Manifold: Space (Manifold Trilogy) by Stephen Baxter

Author:Stephen Baxter [Baxter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 0345430786
Google: nJWuzxfSNCUC
Amazon: B000FBJF1Y
Barnesnoble: B000FBJF1Y
Goodreads: 7184579
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

Life was long, slow, unchanging.

Even her thoughts were slow.

In the timeless intervals between the comets, her growth was chthonic, her patience matching that of the rocks themselves. Slowly, slowly, she rebuilt her strength: light traps to start the long process of drawing out fire for the next seeds, leaves to catch the comet Rain that would come again.

She spoke to her children, their subtle scratching carrying to her through the still, cold rock. It was important that she taught them: how to grow, of the comet Rains to come, of the Giver at the beginning of things, the Merging at the end.

Their conversations lasted a million years.

The Rains were spectacular, but infrequent. But when they came, once or twice in every billion years, her pulse accelerated, her metabolism exploding, as she drank in the thin, temporary air and dragged the fire she needed from the rock.

And with each Rain, she birthed again, the seeds exploding from her body and scattering around the Land.

But, after that first time, she was never alone. She could feel, through the rock, the joyous pulsing of her children as they hurled their own seed through the gathering comet air.

Soon there were so many of them that it was as if all of the Land was alive with their birthing, its rocky heart echoing to their joyous shouts.

And still, in the distant future, the Merging awaited them.

As the comets leapt one by one back into the sky, sucking away the air with them, she held that thought to her exhausted body, cradling it.

Eighty days in and Frank was still making hole at his couple-of-kilometers-a-day target pace. But things had started to get a lot harder.

This was mantle, after all. They were suffering rock bursts. The rock was like stretched wire, under so much pressure it exploded when it was exposed. It was a new regime. New techniques were needed.

Costs escalated. The pressure on Frank to shut down was intense.

Many of the investors had already become extremely rich from the potential of the rich ore lodes discovered in the lower crust and upper mantle. There was talk of opening up new, shallow bores elsewhere on the Moon to seek out further lodes. Frank had proved his point. Why go farther, when the Roughneck was already a commercial success?

But metal ore wasn’t Frank’s goal, and he wasn’t about to stop now.

That was when the first death occurred, all of a hundred kilometers below the surface of the Moon.

She found him in his office at New Dallas, pacing back and forth, an Earth man caged on the Moon, his muscles lifting him off the glass floor.

“Omelettes and eggs,” he said. “Omelettes and eggs.”

“That’s a cliché, Frank.”

“It was probably the fucking Grays.”

“There’s no evidence of sabotage.”

He paced. “Look, we’re in the mantle of the Moon—”

“You don’t have to justify it to me,” she said, but he wasn’t listening.

“The mantle,” he said. “You know, I hate it. A thousand kilometers of worthless shit.”

“It was the changeover to the subterrene that caused the disaster.

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