I’m going to be fine
– she said to herself –
women have been giving birth for ever. It’s just pain – and you get a baby at the end of it.
She reached the table and lowered herself onto one of the benches, gritting her teeth against the pain that shot up her back. It hurt so much already and yet it had only just started. She couldn’t imagine how it could possibly get any worse and the thought that it would frightened her.
‘Better to walk around,’ said a small voice at her side. She turned, and saw the little girl who had arrived that afternoon. ‘It helps the baby come and stops your back hurting so much.’
Liv stared at her like she was a small angel sent to look after her. ‘How did you know the baby was coming?’
Hevva shrugged. ‘I’ve seen a lot of babies being born.’
‘Her mother was a midwife.’ Liv looked up and saw the man the girl had arrived with.
‘Do you mind if she stays nearby?’ she asked him, smiling down at the girl. ‘Can you stay? I’m a bit scared and I think you might make me brave.’
The girl nodded, looking up at her father for approval.
‘If you want,’ the man said. ‘I’ll stay close by – in case you need me.’
More people arrived carrying a mattress and sheets taken from one of the dorms inside the building. All around there was a hum of activity as stakes were found and driven in the ground to hold up privacy screens while others brought battery-powered lights on stands and set them up. They laid the mattress on the table and the doctor took Liv’s arm. ‘Let’s get you up here and take a look at you,’ he said. But Liv didn’t hear him as sudden pain exploded inside her blotting everything else out.
Shepherd walked away feeling anxious.
After what had happened at Göbekli Tepe he didn’t like letting Hevva out of his sight. They had only just arrived here: everybody had been very kind and welcoming, but even so. He stopped by the water’s edge, close enough for comfort but far enough so that the hiss of the fountain drowned out some of the noise coming from the makeshift maternity ward.
The stars were out already, millions of points of light speckling the night. He turned to face east where Taurus was rising and saw the new star shining between Zeta Tauri and Nath. He’d missed it the night before because he’d been sleeping like a dead man in the back of a moving car. It was odd seeing a new thing in something so familiar.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
Kinderman joined him, his eyes tilted up to the same patch of sky. ‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘After all those caffeine pills, chance would be a fine thing. Besides, I wouldn’t miss this for anything.’
Shepherd looked back up at the bright new speck in the sky. ‘Miss what – what did Hubble see exactly?’
‘What do you think it saw?’
‘I don’t know. A Dark Star maybe?’
‘Now wouldn’t that be something! Interesting that you naturally assume it has to be something destructive.’
‘It’s not an assumption, it’s based on the evidence of what I’ve seen. And you did write “end of days” in your diary.’
‘Ah yes, so I did. You’re being very literal though, don’t you think? You’re ignoring the universal law that tells us energy never dies, it just turns into something else. Therefore, the end of one thing must also be the beginning of another. In point of fact you already know what Hubble saw, because you have seen it for yourself.’ Shepherd thought back through all the things he had come across since the investigation had begun but nothing came to mind that might answer his question. ‘You might want to start with the one thing you are sure is connected to the question,’ Kinderman prompted, ever the teacher.
‘The countdown?’
‘Exactly. Now in order to answer your own question you need to take a tip from Marcus Aurelius and ask: “what is it of itself?” – and don’t fall into your usual trap of making assumptions.’
Shepherd thought hard. What was a countdown? It was a steadily reducing measure of time, a prelude to something, like the start of a race or the launch of a rocket. Or was it? Kinderman’s question seemed to suggest it wasn’t the prelude to anything at all – it was actually the thing itself.
‘The countdown is what Hubble saw.’
‘Bravo, Agent Shepherd.’
Shepherd reached into his pocket, looking for his phone but his hand found something else. He pulled out the small, hard object – the woman’s small gun.
Shepherd dropped it back into the jacket and found his phone in another pocket. The countdown was still running, the numbers now almost at zero.
‘Not long now,’ Kinderman said, glancing at the screen.
Shepherd shook his head, confused all over again. ‘Not long to what? If the countdown is the thing itself, then what can come after.’
‘I already told you,’ Kinderman said, ‘a new beginning. Let me try and frame it a little. We are all effectively made of stardust: same atomic material, same physical properties, all linked by an energy and common origin, whether you call it faith or physics. For nearly fourteen billion years the universe has been expanding, from the Big Bang onwards, always heading out, always seeking the new. Everything in the universe has mirrored this inherent nature, stars, planets, even humans. As a species we have spread, conquered, always looking beyond what we already have to what we might attain, even if we risk destroying ourselves in the process: it runs through everything, from an overreaching emperor destroying his empire for the sake of one more conquered land, to the happily married family man risking his happiness for the sake of an affair. Ours is a destructive nature, often a violent one, but it’s not really our fault, we are merely exhibiting the same nature as everything else, the universal urge to expand and ultimately pull ourselves apart.
‘In many ways the Hubble project was no different. We have astonishing levels of child poverty on our planet and there are species beneath the deep oceans we have never laid eyes on. Yet rather than look inward so that we might know ourselves we think the answers always lie out there somewhere, past the edge of what we can see. I was as guilty of it as any. Through Hubble I was able to see further than any man had ever done before. I was gazing upon the ultimate horizon, the one beyond which nothing existed – except maybe God, if that’s the way your beliefs lie – taking measurements of the very first things ever created at the instant of the Big Bang.
‘I had been observing radiation and light at the very edge of the universe, taking measurements of its speed and rate of expansion. Then, just over eight months ago, there was a change. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing, it was so – immense. At first I thought I must have made a mistake so I asked Professor Douglas to check what I was seeing and he concurred. The universe, the constantly expanding universe that has been exploding outwards at ever-increasing speeds since the dawn of time, was slowing down.
‘We decided to keep our findings to ourselves, partly to prevent unnecessary hysteria and speculation and partly to buy ourselves time to try and work out what was happening. At about the same time we both started getting the postcards, which suggested someone was monitoring our work. This made us play our cards even closer to our chest.
‘We classified the data and kept monitoring the furthest edge of the universe as it continued to slow. And the more things slowed down on the furthest edge of space the more we noticed things changing here on Earth. All these migrations of people heading home, the birds flying to nesting grounds out of season, this increasing urge to head back to a point of origin, it’s all just an echo of the changing universe. So there is no great conspiracy or alien mind control at work. Nor is it the harbinger of some terrible divine judgement in the shape of God’s wrath or a rogue planet on a collision course with Earth. It is merely the linked consciousness and impulses that drive us all, fuelled by the energy of the universe, once rushing out to ultimately tear itself apart, now rushing inwards, towards where it originally came from. Back home. To some this is the place they were born, to others it is a person rather than a place, and to others it is somewhere much further back, the place we originally came from as a species.’ He opened his arms and gestured at the garden. ‘Eden.’
Liv felt she was drowning in pain.
‘There’s something wrong. You’re almost ten centimetres dilated already and the head is presenting. This baby should be coming.’ Dr Giambanco looked up from beneath the sheet draped over Liv’s legs. ‘Try pushing now.’
Liv was lying on the bed, sweat sheening her skin. She bore down, focusing her energy on her pelvic floor like she had once written about. The pain inside was so intense and total that it literally took her breath away. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It hurts too much.’
She felt the girl’s small hand grip hers, surprisingly strong for such a tiny thing. ‘Can I see?’ she asked.
Liv nodded, not caring who looked so long as they could make the pain go away. Hevva moved to the bottom of the bed, squirting antiseptic gel on her hands as she went. She rubbed it between her fingers and worked it to the tips in a way that spoke of much practice, then she pressed one hand on Liv’s tummy and swept the other round the top of the baby’s head. ‘It’s a stargazer,’ she said. ‘It’s facing up instead of down. That’s why it’s hard to push out. The head is bending the wrong way so when you push it just gets stuck.’
Dr Giambanco peered around Hevva’s narrow shoulders. ‘I think she’s right. We might have to do an emergency C-section.’
Liv felt sick at the thought, but the pain was so all encompassing she would do almost anything to make it stop.
‘I could try and turn it,’ Hevva said. ‘My hands are small. I’ve done it before.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t think we should risk –’
‘Yes,’ Liv cut in. ‘Let her try.’
Dr Giambanco nodded and moved aside.
‘Could you push against the leg,’ Hevva said, her serious face angled up at the doctor. ‘And you,’ she turned to the other medic, ‘you push against the other, but only when I say.’
She turned back to Liv, squirting more gel on her hands, making them as slippery as she could while she waited for the next contraction. Time stretched and the sounds of the night and rush of the fountain filled it.
Liv breathed. Tried to relax, then the burn of the pain started rising again.
‘Now. Push now,’ Hevva said and everybody obeyed. Then her hands slid forward and around the crown of the baby’s head.
The numbers on Shepherd’s phone continued their steady tick down. ‘What do you think will happen when it hits zero?’
‘Nothing, at least not immediately. I think the changes we have already felt and witnessed will continue. The stardust in everything will respond in exactly the same way as before, only the effect will be different. I imagine we will no longer seek to conquer and discover, but become more reflective instead, our eyes will turn inward, just as Hubble has turned its gaze towards the Earth. I hope that after an entire history blighted by war and violence – manifestations of the destructive imperatives of an expansive universe – we can look forward to an equally long period of peace and calm.
‘On a fundamental level, everything is bound to change: human nature, politics, science, even religion. The end of days may be upon us, but only the end of the old days, the new ones will number the same as those that have gone before as the universe contracts – fourteen billion years, the exact same time frame as its expansion.’
The number on Shepherd’s phone got smaller and he could almost feel a calm flowing from it. Smaller was good. Smaller was simpler and much more comforting somehow than the concept of the infinite.
A noise made him look up, the sound of a diesel engine, approaching low and heavy like a truck. It got louder and the wash of headlamps cut through the trees, bouncing up and down as the wheels caught the ruts in the road. It swung directly towards them, the light blinding them, before slowing to a stop behind the parked jeep.
The engine shuddered to a standstill and silence flooded back. The rear canvas flaps of the truck peeled back and people started to drop to the ground, stretching their backs and looking in wonder at their new surroundings.
‘More people answering the siren call of the changing universe,’ Kinderman said. ‘And just in time too.’
Shepherd looked down at the countdown again just as the numbers tumbled to zero and immediately started to build again with a minus sign in front. At the same moment two things happened: the ambient light levels jumped slightly as all the stars became a little brighter; and a deep, almost animal cry split the night as Liv gave one long, final push. Then there was the tiny mewl of newborn.
The first thing Gabriel heard when he climbed stiffly from the back of the truck after the long journey was the cry of a woman.
He was naturally conditioned to respond to signs of distress and cries of pain but there was something in the sound that he recognized. His senses snapped to attention and he reacted quickly, moving along the side of the truck, heading to the source. The sound had come from a screened-off area by the water’s edge, with light coming from behind the screens.
He pushed past a staked sheet of canvas and squinted against the sudden brightness of the stand lights.
Liv was lying on a makeshift bed in the centre of a group of people. She looked tired and drawn but was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She seemed to glow in the lights. A young girl was at her feet holding a newborn baby that squirmed and cried. She wrapped it in a towel and handed it to Liv.
A baby – Liv’s baby.
Shepherd saw the man get down from the truck
–
and head straight for the canvas screens. Hevva was in there, he couldn’t see what was happening, he was too far away. The man disappeared behind the screens and Shepherd broke into a run, his feet slipping in the soft earth of the shore.
Over by the truck someone else started to move with the same sense of purpose the first man had displayed. He was wearing a bulky jacket, like a soldier’s tunic, and there was something about it and the stiff way he walked that set alarms ringing in Shepherd’s head. The man reached the screens and turned briefly before disappearing behind them, the light from the truck’s headlights catching his face. Shepherd stared. Shocked.