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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