Stone Gods (9 page)

'There is no evidence for that,' said Spike.

'What do you want to find? A talking head buried in the sand?'

Spike said, 'There is only evidence that life in some form existed

at some time on planets other than our own, including, but not exclusively, the white planet.'

'The white planet was a world like ours,' said Handsome, 'far, far advanced. We were still evolving out of the soup when the white planet had six-lane highways and space missions. It was definitely a living, breathing, working planet, with water and resources, cooked to cinders by CO2, They couldn't control their gases. Certainly the planet was heating up anyway, but the humans, or whatever they were, massively miscalculated, and pumped so much CO2 into the air that they caused irreversible warming. The rest is history.'

'Whose history?'

'Looking more and more like ours, don't you think?' said Handsome. 'Anyway, I like the colour co-ordination — a dead white planet, a dying red planet, and Planet Blue out there, just starting up.'

'Our planet .. .'

'Is red,' said Handsome. 'That red-dust stuff?'

'Is sand,' said Spike.

'Yes, it is sand, but it is not just desert sand. The desert advances every year, but the duststorms are not just sand, they are the guts of the fucking planet. It's iron ore in there.'

'There is no evidence for that,' said Spike.

'Iron ore? Of course there is.'

'No evidence that we are gutting Orbus.'

'Well, I don't know what you call it, but a planet that has collapsing ice-caps, encroaching desert, no virgin forest and no eco-species left reads like gutted to me. The place is just throwing up and, I tell you, it's not the first time. My theory is that life on Orbus began as escaping life from the white planet - and the white planet began as escaping life from ... who knows where?'

Pink was visibly moved by the story. 'Y'know, it would make a great movie. It has a human feel.'

Ignoring the cinematic possibilities of global disaster on a galactic scale, I said, 'But it's so depressing if we keep making the same mistakes again and again ... '

Pink was sympathetic. 'I know what you mean — every time we fall in love.'

'I wasn't thinking personal,' I said.

'What's the difference?' she said. 'Women are just planets that attract the wrong species.'

'It might be more complex than that,' said Spike.

'They use us up, wear us out, then cast us off for a younger model so that they can do it all again.'

'But, Pink, you are the younger model. Genetic Fixing changed all that,' I said.

'It didn't work, though, did it? Y'know what I mean?'

'Women always bring it back to the personal,' said Handsome. 'It's why you can't be world leaders.'

'And men never do,' I said, 'which is why we end up with no world left to lead.'

He held up his hands. 'I'm beaten. I'll leave you ladies to destroy what's left of the male sex.' He bent over and kissed Spike.

'Isn't she a robot?' asked Pink, who was nothing if not her own repeating history.

'The champagne's in the cooler,' said Handsome, and left.

Pink sighed. 'He's so strong, so romantic. He's like a hero from the Discovery Channel. I just don't understand why he's in love with a robot — no offence intended to you, Spike, I'm not prejudiced or anything, it's not your fault that you're a robot — I mean, you never had any say in it, did you? One minute you were a pile of wires, and the next thing you know you're having an affair.'

'I don't love Handsome,' said Spike.

'Well, of course not — y'know, like I said, you're a robot.'

'That isn't why I don't love him,' said Spike, but Pink wasn't listening.

'What about you, Billie?' she said. 'What's your story? Now that we're in space we can say what we like. I feel much better since we left Orbus — I think maybe I was allergic to gravity. It's kind of flattening. '

Spike looked at me. I shrugged. 'There was someone. It didn't work out. If I'm truthful I would say that it's never worked out. Almost, nearly, but not quite. And as we're in space, and can say anything, you might as well know now that I'm here to avoid prison. I have been tried for Acts of Terrorism. I have since faked my data details and, yes, I am officially, as of now, on the run.'

Pink McMurphy was staring at me with eyes the size of moons. 'Did you murder someone?'

'I was campaigning against Genetic Reversal.'

'But why?'

'Because it makes people fucked up and miserable.'

'Y'know, I'd be fucked up and miserable anyway — and if I'm going to be fucked up and miserable, I'd rather be young, fucked up and miserable. Who wants to be depressed and have skin that looks like fried onions?'

'Pink, I just visited you on a professional basis and you wanted to refix from age twenty-four to age twelve.'

'I have pressing personal circumstances.'

'You have a husband who is a paedophile.'

'He's just sentimental., When we go shopping, he always likes to visit the toy store. Men, y'know, they don't grow up — it makes sense that they like girls.'

'It doesn't make sense to me. We have a society where routine cosmetic surgery and genetic Fixing are considered normal—'

Pink interrupted me, patting my knee with a clear, unspotted, unaged and manicured hand. 'It is normal . . . What was so normal about getting old? It's great that we have Fixing and laser. I'm fifty-eight in old years, but I look and I feel fantastic.' Pink demonstrated her great feel-good fantasticness by bouncing her silicon tits a little higher out of her dress. 'Nobody has to look horrible any more — it's been a winner for confidence.'

'If you're so confident, why do you want to be twelve years old?'

'I told you a hundred times — I love my husband and I want his attention. I'll never get it aged twenty-four. I even had my vagina reduced. I'm tight as a screwtop bottle.' Fortunately there was no demonstration this time. I relaxed.

Spike said to me, 'What were these acts of terrorism?'

'Do you remember the bombing at MORE-
Futures
?'

'I remember that!' said Pink. 'That was world news! Wow!'

'No one was injured. I had already activated the fire alarm and evacuated the building. It was the plant we wanted to destroy — as a way of getting attention.'

'A bomb is a big way of getting attention,' said Pink. 'I only ever set fire to the shed.'

'No one wanted to talk about the issues. I'm not anti-science I'm a scientist — but you cannot have a democracy that is in default of its responsibilities. MORE is taking over the Central Power. MORE owns most of it, funds most of it, and has shares in the rest. There was never any debate about the ethics of Genetic Reversal — it just started to happen because MORE figured out how to do it.'

'It's a free country,' said Pink.

'No, it's not,' I said. 'It's a corporate country.'

'MORE is paying for this trip,' said Spike. 'It's a Central Power Mission, but that's for the press to report. In private, MORE pays, in return for concessions on Planet Blue.'

'Can't see why you want to blow a place up for making a woman look good on a date,' said Pink.

'I didn't set off the bomb, in case you're worrying. I was instrumental but not active. And I was acquitted.'

'Why?'

'Insufficient evidence against me.'

'But you just said you did it!' .

'I wasn't going to tell the prosecutor that, was I? I had the Access Codes to the building. I sheltered the bombers. I don't regret it.'

'I don't think a convicted — well maybe not convicted, but guilty, y'know, bomber should be lecturing me about my personal life. If I'd known you were a bomber, I'd never have let you in the house. I got nice ornaments and things.'

Pink got up and left. It was probably the first time in her life that she had sighted the moral high ground. Predictably, she occupied it.

Spike leaned forward, took my hands, and said, 'Billie, Handsome has orders to leave you behind on Planet Blue with the others.'

'What others?'

'There's a breeding colony. Class A political prisoners. They can't do any damage — they're back living before the stone age but they can breed.'

'No one can breed any more,' I said. 'It's womb-free.'

'Unless you have refused intervention.'

'Yes ... '

'It's an experiment . . . Handsome dropped sixty prisoners unofficially, of course — on his tracking mission. He was paid by MORE-
Security
on behalf of the Central Power. He should have taken another twenty-five with him this time.'

'The twenty-five who were arrested?'

'Yes. One of them tried to escape and threatened to talk, so the whole thing had to be covered up as a raid, as sabotage. They didn't break into the Compound. They were already there waiting to be shipped. The Enforcement Officer involved in the so-called break-in was the one who arrested you three years ago. He thought this was his chance to try again.'

'Did Manfred know about this?'

 
'Yes.'

'He didn't say anything to me about not coming back.'

'In a way he did you a favour. If you had known the whole story you might not have left — and if you had not left, they would have arrested you.'

'And the farm?'

Spike said nothing. There was nothing to say. It was over. That place. That time. That life. We were silent. I stood up, pacing the room like a badjoke. Like a cliché.

'Spike - what exactly is the plan for Planet Blue?'

'Destroy the dinosaurs and relocate.'

'That's the official story. What's the real story?'

'The rich are leaving. The rest of the human race will have to cope with what's left of Orbus, a planet becoming hostile to human life after centuries of human life becoming hostile to the planet. It was inevitable — Nature seeks balance.

'MORE is building a space-liner called the Mayflower. It will take those who can afford it to Planet Blue, where a high-tech, low-impact village will be built for them. MORE is recruiting farmers from the Caliphate to make a return to sustainable mixed farming to feed the new village. There will be free passage for key workers, including the Science Station crew, who will maintain the satellite link with Orbus.'

'Strictly hierarchical, then.'

'Rigid — and, of course, it will take several generations for a counter-movement to begin, and the feeling is that the planet is so big they can just be allowed to leave and form alternative communities elsewhere. Technology will be the golden key without it, it's going to be space-age minds living stone-age lives. That will be a powerful reason to stay within the system.'

'But there will be no elections, no government — what are we going to have? A king?'

'There will be a Board of Directors.'

'A what?'

'MORE-
Futures
will be the on-the-ground presence, guaranteeing homes and food, development and security.'

'So that's the shape of the brave new world?'

'For now. Life is unpredictable. Planet Blue is still evolving. We may have the smart technology, but she has the raw energy.'

There was a pause. A long one.

I had no idea what to do or what to say. My life had tipped upside-down and I was trying to pretend that everything was still the right way up. It's an optical illusion that happens to people in upturned boats.

I walked over to the wide oval window. In space it is difficult to tell what is the right way up; space is curved, stars and planets are globes. There is no right way up. The Ship itself is tilting at a forty-five-degree angle, but it is the instruments that tell me so, not my body looking out of the window.

In the days before we invented spacecraft, we dreamed of flying saucers, but what we finally built were rockets: fuel-greedy, inefficient and embarrassingly phallic. When we realized how to fly vast distances at light-speed, we went back to the saucer shape: a disc with solar sails. Strange to dream in the right shape and build in the wrong shape, but maybe that is what we do every day, never believing that a dream could tell the truth.

Sometimes, at the moment of waking, I get a sense for a second that I have found a way forward. Then I stand up, losing all direction, relying on someone else's instruments to tell me where I am.

If I could make a compass out of a dream. If I could trust my own night-sight . . .

Spike came behind me and put her hand on my neck. Her skin is warm. 'You are upset,' she said. 'I can feel the change in your skin temperature.'

'The thing about life that drives me mad,' I said, 'is that it doesn't make sense. We make plans. We try to control, but the whole thing is random.'

'This is a quantum universe,' said Spike, 'neither random nor determined. It is potential at every second. All you can do is intervene. '

'What do you suggest I do — to intervene?'