Ark

by Stephen Baxter

  Kenzie leaned back and locked his fleshy fingers behind his head. ′We′re stuck, aren′t we? We agree we need a new Earth. But there are no new Earths in the solar system. We′ve exhausted our options.′

  Liu Zheng said patiently, ′We have exhausted Category One. Category Two remains.′

  Jerzy Glemp grinned. ′The stars.′

  Kenzie pushed his chair back. ′Christ, before we get to that I need a cigarette. I know, I know. But I quit quitting after I lost my first thousand acres of sea front property to the flood. Hey, Joe, can you rustle up more coffee?′

  As they broke, Kenzie went out to smoke and the others milled around the refreshed coffee pot.

  Patrick approached Liu Zheng, who stood alone, politely waiting for the coffee. ′You′re a long way from home,′ Patrick said tentatively.

  ′As are many of us,′ Liu said, but he smiled.

  ′How did you come to be in the US?′

  ′When the floods came, my family was driven from our home in Shanghai. I was twenty. We lived in a refugee colony in Zhejiang province. I was able to pursue a career. Then came the draft.′

  ′The draft?′

  ′For the coming war with the Russians and Indians, over the high ground of central Asia. I did not wish to fight in such a futile and wasteful conflict. My family paid for me to come to America. I was fortunate that, thanks to the aptitude tests administered in the processing centre, I came to the attention of Dr Glemp.′

  ′You′re more than a commodity, man. More than a set of skills.′

  ′Am I? None of us is anything without land, Mr Groundwater. Room to stand, a place to lie. If you have that, and I do not, you can do what you like with me. So it is here, just as at home.′

  ′Well, maybe.′ But Patrick felt a new determination burn in him that that fate was not going to befall Holle. ′So you have a wife at home, kids?′

  ′A wife,′ he said. ′When I fled I had to leave her. Her family would not release her to come with me, I am not sure if she wanted to anyway. Fleeing is shameful.′

  ′Is it? More shameful than sitting there until you′re drowned out?′

  ′China is different, Mr Groundwater. We have a cultural continuity going back to what is known in Britain as the Bronze Age. We, our ancestors, have survived many calamities before, fire, flood, plague, invasion. Always the essence of China has endured. Many cannot believe that it will not be so this time, that the flood is a terminus.′

  ′But you think it is.′

  ′I am an engineer, not a climatologist. But I understand enough of the science to believe that, yes, this is the end of China, and of the world. So here I am.′

  Kenzie came bustling back into the room.

  As they walked back to the table Patrick asked Liu, ′Do you still hope to bring your wife here someday?′

  ′It is a dream. But to find her in the great chaos of the flood, even if she survives, and to bring her here - it may be easier to fly to the stars, Mr Groundwater.′

  10

  Liu opened the discussion of his ′Category Two′. He brought up graphs and tables and artists′ renderings of exotic worlds.

  Liu said, ′Like many other programmes, the work of ′′planet-finding′′ was pretty much curtailed by the flood. That is, using advanced telescopic and photographic techniques, including telescopes in space, to detect and study the planets of other stars. Nevertheless several hundred such ′′exoplanets′′ were found before the flood came, and more have been found since. And of these, several dozen are like Earth. They have masses similar to Earth′s, and appear to have water oceans—′

  ′Some of them have life,′ Jerzy Glemp said, grinning. ′We know that from atmospheric signatures - oxygen, methane. Spectroscopic records of photosynthetic chemicals.′

  Patrick was stunned. ′We found life on other planets? I didn′t know that.′

  Kenzie said dryly, ′These days the news agenda tends to be dominated by domestic issues.′

  ′Think of the irony,′ Jerzy said. ′We finally discovered life beyond Earth just as we are becoming extinct on Earth itself.′

  Liu said, ′These worlds are ′′Earthlike′′ only in as much as they are more like Earth than Mars is, say. Nevertheless—′

  ′Nevertheless,′ Kenzie said, ′if one of these things was floating around the solar system we′d fire our kids over there like a shot. Correct? So how far away are these things?′

  Jerzy Glemp shrugged. ′Well, there′s the rub. The nearest star system is Alpha Centauri - four light years away. That′s a distance hard to grasp. It′s around forty trillion kilometres. A hundred million times further away than the moon is from Earth.′

  Kenzie waved that away. ′And the nearest Earthlike world? How far to that?′

  Liu said, ′The nearest reasonable candidate is sixteen light years away.′

  ′Oh, that all? OK, so how do we get there? I′d guess from our previous discussion about the domes on Mars that you guys wouldn′t think we could run a space mission, unsupported, of more than a few years. A decade, tops. So that′s the timescale. Have I got that right? So how do we get to the stars in a decade? I take it chemical rockets, the shuttle and the Saturn, are out. If it took three days for Apollo to fly to the moon—′

  Patrick grinned. ′Only three million years to Earth II!′

  Glemp said, ′An alternative is to use electricity to throw ions, charged atoms, out the back as your exhaust. A much higher exhaust velocity gives you a better performance …′

  But Liu quickly dug out a whiskery study that suggested that even an ion rocket would need the equivalent of a hundred million supertankers of fuel to reach Alpha Centauri in a century or less.

  ′Nuclear engines, then,′ Glemp went on. ′Back in the 60s NASA developed a ground-based test bed of a fission engine - hydrogen heated up by being passed through a hot nuclear fission pile and squirted out the back …′ NERVA had worked. But again, as they paged through theoretical studies from the archives, they quickly found that the fuel demands for an interstellar mission on the timescales they required were impossibly large. They did find some useful material, such as a NASA study on lightweight nuclear engines meant to power a generation of unmanned explorers of Jupiter′s moons, probes that never got built; Glemp and Liu flagged such material for further study.

  Glemp said, ′Look - you don′t actually need any fuel at all to reach the stars. You can use a solar sail …′ A sail kilometres across, made of some wispy, resilient substance that would gather in the gentle, unrelenting pressure of sunlight, of solar photons bouncing off a mirrored surface. ′Such a craft would take mere centuries to reach the stars.′

  ′Too long!′ Kenzie snapped. ′We′re drifting here, guys.′ He pushed back his chair and walked around the room. He paused briefly by the kids, who, with Harry patiently filming them, were acting out a siege of their plastic fort. Kenzie said, ′Captain Kirk never had this trouble. Where′s a warp drive when you need one?′

  They laughed, all save Liu, and Patrick wondered if that was because he′d never heard of Star Trek. But the Chinese said, ′That of course would be the solution. A faster-than-light drive.′

  ′No such thing exists,′ said Kenzie.

  Jerzy Glemp said firmly, ′No such thing can exist. According to Einstein the speed of light is an absolute upper limit on velocity within the spacetime of our universe.′

  ′True,′ Liu said. ′But spacetime itself is not a fixed frame. That is the essence of general relativity. In the early moments of the universe, all of spacetime went through a vast expansion. During the interval known as inflation, that expansion was actually faster than light.′

  Patrick was lost, but Jerzy Glemp was intent. ′What are you suggesting? That we ride a bubble of inflating spacetime?′

  ′I don′t know,′ Liu Zheng said. ′I have a faint memory, of a study long ago … May I check it out?′ Kenzie waved his permission, and Liu began to scroll through screens of references and citations.


  Kenzie said, ′You know, maybe we need to step aside from the core problem for a minute. We are after all talking about starting up a space programme here in Colorado. However we travel to the stars we′re going to need launch facilities to get to orbit in the first place: gantries, blast pits, liquid oxygen factories, communications, a Mission Control, the whole Cape Canaveral thing. Jerzy, we need to find ourselves some space engineers. And some real-life astronauts, to train our guys. Got to be some of them around.′

  ′Canaveral itself is long drowned,′ Patrick said. ′Went under with Florida. There was an alternate launch facility in the west.′

  ′Vandenberg,′ Kenzie said. ′Run by the air force. Must be flooded too, but maybe more recently. If we have to salvage equipment from one or other of these places, Vandenberg might be the better choice.′

  ′But that′s a huge commitment,′ Patrick said. ′A whole new space programme! At such a time of crisis, how can you expect to get the government to back you?′

  Kenzie smiled. ′There′s always national defence. Look - one effect of the flood has been to knock out our national war-making capabilities. Oh, we′ve been moving nuke-tipped ICBMs out of flooded silos in Kansas. But the basic infrastructure has been hit too. NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain is still operating, not far from here. But all Cheyenne did was gather data and feed warnings to Raven Rock on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, the Pentagon′s deep-bunker control hub, which has now been lost. Meanwhile our satellites are degrading one by one. Even our deep-defence radar systems are failing, now that the bases in Britain and Canada are flooded out. And you have warlike noises coming out of China and Russia and India. What if those guys decide they need a bit of lebensraum over here in the US of A? What are we going to do about it? I think the federal government could be sold the need for a space launch facility, here on the high ground, to give us the means to launch recon sats and to retaliate in case of any strike against us.′

  ′Isn′t that kind of cynical?′

  Kenzie just grinned. ′The space programme has always run off the back of the military programmes. The first astronauts rode honest-to-God ICBMs to orbit. And anyhow, isn′t it for a good cause? Joe - make a note. Start working on fixing me an appointment with the President as soon as we have a reasonable shopping list—′

  Liu spoke softly. ′I have it.′

  He read, ′ ′′The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity.′′ A 1994 paper. I am no specialist in relativity but I recognise the soundness of the idea. It is only a theoretical concept, but there are a number of citations …′

  Jerzy quickly brought up a copy of the paper and skimmed it. ′My God, Liu. Riding a wave of spacetime at superluminal speeds. This is it.′

  ′The engineering details are entirely absent. And the energy requirements are daunting—′

  ′But we have the concept.′ Jerzy grinned at Kenzie. ′We must start work immediately.′

  Kenzie looked from one to the other, open-mouthed. ′If this isn′t bullshit - all right. Tell me the first thing you need.′

  Jerzy considered. ′Mathematicians. Physicists. Computer scientists. Anybody who had contact with predecessor studies, like the old NASA Breakthrough Propulsion programme of the 1990s. And, by the way, if we are serious about planning for a long-duration spaceflight we will need life support experts, biologists, doctors, sociologists, anthropologists. ′

  Liu said, ′Also an artificial intelligence suite, equipped with symbolic manipulator tools.′

  ′A what-now?′

  ′We will build a warp bubble. This will be a designer metric.′ He mimed a bubble with his hand. ′A piece of spacetime, moulded to our purposes. To design such a thing we will need a computer system that can solve Einstein′s relativity equations.′

  ′Make a list.′

  Patrick, feeling lost again, shook his head. ′Are we serious? Are we really going to try to build a warp drive?′

  Jerzy shrugged. ′Compared to terraforming a planet, or trying to run a spaceflight lasting centuries to thousands of years, it is a relatively easy option.′

  ′Fine. So we have something to work on. Meeting adjourned!′ Kenzie slammed his palm down on the desk, and toasted them in cold coffee. ′Here′s to Ark One, born today. Hey, Joe, make a note of the date and time.′

  As the meeting broke up, Patrick went over to collect Holle. The kids were watching a playback of their movie on Holle′s handheld. The teacher, Harry, was cuddling Zane; he moved away, smiling, as Patrick approached.

  Holle ran to her father and hugged his knees. ′Dad! Did you see what we did?′

  ′The fort and everything? Some of it. We were busy over there. But you can show me later.′

  She looked up at him, her face round and serious. ′And did you have a good morning, Dad?′

  Which was a question Linda had always asked. He ruffled her hair and said, ′Yes, I think so. I hope so. We got stuck for a bit. You know what I always say, sweets. If the answer′s not the one you want, maybe you′re asking the wrong question. I think maybe we asked the right question in the end.′

  ′That′s good. Is it lunch time now?′

  ′Yes, it′s lunch time. Let′s get out of here.′

  11

  JANUARY 2031

  Holle was late on her first morning at the Academy, at the very start of the new term.

  She′d meant to cut through the City Park, on her way to the Academy which had been set up in the old Museum of Nature and Science on the park′s east side. But the park had been turned into a mixture of farm and refugee camp, and overnight there had been trouble as mid-process eye-dees had protested over being forced to work on biofuel crops. Her father always said it was simply dumb to make mothers with hungry babies work on anything other than food crops. So this morning the whole park was closed off, and Holle, eleven years old and alone, had to skirt south along 17th Avenue, hurrying past cordons of Denver PD cops and Homeland Security, with their advisers from the Office of Emergency Management and homeless-IDP welfare agencies.

  It wasn′t a pleasant walk. It had been snowing, not so much as it used to in January according to long-term residents, but enough to leave a covering on the fields and slush in the gutters that she tried to walk around. And the air was foul. She kept her mouth clamped shut against the smoke and tear gas. There was an irony. Her father told her the air was cleaner than it had been when he was Holle′s age, despite a global injection of volcanic products. Not this morning. Some days, everything sort of piled up to make life harder.

  Denver wasn′t as much fun as it had seemed when they had first come here six years ago. It was growing shabbier every day, and was increasingly cluttered up with eye-dees and everything that came with them - including diseases like tuberculosis, now that the capability to manufacture antibiotics was breaking down. The city itself was being transformed, in anticipation of a tougher future. Flood walls and storm drains were extended. Wherever possible hard paved surfaces were being ripped up to expose earth where crops could be grown and, more importantly, flood water allowed to soak away. Meanwhile the last year had been a record for tornadoes hitting the city, another outcome of the flood-induced global warming. The big sirens in downtown had wailed over and over, scarily, and buildings had been left battered and glass-less, barely habitable. Even if you went driving out of the city, as her father sometimes took her out on the scrubland beyond Denver′s urban sprawl, you couldn′t escape it. You saw nothing but eye-dees walking in from the drowned eastern states and just setting down where they could. When no shelter was provided for them they built huts of bricks cut from sod, as the pioneers had once done a hundred and fifty years earlier, and started planting potatoes and raising pigs.

  Sometimes she missed the gated community in New York State where she′d lived when she was small, with its clean apartments and swimming pools, and the tall whitewashed wall that excluded the rest of the world. And no floods or tornadoes or eye-dees in sight.

 
; She was relieved to reach Colorado Boulevard and cut down to the museum. Though stained with age now, the museum was a big block of brick and glass set on a slight rise overlooking the sweep of the park to the west, towards downtown, and beyond that the Rockies. From here the park looked like a medieval village, packed with smallholdings and shabby huts, and threads of smoke rising up from dung fires. But the museum on its rise was fortified.

  She had to show her Candidate′s pass and submit to three biometric ID inspections before she was allowed into the main entrance. By the time she got through everybody else had already gone in - everybody save Zane Glemp, who was waiting for her by the door.

  ′I′m sorry,′ she said, breathless.

  ′It′s not me you′ll have to apologise to. Come on.′ He led her inside the building, through an echoing ticket hall and towards the stairs behind the closed-up museum shop. This was a bright tall open space, and overhead the dusty skeletons of marine dinosaurs from Colorado′s vanished Cretaceous sea still swam in the air.

  She felt a rush of affection for Zane. He was a skinny kid, and at ten he was a year younger than she was. But he had his father′s brains, and had been allowed into the Academy a whole two terms ahead of her. This first morning he had promised to meet her and show her around, and he was keeping that promise even at the risk of making himself late as well. ′Thanks for waiting for me.′

  ′I was here already.′ That was true; he had his own room in the Academy, that he used when his father was away.

  ′It wasn′t my fault I was late. There was a riot in the park, and I—′

  ′Save it. They don′t accept excuses here.′

  ′Well said, Mr Glemp.′ By the elevator shaft, Harry Smith was hauling a small trolley laden with books. He stepped towards them and folded his arms. ′Late on your first day, Groundwater? Not a good start.′ He was being teacher-strict, nothing more, and that was sort of reassuring to Holle as she tried to get her bearings. But he was standing very close to them. Something about him always made her uneasy.