Stephen Baxter - Transcendent

“But you old ones bring other baggage, don’t you?”

Leropa smiled. “Baggage? Ah, you mean regret — the driver behind the Redemption. At last we are getting to the point. You have doubts about the Redemption, don’t you, child? You think it is perhaps unhealthy. Obsessive. And you suspect there is more to it than mere Witnessing, don’t you?”

Alia felt weak before the force of personality of this ancient creature. But she gathered her courage. “I think there must be. Because Witnessing isn’t enough for atonement. ”

Leropa nodded approvingly. “Your intuition is sound. Witnessing is in fact only the First Level of Redemption, as defined by the Colleges. And, no, it isn’t thought to be sufficient. How could it be? Witnessing is for children.”

“What is the Second Level?”

“It is called the Hypostatic Union, ” Leropa said. “A union of substances, of essences. Do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“Then learn.” She reached out and once more, with a fingertip that was colder than ice, touched Alia’s forehead.

Alia fell into a bloody dark.

In the morning we gathered outside the hotel’s main entrance, ready to be taken to Makaay’s demonstration. The weather was cold but clear, the sky a pale blue. Tom was here with Sonia, and Shelley and her people, Makaay, and a number of EI workers, most of whom I hadn’t met before. Vander Guthrie was here. His blue hair, protruding out from under his fur cap, looked frankly ridiculous.

We huddled together, wrapped up in heavy fake-fur coats and Russian-style hats provided for us by EI. “We all look like bears,” Shelley joked, although there had been no bears in this area, polar or otherwise, for decades.

Awkwardly Tom and I embraced, father and son reunited in this industrial wasteland. Tom didn’t have much to say to me. I was still in the doghouse for daring to speak to Aunt Rosa, and I refrained from telling him about my nocturnal pursuit of his mother’s ghost. Business as usual. I got a kiss on the cheek from Sonia, however.

A pod bus came to collect us. At the coast we all piled out into a chill wind that swept in off the sea and cut right through our clothing. We looked around.

The core of our stabilization plant had been built into the hulk of an offshore oil rig. We could see the rig from here, a blocky monochrome shape that loomed maybe a couple of kilometers from the shore. On a scrap of low, badly eroded cliff, a marquee had been set up, a brightly lit dome of some transparent fabric. The marquee had a good view of the offshore rig. Here we would witness the ceremonial start-up of the facility. And then, assuming the whole thing didn’t blow itself sky high, we would be flown out by chopper in small groups for a hands-on inspection. It was all good showmanship.

We pushed into the marquee through a kind of airlock, past the scrutiny of massive EI security guards. We dumped our coats; I was grateful to get into the warmth. A hovering bot offered me alcohol or hot drinks. I accepted a nip of Scotch, and a big mug of steaming latte. I wandered away from the rest, taking in the scene.

Maybe fifty people milled in that marquee, most of them EI employees or colleagues of Shelley’s. The accountants and other administrative types wore crumpled suits, but the engineers tended to be more casual, in jackets and jeans. The place was brightly lit and surveillance-rich, with football-size drones that floated in the air, and a finer mist of micro-drones, just a glittering dust that you only noticed if you focused closely.

“An impressive setup. And all for my benefit.” The liquid female voice was very familiar.

I turned to see Edith Barnette standing at my side, with Ruud Makaay at her elbow, beaming proudly.

Barnette wore a mid-length black dress; her legs were thin and pale, her feet clad in heavy-looking shoes. She was surprisingly tall, and her face was big-boned, her jaws heavy. Her skin, deeply wrinkled, was tanned pale gold, and her hair, sprayed into a dense helmet, was an uncompromising white. But she stood straight, her eyes were bright and alert, and when she spoke her voice was as mellow as it had always been.

At the side of today’s sole VIP, Makaay was in his element. His blond hair shone sleek in the bright lights. “Not entirely for your benefit, Madame Vice President.” He outlined his plans, and his intention that today should serve as a rehearsal before we encounter more unforgiving audiences.

Barnette said, “Then I will be sure to give you plenty of feedback.”

“I’ll welcome it. Forgive me, I’m due on stage.” He ducked out, bowing.

“So, Mr. Poole,” Barnette said to me. “All this was your idea, the stabilization project?”

“I guess so. It was me who asked the right questions. But it was in the air, the community I work with. Sooner or later somebody would have seen the need to—”

“Oh, don’t wiffle, man, I’ve no time for that.” She fixed me with a pointed finger, slightly crooked. “Your brainchild. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“It seems we will all owe you a debt of gratitude.”

I felt increasingly uncomfortable. Like Barnette the world tended to have a simple view of such projects; the media always looked for the chief engineer, the unsung double dome behind it all. But it wasn’t a role I was going to be comfortable playing, even if the project went well.

“I guess so,” I said. “If it works.”

“If?”

“We can’t be sure. We think we’ve modeled all the consequences.”

“You consulted Gea, didn’t you?”

“Gea has supported us from the start… You know her?”

“Never met it. Her? But I was responsible for major tranches of her development funding.”

I nodded, impressed. “But even with Gea on board, all we have are theoretical models. We can’t be sure what will happen.”

Barnette surprised me with her understanding. “I’m told some scientists believe the biosphere may be algorithmically incompressible. Is that the right phrase? — it literally can’t be modeled, for its intrinsic complexity is simply too great. The biosphere is its own unfolding story.”

I was impressed. “I’ve seen that, too.”

“Do you believe it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think it makes a difference. The biosphere is bigger than we can manage confidently right now, so it doesn’t matter how big it is, ultimately.”

She smiled. “Spoken like an engineer. I always liked engineers, you know, though I was a philosophy major. You are pragmatists! Though I suspect many of you couldn’t even spell the word. Despite the unfathomable complexity of the world, we must pragmatically tinker with it because of this hydrate destabilization business, mustn’t we?”

“I believe so.”

“Well, I hope you’re right. About everything.”

She was interrupted by a soft chiming. Ruud Makaay had mounted a low stage and in his customary fashion was gently tapping a glass with a pen.

“Madam Vice President, everyone, thank you for joining us here on this exciting day. Of course most of you are paid to be here, and mostly by me, but thanks for showing even so…” Expert stuff, laughter easily evoked. “We’re here to witness the first full-scale end-to-end integrated trial of the hydrate stabilization system prototype,” he said, to a few whoops from his engineers. “But I think we should begin with some context.”

Makaay snapped his fingers, and a screen appeared in the air behind him. To my surprise it showed an image of what looked like an oasis in the desert, a splash of green against pale yellow, with a clear blue pool at its center. “The polar hydrate deposits, a massive store of greenhouse gases, are unstable. But they are not the Earth’s only instability…”