Free Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson

head buried in the sand?'
    Spike said, 'There is only evidence that life in some form existed
    at some time on planets other than our own, including, but not exclusively, the white planet.'
    'The white planet was a world like ours,' said Handsome, 'far, far advanced. We were still evolving out of the soup when the white planet had six-lane highways and space missions. It was definitely a living, breathing, working planet, with water and resources, cooked to cinders by CO2, They couldn't control their gases. Certainly the planet was heating up anyway, but the humans, or whatever they were, massively miscalculated, and pumped so much CO2 into the air that they caused irreversible warming. The rest is history.'
    'Whose history?'
    'Looking more and more like ours, don't you think?' said Handsome. 'Anyway, I like the colour co-ordination — a dead white planet, a dying red planet, and Planet Blue out there, just starting up.'
    'Our planet .. .'
    'Is red,' said Handsome. 'That red-dust stuff?'
    'Is sand,' said Spike.
    'Yes, it is sand, but it is not just desert sand. The desert advances every year, but the duststorms are not just sand, they are the guts of the fucking planet. It's iron ore in there.'
    'There is no evidence for that,' said Spike.
    'Iron ore? Of course there is.'
    'No evidence that we are gutting Orbus.'
    'Well, I don't know what you call it, but a planet that has collapsing ice-caps, encroaching desert, no virgin forest and no eco-species left reads like gutted to me. The place is just throwing up and, I tell you, it's not the first time. My theory is that life on Orbus began as escaping life from the white planet - and the white planet began as escaping life from ... who knows where?'
    Pink was visibly moved by the story. 'Y'know, it would make a great movie. It has a human feel.'
    Ignoring the cinematic possibilities of global disaster on a galactic scale, I said, 'But it's so depressing if we keep making the same mistakes again and again ... '
    Pink was sympathetic. 'I know what you mean — every time we fall in love.'
    'I wasn't thinking personal,' I said.
    'What's the difference?' she said. 'Women are just planets that attract the wrong species.'
    'It might be more complex than that,' said Spike.
    'They use us up, wear us out, then cast us off for a younger model so that they can do it all again.'
    'But, Pink, you are the younger model. Genetic Fixing changed all that,' I said.
    'It didn't work, though, did it? Y'know what I mean?'
    'Women always bring it back to the personal,' said Handsome. 'It's why you can't be world leaders.'
    'And men never do,' I said, 'which is why we end up with no world left to lead.'
    He held up his hands. 'I'm beaten. I'll leave you ladies to destroy what's left of the male sex.' He bent over and kissed Spike.
    'Isn't she a robot?' asked Pink, who was nothing if not her own repeating history.
    'The champagne's in the cooler,' said Handsome, and left.
    Pink sighed. 'He's so strong, so romantic. He's like a hero from the Discovery Channel. I just don't understand why he's in love with a robot — no offence intended to you, Spike, I'm not prejudiced or anything, it's not your fault that you're a robot — I mean, you never had any say in it, did you? One minute you were a pile of wires, and the next thing you know you're having an affair.'
    'I don't love Handsome,' said Spike.
    'Well, of course not — y'know, like I said, you're a robot.'
    'That isn't why I don't love him,' said Spike, but Pink wasn't listening.
    'What about you, Billie?' she said. 'What's your story? Now that we're in space we can say what we like. I feel much better since we left Orbus — I think maybe I was allergic to gravity. It's kind of flattening. '
    Spike looked at me. I shrugged. 'There was someone. It didn't work out. If I'm truthful I would say that it's never worked out. Almost, nearly, but not quite. And as we're in space, and can say anything, you might as well know now that I'm here to avoid prison.