“This makes no sense,” Penny said, growing hostile.
Earthshine urged, “Just run with this for a moment. Stef, what’s your alternative hypothesis?”
She took a deep breath. “History changed. What else? The minute I opened that Hatch.”
Earthshine nodded. “Before, there was a different history.”
“Where I was an only child. Where I had a different name, for God’s sake. I was Stephanie Penelope Kalinski, not Stephanie Karen, and Penelope Dianne never existed. And when I opened that Hatch and stepped inside, there you were, Penny—real, live, impossible. With a set of memories of a different past. Memories that were in everybody else’s head too.”
“All except yours,” Earthshine said. “Just suppose you’re right, Stef. Just suppose reality was changed, that the Hatch, on accepting you, immediately tinkered with the past—at least with your own past. Giving you a sister you never had. And presumably causing subsequent small changes that rippled away from that big central adjustment.”
Penny was clearly uncomfortable, and Stef was sure she knew why. They were talking about a world where she’d never even been born, and that must be existentially terrifying. Penny said now, “Occam’s razor. Basic principle of science. The idea that Stef somehow got a kind of amnesia is a lot simpler than the idea that the whole universe has been changed to generate a new reality.”
“Well, Occam has been dead a long time,” Earthshine said mildly. “And is the alternative really so preposterous? We know that the Hatch technology involves some kind of manipulation of space-time. You both clambered down into a hole beneath the Hatch that could not exist, according to the geophysics measurements. What is a history change but another such manipulation? In time, rather than space. Stef, I suspect you may not have gone much further with this line of thinking yourself, even in the privacy of your own head.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I mean that if there has been some kind of history change, effected by the Hatch, or whoever built the Hatch—”
Penny snorted. “Oh, this is—”
“Then it’s been kind of a messy change, hasn’t it? I mean, it hasn’t been clean. We know that it’s left at least one trace of what went before, in your own memory, Stef.”
“That’s hardly evidence,” Penny snapped.
“It is to Stef. Maybe it had something to do with you being inside the Hatch itself, at the moment the change was effected—”
“And what would be the point?” Penny demanded now. “You’re talking about changing history. If you can do that, why not, hell, wipe out a climate Jolt or two? Or even wipe out the warming altogether—why not go back and shoot Henry Ford?”
Stef said, her mind racing, “Maybe it—or they, the Hatch-makers, whoever is behind this—couldn’t manage anything on that scale. Maybe they didn’t know enough about us, about humanity, to make more than the smallest change. Maybe this was all they could manage. For now, anyhow.” She looked at Earthshine. “But why us? I mean, why me? What’s significant about me, or my life?”
“Everything, “ Earthshine said. “Or nothing. Maybe it was just the fact that you were first into the Hatch. This was a kind of—test run. An exploration. But if so, as I said—”
“The execution was sloppy,” Stef said. “With one loose end left, in my memory. Trant and King remembered Penny opening the second hatchway and going through ahead of me. I remember opening the second hatch myself, then seeing Penny for the first time… Sloppy.”
“At least one loose end.”
Stef looked at him sharply.
Penny stood. “What do you mean? Have you found another ‘loose end’? Have you got some kind of proof?”
He smiled as she loomed over him. “Well, wasn’t it logical to at least look? If there is one ragged corner there could easily be more. So I looked. And—”
Stef said, “Is that why you brought us to France? Is there something you want to show us?”
“I can do this virtually,” he said. “Or it may be better if you travel physically and see for yourselves, with your own eyes.”
“Later,” they both said, their identical voices double-tracking.
“Just show us,” Stef said. “Please.”
Penny sat down, looking frankly scared.
Earthshine nodded, waved a hand, and the room dissolved.
Chapter 43
A footprint.
Yuri froze.
Beside him, Mardina pulled Beth close.
A human footprint, in the mud. Clear as day. Yuri could see the ball of the foot, the heel. He could count the toes.
“Where there’s one print,” Mardina murmured, “there are going to be others. Look, Yuri. That way…” She pointed west across the arid country away from the lake.
The trail of prints was clearly visible, like shallow craters in the crusty ground, one after another, left, right. Off to the horizon.
“Let’s get back to the ColU,” Yuri said.
“Right.”
As they headed, half-running, back around the lake, Beth’s excitement turned to alarm. “What is it? Have I done something wrong?”
“No, sweetie,” Mardina said. “Not at all.”
“Is it that footprint? Is it somebody bad?”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Yuri said. He murmured to Mardina, “We’re scaring her.”
“She’s a right to be scared.”
“This shouldn’t be possible, should it? The Ad Astra drops were supposed to be too far apart.”
“Yet it’s happened.”
They got back to their new campsite, still little more than a heap of supplies, the logs and beams and panels of their dismantled house, a mound of carefully manufactured terrestrial topsoil, other junk. Yuri rummaged until he found a crossbow and bolts. He already had his hunting knife tucked into his belt. “I’ll go and check it out. You look after Beth.”
Mardina curled her lip. “Go ahead, hero.”
Yuri picked up their one flare pistol, it still had a few cartridges left, and stuffed it into his tunic pocket. “Well, if I fire this, come and save me.”
“I’ll save you, Daddy.”
“Thank you, sweetie.” He kissed the top of Beth’s head, grinned at Mardina with a confidence he didn’t feel, and set off.
He tracked back the way they had come. There was the first footprint, bright and sharp. Completely ignored by the builders nearby.
Without hesitating, he went further, following the track of prints across the dry country, heading steadily west, jogging, the crossbow in his hand. In the years since the stranding, Mardina had insisted they both practised with the crossbow until they were reasonably expert. Yuri hadn’t disagreed. There was nothing to shoot at round here, but you never knew. Now it looked as if that might pay off.
More humans! There had been times, especially before Beth had come along, when he had longed for other people to show up, somehow, somewhere—even his enemies, even arsehole Peacekeepers, even that smug bastard astronaut McGregor. He still felt that way sometimes. But now it was different; now he had Beth to shelter and protect. If there were other survivors of the drops down here, who knew what state they would be in? Who knew how they would react to him?
He had come to think of Per Ardua as his, he realised. His and his family’s. It made no sense, but there you were. Now he resented having to share it.
And he feared for his family. He had a mental image of the jilla builders’ efficient genocide: the imprisoning, the wordless, relentless butchery.