Newton's Wake

A thought struck Winter. ‘Shake on it?’

Calder grinned, cocked his head as though considering. ‘Ah, fuck it.’ He stuck out a hand and they shook for the first time in—he didn’t know how long.

They turned, shoulder to shoulder as it were, to face the promoter and the laboratory technician.

‘All right,’ Winter said. ‘We can see it’s been a long time.’

Ben-Ami gestured towards a low table with four chairs around it. They sat.

‘The city we’re in,’ said Ben-Ami, with guileless awkwardness, ‘is called New Start.’

Winter and Calder laughed. The others looked puzzled. It was as if they assumed that there was somewhere, on Earth or Mars perhaps, a city called Start.

‘An old name, I guess,’ said Winter.

‘It was established about two hundred and fifty years ago,’ said Ben-Ami. ‘It is the capital of this planet, Eurydice, which’—he paused, tonguetip flicking between his lips—‘is in the Sagittarius Arm.’

‘What!’ yelped Winter. The cold dismay that gripped him made the room go grey for a second.

‘So the bloody Runners won,’ said Calder.

‘The Reformers, yes,’ said Andrea Al-Khayed. It seemed a political correction, twitchy and touchy. Winter made a rapid downward revision of his opinion of the setup here, whatever it was.

‘I’ll remember to call them that,’ sneered Calder. ‘So what do you want with’—he gave Winter a glance and an awkward twitch of the mouth—‘a couple of Returners?’

‘We want you to sing for us,’ said Ben-Ami. ‘As part of a major public performance.’

‘Why?’ asked Winter, more aggressively than he felt.

Ben-Ami stood up and began to pace about nervously.

‘We need—in my opinion—a small infusion of Returner culture,’ he said. ‘The spirit of confrontation with the war-machines, rather than, ah, retreat.’ He stood still, looking embarrassed. ‘The fact of the matter is that, ah … ’

‘They’ve caught up with you?’ said Calder, nastily.

‘No,’ said Ben-Ami. ‘Not at all! It’s just that—’ He stopped. ‘It might be simpler if I simply showed you the news from last week.’

He went over to what looked like a mirror fixture on his desk and toggled and tabbed. Sound and pictures came up: a man and a woman standing on the steps of a big building, addressing the cameras.

‘Holy shit,’ said Winter. ‘That’s General Jacques!’

Ben-Ami froze the picture. ‘You know him?’

‘Of course I fucking know him. He was the leader of the Returner faction. Christ, he raised me and Calder from the dead. Not something you forget. How did he get here?’

‘The same way as you did,’ said Ben-Ami.

‘Well, yes,’ said Winter heavily. ‘What I meant was, how did he get resurrected here, if you’re all Runners?’

‘The details of the Returner Rebellion on Polarity are contested,’ said Ben-Ami. ‘There was some kind of settlement, after the—’

‘Wait a cotton-picking minute,’ said Calder. ‘You’re telling us there was a rebellion? That it came to a fight?’

‘Yes, yes, but as I said, the details are in some dispute.’

‘And not up for discussion,’ added Al-Khayed. ‘You must understand. It’s all settled. Shall we get on with this?’

‘Sure,’ said Winter, his gaze fixed on the mirror-sharp image of Jacques Armand. Now there was a man. It was impossible to believe that he had thrown in his lot with the bloody Runners. And yet, people he’d thought he’d known better had done the same. He glanced sideways at Calder, but Calder was still looking at the screen and gnawing his lip.

The picture ran again. The first person to speak was not Armand but the young woman beside him. A small lithe figure in a figure-hugging but functional suit veined with heat-exchangers, a belt of chunky gadgetry resting on her hips. Like Armand’s, her face wasn’t optimised, and to Winter’s eye all the more attractive for that. Black brows, bright eyes, black hair fringed and feathered around her face.

And she had a Glasgow accent. She gave some kind of overexcited cheerful greeting, then Armand spoke, much more gravely. His voice hadn’t changed, though its traces of a French accent were fewer.

‘What you have heard is true,’ he said. ‘An astonishing event has occurred today. Much of what we believed about our passage here, and even the date, is false. Let me explain … ’

And then, after that bombshell, another announcement, this time from a cocky little guy with a smug grin on his face.

‘The situation is becoming more complex,’ said Ben-Ami anxiously. ‘But you understand it?’

Winter couldn’t help himself. Calder couldn’t help himself either. They leaned back and howled with laughter. Part of it was just the relief at realising they weren’t ten thousand years in the future, and that they could still get back. Part of it was the shock at seeing Armand again. Most of it, however, was straight schadenfreude.

‘I understand the irony of the situation,’ said Ben-Ami. ‘I’ll thank you to understand its seriousness.’

Winter rocked forward and put his elbows on the table. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I can understand the seriousness, sure. War machines, Zen mechanists, and Glasgow gangsters.’ He fought an involuntary smirk. ‘And going FTL without knowing it can ruin your whole morning. What I can’t understand is how you lot crossed ten thousand light-years and happened to pick a planet that had war machines, out of all—’ He waved a hand skyward.

‘Ah,’ said Andrea. ‘It is not a coincidence. The planet was chosen by the ship. On the basis of its size, its atmosphere and water signatures, it must have looked eminently suitable for colonization.’

‘How does that make it less of a coincidence?’

Al-Khayed shrugged. ‘That a habitable planet turned out to have been inhabited? It lessens the odds, I suppose. It also increases the odds that developing out-of-control war machines is something that all civilizations do.’

‘Christ,’ said Calder. ‘That’s depressing.’ He shifted, easing his bad leg a bit.

‘But we still have Earth,’ said Winter. He glared at the strange beautiful people. He didn’t want to join in their projects without putting down a marker. ‘I still want that, you know. I want it back.’ He sighed. ‘I want us to get them all back.’

Ben-Ami and Al-Khayed looked at him with sympathy but without comprehension. The two Eurydiceans didn’t seem to recognise the phrase at all, or to have the faintest idea what he meant. It was, Winter thought, just as well.

‘I could use a cigarette,’ said Calder.

H

e stubbed it out before they got in the lift.

‘I’d been hoping for dropshafts,’ said Winter, as the doors closed. It might have been an Otis lift.

Andrea Al-Khayed got it.

‘At least we have aircars,’ she said. ‘And entopters.’

‘Entopters?’

‘The buzzing aircraft.’

‘Oh, right.’ The lift dropped fast. ‘Like insects.’

‘They were something of a jeu d’espirit, initially,’ said Ben-Ami. ‘They have turned out to be quite practical. The city’s upper structures are complex.’ He mimed dodging and weaving with his hand.

The doors opened and they walked out through a marble and iron-work lobby to the street. The cars moved not in lanes but in a skein of optimised trajectories, like people in crowds. Winter put this down to computer control. No surprise. There was something different about the people. Winter stood on the pavement and tried to understand what it was. The people around him were strolling rather than hurrying, and they were all richly clothed