The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. 1 Page 11

  Marcus Orthew was standing inside the central chamber. Sort of. He was becoming translucent. I yelled at the others to get out, and ran for the chamber. I reached it as he faded from sight. Then I was inside. My memories started to unwind, playing back my life. Very fast. I only recognized tiny sections amid the blur of color and emotion— the high-speed chase that nearly killed me, the birth of my son, my dad’s funeral, the church where I got married, university. Then the playback started to slow, and I remembered that day when I was about eleven, in the park, when Kenny Mattox our local bully sat on my chest and made me eat the grass cuttings.

  I spluttered as the soggy mass was pushed down past my teeth, crying out in shock and fear. Kenny laughed and stuffed some more grass in. I gagged and started to puke violently. Then he was scrambling off in disgust. I lay there for a while, getting my breath back and spitting out grass. I was eleven years old, and it was nineteen sixty-eight. It wasn’t the way I’d choose to arrive in the past, but in a few months Neil Armstrong would set foot on the Moon, then the Beatles would break up.

  What I should have done, of course, was patented something. But what? I wasn’t a scientist or even an engineer. I can’t tell you the chemical formula for Viagra, and I didn’t know the mechanical details of an airbag. There were everyday things I knew about, icons that we can’t survive without, the kind which rake in millions; but would you like to try selling a venture capitalist the idea of Lara Croft five years before the first pocket calculator hits the shops? I did that. I was actually banned from some banks in the City.

  So I fell back on the easiest thing in the world. I became a singer-songwriter. Songs are ridiculously easy to remember even if you can’t recall the exact lyrics. Remember my first big hit in 78, “Shiny Happy People?” I always was a big REM fan. You’ve never heard of them? Ah well, sometimes I wonder what the band members are doing this time around. “Pretty In Pink,” “Teenage Kicks,” “The Unforgettable Fire,” “Solsbury Hill”? They’re all the same; that fabulous oeuvre of mine isn’t quite as original as I make out. And I’m afraid Live Aid wasn’t actually the flash of inspiration I always said, either. But the music biz has given me a bloody good life. Every album I’ve released has been number one on both sides of the Atlantic. That brings in money. A lot of money. It also attracts girls. I mean, I never really believed the talk about backstage excess in the time I had before, but trust me here, the public never gets to hear the half of it. I thought it was the perfect cover.

  I’ve been employing private agencies to keep an eye on Marcus Orthew since the mid-Seventies, with several of his senior management team actually on my payroll. Hell, I even bought shares in Orthogene, as I knew it was going to make money, though I didn’t expect quite so much money. I can afford to do whatever the hell I want, and the beauty of that is nobody pays any attention to rock stars or how we blow our cash, as everyone thinks we’re talentless junked-up kids heading for a fall. That’s what you think has happened now, isn’t it? The fall. Well, you’re wrong about that.

  See, I made exactly the same mistake as poor old Toby Jenson; I underestimated Marcus. I didn’t think it through. My music made ripples, big ripples. Everyone knows me, I’m famous right across the globe as a one-off supertalent. There’s only one other person in this time who knows those songs aren’t original—Marcus. He knew I came after him. And he hasn’t quite cracked the rejuvenation treatment yet. It’s time for him to move on, to make his fresh start again in another parallel universe.

  That’s why he framed me. Next time around he’s going to become our god. It’s not something he’s going to share with anyone else.

  I LOOKED ROUND the interview room, which had an identical layout to the grubby cube just down the hall where I interviewed Toby Jenson last time around. Paul Mathews and Carmen Galloway were giving me blank-faced looks, buttoning back their anger at being dragged into the statement. I couldn’t quite get used to Paul with a full head of hair, but Orthogene’s follicle treatment is a big earner for the company; everyone in this universe using it.

  I tried to bring my hands up to them, an emphasis to the appeal I was making, but the handcuffs were chained to the table. I glanced down as the metal pulled at my wrists. After the samples had been taken, the forensic team had washed the blood off my hands, but I couldn’t forget it, there’d been so much—the image was actually stronger than the one I kept of Toby Jenson. Yet I’d never seen those girls until I woke up to find their bodies in the hotel bed with me. The paramedics didn’t even try to revive them.

  “Please,” I implored. “Paul, Carmen, you have to believe me.” And I couldn’t even say for old time’s sake.

  A Distillation of Grace

  Adam Roberts

  TWELVE GENERATIONS. THE sum is such that two thousand and forty-eight people reduce down to one person over twelve generations if, and only if, each couple have only a single child, and if the conceptions are controlled such that half of all children are of one gender and half the other. We can call twelve, in this context, a magic number, provided of course that we understand “magic” in its forceful sense of a miraculous divine intervention in reality, a sacramental thing. In this sense, Jesus Christ was a magician. Shad also.

  HERE IS A conversation between Cole, a young boy of the eighth generation, and his tutor, the Patriarchus, or oldest surviving inheritor of the tradition of Shad. Though only ten years old, Cole was eloquent and intelligent. “Of course I understand,” he said, “that our world is unusual in the Galaxy—”

  “Singular,” corrected the Patriarchus. “Unusual implies that there are some others like us, though few. But there are no other worlds like ours. This is our glory.”

  “Singular,” said Cole, and bowed his head in acknowledgment of the correction. “And yet it seems to me,” he continued, “that it is the rest of the cosmos that is unusual, not us. This matter of generations—surely it must be true on every world, just as it is true on ours, that every child has two parents, and every child has four grandparents, and every child has eight great-grandparents, and so on, backward in time...”

  “Of course,” agreed the Patriarchus.

  “Therefore it seems to me that every world should have many more ancestors than present-day inhabitants. Everywhere there should be more inhabitants than descendents, just as it is on our world. And yet the archives say that on every other world,” and he clucked with astonishment at this indigestible fact, “on every other world the opposite is true. There are many more descendents than ancestors. The pyramid is inverted! I cannot understand how that can be.”

  “These other worlds,” said the Patriarchus, indulgently, “have not had the benefit of the wisdom of Shad, bless his memory. They breed prodigiously, such that each new generation outnumbers even the large number of ancestors. And they interbreed promiscuously, so that people share many of the same grandparents and great-grandparents, and a whole vocabulary of words is needed to describe the tangle, terms such as cousin and nepotism and three-times-removed.” The Patriarchus was old, and tired, and here he paused.

  But Cole was possessed of the impatient curiosity of a ten year-old. “And when Shad,” he hurried, “bless his memory, brought the first of us to this world—”

  “God had instructed him,” said the Patriarchus, somberly. “The Bible had inspired him. The Holy Spirit possessed him. He brought a population of two thousand and forty-eight people to this world, and gave them his plan. Each was to marry once, and have one child. Each child was to be genetically determined, in utero, to be either male or female, with an exact balance between the two. The second generation would be half the size of the first, and each member of it would pair off, one-to-one. Medical science—since Shad, bless his memory—”

  “—bless his memory—” Cole chimed in.

  “—since Shad reveals to us that God approves of all scientific and genetic research insofar as it is conducive to the benefits of His divine plan... medical science is recruited to guarantee the exact b
alance of the sexes, to ensure that every couple will be fertile, and to preserve the lives of all offspring. Only in the event of a tragic death may another child be produced, and then only by the parents of the child who has died.” And because this was a teaching session, and not a sermon, the Patriarchus paused here to look sternly at his pupil. “Define tragic death,” he said.

  But Cole knew this lesson. “A tragic death is one in which a person dies before passing on their genetic material to their child.”

  “And other deaths?”

  “—are called glorious deaths, since after one of the Chosen, one of us, has given birth, we are guaranteed a place at God’s right hand.”

  “Very good,” said the Patriarchus indulgently, but a little wearily, for he was tired, and the afternoon was a warm one. From where they were sitting, on the verandah of the Patriarchus’s splendid house, he could see over his own ornamental gardens, with their perfectly circular pond, to the dark-green topiary beyond.

  In the middle distance was a vast arable field across which an automated tractor rumbled along, its oO wheels pressing parallel lines out of the pink clay. Beyond that, purple mountains frayed the line of the horizon, enormously distant and yet vivid, jewel-brilliant, seemingly close enough to reach out and touch. The sky was a flawless mauve. The Patriarchus took simple pleasure in this vista. His charge, the young Cole, took it for granted, of course, as children do with such splendid facts of nature. Never looked at it. Perhaps he would appreciate it when he was older.

  A wind puckered the surface of the pond briefly, and passed on.

  “Have there been any tragic deaths in your generation, Patriarchus?” Cole asked.

  “None, thanks to God, and thanks to Shad-bless-his-memory,” the old man replied. “And none in my child’s, or my grandchild’s, or in your generation either. We take good care of our people on this world. Every soul is precious, for each contributes his essential holiness to the final product, the road to the Unique.”

  “Will you tell me, Patriarchus,” said Cole, after a pause, “about the Unique?” He asked this question tentatively, because he knew that the Unique partook of the nature of divine mystery, and as such it should not be the business of idle chatter.

  “I shall tell you what you know already,” replied the Patriarchus, “and that should suffice you. You are eighth generation, and your partner is decided.”

  “Perry,” said Cole happily, for Perry was pretty, and Cole looked forward to their marriage with pleasure.

  “You and Perry will have a child, a ninth generation. He, or she, will pair and have a child and that child, your future grandson or granddaughter, will be more blessed than us, for he or she will be the grandparent of the Unique itself. That child will give birth to one of the Unique’s parents, and will be alive, should God will it, still be alive when the Unique is born!”

  “And when the Unique is born...?”

  “Then Shad’s purpose will have worked itself out in this cosmos,” said the Patriarchus. “A new grace will enter the universe. And this Unique, this he or she, will be the precise sum of all the holy people who have lived and worked and worshipped on Shad’s World.”

  But this did not tell Cole anything new. This matter of new Grace was kindergarten theology. He wanted more precision—the Unique as a blast of spiritual flame, God like a pillar of light bursting from the planet’s surface, something vivid and fireworky to feed the hunger of his ten-year-old imagination for spectacle. But the Patriarchus’s eyes were closing, and Cole knew enough to leave the old man to his nap.

  COLE, IN TIME, married and had his child, a boy called Parr. And Parr, in due course, married and had a son, called Medd. Cole, in due course, became the Episcopus, the second most senior position in the community of Shad’s World. And then, when the existing Patriarchus died a glorious death, Cole himself became the Patriarchus.

  Life continued in its divinely preordained groove. Every year brought the birth of the Unique closer.

  THERE WAS A problem.

  Medd was fourteen. He had been raised in the fullest knowledge of his holy position, for he would be one of the grandparents of the Unique. He would almost certainly be alive and hale when the Unique was born.

  Yet Medd was a contrary boy. He repudiated his holy calling. He absented himself from school, and ran wild in the woodland, making huts for himself, climbing trees, killing fish in the rivers and cooking them, caked in mud, inside the ashes of an open fire.

  He had been allotted his wife at birth, of course, and being of the tenth generation, there was a simple choice of two—for his generation was only four strong. So close they were to the Unique! Bless the memory of Shad. He was to marry a girl called Rhess, exactly his age, a devout, dark-faced little girl, who looked disdainfully as Medd threw one tantrum or another, in schoolroom or in church. She did not like Medd. Yet she accepted her holy destiny, and was reconciled to the notion of becoming his wife.

  He, however, was not reconciled. “I do not love her,” he said.

  He had fitted up a transceiver from various tech-parts, and had narrowbanded a connection to a Flatship passing not far from their system, sweeping for Gateways. From a friendly AI upon this ship, Medd had downloaded a bundle of old literature, old Earthly poems and plays. These he read avidly, memorizing large portions, such that when the church elders found and deleted his cache he still had great swathes of poetry in his mind.

  It was, the Patriarchus thought, from these forbidden poems that he had learned the notion of sexual love. “I do not love her,” Medd declared, with the absolute certainty that is often characteristic of the young adult. He was fourteen years old and knew everything, past, present and future, without embarrassment of uncertainty. “I never will. I cannot marry her.”

  Then, later, when the absolute necessity of this marriage was pressed and pressed upon him, he changed his tack. “It would be a sin,” he announced. “A sin to marry a woman I did not love. God is love, as it says in the Bible. Wouldn’t it go against the nature of God to enter into such a marriage?”

  “And you believe,” countered the Episcopus, “that you, at fourteen, understand the nature of God better than the whole of Shad’s holy Church?”

  “Yes!” cried Medd, fire in his eyes.

  “You will marry this girl,” said the Episcopus. “It is the will of Shad, bless his memory.”

  “You do not know the will of Shad!” Medd declared, fiercely.

  “If you do not marry her and have your allotted child,” said the Episcopus, angrily but with tears of frustration and fear in his eyes, “then the whole of Shad’s divine plan will come to nothing!”

  “I don’t care,” yelled Medd. “I don’t love her!”

  Every attempt to persuade him broke upon the anvil of this fiercely spoken statement. But is she not comely? Is she not devout? I don’t love her! Do you want to be responsible, you alone in your selfishness responsible for bringing the whole plan crashing down? I don’t love her! Do you want to live a life of celibacy and barrenness?

  “No,” said Medd, becoming calmer. “No, I shall leave this world, somehow. I shall travel the stars, and find my lover there. My true lover.” But why travel from home, when you have a wife already chosen for you? I don’t love her!

  This cussedness on Medd’s part rather spoiled the mood of the New Year’s party. You see, as the year AD twenty-seven-hundred dawned, there was a special mass, and afterward a gathering, dance, and chess tournament. But the mood was subdued, and several members of the congregation cast sorrowful looks at Medd, as he was absorbed in his chess game. “Twenty-seven-hundred is only a number,” he said. “An arbitrary number, after all. It is not intrinsically more special than twenty-six-ninety-nine, or twenty-seven-oh-one.” Nobody was disposed to discuss the point with him.

  IT WAS NOT unprecedented that members of the congregation of Shad’s World sometimes wrestled against their destiny in this way, especially at that emotionally volatile period we call teenage. Stil
l, it was the Patriarchus’s fundamental duty to guard Shad’s holy plan, this distillation of twenty thousand and forty-eight holy people into one Unique person over twelve generations, and so it fell to him to talk to the boy, to explain to him the consequences of so terrible a decision. He summoned Medd to his house, and waited upon his porch for his arrival.

  It was a mild morning. The wind rummaged in the leaves of the fat-headed oak tree in the garden—a tree grown from a conker brought by the first settlers. The tree was a symbol of the connection between the newest generation and the first. The sound of the wind in the leaves was exactly the sound of rushing water. Medd contemplated the precision of this aural echo.

  Medd arrived, finally, two hours late. He was not apologetic.

  “You wished,” he said, sulkily, “to speak to me, Patriarchus?”

  “Yes, grandson,” said the Patriarchus. “Come inside, please.”

  As they stepped through into the cool hallway, Medd said, “You will try to persuade me of the necessity of marrying Rhess. But I do not love her. Nothing you can say will change that.”

  “I think I understand,” said the Patriarchus, “the nature of your feelings for poor Rhess. You have cut her deep, you know; cut her to the heart, with your rejection. Don’t you think she loves you?”