Anticopernicus by Adam Roberts Read Free Book Online

Here?
    —
Earth, actually
.
    —You’re saying Copernicus was wrong? The Earth
is
the centre of the Universe? Hah!
    —
It’s why we came. It’s also why it took us such a long time. To come, I mean. We were afraid. It’s like cutting a slit in the veil of the temple and stepping through into the holy of holies.
    —What nonsense are you speaking now?
    —
You keep adding people to people. You keeping making more consciousnesses, and breeding more human beings. You keep doing it!
    —Not I, said Ange, fiercely, thinking of her own rationally chosen childlessness.
    —
That’s exactly it! You know what dark energy is?
    But she had no time for that sort of non-question. She had practical matters to address. There were six suit tanks, and she was breathing one of them now. Say: another six hours in this one, plus sixty hours in the other five. Less than three days. Was there a way she could compress, or distil, the tenuous air that now circulated through the cabin? Even if she could construct a machine for doing that, how much time would it give her?
    She looked back on what she had done. Why had she opened all those doors? She should have lived in each room in turn, breathing its air until it went bad, and then moving on. That would have given her certain extra hours. But it hardly mattered. Hours were no help when she needed weeks.
    Inspired by some left-field insight into something-or-other, Ange threw a question out that chanced to hit the
eye
of the bull, bullseye, centre-target.
    —How many of you are there, anyway?
    —
Three
, came the reply, immediately.
    Odd that nobody else had thought of asking that question, during all the earlier interactions between human and Cygnic.
    —You left the rest of your people at home?
    —
Our people?
    —Your civilisation.
    —
We are our civilisations. Three separate, entire civilisations. Come to visit you.
    —One from each? Three home worlds? It must be an honour to be the chosen representative.
    —
You’re being dense and dumb. Listen: I
am
my civilisation, entire
.
    —I see, said Ange, who was feeling hungry, and wondering how she might smuggle pieces of food into her helmet and thence to her mouth without dying of asphyxiation in the process.
    —
You see
?
    —I see infinity in a grain of sand, she said, unsure why she did so.
    —
The thing we have found hardest to grasp is your lack of self-knowledge in this matter
, said the alien, haughtily.
    —I don’t even know, said Ange, that
haughty
is a phrase that means anything to you. Who knows what alien emotions are like?
    —
You’re the alien
, said the Cygnic.
    —We’re alien to one another. I suppose it’s relative.
    —
No, said the Cygnic. It’s not. We’re not the aliens. You are
.
    —I don’t see how that works, Ange replied, a little crossly. What’s sauce for the goose is ... But she couldn’t remember how that phrase concluded.
    —
There are more than twenty billion human beings on Earth
.
    —So?
    —
So
, said the alien, as if that summed everything up.
    —How many of your species are there? Billions, I don’t doubt. Maybe trillions, since you clearly have the technology to spread yourself all around the galaxy.
    —
Me
.
    —Yes, you. How many are there of you?
    —
Just me
.
    —That’s what I’m asking.
    —
I’m answering. Just me
.
    Ange thought about this, and it sunk in. It percolated through. Oh, she said. So when you said there are three of you ...
    —Three separate entities. We united to make this pilgrimage; it’s an almost unprecedented event in Galactic history. But it was important.
    —And you are, she said. What: the last of your race? What happened to all the others? Dead?
    —
There never have been any others. I am the first and last. The same with every other intelligence in the cosmos. Intelligence is singular, of course
. 
     And then, fractal-like, the implications of this statement unfolded and unfolded the more she looked at it. Good grief, she said.
    —
Life is