Филип Керр - The Second Angel

Another thirty minutes passed before she saw the Sun coming up over the violet disc of Earth. The Sun was red, like the color of the giant star it would become some five billion years in the future before it flamed into a nova, cooled, and then collapsed into itself. Lenina wondered if the inhabitants of Earth would be able to avoid this distant catastrophe? Perhaps if they found another solar system. Of course, to travel such vast distances through space in search of a suitable alternative to our own solar system would surely require man to fly at speeds faster than the speed of light, which Einstein had said was impossible. But given enough time, intelligence, tractable computer power, and energy, anything in the universe might be possible. Five billion years hence, human beings might hardly be recognizable as such; and surely so much accumulated intelligence would have to reside in something rather more durable than mere flesh and blood. Such beings, such collected intelligence, might come as near to being gods as any rationally minded person could ever believe in. The only God in the universe was the man that men might one day become.

A dark-sun filter automatically screened the flight-deck window against the life-giving glare of the sunrise. At least something appeared to be working properly, she reflected sourly, having just checked the altitude indicators and noted with disgust that the computers were correcting a ten-degree roll to the right. The autopilot was working, but erratically, as if it hadn’t been calibrated properly, and Lenina wondered if, before leaving Earth’s orbit, she ought to go and fetch Gates. But she rejected the idea, counseling herself to let him sleep. He was dog tired after the launch. She was just looking for an excuse to have him spend some time alone with her. Any sight of Gates was pleasing to her and she supposed herself to be in love with him, although she would never have dreamed of telling him as much. ‘Love’ was not a word she was used to.

Hearing someone bang his head and then curse quietly as he floated into the cockpit, Lenina’s heart leaped in her chest; and expecting to see the big man, she turned and was disappointed to find that it was only Cavor, the man with the false arm.

‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked, making his weightless way into the cockpit.

‘Be my guest.’ Lenina helped steer him into the pilot’s seat and then buckled him in.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked politely, quite unaware of Lenina’s current preoccupation with the livid red mark on her stomach. ‘You’re looking kind of pale.’

Lenina shrugged dismissively and looked out of the window as the large altitude control thruster pulsed audibly into action. ‘Just a little space adaptation syndrome,’ she said. ‘Conflict between eyes and inner ear.’

Cavor glanced over the controls and nodded.

‘Have you done much flying in space?’ he asked.

‘Sure. When I was first convicted, learning to fly was part of the rehabilitation program.’

‘I didn’t know they bothered.’

‘They don’t. Not anymore. It was simulations, mostly. But, there’s not much difference from the real thing. Gates is the proper pilot around here. I’m just an instrument flier.’

‘Me, I still can’t take a space flight without a real sense of wonder. Socrates once said that we would understand the world if we could first rise above it. I don’t think he would have been quite so sure if he could have seen this. Looking at Earth from up here begs as many questions as it answers.’

‘I’ve got a question.’

‘Just one?’

‘Why are you here, Cavor?’

‘Are you asking me that in a phenomenological sense?’ Cavor shrugged. ‘Why are any of us here? Because certain atoms interact according to the laws of physics. What other explanation is required?’

‘I meant, why are you part of this team?’

‘I know what you meant,’ said Cavor. ‘I just don’t know the answer. I’m well aware of my shortcomings, Lenina. I’m not even a career criminal — I was sent to Artemis Seven for killing my wife. Which was a mistake. Killing her, that is. Heat-of-the-moment thing. Regretted it ever since. And not because I went to a penal colony. Anyway, before it happened I was a musician. A composer, sometimes.’

‘That should come in useful,’ said Lenina dryly.

‘I’ve asked Dallas why he wanted someone like me along on this odyssey of ours, but so far, he hasn’t seen fit to explain my function.’

‘Maybe he wants you to write a symphony for him. When this is all over.’

‘Perhaps he does. Or a suite. Like Holst. The music of the spheres. Something to express distant galaxies moving away from us. I could call it the Expanding Universe, a piece with only one movement.’

‘With or without a singularity?’ asked Lenina. ‘A Big Bang.’

‘Oh, I think with,’ said Cavor. ‘I’ve never much cared for the steady-state theory of the universe. A Big Bang’s a much better way of starting a piece of music than just picking up somewhere in the middle. A Big Crunch too, for symmetry’s sake. Music needs a beginning and an ending.’

‘So why did you come?’

‘Because Gates asked me. Because the opportunities for one-armed pianists are rather limited. And because this enterprise holds out the possibility of a change of blood and a cure for the virus we’re both carrying — what other reason does anyone need?’

Lenina shook her head. ‘You’re right. I can’t think of a better one.’

Both were silent for a moment as the West Coast of America appeared in the window underneath them.

‘There seems to be a lot of dirt on the outside of these windows.’ Cavor frowned, wiping the inside with the sleeve of his thermal suit.

‘Pollution,’ said Lenina. ‘From when we came up through the stratosphere. It’s full of it. To be more exact, it’s dust from the Great Middle Eastern War. Even after all these years.’

‘It’s comforting to think that the only world we can destroy is our own,’ remarked Cavor.

‘That may not always be the case. It’s taken just ten thousand years for us to come out of the Stone Age to be where we are now. Who knows what forces we’ll have learned to control in another ten thousand.’

‘Then let’s hope we can learn to control ourselves as well.’

‘Amen,’ said Lenina, glancing once again out of the window. The Central Valley of California lay between the Coast Range to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east; Lake Tahoe was a footprint-shaped patch of blue to their lower left, and a short way above it was the skull-shaped Mono Lake, close to the invisible town of Lee Vining, where Lenina had spent part of her all-too-short childhood. That was before she and her family had, like most of the water in the lake and most of the people in the town, gone to Los Angeles. There were no hyperbaric hotels in Lee Vining, just disused campsites and broken-down motels. It wasn’t much of a happy memory, but until Rameses Gates had come along, those were the only good times she had ever known. After the move to L.A., her parents had died and she found herself involved in prostitution, dealing drugs, and, eventually, armed robbery. From there it was a few short steps to a series of prisons and then to the penal colony on the Moon.

Down in California it looked like a clear day with not much fog. You could even see the faults of the San Andreas system as two parallel lines along the scribbled coast, and beyond that, Mexico. She’d always wanted to go Mexico and see the pyramids they had down there.

Some time later on, over the Indian Ocean, Lenina and Cavor watched the Moon appear in the cockpit window. The Moon was full, with few shadows, its most prominent feature the crater Tycho in the south, the center of a system of bright rays extending in all directions — so bright that crater identification was difficult. Against these brilliant rays, the patchy shapes of the various lunar seas took on a darker hue, reminding Lenina of the shape on her stomach. To the west, the Sea of Grimaldi was clearly visible. Close to the equator the great ray-crater of Copernicus could be seen just south of the Carpathian Mountains, where the Artemis Seven penal colony was located. Farther east, along the same line of latitude, was the Sea of Tranquillity and the site, close to the Maskelyne crater system, of the Tranquillity Base and the first Apollo Moon landing. About three hundred and fifty miles to the southwest of TB lay the Descartes Crater, the site of the fifth and penultimate Apollo Moon landing. Geologically speaking, it had been an unremarkable place for such an important mission. Descartes, at only ten miles in diameter, was hardly a noteworthy crater — about a tenth of the size of Copernicus — except for the fact that it was now the location of Selenium City, which was what the First National Blood Bank called its breccia [93] Breccia. An impact rock made of a mixture of rock fragments and soil particles welded together by the energy of a meteor impact. Descartes is an area rich in these breccias, which lunar building engineers have traditionally used to make concrete. Carbonation hardening is achieved in zero atmospheric conditions with the addition of super-critical carbon dioxide, which makes the concrete very hard and dense — about 75 percent denser than ordinary concrete, and hence more resistant to meteorite showers. Concrete is painted gold to reflect the sun and is filled with nanographite and steel fibers to conduct electricity. -built high-security facility.