‘We have no idea what the ship can do yet, but it’s clear that it is powered by some kind of reactionless drive. Possibly a bias drive that alters the gravitational constant to create a local propulsive gradient, the scientists say. If so, we could go anywhere we wanted to go. I could be the first woman to step on Mars.’
Astrid was a few years older than Vic, scary-smart, capable, cosmopolitan, certain about who she was and what she wanted. He wasn’t sure what she saw in him, but believed it might be fun, finding out what they had in common. Maybe one day they would walk the sands of Mars together. Meanwhile, he could most definitely use some certainty in his life.
57. The Gift
Mangala | 15–28 September
Fahad visited Chloe in hospital a couple of days after Vic had told her about the first real flight of the spaceship, and said that he was planning to return to Earth on the next shuttle.
‘What about the ships?’ Chloe said.
Fahad shrugged. ‘They won’t be going anywhere for a little while. And I have to see Rana. See that she is safe. Tell her about the gift that her friend gave us.’
‘Tell me everything. What was it like, flying that ship? Was it easy, was it scary, what?’
‘I was scared that I would fail. But then the ship’s systems settled around me and I knew exactly what to do…It was wonderful, Chloe. Better than anything. I can’t really describe it, but when you go up you’ll see exactly what I mean.’
Fahad was dressed in a green denim jacket and green work pants and a red T-shirt. Sort-of-but-not-quite military gear. He’d grown out his hair and it hung loose around his face and there was a gold earring in his left ear. To mark his first voyage, he’d said. He also told her that he’d come to an arrangement with Ada Morange. Her lawyers would fight his legal battle for control of his ship; he would share with her everything he knew.
Chloe said, ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’
‘She helped me find what I needed to find,’ Fahad said. ‘And she’ll help me keep control of it, too. To start with, her people have worked out what Rana’s drawings mean.’
It took Chloe a moment to remember what he meant. The starburst of lines radiating out from a central point.
Fahad said that it was a map. ‘There are these tiny dense stars, pulsars, which rotate really quickly, and emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. Like radio signals. You can only detect the pulsar beams when they’re pointed at you, so they tick like very precise clocks. Some in milliseconds, some in seconds. Every one is different, so if you know the period of the tick, you can identify the pulsar. Dr Morange’s people think that’s what Rana’s map shows. The marks on each line are a code, giving the period. And the length of the line is the distance from the pulsar to the place the map is aimed at.’
‘Do they know where this place is?’
‘Not yet. The same kind of maps were put on these robot probes that went out into deep space, beyond the edge of the solar system. In case aliens found them, and wanted to know where they came from. Those had a key, a way of working out the time periods. That’s what we need to find first. And when we do, we can find the pulsars, and find the place we’re supposed to find.’
‘Whatever it is.’
‘We’ll know it when we find it. You should talk to Dr Morange, Chloe. You’re the only other person who can control the ships. You can name your price.’
Fahad had acquired a definite air of glamour. A raffish, piratical confidence. The rock-star chic of a kid from the streets who’d made good on talent, luck and dedication. Chloe saw in him one half of the future struggle between the fearful and jealous conservative heartland of humanity and the bold impatient energy of the frontier. And she knew, thanks to her gift, her curse, that she was going to have to decide which side she was on.
‘It scares me,’ she confessed.
‘It’s only just begun,’ Fahad said. ‘There are other ships out there. The first thing we have to do is go and find them.’
‘Did the ship tell you that? Or was it Ugly Chicken?’
‘There were many Elder Cultures,’ Fahad said. ‘And even if only one of them possessed ships, this can’t be the only system where they stashed them. Maybe that’s what the map is about. We’ll find out, you’ll see.’
His serene self-assurance was marvellous and frightening. It reminded Chloe, just a little, of the messianic gleam of the leader of the New Galactic Navy. Who had also believed that he’d been chosen to fly to the stars.
She said, ‘We have to get past the lawyers and politicians first. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. It gives us a chance to think about what we want to do, what we should do, before we fly off into the unknown.’
‘When I come back we’ll go up together,’ Fahad said. ‘It’ll be the beginning of a great adventure!’
But the lawyers and politicians were still arguing about the disposition of the ships when the shuttle arrived. Chloe had been discharged from hospital by then. She still needed a crutch to walk, and she couldn’t walk very far before the grinding pain in her hip became too much, but she had moved into a little apartment in the UN building and liked to sit in the café in the plaza and watch the people of this new world go by. That was where Ada Morange’s lawyer found her, and told her that his boss would like to talk to her.
‘Any time. Just put her on the phone.’
The lawyer smiled. ‘Actually, she would prefer a face-to-face meeting.’
Ada Morange had come up on the shuttle to Mangala, accompanied by a small entourage of scientists and lawyers, and the!Cha, Unlikely Worlds. Chloe met with her in a suite in the Petra Carlton. They sat facing each other in their wheelchairs; Unlikely Worlds’s tank squatted next to Ada Morange, its articulated legs folded around it.
‘We have been given a chance to change history,’ the entrepreneur said, after they had got past the niceties of congratulation on a mission accomplished, and concern about Chloe’s recuperation. ‘We have been entirely dependent on the Jackaroo’s shuttles and their fixed schedules. But now we will be able to travel freely between Mangala and Earth. And between Earth and the other worlds…’
‘As long as the Jackaroo allow it,’ Chloe said.
‘Sometimes, I’m told, the Jackaroo make something attractive by forbidding it,’ Ada Morange said. ‘They push people towards it by pretending to push them away.’
Chloe looked at the!Cha’s tank, said, ‘Is that true? Or is it another of your stories?’
While she’d been bedridden, she’d had plenty of time to think about the Jackaroo, and the!Cha. About why the avatar that called itself Bob Smith had visited her on that beach in Norfolk; about what the avatar carried by Adam Nevers had said to Vic.
Bob Smith had told her that she had been standing at a place where small actions could have large and unintended consequences: that had definitely turned out to be true. And it had said that there were others here, with their own agenda. Perhaps it had meant people like Adam Nevers. Or perhaps it had meant the!Cha, who collected stories they used to attract the attention of a female mate, back home, wherever their home was. Who reshaped stories that were not pleasing, according to the avatar carried by Nevers; who liked to accelerate change.