Stephen Baxter - Xeelee - Endurance

But Enna caught a strange whiff about the woman, an iron stink that at first she couldn’t place. It was only later that she realised it was the smell of raw meat – of blood.

As night fell, the explorers and their attendants and servants dispersed gladly into the city’s bare buildings. After the dirt of the plain, it was going to be a relief to spend a night within solid walls.

Bayle himself established his base in one of the grander buildings on the edge of the city, bathed in light even at the end of the day. It seemed he planned to spend most of the night in conversation with the woman who was, as far as anybody could tell, the city’s sole inhabitant; he said they had much to learn from each other. He kissed his daughter goodnight, trusting her safety to his companions, and to her own common sense.

So it was a betrayal of him, of a sort, when in the darkest night Enna sought out Tomm’s warm arms. It wasn’t hard for her to put her guilt aside; at twenty she had a healthy awareness of how far her father’s opinions should govern her life.

But she dreamed. She dreamed that the building itself gathered her up and lifted her into the sky, just as she was cradled by Tomm’s arms – and she thought she smelled that iron tang again, the scent of blood.

The dream became disturbing, a dream of confinement.

Bayle had formulated many objectives for his Expedition.

Always visible from Foro, Puul and the other towns of the Shelf, the Lowland, stretching away below in redshifted ambiguity, had been a mystery throughout history. Now that mystery would be dispelled. Cartographers would map the Lowland. Historians, anthropologists and moralists hoped to make contact with the lost people of the Lowland plains, if any survived. Clerics, mystics, doctors and other Philosophers hoped to learn something about Effigies, those spectral apparitions that rose from dying human bodies, or some of them, and fled to the redshifted mysteries of the Lowland. Perhaps some insight would be gained into the cause of the Formidable Caresses, the tremendous rattlings that regularly shook human civilisation to pieces. There were even a few soldiers and armourers, hoping to track down Weapons, ancient technology gone wild, too wily to have been captured so far.

There had already been many successes. Take the light storms, for instance.

Old Earth’s blueshifted sky was a dome of stars that spun around the world. Day and night, and the seasons of the year, were governed not by the sky but by the flickering uncertainties of the light that emanated from the Lowland. Now Bayle’s physicists had discovered that these waves of light pulsed at many frequencies, ‘like the harmonics of a plucked string,’ as one mathematician had described it. Not only that, because of the redshifting of the light that struggled up to higher altitudes, the harmonic peaks that governed the daily cycles here were different from those to be observed from Foro, up on the Shelf, where time ran faster.

Enna was walked through the logic by her father. The effects of time stratification, redshifting and light cycling subtly intermeshed, so that whether you were up on the Shelf or down in the Lowland the length of day and night you perceived was roughly similar. This surely couldn’t be a coincidence. As Bayle said, ‘It adds up to a remarkable mathematical argument for the whole world having been designed to be habitable by people and their creatures.’

That, of course, had provoked a lively debate.

Forons were traditionally Mechanists, adhering to a strand of natural philosophy that held that there was no governing mind behind the world, that everything about it had emerged from the blind working-out of natural laws – like the growth of a salt crystal, say, rather than the purposeful construction of a machine. However, there were hard-line Creationists who argued that everything on Old Earth required a purposeful explanation.

After centuries of debate a certain compromise view had emerged, it seemed to Enna, a melding of extreme viewpoints based on the evidence. Even the most ardent Mechanists had been forced to accept that the world contained overwhelming evidence that it had been manufactured, or at least heavily engineered. But if Old Earth was a machine, it was a very old machine, and in the ages since its formation, natural processes of the kind argued for by the Mechanists had surely operated to modify the world. Old Earth was a machine that had evolved.

At the heart of Bayle’s expedition was a deep ambition to reconcile the two great poles of human thought, the Mechanist versus the Creationist – and to end centuries of theological conflict over which too much blood had been spilled. He and his companions would see through this goal, even though they could only return to a distant future.

In the morning Enna and Tomm were among the first to stir. They emerged from their respective buildings, and greeted each other with a jolly innocence that probably fooled nobody.

Cartographer Tomm had been detailed to take up the balloon for a rapid aerial survey, to provide context for the more painstaking work on the ground. Enna, free of specific chores, decided to ride up with him.

But there was a problem. They couldn’t find Momo. The pilot was a habitual early riser, like Bayle himself – a relic from his military days, it seemed. He was always up for Enna.

Tomm was unconcerned. ‘So old One-eye treated himself to a party last night. He won’t be the only one—’

‘That isn’t like Momo!’ Enna snapped, growing impatient. When Tomm treated her like a foolish child, Enna had some sympathy for her father’s view of him. ‘Look, this is a strange city, which we barely explored before splitting up. You can help me find Momo, or use the hot air you’re spouting to go blow up the balloon yourself.’

He was crestfallen, but when she stalked off to search, Tomm, embarrassed, hurried after her.

She thought she remembered the building Momo had chosen as his shelter. She headed that way now.

But something was wrong. As she followed the unpaved alleys, the layout of the buildings didn’t quite match her memory of the night before. Of course, she had only had a quick glimpse of the city, and the light of morning, playing over these crisp creamy walls, was quite different. But even so, she wouldn’t have expected to get as lost as this.

And when she came to the place where she thought Momo’s building should have been, there was only a blank space. She walked back and forth over the bare ground, disoriented, dread gathering in her soul.

‘You must be mistaken,’ Tomm insisted.

‘I’m good at direction-finding, Tomm. You know that.’

Playfully he said, ‘You found your way to my bed well enough—’

‘Oh, shut up. This is serious. This is where Momo’s shelter was, I’m sure of it. Something has changed. I can feel it.’

Tomm said defensively, ‘That doesn’t sound very scientific.’

‘Then help me, o great cartographer. Did any of you make a map last night?’

‘Of course not. The light was poor. We knew there would be time enough today.’

She glared at him. But she was being unfair; it was a perfectly reasonable assumption that a city like this wouldn’t change overnight.

But the fact of the matter was, Momo was still missing.

Growing increasingly disturbed, she went to her father’s room. That at least was just where it had been last night. But her father wouldn’t see her; a busybody junior Philosopher barred her from even entering the door. Bayle was still deep in discussion with Sila, the ragged city woman, and he had left strict instructions to be disturbed by nobody – not even Enna, his daughter.

Tomm, apologetically, said he had to get on with his flight, Momo or no Momo. Distracted, Enna kissed him goodbye, and continued her search.