Our car was a luxury model, a ring running round the cable with the outside edge one long window for most of the circumference. Everyone was strapped in for the launch, but once we were up to speed, you could sit at a table and order drinks just as we passed through the upper cloud layers, revealing the curve of the distant horizon. A few hundred people could travel in such a car, but today we found ourselves in a group of fifty or so, all of us on the way to Iokan’s meeting with the Antecessors. This was something of a major event; a new species to be met, diplomatic relations to be opened, and a genocide to be investigated.
I tried my best to introduce Iokan to some of those travelling with us, but he didn’t take much interest. People from the Diplomatic and Exploration Services got no more than a pleasant smile and a hello, followed by a complete inattention to their questions. He had no interest in speaking about what he expected to happen, much less in current events across the IU, which a couple of the Refugee Service people tried to engage him with. The situation on Ardëe was a frequent topic, and I swiftly learned it was worse than I thought: the sun in Ardëe’s universe was spitting flares out into space at a hundred times the usual rate, and millions were trying to flee. People were shocked at how swiftly the crisis was developing and some doubted we could manage an evacuation so soon after we had been attacked. But Iokan’s attention drifted away, so I made his excuses and tried to get him to pay attention to the spectacle beyond the window instead. We leant on the balustrade that kept us from direct contact with the great glass barrier: outside, clouds sank far below and the curve of the Earth was shadowed with the coming night.
“You didn’t get to see this when you came down. What do you think?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Very nice.”
“Ever seen it from this kind of height?”
“Oh, yes. It’s not my first time in space.”
“Really?” A chime went off in my ear. “Excuse me,” I said. “I have to take a call.”
I left him at the balustrade, still somehow uninterested in a view most species never see before they go extinct. I found a seat away from all the others who had the decency to gawp, fished a pad out of my bag, and answered the call.
It was Liss, sitting in her room, presumably with her own pad on her lap. “Hello, Liss. What’s up?”
“Sorry! Are you in space already?” I held the pad out and showed her the view from the window. “Oh, yeah. That’s space,” she said.
“You don’t sound very impressed.” I turned the pad back round to see her; she was frowning.
“Yeah, well, bad things have happened to me in space…”
“I remember. How can I help?”
“Um. I was wondering, uh, if I could talk to someone from Quillia?”
“We could probably arrange that. There’s a few people in the Refugee Service who come from there.”
“I mean with someone official.”
“Oh. Well. That’s a bit more difficult—”
“They’ve got an embassy, right? And consuls and cultural attachés and all that kind of stuff?”
“Yes, they do. Are you sure you want to make official contact this soon? I thought you were investigating what happened?”
“Uh, well, I was, but, um…” She struggled with her point for a few seconds.
“Yes?”
“You know I was fostered?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Well now I guess I know why. I mean, all that shit about mad child psychologists experimenting on me… they weren’t mad, they were aliens. It was probably normal for them.”
“It’s possible.”
“And why was I there? What were they doing — going on safari and bringing the kid along?”
“I can’t tell you, Liss.”
“Yeah, well… this is it, this is what I want to find out.”
“You want to find out what they were up to?”
“I want to find them. My parents.”
“Oh.”
“It’s like… they’re my family. I don’t even know if they made it out of Calafaria, I mean millions of people died there… I just want to know.” She paused, trying to avoid tears. “They’re the only family I’ve got. And, I don’t know, maybe they’ll help.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll have a word with the embassy—”
“Oh! Um. There’s one thing…”
“Yes?”
“You know how we’re supposed to have anonymity and all that?”
“We’ll do our best to preserve it. Unless you prefer otherwise.”
“Uh, no. I don’t, I mean yes, I want to keep the anonymity thing. Just in case it doesn’t work out.”
“That’s fine. I think we can work something out with the Diplomatic Service. There’s a few people on board here. I’ll have a chat to them and get back to you. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks!”
I went back to Iokan. He was where I’d left him, still staring out the window, though we were higher now and the gentle curve of the Earth was turning into a more pronounced arc. I was surprised when he spoke.
“You know, this isn’t the first space elevator I’ve seen.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The Antecessors used to have one, before the cataclysm. They buried it under the Pacific, in a sea mount.”
“They buried it?”
“They didn’t leave it connected all the time. It could retract back under the sea.”
“That’s quite a piece of engineering.”
“The idea was that one strand would come down from orbit, and another would go up from the sea, and they’d connect. When we found it, we set it off by accident, but there wasn’t anything in orbit for it to go to. It jumped up, went into the sky, hung there for a while and fell back down. Started a tsunami. Not one of our best days.”
He fell silent again with an apologetic smile.
“Iokan… listen. I know you think this is going to end with you going off and being one of them, but… I think you should be a little more cautious. It’s not just going to be you and them at the meeting. There’s a lot of Exploration and Diplomatic people with us, and the ICT as well. If we see the Antecessors giving us any trouble, we’re going to come back here straight away. And we’re not going to leave you behind.”
He smiled at my lack of faith, then looked out at the black sky above the blue Earth. “Don’t worry, Asha. It’s going to be fine. You’ll see.” I left him to it and went to speak to the Diplomatic Service about Liss’s request.
Half a day later, the Earth was a black disc rimmed by blue, and the lights of Hub Metro and a few scattered settlements were the only things visible on the night-time surface. We were called to our cabins to strap in for deceleration as we approached the counterweight station, where we took a shuttle to join our ship, the Exploration Service Vessel Geology, a journey of three more days. She was waiting out beyond the moon at the L2 point, where the gravity of Earth and Moon cancels out. The L1 point was nearer, lying between Earth and Moon, but that was occupied by Grainger Station and the main transit points to and from other universes. The Exploration Service preferred to use L2. It was less convenient but allowed them to emerge into a new universe hidden behind the moon, and was easier to defend should something follow them back. A number of vessels were stationed there permanently with as much weaponry as the IU could muster, which isn’t much and hardly what you would need to defend against a serious invasion; but since the Exploration Service is tasked with finding either empty worlds or planets of scientific interest, it’s rarely much of an issue.