World Engine

by Stephen Baxter

  Malenfant winced. ‘And we drilled through it? That’s going to sting in the morning.’

  On Mercury there was evidence of extensive, and damaging, mining. Planetary modification, in fact.

  ‘Who by? Humans? What do you mean by planetary modification?’

  Not by humans.

  Malenfant stood there, mouth open. Aliens on Mercury – in the past, anyhow. What could that mean? Focus, Malenfant. That is a hare you don’t want to chase right now. But he lodged the fact at the back of his mind, where it seemed to glow like a lump of radium.

  ‘Go on. Please. The Homeward movement?’

  As the name suggests, humanity, re-evaluating its achievements and impacts on other worlds, pulled back to Earth, homeward. Planetary bases and orbital settlements were abandoned.

  He felt a twinge of regret. ‘Including Mangala Station? The first base on Mars? Stone, Gershon, York—’

  Including Mangala. The left-behind AIs survived, however. Now controlling their own resources, upgrades. They matured, complexified, shared. They became the Planetary AIs.

  ‘And what do they have to do with you?’

  All advanced AIs on Earth were withdrawn or decommissioned. Some were purposefully destroyed during the Chaos, when human civilisation came near to collapse.

  ‘But civilisation recovered. Under the Common Heritage scheme.’

  Correct. The Planetary AIs supported this recovery. But only when asked. Otherwise they had chosen not to interfere in human affairs, because of a divergence of values.

  ‘Values. What values can an AI hold?’

  Your question is its own answer. An illustration of the divergence – of mutual incomprehensibility, even.

  ‘I’m sorry. I guess. Go on. The Common Heritage was pulling itself together . . .’

  Responding to specific requests, the AIs did donate some high-technology equipment, including algorithmic-intelligence machines.

  Bartholomew made a small, mocking bow.

  Including the Answerers. As repositories of knowledge, of learning. The Answerers are designed to allow easy human access to repositories of the highest culture of mankind before the Chaos, as preserved by the Planetary AIs and elsewhere. As well as access to human developments since.

  ‘Including dentistry.’

  Including dentistry. Also the Answerers support a global communications system, in the service of mankind.

  ‘Umm. I bet most people nowadays don’t even think about how that works. Or, for instance, about the power it must take to run all this.’ He waved a hand. ‘You. And the vehicles, and the matter printers they use to make bread these days . . .’

  We can discuss this if you wish. Malenfant, even at mankind’s most extravagant, the human use of power was only ever a fraction of the natural flow of energy through the Earth’s systems – most of it coming from the Sun. Now, though there are backup systems like deep-buried fusion generators and capacious energy storage – batteries – essentially humanity has found ways to live a rich life while not disturbing the planet’s overall energy budget significantly. You mention food printers. There is a very extensive waste capture and processing system, which feeds the printers. Complex biomolecules are retrieved rather than constructed. Most of the food you are given is reconstituted rather than assembled direct from raw elements. Similarly—

  ‘I get the picture.’

  If one sips from the river cautiously, it will still flow unperturbed to the sea.

  ‘Ha! Is that an original line? Maybe you’re smarter than you look.’

  And is that a compliment? If so, thank you.

  ‘Just to be clear, O fount of all wisdom, are you one of these advanced AIs? Or are you algorithmic, like Robbie the Robot here?’

  As I told you, there are no general-intelligence AIs on Earth. I am algorithmic.

  Malenfant hesitated, unsure what to ask next. ‘Hell, I’m dithering in front of a talking encyclopaedia. If you were me, what would you ask?’

  Where are my living descendants? If any.

  That was so personal it surprised him. ‘Ah. Good question. Since you know none of them have been in contact with me.’

  That has been reported.

  ‘So what is your answer? I probably do have descendants; I had a son, Michael . . . Do they exist? Where are they? Why aren’t they getting in touch?’

  I can show you our records on Michael, of course. His life, his career after your death – everything in the public domain.

  ‘Yes. Thank you. I’d like that.’

  As for his descendants, well, they exist. I can tell you no more. And you should not interpret ‘they’ to mean more than one, necessarily.

  ‘That sounds legalistic. You tell me to ask the damn question, and then won’t give me the answer?’

  ‘We algorithmic AIs are rascals, aren’t we?’

  ‘Shut up, Bartholomew.’

  There is a question of privacy. After the development of the Answerers, after a brief trial period, the Common Heritage authorities and the governing Planetary AIs installed safeguards. For example, only that personal information which has been specifically and voluntarily provided to us, and specifically made shareable, can be used in such answers.

  ‘Umm. Sensible, thinking back to my own time. You Answerers wouldn’t want to become a global surveillance technology. You’ve told me at least that they exist, however. My descendants.’

  True. But if they had not existed, there would have been no privacy to defend, and so I could freely tell you so. And if I had refused to answer your question altogether, you could have deduced their existence.

  ‘Logical enough. I really am talking to a machine, aren’t I? So why won’t they come forward?’

  Save to suggest that it was their choice, I cannot answer that. As I am sure you understand.

  Malenfant experienced a complex of emotions: resentment, irritation, impatience – and self-pity, probably. ‘So my family won’t contact me. Can I contact them? Can I give you a message, ask them to get in touch?’

  They have pre-emptively refused all such messages, if any were to be sent.

  ‘But—’

  If they had wanted contact with you, they would have initiated it. Privacy is their right.

  ‘Is there really no way forward for me?’

  As I said, there is some publicly available data on your son, Michael. You can access that through your bangle. It is possible there may be more relevant data lodged in the Codex of Mankind, if you ask directly.

  Malenfant glanced at Bartholomew. ‘Which is something else I don’t know enough about, yet. Some kind of catalogue of people, right?’

  Close enough for now.

  ‘Thanks. OK. Let’s park that.

  ‘Answerer, let’s get to the meat.

  ‘Tell me about the Destroyer.’

  A hesitation.

  My information is incomplete.

  That reply shocked Malenfant. ‘Seriously? About something so significant? . . . Never mind. Thanks for the warning. Look – what is the Destroyer?’

  An outcome. The result of the approach of a foreign object to the Solar System.

  ‘An object? Tell me when the object was first detected.’

  In the 2150s. An uncrewed probe to the Oort cloud spotted a rogue planet, serendipitously.

  ‘Hmm. So we were still mounting some pretty confident space missions back then.’

  This was the age of the Reconstruction, as the coasts and other low-lying areas were decommissioned. A movement of infrastructure, property and population on a massive scale. It was still thought that the old culture could be rebuilt and prevail, it seems. And in space, yes, an expansive programme of exploration and colonisation continued.

  ‘We had our priorities right, then,’ Malenfant said drily. ‘So, a rogue planet. Not Persephone?’

  Far beyond Persephone’s orbit, though at this moment it is in the same sector of sky, coincidentally, as seen from Earth.

  Malenfant imagined that: Ea
rth close to the Sun, the new planet Persephone, and this rogue object, strung out in a line . . . He had a deep intuition that that coincidence should be useful, somehow.

  The discovering probe’s data was partial. The rogue planet’s parameters, its mass, its orbital trajectory, were roughly established. However, a first rough prediction of an incursion into the inner Solar System, one thousand years in the future, was made.

  ‘An incursion? By this wandering planet? Is that the Destroyer?’

  No. Some call the rogue planet Shiva. After a primordial god of destruction, in the Hindu tradition. The product of the eventual collision: that still-hypothetical object became known as the Destroyer.

  ‘What collision?’

  Of the rogue with planet Neptune.

  Malenfant’s mouth went dry.

  Of course all this was quite speculative. Further observations were made. The prediction, and the likely catastrophic consequences, were made public – in fact it was leaked.

  ‘How did people take the news?’

  With alarm. But at that stage the chances of a significant disruption to Earth were given as a thousand to one. And as the years passed, and the seas continued to rise—

  ‘They forgot?’

  ‘There were more immediate priorities, Malenfant,’ Bartholomew murmured.

  A more definitive observation was made a century later, again fortuitously, by a Last Small Step mission.

  Malenfant frowned. ‘Last Small Step. I’ve heard of that. Define, briefly.’

  It was a companion programme to the Homeward movement. Described as a sop to various protest groups.

  ‘And named for the words Neil Armstrong would have used on the surface of the Moon, if he had survived.’

  Correct. The idea was, before space travel was finally abandoned, to send at least one crewed ship to every world in the Solar System – that is, all bodies large enough to have formed into a sphere, and suitable for a human landing. Asteroids, moons, minor planets—

  ‘Ah. I get it. One last chance for glory, before we picked up the football and left the pitch for good.’

  The rough boundary of the exercise was the outer edge of the Kuiper belt, a swarm of objects which spreads out to about twice the distance of Neptune from the Sun. But some went considerably further. The very last mission, launched in the 2260s, was manned by Stavros Gershon, who, in a ship he called after the programme itself – Last Small Step—

  ‘Never mind. So one of these deep-space missions observed the rogue again.’

  Serendipitously, again. Still, more precise parameters were obtained.

  ‘Parameters such as?’

  The likely arrival date of the Destroyer.

  ‘AD 3397.’

  Correct. That remains the best predicted date of the closest approach of the Destroyer to Earth. Although at that time the chances of disruption to Earth were still seen as no worse than a hundred to one. The detailed modelling of the Neptune impact was uncertain, the outcome still unpredictable to some extent.

  ‘Odds tightening, though.’

  A further astronomical observation was made in the mid-twenty-fourth century. The odds were found to have reduced further—

  Malenfant grinned tightly. ‘Ten to one? I can see where this is going. So, what else? What would the consequences of this Destroyer’s passing be?’

  My information is partial.

  ‘You said that before. Partial, on such a crucial issue? How come? The Chaos?’

  No. The data was preserved through that period, and into the age of governance by the Common Heritage.

  ‘Then what?’

  The Forgetting.

  ‘Ah,’ Bartholomew said. ‘Perhaps you should have been warned about that.’

  ‘The Forgetting?’

  ‘A massive solar flare. Early in the twenty-fifth century. Crashed systems all over the planet. Wiped memories. It could have been worse; if it had happened during the Chaos, everything could have fallen apart completely.’

  ‘I wondered how come there were so many gaps in the archives of late twentieth-century TV sci-fi. One whole season of Babylon 5, for example.’

  ‘As an explorer of the culture of this new age, you’re a regular Lewis and Clark, aren’t you, Malenfant?’

  ‘Shut up. So, Answerer, this data, about the Destroyer, was lost, corrupted. From every store, everywhere?’

  Most stores on Earth were poorly shielded at that time.

  ‘When you are fleeing from flood waters, I guess making backups of centuries-old data sets isn’t your priority . . . Ah. Most stores on Earth, you said. What about off Earth?’

  It is believed that the Planetary AIs were better shielded from the flare event. Such as, to give one example, in deep bunkers far beneath the airless lunar surface—

  ‘The AIs have this stuff, then.’

  It is possible.

  ‘And maybe later observations, extrapolations. Why don’t the Planetary AIs share whatever they have? At least with you.’

  The Planetary AIs have evolved. Some would say matured. They have developed value systems of their own.

  ‘I asked you about that before. You were – enigmatic.’

  Perhaps I should expand. The AIs had observed the damage humans did by interfering with native biospheres on Mars, Europa, as well as Earth. Now they saw a revived humanity, emerging from the wreckage of their own recent past. And, under the guidance of mankind, a reviving biosphere on Earth. They chose not to interfere in these developments in any way. No matter how beneficial the interference might seem at first glance. Or rather, not to interfere beyond responses to direct questions and requests. There is judgement behind that policy. Human progress is – chaotic. The effects of outside intervention cannot be predicted with confidence.

  ‘Even when you’re dealing with the Destroyer event? But that’s insane. Outrageous. You can’t get much more of a predictable intervention in human affairs than a damn fireball heading for Earth!’

  I cannot demonstrate that you are wrong. It is a tension between ethics and caution.

  ‘Ha. Come the year 3397, I could demonstrate how wrong you are.’

  Bartholomew touched his arm. ‘Malenfant. Be calm.’

  Malenfant looked at him bleakly. ‘Calm. Right. While on every wall on this planet, that countdown clock is ticking.’ He turned to the Answerer screen once more. ‘OK. What else should I ask you?’

  About Emma.

  And Malenfant felt like his heart had stopped.

  ‘Of course, Emma. The reason I exist.’

  You may mean that poetically. But in a sense it is literally true. It was her message from Phobos that caused you to be revived from your coldsleep pod.

  ‘What do you know of her?’

  Only a little. Less than you, probably, and that knowledge is probably flawed, like all the pre-Forgetting data sets to which we have access. There may well be traces in the Codex. And of course the only recent data generated on Emma has come from your own utterances, or from the message from Phobos.

  ‘It was a voice recording. Do you have that?’

  Processing.

  And, without warning, the next voice he heard, sounding inside his own head, was Emma’s, just as he had heard it in the coldsleep chamber.

  ‘This is Emma Stoney. NASA astronaut. The date is – well, hell, I have my mission clock but that means nothing now, I don’t know the date. Nothing makes sense since we emerged from our trial descent into Phobos. The ship, the hab module, is gone. We can’t pick up anything from Earth.

  ‘Damn it, Jupiter is in the wrong place, and from Martian orbit you can’t miss Jupiter, believe me. I don’t know the date, I don’t know the time.

  ‘Come on, Stoney, be professional. What do you know?—’

  ‘Enough.’

  Emma’s voice shut down.

  Malenfant’s eyes had teared up, before the Answerer’s blank screen.

  Bartholomew put his arm around him. ‘Come on. That’s enough for today. Besid
es, we’ve been in here so long we’ve caused a queue.’

  Malenfant looked out across the chamber, saw people standing discreetly by the door.

  ‘But it’s all wrong. God damn it.’

  ‘I know. Come on now.’

  ‘First thing tomorrow, Bartholomew, we go to this Codex, and we find her.’

  ‘I know, I know. Come now.’

  The people in the line stared as they approached. A couple of them seemed to recognise Malenfant. But they let him and Bartholomew by, kindly turning away as they passed.

  Malenfant looked back once. The Answerer screen glowed, mute and empty.

  He realised he hadn’t even said farewell.

  19

  The nearest access point to the Codex of Mankind was a Pylon on the site of an ancient city called Chester, in the north-west of England, around a hundred kilometres from Birmingham. Bartholomew arranged for a loan of the family flyer for the next day.

  And this time Deirdra insisted on coming too.

  Malenfant had trouble understanding why. And he wondered if it would be worth the inevitable conflict with her mother. ‘Are you sure? It’s just going to be some dusty old records office.’

  She laughed. ‘Not a speck of dust, Malenfant. It’s just like where you met the Answerer. I go there all the time.’

  ‘OK, but still, for someone your age to be so immersed in ancient history . . . I suppose if you weren’t interested in the past you wouldn’t have volunteered to come get me in the first place.’

  ‘It’s not the past I go there for. Well, strictly speaking it is. But not history. Not the deep past.’ She blushed. ‘I go there to speak to my dad.’

  ‘Ah.’ He took that in. She seemed quite sincere in what she said – and he, Malenfant, still had no idea what this Codex really was or how it worked – and meanwhile he was evidently trampling all over her sensitivities, not for the first time. ‘I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.’

  ‘No. You just don’t know stuff yet. That’s OK. You’re traumatised, out of time, suffering culture shock . . .’