Helix
Praise for Eric Brown
“A classic concept – a built world to dwarf Rama and Ringworld – a setting for a hugely imaginative adventure. Helix is the very DNA of true SF. This is the rediscovery of wonder.”
Stephen Baxter on Helix
“Essentially a romp – a gloriously old-fashioned slice of science fiction... What gives the novel a unique spin is its intertwining parallel plots. It’s smart, fun, page-turning stuff, with an engaging cast and plenty of twists... A hugely entertaining read.”
SFX Magazine on Helix
“Equal parts adventure, drama and wonder. Sometimes they work alone, providing a raw dose of science fiction. Other times, Brown uses them in concert to spin an irresistible blend that pulls the narrative along almost faster than you can keep up. However it’s served, Helix is a delightful read and is an excellent reminder of why we read science fiction: it’s fun!”
SF Signal on Helix
“A thoughtful, provocative book that sets up a bigger story than it has a chance to tell... A surprisingly calm and fluid read, gracefully skimming over the years with the same detachment displayed by its immortal protagonist. If my regret is that this book was not longer, it is a very good book indeed.”
Pornokitsch on The Kings of Eternity
“A novel about discovery: about the discovery of other worlds and other species only – I repeat only – insofar as it is about the discovery of love, and one another... A charmingly timeless tale, lithe, powerful and tremendously affecting.”
The Speculative Scotsman on The Kings of Eternity
“So very fast as to speed past, and feisty enough to excite... Sets the scene for a strange world wherein anything and everything science-fictional can happen.”
Tor.com on Weird Space: The Devil’s Nebula
“Spot-on... It delivers a good story, introduces the premise of the setting and the threats and dangers posed within it, but also works well as a stand-alone... With Eric Brown already signed up for another book, I know that it’ll be a series worth following.”
Walker of Worlds on Weird Space: The Devil’s Nebula
“Brown’s spectacular creativity creates a constantly compelling read... a memorable addition to the genre.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Brown concentrates on stunning landscapes and in the way he conveys the conflicting points of view between races... No matter how familiar each character becomes, they continue to appear completely alien when viewed through the opposing set of eyes.”
Interzone
“There is always something strikingly probable about the futures that Eric Brown writes... No matter how dark the future that Eric Brown imagines, the hope of redemption is always present. No matter how alien the world he describes, there is always something hauntingly familiar about the situations that unfold there.”
Tony Ballantyne
“Eric Brown joins the ranks of Graham Joyce, Christopher Priest and Robert Holdstock as a master fabulist.”
Paul di Filippo
“SF infused with a cosmopolitan and literary sensibility... accomplished and affecting.”
Paul J. McAuley
“Eric Brown is the name to watch in SF.”
Peter F. Hamilton
Also by Eric Brown
NOVELS
Weird Space: The Devil’s Nebula
The Kings of Eternity
Guardians of the Phoenix
Xenopath
Necropath
Cosmopath
Kéthani
Helix
Helix Wars
New York Dreams
New York Blues
New York Nights
Penumbra
Engineman
Meridian Days
NOVELLAS
Starship Summer
Starship Fall
Starship Winter
Revenge
The Extraordinary Voyage of Jules Verne
Approaching Omega
A Writer’s Life
COLLECTIONS
The Angels of Life and Death
Ghost Writing
Threshold Shift
The Fall of Tartarus
Deep Future
Parallax View (with Keith Brooke)
Blue Shifting
The Time-Lapsed Man
AS EDITOR
The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (with Mike Ashley)
ERIC BROWN
HELIX
First published 2007 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN: (epub) 978-1-84997-184-3
ISBN: (mobi) 978-1-84997-185-0
Copyright © Eric Brown 2007
Cover Art by Dominic Harman
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of he copyright owners.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
To Finn and Freya
ONE /// GRAVEYARD EARTH
1
THE YEAR WAS 2095 and planet Earth was dying.
That morning Hendry was working in the garden of the starship graveyard when his communications rig chimed. He moved back into the Mars shuttle and slumped down before the receiver. It was Old Smith, as usual, calling from across the straits in Tasmania to chat for a while. Smith said he’d lucked in on a radio station beaming out of Jakarta. The big news in Europe was a terrorist strike in Berne, at the headquarters of the European Space Organisation, with a dozen dead and hundreds injured.
“I thought I’d better get in touch, Joe,” Smith said. “Doesn’t your daughter—?”
Sweating, fear lodged like an embolism in his chest, Hendry cut the call short and tried to get through to Berne.
There was no reply from Chrissie. He waited five minutes then tried again. Okay, so she was out, working at the ESO headquarters. What time was it in Europe? He tried to work it out, but fear scrambled his thoughts. Australia was eight hours ahead of Berne, so it’d be around two in the morning in Europe.
Chrissie wouldn’t be at work, then. She’d be sleeping, he told himself, and he didn’t know whether to feel relief at the fact or renewed fear at the thought that his call should have awoken her.
He called her code again, and five minutes later gave up and left the shuttle.
He walked through the starship graveyard to the edge of the sea. Light-headed, trying not to dwell on Chrissie’s lack of response, he looked over his garden, row upon row of peas and beans and potato plants, their lush foliage incongruous amid the rearing shapes of a dozen derelict shuttles and decommissioned tugs. Despite their dilapidated and broken-backed condition, there was something almost proud and defiant about these ships. They spoke of a time when humankind had not been afraid to explore, when the planet could sustain the luxury of space flight, before the cutbacks and the withdrawal of the moon and Mars colonies.
He passed between the two towering solid fuel boosters that formed the entrance to the graveyard, paused and took in the scene before him. The sea lapped listlessly at the scorching sands of the beach, but he saw only Chrissie’s face in his mind’s eye.
Thirty years ago Hendry had lived with his parents in the Melbourne suburb of Edithvale, now submerged twenty miles out to sea. This was as close to the stamping ground of his youth as he had been able to get, and the fact had disturbed him on his return in ’90. He had known, intellectually, that Australia like every other landmass had been pared down little by little and reshaped by the creeping tides, but that the ocean had swallowed his childhood home he found inconceivable and shocking.
So he’d set up a base in the old starship graveyard, and started a garden, along with a dozen other like-minded, lost souls who over the following years had either died or moved away, driven by the encroaching sea or the increasing heat. Hendry had stayed on, despite the pleas from Chrissie to join her in Europe where civilisation was making a last stand against the worsening elements.
He had always resisted her offers of an apartment in Berne. He had his own life here, such as it was, and he could not face the prospect of living an artificial existence of pampered excess in some Swiss fortress enclave.
Now he wanted nothing more than to be with her.
He walked along the shoreline to the jetty, a tumbledown extension of rank lumber, which he had helped erect five years ago. He negotiated the treacherous, sun-warped boards, stepping over gaping holes, and came to the system of pulleys he’d rigged up last year. He hauled, and far below a ripped square of netting emerged from the sea bearing its usual meagre haul of small fish. He transferred the catch to a bucket and carefully retreated to the shore.
He moved along to the desalination plant, which was a grand name for the pile of shuddering junk that O’Grady had patched together two years ago, a parting gift before he bailed out and escaped north.
The plant was powered by a shield array of solar panels, coruscating blindingly in the morning sun. Beneath them the rusting pipes and engines throbbed, taking salt from the seawater and pumping the resulting clear, but foul-tasting, water back up t
he beach to the irrigation system that helped keep Hendry’s vegetable garden alive. There were a couple of litres left over every day for Hendry’s consumption, which he drank in the form of dandelion tea.
He checked the plant half-heartedly, going over the list of details O’Grady had warned him about before his departure. O’Grady had been the community’s engineer, and his loss had been a grave blow—one from which they had never recovered. Stella had died not long after and her husband, Greg, had reluctantly left Hendry and sailed east in a home-made ketch. Hendry often wondered what had become of the meteorologist. Had he ever made it to New Zealand, and the mountainous land of promise they had heard myths about on infrequent radio broadcasts from Dunedin?
The desalination plant was doing fine, a testament to O’Grady’s engineering skills. Hendry turned and walked back up the beach. He’d try getting through to Chrissie again now, and if he did so he’d celebrate with grilled fish and salad for lunch.
He hurried through the booster gateposts and was approaching the shuttle when he heard the chime of the incoming call. He arrived breathless and dived at the rig. “Hendry here. Do you read?”
It took a second for the picture on the screen to clear, and even then it was furred with atmospheric interference.
A smiling face looked out at him, and Hendry shot forward on the couch, relief flooding through him like a drug. “Chrissie! For Chrissake, I thought... The bomb—”
“I know. That’s why I called. I’ve just heard about it.”
“You okay?” he asked, inanely. He realised that his eyes were filling with tears.
She smiled out at him. “I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m not in Europe.”
“You’re not?”
Her smile widened, mischievous. “I’m in Oz, Dad. Sydney.”
“You’re kidding, right? Why on earth...?” If she were in Sydney, then the chances were that she’d be down to see him soon.
“I heard about the bomb,” he said, “tried to get through to you. You can’t imagine how worried I was when you didn’t answer.”
“It’s okay, Dad. I’m fine,” she said.
He sat back in the chair and laughed.
She said, “It was the Fujiyama Green Brigade. They claimed responsibility for the bombing.” She looked away uneasily, perhaps wondering if she should have mentioned the Brigade for fear of opening old wounds.
He stared at her. “It was? My God...”
Chrissie smiled and changed the subject. “You look a sight, Dad!”
“I do?” He looked down at himself. He was wearing sawn-off denims, and an old shirt, through which his pot belly protruded. On his head an ancient straw hat protected him from the sun. “Well, not many people around here now, so I don’t dress for dinner.”
“How many, Dad?”
He thought about lying, but decided against it. “Exactly one.”
Her round face, slanted eyes, registered shock. “You’re all alone?”
“And doing okay, Chrissie.”
He thought she was about to suggest, again, that he join her in Berne. Her calculating look was that obvious. To her credit she didn’t even try, this time.
She leaned forward. The picture broke up briefly, then re-formed. “You remember how we used to talk about the future of humankind?”
He smiled. He had brought her up alone, after her mother had walked out. Chrissie had gone through a phase in her teens when the state of the world, and the future of humanity, became her overriding concern. She’d corner him and talk for hours on end about where the planet was going.
“I remember.”
“And you were always the optimist, Dad.”
“And you the teenage pessimist.”
She laughed. “And now? You still optimistic?”
Hendry smiled. “Well... it’s hard to be optimistic these days, you know?” He stopped there. He didn’t want to sound like the Jeremiahs of his youth: Chrissie was still young; the future was hers, what little there was left of it.
“Dad,” she said, changing tack, “do you think humanity carries within it the seed of its own destruction? I mean, was it destined to end like this? Are we so corrupt on the personal level that that is inevitably mirrored in society at large?”
“What have you been reading, Chrissie?”
His daughter worked as a botanist, battling to save flora endangered by the harsh climatic conditions. As she’d emerged from her teenage angst, she’d turned into a happy young woman who, despite all the evidence around her, always argued that there was hope.
“Answer the question, Dad.”
“Okay, okay,” he smiled and thought about it, then shrugged. “That’s a hard one, Chrissie. But in general I’d say no, nothing is inevitable. Many people are corrupt, but many are not. Some societies down the ages have prospered, and would have continued to do so without despoiling the Earth, if not for other societies who gained pre-eminence.” He shrugged. “Does that make disaster inevitable? It depends a lot on luck, the right breaks.” He decided he was waffling, and shut up.
“What you’re saying is that if we had it all over again, Dad, then with luck it might work out differently?”
He nodded, wondering where this was leading. “Yes, I guess so.”
She smiled, and the smile sent a terrible pain through him, for there was only one world, and it was dying, along with everyone upon it, even his beautiful twenty-five year-old daughter.
“Thanks, Dad. That’s what I think, too.” She leaned forward, so that her face almost filled the screen. “Something’s come up at this end. It’s all top secret, hush-hush. I can’t breathe a word of it over the link. But we’re flying down to Victoria for more training, and I’ve wangled an hour off to see you. I’ll be there around noon, okay?”
He was stunned. “Can’t wait, Chrissie.”
“Love you,” she said, and her image vanished as she reached out and cut the connection.
Hendry went about in a daze for the rest of the day. He’d last seen Chrissie two years ago, when she’d managed the arduous trip and stayed with him for a fortnight. Back then the community had numbered ten, and had a vitality about it, though he’d seen how shocked she was at his living conditions.
Since then they’d communicated every month or so, she trying to get him to relocate to Berne, he resisting, but later wondering why.
Maybe it was because he didn’t want to become emotionally reliant on Chrissie. He’d been down that road fifteen years ago with Chrissie’s mother, Su, and then she’d walked out, left him to join a commune of neo-fascist Greens bent on the systematic assassination of industrialists.
It had taken a long time to get over that, and a long time to come to terms with being alone again when, five years ago, Chrissie left their home in Paris to attend university in Berne. Hendry had thought of going with her then, but something had drawn him south, to the land of his birth.
Later he went out into the garden, watched the sun go down and then began hoeing between the peas. He normally slipped into a mindless fugue while working in the garden, but this time his head was full of Chrissie’s optimism. Something had come up, she’d said, something hush-hush. She’d wanted to know if humanity carried the seeds of their destruction within them... And her mention of a new beginning?
He wondered if, like her mother, she’d been lured into some fanatical cult promising redemption.
But she would tell him all about it tomorrow. That was more than Su had ever done. She’d walked out after dropping Chrissie off at school one morning, left him a note saying that she’d had enough of being married to a spacer and was leaving.
Slowly, he’d worked to overcome his rage, his hatred. He’d hired the services of a private detective, who’d traced her to the headquarters of a back-to-the-soil cult in Tokyo, the Fujiyama Green Brigade. Hendry had tried to contact her, but his calls and emails had gone unanswered. He’d even visited Tokyo in an attempt to track her down, but the cult was expert at covering the traces of its converts.