“Maybe,” I said. “Pleased to meet you. Been here long?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “Weeks and weeks.”
I stooped to lift the pack.
“Let me take that,” he said.
“There’s no need.”
“I need the exercise. Please.”
“All right,” I said. In truth I was glad to be rid of it. I accompanied him into town. Small parks and plazas buzzed with people building ecologies and machines. The buildings were grey and very smooth. They went up and up. Some were angular, others all sweeping curves and elliptical windows and cup-shaped balconies, many of the shapes priapic or vulval or arboreal, a stone dream of the organic.
“Strange smell in the air,” I said.
“Concrete,” he said. He waved a hand at the buildings. “Structural material.”
“So that’s how it’s done.”
“Right. I find it interesting because that’s what I’m learning: structural engineering. You can use some concrete mixes in vacuum, you know.”
“Water could be a problem.”
“Ice and compression. Proven tech.” He looked at me. “So, what do you do?”
“I used to speculate in organic futures,” I said. “When I was younger, I mean,” I added. I knew it sounded tame and obvious, kids’ stuff about, well, kids. “I recently did my micro-gee training and I’m busy trying to plan my future habitat and put together a team. And I write.”
“Biolog?”
“Yes. ‘Learning the World.’ ”
“I’ll check it out,” he said, sounding as if he wouldn’t. “I write too.”
“Not a biolog?” I guessed.
“Just the minimum. If anybody wants to get to know me they can rocking well come and meet me. What I’m really writing is a novel.”
More people say that than say they’re biologging. It’s a disease.
“What’s it about?” I asked. I was looking at shop windows and avoiding collisions. Grant was looking straight ahead and letting other people do the collision avoidance.
“Let’s go in here,” he said, stopping and indicating a cafe. “It’ll take a while to tell you about it.”
I didn’t have anything better to do, so I agreed. The place was bright, with yellow tables and blue crockery. It was about half full, with a dozen or so people at various tables. A wall screen at the back was showing airsurfing, or some such sport. The counter was self-service. I got — bought, I should say — a chicken salad and orange juice. Grant shrugged off the pack beside a vacant table and bought a heaped plate of hot processed meats and fried potatoes and a pot of coffee. I could see why he’d jumped at the chance of exercise.
“So tell me about your novel,” I said, when we’d eaten our first few bites.
He leaned forward, gesturing with his fork. I leaned back. He took the hint.
“It’s about the previous generation,” he said. “Our parents’ generation.”
“Oh,” I said. “Old people.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “Nobody else is interested in it. But there must be stories to tell. Think about it, four hundred years! Cities being built and destroyed! Intrigues, affairs, deals! Secrets! Their past before they took ship!”
“Yes,” I said, “but who would read it?”
“The next generation,” he said. “The one after us.”
I leaned back again, this time for a different reason.
“That’s brilliant,” I said. “The old people will be, like, legendary, and we’ll—”
“We’ll just be boring parents. Exactly.”
“So how much have you written?”
“I’ve done a lot of research,” he said. “It’s not easy. I think, well, to be honest I’d have to have all my faculties before actually, you know, writing about—”
I confess I laughed. He looked taken aback.
“You could write about them from the outside,” I said. “Don’t worry about their inner life, for now.”
He blinked. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “Thanks.”
But I don’t think he has done anything about it. He showed me around the town and helped me to find a place to stay. I met him at a few parties, and sometimes, as now, in the same cafe.
“Morning,” he said, this morning. He was writing.
I sat down with my pot of coffee and plate of berrybread. Grant absently helped himself to a chunk of the latter and went back to tapping the table. Naked people were doing weird stuff on the screen. I’d finished my first cup before he stopped.
“Working on your novel?” I asked.
“Oh, no.” He waved away the idea. “I’m writing up a habitat proposal. For IC413.”
“Ambitious,” I said. “A low number rock.”
The ship radar has been busy the past few months. Kuiper-belt and asteroid-belt objects are now up in the thousands. Most of the early — thus large and/or near — ones have been tabbed.
“It’s more than a rock,” Grant said. “It’s got everything. Metals, volatiles, carbon…”
“And nobody’s tabbed it?”
He gave me an almost adult look. “It’s not AB, it’s 1C.”
“All the same…”
“It’s a waterworld moon, if you can’t be bothered to look it up. A very small one.”
“No wonder it’s unclaimed.”
“It could become a resort. That’s my proposal.”
“A resort? It’ll be decades before anyone can afford a resort.”
“Yes,” he said, “but think about what this could offer them when they do. It’s a long-term investment.”
“In what? A place to watch algae patches from orbit?”
“Access to the waterworld,” he said. “Build a skyhook down. Sailing, swimming…”
“Swimming? In ten gravities?”
“All right then, surfing. Extreme sports.”
I just snorted. “Drowning is extreme, yes!” I was a little disappointed in him. I’d been toying with the idea of asking him on to my team, though I was sure he intended to found his own. I’ve no intention of going near a gravity well, let alone building a business out of lowering people into one, and the second-deepest in the system at that. I was telling him all this at perhaps unnecessary length and with uncalled-for vehemence when an unusual irritating chime came from the wall screen. Forty-Five Free-Fall Love Positions, or whatever the morning programme was, vanished and the World Service Announcement screen came up. Last time I’d seen that, and heard the chime, was when the news about the electromagnetic spectrum sources came through. I felt a pang in my belly.
Seeing the introduction didn’t make it go away: all about how the probes en route can send back pictures which — because they’re so far apart — can be combined and processed and jiggered with to form an image like what you’d get from an enormous telescope. “Let go my hand,” Grant said. “Sorry,” I said. He sucked his knuckles. Then the first picture came up, of a blue hemisphere whorled with white clouds. We just had time to catch breath when the second came up, and stayed. Strip the cloud layer, enhance, and there it is: a hemisphere almost filled with land.
“Wow,” said Grant. “A supercontinent!”
“Not quite,” I pointed out. “Look, the top half, you can see it’s breaking up.” I counted. “Six chunks. Island continents.”
“Yes, yes,” Grant said. I could hear he was still sore about his fingers. “The southern one on its own is a supercontinent. And the others are so close that a bird could fly across the gaps.”
I leaned back, smiling. “Someday there might be birds. Maybe we should give it to the crows.”
Grant was still staring at the screen. People were shouting and speculating. I was too entranced even to pull out my slate. The brown and green of continents, divided by the narrow blue channels and surrounded by the wide blue sea.