Spin by Robert Charles Wilson Extract

8/12/2019 Spin by Robert Charles Wilson Extract

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SPIN

Robert Charles Wilson

www.sfgateway.com


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4 109

A.D.

Everybody falls, and we all land somewhere.

So we rented a room on the third floor of a coloniatyle hotel in Padang where we wouldnt be noticed fo

a while.

Nine hundred euros a night bought us privacy and

balcony view of the Indian Ocean. During pleasanweather, and there had been no shortage of that ove

he last few days, we could see the nearest part of th

Archway: a cloud-colored vertical line that rose fro

he horizon and vanished, still rising, into blue haze. A

mpressive as this seemed, only a fraction of the who

tructure was visible from the west coast of Sumatra

The Archways far leg descended to the underse

peaks of the Carpenter Ridge more than a thousan

kilometers away, spanning the Mentawai Trench like wedding band dropped edge-up into a shallow pond

On dry land, it would have reached from Bombay o

he eastern coast of India to Madras on the west. Or

ay, very roughly, New York to Chicago.


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Diane had spent most of the afternoon on th

balcony, sweating in the shade of a faded stripe

umbrella. The view fascinated her, and I was please

and relieved that she wasafter everything that ha

happenedstill capable of taking such pleasure in it.

I joined her at sunset. Sunset was the best time. A

freighter heading down the coast to the port of Telu

Bayur became a necklace of lights in the offshor

blackness, effortlessly gliding. The near leg of the Arcgleamed like a burnished red nail pinning sky to se

We watched the Earths shadow climb the pillar as th

city grew dark.

It was a technology, in the famous quotationindistinguishable from magic. What else but magi

would allow the uninterrupted flow of air and sea fro

he Bay of Bengal to the Indian Ocean but woul

ransport a surface vessel to far stranger ports? Wha

miracle of engineering permitted a structure with

adius of a thousand kilometers to support its ow

weight? What was it made of, and how did it do what

did?

Perhaps only Jason Lawton could have answere


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hose questions. But Jason wasnt with us.

Diane slouched in a deck chair, her yellow sundres

and comically wide straw hat reduced by the gatherin

darkness to geometries of shadow. Her skin was clear

mooth, nut brown. Her eyes caught the last light ver

fetchingly, but her look was still warythat hadn

changed.

She glanced up at me. Youve been fidgeting a

day.Im thinking of writing something, I said. Before

tarts. Sort of a memoir.

Afraid of what you might lose? But that

unreasonable, Tyler. Its not like your memorys beingerased.

No, not erased; but potentially blurred, softened

defocused. The other side effects of the drug wer

emporary and endurable, but the possibility of memor

oss terrified me.

Anyway, she said, the odds are in your favor. You

know that as well as anyone. There isa risk but it

onlya risk, and a pretty minor one at that.

And if it had happened in her case maybe it had bee


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a blessing.

Even so, I said. Id feel better writing somethin

down.

If you dont want to go ahead with this you don

have to. Youll know when youre ready.

No, I want to do it. Or so I told myself.

Then it has to start tonight.

I know. But over the next few weeks

You probably wont feel like writing.Unless I cant help myself. Graphomania was on

of the less alarming of the potential side effects.

See what you think when the nausea hits. She gav

me a consoling smile. I guess we all have somethinwere afraid to let go of.

It was a troubling comment, one I didnt want to thin

about.

Look, I said, maybe we should just get started.

The air smelled tropical, tinged with chlorine from th

hotel pool three stories down. Padang was a majo

nternational port these days, full of foreigners: Indian

Filipinos, Koreans, even stray Americans like Dian

and me, folks who couldnt afford luxury transit an


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werent qualified for U.N.-approved resettlemen

programs. It was a lively but often lawless city

especially since the New Reformasi had come to powe

n Jakarta.

But the hotel was secure and the stars were out in a

heir scattered glory. The peak of the Archway was th

brightest thing in the sky now, a delicate silver letter U

Unknown, Unknowable) written upside down by

dyslexic God. I held Dianes hand while we watched fade.

What are you thinking about? she asked.

The last time I saw the old constellations. Virgo

Leo, Sagittarius: the astrologers lexicon, reduced tfootnotes in a history book.

They would have been different from here, though

wouldnt they? The southern hemisphere?

I supposed they would.

Then, in the full darkness of the night, we went bac

nto the room. I switched on the room lights while Dian

pulled the blinds and unpacked the syringe and ampou

kit I had taught her to use. She filled the sterile syring

frowned and tapped out a bubble. She looke


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professional, but her hand was trembling.

I took off my shirt and stretched out on the bed.

Tyler

Suddenly she was the reluctant one. No secon

houghts, I said. I know what Im getting into. An

weve talked this through a dozen times.

She nodded and swabbed the inside of my elbo

with alcohol. She held the syringe in her right hand

point up. The small quantity of fluid in it looked annocent as water.

That was a long time ago, she said.

What was?

When we looked at the stars that time.Im glad you havent forgotten.

Of course I havent forgotten. Now make a fist.

The pain was trivial. At least at first.


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THE BIG HOUSE

Iwas twelve, and the twins were thirteen, the night th

tars disappeared from the sky.It was October, a couple of weeks befor

Halloween, and the three of us had been ordered to th

basement of the Lawton housethe Big House, w

called itfor the duration of an adults-only social even

Being confined to the basement wasnt any kind o

punishment. Not for Diane and Jason, who spent muc

of their time there by choice; certainly not for me. The

father had announced a strictly defined border betwee

he adults and the childrens zones of the house, but whad a high-end gaming platform, movies on disk, even

pool table and no adult supervision apart from on

of the regular caterers, a Mrs. Truall, who cam

downstairs every hour or so to dodge canap duty angive us updates on the party. (A man from Hewlett

Packard had disgraced himself with the wife of aPos

columnist. There was a drunken senator in the den.) A

we lacked, Jason said, was silence (the upstairs syste


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was playing dance music that came through the ceilin

ike an ogres heartbeat) and a view of the sky.

Silence and a view: Jase, typically, had decided h

wanted both.

Diane and Jason had been born minutes apart bu

were obviously fraternal rather than identical siblings; n

one but their mother called them twins. Jason used t

ay they were the product of dipolar sperm penetratin

oppositely charged eggs. Diane, whose IQ was nearas impressive as Jasons but who kept her vocabular

on a shorter leash, compared them to differen

prisoners who escaped from the same cell.

I was in awe of them both.Jason, at thirteen, was not only scary-smart bu

physically fitnot especially muscular but vigorous an

often successful at track and field. He was nearly s

feet tall even then, skinny, his gawky face redeemed b

a lopsided and genuine smile. His hair, in those days

was blond and wiry.

Diane was five inches shorter, plump only b

comparison with her brother, and darker skinned. He

complexion was clear except for the freckles that ringe


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her eyes and gave her a hooded look: My raccoo

mask, she used to say. What I liked most about Dian

and I had reached an age when these details ha

aken on a poorly understood but undeniabl

ignificancewas her smile. She smiled rarely bu

pectacularly. She was convinced her teeth were to

prominent (she was wrong), and she had picked up th

habit of covering her mouth when she laughed. I liked t

make her laugh, but it was her smile I secretly craved.Last week Jasons father had given him a pair o

expensive astronomical binoculars. He had bee

fidgeting with them all evening, taking sightings on th

framed travel poster over the TV, pretending to spy oCancun from the suburbs of Washington, until at last h

tood up and said, We ought to go look at the sky.

No, Diane said promptly. Its cold out there.

But clear. Its the first clear night this week. And it

only chilly.

There was ice on the lawn this morning.

Frost, he countered.

Its after midnight.

Its Friday night.


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Were not supposed to leave the basement.

Were not supposed to disturb the party. Nobod

aid anything about going outside. Nobody will see u

f youre afraid of getting caught.

Im not afraid of getting caught.

So what areyou afraid of?

Listening to you babble while my feet freeze.

Jason turned to me. How about you, Tyler? Want t

ee some sky?The twins often asked me to referee their argument

much to my discomfort. It was a no-win proposition.

sided with Jason I might alienate Diane; but if I side

oo often with Diane it would look well, obvious. aid, I dont know, Jase, it ispretty chilly outside

It was Diane who let me off the hook. She put a han

on my shoulder and said, Never mind. I suppose

ittle fresh air is better than listening to him complain.

So we grabbed our jackets from the basemen

hallway and left by the back door.

The Big House wasnt as grandiose as our nicknam

for it implied, but it was larger than the average home

his middling-high-income neighborhood and it sat on


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bigger parcel of land. A great rolling expanse o

manicured lawn gave way, behind it, to an uncultivate

tand of pines bordering a mildly polluted creek. Jaso

chose a spot for stargazing halfway between the hous

and the woods.

The month of October had been pleasant un

yesterday, when a cold front had broken the back o

ndian summer. Diane made a show of hugging her rib

and shivering, but that was only to chastise Jason. Thnight air was merely cool, not unpleasant. The sky wa

crystalline and the grass was reasonably dry, thoug

here might be frost again by morning. No moon an

not a trace of cloud. The Big House was lit up like Mississippi steamboat and cast its fierce yellow glar

across the lawn, but we knew from experience that o

nights like this, if you stood in the shadow of a tree

youd disappear as absolutely as if you had fallen into

black hole.

Jason lay on his back and aimed his binoculars at th

tarry sky.

I sat cross-legged next to Diane and watched as sh

ook from her jacket pocket a cigarette, probab


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tolen from her mother. (Carol Lawton, a cardiologi

and nominal ex-smoker, kept packs of cigarette

ecreted in her dresser, her desk, a kitchen drawer. M

mother had told me this.) She put it to her lips and lit

with a translucent red lighterthe flame wa

momentarily the brightest thing aroundand exhaled

plume of smoke that swirled briskly into the darkness.

She caught me watching her. You want a drag?

Hes twelve years old, Jason said. He has enougproblems. He doesnt need lung cancer.

Sure, I said. It was a point of honor now.

Diane, amused, passed me the cigarette. I inhale

entatively and managed not to choke.She took it back. Dont get carried away.

Tyler, Jason said, do you know anything about th

tars?

I gulped a lungful of cold, clean air. Of course I do.

I dont mean what you learn from reading thos

paperbacks. Can you nameany stars?

I was blushing, but I hoped it was dark enough tha

he couldnt see. Arcturus, I said. Alpha Centaur

Sirius. Polaris


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And which one, Jason asked, is the Klingo

homeworld?

Dont be mean, Diane said.

Both the twins were precociously intelligent. I was n

dummy, but they were out of my league, and we a

understood that. They attended a school for exception

children; I rode the bus to public school. It was one o

he several obvious distinctions between us. They live

n the Big House, I lived with my mother in thbungalow at the east end of the property; their paren

pursued careers, my mother cleaned house for them

Somehow we managed to acknowledge thes

differences without making a big deal of it.Okay, Jason said, can you point at Polaris?

Polaris, the North Star. I had been reading abou

lavery and the civil war. There had been a fugitiv

lave song:

When the sun comes back and the first quail

calls,

Follow the Drinking Gourd.

The old man is waiting to carry you to freedom


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When you follow the Drinking Gourd.

When the sun comes back meant after the winte

olstice. Quail winter in the south. The gourd was th

Big Dipper, wide end of the bowl pointed at Polaridue north, the direction of freedom: I found the Dippe

and waved my hand hopefully in that direction.

See? Diane said to Jason, as if I had proved a poin

n some argument they hadnt bothered to share witme.

Not bad, Jason allowed. You know what a come

s?

Yes.

Want to see one?

I nodded and stretched out next to him, still tastin

and regretting the acrid tang of Dianes cigarette. Jaso

howed me how to brace my elbows on the ground

hen let me hold the binoculars to my eyes and adjuhe focus until the stars became blurred ovals and the

pinpricks, many more than I could see with the nake

eye. I panned around until I found, or guessed I ha

found, the spot to which Jason had directed me: a tin


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node of phosphorescence against the merciless blac

ky.

A comet Jason began.

I know. A comet is a sort of dusty snowball fallin

oward the sun.

You could say that. He was scornful. Do yo

know where comets come from, Tyler? They com

from the outer solar systemfrom a kind of icy hal

around the sun that reaches from the orbit of Pluthalfway to the nearest star. Out where its colder tha

you can possibly imagine.

I nodded, a little uncomfortably. I had read enoug

cience fiction to grasp the sheer, unspeakablargeness of the night sky. It was something I sometime

iked to think about, though it could beat the wron

ime of night, when the house was quieta littl

ntimidating.

Diane? Jason said. You want to look?

Do I have to?

No, of course you dont have to. You can sit ther

fumigating your lungs and drooling, if you prefer.

Smartass. She stubbed the cigarette into the gras


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and held out her hand. I passed over the binoculars.

Just be careful with those. Jase was deeply in lov

with his binoculars. They still smelled of shrinkwrap an

Styrofoam packing.

She adjusted the focus and looked up. She was silen

for a time. Then she said, You know what I see when

use these things to look at the stars?

What?

Same old stars.Use your imagination. He sounded genuine

annoyed.

If I can use my imagination why do I nee

binoculars?I mean, think about what youre looking at.

Oh, she said. Then: Oh. Oh!Jason, I see

What?

I think yes its God! And he has a long whit

beard! And hes holding up a sign! And the sign say

JASON SUCKS!

Very funny. Give them back if you dont know how

o use them.

He held out his hand; she ignored him. She sat uprigh


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and aimed the binoculars at the windows of the B

House.

The party had been going on since late that afternoon

My mother had told me the Lawtons parties wer

expensive bull sessions for corporate bigshots, bu

he had a finely honed sense of hyperbole, so you ha

o take that down a notch or two. Most of the guest

ason had said, were aerospace up-and-comers o

political staffers. Not old Washington society, but wellheeled newcomers with western roots and defense

ndustry connections. E. D. Lawton, Jason and Diane

father, hosted one of these events every three or fou

months.Business as usual, Diane said from behind the tw

ovals of the binoculars. First floor, dancing an

drinking. More drinking than dancing at this point.

ooks like the kitchens closing up, though. I think th

caterers are getting ready to go home. Curtains pulled

he den. E.D.s in the library with a couple of suits. Ew

One of them is smoking a cigar.

Your disgust is unconvincing, Jason said. Ms

Marlboro.


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She went on cataloguing the visible windows whil

ason scooted over next to me. Show her th

universe, he whispered, and shed rather spy on

dinner party.

I didnt know how to respond to that. Like so muc

of what Jason said, it sounded witty and more cleve

han anything I could come up with.

My bedroom, Diane said. Empty, thank God

asons bedroom, empty except for the copy oenthouseunder the mattress

Theyre good binoculars, but not that good.

Carol and E.D.s bedroom, empty; the spar

bedroom Well?

But Diane said nothing. She sat very still with th

binoculars against her eyes.

Diane? I said.

She was silent for a few seconds more. Then sh

huddered, turned, and tossedthrewthe binocular

back at Jason, who protested but didnt seem to gras

hat Diane had seen something disturbing. I was abou

o ask her if she was all right


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When the stars disappeared.

t wasnt much.

People often say that, people who saw it happen.

wasnt much. It really wasnt, and I speak as a witnes

had been watching the sky while Diane and Jaso

bickered. There was nothing but a moment of odd glar

hat left an afterimage of the stars imprinted on my eyen cool green phosphorescence. I blinked. Jason said

What was that? Lightning? And Diane said nothing a

all.

Jason, I said, still blinking.What? Diane, I swear to God, if you cracked a len

on these things

Shut up, Diane said.

And I said, Stop it.Look. What happened to th

tars? They both turned their heads to the sky.

Of the three of us, only Diane was prepared to believ

hat the stars had actually gone outthat they ha


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been extinguished like candles in a wind. That wa

mpossible, Jason insisted: the light from those stars ha

raveled fifty or a hundred or a hundred million ligh

years, depending on the source; surely they had not a

topped shining in some infinitely elaborate sequenc

designed to appear simultaneous to Earthlings. Anyway

pointed out, the sun was a star, too, and itwas st

hining, at least on the other side of the planetwasn

t?Of course it was. And if not, Jason said, we would a

be frozen to death by morning.

So, logically, the stars were still shining but w

couldnt see them. They were not gone but obscuredeclipsed. Yes, the sky had suddenly become an ebon

blankness, but it was a mystery, not a catastrophe.

But another aspect of Jasons comment had lodged i

my imagination. What if the sun actually hadvanished?

pictured snow sifting down in perpetual darkness, an

hen, I guessed, the air itself freezing out in a differen

kind of snow, until all human civilization was burie

under the stuff we breathe. Better, therefore, o

definitely better, to assume the stars had bee


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eclipsed. But by what?

Well, obviously, something big. Something fast. You

aw it happen, Tyler. Was it all at once or did

omething kind of move across the sky?

I told him it looked like the stars had brightened an

hen blinked out, all at once.

Fuck the stupid stars, Diane said. (I was shocked

uckwasnt a word she customarily used, though Jas

and I were pretty free with it now that both our agehad reached double digits. Many things had change

his summer.)

Jason heard the anxiety in her voice. I dont thin

heres anything to be afraid of, he said, although hwas clearly uneasy himself.

Diane just scowled. Im cold, she said.

So we decided to go back to the Big House and se

f the news had made CNN or CNBC. The sky as w

crossed the lawn was unnerving, utterly black

weightless but heavy, darker than any sky I had eve

een.


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Copyright

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright Robert Charles Wilson 2005

All rights reserved.

The right of Robert Charles Wilson to be identified as the author of

his work has been asserted by him in accordance with the CopyrighDesigns and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by

Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House5 Upper Saint Martins Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 11750 1

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any

resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.


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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

ystem or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the

rior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise

irculated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it

s published without a similar condition, including this condition,

eing imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.orionbooks.co.uk

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson Extract

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