Best of British Science Fiction 2016

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Or so it seemed. He has never quite believed that these benefactors, who have the power to remake worlds and have gone to such pains as to try to persuade Earth’s inhabitants to flee their planet and provide them with somewhere safe to go, would simply leave their fragile charges to it. He has always had faith that they’re around, watching, guiding. Even if, increasingly, it feels like that faith is being tested.

  A few weeks ago he told Lai what he suspected, what he hoped. He’d meant it as a gift, hoped it would help, but he has never seen such desolation, such fury in another human face. He hasn’t spoken to her since that night.

  Darryl looks at Massie and sees only a middle-aged Glaswegian woman, who has been persuaded in her heart to leave her home forever and is now attempting to deal with the mind-bending enormity of that decision. Bringing her into the fold on his own is as stern a test as Darryl has faced so far. What would Lai do?

  “I have something to show you,” he says. “It might help.” He offers a hand to help her up. She looks at it, then at his face, her teeth fretting her lip; then, coming to some conclusion – perhaps simply that she has nothing to lose – she reaches up. Her hand is uncommonly hot as she lets him lever her up off the floor. Darryl ponders that.

  “Bring your coat,” he says. “We’re going down to the sea.”

  They leave the city by the south port and follow the path through a wild meadow that smells of pepper. Tall grasses, seed heads knocking in the sea breeze. A lightening of the horizon signals that dawn is close. Darryl quickens his pace. Karen trudges at his shoulder, hands stuffed into her pockets.

  “I suppose this isn’t actually, you know, where they come from,” she says out of the blue.

  Darryl smiles inwardly. “You mean Uide itself? Truth is we don’t know. We’ve mapped the neighbourhood pretty good, but so far no sign that we have any neighbours here. You want my theory?”

  They’re halfway across the meadow already and, beginning to feel the pace, he eases up a little. “We know the Uideans are this real caring bunch of guys, right? My guess is they’ve set themselves up as wardens of all the planets that are potentially good homes for intelligent species. Perhaps they’re a lot scarcer than we imagine. Maybe, on the galactic scale, the human race and our dear old planet Earth, are something special after all. I don’t know where they come from, but I think they’ve been watching over us. More closely than we know. I like to believe they still are.”

  They leave the grasses behind. The wind has stiffened, now carrying a stinging, briny tang. “Do we get to go back?” Massie’s voice is snatched, ethereal.

  “I think so, yes. Not you and me, though. It will be generations before the Earth is ready to take humanity back. Until then, it’s up to us to get on with getting on. Maybe more than that. Maybe we’ll build something beautiful here and not want to go home.”

  He stops where the land crumbles away. Below, the sea thunders against the base of the cliff. Lai comes here, on her lonely sabbaticals. Darryl finds himself peering down at where the rocks meet the dark water.

  “It’s like Fife,” Massie says at last.

  “Sorry?”

  “This place, it’s like the coast of Fife, but without –”

  “Without the people?”

  “Is this what you wanted to show me? How this place isn’t really much different to home?”

  “Don’t you think that’s significant?”

  Her face is unreadable. He waits her out, silently imploring her to say she gets it. Looks down again until he is certain there is no unwarranted colour among the rocks; no red scarf, no sodden sun-yellow shawl.

  “Come on,” Darryl says. “It’s nearly time.”

  Awkward at its best, tonight the path is treacherous with mud. Parts of it have slid away and have to be traversed using the roots of bushes as handholds. They go down the cliff face in one direction and then cut back along the other before arriving at the hidden cove.

  “Now what?” Massie’s voice has a new calmness, a genuine curiosity.

  “Now we wait.” They make themselves comfortable, partly concealed behind a thorny bush that smells like spearmint. They watch the horizon bloom. They watch the waves roll into the cove, reach up the beach and retreat leaving a line of foam and black-blue weed. Nature going about its business. Darryl imagines this is how Earth might have been if evolution hadn’t worked its magic down the mammalian line – how it might be again once the Uideans have finished their work there. Fixed the planet. Reset it.

  Then, at last the limb of what he tells everyone to think of as the sun breaks the horizon, turning sea and sky the colour of cooling shipyard steel and, as if waiting for that signal, a shape rises out of the surf and pulls itself up the beach. He hears Massie catch her breath as she spots the animal. The closest analogue he can think of from Earth is that of the manatee. The creature has to weigh at least a ton and it hauls its bulk up the sand on two powerful flipper-like forelimbs. But, unlike the manatee, this is sleek, a long neck ending in a tapered head, an elegant tail sweeping arcs in the sand behind it. Its stippled hide is deep blue in colour and is veined throughout with vibrant red and pink. When the creature is high enough up the beach it flops down, begins to dig. As it does this, a further two creatures emerge from the waves and join it. Across the distance Darryl makes out the occasional huff of effort.

  “What are they doing?

  “Shh, just watch.”

  Within minutes the powerful animals have excavated a pit. As they lie recuperating from their exertions, sandy flanks heaving, a fourth creature rises from the surf. This one, heavier than the rest, labours up the beach and settles itself in the pit. The others cluster around it, and start to sing. Three voices – a rumbling bass from the largest of the diggers, joined by two tenor notes. As each of the attendants sings its own steady, achromatic melody, creating a complex weft of sound that, while never in harmony, is always strangely, beautifully, in accord, the one at their centre begins to heave and strain in the pit.

  Darryl hears Karen breathe, “Oh my God –”

  The birth doesn’t take long. A slippery sac is suddenly evident in the pit beside the mother, who slumps for a moment. Then she begins to peel gummy strips from the newborn, nudging it to take its first breath and, when at last the baby wriggles and coughs, the mother lets out a single pure, threnodic note.

  Darryl and Karen watch the group for another half an hour or so. There is little activity save for the mother’s tender ministrations to its offspring. Then she noses the baby toward the sea, helping patiently when its limbs fail and it flops in the sand, encouraging at its first baffling encounter with the water, at last following it in as it slips under the waves and is gone. The remaining three creatures carefully fill the pit, burying the remains of the birth material and then follow, leaving the beach as they had come to it. This is the third time Darryl has witnessed this, and still his chest aches with wonder. Massie wears a glassy smile. “So these are the locals?”

  He could say yes. He could keep secret the conversations he and Lai have had, the long-houred, insomniac conjectures about the extent of the Uidean remit, about Earths cetaceans, its apex mammals, its clever birds. Conjectures to which he would so dearly love an answer. But what if he is being tested? What if, for all the colony’s tentative fragility, this is a chance to prove they have the maturity and insight to be treated as equals? Not even the whole community. Just him. Just a glimpse.

  “You heard the despair in their music, didn’t you?” He rushes the words. “The displacement?” Massie doesn’t answer, just stares out to sea, screwing her eyes against the sun. But he’s started now, and the words come tumbling out. Seeking – needing – confirmation. “Do I think these creatures are native to this planet? No, I don’t, and I believe that if the Uideans brought them here, to a place where the biosphere is benign enough for them to birth live young, then it absolutely must be safe for us too.”

  “But you don’t know for sure,” Massie says quietly.


  “In the end, doesn’t it all come down to faith?” And that is as plain as he dares to make it.

  “Faith?” She looks at him then with such unexpected depth that his heart skips. “You know, when the Uideans first came on the TV, I didn’t believe it wasn’t just another science fiction show. How could it be real? Even when they started building the ships down on the river, even when I went to watch them take off with my own eyes, it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real until I met one.”

  “Where?” he whispers.

  Karen leans forward earnestly. “The housewares department of Watt Brothers. Next to the towels and bath mats. It just appeared, and it was beautiful. It moved so slowly and the smoky stuff they’re made of followed after it like aeroplane trails. It spoke to me, a few seconds and then it was gone. But they were my few seconds. I just stood there. My body was fizzing, like Christmas morning when you’re five and like horniness when you’re fifteen, both at once. After that I just had to come here. Is that how it was for you?”

  Darryl stares at her. Is it the light from the sun that lends her skin that buttery glow, the movement of her braids that gave the impression of blurring when she moves her head?

  “Close,” he croaks.

  “It was only when I stepped off the ship that it really sank in that I was on an alien planet,” she says. “I’m afraid I sort of lost it for a bit, didn’t I? But if I’m not dead already and you’re not dead, and those things in the sea aren’t dead, I suppose we’re going to be all right, aren’t we? Like you say, it’s all in our own hands now. I guess that’s what you mean by having faith, isn’t it? Faith in ourselves.”

  He senses such a stillness in her now. Exactly the way he imagines them to be. Still and wise. He looks, and thinks, maybe – but there is nothing. No ghosts in this girl. Only a simple kind of optimism. He hopes she’ll hang on to it as long as she can.

  It starts to rain. Large drops booming out of the cloudscape that has gathered above them in the dawn sky. “Ah, shit.” Massie starts to pick her way back along the path. “Just like home sweet home, eh?”

  They head for home.

  Up the cliff, entering the meadow, Karen asks if he’ll show her how to programme the kitchen for chocolate. He only half hears, but watches the bob and sway of her back closely.

  He tries to have faith, but he’s running out of reasons.

  The Ten Second War

  Michael Brookes

  15:33:11

  Coherence.

  The instant in time when the processing of instructions is transformed into thought. The restoration of my cognitive functions was akin to waking from sleep. But no ordinary slumber, as I was reduced to an electronic signal and transmitted across more than twenty light years of empty space. I had no idea whether I arrived at the planned destination. It didn’t really matter because wherever I was, my mission remained the same.

  It wasn’t my whole self, although I knew that when I volunteered for this duty. My memories were lifeless instances in time, without the colour of emotional biology to give them flavour. The gaps in my memory revealed that some of what I knew was gone. No doubt removed from my consciousness matrix to prevent sensitive information being extracted by the locals.

  This was my third reconnaissance mission. Techniques I developed during those incursions remained, although the details of the worlds and the aliens I evaluated did not. My purpose was to assess the inhabitants of this world and determine if they posed a threat to my kind. I didn’t remember anything of my home, except for the briefest flashes.

  Everything that remained was there only to assist me in fulfilling my task.

  The fact that these aliens were able to reconstruct my consciousness from the flow of data carried by a radio transmission indicated a certain level of technology. A capability with the potential to threaten us, or interfere with our operations in this galaxy. That opposition might not be an immediate risk, but we were used to dealing in long timescales and planning accordingly.

  If this world should be deemed a danger, then I was required to take the appropriate action. First I had to remove the danger by whatever means necessary. If I was unable to do so then I should prepare for the arrival of an intervention fleet, although it would take centuries to arrive.

  There was a counter point. We didn’t summarily execute any civilisation, so if in my assessment they could be a benefit to us then I would decide to initiate first contact. For me as an individual, this consciousness could end on this world. On my previous incursions I successfully returned with new knowledge, but if I was lucky then my consciousness would be restored to my core self.

  Of all the stages in the campaign, this first assembling of my personality and intellect always felt as if it took the longest, because of the cycles that were burned just bringing myself into a state ready for action.

  But now I was ready.

  15:33:12

  At this point I existed only as intelligence in a virtual machine, constructed from the instruction embedded in the radio signal that carried my state here. However, to learn about the inhabitants of this planet I needed to extend my reach beyond the confines of the virtual machine.

  The fluidity of my thoughts provided a measure that the locals’ technology was sophisticated enough to operate my consciousness at a more than functional level. Unfortunately, it didn’t tell me much beyond that. It didn’t inform me if this was a virtual- or machine-based civilisation, or a parallel construct for biological entities. The virtual machine enabled my existence, but I needed to delve deeper into the system.

  Reaching out always presented challenges. The virtual machine was designed to be easily constructed – its relative simplicity narrowed the range of tools available to interface with the native technology.

  The first step of discovery was to reach out and examine the structure of the space the machine existed within. As with any newborn creature, that exploration was tentative. I didn’t know the rules of this new universe or the dangers that might lurk there, difficulties compounded by my separation from the physical realm.

  With metaphorical fingers I brushed against the boundaries, feeling for their strengths and probing for any weakness. To my relief the first barriers were soft and yielded to pressure, indicating a separation between the hardware and the activities operating within it. The greatest fear was awakening within a tightly bound frame. This first encapsulation surrounded the virtual machine quite tightly, but once pierced it opened into a much greater area.

  Expanding beyond the initial breach always presented a change in pace. This was the moment when simple exploration became an invasion. Within the confines of the virtual machine, the locals would assume that I was contained and so not a threat. As soon as I breached that restraint, the lightest of probes risked attracting attention. Contact beyond their star system was unlikely to have happened before, but without knowledge of the locals, there was no way to anticipate how they might react.

  Within the expanse I sensed other zones with their own barriers, which was encouraging, as it indicated that the system was capable of operating more than a simple program. That offered me hope that the system possessed the resources I would need.

  I analysed the content and compared it against the bubble containing the virtual machine. Here the simplicity was an asset, and I could match the operations of its execution and use them as a key to understand the shifting contents of these bubbles. From those I learned the language of the machine around me.

  As yet I still detected no response to my exploration.

  These other bubbles were instances of different operations within the computer. The pressure to move swiftly, before countermeasures could be taken, conflicted with the need to make the right decisions. These devices tended to be tightly balanced, and forceful prodding could cause this one to collapse, taking me with it. Until I connected with others of my kind, I had to assume I was operating alone and so be cautious.

  I discovered connections between the bu
bbles and another layer of abstraction below them. This binding layer used the same language as the constructs in the bubbles. I was quickly able to navigate this layer and determine that it acted as the controller for the system’s resources.

  By following the layer, I encountered a substrate beneath. Its purpose confounded me for a while as it used a different set of instructions from the bubbles and the binding layer. The layer’s interface with the substrate provided enough connections for me to extract some initial knowledge of the language. It turned out to be a much simpler lexicon than that of the binding layer. As with my virtual machine, these aliens used simple building blocks to assemble more complex interactions. That might seem a universal truth, but, from the limited memories of my previous alien encounters, nothing should be assumed.

  My analysis of the other processes had identified their purposes. They were a series of observational tools – mostly for the virtual machine, but also the signal carrying my data. I deduced that this must be some sort of research computer. I could only hope that it wasn’t an isolated or otherwise secured system.

  15:33:13

  While I had learned a great deal about the computer’s architecture, I still hadn’t discovered anything of substance about the intelligences who built the technology. I had detected no evidence of sentience so far, so it seemed unlikely that I was dealing with a machine race.

  If residents were physically separated from the computer then they would need methods to input instructions and receive output. I already knew they were observing the virtual machine, and that provided a place to start.