Stephen Baxter - Resplendent

Hama cringed from the brute physical reality of the erupting conflict. And he knew who to blame. ‘It’s the jasofts,’ he said. ‘The ones taken to orbit to help with the salvaging of the Spline. They took it over. And now they’ve come here, to rescue their colleagues.’

Gemo Cana smiled, squinting up at the sky. ‘Sadly, stupidity is not the sole prerogative of mayflies. This counter-coup cannot succeed. And then, when this Spline no longer darkens the sky, your vengeance will not be moderated by show trials and bleats about justice and truth. You must save us, Hama Druz. Now!’

Sarfi pressed her hands to her face.

Hama stared at Gemo. ‘ You knew . You knew this was about to happen. You timed your visit to force me to act.’

‘It’s all very complicated, Hama Druz,’ Gemo said softly, manipulating. ‘Don’t you think so? Get us out of here – all of us – and sort it out later.’

Nomi pulled back the pharaoh’s head. ‘You know what I think? I think you’re a monster, pharaoh. I think you killed your daughter, long ago, and stuck her in your head. An insurance against a day like today.’

Gemo, her face twisted by Nomi’s strong fingers, forced a smile. ‘Even if that were true, what difference would it make?’ And she gazed at Hama, waiting for his decision.

Obeying Nomi’s stern voice commands, the ship rose sharply. Hama felt no sense of acceleration as shadows slipped over his lap.

This small craft was little more than a translucent hemisphere. In fact it would serve as a lifedome, part of a greater structure waiting in Earth orbit to propel him across Sol system. The three of them, plus Sarfi, were jammed into a cabin made for two. The Virtual girl was forced to share the space already occupied by Hama and Gemo. Where her projection intersected their bodies it dimmed and broke up, and she averted her face; Hama was embarrassed by this brutal indignity.

The ship emerged from its pit and rushed directly beneath the looming belly of the attacking Spline; Hama had a brief, ugly glimpse of fleeing, crumpled flesh, oozing scars metres long, glistening weapon emplacements like stab wounds.

The ship reached clear sky. The air was crowded. Ships of all sizes cruised above Conurbation 11729, seeking to engage the rogue Spline. Hama saw, with a sinking heart, that one of the ancient, half-salvaged ships had already crashed back to Earth. It had made a broad crater, a wound in the ground circled by burning blown-silicate buildings. Already people had died today, irreplaceable lives lost for ever.

The ship soared upward. Earth quickly folded over into a glowing blue abstraction, pointlessly beautiful, hiding the gruesome scenes on its surface; the air thinned, the sky dimming through violet, to black. The ship began to seek out the orbiting angular structure that would carry it to the outer planets.

Hama began to relax, for the first time since Gemo had revealed herself. Despite everything that had happened he was relieved to leave behind the complications of the Conurbation; perhaps in the thin light of Jupiter the dilemmas he would have to face would be simpler.

Gemo Cana said carefully, ‘Hama Druz, tell me something. Now that we all know who and what we are—’

‘Yes?’

‘In your searching, has your inquisition turned up a pharaoh called Luru Parz?’

‘She’s on the list but I don’t believe she’s been found,’ Hama said. ‘Why? Did you know her?’

‘In a way. You could say I created her, in fact. She was always the best of us, I thought, the best and brightest, once she had clarified her conscience. I thought of her as a daughter.’

The Virtual copy of her real daughter, Sarfi, turned away, expressionless.

Nomi cursed.

A vast winged shape sailed over the blue hide of Earth, silent, like a predator.

Hama’s heart sank at the sight of this new, unexpected intruder. What now?

Nomi said softly, ‘Those wings must be hundreds of kilometres across.’

‘Ah,’ said Gemo. ‘Just like the old stories. The ship is like a sycamore seed … But none of you remembers sycamore trees , do you? Perhaps you need us, and our memories, after all.’

Nomi said, anger erupting, ‘People are dying down there because of your kind, Gemo—’

Hama placed a hand on Nomi’s arm. ‘Tell us, pharaoh. Is it Qax?’

‘Not Qax,’ she said. ‘ Xeelee .’ It was the first time Hama had heard the name. ‘That is a Xeelee nightfighter,’ said Gemo. ‘The question is – what does it want here?’

There was a soft warning chime.

The ship shot away from Earth. The planet dwindled, becoming a sparking blue bauble over which a black-winged insect crawled.

Callisto joined the community of foragers.

Dwelling where the forest met the beach, the people ate the grass, and sometimes leaves from the lower branches, even loose flaps of bark. The people were wary, solitary. She didn’t learn their names – if they had any – nor gained a clear impression of their faces, their sexes. She wasn’t even sure how many of them there were here. Not many, she thought.

Callisto found herself eating incessantly. With every mouthful she took she felt herself grow, subtly, in some invisible direction – the opposite to the diminution she had suffered when she lost her hand to the burning power of the sea. There was nothing to drink – no fluid save the oily black ink of the ocean, and she wasn’t tempted to try that. But it didn’t seem to matter.

Callisto was not without curiosity. She explored, fitfully.

The beach curved away, in either direction. Perhaps this was an island, poking out of the looming black ocean. There was no bedrock, not as far as she could dig. Only the drifting, uniform dust.

Tiring of Asgard’s cold company, she plucked up her courage and walked away from the beach, towards the forest.

There were structures in the dust: crude tubes and trails, like the markings of worms or crabs. The grass emerged , somehow, coalescing from looser dust formations. The grass grew sparsely on the open beach, but at the fringe of the forest it gathered in dense clumps.

Deeper inside the forest’s gathering darkness the grass grew longer yet, plaiting itself into ropy vine-like plants. And deeper still she saw things like trees looming tall, plaited in turn out of the vines. Thus the trees weren’t really ‘trees’ but tangles of ropy vines. And everything was connected to everything else.

She pushed deeper into the forest. Away from the lapping of the sea and the wordless rustle of the foraging people at the forest fringe, it grew dark, quiet. Grass ropes wrapped around her legs, tugging, yielding with reluctance as she passed. This was a drab, still, lifeless place, she thought. In a forest like this there ought to be texture: movement, noise, scent. So, anyhow, her flawed memories dimly protested.

She came to a particularly immense tree. It was a tangle of grassy ropes, melding above her head into a more substantial whole that rose above the surrounding vegetative mass and into the light of the sky. But a low mist lay heavily, obscuring her view of the tree’s upper branches.

She felt curiosity spark. What could she see if she climbed above the mist?

She placed her hand on the knotted-up lower trunk, then one foot, and then the other. The stuff of the tree was hard and cold.

At first the climbing was easy, the components of the ‘trunk’ loosely separated. She found a way to lodge her bad arm in gaps in the trunk so she could release her left hand briefly, and grab for a new handhold before she fell back. But as she climbed higher the ropy sub-trunks grew ever more tangled.

High above her the trunk soared upwards, daunting, disappearing into the mist. When she looked down, she saw how the ‘roots’ of this great structure dispersed over the forest floor, branching into narrower trees and vine-thin creepers and at last clumps of grass, melting into the underlying dust. She felt unexpectedly exhilarated by this small adventure—