N. White: The End - Visions of Apocalypse

“Mmmm?” Allan’s face was close to her neck.

“The doomsayers,” she said. “Do you ever think they might have a point? Do you ever doubt we’re doing the right thing? All things end, don’t you think? Eventually, I mean.”

He did not answer. She looked back. He was asleep. She lay for a long time holding his hand to her breast and watching the Sun rise. She watched the sky’s pinks and yellows, and the clouds’ purples and mauves brightening slowly in the growing light to make a perfect morning. Then she closed her eyes, and then she slept, too. It was one of the last sunrises.

The Sun was due to explode sometime in the next few weeks. It was inevitable. Strictly speaking, the sun wasn’t going to explode but, rather, expand incredibly rapidly, but as the expansion would take the Sun’s photosphere beyond Earth’s orbit within 24 hours, the distinction was a moot one. A chain reaction started by a misapplied experiment in the mid twenty-fifth century made it unavoidable. Earth, the mother planet of Man, Bonobos, Dolphins, and the other evolved sentients, was doomed. It had always been doomed of course. At some point in the far-distant future the Sun would have naturally expanded into a red giant, then exploded into a planetary nebular with a white dwarf at its core. Human interference (and everyone agreed it was the Humans who were responsible; even the Dolphins) had just bought the date forward by about five billion years. As monumental errors go, it was a big one. Humans were good at monumental errors; even the Humans didn’t argue with that. The unexpected side-effects of the experiment hadn’t become immediately apparent. It was 700 years before the alarm was raised, and another 300 before anyone came up with a workable idea of what to do about it.

They woke to a thundering roar, the sound of a shuttle lifting off from the nearby field.

It took a few moments for Allan to understand the significance. He rolled over and dialled through to Flight Control.

“What’s happening?” mumbled Clara, sleepily.

He kissed her. “A shuttle launch,” he said. “Someone cleared a take-off.” The bedside screen lit up and Clara slid down below the bedclothes. Allan killed the outgoing video.

“We’re on private,” he whispered. “He can’t see you.”

“Good morning, Coordinator!” Allan recognised the on-screen figure, Henderson, a senior launch officer. “I take it we woke you up.”

“Damn right you did,” said Allan. “What’s happening? Ruiz said it would take a couple of days to clear the debris.”

“He did, but most of it is currently on Sailside. We’ve got it all mapped. The main body of the debris is orbiting in two waves going in opposing directions. We can stagger launches through the gaps when the waves have passed overhead and miss the worst of it. It’s not ideal. There’s still a more-than-minimal risk.”

“Why wasn’t I informed? Dammit, Henderson, I need to know about—”

“We figured you needed the sleep, sir. You had a hard time last night.”

Clara stifled a giggle. Allan shushed her.

“We’ve got you booked in on an upshuttle at 13:00 if you want it. You said you wanted to get up as soon as possible.”

“Talking about ‘up’…” muttered Clara, sliding further below the sheets.

Allan struggled to keep his voice level as she started to work her way down, kissing his chest, his belly, and then his semi-erect penis.

“How’s communications?” he managed to say.

“About seventy percent operational. We’ve full data transfer but not enough bandwidth for luxuries. No face to face yet. Oh… “ Henderson suddenly looked conspiratorial. “If you should happen to see Clara Letoza, would you tell her that her people have been trying to find her all morning. Something about ‘needing her shipboard, as soon as’.” The look of innocence on Henderson’s face wouldn’t have fooled a blind man. “Just to speed things up, I’ve already put her on the same flight.”

Allan smiled at Henderson’s circumspection. And then gulped as Clara cupped his testicles with her hand and moved down, taking his rapidly hardening penis fully into her mouth.

“I’ll be sure to tell her,” he gasped, and cut the connection.

They were seated next to each other in the upshuttle. They held hands. Each had detached a glove ignoring the warning signs insisting that ‘Full suits must be worn at all times!’ The gloves would take moments to reattach in an emergency and the comfort they gained from the touch of each other’s skin was worth the possible inconvenience. Allan hated the acceleration of take-off. He panicked every time.

“Clara,” he said, “when you’ve finished your meeting at Mainstay One will you come up to Top Side? I’d like you to meet Ruiz.”

“I’m not sure….” Clara was hesitant. “My ship’s at Mainstay Three port. It’s a long way. I’ll be on intershuttles all day.”

“Your ship?” Allan was confused. “I thought you came in on the regular flight.”

“No,” she said. “I came in my own ship.”

“From Centauri!”

“I didn’t pilot it myself,” she said. “I have a crew.”

Allan was impressed. Not many people outside of the pages of cheap fiction really had personal interstellar yachts.

They docked at Mainstay One’s transfer point. Neither were accustomed to free fall and when the shuttle’s hatches opened they made their way, clumsily, hand over hand, along the wide connecting tube’s wall. The more experienced of their fellow passengers jumped the length of the umbilical, turning in mid-flight to arrive at the other end feet first. A dolphin sailed past, propelled by puffs of air from a small jetpack, harness-looped around its fins and controlled by neural implants. Allan recognised the cetacean. Klakkatik-k’ka, a systems analyst from Capella, who had helped design the Sail’s gravity anchors. Allan whistle-clicked a greeting and the dolphin slowed.

“Coordinator Allan,” Klakkatik-k’ka said. “What an unexpected pleasure. I left farewells with your department. It is good to say them to you in person.”

The dolphin was one of the last of his team to leave. There were few Project people left on the surface and those that remained were packing. It’s one thing to know that the Project would work; another to be around when it didn’t. The planet was all but abandoned to the hands of a billion Zealots.

The three of them ducked into a nearby observation globe to get out of the flow of traffic. The view from the globe was spectacular. They all instinctively orientated themselves so the Sail was over their heads; it seemed natural to have the Earth ‘below’ them. The central core of Mainstay One, vast, shining, white and silver branched some ten miles above them, and then branched again and again, till it formed a web of glistening rigging that spanned, arch-like, to meet the rigging from other Mainstays. Below them Mainstay One divided into three and then those divisions divided into three again. The ends of these nine roots were supported by, and supported, the vast Gravity Anchors that gripped the planet. Embedded cores of incredibly dense Neutron star stuff that would tug the Earth from its orbit as the Sail pulled them away.

“It’s like a cathedral,” said Clara. “The way the rigging forms those arches. Like a vast Gothic cathedral.”

“What the humans build the humans would destroy,” said Klakkatik-k’ka.

“You mean the bombings?” said Allan.

“Save us all from gods with thumbs,” said the dolphin. He waved a flipper. “Man’s gods are always making things, and destroying them, and making anew.”

“And ’phin gods?” asked Clara.