Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  ‘You’ve never seen snow.’

  ‘Duh. Zone!’

  ‘I’ll thank you not to take that tone, young lady. Now why don’t you tell me how long this has been bothering you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Like for ever.’

  ‘No it hasn’t. You used to be the happiest of all my children. I was so proud, after everything you’ve been through.’

  ‘So you’re not any more, then?’

  ‘Hoo boy. Okay, what do you want to know?’

  ‘Where did I come from? Are you my parents?’

  ‘You came from one of the Distant Planets.’

  ‘The what? I’ve never heard of them.’

  ‘Ah, something you don’t know. Good, well you look them up when you can spare the time from hacking into the habitat’s 18+ entertainment cache.’

  Rebka flushed bright red.

  ‘The Distant worlds are planets that aren’t affiliated to the rest of the trans-stellar community, usually for political reasons,’ her mother explained. ‘And you were brought here for treatment, because we can offer the best genetic therapy there is.’

  ‘And the other? You and Dad?’

  ‘You don’t have any of my DNA in your cells, nor your father’s. Do you believe that means you aren’t our daughter? That we don’t love you just as much as Raul and Krista?’

  ‘No,’ Rebka muttered. Now her eyes were getting all wet for no reason. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought.’

  Monique went over and put her arms around the upset girl. ‘Now listen to me. From the moment I saw you being brought onto the spaceplane at Gibraltar, I wanted nothing more than to protect and nurture you. One day you will have to be told about your heritage, because it is unique and special. But we haven’t talked about that because you are still a child, and I want that to last for as long as possible, because I love your laughter, and your excitement, and I like beating you at tennis, still; and I even like your temper tantrums because it proves what a determined little horror you are. And when you smile it is the most precious, wonderful moment in the universe for me.’

  Rebka couldn’t help it, she was sobbing openly now. ‘Am I awful? Is that it? Am I from bad people? Will I be bad too?’

  ‘No, of course not. Far from it. And this is why we haven’t made an issue of this, the past is over and you have the whole of your future to live in. And when you do face up to this issue, your dad and I will be there to help you through anything you find difficult. But for now, will you please just concentrate on having a good time? There’s so much in this weird and enchanting habitat of ours to enjoy. So much to learn.’

  She nodded solemnly. ‘I will. I’ll be good.’

  ‘You don’t have to be perfect, dear. Just figure out which rules you shouldn’t break.’

  ‘Like ignoring a rad-haz alert?’

  ‘Like reacting as if it’s designed to annoy you personally. It’s not. We didn’t always have arb molecule shielding.’

  ‘I know. I told Raul that.’

  ‘You really do pay attention to your lessons, don’t you?’

  ‘I like school,’ she insisted.

  ‘Thank heavens for that.’

  ‘And I let you win at tennis.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Why are we here, Mum? Why did Constantine build the habitat?’

  ‘Because somebody had to.’

  ‘Why? What’s it all for?’

  ‘Jupiter is an enclave of human civilization that we are determined will not fall. We are both a refuge and, if necessary, a seed to regrow humanity should the Zanth succeed in wiping out all our worlds. Your father and I came here with Constantine because we believed in his vision, to build a society that rejects avarice and selfishness, and more than that, one that can help the rest of the human race.’

  ‘Is that what we’re doing?’ Rebka asked excitedly. ‘Helping people?’

  ‘Yes. Even though they don’t know it yet.’

  *

  The Trans-stellar Situation Centre was a large concrete-ribbed chamber on the lowest level of the HDA headquarters, itself the size of a small town buried a supersafe kilometre below Alice Springs in the Australian desert. From there, its designers believed, it would be able to function for at least a month after a Zanthstorm began, leading the ultimate battle to protect the old homeworld long enough for the inevitable evacuation. It was a fight which would largely be coordinated from the Situation Centre, whose walls were covered with big curving holographic panes, each one showing various enhanced images of every human-settled star system. Fleets of observation satellites, possessed of more sensor boom spikes than sea urchins, circled those stars in orbits that varied from a couple of million kilometres above the blazing coronas right out to the frozen wastes of the outer cometary belts. Their only function was to monitor the quantum structure of spacetime for any hint of the distortions which were the precursors to a Zanthswarm, beaming the data back to the planetary gateways, and from there through the dedicated, heavily protected HDA network on Earth.

  The entire monitoring set-up was completely automated, with the most powerful AI cores ever built analysing and interpreting every quiver and fluctuation in every field interstice. That didn’t prevent HDA from filling the Centre with over a hundred highly specialist technical staff, each sitting alertly at a zone console, checking the telemetry streams from the satellites, and reviewing the status of each star system on a continual basis.

  They were ready for any sign of an emerging Zanthswarm that might threaten a world settled by humans.

  However, for all the contingencies they trained for, all the different scenarios thought up by the tactical review board, the Situation Centre didn’t quite know how to respond to the news of sunspots on Sirius. There certainly wasn’t an alert status that reflected it. And the information bubbling through the transnet was more gossip than hard data. That, then, was their first priority, Captain Toi decided, to determine exactly what was happening. As head of the Sol watch section, she also had oversight for St Libra, which was the HDA’s perennial problem child.

  Unlike every other trans-stellar world, the giant planet didn’t have its own HDA section. Nor was there an HDA base there, either, just an office in Highcastle. St Libra was only a minority HDA member. That was all down to money. The Highcastle Council, which was the largest democratic government on St Libra, declined to tax its citizens and corporations at a level that full HDA membership required. Mainly because Highcastle was a company town; the Council set up by Northumberland Interstellar and its bioil compatriots. The theory drawn up by accountants was that everyone on the planet (under their dominion) lived within a few hundred kilometres of the gateway. They could all get out fast, unlike other planets whose pioneering citizens gloried in spreading out from pole to pole. This was in the days before Bartram went and established Abellia, of course, but even after that nothing changed.

  Then there were the Independencies, who without exception were openly hostile to any notion of what they denounced as: submitting to HDA’s repressive militaristic authority. That left the whole problem of what would happen if there ever was a Zanthswarm on Sirius open to a great deal of political buck passing. Would the GE allow all the rebels and anarchists and anti-authoritarians and religious fundamentalists back through the gateway – assuming any of them ever made it that far during a Zanthswarm? Politically, it would be difficult to slam the door shut on millions of people who would be killed if they couldn’t get back. Which then left the possibility open for HDA providing evacuation cover; paid for by every other planet’s taxpayers. The final decision of just how humanitarian humanity would actually be was one that was constantly pushed off every government’s agenda.

  Now Captain Toi had to make the preliminary analysis, which might well result in finally getting an answer to that thorniest of questions. She turned to the colonel in command and asked: ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Get more data,’ was the simple answer. />
  Toi looked up at the single large wall pane that displayed all the spacetime structure data the HDA received from St Libra. Compared to every other pane in the centre it was almost blank. It was impossible to launch satellites from St Libra, since no space vehicle could ever get through the rings. Instead, HDA had chosen to place five quantum sensors across the Ambrose continent. Theoretically they should be able to detect the kind of instabilities that indicated an impending Zanthswarm. If they were lucky, Highcastle might get warned half an hour before the chunks began to fall.

  Right now, none of the detectors was registering any kind of quantum anomaly. So the HDA, the greatest protective force ever assembled by the human race, would have to rely on a bunch of mildly eccentric telescope owners in Highcastle to base a judgement that might ultimately result in millions of people living or dying. And she didn’t even know how many telescopes there were. ‘Not acceptable,’ Toi told the pane forcefully.

  General Khurram Shaikh arrived in the Centre an hour later, responding to the colonel’s request. As usual, he was in full dress uniform. As he came in he was flanked by his staff officers, Major Fendes and Major Vermekia. ‘So where do we stand?’ he asked the colonel in charge of the Centre as he settled in behind the Sol section. ‘Do I need to issue a Zanthswarm alert?’

  ‘No quantum instabilities registering on our St Libra detectors, sir. It doesn’t look like a Zanthswarm yet.’

  ‘So this is just a natural phenomenon?’

  The colonel turned to Toi. ‘Go ahead, Captain.’

  ‘If it is a Zanthswarm, it’s a very unusual one.’ She told her e-i to bring up the image. On the Sirius wall pane a large circle materialized, primarily composed of blue and yellow speckles. It was covered in dark splodges, like some kind of cancer chewing on a healthy organ. ‘We got lucky. The e-Rays being used by the expedition were built to operate during a Zanthswarm and provide us with additional communication relays. Part of their sensor suite is designed to look directly upwards into space. We use the information they gather to feed our tactical base for the Thunderthorns. So far the expedition has just been using them to map the land beneath. I ordered them to scan up instead. What you’re seeing is a baseline composite image of Sirius in real time.’

  ‘That’s good work, Captain,’ the General said.

  ‘Thank you, sir. Of course we can only see one half of Sirius from the planet, but we’re assuming this outbreak is uniform. The spots we’re observing are certainly well distributed.’

  ‘Do we know when this started?’

  ‘The science advisory team I’ve got has been measuring the expansion rate – we’re thinking the first ones started to develop about eighteen hours ago. Twelve have now reached seventy thousand kilometres in diameter and show no sign of contracting yet. Given the scale of Sirius, we’re expecting them to grow considerably larger than they do here at Sol, where they’ve been measured up to eighty thousand kilometres across.’

  ‘All right, so what’s unusual about sunspots on a star?’

  ‘Sir, Sirius has always been a sunspot minimum star – it’s never been observed with anything approaching this kind of mass outbreak before. So far we’ve counted fifty-six sunspots. They usually erupt in pairs, because they’re driven by magnetic field twists in the photosphere. For this many to appear within such a relatively small timeframe something has to be agitating the whole star. And, sir, they’re still appearing. If anything, the rate of emergence seems to be accelerating.’

  Khurram Shaikh gave Captain Toi a long look. ‘Agitating the star?’

  ‘Yes sir. The underlying origin of sunspots is the interaction between a star’s magnetic field and its convection zone. And the only thing we know that can operate on this kind of scale is the Zanth. Even so, it takes weeks for a convection layer disturbance to rise to the surface and produce a spot. This has been building for a while.’

  ‘What about the companion, Sirius B?’ the General asked. ‘Could that have triggered it?’

  ‘The astronomers on the team don’t think so, sir. Right now Sirius B is still on an outward orbit; it’s twenty-three AUs from A. It’s difficult to see how it could affect the primary in this fashion at such a distance. If there was any interaction between the magnetic fields of both stars it would be when they’re at their closest. There have been two conjunctions since we opened a gateway to St Libra. Nothing like this happened at either time.’

  ‘So you’re considering an external event as the reason?’

  ‘Given how stable Sirius usually is, the astronomy team believe that’s likely.’

  ‘You said the disturbances take weeks to rise up through the convection zone,’ Vermekia said. ‘So when did this agitation actually start? Could it have been back in January?’

  ‘Possibly. The timescale isn’t exact. We’d need to have a much greater knowledge of the star’s internal structure, which we simply don’t have. Nobody ever put solar science satellites in orbit there.’

  ‘You said the astronomy team thinks this might be due to an external event,’ the General said. ‘Does that imply there’s another theory floating round?’

  Toi gave the colonel a desperate look, which he ignored. ‘There is one other thing to consider,’ she blurted.

  ‘What is it?’ Shaikh asked patiently.

  ‘Sir, there’s something called the Red Controversy.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘There is some evidence that Sirius once turned red.’

  ‘Red, Captain?’

  ‘Yes, sir. There are records of old astronomers recording Sirius as having a red coloration.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Sir, eh, 150 BC was the first recorded instance.’

  ‘Are you joking, Captain?’

  ‘Sir, no sir. There have been several such inconsistencies in astronomical accounts in early history. They all happened prior to the invention of the telescope so there’s no modern verifiable proof available. But the legend persisted for some time. There was even a tribe in Africa who supposedly knew about Sirius B centuries before telescopes confirmed its existence.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re doing your homework, Captain, but exactly how is this folklore relevant?’

  ‘Two things, sir.’ She glanced up at the pane as the Centre’s AI bracketed a newly emerging sunspot. ‘We don’t know how many sunspots will erupt. If they continue at the current rate the overall luminosity may conceivably fall.’

  ‘And the spectrum will redshift,’ the General concluded. ‘Very good.’

  ‘In which case we’ll have to admit there’s a very long-term natural cycle at work inside Sirius, something that might produce this kind of phenomenon only every two thousand years. The reports from the forward camps and the areas outlying Highcastle do seem to support this, too.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Every plant on the planet is releasing its spores – that has to be an evolutionary trait. The jungles are bracing themselves for a storm. Some of the botanists are claiming the leaves may be sensitive to spectrum shift. However the plants know, they’re right to react in this fashion. The high-energy particle streams being ejected by this sunspot phase are colossal. Those storms are going to hit the planet in a few hours, and the effect they’ll have on all our electrical systems there is going to be extremely detrimental.’

  ‘Will it affect the gateway?’ the General asked sharply.

  ‘Nobody knows, sir. But the atmosphere will be in turmoil once the particles start to energize the upper layers.’

  ‘Yes. I see your point. So we’ve confirmed something unusual is happening, and yet we still don’t know if it is natural or Zanth related.’

  ‘And we might want to consider if it originated from St Libra itself,’ Vermekia said.

  ‘How could that be, Major?’ Shaikh asked.

  ‘We’ve got a lot of unlikely coincidences starting to accumulate here, sir, especially after last night’s incident at Wukang.’

  ‘There’s no genetic v
ariance,’ Fendes said. ‘None at all. The Norths are sending assassin clones to kill each other, or some such nonsense. Now you’re suggesting an unseen, unknown alien running round a jungle with a spear can also interfere with a star’s convection layer?’

  ‘The St Libra aliens are not unknown,’ Vermekia answered smoothly. ‘They are real enough to have killed several HDA personnel already. They also understand our technology well enough to circumvent most of it. To me that is a clear indication of highly developed abilities.’

  ‘There is no animal life on St Libra,’ Fendes insisted.

  ‘And what about the species which bioformed that world? If the geneticists on the expedition have shown nothing else, it is the extremely advanced evolution of the plant life, which given the age of the star is frankly impossible. Are you going to cherry-pick their results? St Libra is a huge enigma which we have been ignoring for too long.’ He jabbed a finger at the big pane with its sickly star dominating the Centre. ‘That is not a natural event. Something is happening out there, and we have to find out what.’

  Shaikh nodded. ‘In that at least, we are in agreement. Captain, what options have you got to expand our information on Sirius?’

  ‘Very limited, sir,’ Toi said.

  ‘But you do have something for me?’

  ‘Realistically, there’s only one thing we can do at this point, but it’s expensive.’

  ‘I’m the one who deals with politicians and their national treasurers, Captain. Let me make that decision.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We have several batches of multifunction sensor satellites in storage at our Cape Town base ready to be deployed in a Zanthswarm. They’re intended to bolster the surveillance clusters above whatever planet is being attacked, so their systems are battle hardened. If we were to open a war gateway above Sirius and inject them into orbit around the star they should be able to function in those conditions for a while, and supply us the data we need.’

  ‘Break into war stocks?’ The General seemed slightly bemused by the prospect. ‘Very well. You have the authorization to begin that operation. Colonel Fendes, liaise with the Cape Town base commander. Make this happen fast. I want to know what’s happening in that bedamned star system.’