3001: The Final Odyssey Read online

“Conan? The only one I know is the man who invented Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Never mind – sorry I interrupted. Of course, we in the so-called developed countries thought we were civilized. At least war wasn't respectable any more, and the United Nations was always doing its best to stop the wars that did break out.”

  “Not very successfully: I'd give it about three out of ten. But what we find incredible is the way that people – right up to the early 2000s! – calmly accepted behavior we would consider atrocious. And believed in the most mind-boggled–”

  “Boggling.”

  “ –nonsense, which surely any rational person would dismiss out of hand.”

  “Examples, please.”

  “Well, your really trivial loss started me doing some research, and I was appalled by what I found. Did you know that every year in some countries thousands of little girls were hideously mutilated to preserve their virginity? Many of them died – but the authorities turned a blind eye.”

  “I agree that was terrible – but what could my government do about it?”

  “A great deal – if it wished. But that would have offended the people who supplied it with oil and bought its weapons, like the landmines that killed and maimed civilians by the thousand.”

  “You don't understand, Indra. Often we had no choice: we couldn't reform the whole world. And didn't somebody once say 'Politics is the art of the possible'?”

  “Quite true – which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.”

  “Well, I'm glad you have a good supply of genius, so you can put things right.”

  “Do I detect a hint of sarcasm? Thanks to our computers, we can run political experiments in cyberspace before trying them out in practice. Lenin was unlucky; he was born a hundred years too soon. Russian communism might have worked – at least for a while – if it had had microchips. And had managed to avoid Stalin.”

  Poole was constantly amazed by Indra's knowledge of his age – as well as by her ignorance of so much that he took for granted. In a way, he had the reverse problem. Even if he lived the hundred years that had been confidently promised him, he could never learn enough to feel at home. In any conversation, there would always be references he did not understand, and jokes that would go over his head. Worse still, he would always feel on the verge of some “faux pas” – about to create some social disaster that would embarrass even the best of his new friends...

  Such as the occasion when he was lunching, fortunately in his own quarters, with Indra and Professor Anderson. The meals that emerged from the autochef were always perfectly acceptable, having been designed to match his physiological requirements. But they were certainly nothing to get excited about, and would have been the despair of a twenty-first-century gourmet.

  Then, one day, an unusually tasty dish appeared, which brought back vivid memories of the deer-hunts and barbecues of his youth. However, there was something unfamiliar about both flavor and texture, so Poole asked the obvious question.

  Anderson merely smiled, but for a few seconds Indra looked as if she was about to be sick. Then she recovered and said: “You tell him – after we've finished eating.”

  Now what have I done wrong? Poole asked himself. Half an hour later, with Indra rather pointedly absorbed in a video display at the other end of the room, his knowledge of the Third Millennium made another major advance.

  “Corpse-food was on the way out even in your time,” Anderson explained. “Raising animals to – ugh – eat them became economically impossible. I don't know how many acres of land it took to feed one cow, but at least ten humans could survive on the plants it produced. And probably a hundred, with hydroponic techniques.

  “But what finished the whole horrible business was not economics – but disease. It started first with cattle, then spread to other food animals – a kind of virus, I believe, that affected the brain, and caused a particularly nasty death. Although a cure was eventually found, it was too late to turn back the clock – and anyway, synthetic foods were now far cheaper, and you could get them in any flavor you liked.”

  Remembering weeks of satisfying but unexciting meals, Poole had strong reservations about this. For why, he wondered, did he still have wistful dreams of spare-ribs and cordon bleu steaks?

  Other dreams were far more disturbing, and he was afraid that before long he would have to ask Anderson for medical assistance. Despite everything that was being done to make him feel at home, the strangeness and sheer complexity of this new world were beginning to overwhelm him. During sleep, as if in an unconscious effort to escape, he often reverted to his earlier life: but when he awoke, that only made matters worse.

  He had travelled across to America Tower and looked down, in reality and not in simulation, on the landscape of his youth – and it had not been a good idea. With optical aid, when the atmosphere was clear, he'd got so close that he could see individual human beings as they went about their affairs, sometimes along streets that he remembered...

  And always, at the back of his mind, was the knowledge that down there had once lived everyone he had ever loved, Mother, Father (before he had gone off with that Other Woman), dear Uncle George and Aunt Lil, brother Martin – and, not least, a succession of dogs, beginning with the warm puppies of his earliest childhood and culminating in Rikki.

  Above all, there was the memory – and mystery – of Helena...

  It had begun as a casual affair, in the early days of his astrotraining, but had become more and more serious as the years went by. Just before he had left for Jupiter, they had planned to make it permanent when he returned.

  And if he did not, Helena wished to have his child. He still recalled the blend of solemnity and hilarity with which they had made the necessary arrangements...

  Now, a thousand years later, despite all his efforts, he had been unable to find if Helena had kept her promise. Just as there were now gaps in his own memory, so there were also in the collective records of Mankind. The worst was that created by the devastating electromagnetic pulse from the 2304 asteroid impact, which had wiped out several per cent of the world's information banks, despite all backups and safety systems. Poole could not help wondering if, among all the exabytes that were irretrievably lost, were the records of his own children: even now, his descendants of the thirtieth generation might be walking the Earth; but he would never know.

  It helped a little to have discovered that – unlike Aurora – some ladies of this era did not consider him to be damaged goods. On the contrary: they often found his alteration quite exciting, but this slightly bizarre reaction made it impossible for Poole to establish any close relationship. Nor was he anxious to do so; all that he really needed was the occasional healthy, mindless exercise.

  Mindless – that was the trouble. He no longer had arty purpose in life. And the weight of too many memories was upon him; echoing the title of a famous book he had read in his youth, he often said to himself, 'I am a Stranger in a Strange Time.”

  There were even occasions when he looked down at the beautiful planet on which – if he obeyed doctor's orders – he could never walk again, and wondered what it would be like to make a second acquaintance with the vacuum of space. Though it was not easy to get through the airlocks without triggering some alarm, it had been done: every few years, some determined suicide made a brief meteoric display in the Earth's atmosphere.

  Perhaps it was just as well that deliverance was on its way, from a completely unexpected direction.

  “Nice to meet you, Commander Poole – for the second time.”

  “I'm sorry – don't recall – but then I see so many people.”

  “No need to apologize. First time was out round Neptune.”

  “Captain Chandler – delighted to see you! Can I get something from the autochef?”

  “Anything with over twenty per cent alcohol will be fine.”

  “And what are you doing back on Earth? They told me you never come inside Mars
orbit.”

  “Almost true – though I was born here, I think it's a dirty, smelly place – too many people – creeping up to a billion again!”

  “More than ten billion in my time. By the way, did you get my 'Thank you' message?”

  “Yes – and I know I should have contacted you. But I waited until I headed sunwards again. So here I am. Your good health!”

  As the Captain disposed of his drink with impressive speed, Poole tried to analyze his visitor. Beards – even small goatees like Chandler's – were very rare in this society, and he had never known an astronaut who wore one: they did not co-exist comfortably with space-helmets. Of course, a Captain might go for years between EVs, and in any case most outside jobs were done by robots; but there was always the risk of the unexpected, when one might have to get suited in a hurry. It was obvious that Chandler was something of an eccentric, and Poole's heart warmed to him.

  “You've not answered my question. If you don't like Earth, what are you doing here?”

  “Oh, mostly contacting old friends – it's wonderful to forget hour-long delays, and to have real-time conversations! But of course that's not the reason. My old rust-bucket is having a refit, up at the Rim shipyard. And the armor has to be replaced; when it gets down to a few centimeters thick, I don't sleep too well.”

  “Armor?”

  “Dust shield. Not such a problem in your time, was it? But it's a dirty environment out round Jupiter, and our normal cruise speed is several thousand klicks – a second! So there's a continuous gentle pattering, like raindrops on the roof.”

  “You're joking!”

  “ 'Course I am. If we really could hear anything, we'd be dead. Luckily, this sort of unpleasantness is very rare – last serious accident was twenty years ago. We know all the main comet streams, where most of the junk is, and are careful to avoid them – except when we're matching velocity to round up ice.

  “But why don't you come aboard and have a look around, before we take off for Jupiter?”

  “I'd be delighted... did you say Jupiter?”

  “Well, Ganymede, of course – Anubis City. We've a lot of business there, and several of us have families we haven't seen for months.”

  Poole scarcely heard him.

  Suddenly – unexpectedly – and perhaps none too soon, he had found a reason for living.

  Commander Frank Poole was the sort of man who hated to leave a job undone – and a few specks of cosmic dust, even moving at a thousand kilometers a second, were not likely to discourage him.

  He had unfinished business at the world once known as Jupiter.

  II. Goliath

  14. A Farewell to Earth

  “Anything you want within reason,” he had been told. Frank Poole was not sure if his hosts would consider that returning to Jupiter was a reasonable request; indeed, he was not quite sure himself, and was beginning to have second thoughts.

  He had already committed himself to scores of engagements, weeks in advance. Most of them he would be happy to miss, but there were some he would be sorry to forgo. In particular, he hated to disappoint the senior class from his old high school – how astonishing that it still existed! – when they planned to visit him next month.

  However, he was relieved – and a little surprised – when both Indra and Professor Anderson agreed that it was an excellent idea. For the first time, he realized that they had been concerned with his mental health; perhaps a holiday from Earth would be the best possible cure.

  And, most important of all, Captain Chandler was delighted. “You can have my cabin,” he promised. “I'll kick the First Mate out of hers.” There were times when Poole wondered if Chandler, with his beard and swagger, was not another anachronism. He could easily picture him on the bridge of a battered three-master, with Skull and Crossbones flying overhead.

  Once his decision had been made, events moved with surprising speed. He had accumulated very few possessions, and fewer still that he needed to take with him. The most important was Miss Pringle, his electronic alter ego and secretary, now the storehouse of both his lives, and the small stack of terabyte memories that went with her.

  Miss Pringle was not much larger than the hand-held personal assistants of his own age, and usually lived, like the Old West's Colt 45, in a quick-draw holster at his waist. She could communicate with him by audio or Braincap, and her prime duty was to act as an information filter and a buffer to the outside world. Like any good secretary, she knew when to reply, in the appropriate format: “I'll put you through now” or – much more frequently: “I'm sorry – Mr Poole is engaged. Please record your message and he will get back to you as soon as possible.” Usually, this was never.

  There were very few farewells to be made: though realtime conversations would be impossible owing to the sluggish velocity of radio waves, he would be in constant touch with Indra and Joseph – the only genuine friends he had made.

  Somewhat to his surprise, Poole realized that he would miss his enigmatic but useful “valet”, because he would now have to handle all the small chores of everyday life by himself. Danil bowed slightly when they parted, but otherwise showed no sign of emotion, as they took the long ride up to the outer curve of the world-circling wheel, thirty-six thousand kilometers above central Africa.

  • • •

  “I'm not sure, Dim, that you'll appreciate the comparison. But do you know what Goliath reminds me of?”

  They were now such good friends that Poole could use the Captain's nickname – but only when no one else was around.

  “Something unflattering, I assume.”

  “Not really. But when I was a boy, I came across a whole pile of old science-fiction magazines that my Uncle George had abandoned – 'pulps', they were called, after the cheap paper they were printed on... most of them were already falling to bits. They had wonderful garish covers, showing strange planets and monsters – and, of course, spaceships!

  “As I grew older, I realized how ridiculous those spaceships were. They were usually rocket-driven – but there was never any sign of propellant tanks! Some of them had rows of windows from stem to stem, just like ocean liners. There was one favorite of mine with a huge glass dome – a space-going conservatory...

  “Well, those old artists had the last laugh: too bad they could never know. Goliath looks more like their dreams than the flying fuel-tanks we used to launch from the Cape.

  “Your Inertial Drive still seems too good to be true – no visible means of support, unlimited range and speed – sometimes I think I'm the one who's dreaming!”

  Chandler laughed and pointed to the view outside.

  “Does that look like a dream?”

  It was the first time that Poole had seen a genuine horizon since he had come to Star City, and it was not quite as far away as he had expected. After all, he was on the outer rim of a wheel seven times the diameter of Earth, so surely the view across the roof of this artificial world should extend for several hundred kilometers...

  He used to be good at mental arithmetic – a rare achievement even in his time, and probably much rarer now. The formula to give the horizon distance was a simple one: the square root of twice your height times the radius – the sort of thing you never forgot, even if you wanted to...

  Let's see – we're about 8 meters up – so root 16 – this is easy! – say big R is 40,000 – knock off those three zeros to make it all klicks – 4 times root 40 – hmm – just over 25...

  Well, twenty-five kilometers was a fair distance, and certainly no spaceport on Earth had ever seemed this huge. Even knowing perfectly well what to expect, it was uncanny to watch vessels many times the size of his long-lost Discovery lifting off, not only with no sound, but with no apparent means of propulsion. Though Poole missed the flame and fury of the old-time countdowns, he had to admit that this was cleaner, more efficient – and far safer.

  Strangest of all, though, was to sit up here on the Rim, in the Geostationary Orbit itself – and to feel weight! Just met
ers away, outside the window of the tiny observation lounge, servicing robots and a few spacesuited humans were gliding gently about their business; yet here inside Goliath the inertial field was maintaining standard Mars-gee.

  “Sure you don't want to change your mind, Frank?” Captain Chandler had asked jokingly, as he left for the bridge. “Still ten minutes before lift-off.”

  “Wouldn't be very popular if I did, would I? No – as they used to say back in the old days – we have commit. Ready or not, here I come.”

  Poole felt the need to be alone when the drive went on, and the tiny crew – only four men and three women – respected his wish. Perhaps they guessed how he must be feeling, to leave Earth for the second time in a thousand years – and, once again, to face an unknown destiny.

  Jupiter-Lucifer was on the other side of the Sun, and the almost straight line of Goliath's orbit would take them close to Venus. Poole looked forward to seeing, with his own unaided eyes, if Earth's sister planet was now beginning to live up to that description, after centuries of terraforming.

  From a thousand kilometers up, Star City looked like a gigantic metal band around Earth's Equator, dotted with gantries, pressure domes, scaffolding holding half-completed ships, antennas, and other more enigmatic structures. It was diminishing swiftly as Goliath headed sunwards, and presently Poole could see how incomplete it was: there were huge gaps spanned only by a spider's web of scaffolding, which would probably never be completely enclosed.

  And now they were falling below the plane of the ring; it was midwinter in the northern hemisphere, so the slim halo of Star City was inclined at over twenty degrees to the Sun. Already Poole could see the American and Asian towers, as shining threads stretching outwards and away, beyond the blue haze of the atmosphere.

  He was barely conscious of time as Goliath gained speed, moving more swiftly than any comet that had ever fallen sunwards from interstellar space. The Earth, almost full, still spanned his field of view, and he could now see the full length of the Africa Tower which had been his home in the life he was now leaving – perhaps, he could not help thinking, leaving for ever.