Lightoller said, ‘Comets?’
‘Not nuclear war. Comets. That’s it. If a comet hit the Earth, debris would be thrown up out of the atmosphere. Molten blobs of rock. They would re-enter the atmosphere as –’
‘A skyful of shooting stars.’
‘Yes. They would reach low orbit, keep falling for years. The air would burn. Nitrous oxides, acid rain – the global temperatures would be raised all to hell.’
‘So in some alternate world a comet landed on Yoko, and the Beatles never broke up.’ Lightoller laughed at me. ‘Only a true Beatles fan would lay waste to the fooking Earth to get a new album.’
‘I don’t think this is funny, Lightoller.’
‘God’ wound to its leaden close. The stylus hissed on the spiralling intertrack, and Lightoller and I watched it. I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking exactly the same.
This would be the ultimate track – the twelfth track on the twelfth album.
The last new Beatles song we would ever hear.
Because, of course, by now we both believed.
It was recognizable from the first, faded-in, descending piano chords. But then the vocals opened – and it was Lennon.
‘It’s “Maybe I’m Amazed”,’ I said, awed. ‘McCartney’s greatest post-Beatles song –’
‘Just listen to it,’ said Lightoller. ‘He gave it to Lennon. Listen to it.’
It didn’t sound like the version from our world, which McCartney, battered and bruised from the break-up, recorded in his kitchen.
Lennon’s raw, majestic voice wrenched at the melody, while McCartney’s melodic bass, Starr’s powerful drumming, and Harrison’s wailing guitar drove through the song’s complex, compulsive chromatic structure. And then a long coda opened up, underpinned by clean, thrusting brass, obviously scored by George Martin.
At last the coda wound down to a final, almost whispered lament by Lennon, a final descending chord sequence, a last trickle of piano notes, as if the song itself couldn’t bear to finish.
The stylus hissed briefly, reached the run-off groove, and lifted.
Lightoller and I just sat there, stunned.
Then the magic faded, and I got an unwelcome dose of reality: a sense of place, where we were and what we had become: two slightly sad, slightly overweight, forty-ish guys mourning the passing of a friend, and another little part of our own youth.
Lightoller put the album back in its sleeve, and slotted it carefully into its place.
We found our way outside, to the dock.
The old ship’s stern towered over us. It was late by then, and the ship blazed with light from its big promenade decks and the long rows of portholes. Up top, I could see the four big funnels and the lacework of masts and rigging. People were crossing the permanent gangways that had been bolted to the side of the ship, like leashes to make sure she never shook loose again.
‘She’s an old relic,’ said Lightoller. ‘Just like Sick Note.’
‘Yeah.’
‘All fooking bullshit, of course,’ he said.
‘Other worlds?’
‘Yeah.’
It was starting to rain, and I felt depressed, sour, mildly hung over. I looked up at the stern and saw how the post-Heseltine paint job had weathered. Even the lettering was running. You could still make out the registration, LIVERPOOL, but the ship’s name was obscured, the I’s and T’s and the N streaking down over the hull, the A and C just blurred.
We turned our backs and started the walk to the bus stop.
Lightoller and I don’t talk about it much.
I’d like to have heard those singles, though.
AFTERWORD
A reference to Dante’s 4-dimensional geometry, mentioned in ‘Dante Dreams’, can be found in ‘Dante and the 3-sphere’, Mark Peterson, American Journal of Physics vol. 47, pp 1031–35, 1979.
‘Martian Autumn’ is dedicated to Colin Pillinger and the Beagle 2 team. The Beagle, riding ESA’s Mars Express spaceprobe, is scheduled for launch in June 2003, and should land on Mars at Christmas that year.
‘Sun God’ is based on a splinter of fact. Earth and Moon swim together through a sea of objects called NEOs: near-Earth objects, or Earth-crossing asteroids, with orbits similar to Earth’s. Some are rocky, some metallic, others are rich in organics. Some NEOs have orbits which seem too close to Earth’s for coincidence. A small, dim NEO called 1991JW, discovered at Palomar Observatory, tracks the Earth so closely that it has been suggested it may be a Saturn V third stage, abandoned after delivering its Apollo to the Moon, lost and rediscovered decades later. The story is a pendant to my novel Titan.
Of the stories set in the multiple universes of the Manifold, ‘Sheena 5’ is set in a closely related variant cosmos to that of my novel Time; ‘Huddle’ and ‘The Fubar Suit’ are pendants to Space; and ‘Grey Earth’ is a pendant to Origin. ‘Refugium’ and ‘Touching Centauri’ are each set in their own parallel universes within the Manifold. The ideas in ‘Touching Centauri’ are further explored in ‘The Planetarium Hypothesis: A Resolution of the Fermi Paradox,’ Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol 54 nos. 5/6, May/June 2001.
‘Tracks’ derives from an interview I conducted with Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke in July 1999, the thirtieth anniversary of Apollo 11’s first lunar landing. The story is based on a vivid dream Duke had before his only spaceflight.
‘Marginalia’ is a pendant to my novel Voyage. ‘The Gravity Mine’ is a pendant to my novel Time.
I was honoured to win the British Science Fiction Association Award for best short story in 1998 for ‘War Birds’. ‘Moon-Calf’ won the Analog Magazine Analytical Laboratory Award for best short story of 1999, while ‘Sheena 5’ won the same award for 2000, and won second place in the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short fiction of 2000. ‘Huddle’ won the Locus Award for Best Novelette for 2000. ‘The Gravity Mine’ was a Hugo nominee for best short story of 2000.
Stephen Baxter
Great Missenden, UK
December 2001
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
‘Open Loops’, first published in Skylife, ed. Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, April 2000.
‘Glass Earth, Inc.’, first published in Future Histories, ed. Stephen McClelland, 1997.
‘Poyekhali 3201’, first published in Decalog 5, ed. Paul Leonard and Jim Mortimer, September 1997.
‘Dante Dreams’, first published in Asimov’s, August 1998.
‘War Birds’, first published in Interzone 126, December 1997.
‘Sun-Drenched’, first published in Bending the Landscape, ed. Stephen Pagel and Nicola Griffith, June 1998.
‘Martian Autumn’, first published in Mars Probes, ed. Mike Ashley, 2002.
‘Sun God’, first published in Interzone 120, June 1997.
‘Sun-Cloud’, first published in Starlight 3, ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, 2001.
‘Sheena 5’, first published in Analog, May 2000.
‘The Fubar Suit’, first published in Interzone 123, September 1997.
‘Grey Earth’, first published in Asimov’s December 2001.
‘Huddle’, first published in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1999.
‘Refugium’, first published in Mammoth Book of Science Fiction, ed. Mike Ashley, 2002.
‘Lost Continent’, first published in Interzone 164, February 2001.
‘Tracks’, first published in Interzone 169, July 2001.
‘Lines of Longitude’, first published in Dark of the Night, ed. Stephen Jones, November 1997.
‘Barrier’, first published in Interzone 133, June 1998 (as ‘The Barrier’).
‘Marginalia’, first published in Interzone 143, May 1999.
‘The We Who Sing’, first published in Microcosms, ed. Gregory Benford, 2002.
‘The Gravity Mine’, first published in Asimov’s, April 2000.
‘Spindrift�
��, first published in Asimov’s, March 1999.
‘Touching Centauri’, first published in Asimov’s June 2002.
‘The Twelfth Album’, first published in Interzone 130, April 1998.
OTHER WORKS
ALSO BY STEPHEN BAXTER
In the Manifold Series:
TIME
SPACE
ORIGIN
THE TIME SHIPS
VOYAGE
TITAN
ANTI-ICE
TRACES
MOONSEED
Novels and stories in the Xeelee Sequence
RAFT
TIMELIKE INFINITY
FLUX
RING
VACUUM DIAGRAMS
COPYRIGHT
Voyager
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2002
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Copyright © Stephen Baxter 2002
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Prologue
DREAMS (I)
Moon-Calf
EARTHS
Open Loops
Glass Earth, Inc.
Poyekhali 3201
Dante Dreams
War Birds
WORLDS
Sun-Drenched
Martian Autumn
Sun God
Sun-Cloud
MANIFOLD
Sheena 5
The Fubar Suit
Grey Earth
Huddle
PARADOX
Refugium
Lost Continent
Tracks
Lines of Longitude
Barrier
Marginalia
The We Who Sing
The Gravity Mine
Spindrift
Touching Centauri
DREAMS (II)
The Twelfth Album
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Other Works
Copyright
About the Publisher