Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“Tomorrow?”

“Don’t mock me, Captain Greg,” Sinclair said smartly. “You know it’s truth as much as I do. All of us are guided, one way or another.” He raised his voice. “Isn’t that right, Miss Julia?”

The crash team had been filing out of the passage behind. Greg saw Rick and Julia emerge, both pulling their hoods off.

Julia took in the cave with a stoic glance. “I came looking for my husband,” she said, “Nothing more.”

“And yet this edifice you call New London cost you billions. More billions than you’ll ever see returned to your corporate balance sheet. Now why is that, I wonder? Do you see beyond the physical, Julia Evans?”

She shrugged.

Sinclair carried on round the shore towards a brightly lit archway. This time the passage was much shorter, ten metres, with a sharp right-angle turn at the end. A wave of warm humid air blew straight into Greg’s face as he turned the corner, bringing a thick, living smell of vegetation with it. Bright, hazy red light dazzled him.

When he blinked the moisture from his eyes, he found himself standing on the top of a broad stone staircase, looking down on the biggest cave yet, easily eighty metres across, twenty high. A village of reed huts was clumped together on the far side. A ring of ten big Solaris spots on the ceiling shone with a strong gold-pink light, fluorescing the thin water vapour around them into hemispherical nimbuses. A Hollywood sunset, Greg thought.

The floor had been levelled and covered with gene-tailored arable moss, reminding him of Greenland. Rows of circular troughs had been built around the huts for more substantial plants, young fruit trees were already flourishing, trellises supported grape vines, yellow melons hung over the edges. A herringbone network of irrigation hoses lay on the floor between the troughs, the pattern barely visible under the tide of moss.

A broad square pedestal had been set up in the centre of the village, supporting six large flatscreens in a hexagonal arrangement. The two facing Greg looked almost completely black, though they could be showing some tiny silver smudges, he was too far away to be certain.

Children were playing around the pedestal. Adults walked about, tending to the troughs, working in an area that was obviously a communal kitchen, with aluminium tables and benches. Greg guessed at about a hundred and fifty people all told. He wasn’t prepared for it. Commune-mentality. Greens in sleeping bags, candles and camp fires, huddled into dark clefts, chewing cold fruit, zombie pupae. That was the theory he’d built.

But this… This was designer underclass. Or perhaps not. Perhaps New London’s innate perfection carried on even down here, a natural extension of the philosophy which suffused Hyde Cavern. Julia’s principle of success with style.

The Celestial Apostles did believe in the future, after all, however it diverged from the mainstream. And some of them were tech-types.

Sinclair started to descend the stairs, stretching out his arms, laughing wildly. “I’m back. I’m back. ‘Tis me returned to you all.”

The Celestials nearest the staircase turned to look, smiles turning to alarm as armour suits clumped out of the passage. Yells and cries went up.

“No, no,” Sinclair shouted. “You’ve nothing to be afraid of. Tomorrow is come. I’ve brought it to you.”

He reached the floor of the cave and started to gather Celestials to him, ruffling the heads of the children, embracing the adults. An archetypal tribe father.

“Look,” he said. “Look.” And pointed.

Julia was halfway down the staircase as the murmur of astonishment began. It spread out in a wave; the Celestials edged towards the foot of the staircase, ignoring Greg and the others. The children were shy and curious, adults incredulous. Two of the crash team moved protectively in front of Julia.

“She knows the dawn we await is real,” Sinclair said. “She came to us because our path is right.”

“You should shut the old prick up,” Suzi’s voice said in Greg’s earpiece. “The daft sods will want miracles next. And we can’t deliver.”

“Too late,” he whispered back.

Sinclair folded his anns across his chest and faced Julia. “Behold, my kingdom. Yours to command.”

Julia studied the faces in front of her, they were all quiet, waiting for her to speak. Greg sensed a curious calm settle in Julia’s mind.

“You have all waited a long time for this day,” she said. “And it hasn’t been without its trials. But tomorrow the change we all expect will come.” And she smiled warmly.

“Oh, bollocks,” Suzi said as the Celestials started to applaud. “She’s flipped. She’s totally flicking flipped.”

Tears were forming in Sinclair’s eyes. There were calls of ‘How?” coming from the crowd.

Greg left them behind and walked into the middle of the village for a closer look at the flatscreens; the move was intuitive. All the screens were showing images of space, taken from cameras on the outside of New London as far as he could tell. There was the archipelago, and Earth, the Moon, silver flowers of industrial modules.

“I didn’t know who you were before,” said a voice behind him. It was the Oriental girl in the black net top who had handed him the leaflet in the Trump Nugget castle quadrangle. She was carrying a baby, about eighteen months old, who looked at Greg with wide brown eyes.

“A lot of us saw you in the Cavern this afternoon,” she went on. “We thought you’d stolen Sinclair from us.”

“I was just looking for him. Julia Evans wanted to see him.”

The girl smiled pertly. “I can’t believe that’s really her. Even though I believed in Sinclair. But it’s actually happening, isn’t it? All the things he told us. How is she going to save us?”

“It’s a bit complicated. All plugged in to alien technology.” He moved on round the flatscreens, searching. There was something to see here, something to watch for. The impulse was irresistible.

“An alien?” the girl asked, intrigued. “Are you making fun of us?”

“No, I’m perfectly serious.”

“Sinclair always said that our souls would be liberated by a celestial angel; and that we would be safe up here while stars fell upon the Earth and smote it. And there would be locusts and plague, too. I was never really sure. Could your alien be the same thing as Sinclair’s angel, do you think?”

He gave the gently zany girl a sideways glance. “I’ve no idea, theology and xenobiology aren’t my strong points. What are these flatscreens for?”

“So we can watch for the dawn of change to emerge from the stars.” The tone wasn’t quite self-mocking, but close. “Perhaps your alien’s star.”

“The images are real-time?”

“Yes. Tol plugged the flatscreens into the colony’s datanets.”

“Who’s Tol?”

“A brother.”

Greg stopped in front of a flatscreen showing a view of the southern hub crater, the docking spindle covered a third of the screen. “He must be a very technical lad.”

“Yes, he is. He knows everything there is to know about the asteroid’s communication networks, he used to belong to one of the big channel companies.” She giggled. “He’s been with Sinclair almost since the beginning. I don’t think he really believes in the Celestial Revelation, but he contributes as much as anyone. Five of the children are his, as well. Including Zena here.” she bounced the softly cooing baby on her hip.

“Busy man,” Greg said. One star was brightening, edging across the screen. He stared at it, and knew.

“Melvyn,” he called.

“Greg,” Melvyn’s voice was equally urgent. “Victor’s on line. He reckons there’s a tekmerc squad on the way.”