Читать книгу Origin - Stephen Baxter - Страница 31

A flock of pigeons flew at the big Marine helicopter. Such was their closing speed that the birds seemed to explode out of the air all around them, a panicky blur of grey and white. The pilot lifted his craft immediately, and the pigeons fell away.

Nemoto’s hands were over her mouth.

Malenfant grinned. ‘Just to make it interesting.’

‘I think the times are interesting enough, Malenfant.’

‘Yeah.’

Now the chopper rolled, and the capital rotated beneath him. They flew over the Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington monuments, set out like toys on a green carpet, and to the right the dome of the Capitol gleamed bright in the sunlight, showing no sign of the hasty restoration it had required after last month’s food riots.

The helicopter levelled and began a gentle descent towards the White House, directly ahead. The old sandstone building looked as cute, or as twee, as it had always done, depending on your taste. But now it was surrounded by a deep layer of defences, even including a moat around the perimeter fence. And, save for a helipad, the lawn had been turned to a patchwork of green and brown, littered with small out-buildings. In a very visible (though hardly practical) piece of example-setting, the lawn had been given over to the raising of vegetables and chickens and even a small herd of pigs, and every morning the President could be seen by webcast feeding his flock. It was not a convincing portrait, Malenfant always thought, even if the Prez was a farmer’s son. But for human beings, it seemed, symbolism was everything.

The helicopter came down to a flawless landing on the pad. Nemoto climbed out gracefully, carrying a rolled-up softscreen. Malenfant followed more stiffly, feeling awkward to have been riding in a military machine in his civilian suit – but he was a civilian today, at the insistence of the NASA brass.

An aide greeted them and escorted them into the building itself. They had to pass through a metal-and-plastics detector in the doorway, and then spent a tough five minutes in a small security office just inside the building being frisked, photographed, scanned and probed by heavily-armed Marine sergeants. Nemoto even had to give up her softscreen after downloading its contents into a military-issue copy.

Nemoto seemed to withdraw deeper into herself as they endured all this.

‘Take it easy,’ Malenfant told her. ‘The goons are just doing their job. It’s the times we live in.’

‘It is not that,’ Nemoto murmured. ‘It is this place, this moment. From orbit, I watched the oceans batter Japan. I felt I was in the palm of a monster immeasurably more powerful than me – a monster who would decide the fate of myself, and my family, and all I possessed and cared for, with an arbitrary carelessness I could do nothing to influence. And so, I feel, it is now. But I must endure.’

‘You really want to go on this trip, don’t you?’

She glanced at him. ‘As you do.’

‘You always deflect my questions about yourself, Nemoto. You are a koan. An enigma.’

She smiled at that fragment of Japanese.

At last they were done, and the aide, accompanied by a couple of the armed Marines, took them through corridors to the Oval Office, on the West Wing’s first floor, which the Vice-President was using today. Her official residence, a rambling brick house on the corner of 34th Street and Massachusetts Avenue, was no longer considered sufficiently secure.

Nemoto said as they walked, ‘You say you know Vice-President Della.’

‘Used to know her. She’s had an interest in space all her career. As a senator she served on a couple of NASA oversight committees.’ Now the President had asked Della to take responsibility for Malenfant’s project, in her capacity as chair of the Space Council.

Nemoto said, ‘If she is a friend of yours –’

‘Hardly that. More an old sparring partner. Mutual, grudging respect. I haven’t seen her for a long time – certainly not since she got here.’

‘Do you think she will support us?’

‘She’s from Iowa. She’s a canny politician. She is – practical. But she has always seen a little further than most of the Beltway crowd. She believes space efforts have value. But she’s a utilitarian. I’ve heard her argue for weather satellites, Earth resources programmes. She even supports blue-sky stuff about asteroid mining and power stations in orbit. Moving the heavy industries off the planet might provide a future for this dirty old world … But robots can do all that. I don’t think she sees much purpose in Man in Space. She never supported the Station, for instance.’

‘Then we must hope that she sees some utility in our venture to the Red Moon.’

He grimaced. ‘Either that or we manage to twist her arm hard enough.’

As they entered the Oval Office, Vice-President Maura Della was working through documents on softscreens embedded in a walnut desk. The desk was positioned at one of the big office’s narrow ends – the place really was oval-shaped, Malenfant observed, gawking like a tourist.

Della glanced up, stood, and came out from behind the desk to greet them. Dressed in a trim trouser-suit, she was dark, slim, in her sixties. She shook them both briskly by the hand, waved them to green wing-back chairs before the desk, then settled back into her rocking-chair.

The only other people in the room were an aide and an armed Marine at the door. Malenfant had been expecting Joe Bridges, and other NASA brass.

Without preamble Della said, ‘You’re trying to get me over a barrel, aren’t you, Malenfant?’

Malenfant was taken aback. This was, after all, the Vice-President. But he could see from the glint in Della’s eye that if he wanted to win the play this was a time for straight talking. ‘Not you personally. But – yes, ma’am, that’s the plan.’

Della tapped her desk. Malenfant glimpsed his own image scrolling before her, accompanied by text and video clips and the subdued insect murmur of audio.

Maura Della always had been known for a straightforward political style. To Malenfant she looked a little lost in the cool grandeur of the Oval Office, even after three years in the job, out of place in the crispness of the powder-blue carpet and cream paintwork, and the many alcoves crammed with books, certificates and ornaments, all precisely placed, like funerary offerings. This was clearly not a room you could feel you lived in.

There was a stone sitting on the polished desk surface, a sharp-edged fragment about the size of Malenfant’s thumb, the colour of lava pebbles. No, not stone, Malenfant realized, studying the fragment. Bone. A bit of skull, maybe.

Della said, ‘Your campaign has lasted two weeks already, in every media outlet known to man. Reid Malenfant the stricken hero, tilting at the new Moon to save his dead wife.’ She eyed him brutally.

‘It has the virtue of being true, ma’am,’ Malenfant said frankly. ‘And she may not be dead. That’s the whole point.’

Nemoto leaned forward. ‘If I may –’

Della nodded.

‘The response of the American public to Malenfant’s campaign has been striking. The latest polls show –’

‘Overwhelming support for what you’re trying to do,’ Della murmured. She tapped her desk and shut down the images. ‘Of course they do. But let me tell you something about polls. The President’s own approval ratings have been bouncing along the floor since the day the tides began to hit. You know why? Because people need somebody to blame.

‘The appearance of a whole damn Moon in the sky is beyond comprehension. If as a consequence your house is smashed, your crops destroyed, family members injured or dead, you can’t blame the Moon, you can’t rage at the Tide. In another age you might have blamed God. But now you blame whoever you think ought to be helping you climb out of your hole, which generally means all branches of the federal government, and specifically this office.’ She shook her head. ‘So polls don’t drive me one way or the other. Because whatever I decide, your stunt isn’t going to help me.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Nemoto. ‘But it might help the people beyond this office. The people of the world. And that is what we are talking about, isn’t it?’

Malenfant covered her hand. Take it easy.

Della glared. ‘Don’t presume to tell me my job, young woman.’ Then she softened. ‘Even if you’re right.’ She turned to a window. ‘God knows we need some good news … You know about the ’quakes.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Malenfant said grimly.

This was the latest manifestation of the Red Moon’s baleful influence. Luna had raised tides in Earth’s rock, just as in its water. Luna’s rock tides had amounted to no more than a few inches.

But the Red Moon raised great waves several feet high.

Massive earthquakes had occurred in Turkey, Chile and elsewhere, many of them battering communities already devastated by the effects of the Tide. In fault zones like the San Andreas in California, the land above the faults was being eroded away much more rapidly than before, thus exposing the unstable rocks beneath, and exacerbating the tidal flexing of the rocks themselves.

Della said, ‘The geologists tell me that if the Red Moon stays in orbit around Earth, it is possible that the fault lines between Earth’s tectonic plates – such as the great Ring of Fire that surrounds the Pacific – will ultimately settle down to constant seismic activity. Constant. I can’t begin to imagine what that will mean for us, for humanity. No doubt devastating long-term impacts on the Earth’s climate, all that volcanic dust and ash and heat being pumped into the air… When I look into the future now, the only rational reaction is dread and fear.’

‘People need to see that we are hitting back,’ Malenfant said. ‘That we are doing something.’

‘Perhaps. That is the American way. The myth of action. But does our action hero have to be you, Malenfant? And what happens when you crash up there, or die of starvation, or burn up on re-entry? How will that play in the polls?’

‘Then you find another hero,’ Malenfant said stonily. ‘And you try again.’

‘But even if you make it to the Moon, what will you find? You should know I’ve had several briefings in preparation for this meeting. One of them was with Dr Julia Corneille, from the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. An old college friend, as it happens.’

‘Anthropology?’

‘Actually Julia’s specialty is palaeoanthropology. Extinct homs, the lineage of human descent. You see the relevance.’

‘Homs?’

‘Hominids.’ Della smiled. ‘Sorry. Field slang. You can tell I spent some time with Julia … She told me something of her life, her work in the field. Mostly out in the desert heartlands of Kenya.’

‘Looking for fossils,’ Malenfant said.

‘Looking for fossils. People don’t leave many fossils, Malenfant. And they don’t just lie around. It took Julia years before she learned to pick them out, tiny specks against the soil. It’s a tough place to work, harsh, terribly dry, a place where all the bushes have thorns on them … Fascinating story.’ She picked up the scrap of bone from her desk. ‘This was the first significant find Julia made. She told me she was engaged on another dig. She was walking one day along the bed of a dried-out river, when she happened to glance down … Well. It is a fragment of skull. A trace of a woman, of a species called Homo erectus. The Erectus were an intermediate form of human. They arose perhaps two million years ago, and became extinct a quarter-million years ago. They had bodies close to modern humans, but smaller brains – perhaps twice the size of chimps’. But they were phenomenally successful. They migrated out of Africa and covered the Old World, reaching as far as Java.’

Malenfant said dryly, ‘Fascinating, ma’am. And the significance –’

‘The significance is that the homs who rained out of the sky, on the day you lost your wife, Malenfant, appear to have been Homo erectus. Or a very similar type.’

There was a brief silence.

‘But if Erectus died out two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, what is he doing falling out of the sky?’

‘That is what you must find out, Malenfant, if your mission is approved. Think of it. What if there is a link between the homs of the Wheel and ancestral Erectus? Well, how can that be? What does it tell us of human evolution?’ Della fingered her skull fragment longingly. ‘You know, we have spent billions seeking the aliens in the sky. But we were looking in the wrong place. The aliens aren’t separated from us by distance, but by time. Here –’ she said, holding out the bit of bone ‘– here is the alien, right here, calling to us from the past. But we have to infer everything about our ancestors from isolated bits of bone – the ancient homs’ appearance, gait, behaviour, social structure, language, culture, tool-making ability – everything we know, or we think we know about them. We can’t even tell how many species there were, let alone how they lived, how they felt. You, on the other hand, might be able to view them directly.’ She smiled. ‘Even ask them. Think what it would mean.’

Malenfant began to see the pattern of the meeting. In her odd mix of hard-nosed scepticism at his mission plans, and wide-eyed wonder at what he might find up there, Della was groping her way towards a decision. His best tactic was surely to play straight.

Nemoto had been listening coldly. She leaned forward. ‘Madam Vice-President. You want this Dr Corneille to have a seat on the mission.’

Ah, Malenfant thought. Now we cut to the horse-trading.

Della sat back in her rocker, hands settling over her belly. ‘Well, they sent geologists to the Moon on Apollo.’

‘One geologist,’ said Malenfant. ‘Only after years of infighting. And Jack Schmitt was trained up for the job; he made sure he was, in fact. As far as I know there are no palaeoanthropologists in the Astronaut Office.’

‘Would there be room for a passenger?’

Malenfant shook his head. ‘You’ve seen our schematics.’

Della tapped her desk, and brought up computer-graphic images of booster rockets and spaceplanes. ‘You are proposing to build a booster from Space Shuttle components.’

‘Our Saturn V replacement, yes.’

‘And you will glide down into the Red Moon’s atmosphere in a – what is it?’

‘An X-38. It is a lifting body, the crew evacuation vehicle used on the Space Station. We will fit it out to keep us alive for the three-day trip. On the surface we will rendezvous with a package of small jets and boosters for the return journey, sent up separately. The whole mission design is based around a two-person crew. Madam Vice-President, we just couldn’t cram in anybody else.’

‘Not on the way out,’ Della said evenly. ‘Two out, three back. Isn’t that your slogan, Malenfant?’

‘That’s the whole idea, ma’am. And those outbound two have to be astronauts. The best scientist in the world will be no use on the Red Moon dead.’

‘The same argument was used to keep scientists off Apollo,’ Della said.

‘But it is still valid.’

Nemoto said coldly, ‘The reality is that I must fly this mission because the Japanese funding depends on it. And Malenfant must fly the mission –’

‘Because the American public longs for him to go,’ Della sighed. ‘You’re right, of course. If this mission is approved, then it will be you two sorry jerks who fly it.’

If. Malenfant allowed himself a flicker of hope.

Nemoto seemed to be growing agitated. ‘Madam Vice-President, we must do this. If I may –’ She leaned forward and unrolled her softscreen on Della’s desktop.

Della watched her blankly. Malenfant had no idea where this was leading.

‘There is evidence that similar events have touched human history before, evidence buried deep in our history and myths. Consider the story of Ezekiel, from the Old Testament: And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the Earth, the wheels were lifted up. Or consider a tale from the ancient Persian Gulf, about an animal endowed with reason called Oannes, who used to converse with men but took no food … and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences and every kind of art –’

Shit, Malenfant thought.

Della was keeping her face straight. ‘So is this your justification for a billion-dollar space mission? UFOs from the Bible?’

Nemoto said, ‘My point is that the irruption of the Red Moon is the greatest event in modern human history. It will surely shape our future – as it has our past. The emergence of the primitive hominids from Malenfant’s portal tells us that. This one event is the pivot on which history turns.’

‘I feel I have enough on my plate without assuming responsibility for all human history.’

Nemoto subsided, angry, baffled.

Della said bluntly, ‘However I do need to know why you are trying to kill yourselves.’

Malenfant bridled. ‘The mission profile –’

‘– is a death-trap. Come on, Malenfant; I’ve studied space missions before.’

Malenfant sat up straight, Navy style. ‘We don’t have time not to buy the risks on this one, ma’am.’

‘You’re both obsessed enough to take those risks. That’s clear enough. Nemoto I think I understand.’

‘You do?’

Della smiled at Nemoto. ‘Forgive me, dear. Malenfant, she may be an enigma to you, but that’s because she’s young. She lost her family, her home. She wants revenge.’

Nemoto did not react to this.

‘But what about you, Malenfant?’

‘I lost my wife,’ he said angrily. ‘That’s motive enough. With respect, ma’am.’

She nodded. ‘But you are grounded. Let me put it bluntly, because others will ask the same question many times before you get to the launch pad. Are you going back to space to find your wife? Or are you using Emma as a lever to get back into space?’

Malenfant kept his face blank, his bearing upright. He wasn’t about to lose his temper with the Vice-President of the United States. ‘I guess Joe Bridges has been talking to you.’

She drummed her fingers on her desk. ‘Actually he is pushing you, Malenfant. He wants you to fly your mission.’ She observed his surprise. ‘You didn’t know that. You really don’t know much about people, do you, Malenfant?’

‘Ma’am, with respect, does it matter? If I fly to the Red Moon, whatever my motives, I’ll still serve your purposes.’ He eyed her. ‘Whatever they are.’

‘Good answer.’ She turned again to her softscreen. ‘I’m going to sleep on this. Whether or not you bring back your wife, I do need you to bring us some good news, Malenfant. Oh, one more thing. Julia’s ape-men falling from the sky … You should know there are a lot of people very angered at the interpretation that they might have anything to do with the origins of humankind.’

Malenfant grunted. ‘The crowd who think Darwin was an asshole.’

Della shrugged. ‘It’s the times, Malenfant. Today only forty per cent of American schools teach evolution. I’m already coming under a lot of pressure from the religious groups over your mission, both from Washington and beyond.’

‘Am I supposed to go to the Red Moon and convert the ape-men?’

She said sternly, ‘Watch your public pronouncements. You will go with God, or not at all.’ She fingered the bit of hominid skull on her desk. ‘O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Our old friend Ezekiel. Chapter 37, verse 4. Good day.’