Origin

Origin
Stephen Baxter

2015: Astronaut Reid Malenfant is flying over the African continent, intent on examining a mysterious glowing construct in Earth’s orbit.But when the very fabric of the sky tears open, spilling living creatures to the ground and pulling others inside, including Reid’s wife, Emma, his quest to uncover the unknown becomes personal.While desperately searching to discover what happened to the woman he loves, Reid embarks upon an adventure to the very fount of human development . . . on earth and beyond.

STEPHEN BAXTER

ORIGIN

MANIFOLD 3

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_6e317824-1b89-55a0-a690-03fe94fa71b1)

HarperVoyager an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk/)

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2001

Copyright © Stephen Baxter 2000

Cover image of Calabi-yau manifold © Laguna Design/Getty Images

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Stephen Baxter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780008134495

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN 9780007401147

Version: 2015-09-01

DEDICATION (#ulink_714e0cc7-3808-5ed2-a74e-fbf261d4d0e5)

To my nephew, William Baxter

CONTENTS

Cover (#ue35da280-b25e-5e28-a99f-72bfef15d231)

Title Page (#uc18d2f50-fe7f-5cc0-8445-114cc59d7ff2)

Copyright (#u81ebd451-7e0d-5ef1-a575-e4488da6b70a)

Dedication (#ue49fbe64-7e31-5a1b-aaca-38b596ce2b64)

Preface (#u7ef2e902-565e-5394-a2bd-da003ea8fbc8)

1 Wheel (#ub609a398-699d-5194-86c1-cceda083b93b)

2 Red Moon (#u2f98069b-fc53-5408-90b7-ee660dd715b4)

3 Hominids (#litres_trial_promo)

4 World Engine (#litres_trial_promo)

5 Manifold (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

PREFACE (#ulink_49b4bde5-f949-53f8-bf1e-ca6ef3c07502)

Emma Stoney:

Do you know me? Do you know where you are? Oh, Malenfant …

I know you. And you’re just what you always were, an incorrigible space cadet. That’s how we both finished up stranded here, isn’t it? I remember how I loved to hear you talk, when we were kids. When everybody else was snuggling at the drive-in, you used to lecture me on how space is a high frontier, a sky to be mined, a resource for humanity.

But is that all there is? Is the sky really nothing more than an empty stage for mankind to strut and squabble?

And what if we blew ourselves up before we ever got to the stars? Would the universe just evolve on, a huge piece of clockwork slowly running down, utterly devoid of life and mind?

How – desolating.

Surely it couldn’t be like that. All those suns and worlds spinning through the void, the grand complexity of creation unwinding all the way out of the Big Bang itself … You always said you just couldn’t believe that there was nobody out there looking back at you down here.

But if so, where is everybody?

This is the Fermi Paradox – right, Malenfant? If the aliens existed, they would be here. I heard you lecture on that so often I could recite it in my sleep.

But I agree with you. It’s powerful strange. I’m sure Fermi is telling us something very profound about the nature of the universe we live in. It is as if we are all embedded in a vast graph of possibilities, a graph with an axis marked time, for our own future destiny, and an axis marked space, for the possibilities of the universe.

Much of your life has been shaped by thinking about that cosmic graph. Your life and, as a consequence, mine.

Well, on every graph there is a unique point, the place where the axes cross. It’s called the origin. Which is where we’ve finished up, isn’t it, Malenfant? And now we know why we were alone …