Blue Remembered Earth (85 page)

They’re still out there, the phyletic dwarves. There’s no harm in disclosing this information now. We don’t know where they are, and in all likelihood neither do the orthodox Pans. After the sundering, after the great parting of the ways between Truro and Arethusa, Chama and Gleb took their work deeper underground than it had been before. But somewhere out there, in a solar system still big enough to contain hiding places and dark corners, still big enough for secrets, the elephants thrive. Once in a while, conveyed to us through a labyrinth of quangle paths, all but untraceable, we hear from the zookeepers. They are still happily married, and the great work continues. The elephants are doing well. One day we may yet be a part of it.

Data packets still bind the dwarves to the M-clan, providing that essential socializing framework, but please do not go trying to follow that thread; it’ll get you nowhere. Besides, the bonds between the herds are much weaker now than they were when all this started. Twenty years on, the dwarves have grandchildren of their own, sons and daughters, matriarchs and bulls, family ties, the foundation of a complex, self-sustaining elephant society. One day, when resources allow, they may even be allowed to grow, to stop being dwarves. But perhaps that is for another century.

If Geoffrey misses his role in that enterprise, he is careful not to show it. No more, perhaps, than Sunday misses her former career as an artist, or Lucas misses his as a willing component in the family machine. We have all had other business to keep hands, hearts and minds occupied.

Sunday returned to the Descrutinised Zone, and for a little while she tried to submerge herself in the routines of her old life. She went back to the commissions she had abandoned, before her journey to Mars. Jitendra, too, tried to pick up the pieces of his former existence. But it was hard. They both carried too much knowledge, burning in their heads like a lit fuse. We all did.

For years Sunday had worked to bring the Eunice construct to fruition. That private project had been the mainspring of her life, the thing she cared about beyond any of her tiring, rent-paying commissions. She had abandoned physical sculpture in preference for the sculpting of a single human life, in all its dizzying fractal glory.

And she had not failed. But the construct had grown too clever, too complex. It had torn itself free of Sunday’s plans, become something she could influence but not control. And although Geoffrey and Jumai had tried to shield her from the truth, she had made the necessary deductions for herself. The artilect running Lionheart was everything she had ever hoped her construct might become. The work she strove to complete had already been achieved.

The construct abides. Like the dwarves, it is out there somewhere. Being a bodyless spirit, haunting the aug, there would be even less point in trying to pin it down. We long ago assigned it all the autonomy it craved. Once in a while, we hear from it. Perhaps it thinks of the woman in whose shadow it walks, the figure it can emulate but never become. Perhaps it is content to become something else entirely. Sometimes, when it offers us wise counsel, when it advises us on the intentions of those who would act against us, we are grateful that it is on our side. At other times we slightly fear it. And sometimes we forget that Eunice is an it, not a she.

Of the real Eunice, the living woman, our dead grandmother, things are simpler. At least we know where she is now.

There will, of course, be those who criticise us for waiting as long as we did, before making this decision. What choice did we have, though? When this burden was placed upon us we were, to be frank, little better than children. We needed time to think, time to judge the readiness of the world. Eunice could not make this decision sixty years earlier; we could not make it rashly either. We wished to see how the world would adapt to the new engines, and the knowledge of Mandala.

It’s been twenty years. But now we are ready.

This testimony, written in our shared hand as honestly as we are able, is our attempt at explaining ourselves. We did not go looking for this responsibility, but we have done our best to measure up to it. Looking back across these years, at the way we were then, all our enmities are matters of vanishing consequence, the squabbling of infants. We have moved beyond such things. If nothing else, we owed it to Hector and Memphis to rise above our former selves. Because if we couldn’t do it, if we couldn’t put aside the past, what hope could there be for anyone else?

Twenty years ago the world saw a glimpse of what lay ahead. The improved engines have shrunk the inner solar system, brought Jupiter and Saturn closer, and accelerated the development and colonisation of Trans-Neptunian space. There have been accidents and stupidities, but for the most part the technology has been absorbed without catastrophe. As well it should have been, for what we gave you then was really nothing at all. The real test of our collective wisdom begins here and now.

We call it the Chibesa Principle. The improved engines were merely a glimpse of what this new physics can give us. Properly tamed, the Chibesa Principle will not only shrink the solar system even further. It will put human starflight within our reach.

But understand the risk, as well as the promise. Like the discovery of fire, this is not something that can be uninvented. And in the wrong hands, used maliciously or foolishly, the Chibesa Principle is fully capable of murdering worlds.

That is why our grandmother deemed us unready. But that was more than eighty years ago, and much has changed since then. We think things are different now, and that the species is ready to demonstrate its collective wisdom. If we are wrong, if our wisdom is lacking, the Chibesa Principle will burn us. And if that is the case, and if there is anyone left to cast judgement on our actions, we shall gladly accept history’s verdict. But if we are right, it will give us everything that Soya Akinya showed her daughter, when she held her up in the velvet warmth of a Serengeti night: all these stars, all these tiny diamond lights.

We have been clever, and on occasion we have been foolish. For smart monkeys, we can, when the mood takes us, be exceedingly stupid. But it was cleverness that brought us to this point, and it is only cleverness that will serve us from now on.

We have no time for anything else.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Huge thanks are due to Tim Kauffman, Louise Kleba, Kotska Wallace and Joan Wamae – and not least my wife – for agreeing to read an early draft of this novel and offering their comments and suggestions. Up-and-coming writer Jonathan Dotse was also kind enough to make time during a visit to London to talk about Africa and science fiction, from a uniquely Ghanaian perspective. For specific discussions on exoplanets and breakthrough physics, I thank my brilliant and talented scientist friends Lisa Kaltenegger and Dave Clements. I am indebted to all of you for your time and insights. The faults of the book, of course, remain my responsibility alone.

I spent the first decade of my professional writing career under the able editorship of Jo Fletcher, not only a trusted colleague but also a good friend. By the time Jo left to run her own imprint we had already been discussing this book for several years. There’s no doubting her influence on BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH, and some of that influence, I’m sure, will continue to be felt in later instalments of the Akinya saga. In particular, it was Jo’s immediate fondness for the elephants that made me determined to make them much more than background dressing. Thank you, Jo!

By the same token, it has been a delight to work with my new editor, Simon Spanton – all round good bloke and a man with a deep passion for the core virtues of science fiction. It is no easy thing to take on an established writer halfway through their career; Simon has given me nothing but support and friendship. Respect!

Once again, it has been a pleasure to work with the brilliant and meticulous Lisa Rogers, who has been my line editor for most of my career – there is, I suspect, no sharper pair of eyes in the business, nor anyone better equipped to impose sense on my often muddled approach to internal chronology. Thanks, Lisa!

I am also hugely indebted to my agent, Robert Kirby, for years of support and enthusiasm. Like Jo, Robert has been in on this book since the beginning. Deep into a big project, it’s easy to forget why one ever thought it was a great idea in the first place. Robert has always managed to give me that motivational impulse, whenever I felt my energy flagging. Again, it’s been a pleasure.

The genesis of this book – one strand of it, anyway – goes back to the first in a series of visits to the Kennedy Space Center. My wife and I have been fortunate enough to witness two launches of the Space Shuttle Atlantis – literally unrepeatable experiences. For allowing me to get closer to a launch than I ever dreamed I would, I thank Tim Kauffman, Louise Kleba and Piers Sellers – all fine people, still committed to the idea of human space exploration. It has also been a pleasure and privilege to spend time with Steve Agid, who knows more about the past, present and future of manned and unmanned spaceflight than almost anyone on the planet.

Much of the technology in this book is speculative, but quite a lot of it is based on real ideas and proposals, none of which involve breaking the laws of physics. Space elevators, ballistic launchers, VASIMR drives, even metallic-hydrogen-fuelled rockets and the direct imaging of exoplanet surfaces, are all technologies that have been discussed in the ‘serious literature’ – indeed, some of these concepts are well on the way to being realised.

At the moment we lack a ‘Theory of Everything’, a single, all-enveloping physical theory that would tie together both the behaviour of matter at the grandest of scales – the dynamics of black holes and galactic superclusters – and the smallest, the fizzing, fuzzy realm of subatomic processes. Despite this, we have some promising candidate ideas. We also live in an era of truly exciting experimentation, with projects like the ongoing Large Hadron Collider pushing into energies which may enable competing theories to be tested against each other. It’s too soon to say what the outcome of these studies will be. Perhaps conservatively, I have assumed that the theoretical physics of Eunice’s time is not radically different from our own. However, the breakthrough on Mercury, with its supposed connection to quark-quark interactions and subsequent application as a new form of spacecraft engine, is entirely fanciful – very much ‘made-up’ science.

There is no such world as Crucible, although the star 61 Virginis is believed to have a planetary system, and the presence of an Earthlike world is not yet ruled out. The field of exoplanet research is moving so rapidly that I fully expect to be caught out by observations within the lifetime of this book. But that’s the joy of speculating in a rapidly evolving discipline.

There is a monolith on Phobos, but no one seriously believes that it’s anything other than a slightly unusual (but not all that odd) geological feature. Obtaining close-up images of this long-shadow-casting object will doubtless be a goal for future exploration of the Martian moons. I look forward to seeing what they find.

Two things motivated me to write a science fiction novel in which Africa was the dominant economic and technological power. The first was a simple: why not? I have never been to Africa, but I have no reason to suppose that there is anything that would prevent Africa, or a part of that continent, from assuming global dominance in one or more advanced industries. The second reason, which is rather more personal and heartfelt – and therefore rather more difficult to articulate – is to do with music. In the last five years I have come to love African music and it has formed a great part of my listening during the conception of this book. In particular I would like to mention the amazing Ugandan musician Geoffrey Oryema, who was very much my gateway into a realm of wonderful and surprising discovery. His beautiful song ‘Land of Anaka’, written from an exile’s point of view, conveyed exactly the sense of overwhelming loss that I felt might be shared by space travellers, centuries from now, remembering an Earth to which they could never return.

Which is why I named my central character Geoffrey.

Also by Alastair Reynolds from Gollancz:

Revelation Space

Redemption Ark

Absolution Gap

Chasm City

Century Rain

Pushing Ice

The Prefect

House of Suns

Terminal World

Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days

Galactic North

Zima Blue

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © Alastair Reynolds 2012
All rights reserved

The right of Alastair Reynolds to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company

This eBook first published in 2012 by Gollancz.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.