Gary Gibson - Final Days

‘What is irrefutable, to my mind,’ Nick continued, a glint of malice now evident in his gaze, ‘is that we are currently witness to the greatest act of murder in history. I mean the murder of an entire planet and its civilization.’

Amanda’s grip on Fowler’s hand became so tight that it hurt.

‘You really think someone caused all this?’ Fowler replied.

‘An act of negligence, perhaps, if not outright murder, but the result is the same.’

‘I think Jason was right,’ said Fowler. ‘I’ve heard a hundred conspiracy theories just like that one in the past week.’

The table had by now become quite silent.

‘Perhaps,’ said Nick, conceding the other man’s point. ‘And yet I have found myself encountering the most remarkable people on this voyage. Some, I suspect, are far better informed than one might reasonably expect.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Amanda, ‘but I didn’t catch your last name.’

‘If you’ll excuse us, we have to go,’ she said, suddenly standing up and tugging at Fowler’s arm. ‘Like we said, it’s been a long night for all of us.’

‘Of course,’ said Nick, his smile tightening across his teeth. ‘I wish you a good night.’

‘He recognized you,’ she whispered as they hurried back to their cabin. ‘I don’t know who he is, but he sure as hell knows who you are.’

‘Can you place him? Was he working anywhere on the Tau Ceti station?’

‘I really don’t think so. There’s very few of the staff we didn’t account for during the clean-up process, and he’s not one of them. But the way he was looking at us . . .’ She shuddered despite the tropical heat. ‘He knows, Thomas, I feel sure of it.’

‘It’s not like it takes a great leap of logic to figure out that the growths might be the result of some error of human judgement. It’s unlikely he was making any personal reference to either of us.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘stop trying to rationalize this! I could see it in his face, the way he was looking at you. It’s not just that he knows about the Founders: he also knows who you are.’

They came to the door of their cabin, and Fowler put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘Even if that turned out to be the case, it’s much too late to worry about it now. We already know what’s in our future.’

‘But how sure are you, really, that it’s set in stone?’

He hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘Sure enough to believe that what I saw in that video is bound to come to pass, whatever else happens in the meantime.’

They were woken during the night by angry shouting, followed by gunfire. Fowler pressed his ear to the cabin door, unwilling to risk stepping out into the corridor and wishing he had thought to arm himself. When first light came, he summoned up the courage to venture out on his own and learned, from a member of the crew, that a few of the more belligerent passengers, who had apparently come on board armed with sports rifles, had demanded the ferry make a detour towards a pod of whales sighted several kilometres to the east. The captain’s blank refusal had led to an argument, and the argument – largely fuelled by alcohol – had led to a violent altercation, leaving two of the passengers dead and another seriously injured. Their sleep after that was restless, and Fowler dreamed of bone-white flowers growing from blood-red seas.

The Pacific growth – the first one of all to come into existence – became visible on the horizon the following afternoon. It looked to Fowler like something that Magritte might have imagined: a silver and gold behemoth resembling a flower only in the most abstract terms, and self-constructed on a scale that ded all logic. The senses rebelled at the sight of it when seen directly, and he felt the same tight knot of primitive terror deep in his chest that he’d experienced on first seeing the news footage of this same growth.

Once again they gathered by the rail with the rest of the passengers, steadying themselves cautiously as the ferry rose and dipped with the waves. The growth was still sufficiently distant for the lowest part of its base to be hidden below the curve of the horizon, and yet the complex structures sprouting from its massive stem, like tangled nests of leaves, were clearly visible even at so great a distance. So was a haze of barely discernible black dots and curious twists of light that clouded its upper half.

‘Do you think he was right?’ Fowler asked, tasting salt as waves broke against the hull. ‘That man last night, I mean – in what he said about the slate being wiped clean.’

Amanda laughed and shook her head. ‘Nick? I think he’s watched too many bad TriView shows. No, it’s probably something much more prosaic than that.’

‘Like what?’

‘A construction tool,’ she suggested. ‘An earth-digging machine that a bunch of ants accidentally figured out how to switch on, and now it’s rolling over their own anthill. That would be about the size of it.’

‘He was right about one thing: there are easier ways to wipe us out.’

‘What you said about the earthquakes. Do we know if that’s the case?’

‘Think about the amount of energy the growths must need to reach such an enormous size in so little time.’ A big wave smashed into the ferry, and they staggered slightly as the deck tilted first one way, then the other. ‘The leaves are for gathering solar energy, but I reckon that wouldn’t give them a fraction of the total power they’d need. Geothermal power is a fast way to get the rest of that energy, so they drill deep into the crust, or maybe even further.’

‘And the atmospheric phenomena we’re seeing? What about that?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But I don’t think Tesla’s got much to do with it.’

‘I’m still glad we came here, you know,’ she said. ‘Somehow seeing it like this – actually being here – makes all the difference.’

‘You think we’re getting what we deserve by being here?’

She looked at him. ‘Don’t you?’

He shook his head. ‘I think we were just unlucky. Curiosity defines us. It’s what makes us human. There’s no way you could explore something like the Founder Network and not expect to get your fingers burned.’ He pulled her closer and nodded up at the sky. ‘Out there, quo;re seeuo;ll survive . . . or other people will, at any rate.’

A message was broadcast over the ferry’s tannoy system before Amanda could form a reply. The captain proposed taking a vote on whether to sail the ferry to within a kilometre of the growth’s base, and the result of the vote would be announced the following morning.

Fowler felt overcome by a mixture of excitement and terror as he listened. That single glimpse, in a fragmentary video, of Amanda standing on the deck of this very same ferry, had given him the sense of fulfilling some kind of personal destiny just by being here. The end was close, but at least it was an end they had chosen together, and of their own free will. From this point on, there could be no surprises.

Quite soon they retired once more for the night, waking frequently to the sounds of shattering glass or loud music emanating from the deck, then later to screams and moans coming from the cabins adjacent to their own. They both woke early, to find the sun still boiling its way up over the horizon, and stepping over snoring bodies and the remains of smashed wine bottles as they made their way to the restaurant deck. It proved to be deserted, except for the man called Nick, who stood by the railing, looking out to sea. He turned and nodded to them as they approached, almost as if he’d been waiting for them.

‘Mr Fowler,’ he said. ‘I’ve been up all night thinking about you.’