Stephen Baxter - Transcendent

The marquee was actually several stories tall, like a transparent apartment block, its walls so clear you could barely see them except when the wind off the sea made them ripple. There was a fine view of our rig, and of the other old oil facilities that littered this part of the coast. The floor was carpeted wall to wall with a pale green-brown weave, colors sympathetic to the tundra colors of the North Slope. Above my head flags hung, a Stars and Stripes, the UN flag, banners bearing the EI logo and the cradled-child symbol of the Stewardship. All very classy: the EI folk had a lot of experience of this sort of event, and they knew how to impress without overwhelming.

There were cameras, microphones, and other sensors everywhere, and as I walked in big drones descended on me, and an animated cloud of electronic dust swirled around. Given there were plenty of VIPs, it was faintly disturbing such a chunk of that electronic attention was turned on me. I was one of the movers of the project, one of the faces that EI had presented to the public, so I suppose I should have expected it. But it was an eerie feeling to be so watched, as if I was stuck inside a giant eyeball.

And I tried not to think about George’s speculations that I might be under even more intense scrutiny by a curious future.

We had attracted quite a crowd. Throughout the marquee expensively dressed people mingled confidently, and there was a hubbub of loud conversation as acquaintances were made and renewed,

and, no doubt, deals were done, few of which would have anything to do with our hydrate project. Serving bots hovered in the air, bearing trays of drinks and exotic-looking snack foods. Here and there I saw subtle imaging imperfections: expensively shod feet suspended mysteriously a centimeter or so above the carpet, a gown billowing in a non-existent breeze, a shadow across a beautiful face cast by an invisible light source. I imagined only ten percent or so of these movers and shakers were here in person.

Here was the other side of the vast collapse in transportation infrastructure which Edith Barnette had, in part, overseen. Few governmental agencies, few corporations or other organizations actually “existed” anywhere meaningfully, except in cyberspace; and few crowds were ever as populous as they seemed. Well, on this occasion it was probably just as well that people projected rather than traveled. If so many VIPs had descended on Prudhoe Bay in the flesh, that dismal hotel in Deadhorse would have been overwhelmed, temperamental en suite bathrooms and all.

However, somewhere in that crowd, Edith Barnette was here in person once more. And so was my brother John, and Tom and Sonia, and Shelley, and Vander Guthrie — all the core team who had driven the project, in their different ways, from the beginning. I walked through the crowd, trying to pick out familiar faces, and to hold my nerve.

That was when I saw Morag.

She was moving through the crowd, some distance from me. I saw her out of the corner of my eye. I helplessly turned that way, as I always did. I thought she was turning toward me, I thought she smiled — but before I was even sure it was her, I lost her behind a knot of gabbling VIPs.

I didn’t want this to be happening. In the last few days I had suffered this kind of visitation over and over — and suffered is the word. There had been no repeat of that close encounter out on the tundra I had had before, when she had smiled, and let us take her picture, and record her words, even if we couldn’t understand what she had to say. I was back to a world of glimpses, a flash of strawberry blond hair in my peripheral vision, a soft voice. And there were more of these visitations than ever before, many more of them, sometimes more than one a day. I didn’t want to deal with her, not this way, not if I was going to be so tantalized, and certainly not on a day like today.

But then I saw her again, on the far side of the marquee this time. And when I looked away, there she was again, this time close to the small podium at the front of the marquee. It was as if she were teleporting around the place.

I grabbed a vodka and tonic off a floating bot’s tray and downed it quickly.

John approached me, a tumbler of whisky in his hand. A small, dark, intense figure was at his side: Jack Joy, I recognized after a moment, the Lethe Swimmer. John seemed uncomfortable to be tailed by the guy. But he had got Jack involved in the first place, and since the Swimmers had put money into the project Jack had a perfect right to be there.

Jack Joy held out a hand, but his unreal fingers just brushed my sleeve; he grinned apologetically. “Sorry I couldn’t haul my ass here in all its glory. Commitments, pressures — you know. Actually I really am sorry. Look around, the sky is full of free booze!…”

Distracted by the glimpses of Morag, I wasn’t interested in anything the man had to say. I looked at John. It was the first time we had been together in person for weeks. I felt that usual complicated emotional tug toward my brother, a mix of rivalry and helpless love.

“So here we are,” I said.

John shrugged. “We’re a strange family. We gather in person for a function like this, but we send VR projections to a funeral.”

I shrugged. “George always said, We Pooles are a funny lot. ”

“If you say so. Anyhow you’re the Poole, I’m a Bazalget, remember.” He stared at me hard, and I thought I knew what was on his mind: Morag, the whole phenomenon that had become such an issue between the two of us. But we couldn’t talk now, not with Jack Joy there.

Jack said to me, “I was just saying to your brother — don’t you think it’s an impressive place? Prudhoe Bay, the whole oil complex. I mean, look around. For the United States it was a historic achievement to be able to establish an oil industry up here, in a place of Arctic dark and cold and thousands of kilometers from civilization. You may as well have had to develop an oil industry on the Moon. In fact it might have been easier on the Moon, because here you have all this fucking tundra all around. You know, you make a wheel track on that stuff and it’s there forever… ” His tone was clipped, his speech rapid, and he kept flashing nervous grins. He was sweating, a small virtual incongruity in the air-conditioned comfort of the marquee.

I said, “So you don’t approve of all that eco-protection, Jack.”

“Approve, disapprove, it was the flavor of the times. It still is.” He bunched a fist. “In this day and age, a person who wants to achieve something is hedged around by bleats about don’t hurt this, don’t disturb that. I always say, if God hadn’t wanted us to shake up the planet He wouldn’t have given us the mechanical excavator.” He nodded, as if trying to convince himself. “And in the end it’s all bullshit.”

“It is?”

“Of course! Look at the precious tundra that those roughnecks weren’t allowed to take a piss on. When the permafrost melted it just became a swamp! So what difference did all that effort to preserve it make? None. It just got in the way of getting the job done, is all.”

I turned to John. “So is this the way all Swimmers think?”

He looked increasingly uncomfortable. This guy isn’t with me. “The Swimmers are a broad church, Michael. We live in complex times, with challenging, interconnected problems that may demand out-of-the-box thinking. You have to have a forum where radical opinions can be expressed…” But all this sounded like a party line; he didn’t sound as if he believed it himself.

Jack Joy said, “I didn’t mean to disturb you, Mike. I see some people I know. I’ll catch you later. This is your day, enjoy it, I wish you success, et cetera et cetera.” Sweating and grinning, he sidled away from us.