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  • Schemes of the Unknown Unknown Ch. 03

Schemes of the Unknown Unknown Ch. 03

Chapter Three
Earth - 3752 C.E.

Notwithstanding the fact that along with the rest of humanity scattered beyond the orbit of the third planet Paul had wanted to visit Earth ever since he was a child, his initial experience was actually rather disappointing.

It wasn't just that he'd forgotten what normal gravity felt like after the time he'd been living on the Moon. There was also the drizzle, the chill in the South Pacific air and the unaccustomed brush of wind on his face. For the first time in his life Paul had to wear clothes not only for reasons of decoration and decorum but also as protection from the elements. Never again would he complain about the artificial atmosphere that was standard everywhere in the Solar System but Earth: the birthplace and fountainhead of humanity and civilisation.

The short journey from the Moon to Earth was probably the most uncomfortable Paul had endured since leaving Godwin. The executive government of Earth was so fretful about the environmental risk of a space vehicle landing on the planet's surface that the flight was executed in a series of small hops from one craft to another of steadily diminishing size. The aeroplane that actually touched down on the airstrip at South Pacific City was little more than a tube with wings that could accommodate fewer than a thousand passengers. These poor souls, including Paul and Beatrice, were strapped into upright seats where they had virtually no opportunity to stretch their legs and had to subsist on a very limited choice of food.

South Pacific City wasn't dry land exactly. In fact, it was many kilometres adrift in the southern Pacific Ocean. The city was a floating platform of small settlements that had expanded by aggregation over the centuries from the need to minimise the impact of space flight on the fragile planet. It now had a total diameter of over a thousand kilometres, but even from ground level Paul could see that the city wasn't contiguous. There were more expansive areas of open water than there were of walkable surface.

South Pacific City housed the single largest population of any continent on Earth. About one in five of the planet's strictly controlled population of a billion people lived in the city. Nevertheless, this bald statistic was misleading as only a third of that number was permanently resident and three-quarters of the population of South Pacific City belonged to this privileged minority. As the floating continent was the main point of intersection between Earth and the rest of the Solar System, it employed more people than anywhere else on the globe.

As soon as Paul's eyes had at last adjusted to the Sun's bright light on an azure sea under a wide uninterrupted blue sky while his face was battered by a brisk breeze, Beatrice and he were led down a slope to the streets and concourses beneath the ocean surface. Paul had learnt about all this as a schoolboy in his lessons on Earth's geography. To support the weight of the buildings above water-level, the city needed nine times the ballast below. Most of the city above water level was reserved for office space and luxury residential properties so the public spaces were housed in an environment Paul found more familiar from a life in an artificial colony in deep space. Like Godwin, most of South Pacific City was comfortably climate-controlled and enclosed by thick plates of glass. The imperative at Pacific City wasn't to keep out the vacuum of empty space but to hold back the teeming oceans. Paul could see seaweed, fish and even sharks through the metre-thick glass.

"The city attracts a lot of wildlife," said Ali, the guide assigned to escort Beatrice and Paul. "In a sense, it has actually increased the ocean's biodiversity. We do have to be careful about whales, however."

"Whales?" Paul wondered.

"They are very big," Ali explained. "It can cause quite a shock to the whale and even to citizens if one collides against the city's underside."

Although it wasn't Ali's job to guard the couple, he advised Paul and Beatrice that they would still be accompanied by very strict security. Although Earth was mostly nothing more than a tourist site and therefore the Solar System's safest and most benign satellite, even here there was a risk that there might still be fanatics who would want to assassinate Paul.

Ali escorted the couple by foot for more than a kilometre in a city where the only other means of transport were boat and bicycle. Their destination was a tall building that towered into the sky high above the glass ceiling and the pavements.

"You'll get a good view of the ocean from your hotel room," Ali said. "It towers about half a kilometre above the water surface. I just hope you'll never have a problem with the elevators especially if you want to go to the gym. And that's because the gym's nearly four hundred meters below the surface."

"Is there as much hotel beneath the water surface as above?" Paul wondered.

"Rather more, in fact," Ali said. "Tall buildings need a lot of ballast. There aren't many hotel rooms below sea level except those to hold guests who are here to observe underwater life. If it is of interest to you, there's a submarine tour to a deep sea settlement that's situated by a black smoker vent. That might be a great treat if you've ever visited Venus and would like to see where the technology for living on that planet was first actively used."

"That's a trip I look forward to," said Beatrice.

The view from the windows of the couple's rooms was breathtaking. The hotel wasn't quite the tallest structure on the horizon, but the distance between similar tall buildings was so great that the others didn't obscure their view. Although the hotel was situated about fifty kilometres from the nearest edge of South Pacific City and much further from the others, Paul could see an ocean landscape extending in all directions peppered by a flotilla of disconnected artificial islands. From this elevation, he could well believe how disjointed and widely scattered the city was. Beyond the city limits to the South and East was unbroken ocean that reached the distant horizons.

Something Paul had always wanted to do since he was a child was to open a window, stand on a balcony and know that the air he breathed wasn't enclosed within a glass tube or held under a glass dome; to breathe instead from an atmosphere that encircled the entire planet's surface. It mightn't taste quite as sweet as the air Paul was accustomed to. It was, in fact, salty, damp, blustery and chilly, but it was genuine unadulterated natural and breathable atmosphere.

"Earth at last!" Paul announced. "Isn't it great?"

Beatrice strode over to Paul from inside the apartment and he was slightly startled but not too surprised to see she was naked.

"It's a lovely view," she said as she pressed her bosom against his chest. "And we have the privacy and time to do whatever we like. Only the occasional sea bird can see us."

"Of course," admitted Paul who immediately saw the attraction of making love in the open air while looking over an endless vista. Another first, he thought as Beatrice slowly removed one item of his clothing after another and flung them expertly over the hotel surveillance cameras.

However much passion a man may possess, his amorous ambition must eventually be defeated by the evening chill especially when the lovemaking is high above the ocean waves. And so it proved for Paul, though he was distracted for long enough to miss the opportunity to view the sunset. This was a sight he'd only seen before in an airless sky. The apartment lights came on gradually as the Sun sunk below the horizon and cast progressively longer shadows over the balcony. It was too late when Paul became aware that this was yet another eagerly anticipated first that he'd failed to properly appreciate.

He also failed to see the first rays of the early morning Sun when they streamed in through the balcony windows. In fact, Paul was only finally prodded into wakefulness by Ali's urgent calls on the holoscreen.

"You have an appointment with Professor Giuseppe Wasilewski in just over half an hour," Ali announced. "Don't be late. The professor's not a patient man."

"Professor who?" wondered Paul after Ali's holographic image vanished.

"He's the space mission's Head of Science and Research," said Beatrice as she unhurriedly slipped on some loose and positively revealing clothes.

"Why do we have to see him?"

"He's your boss."

"Boss?" wondered Paul who still found the concept both alien and quite novel. "I still don't know why we should meet him."

"It's expected of you," said Beatrice.

That was explanation enough in a sense, but Paul was still rather more than an hour late and unconvinced by the notion that a man he'd never met before should now somehow have a position of authority over him. He also wasn't quite certain what authority really meant beyond being something he'd rather not be subject to.

"At last," said the professor. "I'm glad you could fit me into your busy schedule."

"Actually, it's not very busy at all," said Paul breezily. He was as unfamiliar with sarcasm as he was with authority. "I was hoping you'd be able to give me an idea of what I should be doing."

"And what might that be, Paul?" the professor asked as his scorn slowly elided into a tone of incredulity. He was accustomed to rather more respect from junior academics, even if he was accompanied by a wife of such remarkable beauty.

"I'm not sure," said Paul. "I hope it's not too onerous because I'd like to do some sightseeing while I'm on Earth."

"So, you believe the chief purpose of your stay on Earth is to provide you with an excuse for tourism, is that right?"

"Well, of course," said Paul, oblivious to the professor's tone. He wasn't sure what to make of Professor Wasilewski and was even less sure how to pronounce his name. Despite the man's smile, he didn't really seem especially friendly. But Paul had come to both recognise and disregard the diversity in custom across the Solar System. Perhaps Earthlings had their own peculiar customs. "I've never been to Earth before and I've heard so much about it."

"I'm sure you have," said the professor. "I see you come from Godwin. That's in the Kuiper Belt, isn't it? I'm surprised you know anything about Earth coming from so far beyond the boundaries of civilisation."

"Oh, we know a lot about Earth," Paul continued, warming to the subject. "After Godwin, Earth is the place in the Solar System we know most about. That and the Moon, of course."

"Really?" said Professor Wasilewski.

"Yes," said Paul, wondering where this conversation was heading.

"Well, in answer to your original question, as far as I'm concerned you can do exactly as much sightseeing as you like."

"Well, thank you," said Paul who hadn't previously been aware that there was any limit to this pursuit.

There was a pause while the professor attempted to articulate an appropriate reply. Paul looked nervously at Beatrice for guidance. He half-expected that she would signal that this interview with the not very affable professor was over and that they could leave. Instead, her face showed virtually no expression and her eyes were fixed steadily on Professor Wasilewski. Paul turned his gaze back to the man he still struggled to regard as his 'boss'.

"When I say that you can do as much sightseeing as you like," continued the professor in measured tones having now abandoned his attempt at deprecating wit, "what I mean is that I have real difficulty in assigning a constructive role for you and your wife. I don't know why you've been foisted on me. I simply can't grasp what practical use you could possibly serve."

"I've wondered about that too," said Paul helpfully.

"Indeed?" said the professor with some astonishment at Paul's ready agreement. "I thought you could maybe enlighten me as to what value a data archaeologist might have on a mission to a part of space where as far as I know there has never been an archaic database or computer operating system at any time in all eternity. Do you expect to find antique compact discs or binary machine code instructions? Do you think the Anomaly is best understood through detailed knowledge of silicon chips and magnetic hard drives?"

"Paul is on the mission because he identified the historical antiquity of the Anomaly," said Beatrice, while her husband struggled to find a coherent answer to the professor's rather bizarre assertions.

"Because he attracted unwanted publicity and the attention of every wingnut terrorist in the Solar System more like," snorted the professor. "It's true that Dr Morris provided fairly convincing additional evidence for what we had already suspected. That was nothing more than that the Anomaly is a rather more ancient phenomenon than was originally assumed. Beyond that, he's been rather more of a distraction than a help. And when he hasn't been a distraction, he's been a positive nuisance. That is why I firmly recommended that he shouldn't be part of this mission. And that is also why, young lady, that I recommended that you shouldn't be a member of the mission either. On both counts I have been overruled. And now I find that I am expected to assign you to some kind of useful endeavour."

"Well, surely there's something that Paul and I can do?" Beatrice pleaded.

"What this mission needs are soldiers, navigators and scientists. The scientists that the mission needs are experts in whatever this Anomaly might be. I wonder sometimes whether the secrecy surrounding the mission is less to do with security concerns than the more profound fear that the more people knew about the mission the more they would realise just how little we know what this Anomaly might be. Rather than hide the extent of our knowledge, the secrecy serves to disguise the embarrassing magnitude of our ignorance. Nevertheless, whether the Anomaly is biological, mechanical or polydimensional, what it most certainly isn't is something about which a data archaeologist specialising in twentieth and twenty-first century computer systems is likely to be expert. Nor is it something where a former Venusian fire-fighter is likely to be of much help."

"That's what I thought," said Paul who more or less agreed with everything the professor was saying. "So, you wouldn't mind it if we spent the next couple of months on Earth just being tourists?"

"It's not a couple of months, alas," said the professor almost defeated by Paul's naive insouciance. "It may be nearer to a year until everything is properly organised. For most of the hundreds of scientists and technicians on the mission, this will be a period of busy activity to study all the available evidence now they have the security clearance to do so. For you two, however, it looks like the year will be nothing worse than a long holiday at the Interplanetary Union's expense."

"That doesn't sound bad," said Paul.

"Isn't there a need for pre-flight training?" asked Beatrice.

"There is some standard training for all passengers," the professor admitted. "It's scarcely more than routine. There will also be some general briefing about the nature of the mission, the parameters under which we operate, and our present understanding of what the Anomaly is. The last might sound the most enlightening, but is actually the least satisfactory part."

"Are we scheduled to attend the training and briefing sessions?" Beatrice asked.

"Of course."

"And is there anything more that you want of me and my husband?"

"No. Unlike the other scientists on this mission you're unlikely to have to see me again until we leave Earth. And—whether it is agreeable to you or not I don't know—I shan't be joining you on the mission. I have no wish to waste years of what remains of my life on what I frankly believe to be a wasteful and wasted expedition to nowhere very useful."

It hadn't occurred to Paul before that the professor might be quite old. Medical technology disguised all evidence of aging, but someone with the seniority to guide the scientific part of the mission and of course to be Paul's 'boss' could very well be more than a century or two old.

"Is that what you think this Anomaly is?" asked Beatrice who was guiding the conversation rather more than Paul. "Nowhere very useful."

"All these strange apparitions like lamp-posts materialising on icy planets, elves climbing out of craters and fires burning in a vacuum..." pondered the professor. "A substantial extent of space just beyond the Heliopause ripping open like a sore... A historical presence that goes back to at least the beginning of space exploration and perhaps earlier... It's all very odd and at the moment inexplicable. But my guess is that like all the other bizarre things that humanity has identified—like strange attraction, dark energy and lateral time—the ultimate solution will be rather mundane however elegant the mathematical description or incredible its manifestation."

"Do you think the mission is a waste of time?"

"Unlike many of my peers I really don't see much need for haste in our research. We should be thorough and detailed. What we probably don't want or need to do is squander a significant amount of the Interplanetary Union's wealth on a mission that is unlikely to be a success. And we still don't even know what would constitute success or whether it would bring any material benefit. On the basis of cost and risk alone, this is a mission that should never have been authorised. Should some brave politician choose to write off the losses already incurred and kill the project before it squanders even more, then this couldn't happen too soon."

"Is that what you believe?" wondered Paul who had problems understanding any analysis in terms of economic impact.

"Indeed I do," admitted the professor.

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