Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

Communication was always the great problem at the start, Helena knows. Spiders lack the ability to hear speech as anything more than a tickling of the feet; while humans lack the sensitive touch required to detect the wealth of arachnid language. Technology on both sides came to the rescue, of course, and there was always the sour, recalcitrant presence of Avrana Kern. The common language, everyone’s second language, is that curious mangled Imperial C that Kern and the spiders worked out between them when she was still the Messenger, and they her faithful. The dead language lives on. Helena’s great-great-grandfather would find that thought hilarious, no doubt.

All of the living ship’s systems are within tolerance, the organic readouts confirm. Helena adds her own confirmation to the chorus, waiting for the word. She is not the commander of this mission. That honour goes to Portia, the spiders’ first ever interstellar pioneer. Hunched in her own webbing slung from the ceiling – or at least the curved side of their chamber that faces Helena’s, the spider considers the moment for a few seconds, exchanges quick radio communication with the dock and with the world below, and then speaks to the ship itself.

When you wish .

The ship’s response, though positive, has a fragment of the dry wit of Doctor Avrana Kern. Its biomechanical intelligence is extrapolated from what she once was: a child of Kern budded off her, with her blessing.

With awesome, colossal grace, the Voyager reconfigures its shape for optimum efficiency and detaches itself from the orbital web, a structure vastly grander than when the Gilgamesh first saw it, and now blooming with green solar collectors, dotted with other amorphous spacecraft that have already plotted the extent of the green planet’s solar system.

The Voyager is more fuel-efficient than the Gilgamesh – or even than the Old Empire’s vessels, according to Kern. Sometimes all it takes, to crack a problem, is a new perspective. The vessel’s reactor can accelerate smoothly and constantly for far longer, decelerate likewise, and the ship’s fluid internal structure will protect the crew from extremes of acceleration far more effectively. The journey out will be a sleep of mere decades, not millennia or even centuries.

Still, it is a grand step, and not to be taken lightly. Although returning to the stars was always a certainty that both species had worked hard towards, nobody would ever have suggested reaching out there quite yet, if it had not been for the signal, the message.

Out of all the points of light in the sky, one of them is talking. It is not saying anything comprehensible, but the message is plainly something more than mere static, something more structured than the orderly calls of pulsars or any other known phenomenon of the universe. The work, in short, of intelligence, where there should be none. How could the people of the green planet ignore such a beacon?

The Voyager begins its long acceleration, gently stressing the bodies of its crew, realigning its internal geometry. Soon they will sleep, and when they wake there will be a new world awaiting them. An unknown world of perils and wonders and mystery. A world that calls out for them. Not an alien world, though, not entirely. The ancient progenitors of the people of the green planet walked there once. It exists on the Gilgamesh ’s star maps, another island in the strung-out terraformers’ archipelago that was left to its own devices by the collapse of the Old Empire.

After all the years, the wars, the tragedies and the loss, the spiders and the monkeys are returning to the stars to seek their inheritance.

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son. He is the author of the ten-book fantasy series Shadows of the Apt and Guns of the Dawn , a stand-alone historical fantasy novel. Children of Time is his first science fiction novel.

Catch up with Adrian at www.shadowsoftheapt.comfor further information plus bonus material including short stories and artwork.

Empire in Black and Gold

Dragonfly Falling

Blood of the Mantis

Salute the Dark

The Scarab Path

The Sea Watch

Heirs of the Blade

The Air War

War Master’s Gate

Seal of the Worm

Guns of the Dawn

Children of Time

A big thank-you to my scientific advisors, including Stewart Hotston, Justina Robson, Michael Czajkowski, Max Barclay and the Entomology department of the Natural History Museum.

Also the usual thanks to my wife, Annie, my agent, Simon Kavanagh, to Peter Lavery, and to Bella Pagan and everyone else at Tor. I’m very glad of all the support for what has been a deeply, weirdly personal project.

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First published 2015 by Tor

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Copyright © Adrian Czajkowski 2015

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Author Photo © Kate Eshelby

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