Futures - Four Novellas Part 1

FUTURES.

FOUR NOVELLAS.

PETER F. HAMILTON.

Introduction by Peter Crowther

Let's talk about s.p.a.ce: Well, it makes a kind of sense, you've either bought this book (Hurrah!) or you're thumbing through it-maybe thinking about buying it, maybe just hanging around until the counter queue disappears so you can hit on the a.s.sistant you've been eyeing up for the past few weeks, or maybe you've just ducked into a bookstore and you're waiting for the rain to stop. Whichever, you've still picked up what is, to all intents and purposes (given the fairly obvious packaging), a science fiction book, so we'll take it as read you've got some kind of interest in s.p.a.ce. So we'll move forward a little.

Do you remember who first took you into s.p.a.ce? Because, let's face it, we've all been up there, either via the printed page, the movie theater or the TV set. So who was that person into whose care you entrusted your imagination ... saying, albeit silently, "Here I am ... make my senses spin and my jaw drop .. .feed me Wonder!"? If it was by the printed page then maybe it was in the capable hands of H. G. Wells or Jules Verne, with their futuristic visions of s.p.a.ce travel, in c.u.mbersome rockets whose viii trajectory and power source were a little shaky even then, around about a century ago for most of those marvelous tales. Or maybe it was the pulp-fictioneers, those penny-a- word scribes who filled page after page of exotic planetary locations usually populated by scantily-clad females and horrible monsters (boy, it must have been tough being a girl on some of those orbiting rocks ... at least until the torn- suited Earth astronaut crash-landed to save the day). Maybe it was the likes of the "serious" writers ... guys like Isaac Asimov, with his agoraphobic investigator, his robotic hordes and the mind-boggling read that were the Foundation books; and Ray Bradbury, with his homespun humanistic homilies of interstellar needles descending onto the Martian quilt and poverty-line families constructing soapbox rockets in their back yards; and Arthur C. Clarke, with his barroom fables from the White Hart and the short story "The Sentinel" that became 2001: A s.p.a.ce Odyssey. In fact, maybe it was film-the sight of Spielberg's mother s.h.i.+p descending onto the mountain-top or the spectacle of the alien toddler bursting out of John Hurt's stomach -or TV (Joseph Stefano's insectoid Zanti misfits from The Outer Limits, perhaps ... or the scene when one of the folks in Rod Serling's Twilight Zone diner reveals he's a Martian) that lit the fire in your soul and set you dreaming about out there. There are so many writers and artists and directors who, year upon year, decade upon decade, have continued the craft, fas.h.i.+oning their own voices and their own ideologies, that it's a genre in which, no matter where you start into it, it's eminently possible-and frequently essential-to travel back to earlier works for further entertainment and enlightenment. ix nMfc*. .--Mti*$lsBii As we've been told through our TV sets for more than 30 years, s.p.a.ce may well be the final frontier. Of course there's Time to be unraveled yet, and Immortality, but the vastness of s.p.a.ce-with its seemingly infinite possibilities of worlds, cultures, environments, eco structures and so on-invariably strikes the loudest chord in the minds of fiction readers and mo vie-watchers the world over. And no matter how far we manage to progress into the void, that frontier will still be there... the line just being constantly rubbed out and redrawn again and again, each time a little further away. Although I've spent much of the last 10 or 12 years involved with horror, dark fantasy and even crime-both writing it and editing anthologies of the stuff-science fiction (or, more specifically, s.p.a.ce fiction) was my first love ... fed from the British black and white reprints of full-color American comic books such as Mystery In s.p.a.ce or curled up on a sofa listening to the BBC's radio renditions of Charles Chilton's Journey Into s.p.a.ce. But it was Patrick Moore who first took me into s.p.a.ce via a book. The year was 1958, and it was probably my first hardcover ... bought by my parents for Christmas (it's neatly inscribed in my mother's handwriting, penned, I'm sure, little realizing the effect such a gift was to have on her son) a book ent.i.tled Peril on Mars, written by the great astronomer himself. It was wonderful stuff and I had no hesitation in scribbling down the t.i.tles of the three earlier adventures of Maurice Gray and his friends on the Red Planet. I've since had the opportunity of acknowledging that formative experience by commissioning an Introduction from Patrick for Mars Probes, an anthology of new stories about our closest x planetary neighbor to be published in the US in late 2001- it's always nice to square the books and repay your dues, no matter how long it takes. Anyway, back in the 1950s and hungry for more science fictional inspiration, I haunted the bookshops and quickly discovered Angus McVicar's Lost Planet series, featuring young Jeremy Grant, and E. C. Eliott's tales of Kemlo and his friends on Satellite Belt K. And then on to H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds-which I had already read as a Cla.s.sics Ill.u.s.trated and so knew the story-and Edgar Rice Bur-roughs's Princess of Mars and its many sequels. After that, courtesy of my English Language tutor at Leeds Grammar School, came Ray Bradbury's The Ill.u.s.trated Man ... in which "Kaleidoscope", a one-act tale of a doomed astronaut adrift in the void, brought the concept of s.p.a.ce travel firmly into the realms of the possible-even the probable-and, paradoxically, its downbeat finale made the prospect of such adventure even more attractive than the ray-gun variety of SF favored by the comic books and the once-so-called "juvenile" adventures. From then I was firmly hooked. As I grew older and more adventurous and demanding in my reading, the emphasis on s.p.a.ce gave way to terra firma tales set sometimes in possible futures, sometimes in the present and occasionally on an alternate version of Earth on which accepted historical facts and events had been altered ... sometimes subtly and sometimes not. Thus it was that the science-or simply the developmental and speculative possibilities inherent in this brave and frequently audacious brand of literature-wove its spell. Now I can enjoy the so-called hard science (quite an achievement for someone who regularly marvels at both car and computer-and even, when the muse hides for a while, my desk lamp-when they obligingly respond to the flicking of a switch) just as much as the s.p.a.ce opera of, say, E. E. Smith's Lensman books and old issues of Amazing and Fantastic. All of these still grace my crowded bookshelves, though old faithfuls such as some of the ones I've already mentioned and the likes of Carey Rockwell's adventures of Tom Corbett, s.p.a.ce Cadet are (despite, in the latter, the exemplary technical a.s.sistance of Willey Ley) a little more mannered today than they seemed to be all those years ago. But mannered or not, they all make up a glorious confusion of adventures and stories set both on Earth and on worlds near and far, and in strange futures ... realities populated by fantastic creatures and barely recognizable versions of ourselves. And every single word on every page continues to fight the good fight and carry forward the baton of imaginative fiction. The quartet of novellas in Futures, the second in what will be a continuing series of the very best in long short fiction, comes from four writers working at the forefront of British science fiction ... four writers who have carried that baton of imagination with tremendous vigor. There are echoes of many of the authors I've already mentioned -and a whole lot more-in these four great works. I could say that, for me at least, lan McDonald's latest tale of the rampaging alien infestation known as the Chaga and, specifically, of its effects on the life of a young East African girl, calls to mind much of J. G. Ballard's work circa The Drowned World; that Stephen Baxter's consideration of G.o.dhood and immortality on one of Saturn's moons in the sixth millennium seems a touch reminiscent of Arthur C. xii Clarke's almost mystical parables of Mankind's true destiny set against a backdrop of supposed future Utopias; that Peter F. Hamilton's centuries-long murder investigation conducted, as forensic science develops, by descendants of the Roman Empire on an alternate Earth, carries the feel of both Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot tales and the Gil Hamilton stories of Larry Niven; and that Paul McAuley's epoch- stretching, post-uiet War saga of politics, upheaval and opera at the edge of the solar system features all the very best in hard science and future history as exemplified by Isaac Asimov's Foundation cycle. But that's just my take-yours may well be entirely different: just as we all bring different things to the reading process, so too do we take away different things when that process has been completed. All that is certain is that great writing is here in these pages ... great invention and great characterization, too- finally laying to rest (if such a ceremony were really needed anymore) the h.o.a.ry old chestnut that SF cares less about humanity and personal relations.h.i.+ps than it does about detailing the workings of a rocket's engines. And you're due for some of the most wonderful and disconcerting suggestions as to what may lie ahead for the human race. In their introduction to the 1992 edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, John Clute and Peter Nicholls rightly recognize that the secret history of SF is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside ... and the further in you go, the bigger it gets. Science fiction is more popular now than ever before: moreover, having at last escaped the withering stigma imposed by the constraints of the old pulp magazines in terms of both content and execution, it's finally finding warmer receptions in the one-time frosty corridors occupied by the literati-as surely evidenced by John Updike's recent Toward the End of Time. What the great supporters of the field have always said is true: science fiction is the literature of ideas. Here are four more ... but they are four covering a whole host of styles and images and approaches to the field. s.p.a.ce Opera, Future Civilizations, Alien Invasions, Scientific Advancement, Political Chicanery, Human Relations.h.i.+p and even Police Procedural-they're all here. But then they would be ... because those are what science fiction is all about. So no matter who took you into s.p.a.ce the first time, you're about to go again ... in the safe hands of four of the best interstellar pilots in the galaxy. Enjoy the trip. matching Trees Grouu

WATCHING TREES GROW by Peter F. Hamilton

Peter Hamilton brings his trademark flair for narrative sweep and epic ideas to a short novel that tells the story of a near immortal mankind that grew from the Roman Empire.

ONE.

Oxford. England DO 1832 If I was dreaming that night I forgot it the instant when that blasted telephone woke me with its shrill two-tone whistle. I fumbled round for the bedside light, very aware of Myriam s.h.i.+fting and groaning on the mattress beside me. She was seven months pregnant with our child, and no longer appreciated the calls which I received at strange hours. I found the little chain dangling from the light, tugged it, and picked up the black bakelite handset.

I wasn't surprised to have the rich vowels of Francis Haughton Raleigh rolling down the crackly line at me. The family's old missi dominici is my immediate superior. Few others would risk my displeasure with a call at night.

"Edward, my boy," he growled. "So sorry to wake you at this unG.o.dly hour."

I glanced at the bra.s.s clock on the chest of drawers; its luminous hands were showing quarter past midnight. "That's all right, sir. I wasn't sleeping."

Myriam turned over and gave me a derisory look.

"Please, no need to call me, sir. The thing is, Edward, we have a bit of a problem."

"Where?"

"Here in the city, would you believe. It's really the most d.a.m.nable news. One of the students has been

killed. Murdered, the police seem to think."

I stopped my fidgeting, suddenly very awake. Murder, a concept as difficult to grasp as it was frightening to behold. What kind of pre-Empire savage could do that to another person? "One of ours?"

"Apparently so. He's a Raleigh, anyway. Not that we've had positive confirmation."

"I see." I sat up, causing the flannel sheet to fall from my shoulders. Myriam was frowning now, more

concerned than puzzled.

"Can we obtain that confirmation?" I asked.

"Absolutely. And a lot more besides. I'm afraid you and I have been handed the family jurisdiction on

this one. I'll pick you up in ten minutes." The handset buzzed as the connection ended.

I leaned over and kissed Myriam gently. "Got to go."

"What is it? What's happened?"

Her face had filled with worry. So much so that I was unable to answer in truth. It wasn't that she lacked

strength. Myriam was a senior technical nurse, seeing pain and suffering every day at the city clinic-she'd certainly seen more dead bodies than I ever had. But blurting out this kind of news went against my every instinct. Obscurely, it felt to me as though I was protecting our unborn. I simply didn't want my child to come into a world where such horror could exist. Murder. I couldn't help but s.h.i.+ver as I pulled on my s.h.i.+rt, cold fingers making a hash of the small pearl b.u.t.tons. "Some kind of accident, we think. Francis and I have to investigate. I'll tell you in the morning." When, the Blessed Mary willing, it might be proved some ghastly mistake.

My leather attache case was in the study, a present from my mother when I pa.s.sed my legal exams. I had been negligent in employing it until now, some of its fine bra.s.s implements and other paraphernalia had never even been taken from their compartments. I s.n.a.t.c.hed it up as if it were some form of security tool, its scientific contents a s.h.i.+eld against the illogicality abroad in the city that night.

I didn't have a long wait in the lobby before Francis's big black car rolled up outside, crunching the slushy remnants of last week's snowfall. The old man waited patiently while I buckled the safety restraint straps around my chest and shoulders before switching on the batteries and engaging the gearing toggle. We slipped quietly out onto the cobbled street, powerful yellow headlamps casting a wide fan of illumination.

The apartment which Myriam and I rent is in the city's Botley district, a pleasant area of residential blocks and well-tended parks, where small businesses and shops occupy the ground floors of most buildings. The younger, professional members of the better families had taken to the district, their nannies filling the daytime streets with prams and cl.u.s.ters of small excitable children. At night it seemed bleaker somehow, lacking vitality.

Francis twisted the motor potentiometer, propelling the car up to a full twenty-five miles an hour. "You know, it's at times like this I wish the Roman Congress hadn't banned combustion engines last year," he grumbled. "We could be there in half a minute."

"Batteries will improve," I told him patiently. "And petroleum was dangerous stuff. It could explode if there were an accident."

"I know, I know. l.u.s.ting after speed is a Shorts way of thinking. But I sometimes wonder if we're not being too timid these days. The average citizen is a responsible fellow. It's not as if he'll take a car out looking to do damage with it. n.o.body ever complains about horse riding."

"There's the pollution factor as well. And we can't afford to squander our resources. There's only a finite amount of crude oil on the planet, and you know the population projections. We must safeguard the future, we're going to spend the rest of our lives there."

Francis sighed theatrically. "Well recited. So full of earnest promise, you youngsters."

"I'm thirty-eight," I reminded him. "I have three accredited children already." One of which I had to fight to gain family registration for. The outcome of a youthful indiscretion with a girl at college. We all have them.

"A child," Francis said dismissively. "You know, when I was young, in my teens in fact, I met an old man who claimed he could remember the last of the Roman Legionaries withdrawing from Britain when he was a boy."

I performed the math quickly in my head. It could be possible, given how old Francis was. "That's interesting."

"Don't patronize, my boy. The point is, progress brings its own problems. The world that old man lived in changed very little in his lifetime-it was almost the same as the Second Imperial Era. While today, our whole mindset, the way we look at our existence, is transformed every time a new scientific discovery drops into our lap. He had stability. We don't. We have to work harder because of that, be on our guard more. It's painful for someone of my age."

"Are you saying today's world makes murder more likely?"

"No. Not yet. But the possibility is there. Change is always a domino effect. And the likes of you and I must be conscious of that, above all else. We are the appointed guardians, after all."

"I'll remember."

"And you'll need to keep remembering it as well, not just for now, but for centuries."

I managed to prevent my head from shaking in amus.e.m.e.nt. The old man was always going on about the uncertainties and dangers of the future. Given the degree of social and technological evolution he'd witnessed in the last four hundred years, it's a quirk which I readily excuse. When he was my age the world had yet to see electricity and water mains; medicine then consisted of herbs boiled up by old women in accordance with lore already ancient in the First Imperial Era. "So what do we know about this possible murder?"

"Very little. The police phoned the local family office, who got straight on to me. The gentleman we're talking about is Justin Ascham Raleigh; he's from the Nottingham Raleighs. Apparently, his neighbor heard sounds coming from his room, and thought there was some kind of fight or struggle going on. He alerted the lodgekeepers. They opened the room up and found him, or at least a body."

"Suspicious circ.u.mstances?"

"Very definitely yes."

We drove into the center of Oxford. Half past midnight was hardly late by the city's standards. There were students thronging the tree-lined streets, just starting to leave the cafes and taverns. Boisterous, yes; I could remember my own time here as a student, first studying science, then later law. They shouted as they made their way back to their residences and colleges; quoting obscure verse, drinking from the neck of bottles, throwing books and bags about... one group was even having a scrum down, slithering about on the icy pavement. Police and lodgekeepers looked on benignly at such activity, for it never gets any worse than this.

Francis slowed the car to a mere crawl as a bunch of revelers ran across the road ahead. One young man mooned us before rus.h.i.+ng off to merge with his laughing friends. Many of them were girls, about half of whom were visibly pregnant.

"Thinks we're the civic authorities, no doubt," Francis muttered around a small smile. "I could show him a thing or two about misbehaving."

We drew up outside the main entrance to Dunbar College. I hadn't been inside for well over a decade, and had few memories of the place. It was a six-story building of pale yellow stone, with great mullioned windows overlooking the broad boulevard. Snow had been cleared from the road and piled up in big mounds on either side of the archway which led into the quad. A police constable and a junior lodgekeeper were waiting for us in the lodgekeeper's office just inside the entranceway, keeping warm by the iron barrel stove. They greeted us briskly, and led us inside.

Students were milling uneasily in the long corridors, dressed in pajamas, or wrapped in blankets to protect themselves from the cool air. They knew something was wrong, but not what. Lodgekeepers dressed in black suits patrolled the pa.s.sages and cloisters, urging patience and restraint. Everyone fell silent as we strode past.

We went up two flights of spiraling stone stairs, and along another corridor. The chief lodgekeeper was standing outside a st.u.r.dy wooden door, no different to the twenty other lodgings on that floor. His ancient creased face registered the most profound sadness. He nodded as the constable announced who we were, and ushered us inside.

Justin Ascham Raleigh's accommodation was typical of a final year student-three private rooms: bedroom, parlor and study. They had high ceilings, wood paneled walls dark with age, long once-grand curtains hanging across the windows. All the interconnecting doors had been opened, allowing us to see the corner of a bed at the far end of the little suite. A fire had been lit in the small iron grate of the study, its embers still glowing, holding off the night's chill air.

Quite a little group of people were waiting for us. I glanced at them quickly: three student-types, two young men and a girl, obviously very distressed; and an older man in a jade-green police uniform, with the five gold stars of a senior detective. He introduced himself as Gareth Alan Pitchford, his tone somber and quiet. "And I've heard of you, sir. Your reputation is well established in this city."

"Why thank you," Francis said graciously. "This is my deputy, Edward Buchanan Raleigh."

Gareth Alan Pitchford bestowed a polite smile, as courteous as the situation required, but not really interested. I bore it stoically.

"So what have we got here?" Francis asked.

Detective Pitchford led us into the study. Shelving filled with a mixture of academic reference books and cla.s.sic fiction covered two walls. I was drawn to the wonderfully detailed star charts which hung upon the other walls, alternating with large photographs of extravagant astronomical objects. A bulky electrically powered typewriter took pride of place on a broad oak desk, surrounded by a litter of paper and open scientific journals. An ordinary metal and leather office chair with castors stood behind the desk, a gray sports jacket hanging on its back.

The body was crumpled in a corner, covered with a navy- blue nylon sheet. A considerable quant.i.ty of blood had soaked into the threadbare Turkish carpet.

It started with a big splash in the middle of the room, laying a trail of splotches to the stain around the corpse.

"This isn't pretty," the detective warned as he turned down the sheet.

I freely admit no exercise in self control could prevent me from wincing at what I saw that moment.

Revulsion gripped me, making my head turn away. A knife was sticking out of Justin Ascham Raleigh's right eye; it was buried almost up to the hilt.

The detective continued to pull the sheet away. I forced myself to resume my examination. There was a deep cut across Justin Ascham Raleigh's abdomen, and his ripped s.h.i.+rt was stained scarlet. "You can see that the attacker went for the belly first," the detective said. "That was a disabling blow, which must have taken place about here." He pointed to the glistening splash of blood in the middle of the study.

"I'm a.s.suming Mr. Raleigh would have staggered back into this corner and fallen."

"At which point he was finished off," Francis said matter- of-factly. "I would have thought he was dying anyway from the amount of blood lost from the first wound, but his a.s.sailant was obviously very determined he should die."

"That's my belief," the detective said.

Francis gave me an inquiring look.

"I agree," I stuttered.

Francis gestured weakly, his face flush with distaste. The sheet was pulled back up. Without any spoken agreement, the three of us moved away from the corpse to cl.u.s.ter in the doorway leading to the parlor.

"Can we have the full sequence of events, please?" Francis asked.

"We don't have much yet," the detective said. "Mr. Raleigh and five of his friends had supper together at the Orange Grove restaurant earlier this evening.

It lasted from half past seven to about ten o'clock, at which point they left and separated. Mr. Raleigh came back here to Dunbar by himself around twenty past ten-the lodgekeepers confirm that. Then at approximately half past eleven, his neighbor heard an altercation, then a scream. He telephoned down to