Aupes

AUPES

  Les Broad

  Copyright 2011 Les Broad

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  PROLOGUE

  Some people perhaps the perceptive ones, perhaps the gullible, Believed.

  Some said that lines on the ground in South America were alien landing strips. Others contended that corn circles were complex messages. It had been argued that even the Bible contained descriptions of alien spaceships as pillars of fire. Those who really Believed knew that Earth had been visited over thousands of years by travellers from other worlds.

  So-called ‘reliable' witnesses gave undramatic factual accounts. Airline and air force pilots reported craft doing impossible things. Police officers saw flying saucers on the ground. Radar operators saw blips that shouldn't do what they did.

  But, naturally, some people refused to accept the evidence, arguing that there were rational, earthbound explanations for these phenomena. The late twentieth century boom in flying saucer spotting was explained as weather balloons, low flying aircraft and other mundane occurrences. Roswell? Area 51? These were of no significance at all if you refused to Believe.

  There were of course those who had met Them. Their accounts may have been dismissed as tricks of the memory, lies or the product of hallucinogenic drugs but these people Believed.

  But none of these people could ever know how important they really were.

  Because they were momentously significant.

  CHAPTER 1

  In the year 2207 the pace of degradation seemed to increase. The only habitable places on the face of the planet were Europe north of the Alps and Scandinavia, and even what had once been Sweden was getting bad now.

  It had been going on for nearly two hundred years. Mankind had entered the new millennium with unbounded optimism, with new-found wealth being created in East Africa based on new generation intelligent computer, robotics and deep-space avionics companies setting up in the equatorial regions. Tragically, this explosion of wealth occurred as reliance on fossil fuels declined sharply, plunging the Middle East into a financial crisis with amazing speed. That decline brought to the fore expansionist rulers who were prepared to use any means to regain their financially pre-eminent position in the world. A first strike on newly industrialised East Africa with chemical and biological weapons led to a response, forced on Western politicians by their corporate paymasters. Within hours sufficient weapons had been deployed to wipe out all life in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North America.

  Those who made fortunes creating and trafficking in such weapons of mass killing insisted in their sales pitches that the effects were short term. They could not have been more wrong.

  As well as the original target areas, Asia was now, nearly two hundred years later, all but a dead continent. Even Australia and New Zealand could no longer support any life. South America had been completely dead within fifty years. Europe resisted, but at huge cost as all efforts in any academic or technological field were directed at stopping the spread of murderous chemical clouds. Even so, southern Europe was finished and the habitable areas were becoming smaller with every year. But this year it was getting worse faster.

  Against the threatening, ominous background Sarah Gifford worked in a pocket of what might almost be called civilisation in Denmark (as it used to be called) controlling a vast team dedicated to survival. She was a toxicologist but these days seemed to be a full time panic controller and administrator. Two years earlier she had instigated, in the greatest secrecy, a survival option.

  She had sworn a specially convened meeting, in January 2205, to secrecy before outlining what she wanted to achieve. She had managed, as had those who had been Controller before her, to hold together the best people in all the necessary fields to fight the poisonous onslaught, but had realised that she and her predecessors in the shrinking world's most impossible job had been merely deferring the ultimate disaster of extinction. By the time she hatched her plan, she knew she would be the one who would be unable to hand over control. When the time came, everyone would have been dead for a decade or more.

  On that freezing morning two years before, she had looked at the weary, drawn faces of her chosen team. Bryn Jenkins the Welsh engineer could, it seemed, build anything with nothing and make it run perfectly on hope alone. Marge Dorowitz was a physicist of considerable skill and, for someone of American origin, discreet and sensible. Finally there was the biologist. Nikki Weaver was young, just 25 whereas Jenkins was over 40, as was Marge, but her knowledge of her subject was encyclopaedic. Sarah was also in the over forty category but her years in charge made her look and act much older.

  "Let's all sit down. I have something to put to you all and I am nervous enough already without you three milling about."

  Sarah sat behind her desk with Nikki straight in front of her. The others sat off to one side.

  "I'd appreciate it," Sarah began, "if, as far as anyone else is concerned, this is just a routine updating session. OK?" There were murmurs of interested agreement.

  "Good. I am going to start by admitting I'm frightened. Well, it's more than that, really, I'm actually scared to death. I've been checking back, as far as I can, over the whole period since the war - nearly two hundred years now - and I can't find any, repeat, any time when we've regained so much as a yard of ground against this damned poison. Sure, from time to time we've slowed it down some, maybe even halted it for a while, but we've never pushed it back. Let's face it, people, if we haven't done it yet, it just ain't about to happen. We're losing and with our resources reducing all the time we're not going to change that. For two centuries we've fought a losing battle and it seems pretty clear to me that I'm going to be the one in charge when the last of us dies. Anybody want to argue with me so far?"

  "We've made progress with artificial environments," Nikki said, "but realistically we'd need a major slowdown in degeneration, maybe eighty per cent, to give us a chance of getting something working properly. Every time we try anywhere near the poison border we lose another team. As the degeneration is on the increase I'd have to say it's hopeless."

  "OK. Anything to add? Marge? Bryn?" Nobody replied.

  "We're agreed then. We've had it, maybe in five, ten years. Fifteen if we're optimistic, but then we'd probably starve before the poison kills us. As I see it we've got one option. Leave."

  "And go where?" Marge seemed cynical. "About the only place better is north Norway, but it's too damned cold to grow food and anyway with Sweden being bad and getting worse that situation won't last more than a year or two. We can't go anywhere."

  "Now hold on Marge, Sarah must have something in mind to raise the issue at all. I don't see what it could be, but let her go on."

  "Thanks, Bryn. But Marge is right. We're in the best place on Earth. Where I have in mind isn't on Earth."

  The trio in the audience looked at each other in astonishment, but quickly Bryn's face showed that he was thinking about the proposal seriously. Marge was the one who took the point up.

  "Fantasy! The farthest we've been is Mars and there's nothing there to justify any hope of a permanent settlement as we've known for two hundred years or more. Anyway, I doubt if we could now drum up enough expertise to build an orbiter, much less an interplanetary vehicle. Sorry, Sarah, much as I admire you for trying to think of a novel solution you can forget that one."

  Sarah looked Marge straight in the eye
as she leaned forward.

  "Marge," she said, "I wasn't thinking interplanetary - "

  "Well," Marge jumped back in "that makes a difference! We screw together a vehicle with lunar capability and after a few dozen trips we've got a nice little community up there, peering down on Earth waiting for the grass to start growing again. I'd rather take my chances down here, thanks.”

  "It would be possible, given time, though." Bryn sounded unsure but his face showed a more positive disposition.

  "I'm sure it would be possible, Bryn," Sarah went on, "But it's not enough. I want interstellar."

  Marge snorted. "Good grief. You're mad, quite mad."

  "No, Marge, I think," Bryn said quietly, "it could be done. The engineering records are pretty good and somewhere there are some theoretical proposals for going outside the solar system – I read that stuff for fun when I’ve got time. Never tested, of course, so even if we could build the vehicle it would be bloody dangerous at every stage. My gut reaction is that we've got damn all to lose, so let's look at it."

  "OK," said Sarah, appearing satisfied, “this is what I propose. Nikki can work out a payload in terms of food production and a genetic bank to start a new population. Bryn can see if a vehicle can be built. And you, Marge, can offer your skills to Bryn whenever he needs them as well as, if you don't mind me being direct, a healthy dose of cynicism towards the whole project, so that we don't get carried away. Questions?"

  "What's the next stage, assuming my so-called cynicism doesn't quash everything inside twenty four hours?"

  “I suggest we meet again in fourteen days with a view to making a decision as to whether or not we try."