Stephen Baxter: Resplendent

That puzzled her. He’d said his goal was the detection of superheavy elements in Earth’s crust. So why was he manufacturing them?

‘Why were the Qax making exotic matter?’

‘None of us knows for sure,’ he said. ‘There is a rumour that the Qax were trying to build a tunnel to the future . It’s even said that the Qax Governor itself is an immigrant from the future, where humanity is triumphant. And that is why the Qax work so hard to control us. Because they are frightened of us.’

‘That’s just a legend.’

‘Is it? Perhaps with time all history becomes legend.’

‘This is nonsense, Symat!’

‘How do you know , Luru?’

‘There are witnesses to the past. The pharaohs.’

‘Like Gemo Cana?’ Symat laughed. ‘Luru, there are no survivors from before the Occupation. The Qax withdrew AntiSenescence treatment for two centuries after the Occupation. All the old pharaohs died , before the Qax began to provide their own longevity treatments. These modern undead, like Gemo Cana, have been bought by the Qax, bought by the promise of long life.’ He leaned towards her. ‘As they are buying you, Luru Parz.’

They emerged from the clean blue calm of the facility, back into the grimy mire of the town.

Disturbed, disoriented, she said evenly, ‘Symat, the starbreaker beams are coming here. Once the Qax tolerated activities like this, indigenous cultural and scientific endeavours. Not any more, not since the Friends of Wigner betrayed the Qax’s cultural generosity towards indigenous ambitions.’ The Friends had used a cultural site to mask seditious activities. ‘If you don’t move out you will be killed.’

He clambered on a low wall and spread his arms, his long robe flapping in the thin dusty breeze. ‘Ah. Indigenous . I love that word.’

‘Symat, come home. There’s nothing here. The data cleansers were sent through this place long ago.’

‘Nothing? Look around you, Luru. Look at the scale of these old foundations. Once there was a host of immense buildings here, taller than the sky. And this roadway, where now we mine the old sewers for water, must have swarmed with traffic. Millions of people must have lived and worked here. It was a great city. And it was human , Luru. The data might have gone; we might never even know the true name of this place. But as long as these ruins are here we can imagine how it must once have been. If these last traces are destroyed the past can never be retrieved. And that’s what the Qax intend.

‘The Extirpation isn’t always a matter of clinical data deletion, you know. Sometimes the jasofts come here with their robots, and they simply burn and smash: books, paintings, artefacts. Perhaps if you saw that, you would understand. The Qax want to sever our roots – to obliterate our identity.’

She felt angry, threatened; she tried to strike back at him. ‘And is that what you’re seeking here? An identity from unravelling this piece of obscure physics?’

‘Oh, there is much more here than physics.’ He said softly, ‘Have you ever heard of Michael Poole ? He was one of the first explorers of Sol system – long before the Occupation. And he found life, everywhere he looked.’

‘Life?’

‘Luru, that primordial supernova did more than spray superheavy atoms through the crust of the young Earth. There were complex structures in there, exotic chemistries. Life . Some of us believe they may be survivors of a planet of the primordial supernova – or perhaps they were born in the cauldron of the supernova itself, their substance fizzing out of that torrent of energy. Perhaps they breed that way, seeds flung from supernova to supernova, bugs projected by the mighty sneezes of stars!

‘There is much we don’t understand: their biochemistry, the deeper ecology that supports them, their lifecycle – even what they look like. And yet we know there is a forest down there, Luru, a chthonic forest locked into the substance of the ground, inhabited by creatures as old as the Earth itself. You see, even in these unimaginably difficult times, we are finding new life – just like Michael Poole.’

Wonder flooded her, unwelcome. Bombarded by strangeness, she felt as if some internal barrier were breaking down, as if Symat’s bizarre superheavy creatures were swimming through her mind.

He peered into her eyes, seeking understanding. ‘Now do you see why I’m prepared to fight for this place? Humans aren’t meant to be drones, for the Qax or anybody else. This is what we live for. Exploration, and beauty, and truth.’

She returned to Conurbation 5204, without Symat. She filed a report for Gemo Cana. Her duty fulfilled, she tried to get back to work, to immerse herself once more. As always, there was much to do.

But the work was oddly unsatisfying.

She was distracted by doubt. Could it really be true, as Symat had said, that her career trajectory, with its pleasing succession of tasks and promotions, was just a Qax social construct, a series of meaningless challenges meant to keep bright, proactive people like herself contented and contained and usefully occupied – useful for the Qax, that is?

Meanwhile it was a busy time in the Conurbation. The cramped corridors were crowded with people, all of them spindly tall, bald, pale – just as Luru was herself – all save the pharaohs, of course; they, having been born into richer times, were more disparate, tall and short, thin and squat, bald and hairy. The cadres were undergoing their biennial dissolution, and everybody was on the move, seeking new quarters, new friends, eager for the recreation festival to follow, the days of storytelling and sport and sex.

Luru had always enjoyed the friendly chaos of the dissolutions, the challenge of forming new relationships. But this time she found it difficult to focus her attention on her new cadre siblings.

At the age of twenty-two Luru was already done with childbirth. She had donated to a birthing tank; it was a routine service performed by all healthy women before they left their late teens, and she had thought nothing of it. Now, thinking of the families of Mell Born, she looked at the swarms of youngsters scrambling to their new cadres, excited, all their bare scalps shining like bubbles on a river, and wondered if any of these noisy children could be hers .

Gemo Cana said, ‘I read your report. You’re right to question why Suvan needs to manufacture his strange elements. He’s obviously planning something, some kind of rebellious gesture.’ She looked up from her data slate, as if seeing Luru for the first time. ‘Ah. But you aren’t interested in Symat Suvan and his grubbing in the dirt, are you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Cana put down the slate. ‘It got to you. The outside. I can see it in you. I knew it would, of course. The only question is what difference it’s going to make. Whether you will still be useful.’ She nodded. ‘You have questions, Luru Parz. Ask them.’

Luru felt cold. ‘Symat Suvan told me that the Qax’s ultimate intention—’

‘Is to cauterise the past. I suppose he talked about our identity being dissolved, and so forth? Well, he’s right.’ Cana sounded tired. ‘Of course he is. Think about what you’ve done. What did you think was the purpose of it all? The Extirpation is an erasing of mankind’s past. A bonfire of identity. That is the truth.’

‘But—’

‘There are further plans, you know,’ Cana said, ignoring her. ‘For example: the Spline starbreakers penetrate only the first few tens of metres of the ground, to obliterate shelters, archives and other traces. But the Qax intend to perform a deeper ploughing-up. They have a nanotech replicator dust, which – Well. You see, with such tools, even the fossils will be destroyed, even the geology of the Earth itself: never to be retrieved, the wisdom they contain never to be deciphered.