Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe (25 page)

‘I could order the stuff on the moon destroyed. Couldn’t I? As soon as my mother is dead, I will be in command of the mission’s objectives.’

‘You could.’ Tanz seemed more intrigued than offended. ‘Then you would be like the Xaians. So it would be argued. It is said their first action was to destroy the Books of the Founders, their own carefully preserved records of humanity’s arrival on Windru. And they went on from there, on world after world. History judges the Xaians as criminals.’

‘One day, history may thank me. Let’s leave this place to the swimmers – it’s their world now. We belong to the stars, to the uncounted worlds that birthed us. You see, if we do identify this planet as the mother, we’ll never be able to break away from her.’

Tanz raised an eyebrow. ‘Which mother are you talking about?’

‘Don’t try to analyse me.’

‘Hmm. You know, in the Temples we are taught that almost every human action is fundamentally driven by personal motives. Not by a desire to venerate some Designer, not by some grand vision of the benefit of mankind as a whole, or whatever. I think you want to punish your mother by denying her this final victory.’

She didn’t feel like arguing with him. ‘Call it a side benefit, then.’

‘LuSi? ...’

With the plaque held behind her back, she hurried to SheLu’s side. ‘Mother? I’m here.’

SheLu raised a hand, and LuSi took it. ‘I’m sorry, child.’ Her eyes were misty globes, grey as the world ocean, and as unseeing.

‘Sorry for what?’

‘For dragging you across the stars ... I was so sure, so sure.’

‘Try to be calm ...’

‘Here’s another thought,’ Tanz murmured in her ear. ‘There’s more than just humanity in this universe of ours. You know that. The Galaxy is full of antique mysteries that we’ll surely have to face some day. If you do destroy the truth about our own origins, will that not diminish our ability to cope with those unknowable challenges?’

‘I’ll leave the future to those who live in it,’ LuSi snarled.

‘LuSi?’

‘Yes, mother, I’m here.’

‘I was right, wasn’t I? About Urth I. I was right. And it makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it?’

LuSi didn’t reply. Still holding her mother’s hand, she knelt to the raft’s deck, leaned over, and let the steel plaque slip out of her hands. It passed out of sight in a heartbeat, falling silently into the sea.

V

Once, just once, as Venus Jenning floated in the dark of the Ark’s cupola, she picked up a strange signal. It appeared to be coherent, like a beam from a microwave laser. She used her spaceborne telescopes to triangulate the signal, determining that it wasn’t anywhere close. And she passed it through filters to render it into audio. It sounded cold and clear, a trumpet note, far off in the Galactic night.
 

If it was a signal it wasn’t human at all.
 

She listened for two years. She never heard it again.

Ark
, Chapter 93

Also by Stephen Baxter

Xeelee Sequence

Raft

Timelike Infinity

Flux

Ring

Vacuum Diagrams (collection)

Anti-Ice

The Time Ships

NASA Trilogy

Voyage

Titan

Moonseed

The Light of Other Days (with Arthur C. Clarke)

Manifold Trilogy

Manifold: Time

Manifold: Space

Manifold: Origin

Phase Space (collection)

Destiny’s Children Trilogy

Coalescent

Exultant

Transcendent

Resplendent (collection)

Mammoth Trilogy

Silverhair

Longtusk

Icebones

Evolution

A Time Odyssey (with Arthur C. Clarke)

Time’s Eye

Sunstorm

Firstborn

The H-Bomb Girl

Time’s Tapestry

Emperor

Conqueror

Navigator

Weaver

Flood

Ark

Northland Trilogy

Stone Spring

Bronze Summer

Iron Winter

Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice

The Long Earth
(with Terry Pratchett)

The Long Earth

The Long War

The Long Mars

Proxima

Ultima

Nonfiction

Deep Future

Omegatropic

Ages in Chaos: James Hutton and the Discovery of Deep Time

The Science of Avatar

Title

Introduction

Earth II

Earth III

Earth I

Other works by Stephen Baxter