It took the Xeelee three hundred thousand years, but at last, a million years after the first starships, the streams of refugees became visible in the skies of Earth.
But the photino birds had been busy too, progressing their own cosmic project, the ageing of the stars.
When Sol itself began to die, its core bloated with a dark-matter canker, suddenly mankind had nowhere to go.
PART SIX
THE FALL OF MANKIND
THE SIEGE OF EARTH
c. AD 1,000,000
I
The canal cut a perfect line across the flat Martian landscape, arrowing straight for the crimson rim of sun at the horizon.
Walking along the canal’s bank, Symat was struck by the sheer scale on which people had reshaped the landscape for a purpose - in this case, to carry water from Mars’s perpetually warm side to the cold. Of course the whole world was engineered, but terraforming a world was beyond Symat’s imagination, whereas a canal was not.
His mother had always said he had the instincts of an engineer. But it wasn’t likely he would ever get to be an engineer, for this wasn’t an age when people built things. A million years after the first human footsteps had been planted in its ancient soil, Mars was growing silent once more.
Symat was fourteen years old, however, and that was exactly how old the world was to him. And he was unhappy for much more immediate reasons than man’s cosmic destiny. He stumbled on, alone.
It was hours since he had stormed out of his parents’ home, though the changeless day made it hard to track the time. Nobody knew where he was. He had instructed the Mist, the ubiquitous artificial mind of Mars, not to follow him. But the journey had been harder than he had expected, and he was already growing hungry and thirsty.
It might have been easier if his journey had a destination, a fixed end. But he wasn’t heading anywhere as much as escaping. He wanted to show his parents he was serious, that his refusal to join the great exodus from reality through the transfer booths wasn’t just some fit of pique. Well, he’d done that. But his flight had a beginning but no end.
Trying to take his mind off his tiredness, he stared into the sliver of sun on the horizon. Sol was so big and red it didn’t hurt his eyes, even when he gazed right into it. The sun never moved, of course, save for its slow rise as you walked towards it.
The sky of Mars had changed, across a million years. Symat knew that Mars’s sky had once had three morning stars, the inner planets. But Venus and Mercury had long been eaten up by the sun’s swelling, Earth wafted away, and Mars was the closest of the sun’s remaining children.
And that sun never shifted in the sky. These days Mars kept one face turned constantly towards the sun, and one face away from it: one Dayside, one Nightside, and a band of twilight between where the last people lived.
Something briefly eclipsed the sun. He stopped, blinking; his eyes were dry and sore. He saw that he had passed through the shadow of a spire.
He walked on.
Soon he entered a city. The buildings were tall and full of sunlight, and bridges fine as spider web spanned the canal water. But there were no people walking over those bridges, no flitters skimming around the spires, and red dust lay scattered over the streets. It was like walking through a museum, solemn and silent.
One building bulged above his head, a ball of smooth, fossil-free Martian sandstone skewered on a spire of diamond. Clinging to the bank of the canal Symat gave it a wide berth: even after all this time human instincts remained shaped by the heavier gravity of Earth, where such an imbalanced structure would have been impossible.
Time had made its mark. Right in the heart of the city one slender bridge had collapsed. He could see its fallen stones in the water, a line of white under the surface.
Before he reached the ruined abutment on the canal bank he came to a scattering of loose stones. He gathered together a dozen or so cobbles and peered up resentfully at one of the more substantial buildings. Its flat windows, like dead eyes, seemed to mock him. He hefted a cobble, took aim, and hurled it. His first shot clattered uselessly against polished stone. But his second shot took out a window that smashed with a sparkling noise. The sound excited him, and he hurled more stones. But the noise stopped every time he quit throwing, reminding him firmly he was alone.
Dispirited, he dumped the last of his cobbles and turned back to the canal. On its bank, he sat with his feet dangling over blue running water, water that ran endlessly from the world’s cold side to the warm.
Symat was very thirsty.
The canal bank was a wall of stone that sloped smoothly down to the water. It would be easy to slide down there, all the way into the water. He could drink his fill, and wash off the dust of Mars. But how would he get out? Glancing down the river he saw the ruins of that bridge. The bank beneath the abutment was broken up; surely he could find handholds.
Without water he was going to have to turn back. It was a defining moment in his odyssey.
Without letting himself think about it he pulled off his boots, pants and jacket, and slid down the smooth sloping wall. The water was so cold it shocked him, and it was deep; he couldn’t feel the bottom. When he came bobbing back up he was faintly alarmed that he had already been washed some way towards the stump of the bridge. The current must be stronger than it looked.
With a couple of strokes he reached the canal wall. It was smooth, but by pushing his hands against it he was able to resist the current. Feeling safer, he ducked his head and scrubbed his hair clean of dust, and took long deep draughts of the water. It was chill, for it was meltwater from Nightside, and slightly sparkling; Mars’s water was rich in carbon dioxide.
Refreshed, he felt his energy return. There were more cities strung out along the canal like pearls on a necklace. He could hide out for days, and how that would make his parents worry.
But he was starting to feel cold, deep inside. Time to get out. He pushed off from the wall and let himself drift downstream. When he reached the ruined abutment he grabbed at projecting stones. But they were all slick with some green slime, and slid maliciously out of his hands. Scared now, he shoved himself at the protruding stones. He managed to halt his slide down the river, but only by clinging on with all his limbs, like a spider, and the water still plucked at his legs and torso.
He was getting very cold, and tiring quickly, his muscles aching. He had walked along the canal for hours and had seen nothing but smooth walls. If he lost his grip here, he would be washed away until he drowned - or, even worse, the Mist would alert his parents, who would come sweeping down in the family flitter to rescue him. The first real decision he had made had been a stupid one, and all his defiant dreams of showing his parents he was worthy of their respect were imploding.
He was starting to shiver. He had no choice. He prepared to call for the Mist’s help.
‘Up here.’
The voice came from above. Looking up, he saw three heads silhouetted against the sky, three small curious faces peering down. ‘Who are you?’
‘Try there!’ The middle figure leaned over and pointed. It was a girl, a bit younger than he was. She was pointing at a shelf on the canal wall, all but invisible from his position down here. With an effort he lifted up his hand and grabbed at the shelf. It was dry and he grasped it easily, and already felt safer.
‘All right,’ the girl called down. ‘Now see if you can reach that foothold. To your left, just behind that broken stone …’
In this way, with the girl spotting one hand- or foothold after another, he managed to haul himself up out of the water.
Exhausted, he flopped on his belly on the bank.
He got his first good look at the children who had helped him. They were a girl and two boys. The girl looked about twelve, and the boys, wide-eyed, were no more than eight or nine. They wore simple shifts of bright blue cloth that looked oddly clean. They weren’t alike, not like siblings, a family.
One of the boys approached him, and Symat reached out a hand. But there was a soft chime, and his fingers passed through the boy’s palm. The boy yelped and drew back, as if it had hurt.
Symat looked at the girl. ‘You’re Virtuals.’
She shrugged. ‘We all are. Sorry we can’t help you up.’
‘I can manage.’ Not wanting to shame himself before this girl, he rolled on his back and sat up, panting hard.
The Virtuals stared at him. ‘My name is Mela,’ the girl said. ‘This is Tod, this is Chem.’
‘I got stuck,’ Symat said, hotly embarrassed.
Mela nodded, but he saw the corners of her mouth twitch. ‘You ought to put your clothes back on before you get too cold.’
One of the boys, Tod, said in a piping voice, ‘We can’t get them for you.’
‘Sorry,’ said the other, Chem. ‘Would you like some food?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll show you.’
Symat towelled himself on his jacket and dressed. His clothes dried quickly, and, sensing his low body temperature, warmed him. The three Virtual children watched him silently.
They led him into the city, away from the canal. They walked with a sound of rustling clothes, even of boots crunching on the scattered sand. But of the four of them only Symat left footprints.
‘We saw you breaking the windows,’ Tod said. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Why not?’
Tod considered. ‘It’s wrong to break things.’
‘But nobody’s coming back here. People are leaving the planet altogether. What difference does it make?’
‘My parents are coming back,’ Chem said.
Mela said softly, ‘Chem—’
‘I wouldn’t throw stones,’ the boy said. ‘My parents wouldn’t like it.’
‘What parents? … You couldn’t throw stones anyway,’ Symat said. ‘You’re a Virtual.’
That seemed to hurt the boy, and he glanced away.
Mela was slim, thoughtful, grave. She didn’t react to this exchange one way or another. But somehow she made Symat feel ashamed of upsetting the Virtual boy.
They came to a building, an unprepossessing block in a neighbourhood of crystalline spires. It was as unlit as the others. ‘There’s food in here,’ Tod insisted. ‘Through that door.’ They stood waiting for him to open the door.
‘Why don’t you go in? You’re Virtuals. You could just walk through the wall.’
Mela said, ‘Protocol violations. We aren’t supposed to.’
‘It hurts,’ Chem said.
Symat said, ‘I haven’t been around Virtuals much.’ He stepped forward, pushed at the door’s polished surface, and it slid open.
The building was an apartment block. They wandered through suites of rooms. Heavy furniture remained, chairs and tables and beds, but smaller items had been taken away.
‘I’ve seen people take stuff,’ Symat said. ‘Clothes and ornaments and toys, even sets of plates to eat dinner. They carry them in suitcases and boxes when they go through.’
Mela asked, ‘Through where?’
‘Through the transfer booths. Imagine carrying plates and forks and knives into another universe!’
‘What are they supposed to take?’ Mela asked reasonably.
They came to a kind of kitchen, where a nanofood replicator was still functioning. Symat asked it to prepare him something warm, and soon rich smells filled the air.
‘It probably needs restocking,’ Mela said. ‘You can scrape up some algae from the canal, I guess.’
Chem said sharply, ‘If you can keep from getting stuck!’ He and Tod laughed.
Mela reproved the boys. Symat sat at a table and ate in dogged silence. The Virtuals stood around the table, watching him.
Chem said, ’Of course you won’t have to put more glop in the nanofood box if your parents come for you.’
‘They won’t come,’ Symat said, chewing. Mela watched him with that quiet gravity, and he felt impelled to add, ‘They don’t know I’m here.’
‘Are you hiding?’ Chem asked. ‘Did you run away?’
‘Did you do something wrong?’ Tod asked, wide-eyed.
‘They want me to go into a transfer booth with them. I don’t want to go.’
Chem said, ‘Why not?’
‘Because it would feel like dying. I haven’t done with this world.’
Chem said brightly, ‘I’d go with my parents. I always do whatever they want.’
Tod said maliciously, ‘They would go without you. They probably have already.’
‘No, they haven’t.’ Chem’s lips were working. ‘They’ll come back to me when—’
‘When, when, when,’ Tod sang. ‘When is never. They’re never coming back!’
‘And nor are yours!’
‘But I don’t care any more,’ Tod said. ‘You do. Ha ha!’
Chem, in a tearful fury, flew at Tod. The wrestling boys fell to the floor and crashed through table legs. Pixels flew and protocol-violation warnings pinged, but the table didn’t so much as quiver.