Proxima (42 page)

And it felt as if the floor fell away beneath them.

2197

T
he Obelisk negotiations started late on Penny’s second day on Mars, to allow for the visitors’ misaligned biological clocks.

The talks were held in a panoramic conference room, on a floor of the Obelisk even higher than Penny’s hotel room. The main players sat at a long table, with the UN Deputy Secretary
General and the chief Chinese official, a local provincial governor, facing each other across the centre of the table, with translators scattered around. Penny was here purely to advise Sir Michael
King, so she sat back from the table just behind him, coming forward only when he beckoned her.

It seemed to Penny that the talks proceeded pretty well, on a broad-brush level. The delegates on both sides set out goals, aspirations, rather than demands or decrees. Visitors from UN nations
should be allowed access to the Chinese offworld operations – especially the asteroid Ceres, the hub of development in the main belt, which was currently entirely closed to the UN. Similarly
UN zone corporations should be granted licences to begin a share of exploitation of asteroid resources; after all, there was enough for everybody. On the other hand the Chinese wished for some kind
of access to the kernels, at least to the wild developments in physics theory they had spawned, if not to the objects themselves. There were no blank refusals on either side, not yet.

Most of the discussion concerned matters of principle rather than details of the kernel science that was Penny’s speciality, and she had plenty of time to kick back and stare out of the
window at the view. They were so high up that Mars’s tight horizon visibly curved, as if she was in some aircraft, not in a solid structure at all.

In a break, Penny stood with Sir Michael King and her assigned companion Jiang Youwei at a window, clutching coffees. King agreed that progress had been reasonable. ‘Here you have two
societies with competing strategic goals, but with an almost entire lack of understanding of each other. A classic recipe for war, no matter how long we talk about zones of influence and such. But
today, war is unthinkable.’

‘Yes,’ Jiang Youwei said seriously. ‘Both sides command enormous energies, the UN with its kernels, the Chinese with our interplanetary economy. Yet the populations of both
sides are hugely fragile, we under our domes, the UN nations with their sprawling masses under an open sky—’

‘Not to mention the sprawling masses in China itself,’ King said sternly.

‘Of course.’

‘At the same time,’ King said, ‘we each have a monopoly of something we don’t want the other guy to share. We the kernels, you the asteroids, roughly speaking. So what
we’re each doing is prising open our treasure chests and letting each other at least sniff the gold. Everything is symbolic. The very fact that we made the effort to come all the way out here
rather than just send a delegation to New Beijing on Earth is itself a token of our willingness to cooperate.’

He was right, of course. It was all about symbols, on a level beneath the torrents of words. Penny understood that as a ‘face’ of kernel physics, internationally known, her presence
too was a symbolic gesture. Even if she never opened her mouth.

Jiang said, straight-faced, ‘And of course your immense hulk ship in orbit around Mars is itself another symbol.’

King raised his eyebrows, and mock-toasted the boy’s answer with his coffee.

‘Maybe free trade will be possible some day,’ Penny said. ‘That’s generally a way to avoid war.’

King glanced at Jiang. ‘Maybe. But would your society, here on Mars for instance, be “free” enough for that? What does freedom here actually mean for you?’

Jiang might have taken offence, Penny realised. In the formal talks both sides had shied away from any comment on the other’s political system. But, from what she had seen of the city of
Obelisk, she was curious about this herself. ‘We never did have our conversation on that topic.’

Jiang merely nodded thoughtfully. ‘It is an interesting question. We of Chinese descent are products of a stable society now centuries old—’

King snorted disrespectfully. ‘All framed by a value system that goes back to Karl Marx and Chairman Mao.’

‘But within any system, the challenges of ensuring freedom under conditions that pertain in an offworld colony – even here, in the largest offworld colony of all at the present time
– are significant.’

‘In our Western tradition the freedom of the individual is paramount.’

‘Yes,’ Jiang said, ‘as I understand from my own school studies. But even in your own offworld colonies the freedom of the individual must be curtailed, if the collective good
is to be maintained. The problem is the fragility of the colonies. One cannot challenge the most repressive dictator, if that dictator is the only one who can control the air supply.

‘We have philosophers exploring ways of ensuring individual freedom within a tightly constrained collective system. This is after all the condition under which most of mankind is likely to
live for the foreseeable future. We reach back to old traditions; a citizen of the Roman Empire, for example, would have placed less value on individual liberty in the modern Western sense than on
collective responsibility – a collective liberty, if you like. Actually it is a system-wide debate, for us. An ongoing participation for all our citizens, on Earth as well as offworld. Though
we are not minded to follow your example, as evidenced at your Eden colony on Mars – I have been there myself – of excessive individual freedom kept in check by excessive
policing.’

King laughed, and clapped his shoulder. ‘You got me there. Who’d want to live in a dump like that? Well, let’s hope these talks work out and we get to see a future where we can
try out these experiments in liberty. Right, Colonel Kalinski? Colonel?’

But Penny had been distracted by a commotion. A door opened, and a harassed-looking official bustled in with a slate that he showed to the leading Chinese delegates. The news, whatever it was,
spread quickly. Something about Mercury, she overheard them muttering, something extraordinary.

And then, it felt like, everybody in the room stared at Penny.

T
hey all staggered. Yuri and Mardina reached for each other, and for Beth. Tollemache backed up to a wall.

Beth clasped her stomach. For the first time in this whole episode she looked genuinely scared. Nearly in tears, she stumbled across to her mother, who held her tight. ‘Mom? What just
happened?’

Tollemache said, ‘It feels like the elevator just went down.’

Mardina said, ‘Or the drive thrust just cut. But we’re not in a spacecraft.’

‘Or,’ Yuri said, ‘the gravity just weakened.’ He bounced on his toes; he drifted back down slowly. What was this, about a third Earth-normal? Like Mars? He was distracted
by motion he glimpsed through the open doorway. He walked that way, slow-motion swimming in the low gravity. Through the open hatch he saw another cylindrical chamber, a third, just like this
second one, like the first. But though the walls glowed with that same eerie grey-white radiance, Yuri thought there was something different about the light in there. As if there was another
source, shining from above.

A figure walked past the open hatch, back turned. A black costume, spangled with silver.

He looked wildly at Mardina. ‘That looked like—’

‘An ISF uniform.’

‘Then who the hell is
that
?’

‘Only one way to find out.’ Mardina led Beth across the floor and climbed through the doorway to the next chamber, and helped Beth through. Then Tollemache came, and finally
Yuri.

This third chamber was another smooth-walled cylinder, just like the rest. A ladder had been attached somehow to the curving wall. Elsewhere on the wall small sensors had been fixed, anonymous
white boxes, evidently human made. Yuri saw, glancing up, that some kind of translucent dome had been set up over the open pit, through which could be seen a roof of rock, as if they were stuck in
some deep cavern.

That figure in the black and silver astronaut uniform, a woman, her back to the new arrivals, was working her way along the row of sensors, referring to a slate as she did so. Tall,
blonde-haired, she was softly singing some tune about flying around the universe with her lover. She might have been in her fifties.

Beth turned to Yuri, grinning gleefully, thrilled at this new development, her low-gravity queasiness forgotten. She pointed at the woman’s back. Her meaning was clear.
She
doesn’t even know we’re here!

Mardina raised her eyebrows. Then, gently, she coughed.

The woman jumped, whirled like a Per Arduan builder, dropped her slate, and backed against the wall. ‘Holy shit. Who are
you
? And how did you get in here?’

Tollemache took charge. He strode forward, pointing his finger. ‘Never mind that, lady. Who are you? And how come I don’t know about you? This whole damn planet is full of illegals
and stowaways.’

The astronaut shook her head, irritated, baffled. ‘What are you talking about? What planet?’

‘Prox c.’

The astronaut stared at him. ‘Conan Tollemache!’

‘What?’

‘I knew I recognised you. Your face has been all over the news just recently. Peacekeeper Tollemache, right?’

‘What’s it to you?’

The astronaut turned to the others, one by one. ‘Mardina Jones. Yuri Eden. Beth Eden Jones. All four of you. My God.’

Mardina glared at her, confused, disturbed. ‘What is this? What do you mean, the four of us? How do you know our names?’

‘You’re the four who disappeared, into the hatch on Prox c, a few hours ago.’ She frowned. ‘No. That is, given the time it took for the news to get here at lightspeed
– four
years
ago, I’m guessing, by your time . . .’

They spoke at once.

‘We didn’t disappear anywhere,’ Mardina said.

‘What do you mean, we disappeared on Prox c?’ Yuri asked. ‘Where are we now, if not on Prox c?’

‘Who are
you
?’ Beth asked.

But Tollemache was the most insistent. He faced the young astronaut. ‘Four years ago. Bullshit.’ He raised his ISF-issue chronometer, and brought up the date. ‘This is the
date. 2193.’

‘No.’ Backing away from Tollemache, the woman bent to pick up her slate, and brought up a date of her own. ‘
This
is the date. 2197.’

Yuri could see it. If this astronaut wasn’t lying to them – and why the hell would she? – he had just jumped forward four years and a couple of months in time. Just like the
cryo sleep.

‘Not again,’ he said.

The astronaut looked at him strangely. Then she smiled, competent, efficient, taking control, her training kicking in. ‘To answer your questions. Sir, my name is Stephanie Kalinski,
Colonel, ISF. Good to meet you. And as to where you are, Ms Eden Jones,’ she said to Beth, ‘welcome to the solar system. You’re on Mercury.’

P
enny tried to make sense of the news from Mercury. Refugees from another star, wandering out of the Hatch in the kernel layers? What could it
possibly mean?

King growled, ‘Damn it. That cuckoo’s nest at the heart of the solar system is screwing us up again. And I’ve got to go back to Mercury to sort the bloody mess out.’ He
got up and left the room, without ceremony.

Penny, hastening to follow him, gathered up her stuff. The room was suddenly full of muttered conversation, hostile glares between renewed rivals. Penny had no diplomatic antennae to speak of,
but the change in mood was obvious. She remembered Earthshine’s deep suspicion of the Hatch and the kernels and whoever was behind those mysteries on Mercury, and their malevolent effect on
human affairs. Now here was another intervention of the same kind: another bizarre miracle on Mercury, perhaps, another gift from some unknown benefactor from which the Chinese were once more
excluded.

She wondered what the hell had really happened on Mercury. And how come her sister was involved, as evidenced by the glares directed at her.

She looked for Jiang, seeking a way out of here.

T
he astronaut, Colonel Stef Kalinski, shepherded the newly arrived Arduans out of the pit from the stars.

One by one they climbed the short fixed ladder. Yuri went first; it was easy in the low gravity. Once out of the pit Yuri looked back and saw an open cover, tipped up, just like the one
he’d seen on Per Ardua. Remarkably, on the outside face of the lid there were not builder body-plan grooves, but indents to take human hands. And now he recalled the builders who had been
their guides, so to speak, through the hatch from Per Ardua. He glanced down into the pit, past his companions, but the builders were nowhere to be seen; maybe they’d taken the chance to run
back home, and he couldn’t blame them for that.

As soon as they were out Kalinski shepherded them through this rocky cavern to an elevator. It was a smooth but fast ride upwards. Kalinski, smiling, told them they were rising up through
hundreds of kilometres. Yuri neither believed nor disbelieved that; he couldn’t take it in.

When they emerged from the elevator Yuri looked around, increasingly bewildered, trying to get his bearings. He found himself under a dome. Clear ceiling panels admitted the ferocious light of a
sun above, which looked at least twice the size it had from Earth – not as big as the apparent size of Proxima from Per Ardua, but much, much brighter, even as seen through the evidently
heavily filtered dome panels. He saw open doorways leading to transparent tunnels, no doubt connecting this dome to others on the surface. He knew the logic of this; it was just as he’d got
used to on Mars, sealed up in the domes of Eden.