The Light of Other Days
In the most exciting SF collaboration ever, Arthur C. Clarke and his acknowledged heir Stephen Baxter pool talent and unprecedented cosmic insights as well as page-turning plotting skills and breathlessly good writing to produce the most awesome novel of the future since 2001: A Space Odyssey.’Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place. Right?’ With these words Hiram Patterson, head of the giant media corporation OurWorld, launches the greatest communications revolution in history. With OurWorld’s development of wormhole technology, any point in space can be connected to any other, faster than the speed of light. Realtime television coverage is here: earthquakes and wars, murders and disasters can be watched, exactly as they occur, anywhere on the planet.Then WormCams are made to work across time as well as space. Humanity encounters itself in the light of other days. We witness the life of Jesus, go to the premiere of Hamlet, solve the enigmas that have baffled generations. Blood spilled centuries ago flows vividly once more – and no personal treachery or shame can be concealed.But when the world and everything in it becomes as transparent as glass and there are no more secrets, people find new ways to gain vengeance and commit crime. And Hiram Patterson meanwhile will try to keep his deadly schemes secret – but even he, its creator, cannot anticipate the power of the all-seeing WormCam.
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The Light of Other Days
Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter
HarperVoyager
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Voyager 2000
Copyright © Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter 2000
Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover image © Shutterstock.com
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780002247535
eBook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007379514 Version:2016-05-20
To Bob Shaw
Is it not possible – I often wonder – that these things we have felt with great intensity have an experience independent of our minds; are in fact still in existence? And if so, will it not be possible, in time, that some device will be invented by which we can tap them?…instead of remembering here a scene and there a sound, I shall fit a plug into the wall; and listen in to the past…
– Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 6 The Billion Dollar Pearl
THREE: THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS
We…know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.
– Henri Poincaré (1854–1912)
Bobby could see the Earth, complete and serene, within its cage of silver light.
Fingers of green and blue pushed into the new deserts of Asia and the North American Midwest. Artificial reefs glimmered in the Caribbean, pale blue against the deeper ocean. Great wispy machines laboured over the poles to repair the atmosphere. The air was clear as glass, for now mankind drew its energy from the core of Earth itself.
And Bobby knew that if he chose, with a mere effort of will, he could look back into time.
He could watch cities bloom on Earth's patient surface, to dwindle and vanish like rusty dew. He could see species shrivel and devolve like leaves curling into their buds. He could watch the slow dance of the continents as Earth gathered its primordial heat back into its iron heart. The present was a glimmering, expanding bubble of life and awareness, with the past locked within, trapped unmoving like an insect in amber.
For a long time, on this rich, growing Earth, embedded in knowledge, an enhanced humankind had been at peace: a peace unimaginable when he was born.
And all of this had derived from the ambition of one man – a venal, flawed man, a man who had never even understood where his dreams would lead.
How remarkable, he thought.
Bobby looked into his past, and into his heart.
A little after dawn, Vitaly Keldysh climbed stiffly into his car, engaged the SmartDrive, and let the car sweep him away from the run-down hotel.
The streets of Leninsk were empty, the road surface cracked, many windows boarded up. He remembered how this place had been at its peak, in the 1970s perhaps: a bustling science city with a population of tens of thousands, with schools, cinemas, a swimming pool, a sports stadium, cafes, restaurants and hotels, even its own TV station.
Still, as he passed the main gateway to the north of the city, there was the old blue sign with its white pointing arrow: TO BAIKONUR, still proclaiming that ancient deceptive name. And still, here at the empty heart of Asia, Russian engineers built spaceships and fired them into the sky.
