by Allan Kaster
Lawson could only think of the wreckage of his plane, and how it all might have been avoided if they had made it back to town on time. Rising from his chair, he spoke evenly. “We’ll be ready in the morning. Leave as much behind as you can. We aren’t going to be able to carry much weight.”
He left without saying goodbye. Outside the cabin, he stuffed his hands into his pockets, the rage now spreading freely through his body. They had played him for a fool, and he wanted to have nothing to do with either of them.
Lawson went into the warehouse and closed the door. The combination gun was still lying on the chopping block.
He picked up the gun. Hefting it, he told himself that he would only ask Russell to pay for the repairs. There was no reason to threaten violence, except as a last resort. He had the upper hand. They weren’t going back without him. A real town was worth more than an imaginary city.
A second later, an unfamiliar voice began to whisper in his head. It said that no one knew that the couple was here at all. The flight plan had only stated that he was taking two passengers on a scenic circle tour. He had not been required to list them by name, and he had not entered any additional remarks.
He thought again of the cash in the wallet, and how little would remain for him in Juneau when he returned, even if he managed to fix his plane. And as much as he tried, he could not push this new thought away.
There was a knock at the door. Lawson set down the gun, feeling a sudden wave of sickness. “Who is it?”
“Only me.” The door opened to reveal Cora outside. “I’d like to talk to you.”
Lawson took a seat, indicating the second chair by the chopping block. He tried to keep his voice steady. “Suit yourself.”
Cora came in and shut the door behind her. When she saw the gun on the table, her mouth seemed to tighten incrementally, but she made no mention of it. She lowered herself into a chair. “Sam’s sleeping. His knee is in pretty bad shape. He’ll need to see a doctor when we get back.”
“I know one in Juneau. He’s pushed my nose back into place a few times. What else did your husband say?”
“He thinks I’m mad at him.” Cora eyes strayed down to the gun again. “You’re sure we can take off tomorrow?”
“I’ll get you back if I can. Provided that we come to an understanding.” When Cora failed to respond, Lawson went on. “There’s a lot of damage to the plane. Since I only got caught in the storm because your husband wandered off, it seems fair that you cover the cost.”
Cora appeared to take this in. “And what if we decide not to pay you anything?”
“Then we aren’t going anywhere,” Lawson said. “I’m happy to stay as long as necessary. There are deer in the woods. I know how to take care of myself. But I wonder if you do.”
Cora smiled. “Don’t try to frighten me. We’ve been through more than you know.”
She took out a wallet, removed a wad of bills, and set it on the table. Lawson didn’t reach for it yet. Returning the wallet to her pocket, Cora seemed to feel something else there, which she withdrew. It was the map. She unfolded it on the tabletop, handling it with a strange tenderness. “It’s a shame. We aren’t rich, you know. All we have is Sam’s writing, and that doesn’t pay much. But we still had to come here. When you met Sam, he told you that there might be another stop after this one. If you’ll hear me out, I can tell you where it is.”
“I don’t need you to tell me.” Lawson inclined his head toward the map. “You want to see the towns in that triangle. Even if there’s nothing there now, you want to set foot there for yourself. But I still don’t understand why.”
“It’s simple. These are the most likely locations where the real city of spires will appear. If it isn’t Valdez, it might be somewhere else. We want to leave a message that will prove we were right. I’m still not sure what it will be. We can’t make a public prediction, because that might affect the future itself. Maybe we’ll bury it. Or seal it with instructions to open it under certain conditions after we’re dead.”
“I don’t see the point,” Lawson said. “Nobody alive will know you were right.”
“But somebody would. That’s what matters. We want people to see more than what’s in front of their eyes. To look past the present. That’s what Fort tried to do. If we’re right about this, we can finish what he started. We can predict that there will be a city of spires where no one would ever believe it.”
“That’s what I don’t get. You haven’t said how a mirage can come back in time.”
“It isn’t so hard to understand. You just have to ask yourself what a mirage really is. Light travels from the Sun, strikes an object, and is refracted through the atmospheric duct to the observer. That’s all. But it isn’t just visible light. It’s radiation of all kinds. Radio, for instance. Under the right conditions, signals that would be limited to line of sight can travel for hundreds of miles. Now imagine a class of particle that can move back in time. Let’s say they’re created by some kind of event at our city of the future, like a high-energy collision. Once they exist, they can travel along the atmospheric duct, just like the light from a visible mirage. And if they interact with particles in our time, we might see something. Like a picture of a ghost.”
“But why would it happen at this one spot? Why wouldn’t we see it in other places?”
“I don’t know,” Cora said simply. “But the city itself wouldn’t see any trace of it in its own time, either. It might even be an accident. They would have no way of knowing that they were casting a shadow on the past. Unless, of course, someone from our time left them a message.”
Lawson tried to get his head around this. “But why does it matter to you?”
Cora paused before responding. “It means that the past and the future all somehow exist together. If the future has already happened, then everything we do has already been decided. And maybe it means that the past still exists, in a way we can’t explain, even after we’ve lost it.”
She glanced out the window. “Sam understands this. If we can prove that this silent city will exist one day, it means that we’re all part of a pattern. Sometimes the patterns you see aren’t real, but sometimes they are. Most people avoid the places where the unknown breaks through. But some don’t. Like you.”
Lawson looked across the table at Cora. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I don’t think one person can ever know anything about another,” Cora said mildly. “But you can follow your hunches. Call it intuition, or paranoia, but it’s a mistake to only trust in what you know for sure.”
She paused. “I’ve been thinking of what you said about the foxes. Most are killed in the trap houses. Snares take care of the others. For the last few, you need traps. Those foxes aren’t smarter than the rest. They’re just born suspicious. But what if they tried to warn the others that there was a conspiracy against them? No one would believe it. The foxes think they’re being fed by a loving hand. When it kills them, they think they’re unlucky. They don’t realize that they were bred for it.”
Cora looked at Lawson. “People are the same. They don’t understand the world any more than the foxes do. That’s why you need a few who see things that might not even be there. It’s a delusion that allows the species to survive. Fort was one. I’ve tried to be another. So has Sam. We may never know what that city really is, but we have to ask. It gives us a reason to keep going. Something is coming, whether we understand it or not. Our mutual friend thought you would understand—”
Lawson felt his attention click sharply into place. “What are you talking about?”
Cora smiled. “Sam spoke with him about you. Ernie Pyle. The columnist for Scripps Howard. I gather that he took a trip with you a few years ago. He told us that you were an interesting man. Sam called him from Juneau, just before we flew out to the island, and gave him instructions in case we didn’t come back. And he knew we were flying out on your plane.”
Lawson became very conscious of the gun
on the table. “What else did he say?”
“He said that you were the best,” Cora said. “But you didn’t know what you wanted. He said that he once advised you to build something for yourself. Because there aren’t any old pilots in Alaska.”
A long silence fell. Lawson kept his eyes on Cora. Finally, he reached for the table. Cora seemed to brace herself, but instead of the gun, Lawson scooped up the money. He took every single dollar that was there, without bothering to count it, and slid it into his pocket.
Cora didn’t lower her gaze. At last, she rose and left the warehouse without a word.
Lawson didn’t see either of them again until the following morning, as they prepared to depart. As he had instructed, the couple left most of their baggage behind. He saw that Cora was carrying a sheaf of papers, and that Russell was clutching his valise with the notes from the trip.
An hour earlier, Lawson had secured the propeller to the nose of the plane. Once the passengers were seated, he headed out into the water, opening the throttle all the way. As he had feared, the propeller wasn’t cutting as much air as usual. Reaching up, he grabbed a cross member over his head to get more leverage, then pulled back on the stick with the other.
At last, he felt the floats rise up on their steps. The pontoons broke loose from the surface of the water, and then they were up and away, the spray wreathing them as they ascended. Lawson exhaled. The hard part was over, and all that remained was to get back to Juneau.
He took them away from the cove. Before circling back toward the Chilkat Range, he looked north, gazing at the mountains in the distance.
For a second, he thought that he saw something outlined on the side of Mount Fairweather. When he blinked, it was gone. It had been just his imagination, or the distortion of the windshield. But in that brief instant, the future had seemed close enough to touch, and it reminded him of something that Russell had said. If the city was sending its image into the past, it might not even know it.
Lawson glanced behind him. He saw that Russell had the map out again, and that he was looking at it sadly. They would not be visiting the towns to the northwest, at least not this time around.
Cora took her husband’s hand. “There will be other chances. Let it go for now.”
“I know. But I’m still sorry.” Russell studied the map. “I would have liked to have seen Valdez. Or—”
He appeared to pick the name of one of the other villages at random. “Or Gakona.”
☼ ☼ ☼
A military-funded project called the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), located on remote tundra in Alaska, jumps off the horizon just past mile marker eleven on the Glenn Highway. . . . What grabs the imagination of most, though, are the couple hundred oversized antennas. . . . Those fanged metal structures have made the sleepy, rural Alaska village of Gakona, population two hundred, a lightning rod for controversy. . . .
Theories abound about what goes on inside HAARP, which was founded in 1990 to conduct research on the ionosphere, an upper level of the atmosphere. . . . They’re studying lightning, aurora borealis and the like. They’ve even learned how to induce both of those on a limited scale, according to a statement included on a Navy defense budget. . . .
—Alaska Dispatch, September 20, 2011
Depending on the unpredictable agendas of military scientists [conspiracy theorists claim], this group of technicians must shoot radio waves into the upper reaches of our atmosphere to create missile shields, eviscerate enemy satellites, set off the occasional earthquake, or control the minds of millions of people.
The truth is, though, that the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP . . . is nothing more sinister than a research station. . . .
—Popular Science, June 8, 2008
Four golden crosses are planted . . . to help a radio receiver measure ionospheric absorption. . . . A white telescope dome and a gray tangle of poles [are] used to observe the ionosphere’s properties. . . .
But the most striking sight at HAARP is the facility’s largest array: one hundred and eighty silver poles rising from the ground, each a foot thick, seventy-two feet tall, and spaced precisely eighty feet apart. Every pole is topped with four arms like helicopter rotors. . . .
The result is an aluminum cat’s cradle, calibrated to the millimeter, that spreads out over thirty acres. Geometric patterns form and reform in every direction, Athenian in their symmetry.
It looks like a bionic forest. . . . Or an infinite nave in a futuristic outdoor church.
—Wired, July 20, 2009
Providence
Alastair Reynolds
THEY THREW PETALS into the capsule before sealing me in. Pastor Selestat hammered the door, the final signal for departure. I nodded, read his lips:
Goodbye, Goodwoman Marudi.
I braced. The ejection sequence shot me out of the hull, into interstellar space.
The capsule wheeled, trimming its orientation. I had my first good view of the Dandelion since being packed aboard with the other pilgrims, before they showed us to the dormitories.
Ten kilometers long, whale-bellied, speckled with ten thousand tiny windows. And at the far end, where there should have been the swelling of its Inflator Drive, a scorched and mangled stump.
☼ ☼ ☼
“This doesn’t have to be the end,” I said, voice trembling as I took in the desperation of my fellow crewmembers. “We can still make something of the expedition.”
“Maybe you haven’t been paying attention,” said Selestat, falling into the sarcasm that had served him well since the fault lines appeared. “We have no engine. Not since you and your technician friends decided to run a systems test without adequate . . .”
“Don’t blame Marudi,” said Goodman Atrato, one of the propulsion clerics. “Whatever decisions were taken, she wasn’t part of them. And she’s right to look at ways in which we can salvage something. We have an obligation—a moral prerogative.”
“Don’t talk to us about morals . . .” started Goodwoman Revda, opening and closing her fist.
Before someone lashed out, I strode to a wall and brought up a schematic I’d pre-loaded. It had a drunken, sketchy look to it, my coordination still sluggish.
“Say we’re here,” I said, jabbing at a point two-thirds of the way along the line that connected Earth and Providence. “Doesn’t have to be exact.” A smudge-like representation of the Dandelion appeared under my fingertip, skewered by that line. “Given the engine damage, there’s no way for us to slow down now. Any sort of settlement of the target system is out of the question.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Selestat said.
“But we can still redeem ourselves,” I said, tapping at the wall again, making the ship zip along the line. “When we reach the target system we’ll sail through it in only a few days. We can use that time to gather information.”
“No use to us,” Revda said.
“No,” I agreed. “But one day Earth will send out another ship. We’ll be able to give them the data we didn’t have. Maps, surface conditions . . . weather systems, atmospheric and oceanic chemistry, detailed biomarkers . . . they’ll be able to shape the expedition much more efficiently.” I swallowed, knowing that the truth needed to be stated, however unpalatable. “We’ll die. That’s inevitable. But we can do this one good thing for the pilgrims to come.”
“One chance,” Atrato said, looking grim. “Better make sure we get it right.”
I touched the wall again, making the ship spring back to its earlier position. “No. Two chances. We commit the Dandelion to one approach. Most of our eggs in that basket, yes. But if we launch a service capsule now, it can give us a second pair of eyes, an observational baseline.”
A slanting line peeled away from the ship. As the ship moved, a dot diverged along the line. That was the capsule, putting more and more distance between itself and the mother vessel.
“Just one snag,” Revda said. “The servi
ce capsules don’t run themselves. Some fool would need to be inside that thing the whole time. Or did you forget that?”
I met her scorn with a smile. “I didn’t, no.”
☼ ☼ ☼
I watched the Dandelion diminish, fading to a dim grey speck.
Ahead was a red star only a little brighter than any of the others. Still much too far for the naked eye to make out its accompaniment of planets, much less any useful details. But that would change by the time I emerged from hibernation.
As I readied the capsule for the long sleep, Selestat asked me how I was doing.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ve got a job to do, something useful. That’s enough for me. Just make sure you get a good set of observations from your end of the baseline, and we’ll give Earth something to really make them grateful.”
“It’s a good thing that you’re doing, Goodwoman.”
“Duty,” I answered, moving my hand to close the communication link. “That’s all.”
☼ ☼ ☼
I opened my eyes to silence and loneliness. And squinted them shut just as quickly.
A sun’s brightness flooded the capsule. I raised my palm to the window glass, trying to catch some of that life-giving warmth. That was the light we had been promised, the light that should have been giving us sustenance as we made a home on Providence, establishing a human foothold around another star.
But this distant warmth, conveyed to my skin through glass, was the closest I would get to feeling that star’s nourishment. Providence would never be ours. The best we could do now was turn our long-range instruments onto that planet, imagining the breezes we would never feel, the shorelines we would never touch. But we do so dutifully, pouring our souls into that work, making the best observations we could, and committing our findings back to Earth, so that a second expedition might begin their journey with a huge advantage compared to our own.