Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Oh, I think I know that already,’ the Doctor said, with faint sadness.

  There was another shrill electronic noise, coming from Florian’s cuff. She glanced at a flashing display. ‘Excuse me, I’ll have to take this.’ She turned away, clamped a hand over her ear, and began to whisper rapidly, angrily.

  Zoe leaned towards the Doctor. ‘Have you heard of Bootstrap, Inc., before?’

  ‘In various contexts, yes. Met the chap who founded it, actually. Not a bad fellow. Let his ambitions run away with him, though.’

  ‘This isn’t a happy place.’

  ‘I’d say not, Zoe. A society where children’s whole lives are being sacrificed to the goals of their parents. The parents had a choice about coming out here, living like this – well, I presume they had a choice. The children had none at all.

  ‘These are the first generations to live away from the Earth, Zoe. You’re meeting some of the first children, like Sam and Phee and little Casey, ever to have been born away from the mother world. Born in boxes of metal or plastic or ceramic, where you have to buy every molecule of air you breathe. These, Zoe, are the first human beings ever to have been born in cages.’

  ‘No wonder there is conflict, then.’

  ‘Quite. But, Zoe, it’s nothing to do with us. All we are concerned about is the Relative Continuum Displacement Zone.’ He glanced up at the moon. ‘I rather think I need to take a look at what’s really going on up there, in the mine. And to have something of a root around down here. I saw it too, you know,’ he murmured.

  ‘Saw what?’

  ‘Casey’s “Blue Doll”.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Now if we saw it, despite having just arrived here, it’s clearly a real phenomenon. Something that can be objectively confirmed. So why the denial, why the mystery? Is somebody running a cover-up? And what’s the significance of the Blue Dolls anyhow? I’ve no idea what’s going on here – not yet – but everything’s connected, Zoe. The social tension, this funny business with the Blue Dolls, the time anomaly. Everything’s connected. It always is. All you have to do is pull on a thread, and the rest unravels.’

  This sounded a bit pompous to Zoe, and irritated her. ‘What about Jamie and me? What threads shall we pull on?’

  ‘The girl Phee Laws is somehow central to this. The time-travel artefact that may be in her possession. Jamie’s rather hit it off with the brother, I think, and you with Phee. I suggest you stick close to the youngsters.’

  In this place, Zoe didn’t feel young at all. She too had been born and raised in confined extraterrestrial environments. She ought to be used to this. But part of her longed to be away from this Wheel of Ice. ‘I think I’d rather go chase another dangling thread. I want to speak to MMAC again. That spider robot. He must know all about this place.’

  ‘Yes, that sounds worthwhile to me, I hadn’t thought of it.’ His tone was so gentle, she couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or just being kind.

  Florian shook her sleeve out. ‘I need to go.’

  ‘What a pity,’ the Doctor said with only mild sarcasm. ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘More sabotage. More production lost – another disruption to the income stream. Those wretched kids!’

  ‘Are you so sure it’s the children?’

  ‘The adults are all committed to the economic goals. If they weren’t they wouldn’t have come here in the first place. Of course it’s the kids.’ And with that she turned away, distracted, checked the time, and marched out as if the others no longer even existed.

  INTERLUDE

  MMAC

  I

  Alone, Zoe Heriot rose above the rings of Saturn.

  ‘Oh, I loathe this scooter—’

  ‘Och, dinna fash yersel’, miss.’

  ‘Oh! I was talking to myself. I didn’t realise you were listening in. I mean—’

  ‘Dinna fret. I didnae mean to intrude. But I can override yer privacy settings. It’s a safety thing. Ah, but that’s me, now that my days of colony-buildin’ are done. I’m just one big fat backup system these days!’

  ‘Well, it’s the lack of backup on this scooter that worries me. There are so many ways for this thing to go wrong!’

  ‘If ye were tae lose control, it would fly ye home. Like one of ma uncle Murdo’s homin’ pigeons back in Govan.’

  ‘Uncle Murdo? Yes, but with all respect that’s not good enough. Not in the environment I come from. The scooter has only one rocket engine! We designed systems for safety, with multiple layers of redundancy built in from the start.’

  ‘It’s different here, miss. They’re pioneers. They take risks. Otherwise they’d get nothin’ done. And besides there’s the cost. Yon scooter would cost a hatful more if it had a backup engine. And it’d be heavier, and harder tae handle.’

  ‘And not so much fun to ride.’

  ‘Now ye’re talkin’. But I understan’ yer thinkin’. I’m programmed fer safety mesel’. So dinna think me a hero if I bail ye oot again, miss. I canna help it.’

  ‘Oh! Sorry. I’m rising out of the shadow of Saturn, into the sunlight. Quite a spectacle!’

  ‘Tell me what ye see.’

  ‘A gas giant. The rings are within Saturn’s Roche limit, as it’s called, where the tides are strong enough to rip larger objects to fragments. The flatness of the ring system, and the banding of the rings, come from gravitational resonances with the orbits of the moons… But it can’t be as simple as that. There are waves, ripples, even spokes laid over the basic circular banding.’

  ‘I take it yer studied space science.’

  ‘Yes. In the City, I was a pure maths major, and went on to astrophysics and astrometry.’

  ‘And ye’ve been tellin’ me what ye think.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I asked ye what ye see, miss. Try again.’

  ‘You sound like the Doctor. All right. Well, I suppose – the dim sun, the gentle shades – I see… autumn.’

  ‘Ah. Now ye’re gettin’ it.’

  ‘So what do you see, MMAC?’

  ‘Smog. A smoggy sunset o’er Glasgae, when I were a wee bairn.’

  ‘MMAC, I don’t understand. About your being a bairn, I mean a child, in Glasgow. And having an uncle?’

  ‘Ye dinnae wanna hear all that rot.’

  ‘But I do…’

  II

  ‘I were born in Govan – well, ye know that.

  ‘My ma worked in the spacecraft fittin’ yards on the Clyde. A welder. Worked on the first generation o’ Phoenix ships. My pa worked in computing, in software an’ artificial intelligence. Well, that’s nae surprise I suppose.

  ‘I loved gannin’ tae see my ma at work. One of my first mem’ries is sittin’ in the navigator’s seat o’ a big ol’ Phoenix Mark I. I think e’en then ah knew I’d work in space some day. That or the football, and I had two left feet and would ne’er have cut it for Glasgae Celtic!’

  ‘I still don’t understand. You had a mother and father. Your memories are of being a boy, physically. Of playing football…’

  ‘Look, miss – I grew up believin’ I were a little boy.’

  ‘A human.’

  ‘Aye. It was the way it were done then. My job, my purpose, was always gannae be oot here. At Saturn. They were goin’ to send me out here alone, all on my tod, ’cept for some dumb subsidiary bots that ye couldnae have a conversation with if ye worked ’em like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I had to build the colony – yon Wheel – build it from scratch using old salvaged hulks and the raw material here, ice from the moon and the rings. That was the plan.

  ‘Givin’ me the ability to do the work, that was easy for the programmers. The hard part was givin’ me the motivation. Ye see? I had to work ma hide off for the sake of humans, and tae do it as fast and as well as I could. So to give me that motivation—’

  ‘They wanted to make you loyal to humanity. And so they made you grow up believing you were human.’

  ‘Aye! It was cleverly done. A mix of virtual-reality foolery
and live action. Fer example, that day my ma took me in to the spaceship yards – she actually took in a remote sensor unit, a box with cameras and microphones and sensors so I could see and hear and smell and touch and taste, and accelerometers so I could feel as if I was being picked up and put down… But it wasn’t a little boy sat in that pilot’s chair. It was a gadget the size of a suitcase.’

  ‘And she wasn’t really your mother.’

  ‘Nah. But my pa had more claim; he was one o’ the team that designed me. So I grew up. Went to school, or thought I did. Helped Uncle Murdo with his pigeons. Got to the age o’ twelve and started showin’ an interest in the lassies. And then—’

  ‘And then they told you the truth.’

  ‘Aye. They had Uncle Murdo do it. He just held up a mirror, and I saw mysel’ clear, fer the firs’ time in my life. I didnae see my face any more.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘That suitcase. On a kind o’ trolley. Not my eyes, a camera lens lookin’ back at me. I remember what I said.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘“S’no’ fair.” What else could ye say? And then I, or my programmin’, was whisked up to the moon, to the big Bootstrap, Inc. construction yard in Clavius Crater, where they were buildin’ this big ugly carcass I’m in now. And I started trainin’, like I had tae learn how to walk again. And to move a hundred arms independently!’

  ‘It must have been traumatic. MMAC, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, it wasnae your fault.’

  ‘But it seems so terribly cruel.’

  ‘Aye, well, it were done fer the best o’ motives. I’ll tell ye, once I got used tae the idea I had great fun out here. Diggin’ into the moons, hurlin’ great lumps o’ iron across the solar system. And, look at it this way. At least I ne’er had acne.’

  ‘Oh, MMAC, you shouldn’t joke about it.’

  ‘Wha’ else is there tae do? And besides, they had the right. I was ne’er human at all. I am a made thing. They made me. They could do wha’ they like wi’ me.’

  ‘No. I don’t believe that. Made or not, you are a sentience, a mind. However you were created, you have rights, to self-determination, to consciousness, to liberty… But then, I don’t know if your treatment was so terribly different from my own upbringing. My education was as narrowly vocational as it could possibly be. And the result, well, a good friend of mine once called me “All brains and no heart”. I didn’t even know what he meant, until I met the Doctor and Jamie! At least I had the chance to escape – a chance I took. What chance did you ever have?’

  ‘Oh, it’s no’ so hard as that.’

  ‘Well, I think it is. Did you see your parents again?’

  ‘Not in person. My pa was on the programmin’ team. But after I was transferred to the moon – well, he wasnae really my pa no more.’

  ‘It had just been an act.’

  ‘Aye. But my ma, she wanted to come visit. The Bootstrap folk wouldnae allow it. She sent me letters. Mail. Just text, or audio or images if she could.’

  ‘Do you still hear from her now?’

  ‘Naw. Not since I came oot here.’

  ‘Hmm. That’s odd. I must remember to check that when I get back to the Wheel. So what now for you, MMAC?’

  ‘They still find me work. Bits o’ construction, or ferryin’.’

  ‘Rescuing stranded space travellers like us?’

  ‘Some o’ that too.’

  ‘There must be other mining projects to develop. Why not transfer you?’

  ‘Because I’m out o’ date. Knackered. Past it. It would cost more tae upgrade me than to build a new specialised unit in the firs’ place. And besides, they don’t make ’em smart any more. Not like me.’

  ‘Yes. You certainly couldn’t have a conversation with the servo-robots on the Station where I worked.’

  ‘For one thing brainy robots make people uncomfortable. And then, there are rules about binnin’ us. See, I think they’d scrap me, Bootstrap would, if they could. But they cannae, because the authorities won’t let ’em.’

  ‘What authorities?’

  ‘The ISC. But they’re under pressure from PEC.’

  ‘The Planetary Ethics Commission. So they won’t transfer you, they can’t shut you down—’

  ‘And so I just hang around, oot here. There are worse lives, believe me. And worse places to be…’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt.’

  ‘Doctor? Is that you?’

  III

  ‘Do forgive me, Zoe. I’m down in the colony, in Mayor Laws’ home. I just wanted to check and see how you’re getting along. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.’

  ‘No matter. Are you getting a visual feed? Can you see what I’m seeing?’

  ‘I can indeed, Zoe. And it’s enhanced with imagery from MMAC’s cameras. My word, what a glorious sight! It’s like a tremendous musical box, isn’t it?’

  ‘And rather different from our first look at it, Doctor.’

  ‘Yes. The middle of the ring plane is not the best viewpoint of the Saturn system. And now, Zoe, if you don’t mind putting your scientist’s cap back on – look at all the structure in those rings!’

  ‘Yes. I was thinking of that before. Some of it is obvious. The gaps are clearly caused by tidal resonances with the moons’ orbits. But there’s more to it than that, Doctor. It’s very clearly visible from up here. You’ll have to come up here and see.’

  ‘On one of those scooter things? Not on your nellie.’

  ‘There are more complex patterns overlaid on the rest, the basic bands and gaps. Spokes, crossing the ring bands, that seem to turn with the planet.’

  ‘Umm. Some effect of Saturn’s magnetic field, perhaps?’

  ‘Maybe. But what about this?’

  ‘Ah. I see. Fine ringlets – and they’re braided, like hair. Oh! How remarkable. I wonder how that can happen. You know, Zoe, I’m beginning to wonder if these strange features of the ring system are somehow connected to the other puzzles we’re facing.’

  ‘Everything’s connected, Doctor. That’s what you told me.’

  ‘Whatever’s shaped the rings is basically mediated by gravity and magnetic fields. Hmm. Florian Hart, in between bragging, threatening and being generally domineering, said that our own mined moon, Mnemosyne, itself produces gravitational anomalies, as if the core is unstable. I wonder if that could have anything to do with the higher-order patterns you’re detecting?’

  ‘It certainly could, if you consider the relevant equations of orbital mechanics and gravitational perturbation. And, after all, the very existence of the rings themselves is something of a puzzle. Let me think – given the quasi-stability of the orbits of the particles, the rate of attrition by the atmosphere of Saturn… Why, the rings can only be fifty million years old or so. Any older than that and they’d decay away, all those little ice bits being dispersed into space, or falling into Saturn’s clouds.’

  ‘“Only”, ye say? Tha’ seems long enough tae me.’

  ‘Not really, MMAC. We handle much longer timescales in astrophysics. The solar system, Saturn itself, is a hundred times older than that. So finding rings here is unusual. Unexpected. Oh! But, Doctor, you already had a theory that the ring system is the debris from some ancient disaster.’

  ‘I did indeed. The break-up of a moon. And now we have a date for that event: fifty million years ago. Good thinking, Zoe.’

  ‘But to work out what the ring perturbations might mean, we’d need a long baseline study.’

  ‘Yes, quite. Years and years of records! I don’t imagine Bootstrap and their workers will help us there. They’ve been up here for the bernalium in Mnemosyne, not for planetary physics.’

  ‘Ah, ’scuse me. I’m still here.’

  ‘Sorry, MMAC!’

  ‘I’ve been floatin’ around this system fer – well, ne’er you mind how long. And I’ve been watching the rings, among other things.’

  ‘You don’t mean—’

  ‘Full record, high resoluti
on. I’ve got a big brain, Doctor, an’ a high-capacity memory, and not much tae fill it with. If ye can work out where ye want me tae download it—’

  ‘Oh, what a splendid fellow you are!’

  ‘Ah, whisht ye, Doc, it’s a pleasure.’

  ‘I should think the computing capacity here will be up to the job. If not, there’s always the TARDIS, if they’ll ever let me near the old girl. Well, I think we’ve got our work cut out, Zoe. A number of threads to follow, indeed.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor. I’ll come back in and make a start. Oh, by the way, Doctor, how’s Jamie?’

  ‘Jamie? You know, he did tell me one thing that bears on what we’ve been discussing. He says the youngsters here have noticed the ring structures too. And what they see is resonances – harmonies.’

  ‘As if the rings are frozen music?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Why, what a charming thought.’

  ‘Yes. Rather wasted on dear old Jamie, I fancy.’

  ‘So where is he now?’

  ‘Going skiing.’

  ‘Skiing?’

  ‘Don’t ask. Sooner him than me! I’ll pass on your regards…’

  10

  AT THE END of her latest shift on Mnemosyne, Phee overheard mutterings among the older workers, mostly Cs but a few B-grade supervisors and shift leaders. Mutterings about more gremlins.

  And another injury, to a man called James Campbell. Phee knew a few of the Campbells. In a community as small as the Wheel it was impossible not to have some kind of connection to almost everybody, but she hadn’t come across this man James. Anyhow, whatever had happened to him was none of her business.

  But she couldn’t help but hear the gossiping. The C-grade workers tried to keep what they knew secret from the B-grade supervisors, and the Bs kept secrets from the Cs, and neither of them talked to the A-grade executives. But none of them seemed to notice the youngsters around them, on their orientation tours and apprenticeships, and, sometimes, they would speak as if you weren’t even there.

  So Phee picked up fragments of the story. Of some kind of encounter in the deep shafts, that had left the workers terrified. It wasn’t any technical problem this time, not like the earlier glitches, though some of those had caused injuries as a by-product. This time it had been a direct injury to a worker – a human, to Campbell. A direct attack. The injury was strange, the doctors were puzzled.