Xeelee: Endurance

by Stephen Baxter

  Even after the Xeelee had finally won their war against humanity, the stars continued to age, too rapidly. The Xeelee completed their great Projects and fled the cosmos.

  Time unravelled. Dying galaxies collided like clapping hands. But even now the story was not yet done. The universe itself prepared for another convulsion, greater than any it had suffered before.

  And then—

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Michael Poole.’

  THE XEELEE SEQUENCE – TIMELINE

  Singularity: Big Bang

  ERA: Earth

  AD 476–2005: Events of Coalescent.

  AD 2047: Events of Transcendent (see also c.AD 500,000).

  ERA: Expansion

  AD 3000+: Opening up of the Solar System.

  AD 3685: ‘Return to Titan’.

  AD 3717: Launch of GUTship Cauchy. Events of Timelike Infinity begin.

  AD 3829: The Emergency: time-travel invasion by Occupation-Era Qax (Timelike Infinity).

  AD 3951: Events of Ring begin (see also c. AD 5,000,000).

  AD 4820: ‘Starfall’. Collapse of Empire of Sol.

  ERA: Squeem Occupation

  AD 4874: Conquest of human planets by Squeem.

  AD 4925: Overthrow of Squeem.

  AD 5071: ‘Remembrance’.

  ERA: Qax Occupation

  AD 5088: Conquest of human planets by Qax.

  AD 5274: ‘Endurance’. Return to Solar System of GUTship Cauchy. Launch of backward time-travel invasion by Qax (Timelike Infinity).

  AD 5407: Overthrow of Qax. Third Expansion begins under Coalition.

  ERA: The War with the Ghosts

  AD 5810: ‘The Seer and the Silverman’.

  ERA: The War to End Wars

  AD 24973: Events of Exultant.

  AD 104,858+: Events of Raft.

  c.AD 193,700: Events of Flux.

  c. AD 500,000: Events of Transcendent (see also AD 2047). The retreat of mankind begins.

  AD 978,225: ‘Gravity Dreams’.

  c.AD 1,000,000: Final siege of the Solar System by Xeelee. The Saving of Old Earth.

  ERA: Photino Victory

  c.AD 5,000,000+: Events of Ring (see also AD 3951).

  ERA: Old Earth

  c. AD 3.8 billion years: ‘PeriAndry’s Quest’.

  c. AD 4 billion years: ‘Climbing the Blue’.

  c. AD 4.5 billion years: ‘The Time Pit’.

  c. AD 4.8 billion years: ‘The Lowland Expedition’.

  c. AD 5 billion years:‘Formidable Caress’.

  Singularity: Timelike Infinity

  This outline timescale provides the context for the stories in this collection, as well as the novels published in the Xeelee Sequence so far. Other short fiction has been collected in Vacuum Diagrams (HarperCollins, 1997) and Resplendent (Gollancz, 2006). For a full timeline of the ‘Xeelee Sequence’ of novels and stories, please visit:

  www.stephen-baxter.com

  ALSO BY STEPHEN BAXTER FROM GOLLANCZ:

  NON-FICTION

  Deep Future

  The Science of Avatar

  FICTION

  Mammoth

  Longtusk

  Icebones

  Behemoth

  Reality Dust

  Evolution

  Flood

  Ark

  Proxima

  Ultima

  Xeelee: An Omnibus

  NORTHLAND

  Stone Spring

  Bronze Summer

  Iron Winter

  THE WEB

  Gulliverzone

  Webcrash

  DESTINY’S CHILDREN

  Coalescent

  Exultant

  Transcendent

  Resplendent

  A TIME ODYSSEY (with Arthur C. Clarke)

  Time’s Eye

  Sunstorm

  Firstborn

  TIME’S TAPESTRY

  Emperor

  Conqueror

  Navigator

  Weaver

  Previous publications:

  ‘PeriAndry’s Quest’ first published in Analog, June 2004. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2004.

  ‘Climbing the Blue’ first published in Analog, July/August 2005. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2005.

  ‘The Time Pit’ first published in Analog, October 2005. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2005.

  ‘The Lowland Expedition’ first published in Analog, April 2006. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2006.

  ‘Remembrance’ first published in The New Space Opera, ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, Voyager, 2007. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2007.

  ‘The Seer and the Silverman’ first published in Galactic Empires, ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, SFBC, 2008. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2008.

  ‘Starfall’ first published by PS Publishing, April 2009. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2009.

  ‘Formidable Caress’ first published in Analog, November 2009. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2009.

  ‘Return to Titan’ first published in Godlike Machines ed. Jonathan Strahan, SFBC, 2010. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2010.

  ‘Gravity Dreams’, first published by PS Publishing, April 2011. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2011.

  ‘Endurance’, original to this edition. Copyright Stephen Baxter 2015.

  This collection copyright Stephen Baxter 2015.

  All material newly edited for this anthology.

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Stephen Baxter 2015

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Stephen Baxter to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

  Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2015 by Gollancz.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 473 21273 2

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and

  any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  without the prior permission in writing of the publisher,

  nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or

  cover other than that in which it is published without a

  similar condition, including this condition, being imposed

  on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.stephen-baxter.co.uk

  www.orionbooks.co.uk