The Only War

by Jason Wray Stevensson

  The expedition picked up some honest work at least for the Antarctic jaunt; seeing as they were already going that way, they bid a quarter of what it would usually cost the University of Wisconsin–Madison to send an upgrade team to the Ice Cube. The Cube is a neutrino detector buried in three thousand cubic feet of ice beneath the Surface Array, which looks like a small oil refinery because Article II of the Antarctic Treaty doesn’t say science has to be pretty.

  What forays they were now attempting are by air, beyond the Shackleton Ice Shelf and far into the mountains of madness. Delacroix and Lancaster had been feared lost after ascending the icy barrier in the remaining plane; short range booster rockets threw them through the thin atmosphere, until aerodynamics caught up and the twin electric propeller engines took over. Instruments lie out here; Pearson’s hand drawn maps from his disastrous first attempt and observations from the rescue mission are all they have to go on, and without the sun compass even those would be of little use. Eventually, the sound of a light aircraft struggling on one engine brought the crew outside. Landing on skis is tricky enough at the best of times; summer at the pole turns compacted snow runways to slush, so they’re coming in hard on glacial ice. When the plane touches down everyone on the ground has been holding their breath for so long they’ve nothing left to cheer with; the explorers are wrapped in blankets and hurried into the warm belly of Pingu, as aircrewmen secure their machine.

  “How did you get on with the altitude?” Asks Pearson; Delacroix laughs through chattering teeth.

  “Oh I took it like a man, but Matt spent most of the jag in a coma. I thought he was dead at one point, did last rites and everything.”

  “You bloody liar! I had to wake you every five minutes!”

  “I was resting my eyes! It’s very bright up there!” Lancaster shakes his head pityingly.

  “Nobody here would believe such frailty of a Navy man, but they don’t know you like I do.”

  Pearson silently thanked God he’d risked the extra weight of a two man mission; his solo flight contained more than one experience of waking with a sinking feeling. There are civilians on this expedition chosen for their specialised skills and knowledge; Faith Lancaster, sister of Matthew no less, is rendered all but speechless by the vegetation.

  “Where did you find this, and more to the point what chewed it?” The aviators look to each other.

  “Are you going to tell them?” asks Lancaster.

  “You’d do it better; more resonance” proposes Delacroix.

  “But you’ve a lovely speaking voice, everyone says so!”

  “You’re too kind. Together?”

  “Mastodon! Oh you wanker! We agreed together!” There is a silence; Delacroix elucidates.

  “Or a mammoth, or possibly a very hairy elephant but I assure you we found one under ice, this stuff sticking out its mouth like it was halfway through dinner; could the cold have preserved it?” Faith Lancaster is staring down her microscope at the flora.

  “It’s not that old, barely a few years; your mastodon was recently alive!” Tissue samples from the beast will later confirm this.

  “It’s nothing I’ve ever seen before; oh there are parallels, it’s not alien life but what I’m trying to say is its native. You haven’t found an oasis; you’ve found the edge of an ecosystem which makes Larsen C look like a rock pool!” They know they can’t go further; it will be an anxious few days trying to get at least an idea of what’s out there before time and tide force them back.

  They’re searching for the Summer Gate, a fabled seasonal breach in the ice leading to green lands of warm freshwater lakes and plentiful resources. Few have seen it, fewer have passed through and in any rational universe it would not be there but this was no longer a rational universe; the smooth rubber sheet had been ripped away to reveal a creased and sweaty black silk jobbie with random cigarette burns exposing the mattressy netherworld beneath. On the one hand they were standing on a perfectly sensible continent, annually circumnavigated by the Antarctica Cup Ocean Race and swarming with tourists in the warmer months, while on the other you have the inside out places which defy all reason. It was true that much of the continent remained invisible to overhead cams, but commercial flights avoiding the restricted airspace of the Soviet Union flew over it for half of the twentieth century and encountered nothing unusual. The view from space was no help; once you’re clear of the radiation tunnel our home is a vague splodge to be peered at through clouds of floating debris and blinding light. In all honesty nobody knew if there were unknown lands or a tunnel to New Zealand beyond Antarctica, but there was something out there.

  Later in the evening Pearson is outside with Delacroix and Lancaster, working on the dead engine. The men have something to show him which they found on the mastodon at the time, something strange enough to make them want to run it through their commanding officer before involving civilians. Pearson turns it over and over in his hands, trying to keep an open mind, which is difficult when you know exactly what you’re looking at.

  “This is an electronic tag.” Lancaster sounds a note of caution.

  “We don’t know that for certain, Sir.”

  “I’ve tagged Orcas and I know a tag when I see one. It’s an electronic tag, and it was made in Britain.”

  “Does this mean we’re not the first humans to see one?”

  “’Fraid not, and it’s quite a high number.”

  “How high?” Pearson takes another look, aware of a vague swimming sensation.

  “Um, it’s in the eighteen hundreds” he replies weakly. Delacroix also struggles with this information.

  “Do you mean to say there’s the thick end of two thousand bloody mammoths wandering around the Antarctic, and Britain knows all about it? What are we planning to do with them; cross the Alps?”

  “You know I’ve never understood that; wouldn’t you just go around the coast?”

  “Ah well Matt, what you have to remember here was Hannibal had…” Pearson holds up a hand in protest; Daniel Delacroix is the kind of history bore who would detail the origins of the London Fire Brigade while your house burned down.

  “If I could just pause you there before it gets involved Dan, I’m off to get some rest. Not a word about this to the others, OK?” Delacroix turns to Lancaster in renewed confusion as their superior officer takes his leave.

  “It makes no sense! How could this many of something this big and, lest we forget, generally assumed extinct, be a secret? We live in an age of instant mass communication; somebody would have blown the whistle, surely?” Lancaster is not so certain.

  “Granted, whoever tagged these things is in on it but why would anyone else be? Once they’re logged you just call them penguins or space hoppers or something; thousands of people access and process the information, but none of them would know what they were really working on.”

  “You’ve never mentioned this deep seated paranoia before.”

  “Well don’t denounce me to the apparatchiks yet old boy, I just know people. I know how sneaky and devious they can be, and I know how much they love getting one over on everyone else.”

  “With that sort of world view any given conspiracy theory could be true!” Lancaster nods resignedly.

  “Yes, in all honesty it’s probably best not to think about it.”

  Pingu the Snow Cruiser, so splendid on the triumphant journey to Portsmouth, with crowds waving flags and children on their parents’ shoulders, and so celebrated with detailed exploded diagrams in the popular science mags and daily papers, had been problematic since it overbalanced and fell off the ramp at Ross Island. The perverse monstrosity made heavy weather of the journey, and was eventually found to grip snow and ice better in reverse. At least it was a warm place to live, even if the air was taking on some socks farts and knickers ambience seemingly beyond the scope of charcoal filters. Halfway back to the coast, the gearbox eats itself alive and jams the machine solid; they barely make it in time, walking on skis with the invalid Pe
arson pulled on a sled. The cruiser was photographed by an overhead twenty years later, but even then the frozen waste was claiming it.

  Pearson occupies the stern of the icebreaker, watching until the coast is beyond sight. He wonders if he’ll ever go back; they do say third time’s the charm. He looks down to the sealed core samples he’d taken on his solo flight. It had to be solo, there was no way he could have told them what he was really doing; they’d make the same arguments he’d had with his own conscience. He half wanted to throw the bag into the wake beneath him; nobody would know and black ops rarely went to plan. In all fairness the disease must be understood; the Earth wasn’t getting any colder and who knew how much of this stuff could thaw out. Even with a near carbon zero worldwide economy, warming was still accelerating; much of the historical damage had been absorbed by the oceans, and this would continue to circulate for millennia to come. Keep the samples close they said; you will meet someone known to you.

  The expedition has been on sledging rations for the duration, so the food in a dockside café on the freezing southernmost end of Argentina seems like the best meal of their lives. Pearson excuses himself to his colleagues, and heads for the conveniences; he’s just getting settled when there’s a knock on the cubicle door, a specific knock he recognises. Standing and sorting himself he unlocks the door to admit Friar James Nugent, Brotherhood of.

  “We have to stop meeting like this, Nudge; Lizzie’s beginning to suspect.”

  “How is the old girl?”

  “Through the worst of it we think; if you’d have told me a year ago I’d be off gallivanting for a couple of months, I wouldn’t have believed you.” Nugent chuckles.

  “You’d never gallivant, Greg; nobody could suggest such a thing!” Nugent takes the holdall, and they exit the cubicle to find Delacroix and Lancaster looking askance from the emerging conspirators to each other and back again.

  “We noticed you’d been followed, Sir. Didn’t realise the gentleman was known to you.”

  “He’s a Friar” explains Pearson as Nugent takes his leave “Most of these cubicles have them. Puts you off your stride though; if you’ll excuse me, I’ll head back in for another try.”

  They return to a full-on mediagasm as holotape rains upon packed streets. Tricolour flags and bunting adorn every surface and Rule, Britannia! blasts from many a patriotic loudspeaker, having supplanted God Save the King since the Royal Family returned to mainland Europe post Brussels. Lack of a monarch did not mean Britain was no longer a monarchy; Windsor Castle, Sandringham and Buckingham Palace were kept aired by an elite housekeeping service, but only once in all this time has a Saxe-Coburg Gotha set foot upon this sceptred isle. She didn’t stay long and was later heard to remark the food was awful, the weather worse and the locals far too ready to resort to casual violence. Britain’s isolation from other countries and trade with the Outer Colonies had encouraged a hardy breed, with little time for the finer details; life wasn’t cheap, but you grew up fast and you took responsibility. From each was expected the fullness of their abilities and if every need was not always met it wasn’t for want of effort, so stop complaining.

  The Pearson House, England

  March 2247 A.D.

  Dr. Elizabeth Pearson heard the key in the door, and the low murmur of their sons in conversation with him; she’d relapsed a month ago, and was adamant he shouldn’t be told. The boat would come for him when it came, and bad news would do him no good trapped in Antarctica. Besides, she wanted him to be out there; she knew what had to be done. She wished to God it wasn’t her husband doing it of course, but had to admit, if there were better men she hadn’t met one yet. Elizabeth knew she could wait for him; she had always waited for him, and she needed to say goodbye. He knelt by her bedside; he had no words and eventually she spoke.

  “You brought summer into my life, you know; you were there and autumn never came.”

  “God Lizzie, what am I supposed to do without you?”

  “Cheer up!” she chided “You’re about to be launched into a galaxy full of man-hungry women!” The same warm wicked smile and pale blue eyes he first saw across a dance floor so many years ago blew the devastation from his mind for one blessed moment and Elizabeth died as she had often lived, laughing with her arms around him.

  An Expensive Part of Lincolnshire

  First Thing in the Morning, 2249 A.D.

  The progress of time we experience is merely expansion; after all, if space is indeed behaving as the Reverend Monsignor Lemaître taught us then time must also be moving at whatever rate Edwin Hubble would care to apply. If a bowling ball on a rubber sheet is a remarkable visual aid, so too is a giant balloon inflated by some unseen force; you and I were born on its surface, and we live our lives beholden to the speed of time. We all know what happens to an overstretched balloon, and at some point it may become necessary to stop time or get off. Some say it could contract; we’ll go through the whole damn thing again only backwards, and this may already be happening. Would it matter if cause followed effect? We’d bend it around the ideological constant of free will same way we always do; it’s better for morale than giving it all up to the Fates and General Relativity. In truth, a predestined outcome does not negate free will; the very choices we make cast both past and future in stone, and such tenses are absolutely subjective.

  There’s a flash and Faith Fältskog screams; Damien instinctively reaches for her and then there is nothing, just a baby stood in a cot in a basement laboratory with wide eyes and knuckles fast whitening on the pastel painted bars of her prison. The family wolfhound looks around and scents the air.

  Yvette Delacroix, née Stirrups, is a 33rd degree Arcane Nanny to the nobility. The fragile veil is constantly breached by demon spawn and changelings, and long ago people knew all about it, but a little learning is a dangerous thing and too many innocents lay dead at the hands of mistaken parents and neighbours. Centuries past the Nannies began to deprogram the population; such things are childish fancy, we were told, pay them no mind. We never do forget early conditioning and it mattered not if the Nannies could influence but a fraction of the population, when that very fraction would grow up to influence everyone. This little girl wasn’t of any unknown dimension, but an unknown quantity nonetheless; Catherine Fältskog is one sixteenth not of this world, and Nanny watches as her mother and grandmother watched their assigned Fältskogs.

  The child throws back her head and screams, splintering wooden bars in tiny powerful fists; a key turns in the front door and Nanny Yvette opens a portal to the outer limits of her Norland training.

  Minutes later the police and social services are in attendance. This is a well-heeled neighbourhood, and incidents are quickly investigated; it’s the squeaky wheel which gets the oil, and people in such places have a lot of squeak. Cathy is calm, and will remain so for now; Nanny has her and the uncle is on his way, the child’s only relative. He arrives in a state of shock, and is thankful to see a familiar face; there is no news, no explanation, the cameras clearly show his sister and brother-in-law were here and now they are not. He has his infant niece in his arms, and not the faintest idea of what to do next; Nanny Yvette produces suitcases, and snaps the dazed man from his fog.

  “The immediate formalities have been finalised, we shall leave the authorities to their investigations; time we were going Mr. Lancaster! I shall of course accompany you, and continue in my duties towards Catherine” she turns her attention to the dog “Heel, Cromwell!” Lancaster trots after her with the baby, Cromwell obediently bringing up the rear.

  “It’s very kind of you, but I’m afraid I can’t afford the services of…” Yvette places a hand on his shoulder and speaks softly.

  “Matthew; it’s all been taken care of.”

  “But I don’t understand…” The pressure on his shoulder increases. He’s a Navy man and could probably use some orders round about now.

  “Everything, Mr. Lancaster, will be taken care of!” He is driven not to his barracks, b
ut a clapboard two bed in the family quarters of South Downs spaceport; boxes are arriving from the Fältskog’s and Yvette puts Lancaster to work erecting furniture while she bathes Cathy and gets dinner on.

  Soon Yvette is dishing up and Cathy is beneath the table attempting to catch the dog’s tongue, gurgling with joy every time it whips back into the grinning hairy face. Just once she’s too fast for the beast, and squeals in triumph before releasing her slobbery prize.

  “Um, is she allowed to do that?”

  “Oh yes! Marvellous for the system, animals! Do you know dairy maids were immune to smallpox?” Cathy climbs a dining chair and spears her food with a fork clenched in one chubby fist.

  “On solids at three months, that one” Lancaster looks blank “which is very early; doubled her birth weight in the blink of an eye, but the doctors say she should level out after this initial spurt. She’s none too steady on her feet yet; remember that, it’ll come in useful. She bloody loves that dog; win the dog over and you’re halfway there so good luck, and I’ll be back at eight in the morning.” Lancaster looks over to the child, who has clambered onto an armchair after several experimental leg swings and is now snoring.

  “Best leave her be. I’ll say this for the little sprite, once she’s out you’ve a good nine or ten hours; sleeps like the dead.” Yvette tucks a blanket over and around her small charge, kisses her on the forehead and lets herself out. Matthew Lancaster settles back on his sisters’ sofa and calls Dan.