Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe by Stephen Baxter Page A
Authors: Stephen Baxter
Ads: Link
for our tithes, and for the food imports we need to survive -’
Maryam nodded curtly, and glanced around. ‘My staff relayed something of your proposals to me.’ The Polars had been floating a suggestion to cut out the Speakerhood by negotiating a covert but direct trading deal between Wilson and the Pole. Aside from the direct benefit to the Polars, they argued that such openness would lead to a rapid growth in the planetary economy, after its strangling by the Speakers’ control. Maryam said softly, ‘I’m never sure who’s listening, here in this palace. It’s best not to go into details here. Plenty of my companions are fearful of the wrath of the Speakers, and of the Controllers.’
Tripp snorted. ‘More fool them. By indulging in such superstitions they are doing the Speakers’ work for them. As if they are forging the bars of their own cages.’
Maryam was irritated, as she often was, by the smug, strange Polars with their arrogance and certitude. ‘It may be a mere set of “beliefs” to you, that we live in a Simulated reality. The fact is, it is the foundation of a religion of global reach and power. Otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting in this Palace dedicated to the Controllers’ worship, would we?’ She riffled through the pages on the table between them. ‘And are these more pages of the “Venus Document” you’ve been trying to buy up?’
‘Those that aren’t forgeries, good enough to fool me.’
‘Aren’t you being contradictory? It seems to me that by seeking out these things you’re tacitly admitting the historical existence of Helen Gray, whose life story is a key part of the entire legend.’
Tripp looked irritated in her turn. ‘We don’t deny all of the standard account of the past. You have to consider our myths and legends as source material, to be handled sceptically.
‘We do believe that Helen Gray, and Wilson Argent and Jeb Holden, all existed. It’s just that we don’t believe they were created out of thin air, along with the Thirty-Seven Children, by any Sim Designers. They all came here in some kind of ship, from another world – from Earth I, maybe, or Earth II. A ship of space. Helen, Wilson and Jeb were the only adults. We believe they fought – and my opinion is Wilson and Jeb fought over Helen, the only woman, as simple as that, and never mind more fanciful theories – and killed each other off a mere three Great Years after landing, and left the Thirty-Seven to grow up unsupervised, and fend for themselves as best they could. And we are all their children, a thousand Great Years later. That in itself is a remarkable story.’
‘But if that’s so, where does the legend of the Sim Controllers come from?’
‘Probably from half-memories of a space mission the Children grew up barely remembering, and never understood! There are pages in the Venus Document that hint at a kind of madness among the crew of that ship – locked up for decades, whole generations living and dying in a metal prison. Some of them came to believe that it was all a hoax and they were being watched, the way you might watch a mirror-bird in a cage.’ She waved a hand. ‘And so this tremendous layered theology, this edifice of power and wealth – all of it came out of a child’s bad dream! We’re lucky that before she died Helen Gray managed to set down a kind of story of her world, and the trip she’d taken. She called it the Venus Document – we think Venus was a companion on the ship. The Document was seen as heretical from the age of the first Speakers. It was locked away, copied, broken up so its imagery could be used as fine art, burned, forged … We suspect only fragments remain. But those fragments, when sifted, are enough to prove -’
‘To the satisfaction of you Polars, at least -’
‘- that this world is real. It’s no Simulation. And that humans came here, somehow, from somewhere else.’
‘I thought you Polars were rationalists.’
‘Well, we have to
Maryam nodded curtly, and glanced around. ‘My staff relayed something of your proposals to me.’ The Polars had been floating a suggestion to cut out the Speakerhood by negotiating a covert but direct trading deal between Wilson and the Pole. Aside from the direct benefit to the Polars, they argued that such openness would lead to a rapid growth in the planetary economy, after its strangling by the Speakers’ control. Maryam said softly, ‘I’m never sure who’s listening, here in this palace. It’s best not to go into details here. Plenty of my companions are fearful of the wrath of the Speakers, and of the Controllers.’
Tripp snorted. ‘More fool them. By indulging in such superstitions they are doing the Speakers’ work for them. As if they are forging the bars of their own cages.’
Maryam was irritated, as she often was, by the smug, strange Polars with their arrogance and certitude. ‘It may be a mere set of “beliefs” to you, that we live in a Simulated reality. The fact is, it is the foundation of a religion of global reach and power. Otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting in this Palace dedicated to the Controllers’ worship, would we?’ She riffled through the pages on the table between them. ‘And are these more pages of the “Venus Document” you’ve been trying to buy up?’
‘Those that aren’t forgeries, good enough to fool me.’
‘Aren’t you being contradictory? It seems to me that by seeking out these things you’re tacitly admitting the historical existence of Helen Gray, whose life story is a key part of the entire legend.’
Tripp looked irritated in her turn. ‘We don’t deny all of the standard account of the past. You have to consider our myths and legends as source material, to be handled sceptically.
‘We do believe that Helen Gray, and Wilson Argent and Jeb Holden, all existed. It’s just that we don’t believe they were created out of thin air, along with the Thirty-Seven Children, by any Sim Designers. They all came here in some kind of ship, from another world – from Earth I, maybe, or Earth II. A ship of space. Helen, Wilson and Jeb were the only adults. We believe they fought – and my opinion is Wilson and Jeb fought over Helen, the only woman, as simple as that, and never mind more fanciful theories – and killed each other off a mere three Great Years after landing, and left the Thirty-Seven to grow up unsupervised, and fend for themselves as best they could. And we are all their children, a thousand Great Years later. That in itself is a remarkable story.’
‘But if that’s so, where does the legend of the Sim Controllers come from?’
‘Probably from half-memories of a space mission the Children grew up barely remembering, and never understood! There are pages in the Venus Document that hint at a kind of madness among the crew of that ship – locked up for decades, whole generations living and dying in a metal prison. Some of them came to believe that it was all a hoax and they were being watched, the way you might watch a mirror-bird in a cage.’ She waved a hand. ‘And so this tremendous layered theology, this edifice of power and wealth – all of it came out of a child’s bad dream! We’re lucky that before she died Helen Gray managed to set down a kind of story of her world, and the trip she’d taken. She called it the Venus Document – we think Venus was a companion on the ship. The Document was seen as heretical from the age of the first Speakers. It was locked away, copied, broken up so its imagery could be used as fine art, burned, forged … We suspect only fragments remain. But those fragments, when sifted, are enough to prove -’
‘To the satisfaction of you Polars, at least -’
‘- that this world is real. It’s no Simulation. And that humans came here, somehow, from somewhere else.’
‘I thought you Polars were rationalists.’
‘Well, we have to
Similar Books
