Space. Stephen Baxter

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ its periphery, Edo was functional. The walls were bare, of fused, glassy regolith. Ducts and cables were stapled to the roof. People wore plain, disposable paper coveralls. There was an air of bustle, of heavy industry.

      Nemoto led him through Edo, a gentle guided tour. ‘Of course the station is a great achievement,’ she said. ‘No less than ninety-five flights of our old H-2 rockets were required to ferry accommodation modules and power plants here. We build beneath the regolith, for shelter from solar radiation. We bake oxygen from the rocks, and mine water from the polar permafrost …’

      At the centre of the complex, Edo was a genuine town. There were public places: bars, restaurants where the people could buy rice, soup, fried vegetables, sushi, sake. There was even a tiny park, with shrubs and bamboo grass; a spindly lunar-born child played there with his parents.

      Nemoto smiled at Malenfant’s reaction. ‘At the heart of Edo, ten metres beneath lunar regolith, there are cherry trees. Our children study beneath their branches. You may stay long enough to see ichi-buzaki, the first state of blossoming.’

      Malenfant saw no other Westerners. Most of the Japanese nodded politely. Many must have known Nemoto – Edo supported only a few hundred inhabitants – but none engaged her in conversation. His impression of Nemoto as a loner, rather eccentric, was reinforced.

      As they passed one group he heard a man whisper, ‘Wah! – gaijin-kusai.’

      Gaijin-kusai. The smell of foreigner. There was laughter.

      Malenfant spent the night in what passed for a ryokan, an inn. His apartment was tiny, a single room. But, despite the bleak austerity of the fused-regolith walls, the room was decorated Japanese style. The floor was tatami – rice straw matting – polished and worn with use. A tokonoma, an alcove carved into the rock, contained an elaborate data net interface unit; but the owners had followed tradition and had hung a scroll painting there – of a dragonfly on a blade of grass – and some flowers, in an ikebana display. The flowers looked real.

      There was a display of cherry blossom, fixed to the wall under clear plastic. The contrast of the pale living pink with the grey Moon rock was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

      In this tiny room he was immersed in noise: the low, deep rumblings of the artificial lungs of the colony, of machines ploughing outward through the regolith. It was like being in the belly of a huge vessel, a submarine. Malenfant thought wistfully of his own study: bright Iowa sunlight, his desk, his equipment.

      Edo kept Tokyo time, so Malenfant, here on the Moon, suffered jet lag. He slept badly.

      

      Rows of faces.

      ‘… How are we to populate the Galaxy? It’s actually all a question of economics.’ Over Malenfant’s head a virtual image projected in the air of the little theatre, its light glimmering from the folded wooden walls.

      Malenfant stared around at the rows of Japanese faces, like coins shining in this rich brown dark. They seemed remote, unreal. Many of these people were NASDA administrators; as far as he could tell there was nobody from Nishizaki senior management here, nominally his sponsors for the trip.

      The virtual was a simple schematic of stars, randomly scattered. One star blinked, representing the sun.

      Malenfant said, ‘We will launch unmanned probes.’ Ships, little dots of light, spread out from the toy sun. ‘We might use ion rockets, solar sails, gravity assists – whatever. The first wave will be slow, no faster than we can afford. It doesn’t matter. Not in the long term.

      ‘The probes will be self-replicating: Von Neumann machines, essentially. Universal constructors. Humans may follow, by such means as generation starships. However it would be cheaper for the probes to manufacture humans in situ, using cell synthesis and artificial womb technology.’ He glanced over the audience. ‘You wish to know if we can build such devices. Not yet. Although your own Kashiwazaki Electric has a partial prototype.’

      At that there was a stir of interest, self-satisfied.

      As his virtual light-show continued to evolve, telling its own story, he glanced up at the walls around him, at the glimmer of highlights from wood. This was a remarkable place. It was the largest structure in Edo, serving as community centre and town hall and showpiece, the size of a ten-storey building.

      But it was actually a tree, a variety of oak. The oaks were capable of growing to two hundred metres under the Moon’s gentle gravity, but this one had been bred for width, and was full of intersecting hollowed-out chambers. The walls of this room were of smooth polished wood, broken only subtly by technology – lights, air vents, virtual display gear – and the canned air here was fresh and moist and alive.

      In contrast to the older parts of Edo – all those clunky tunnels – this was the future of the Moon, the Japanese were implicitly saying. The living Moon. What the hell was an American doing here on the Moon, lecturing these patient Japanese about colonizing space? The Japanese were doing it, patiently and incrementally working.

      But – yes, incrementally: that was the key word. Even these lunar colonists couldn’t see beyond their current projects, the next few years, their own lifetimes. They couldn’t see where this could all lead. To Malenfant, that ultimate destination was everything.

      And, perhaps, Nemoto and her strange science would provide the first route map.

      The little probe-images had reached their destination stars.

      ‘Here is the heart of the strategy,’ he said. ‘A target system, we assume, is uninhabited. We can therefore program for massive and destructive exploitation of the system’s resources, without restraint, by the probe. Such resources are useless for any other purpose, and are therefore economically free to us. And so we colonize, and build.’

      More probes erupted from each of the first wave of target stars, at greatly increased speeds. The probes reached new targets; and again, more probes were spawned, and fired onwards. The volume covered by the probes grew rapidly; it was like watching the expansion of gas into a vacuum.

      He said, ‘Once started, the process is self-directing, self-financing. It would take, we think, ten to a hundred million years for the colonization of the Galaxy to be completed in this manner. But we must invest merely in the cost of the initial generation of probes. Thus the cost of colonizing the Galaxy will be less, in real terms, than that of our Apollo program of fifty years ago.’

      His probes were now spreading out along the Galaxy’s spiral arms, along lanes rich with stars. His Japanese audience watched politely.

      But as he delivered his polished words he thought of Nemoto and her tantalizing hints of otherness – of a mystery which might render all his scripted invective obsolete – and he faltered.

      Trying to focus, feeling impatient, he closed with his cosmic-destiny speech. ‘… This may be a watershed in the history of the cosmos. Think about it. We know how to do this. If we make the right decisions now, life may spread beyond Earth and Moon, far beyond the solar system, a wave of green transforming the Galaxy. We must not fail …’ And so on.

      Well, they applauded him kindly enough. But there were few questions.

      He got out, feeling foolish.

      

      The next day СКАЧАТЬ