Space - Stephen Baxter

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in the shadows.

      ‘These are sources of infrared,’ she said. ‘Sources I cannot explain.’

      Malenfant bent to study the little beads of light. ‘Could they be asteroids that have strayed into the gap after collisions?’

      ‘No. The sources are too bright. In fact, they are each emitting more heat than they receive from the sun. I am, of course, seeking firmer evidence: for example, structure in the infrared signature; or perhaps there will be radio leakage.’

      He stared at the ruby lights. My God. She’s right. If these are emitting heat, this is unambiguous: it’s evidence of industrial activity …

      His heart thumped. Somehow he hadn’t accepted what she had said to him, not in his gut, not up to now. But now he could see it, and his universe was transformed.

      He made out her face in the dim light reflected from the regolith, the smooth sweep of human flesh here in this dusty wilderness. Though it must have been a big moment for her to show him this evidence – a moment of triumph – she seemed troubled. ‘Nemoto, why did you ask me here? Your work is a fine piece of science, as far as I can see. The interpretation is unambiguous. You should publish. Why do you need reassurance from me?’

      ‘I know this is good science. But the answer is wrong. Very wrong. The koan is not resolved at all. Don’t you see that?’ She glared up at the sky, as if trying to make out the signature of aliens with her own eyes. ‘Why now?’

      He glimpsed her meaning.

      They must have just arrived, or we’d surely see their works, the transformed asteroids swarming … But why should they arrive now, just as we ourselves are ready to move beyond the Earth – just as we are able to comprehend them? A simple coincidence? Why shouldn’t they have come here long ago?

      He grinned. Old Fermi wasn’t beaten yet; there were deeper layers of the paradox here, much to unravel, new questions to ask.

      But it wasn’t a moment for philosophy.

      His mind was racing. ‘We aren’t alone. Whatever the implications, the unanswered questions – my God, what a thought. We’ll need the resources of the race, of all of us, to respond to this.’

      She smiled thinly. ‘Yes. The stars have intervened, it seems. Your kokuminsei, your people’s spirit, must revive. It will be satori – a reawakening. Come.’ She held out her hand. ‘We should go back to Edo. We have much to do.’

      He squinted, trying to make out the constellations against the glare of the regolith. There was gaijin-kusai there, the smell of foreigner, he thought. He felt exhilarated, awakened, as if a hiatus was coming to an end. This changes everything.

      He took Nemoto’s hand, and they walked back across the regolith to the tractor.

       Chapter 2

       BAIKONUR

      The priest was not what Xenia Makarova had expected.

      Xenia herself wasn’t religious. And Xenia’s family, emigrant to the United States four generations ago, had been Orthodox. What did she know about Catholic priests? So she had expected the cliché: some gaunt old man, Italian or Irish, shrivelled up by a lifetime of celibacy, dressed in a flapping black cassock that would soak up the toxic dust and prove utterly unsuitable for the conditions here at the launch site.

      Her first surprise had come when the priest had expressed no special accommodation requirements, but had been happy to stay in the town of Baikonur, along with the technicians who worked for Bootstrap here at the old Soviet-era launch station. Baikonur – once called Leninsk, at the heart of Kazakhstan – was a place of burned-out offices and abandoned, windowless apartments, of roads and roofs coated with strata of gritty brown powder, blown from the pesticide-laden salt flats of the long-dead Aral Sea a few hundred kilometres away. Baikonur was a relic of Soviet dreams, plagued by crime and ill-health. Not a good place to stay.

      So Xenia wasn’t sure what to expect by the time the bus drew up to the security gate, and she went out to greet her holy guest.

      The priest must have been sixty, small, compact: fit-looking, though she showed some stiffness climbing down from the bus. Camera drones, glittering toys the size of beetles, whirred out in a cloud around her head.

      Her, yes: of course it would be a female, one of the Vatican’s first cadre of women priests, that would be assigned to this most PR-friendly of operations.

      And no black cassock. The priest, dressed in loose, comfortable-looking therm-aware shirt and slacks, could have held any one of a number of white collar professions: an accountant, maybe, or a space scientist of the kind Frank Paulis had recruited in droves, or even a lawyer like Xenia herself. It was only the dog collar, a thin band of white at the throat, that marked out a different vocation.

      From the shadows of her broad, sensible sun-hat the priest smiled out at Xenia. ‘You must be Ms Makarova.’

      ‘Call me Xenia. And you –’

      ‘Dorothy Chaum.’ The smile grew a little weary. ‘I’m neither Mother, nor Father, thankfully. You must call me Dorothy.’

      ‘It’s a pleasure to have you here, Ms – Dorothy.’

      Dorothy flapped at the drones buzzing around her head like flies. ‘You’re a good liar. I’ll try to trouble you as little as I can.’ And she looked beyond Xenia, into the rocket compound, with questing, curious eyes.

      Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, Xenia thought.

      

      Xenia, in fact, had been against the visit on principle, and she had told her boss so. ‘For God’s sake, Frank. This is a space launcher development site. It’s a place for hard hats, not haloes.’

      Frank Paulis – forty-five years old, squat, brisk, bustling, sleek with sweat even in his air-conditioned offices – had just tapped his softscreen. ‘Just like it says in the mail here. This character is here on behalf of the Pope, to gather information on the mission –’

      ‘And bless it. Frank, the Bruno is a mission to the asteroids. We’re going out to find Eeties, for God’s sake. To have some quack waving incense and throwing holy water over our ship is – ridiculous. Mediaeval.’

      Frank had got a look in his eyes she’d come to recognize. You have to be realistic, Xenia. Live in the real world. ‘The Vatican are one of our principal sponsors. They’ve a right to access.’

      ‘The Church is using us as part of its repositioning,’ she’d protested sourly. It was true; the Church had spent much of the new millennium rebuilding, after the multiple crises that had assailed it after the turn of the century: sexual scandals, financial irregularities, a renewed awareness of the horrors of Christian history – the Crusades and the Inquisition chief amongst them. ‘Not to mention,’ Xenia said bitterly, ‘the Church’s refusal to acknowledge female reproductive rights and to address the issue of population growth, a position not abandoned until 2013, a historic wrong which must be on a par with –’

      ‘Nobody’s arguing,’ Frank said gently. ‘But – who are you suggesting is cynical? Us or them? Look, I don’t care about the Church. All I care about is its money, and there’s still a hell of a lot of that. And, just like any other corporate sponsor, the Church is entitled to its slice of the PR pie.’

      ‘Sometimes I think you’d take money from the Devil himself if it got your Big Dumb Booster a little closer to the launch pad.’

      ‘Since we have a bunch of those apocalyptic cultists here – the ones who think the Gaijin are demons sent to punish us, or whatever – I suppose I am taking money

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