Dan Simmons - Phases of Gravity

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Phases of Gravity

Dan Simmons

This book is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book

are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in

part in any form.

Published in 2001 by Olmsetead Press, Chicago, Illinois

Published in 1989 by Bantam Books, New York, New York

Cover designed by Hope Forstenzer

Text designed and typset by

Syllables, Harrwick, New York, USA

Printed and bound in Toronto, Ontario, Canada by

Webcom Inc.

ISBN: 1-58754-106-8

Library of Congress Card Number: 2001086674

Editorial Sales Rights and Permission Inquiries should be addressed to:

Olmsetead Press, 22 Broad Street, Suite 34, Milford, CT 06460

Email: Editor@lpcgroup.com

Manufactured in Canada

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Olmsetead Press books are available

To corporations, professional associations and other organisations. If you are in

The USA or Canada, contact LPC Group, Attn. Special Sales Department,

1-800-626-4330, fax 1-800-334-3892, or email: sales@lpc group.com

To Robert and Kathryn Simmons

Table of Contents

Part One Poona

Part Two Glen Oak

Part Three Uncompahgre

Part Four Lonerock

Part Five Bear Butte

Phases of Gravity

Part One

______________

Poona

Pan Am Flight 001 left the moonlight behind it and dropped into clouds and darkness as it felt its

way toward a landing in New Delhi. Staring out at the port wing, Baedecker felt the weight

pulling at him and mixing with the tension of an old pilot being forced to suffer a landing as a

passenger. The wheels touched tarmac in an almost perfect touchdown and Baedecker glanced at

his watch. It was 3:47 A.M. local time. Tiny motes of pain danced behind his eyes as he looked

out past the flashing wingtip light at the dark silhouettes of water towers and service buildings

moving past. The massive 747 swung sharply to the right and rolled to the end of its taxi run.

The sound of engines swelled one final time and then dropped into silence, leaving Baedecker

with the tired pounding of his own pulse in his ears. He had not slept for twenty-four hours.

Even before the shuffling line reached the forward exit, Baedecker felt the wave of heat and

humidity strike him. Descending the ramp toward the sticky asphalt, he became aware of the

tremendous mass of the planet under him, weighted even further by the hundreds of millions of

wretched souls populating the subcontinent, and he hunched his shoulders against the inexorable

pull of depression.

I should have done the credit card commercial, thought Baedecker. He stood in the gloom

with the other passengers and waited for a blue-and-white jitney to approach them across the

dark expanse of pavement. The terminal was a distant blur of lights on the horizon. Clouds

reflected the rows of blinking lights beyond the runway.

It would not have been very difficult. All they had asked of him was to sit in front of the

cameras and lights, smile, and say, 'Do you know me? Sixteen years ago I walked on the moon.

That doesn't help me though when I want to reserve an airline seat or pay for dinner in a French

café.' Two more lines of such drivel and then the standard closing with his name being punched

out on the plastic card — RICHARD E. BAEDECKER.

The customs building was a huge, echoing warehouse of a place. Sodium yellow lights hung

from metal rafters and made people's skin look greasy and waxlike. Baedecker's shirt was

already plastered to his body in a dozen places. The lines moved slowly. Baedecker was used to

the officiousness of customs officials, but these black-haired, brown-shirted little men seemed to

be reaching for new heights of official unpleasantness. Three places in front of him in the line, an

older Indian woman stood with her two daughters, all three in cheap cotton saris. Impatient with

their replies, the agent behind the scratched counter dumped their two cheap suitcases on the

floor of the shed. Brightly printed cloth, bras, and torn underpants spilled out in a heap. The

customs man turned to another agent and said something in rapid Hindi that brought smirks to

their faces.

Baedecker was almost dozing when he realized that one of the customs men was talking to

him.

'Pardon me?'

'I said — is this all you have to declare? You are bringing in nothing else?' The singsong of

Indian English seemed strangely familiar to Baedecker. He had encountered it with Indian hotel-

management trainees around the world. Only then the tone was not edged with a strange

suspiciousness and anger.

'Yes. That's all.' Baedecker nodded toward the pink form they had filled out before landing.

'This is all you have? One bag?' The agent hefted Baedecker's old, black flight bag as if it held

contraband or explosives.

'That's all.'

The man scowled fiercely at the luggage and then passed it contemptuously to another brown-

shirted agent farther along the counter. This man struck an X on the bag as if the violence of the

motion would drive out whatever evils it held.

'Move along. Move along.' The first agent was gesturing.

'Thank you,' said Baedecker. He hefted the flight bag and moved out into the darkness beyond

the customs shed.

The view had been one of blackness. Two black triangles. Not even the stars had been visible

during their final descent. Standing in their bulky pressure suits, locked in position by an array of

straps and stirrups, they could see only the featureless black sky. During most of its final burn

and descent sequence, the landing module had been pitched back so that the lunar surface was

invisible beneath them. Only during the final minutes did Baedecker have a chance to look out

onto the glare and tumble of the moon's face.

It's just like the simulations, he'd thought. He knew even then that there should be more. He

knew even as they were descending that he should be sensing more, feeling more. But as he

automatically responded to Houston's updates and inquiries, obediently punched the appropriate

numbers into the computer and read off figures to Dave, the same unworthy thought returned

again and again. It's just like the simulations.

'Mr. Baedecker!' It took a minute for the shout to register. Someone was calling his name, had

been for some time. Baedecker turned from where he was standing in the alley between the

customs shed and the terminal and looked around. Thousands of bugs danced in the glare of the

spotlights. People wrapped in white robes slept on the sidewalk, sat huddled against the dark

buildings. Dark men in bright shirts leaned against black-and-yellow cabs. He turned the other

way just as the girl caught up to him.

'Mr. Baedecker! Hello.' She stopped with a graceful half step, threw her head back, paused to

take a deep breath.

'Hello,' said Baedecker. He had no idea who the young woman was but was haunted with a

strong sense of déjà vu. Who in the world would be greeting him in New Delhi at four-thirty in

the morning? Someone from the embassy? No, they didn't know he was coming and wouldn't

care if they did. Not anymore. Bombay Electronics? Hardly. Not in New Delhi. And this young

blonde was obviously American. Always poor at remembering names and faces, Baedecker felt

the familiar flush of guilt and embarrassment. He ransacked his memory. Nothing.

'I'm Maggie Brown,' said the girl and stuck her hand out. He shook it, surprised at how cool it

felt. His own skin felt feverish even to himself. Maggie Brown? She brushed back a loose strand

of her shoulder-length hair and again Baedecker was struck with a sense of having seen her

before. He would go under the assumption that she worked with NASA, although she appeared

too young to have . . .

'I'm Scott's friend,' she said and smiled. She had a wide mouth and a slight gap between her

front teeth. Somehow the effect was pleasant.

'Scott's friend. Of course. Hello.' Baedecker shook her hand again. Looked around again.

Several cabbies had come up to them and were proffering rides. He shook his head, but their

babble only intensified. Baedecker took the girl's elbow and turned away from the gesticulating

mob. 'What are you doing here? In India, I mean. And here, too.' Baedecker gestured lamely at

the narrow street and the long shadow of the terminal. He remembered her now. Joan had shown

him a picture of her the last time he had visited Boston. The green eyes had stuck in his memory.

'I've been here for three months,' she said. 'Scott rarely has time to see me, but I'm there if he

does. In Poona, I mean. I found a job as governess . . . not really governess, I guess, but sort of a

tutor . . . with this nice doctor's family there? In the old British section? Anyway, I was with

Scott last week when he got your cable.'

'Oh,' said Baedecker. He could think of nothing else to say for several seconds. Overhead, a

small jet climbed for altitude. 'Is Scott here? I mean, I thought I'd see him in . . . what is it . . .? in

Poona.'

'Scott's at a retreat at the Master's farm. He won't be back until Tuesday. He asked me to tell

you. Me, I'm visiting an old friend at the Education Foundation here in Old Delhi.'

'The Master? You mean this guru of Scott's?'

'That's what they all call him. Anyway, Scott asked me to tell you, and I figured you wouldn't

be staying long in New Delhi.'

'You came out before dawn to give me that message?' Baedecker looked carefully at the young

woman next to him. As they moved farther away from the glaring spotlights, her skin seemed to

glow of its own accord. He realized that soft light was tinging the eastern sky.

'No problem,' she said and took his arm in hers. 'My train just got in a few hours ago. I didn't

have anything to do until the USEFI offices opened up.' They had come around to the front of the

terminal. Baedecker realized that they were out in the country, some distance from the city. He

could see high-rise apartments in the distance, but the sounds and smells surrounding them were

all of the country. The curving airport drive led to a wide highway, but nearby were dirt roads

under multitrunked banyan trees.

'When's your flight, Mr. Baedecker?'

'To Bombay? Not until eight-thirty. Call me Richard.'

'Okay, Richard. What do you say we take a walk and then get some breakfast?'

'Fine,' said Baedecker. He would have given anything at that moment to have an empty room

waiting for him, a bed, time to sleep. What time would it be in St. Louis? His tired mind was not

up to the simple arithmetic. He followed the girl as she set off down the rain-moistened drive.

Ahead of them the sun was rising.

The sun had been rising for three days when they landed. Details stood out in bold relief. It

had been planned that way.

Later, Baedecker remembered very little about actually descending the ladder and stepping off

the LM footpad. All those years of preparation, simulation, and expectation had led to that single

point, that sharp intersection of time and place, but what Baedecker later remembered was the

vague sense of frustration and urgency. They were twenty-three minutes behind schedule when

Dave finally led the way down the ladder. Suiting up, going over the fifty-one-point PLS

checklist, and depressurizing had taken more time than it had in the simulations.

Then they were moving across the surface, testing their balance, picking up contingency

samples, and trying to make up for lost time. Baedecker had spent many hours composing a short

phrase to recite upon first setting foot on lunar soil — his 'footnote in history' as Joan had called

it — but Dave made a joke after jumping off the footpad, Houston had asked for a radio check,

and the moment passed.

Baedecker had two strong memories of the rest of that first EVA. He remembered the damned

checklist banded to his wrist. They never caught up to the timeline, not even after eliminating the

third core sample and the second check of the Rover's guidance memory. He had hated that

checklist.

The other memory still returned to him in dreams. The gravity. The one-sixth gee. The sheer

exhilaration of bouncing across the glaring, rock-strewn surface with only the lightest touch of

their boots to propel them. It awakened an even earlier memory in Baedecker; he was a child,

learning to swim in Lake Michigan, and his father was holding him under the arms while he

kicked and bounced his way across the sand of the lake bottom. What marvelous lightness, the

supporting strength of his father's arms, the gentle rise and fall of the green waves, the perfect

synchronization of weight and buoyancy meeting in the ribbon of balance flowing up from the

balls of his feet.

He still dreamed about that.

The sun rose like a great, orange balloon, its sides shifting laterally as light refracted through

the warming air. Baedecker thought of Ektachrome photos in National Geographic. India!

Insects, birds, goats, chickens, and cattle added to the growing sound of traffic along the unseen

highway. Even this winding dirt road on which they walked was already crowded with people on

bicycles, bullock carts, heavy trucks labeled Public Transport, and an occasional black-and-

yellow taxi dodging in and out of the confusion like an angry bee.

Baedecker and the girl stopped by a small, green building that was either a farmhouse or a

Hindu temple. Perhaps it was both. Bells were ringing inside. The smell of incense and manure

drifted from an inner courtyard. Roosters were crowing and somewhere a man was chanting in a

frail-voiced falsetto. Another man — this one in a blue polyester business suit — stopped his

bicycle, stepped to the side of the road, and urinated into the temple yard.

A bullock cart lumbered past, axle grinding, yoke straining, and Baedecker turned to watch it.

A woman in the back of it lifted her sari to her face, but the three children next to her returned

Baedecker's stare. The man in front shouted at the laboring bullock and snapped a long stick

against a flank already scabrous with sores. Suddenly all other noises were lost as an Air India

747 roared overhead, its metal sides catching the gold of the rising sun.

'What's that smell?' asked Baedecker. Above the general onslaught of odors — wet soil, open

sewage, car exhausts, compost heaps, pollution from the unseen city — there rose a sweet,

overpowering scent that already seemed to have permeated his skin and clothes.

'They're cooking breakfast,' said Maggie Brown. 'All over the country, they're cooking

breakfast over open fires. Most of them using dried cow dung as fuel. Eight hundred million

people cooking breakfast. Gandhi once wrote that that was the eternal scent of India.' Baedecker

nodded. The sunrise was being swallowed by lowering monsoon clouds. For a second the trees

and grass were a brilliant, false green, made even more pronounced by Baedecker's fatigue. The

headache, which had been with him since Frankfurt, had moved from behind his eyes to a point

at the base of his neck. Every step sent an echo of pain through his head. Yet the pain seemed a

distant and unimportant thing, perceived as it was through a haze of exhaustion and jet lag. It

was part of the strangeness — the new smells, the odd cacophony of rural and urban sounds, this

attractive young woman at his side with sunlight outlining her cheekbones and setting fire to her

green eyes. What was she to his son anyway? How serious was their relationship? Baedecker

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PhasesofGravityDanSimmonsCopyright©1989,2001byDanSimmonsThisbookisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictitiousandanyresemblancetorealpeopleoreventsispurelycoincidental.Allrightsreserved.Exceptforthequotationofshortpassagesforthepurposeofcriticismandreview,nopartofthispubl...

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Dan Simmons - Phases of Gravity

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