thought. If the only way back to Earth was through the Eye in Babylon, war over possession of that city might ultimately be inevitable.
Oker sighed. “The trouble is, however, that once you are in the pocket of a man like Rice, it’s hard to climb out again. I should know,” he said ruefully. “And you must decide, Bisesa Dutt, what you want.”
She was clear about that. “I’ve achieved what I came here for. Now I have to get back to Babylon. That’s the way I came into this world, and it’s my only connection to my daughter. And I think I ought to take Abdikadir back home too. The court of Alexander needs clear intelligences like his.”
Oker thought that over. “You have given us much, Madam Dutt—not least, an awareness of our place in this peculiar panoply of multiple universes. Jacob Rice’s wars are not your wars; his goals are not your goals. At some point we will help you get away from him.” He glanced at Emeline and her sons, who nodded their support.
“Thank you,” Bisesa said sincerely. “But what about you, Professor?”
“Well, the foundation stone of the new observatory at New Chicago has already been laid. Building that might be enough to see me through. But beyond that—” He looked up at the dense mass of cloud above. “Sometimes I feel privileged just to be here, you know, on the world you call Mir. I have been projected into an entirely new universe, in which different worlds are suspended, studied by no astronomer before my generation! But the seeing is always poor. I would love to travel above the clouds of Mir—to sail to the Moon and the other worlds in some aerial phaeton. It beggars my imagination as to how that might be achieved, but if Alexander the Great can run a steam-train service, perhaps New Chicago can reach the stars. What do you think?” He grinned, suddenly boyish.
Bisesa smiled. “I think that’s a marvelous idea.”
Emeline clung to the arm of Harry, her son. “Well, you can keep the stars. All I want is a plot of land that’s ice-free at least some of the time. And as for the future—five hundred years, you say? That will see me out, and my boys. It’s time enough for me.”
“You’re very wise,” Oker said.
There was a blast on a hunting horn.
An anticipatory cheer went up. Men, women and children shuffled, adjusting the packs on their backs. The horses neighed and bucked, harness rattled, and the somewhat shapeless crowd, crammed into the muddy street, began to take on the appearance of a procession.
Lights flared, startling Bisesa. Electric searchlights suspended from the skyscrapers splashed light over walls that were now revealed to be draped in bunting and the Stars and Stripes. The cheers grew louder.
“All scavenged from the world’s fair,” Emeline said, smiling, a bit tearful. “I have my reservations about Jacob Rice, but I’d never deny he has style! What a way to say good-bye to the old lady.”
A walking beat was sounded by the massed drummers.
With a protesting trumpet Rice’s harnessed mammoth led the march, jolting the Mayor’s carriage into motion. The crowd was packed so tightly that the movement took time to ripple through its ranks; it was some minutes before Bisesa, Emeline, and the others had room to walk. At last all the great crowd shuffled forward, heading south along Michigan Avenue toward Jackson Park. Armed troopers wearing yellow armbands walked to either side of the dense column, to fend off the wild animals. Even the yellow streetcars clattered into motion, one last time, though they couldn’t carry their passengers far along their journey.
As they marched the Chicagoans began to sing, the rhythm driven by the drums and the slow beat of the steps of their swaddled feet. At first they plumped for patriotic songs: “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” “America,” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But after a while they settled into a song Bisesa had heard many times here, a Tin Pan Alley hit of the 1890s from which Chicago had been plucked. It was a sweet dirge about an old man who had lost his love. The mournful voices rose up, echoing from the brick, glass, and concrete faces of the abandoned buildings around them, singing of the hopes that had vanished “after the ball.”
Bisesa heard a crash of glass, drunken laughter, and then a dull crump. Looking back, she saw that flames were already licking out of the darkened upper windows of the Lexington Hotel.
53: AURORA
December 7, 2070
With Bill Carel and Bob Paxton at her side, Bella Fingal gazed out of the shuttle’s small blister window as they approached one of the most famous spacecraft in human history.
Bella felt exhausted, deep in her bones, after the strain of the last months. But now it was almost over. Only a few more days remained to the Q-bomb’s closest approach to Earth: “Q-day,” as the commentators called it. The astronomers and the military assured her daily that the bomb had stuck to the path to which it had been deflected after the Eye on Mars had suddenly flared to life; the Q-bomb would come close, even sailing between Earth and Moon, but it would not impact the planet.
Bella had to plan her affairs as if that were true. Today, for instance, she had to get through this conference on Aurora, fulfilling one of her last self-appointed duties, the kick-starting of a new debate about the future of mankind. But she suspected that like the rest of the human race she wouldn’t quite believe it until the Q-bomb really had passed by harmlessly. And like much of mankind she planned to spend Q-day itself with her family.
After that she could lay down the burden of office at last, and submit herself to the war crimes tribunal at the Hague, and somebody else would have to make the decisions. She was content with that. Content even at being relieved of office before the final act of this lethal drama was played out, in the abandonment of Mars.
The shuttle turned. She was maundering; she had almost forgotten where she was. She peered out of her window, concentrating on a remarkable, and familiar, view.
Shining in raw sunlight, Aurora 2 was ungainly, fragile-looking. She looked something like a drum majorette’s baton, a slim spine two hundred meters long connecting propulsion units and habitable compartments. The ship was badly scarred, paint peeli
ng, solar-cell arrays blackened and curled up, and in one place the hull of the crew dome had burned and wrinkled back, exposing struts and partitions. Aurora had visibly withstood a terrible fire. But she had achieved what had been asked of her.
Aurora had been the second manned ship to Mars. She had been intended to pick up Bob Paxton and his crew, who would have sailed home to their heroes’ welcome. But the sunstorm had put paid to those plans, and Aurora 2, one of the largest spacecraft of its day, was needed for other purposes than exploration, and she was brought back to Earth. L1, a stationary point between sun and Earth, was the logical place to hang a shield intended to shelter the Earth from the raging of the sunstorm. So it was here that Aurora had been stationed, to serve as a shack for the construction crews.
The shield was gone now. The storm had left it a monumental wreck, that had then been cannibalized to build new stations in space and on the Moon. But the Aurora herself remained here at L1, a permanent memorial to those astonishing days, and a stub of the shield had been kept in place around the ship, its glistening surface spiralling out from the embedded hull like a spiderweb.
Bella glanced at her fellow passengers. Bill Carel, frail, trembling slightly, his face full of anger at the betrayal by his son, barely seemed able to see the approaching ship.
Bob Paxton’s expression was harder to read.
Bella herself had served on the shield during the sunstorm, and had been up here many times since, for memorials, dedication services, museum openings, anniversaries. But for Bob Paxton it was different. As soon as he got back to Earth after the storm, he had gotten through the medals-and-presidents stuff as quickly as possible. Then he had thrown himself back into his military career, and had ultimately devoted his life to the issue of how to deal with the future Firstborn threat. Paxton had never visited L1, and probably hadn’t even seen Aurora 2 since he glimpsed her from the surface of Mars, sliding through the sky on its flyby pass, abandoning him and his crew. Now the old sky warrior’s face was creased, clamped, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
The shuttle turned with a remote clatter of attitude thrusters and nestled belly-down on the curving hull of Aurora’s habitable compartment. The sun was directly below Bella now, casting vertical shadows, and through a small window set over her head she saw the Earth, a blue lantern hanging directly opposite the position of the sun. Earth was full, of course; it always was, as seen from L1. She wished she could see it more clearly.
With the docking complete, the shuttle closed its systems down.
“Welcome to Aurora 2, and the Shield Memorial Station.”
The soft female voice sent a shiver of familiarity through Bella. This was different from all her previous visits. “Hello, Athena. Welcome home.”
“Bella. It’s good to speak to you again. Please come aboard.”
A hatch opened in the floor. Bella released her seat restraint and floated into the air.
Alexei Carel and Lyla Neal were waiting for them on the bridge of Aurora.
This was the ship’s single most prestigious site, the location where Bud Tooke had once masterminded the salvation of the Earth. Now it was a museum, and the antique-looking softscreen displays, headsets, clipboards, and other bits of detritus from the days of crisis had been lovingly preserved under layers of transparent plastic. It always made Bella feel old to come back here.
Bill Carel was the last to come through onto the bridge. Clumsy in microgravity, evidently feeble, he looked oddly comical in his orange jumpsuit. But when he faced his son his expression was twisted. “You bloody little fool. And you, Lyla. You betrayed me.”
Alexei and Lyla clung to each other, drifting a little in the microgravity, nervous, defiant. Alexei was a skinny kid, only twenty-seven, and Lyla looked even younger. But then, reflected Bella, all true Spacers were just kids.
Alexei said, “We don’t see it like that, Dad. We did what we had to do. What we thought was best.”
“You spied on me,” Carel snapped. “You stole my work. You were a brilliant student, Lyla. Brilliant. And you’ve come to this.”
Lyla was cooler than her lover. “We were forced into it by your own actions, sir. You kept secrets. You wouldn’t tell people what they needed to know. You lied! If we were at fault, so were you.”
“And that,” Bella broke in, “is the first sensible thing anybody’s said.”
“I agree,” Athena said dryly. “Perhaps you should all sit down. A small educational area has been set aside at the rear of the bridge…”
It was a plastic table, its top drenched with kid-friendly sunstorm info, with small seats set around it with microgravity bars to hook your feet onto. The five of them sat here, over the glimmering primary colors of the table, glowering.
“Well, I’m glad to be here, at any rate,” Athena said.
Bella looked up. “Was that a joke, Athena?”
“You remember me, Bella. I always was a joker.”
“You thought you were. So you’re pleased we brought you home from Cyclops.” If a distributed intelligence like Athena could be said to “be” anywhere, she, or rather her most complete definition, was now lodged in a secure memory store in one of Aurora’s abandoned engine rooms.
Athena said, “I was made welcome at Cyclops. I was protected there. But I was born to run the shield, born to be here. Of course I, this copy of me, have no memory of the sunstorm itself. It is actually educational for me to be here, to access the data stores. To learn what happened that day, as if I were any other visitor. It is humbling.”
“And may I humbly ask,” Bob Paxton asked sourly, “why the fuck you have dragged us all up here?” It was the first time he had spoken since coming aboard.
Bella laid her hand flat on the table, a gentle gesture that nevertheless commanded their attention. “Because this is neutral ground for Earthborn and Spacers, or as near as I could come up with. Somehow we seem to have gotten through the Q-bomb crisis, though we fought like cats in a sack in the process. Well, now we need a new way of getting along.”
Alexei said, “I heard you’re standing down after Christmas.”
“More than that,” Paxton growled. “Madam Chair here is probably going to face a war crimes tribunal. As, in fact, am I.”
Lyla frowned. “But what of the attacks on the elevators? Who’s going to be held responsible for that?”
“I am happy to stand trial,” Athena said firmly, “if it will protect those whose actions I influenced.”
Alexei laughed. “They can’t put an AI on trial.”
“Of course they can,” Bella said. “Athena has rights. She is a Legal Person (Non-Human). But with rights come responsibilities. She can be tried, just as much as I can be. Though I don’t think anybody has worked out what her sentence might be, if she’s found guilty…”
Athena said, “These trials will be played out in full public view, before courts representing both Earth and Spacer communities. Whatever the outcome I hope it will be part of the reconciliation process. The healing.”
Bella said, “We all did what we thought we had to do. But that’s all in the past. The Q-bomb changed everything. It’s all different now.”
Lyla studied her curiously. “Different how?”
“For one thing, the politics…”
The species-wide debate forced by Athena on the decision to deflect the bomb had been a brief, traumatic shock to the political system. Perhaps it was a culmination of tensions that had been building up for decades among an increasingly interconnected mankind. Afterward, it hadn’t proven possible to shut down the debate.
“Everything is fluid, since the vote. There are new factions, new interest and protest groups, new sorts of lobbies. On Earth the last barriers between the old nations are being kicked down. Across the system people are ignoring the old categories, and are uniting with others with whom they find common cause, whichever world they happen to live on. An interconnected democracy is taking over, a mass, self-correcting wisdom, whether
we like it or not. Maybe it was good that our first great exercise in using our collective voice was over something we could pretty much unite around—in the end, perhaps, the Firstborn have done us a favor. But that voice hasn’t been stilled.”
Alexei faced his father. “Look, Dad. Things have got to change in space, too. I mean the relationship between Spacers and Earth.”
“Between you and me, you mean,” said Bill Carel.
“That too. The idea that Earth can impose its will on space is a fantasy, no matter how many antimatter warships you build.”
In December 2070, there had been no declaration of independence; there were no Spacer nations, and at present all Spacers were colonists, formally owing their allegiance to one of Earth’s old nations or another. The Spacers had their own internal rivalries, of course. But as they looked back to an Earth reduced to a blue lamp in the sky, if they could see it at all, it was increasingly difficult for them to think of themselves as American Spacers versus Albanian, British Spacers versus Belgian…
“‘Spacer’ is an absurd label, really. A negative one that actually means ‘not of Earth.’ We’re all different, and we all have our own opinions.”
“You got that right,” Bob Paxton growled. “More opinions than fucking Spacers.”
“My point is, you can’t control us anymore. We can’t even control ourselves—and wouldn’t want to. We’re on a new road, Dad, and even we don’t know where it will lead.”
“Or what you will become,” said Carel. “But I have to let you go come what may, don’t I?”
Alexei smiled. “I’m afraid so.”
And there, Bella knew, was the subtext in the conversation between Earth and Spacers. If the mother world released her grip, she would lose her children forever.
Bob Paxton grunted. “Christ, I feel like blubbing.”
“All right, Bob,” Bella said. “Look, it’s a serious point. One of my last executive orders will be to initiate a new constitutional convention for all of us—Earth and the whole solar system—based on recognized human rights precedents. We do not want a world government, I don’t think. What we do need are new mechanisms, new political forms to recognize the new fluidity. No more power centers,” she said. “No more secrets. We still need mechanisms to unify us, to ensure justice and equality of resource and opportunity—and fast-response agencies when crises hit.”