Gary Gibson - Final Days

‘It’s not so bad, really,’ said Mitchell. ‘At least not when you think about what explorers had to cope with in previous centuries, like starvation, scurvy, dehydration. At least Armstrong didn’t have to worry about getting a spear through his chest when he landed on the Moon.’

‘I guess,’ Saul conceded, then peered back through into the command module, where he could just see the top of Amy’s and Lester’s heads. ‘Do we know what’s happening back home?’

‘The feed reports are getting pretty confused.’ Mitchell glanced towards Lester and Amy, and dropped his voice. ‘You ought to know, one of the VASIMRs didn’t make it into orbit.’

‘What happened?’

‘Fuel-line break. Might be due to the tremors, or maybe because everything was so rushed. Ginny was on board, so Lester and Amy are having a hard time of it. You see, Ginny was their niece.’

‘Shit.’

‘Not that you could really tell. They’re so good at keeping things buttoned up.’

‘Well, thanks, I guess, for letting me know.’

&lsoLester also grabbed some public feeds from back home, and . . . well,’ he shrugged. ‘I guess you’d better see for yourself.’

Most of what Saul then received from Mitchell, a moment later, consisted of amateur footage recorded either on witnesses’ contacts or handheld video recorders. All featured bright twists of light that danced through city streets, reducing them to dust within seconds. The view from hovering camera-drones showed the same twists of light roaming across suburbs and crowded cities, leaving nothing in their path but dense choking clouds of dust rising above a grey and featureless landscape. Dense conurbations, filled with people and traffic and homes, disappeared in an instant. Other video segments showed the same disaster happening to forests, grassy mountain slopes and equatorial jungles, the soil turned to lifeless grey ash that billowed up to blot out the sun. Yet another segment showed the same twists of light dancing around a growth, like so many glowing snowflakes.

The next time he looked at Mitchell, Saul felt like he’d aged another decade. ‘I don’t know if I really believed what was happening, until now.’

‘You wouldn’t have any trouble believing it if you were still stuck down below there,’ remarked Mitchell.

‘Look . . .’ Saul let out a sigh. ‘We’re not going to get too many chances like this to talk about what we’re actually intending to do once we reach Copernicus or the Lunar Array. Getting past whatever security operation is still running up there is going to be one of our biggest priorities.’

‘Agreed,’ said Mitchell.

‘But the real priority is triggering an Array-wide shutdown. And for that I still need your help.’

Mitchell threw him an appraising look. ‘I got the impression earlier that you didn’t need anyone else.’

‘I can trigger a shutdown on my own, sure, but only once the Lunar Array’s security systems fall out of contact with Florida. I don’t know how much time that’s going to leave either one of us to set the shutdown in motion. For all I know, it might not be anywhere near long enough. But if we had a second code, it might make all the difference.’

‘Except,’ said Mitchell, ‘you don’t have a second code.’

‘No, but we need to head for the Lunar ASI offices before any code at all can be activated. While we’re there, it might be worth scanning through the servers to see if we can find any kind of information that might help us.’

‘That’s a seriously long shot,’ said Mitchell, looking unconvinced.

‘Better than no shot,’ Saul replied. ‘A little while ago,’ he said, ‘I had the feeling that maybe you weren’t so keen on helping me with this.’

Mitchell hesitated. &lsuoThe only thing that makes me hesitate is knowing I’d be complicit in something that would make people revile the pair of us for a thousand years, if they ever learned what we’d done.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Saul snapped. ‘Or that it hasn’t been on my mind every single second since it first occurred to me? If you know a better way to stop the rest of the human race from extinction, I’m fucking desperate to hear it. Really, truly desperate . If there was any other way—’

‘Saul,’ Mitchell put up a hand, ‘I get it. I understand.’

‘Just so I know I can count on you.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Mitchell, flashing him a grin full of bright, sharp teeth.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Translunar Space, 10 February 2235

Saul climbed into one of the sleeping bags in the lander, and blacked out more than just fell asleep. He woke several hours later, groggy and bedevilled by a thousand aches and pains, his sleeping bag twisted slightly where it had been Velcroed to a bulkhead. He saw Mitchell, snoring loudly, wrapped in another sleeping bag across the lander.

Saul swallowed to get rid of the dry, gummy taste in his mouth, and spent the next few minutes figuring out how to unzip himself from the bag and its Velcro straps. He then kicked himself through to the command module, finding Lester and Amy still at their stations.

‘Still alive?’ asked Amy, glancing up at him.

‘Barely,’ Saul mumbled. ‘What’s the latest?’

‘See for yourself,’ suggested Lester, without turning.

A second or two later, Saul found himself watching live satellite feeds of Europe and Africa. He could just make out the coasts of Morocco and South Africa, and saw that both landmasses had become almost entirely hidden under an impenetrable grey haze. Occasional streaks of light chased each other through the ashen murk, come and gone so quickly that they almost didn’t register.

Saul scanned through more feeds and saw that, although the same haze had not yet crossed the Atlantic to North America’s eastern seaboard, it could nonetheless be seen approaching from the other direction, spreading across the Bering Straits, and reaching as far as the northern tip of Alaska.

He inhaled loudly through his nose, fighting off a surge of bile that rose into the back of his throat. A billion years of evolution, and millennia of human history, all wiped out of existence in the course of just a few days. It defied comprehension. Olivia and Jeff came to mind in that moment, and he prayed they had managed to shut down the Inuvik gate in time.

‘Try not to throw up, son,’ said Lester. ‘It’s more dangerous than you think.’

‘I won’t,’ Saul gasped, tasting sour phlegm. He floated, eyes shut, with one hand gripping the back of Lester’s seat.

‘He’ll be fine,’ Amy muttered. ‘Barbiturates’ll keep him from puking too bad.’

‘Saul, did you notice anything weird?’ asked Lester. ‘About the distribution of those clouds, I mean.’

Saul forced himself to open his eyes again, despite a rush of dizziness. ‘Weird in what way?’

‘I ran a comparison between the spread of the clouds and some speculative climate simulations designed to predict the effect of nuclear winter and major eruptions – that kind of thing. From what I can tell, they’re not acting like clouds are supposed to act. They’re moving against the prevailing winds, for a start, except for where there’s a storm system in the Indian Ocean.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t even begin to tell you how much that scares me. It’s like those clouds are alive .’

‘Worst thing,’ Amy muttered, ‘is not even knowing what started it all.’

‘How much did Jeff tell you about the growths?’ asked Saul.

‘Well.’ Lester squinted, as if uncomfortable with the subject, ‘more than we wanted to hear, to be honest. Mainly he talked about some whole big network of CTC gates leading all over the galaxy. He talked about so much stuff it was kind of hard to take a lot of it on board.’