Stephen Baxter - Space

He smiled. “This was merely a part of their shared history. They were always frightened, first of the Japanese, then of Indonesians and Chinese, flowing down from the north, with their eyes on Australia’s empty spaces, its huge mineral deposits. Now perhaps they fear the Gaijin, come to take their land. And each time they exorcise their fears using us. I do not hate them. I understand them.”

To her surprise, he turned out to hold a doctorate in black-hole physics. But he had been drawn back to Framlingham, as had others of his generation. Slowly they had constructed a dream of a new life. Almost all of the people escaping to Triton were from Framlingham, he said. “It was a wrench to leave the old lands. But we will find new lands, make our own world.”

Ben served her sambuca, an Italian liqueur: a new craze, it seemed. Sambuca was clear, aniseed flavored. Ben floated Brazilian coffee beans in her glass and set it alight. The alcohol burned blue in the fading light, cupped in the open space above the liquid, and the coffee beans hissed and popped. The flames were to release the oils from the beans, Ben said, and infuse the drink with the flavor of the coffee.

He doused the flames and took careful sips from her glass, testing its temperature for her so that Madeleine would not burn her lips. The flavor of the hot liquid was strong, sharp enough to push at the boundary of her Discontinuity.

They sat under the darkling sky, and the stars came out.

Ben pointed out constellations for her, and he traced other features of the celestial sphere for her, the geography of the sky.

There was the celestial equator, an invisible line that was a projection of Earth’s equator on the sky. From here, of course, the equator passed right over their heads. Lights moved along that line, silent, smoothly traversing, like strangely orderly fireflies. They were orbital structures: factories, dwellings, even hotels. Many of them were Chinese, Ben told her; Chinese corporations had built up a close working relationship with the Gaijin. Then he distracted her with another invisible line called the ecliptic. The ecliptic was the equator of the Solar System, the line the planets traced out. It was different from the Earth’s equator, because Earth’s axis was tipped over through twenty-three degrees or so.

…Rather, the ecliptic used to be invisible. Now, Madeleine found, it was marked by a fine row of new stars, medium bright, some glowing white but others a deeper yellow to orange. It was like a row of street lamps.

Those lights were cities, Madeleine learned: the new Gaijin communities, hollowed out of the giant rocks that littered the asteroid belt, burning with fusion light. No human had gotten within an astronomical unit of those new lamps in space.

It was beautiful, chilling, remarkable. The people of this time had grown up with all this. But nevertheless, she thought, the sky is full of cities, and huge incomprehensible ruins. New toilets and telephones she could accept. But even the Solar System had changed while she had been away, and who would have anticipated that?

She felt too hot, dizzy.

She considered making a pass at Ben. It would be comforting.

He seemed receptive.

“What about Lena?”

He smiled. “She is not here. I am not there. We are human beings. We have ties of gurrutu, of kinship, which will forever bind us.”

She took that as assent. She reached out in the dark, and he responded.

They made love in the equatorial heat, a slick of perspiration lubricating their bodies. Ben’s skin was a sculpture of firm planes, and his hands were confident and warm. She felt remote, as if her body were a piece of equipment she had to control and monitor.

Ben sensed this. He was tender, and held her for comfort. He was fascinated by her skin, he said: the skin of a woman tanned by the light of different stars.

She couldn’t feel his touch.

She slept badly. In her dreams Madeleine spun through rings of powder-blue metal, confronted visions of geometric forms. Triangles, dodecahedra, icosahedra. When Madeleine cried out, Ben held her.

At one point she saw that Ben, sleeping, was about to knock over the coffeepot, and still-hot liquid would pour over his chest. She grabbed the spout, taking a few splashes, and pushed it away. She felt nothing, of course. She wiped her hand dry on a tissue and waited for sleep.

When they woke they found that the coffee had burned her hand severely.

Ben treated her. “The absence of pain,” he said, “is evidently a mixed blessing.”

She’d heard this before, and had grown impatient. “Pain is an evolutionary relic. Sure, it serves as an early warning system. But we can replace that, right? Get rid of sharp edges. Soak the world with software implants, like my biocomp, to warn and protect us.”

Ben studied her. “Do you know what the central reticular formation is?” he asked.

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“It’s a small section of the brain. And if you excite this formation — in the brain of a normal human — the perception of pain disappears. This is the locus of the Discontinuity damage. I am talking of qualia: the inner sensations, aspects of consciousness. Your pain, objectively, still exists, in terms of the response of your body; what has been removed is the corresponding quale, your perception of it. Put an end to discomfort, and there is an end to the emotions linked with pain: fear, grief, pleasure.”

“So my inner life is diminished.”

“Yes. Consciousness is not well understood, nor the link between mind and body. Perhaps other qualia, too, are being distorted or destroyed by the Saddle Point transitions.”

But, Madeleine thought, my dreams are of alien artifacts. Perhaps my qualia are not simply being destroyed. Perhaps they are being… replaced. It was a thought that hadn’t struck her before. Resolutely she pushed it away.

“How do you know so much about this?”

“I have ambitions myself to travel to the stars. To see a black hole, before I build my farm on Triton. It is worth studying what would happen to me…

“Madeleine,” he added slowly, “there is something I should tell you. Even though Nemoto has forbidden it.”

“What?”

“The Chinese discovered it first, in their dealings with the Gaijin. Some say it is a Gaijin gift, in fact. Nemoto has worked to suppress knowledge of it. But I—”

“Tell me, damn it.”

“There is a cure for the Discontinuity.”

She was electrified. Terrified.

“You know,” he said, “the remarkable thing is that the reticular formation is in the oldest part of the brain. We share it with our most ancient ancestors. Madeleine, you have returned from the stars, changed. There are those who think we are forging a new breed of humans, out there beyond the Saddle Points. But perhaps we are merely swimming through the dreams of ancestral fish.”

He smiled and held her again.

She stormed into Nemoto’s office.

Nemoto was busy; an Ariane launch was imminent. She took a look at the bandaging swathing Madeleine’s hand. “You ought to be careful.”

“There’s a way to reverse the Discontinuity. Isn’t there?”

“Oh.” Nemoto stood and faced the window, the Ariane mock-up framed there. She held her hands behind her back, and her posture was stiff. “That smart-ass kid. Sit down, Madeleine.”

“Isn’t there?”

“I said sit down.”

Madeleine complied. She had trouble arranging herself on Nemoto’s office furniture.

“Yes, there’s a way,” Nemoto said. “If you’re treated correctly before you go through a gateway, the translation can be used to reverse the Discontinuity damage.”

“Then why are you hiding this?” Madeleine asked. “Send me to a Saddle Point.”