Seveneves

Epilogue

“CAL SENT MORE THAN ONE PHOTO TO EVE IVY DURING THE WEEKS leading up to the Hard Rain,” said Esa Arjun. “A total of seventeen, including that one.” He nodded at the picture. Somewhat the worse for wear, it was leaning against the inner wall of Ark Darwin’s fuselage at the end of the table where he and Ty were eating lunch.

He and Ty and Deep. Deep was the Pinger who had approached Ty and befriended him with a nonverbal joke about his dry suit. He was seated a couple of chairs away at the same table. It wasn’t really clear whether he thought of himself as part of this conversation.

“Can he understand what I’m saying?” Arjun asked.

“He’s getting better. We sound like tuba music to them.”

“Is his name really what you say it is?”

“It’s the closest I can get to pronouncing it,” Ty said, “and he answers to it.”

Deep had been tearing into a raw fish filet, served on a platter with some seaweed garnishes. He seemed then to realize that he was being talked about, and tensed up in a way that seemed very human. At a loss for words, he grabbed his cup of cider and raised it to them. They raised theirs in return, and all drank.

“I think he’s some kind of technician or scientist,” Ty said. “All that stuff in his harness.”

“Yes,” Arjun said, eyeing the Pinger curiously. “Optics. Electronics. They preserved more technology than the Diggers were able to.”

“They had more space,” Ty pointed out, “and they could scavenge whatever sank to the bottom.” He turned his attention back to Arjun. “Anyway, you were saying about the seventeen photos?”

“Yes. Most of them were of a type referred to, in those days, as selfies. Now, technically, this was a criminal violation of military secrecy. Very strange given that Cal was otherwise so attentive to duty.”

“Yes,” said Ty, casting his mind back to scenes from the Epic. “I remember Eve Ivy agonizing about that when Eve Julia ordered Cal to nuke Venezuela.”

“That’s a perfect example. So, this lapse — if that’s what it was — has attracted some attention from scholars. All seventeen of the photos were eventually recovered from Ivy’s phone. An obscure sub-sub-sub-discipline of historical scholarship grew up around them.”

“The kind of thing only Ivyns would care about,” said Ty.

“Cloistered in some library on Stromness. Exactly.”

Ark Darwin was still riding at anchor outside the cove, and its fuselage was still flooded. This made it a perfect setting for what was happening now: a diplomatic conference between the Pingers and a delegation of important Blue officials who had been pod-dropped, straight from Greenwich, a few hours after the conclusion of the battle above the beach.

Einstein, Sonar Taxlaw, and all the other Blues had evacuated the cove and gone aboard the ark. Beled had been the last to depart; before climbing into the waiting boat, he had freed the captured Neoander and left him enough provisions to keep him in good stead until he could be rescued by his own people. And his own people had shown up in force a few hours later. But according to the deal they themselves had struck with the Diggers, their claim was to the land surface only. And Ark Darwin wasn’t on the land. So, a growing Red military encampment was spreading around the shore of the cove, facing their Blue counterparts across a few hundred meters of salt water.

The ark’s flooded hull was chilly, and obliged the Blue diplomats to dress warmly. Ty, Deep, and Arjun were in a dry space higher up and farther forward, a sort of half-exposed mezzanine where folding tables and chairs had been set up to act as a mess hall for the growing complement of Blue personnel — as well as any Pingers who felt like wading up the ramp. They were eating hot soup and quaffing a funky but quite palatable cider from the northern slope of Antimer.

“Now,” said Arjun — enjoying, as only an Ivyn could, the opportunity to wax professorial—“what you must be wondering about these people is—”

“How the hell they survived. With only one submarine.”

Arjun nodded. “It turns out that if you look at the work of those scholars I mentioned — the most recent of whom died two centuries ago — there are clues.”

“But if the selfies were taken before the Hard Rain even began,” Ty protested, “how could there be clues as to what happened after?”

“I mean clues that Cal went out of his way to plant in the background of the photos. Clues intended for Ivy’s eyes only. Hints that he had more of a chance than one might imagine.”

“Go on.” Ty sat back and reached for his cup of cider.

“We know all about the Cloud Ark program, because it’s where we came from. It is our history. We have all of the records in our archives. Well, what Cal was hinting at, with these photos, is that there was another program, perhaps as large, that we never heard about.”

“A program to keep people alive under the sea?” Ty asked.

“Exactly. There are, in the background of these photos, detailed bathymetric charts of some of the deepest undersea canyons in the world’s oceans. There are documents — binders on a shelf — whose titles suggest that they are about such preparations. Other clues as well — it’s all public research, I’ll send you the information if you want it.”

“Okay,” Ty said, just to be cordial. He knew that he would never read those research papers. “But the bottom line is that Deep’s people”—he nodded at their tablemate—“didn’t survive just because Cal got lucky.”

“They have an Epic of their own that, for all we know, might compare to ours,” Arjun said.

Sonar and Einstein had been making their way down the food service line and now approached, eyeing the two vacant seats at the table. Arjun took this as his cue to excuse himself. Deep said goodbye to him with a courteous bob of the head. Within moments Ty and his Pinger friend had been joined by the young Ivyn and the Cyc. For a minute or two, the new arrivals did nothing but eat ravenously, the only conversation being Sonar asking the names and origins of the various foods — all new to her — on her tray. Ty handled those inquiries so that Einstein could be left free to stuff his face. After a while this became a source of amusement even to Sonar Taxlaw, who just watched the boy eat, and transferred some of her food to his tray when he began to run low.

“Sometime, you’ll have to tell me what it’s like,” Ty remarked.

“What—” Einstein began, before food got in the way.

“—what’s like?” Sonar said, completing his sentence.

“Finding someone so completely. The way you two did.”

“That’s never happened to you?” Einstein asked. He wasn’t being rude. It had simply never occurred to him that he could have had experiences of which Tyuratam Lake knew nothing.

“No. It’s never happened to me.”

Einstein had begun to approach the point of satiation. He sat back in his chair and cast his gaze over the wreckage of his lunch, looking for any morsels that deserved more attention.

“I have a question for you,” he said.

“Fancy that,” Ty returned.

“What’s the Purpose? People keep mentioning it.”

“I wish I knew.”

“Very funny, but you know what I’m talking about. Roskos Yur mentioned it. Cantabrigia Five mentioned it. Purpose with a capital P.”

“My answer remains the same,” Ty said. “No one has ever told me. I have to make guesses, based on what I see from people who act like they know what it is.”

“People like the owners of your bar?”

“Evidently.”

“And what is your guess?”

Sensing another pair of eyes on him, Ty glanced over toward Deep, who was chewing vigorously, trying to reduce a stubborn wad of seaweed to submission. But he seemed to be following the conversation.

Ty shrugged. “Humans have always—”

He was about to say deluded themselves but didn’t want to make a poor impression on Deep.

“—preferred to believe that there was a purpose to the universe. Until the moon blew up, they had theories. After Zero, the theories all seemed kind of stupid. Fairy tales for coddled children. No one thought about the big picture for a few thousand years. We were all scrambling to survive. Like ants when their nest has been destroyed. On those rare occasions when we thought about the big picture, it wasn’t really that big — Red versus Blue or what have you. There was surprisingly little thinking about the Agent. Where it came from. Whether it was natural or artificial, or even divine.”

Einstein, the Cyc, and Deep were all nodding as if to say Go on, go on!

But he had nothing to go on with.

“Some people — some Red, some Blue, and some ambiguous folks like the Owners of my bar — maybe even some of those kind of people”—he nodded at Deep—“seem to think they know something.”

“Do they?” asked Sonar Taxlaw.

“I have no idea,” said Ty. “But from what I’ve seen, they’re not stupid. Even if they are—”

He paused, groping for words.

“Even if they are,” Einstein repeated, “what?!”

“It’s a way — the Purpose is a way — of saying there’s something bigger than this crap we’ve spent the last week of our lives dealing with.”

“Red versus Blue crap?”

“Yes. And even though no one is sharing anything with me—yet—I like the feeling of that. People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently — and generally better — than people who serve other masters.”

“So it is like believing in God.”

“Maybe yes. But without the theology, the scripture, the pigheaded certainty.”

Einstein and the Cyc nodded and looked thoughtful. But also, or so it seemed to Ty, a little let down.

“Sorry I didn’t have an answer to your question,” Ty said.

“What are you going to do next? Now that your Seven is disbanded?” asked Sonar.

“Go back to my bar.”

“On Cradle?”

“On Cradle. Once, an astonishing wonder of technological prowess. Now a quaint, outmoded precursor to the vastly superior Gnomon.”

“I’d like to see it,” Sonar said.

“We have rooms. Apartments where people can stay, around the courtyard in the back.”

“They must be expensive.”

“They are free,” Ty said.

“How do you get one of those free rooms?” Einstein asked.

“Beats me. The Owners hand them out to people who serve the Purpose.”

“Very important people, then.”

Ty shrugged. “They can’t kill you for asking. You’re right about the Seven. That’s gone. Our Ivyn died. You took his place.”

Einstein cackled nervously. “I’m no replacement for Doc!”

“You don’t have to replace him. Not in that sense. But look what you did. You made first contact with these guys.” He nodded at Deep. “And first contact of another kind with the Diggers.”

Both Einstein and Sonar Taxlaw blushed deeply.

“The Cyc came along and replaced Memmie. That’s not a traditional Seven. But if we can pry Beled and Kathree apart, and if we can round up a Julian and a Camite who don’t hate each other, we’ll have ourselves a Nine. The first Nine ever assembled.”

Ty was just running his mouth, letting the cider talk. Sonar, however, was taking it all seriously. “But only one of the Aïdan subraces will be represented,” she pointed out.

“Bard is plenty.”

“You should include the other four,” Einstein said.

“That makes thirteen. An unlucky number. And a bit of a crowd, frankly.” But the youngsters across the table from him were looking heartrendingly sincere. Ty broke eye contact. “I’ll bet I could talk the Owners out of a few free rooms, for such a momentous occasion.”

“Are you really going to ask them?!” Sonar exclaimed.

“Nah. As an ancient saying has it, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. You are all welcome at the Crow’s Nest.” Ty looked over at Deep. “Just go easy on the cold baths, man. The plumbing in that place has seen better days, and I’m the only one who knows how to fix it.”