by Ian McDonald
* * * *
Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee …
“Crisis situation.”
“Termination of all telemetry data.”
“Cessation of all onboard monitoring systems.”
“We’re getting nothing but three-k static on the communications links.”
“No incoming intelligence.”
“All sensors nonfunctional.”
“All systems dead.”
The Big Wall is blank save for the tiny, mocking alphanumerals in the top left corner:
T + 150 1320 KM
The control room is filled with the penetrating keen of the alarm. Every head is turned on Dr. Hugh: What do we do now, leader? Dr. Hugh flips off the whistle and his voice seems very loud as he speaks into the deepspace radio hiss.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we must assume that Vivaldi has crossed the event horizon and that the mission is terminated. Thank you for your assistance, it was a pleasure to have worked with you. Thank you.”
Hissssssssss. Good-bye, Starship of the Imagination.
Kirkby Scott bangs his desk displays in frustration but Dr. Hugh does not share his sense of failure. Rather, he glows with a peculiar elation, as if in the loss of twenty visionary years, by some universal law of conservation, he has gained some vital insight. The odds were always stacked against him. Now after twenty years he must take up his life again. As he leaves the control room he hears Alain Mercier’s measured syllables:
“The Vivaldi Mission count has been terminated at launch plus six point three times ten to the eighth seconds at 5:45 GMT, August twenty-seventh, 2008.”
Outside, the demon MEDIA has lain in wait for him, now it pounces.
“Dr. MacMichaels, tell me, will there now be a joint European/American mission to the Oort Cloud?”
“Dr. MacMichaels, what light does the Vivaldi mission throw upon the origins of the solar system?”
“Dr. MacMichaels, what bearing does the outcome of the Vivaldi mission have on the Orion probe?”
“Dr. MacMichaels, what would you say is the probability that a wave of comets has been dislodged from the Oort Cloud, and will you now be pressing for an international skywatch?”
“Dr. MacMichaels, does the revelation that Nemesis is composed of Hypothesis B dark matter imply in any way that the universe is reaching the limits of its expansion and that contraction to the point source will begin to occur within the next few million years?”
He stops for that one. All bits and parts of other things, the stained-glass demon MEDIA halts in a surge of boom-mikes, cameras, and handheld recorders.
“Quite frankly, sonny, I don’t give a shit. And neither should you.” The pimply-faced cub reporter in the bright red body-suit and inappropriately padded muscles blushes. And Dr. Hugh is suddenly angry. “How old are you? Nineteen, twenty? Less? Listen, sonny, get out of here, go and make love, make friends, make a big noise, see things, do things, be things, have fun, be good, be kind, be loved by everyone, live as full a life as you can so when the time comes for your own death you can go into it full and satisfied and at peace, because quite frankly, boy, the death of the universe is not worth a single tear. Not one damn tear.”
The doors are close; beyond the glass, the waiting car, the neatly planted trees, the east-is-red sunrise. Something to do with the Ruhr, the redness of the sunrise. An hour and a half from now he can be arriving in yawning Edinburgh. When he gets there, there is something he must do.
T + 200
And now Dr. Hugh’s battered red Ford station wagon is driving through the five-o’clock-empty streets of Edinburgh. A time zone westward, he has beaten the sun. Under the yellow streetlights the city is the possession of the milk-floats, the newspaper vans, the ambulances and their dark brothers the night police, and Dr. Hugh, driving fast, driving home. 5:05, he turns into the driveway with a crunch of gravel: it is early, not a blind open, not a carton of milk on a doorstep, not a jogger defiling the tranquility in designer jogging suit and shoes. Dr. Hugh watches the sun rise over Milicent Crescent: no rain today, amazing. He opens the trunk of the car and takes out not an overnight case but a red metal can. And he does not enter his house by the front door but by the side gate into the back garden. A neighbor’s dog barks as Dr. Hugh crosses the garden: across the lawn, past the dying roses and the brussels sprouts and the raspberry canes—they look green, perhaps we shall have jam this year—to the gazebo.
The Gemmathing is awake and alert the instant he opens the door but Dr. Hugh knows that machines can go as long as twenty years without sleep.
“Dad! Do you know what time it is?”
“I do.”
“So, how did things go?”
“Things went fine.”
He unscrews the lid from the red metal can. Camera-eyes roll and focus. He sloshes the contents over the walls, the floor, the wicker chair. The Gemmathing shrieks and raises its hands in panic as the liquid slosh-sloshes over her flowery print frock. The stench of gasoline chokes the gazebo.
“Dad! What are you doing! Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I do,” says Dr. Hugh. “Oh I do.” And as he sloshes the gasoline over the Gemmathing he explains. “You see, I worked out the answer to your question. What’s the difference between you and my memories of Gemma? Answer, nothing. Both were wrong. Both are wrong. It’s wrong to cling to memories, to make them the justification for my failure to escape from your death. But at least my memories will change and fade with time. That’s why it’s wrong to give them form and shape, enshrine them; it’s giving death the victory. I realized that when Vivaldi was lost: it had gone to where I could never reach it, twenty years of my life, gone for good. I realized that no amount of wishing or hoping or praying could bring it back from the black hole, or you, Gemma, from the wrecked car. I had to lose you, Gemma, I had to let you pass over the event horizon. Memories are no substitute for living and we have to live, Gemma. We have to.”
And standing by the door of the gazebo he takes a match from an Air Caledonian matchbook, strikes it, and tosses it into the Gemmathing’s lap.
The blossom of flame knocks him backwards into the raspberry canes. The intense heat has seared away his eyebrows and scorched his beard. He backs away, shielding raw face with hands, yet curious to see the destruction he has wrought. In the burning gazebo he sees the plastic features of the Gemmathing melting, flowing onto the blazing print frock. The windows shatter, twelve thousand five hundred pounds’ worth of transputer modules crack and fuse and all the photographs, all the trapped memories, take wing and fly away on the burning wind like black crows. The flames roar and lick around the melting, burning Gemmathing.
“God, I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Alarmed by the explosions, neighbors are leaning out of open windows, fearful sheep-faces gaping at the suburban nightmare in MacMichaels’s garden. Slippered and dressing-gowned, Moira is running across the lawn to the pyre.
“It’s you and me now!” Dr. Hugh shouts. “Just you and me. No Gemma to hold us together. We work it out on our own or not at all. We’re adult, mature humans, dear God, we have our own lives to live.” Moira is on her knees amidst the brussels sprouts, hands held imploringly to the blazing summerhouse. Tears stream down her cheeks. The oily black smoke plumes into the sky. Dr. Hugh hears in the distance the wail of the fire brigade’s red engines. He watches his wife weep and kneels beside her to comfort her. As he places his hand on her shoulder he notices the little buds of color amidst the thorns and acid-browned leaves. Maybe there will be roses this year after all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ian McDonald is the author of many award-winning and critically-acclaimed science fiction novels, including Brasyl, River of Gods, Cyberabad Days, The Dervish House, and the ground-breaking Chaga series. He has won the Philip K. Dick Award, the BSFA Award (five times), LOCUS Award, a Hugo Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. His work has also been nominated for the Nebula Award, a Quill Book Award, and has several nomina
tions for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
ALSO BY IAN MCDONALD
EVERNESS SERIES
Planesrunner
Be My Enemy
Empress of the Sun
INDIA 2047
River of Gods
Cyberbad Days
DESOLATION ROAD SERIES
Desolation Road*
Ares Express*
CHAGA SERIES
Chaga / Evolution's Shore*
Kirinya*
Tendeleo's Story*
OTHER BOOKS
Empire Dreams*
Broken Land
Out on Blue Six
King of Morning, Queen of Day
Hearts, Hands and Voices
Sacrifice of Fools
Hopeland
The Dervish House
Brasyl
Necroville / Terminal Cafe
Luna
*available as a Jabberwocky ebook
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