She’d materialized in the middle of the mansion’s ballroom. Her bare feet pressed down on a polished oak floor that was nearly as shiny as the huge gilt-edged mirrors on the wall. A hundred reflections of her naked body grinned sheepishly back at her. Deep-purple velvet drapes curved around the tall window doors which opened out on a veranda dripping with white wisteria. Outside, a bright low February sun shone across the extensive wooded grounds with their massive swathes of rhododendrons. There had been some fabulous parties held in here, she recalled. Fame, wealth, glamour, power, notoriety, and beauty mingling in a fashion that would have made Jane Austen green with envy.
The doors were open, leading out into the broad corridor. Justine walked through, taking in all the semi-familiar sights, welcoming the warm rush of recognition. Alcoves were filled with furniture that had been antique even before Ozzie and Nigel built their first wormhole generator; and as for the artwork, you could buy a small continent on an External World with just one of the paintings.
She padded up the staircase which curved its way through the entrance hall, and made her way down the north petal to her old bedroom. Everything was as she’d left it, maintained for centuries by the stabilizer fields and maidbots; a comforting illusion that she or any other Burnelli could walk in at any time and be given a perfect greeting in their ancestral home. The bed was freshly made, with linen taken out of the stabilizer field and freshened as soon as she and ANA had agreed to the reception. Several clothes were laid out. She ignored the modern toga suit, and went for a classical Indian-themed emerald dress with black boots.
‘Very neutral.’
Justine jumped at the voice. Irritation quickly supplanted perturbation. She turned and glared at the solido standing in the doorway. ‘Dad, I don’t care how far past the physical you claim to be, you DO NOT come into a girl’s bedroom without knocking. Especially mine.’
Gore Burnelli’s image didn’t show much contrition. He simply watched with interest as she sat on the bed and laced her boots up. He’d chosen the representation of his twenty-fourth-century self, which was undoubtedly the image for which he was most renowned: a body whose skin had been turned to gold. Over that he wore a black V-neck sweater and black trousers. The perfect reflective surface made it difficult to determine his features. Without the gold sheen he would have been a handsome twenty-five-year-old with short-cropped fair hair. His face, which at the time he had it done was nothing more than merged organic circuitry tattoos, was all the more disconcerting thanks to the perfectly ordinary grey eyes peering out of the gloss. That Gore looked out on the world from behind a mask of improvements was something of a metaphor. He was a pioneer of enhanced mental routines, and had been one of the founders of ANA.
‘Like it matters,’ he grunted.
‘Politeness is always relevant,’ she snapped back. Her temper wasn’t improved by the way her fingers seemed to lack any real dexterity. She was having trouble tying the boot laces.
‘You were a good choice to receive the Ambassador.’
She finally managed to finish the bow, and lifted a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Are you jealous, Dad?’
‘Of becoming some kind of turbo-version of a monkey again? Yeah, right. Thinking down at this level and this speed gives me a headache.’
‘Turbo-monkey! You nearly said animal, didn’t you?’
‘Flesh and blood is animal.’
‘Just how many Factions do you support?’
‘I’m a Conservative, everyone knows that. Maybe a few campaign contributions to the Outwards.’
‘Humm.’ She gave him a suspicious look. Even in a body, she knew the rumours that ANA gave special dispensation to some of its internal personalities. ANA: Governance denied it, of course; but if anyone could manage to be more equal than others it would be Gore, who’d been in there right at the start as one of the founding fathers.
‘The Ambassador is nearly here,’ Gore said.
Justine checked her exoimages, and started to re-order her secondary thought routines. Her body’s macrocellular clusters and biononics were centuries out of date, but still perfectly adequate for the simple tasks today would require. She called her son, Kazimir. ‘I’m ready,’ she told him.
As she walked out of her bedroom she experienced a brief chill that made her glance back over her shoulder. That’s the bed where we made love. The last time I saw him alive. Kazimir McFoster was one memory she had never put into storage, never allowed to weaken. There had been others since, many others, both in the flesh and in ANA, wonderful, intense relationships, but none ever had the poignancy of dear Kazimir whose death was her responsibility.
Gore said nothing as his solido followed her down the grand staircase to the entrance hall. She suspected that he suspected.
Kazimir teleported into the marbled entrance hall; appearing dead centre on the big Burnelli crest. He was dressed in his Admiral’s tunic. Justine had never seen him wear anything else in six hundred years. He smiled in genuine welcome and gave her a gentle embrace, his lips brushing her cheek.
‘Mother. You look wonderful as always.’
She sighed. He did look so like his father. ‘Thank you, darling.’
‘Grandfather.’ He gave Gore a shallow bow.
‘Still holding up in that old receptacle, then,’ Gore said. ‘When are you going to join us here in civilization?’
‘Not today, thank you, Grandfather.’
‘Dad, pack it in,’ Justine warned.
‘It’s goddamn creepy if you ask me,’ Gore grumbled. ‘No one stays in a body for a thousand years. What’s left for you out there?’
‘Life. People. Friends. True responsibility. A sense of wonder.’
‘We got a ton of that in here.’
‘And while you look inwards, the universe carries on around you.’
‘Hey, we’re very aware of extrinsic events.’
‘Which is why we’re having this happy family reunion today.’ Kazimir gave a small victory smile.
Justine wasn’t even listening to them any more, they always ran through this argument as if it was a greeting ritual. ‘Shall we go, boys?’
The doors of the mansion swung open and she walked out on to the broad portico without waiting for the others. It was a cold air outside; frost was still cloaking the deeper hollows in the lawn where the long shadows prevailed. A few clouds scudded across the fresh blue sky. Pushing its way through them was the Ocisen Empire ship sliding in from the south-east. Roughly triangular, it measured nearly two hundred metres long. There was nothing remotely aerodynamic about it. The fuselage was a dark metal, mottled with aquamarine patches that resembled lichen. Its crinkled surface was cratered with indentations that sprouted black spindles at the centre, whilst long boxes looked as though they’d been welded on at random. A cluster of sharp radiator fins emerged from the rear section, glowing bright red.
Gore gave a derisive chuckle. ‘What a monstrosity. You’d think they could do better now we’ve given them regrav.’
‘We took five hundred years to get from the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk to the Second Chance,’ Justine pointed out.
Gore looked up as the alien starship slowed to a halt above the mansion’s grounds. ‘Do you think it’ll have jets of dry ice gushing out when it lands, or maybe they’ve mounted a giant laser gun that’ll blast the White House to smithereens?’
‘Dad, be quiet.’
The ship descended. Two rows of hatches along its belly swung open.
‘For fuck’s sake, haven’t they even heard of malmetal?’ Gore complained.
Long fat landing legs telescoped out. The movement was accompanied by a sharp hissing sound as high-pressure gas vented through grilles in the undercarriage bays.
Justine had to suck her lower lip in to stop herself giggling. The starship was ridiculous, the kind of contraption Isambard Kingdom Brunel would have built for Queen Victoria.
It touched down on the lawn, its landing pads sinking deep into the grass and soft soil.
Several radiator fins sliced down into silver birch trees, their heat igniting the wood. Burning branches dropped to the ground.
‘Wow, the damage it causes. How will our world survive? Quick, you kids flee to the woods, I’ll hold them off with a shotgun.’
‘Dad! And cancel your solido, you know what the Empire thinks of ANA personalities.’
‘Stupid and superstitious.’
His solido vanished. Justine watched his icon appear in her exoimage. ‘Now behave,’ she told him.
‘That ship is leaking radiation all over the place,’ Gore commented. ‘They haven’t even shielded their fusion reactor properly. And who uses deuterium anyway?’
Justine reviewed the sensor data, scanning the ship’s hotspots. ‘It’s hardly a harmful emission level.’
‘The Ocisens aren’t as susceptible to radioactivity as humans are,’ Kazimir said. ‘It’s one reason they were able to industrialize space in their home system with what equates to our mid-twenty-first-century technology. They simply didn’t require the shielding mass we would have needed.’
Halfway down the starship’s fuselage a multi-segment airlock door unwound. The Ambassador for the Ocisen Empire floated out, sitting on top of a hemispherical regrav sled. Physically, the alien wasn’t impressive; a small barrel-shaped torso wrapped in layers of flaccid flesh that formed overlapping folds. Its four eyes were on serpent stalks curving out from the crest, while four limbs were folded up against the lower half of its body. They were encrusted in cybernetic systems, amplifying its strength and providing a number of manipulator attachments ranging from delicate pliers up to a big hydraulic crab pincer. Further support braces ran up its body, resembling a cage of chrome vertebrae that ended in a collar arrangement just below the base of the eye stalks. Patches of what looked like copper moss were growing across various sections of its flesh; they sprouted small rubbery stalks covered in minute sapphire flowers.
Justine bowed formally as the sled stopped in front of her, floating half a metre off the ground, which put the Ambassador’s eye stalks above her. Even with the regrav unit and the physical support it was obvious the Ambassador had come from a low-gravity world. It sagged against the metal and composite structures holding it up. Two of the eye stalks bent round so they were aligned on her.
‘Ambassador, thank you for visiting us,’ Justine said.
‘We are pleased to visit,’ the Ambassador answered, its voice a whispery burble coming from a slender vocalizer gill between his eye stalks. Translated into English by the sled processors, a speaker on the rim boomed the reply to Justine.
‘My home welcomes you,’ she said, remembering the formality.
Another of the Ambassador’s eye stalks curved round to stare at Kazimir. ‘You are the human Navy commander.’
‘That is correct,’ Kazimir said. ‘I am here as you requested.’
‘Many of my nest ancestor cousins fought in the Fandola assault.’ Thin droplets of spittle ran out of the Ambassador’s gill, to be absorbed by drain holes in its support collar.
‘I am sure they fought with honour.’
‘Honour be damned. We would have enjoyed victory over the Hancher vermin if you had not intervened that day.’
‘We are friends with the Hancher. Your attack was ill-advised; I warned you we would not abandon our friends. That is not our way.’
The fourth eye stalk turned on Kazimir. ‘You in person warned the Empire, Navy commander?’
‘That is correct.’
‘You live so long. You are no longer natural.’
‘Is this why you are here, Ambassador, to insult me?’
‘You overreact. I state the obvious.’
‘We do not hide from the obvious,’ Justine said. ‘But we are not here today to dwell upon what was. Please come in, Ambassador.’
‘You are kind.’
Justine walked into the entrance hall with the Ambassador’s sled gliding along behind her. Somehow it managed to keep a distance that wasn’t too close as to be blatantly rude, but still close enough to be disconcerting.
Kazimir’s icon blinked up beside Gore’s in her peripheral vision. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘the Ocisens only started painting their sleds black after they found out humans are unsettled by darkness.’
‘If that’s the best they can come up with it’s a wonder their species ever survived the fission age,’ she replied.
‘We shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to mock them,’ Gore replied. ‘However much we sneer, they do have an empire, and they would have obliterated the Hancher if we hadn’t stepped in.’
‘I’d hardly consider that to be an indicator of their superiority,’ Justine told them. ‘And they’re certainly not a threat to us. Their technology level is orders of magnitude below Higher culture, let alone ANA.’
‘Yes, but right now they only have one policy, to acquire better technology, especially weapons technology. A sizeable percentage of the Emperor’s expansion budget is diverted to building long-range exploration ships in the hope they’ll come across a world whose inhabitants have gone post-physical, and they can help themselves to what-ever’s left behind.’
‘Let’s hope they never encounter a Prime immotile.’
‘They’ve made seventeen attempts to reach the Dyson Pair,’ Kazimir told her. ‘And they currently have forty-two ships searching for an immotile civilization beyond the region of space we Firewalled.’
‘I didn’t know that. Is there any danger they’ll find a rogue Prime planet?’
‘If we can’t find one, they certainly won’t be able to.’
Justine led their little party into the McLeod room, and sat at the head of the large oak table running down the middle. Kazimir took the chair at his mother’s side, while the Ambassador hovered at the other end. Its eye stalks bent round slowly, as if it was having trouble with what it saw as it scanned the walls. The room’s décor was Scottish themed, which surrounded the alien with tartan drapes, ancient Celtic ceremonial swords, and solemn marble mannequins dressed in clan kilts. Several sets of bagpipes were displayed in glass cases. A fabulous pair of stag antlers hung above the stone mantelplace that had been imported from a Highland castle.
‘Ambassador,’ Justine said formally, ‘I represent the human government of Earth. I am physical, as you asked, and I am empowered to negotiate on the government’s behalf with the Ocisen Empire. What do you wish to discuss?’
Three of the Ambassador’s eyes curved round to stare at her. ‘Although we disapprove of living creatures placing themselves subordinate to the mechanical, we consider your planetary computer is the true ruler of the Commonwealth. That is why I required this direct meeting, rather than with the Senate as usual.’
Justine wasn’t about to start arguing about political structures with an alien who saw everything in terms of black and white. ‘ANA has considerable influence beyond this planet. That is so.’
‘Then you must work with the Empire to avert a very real danger.’
‘What danger is that, Ambassador?’ As if none of us know.
‘A human organization is threatening to send ships into the Void.’
‘Yes, our Living Dream movement wants to send its followers on a Pilgrimage there.’
‘I am familiar with human emotional states after being exposed to your kind for so long, so I am curious why you do not react to this event with any sense of distress or concern. It is through humans that we know of the Void, therefore you know what effect your Living Dream is proposing to trigger.’
‘They do not propose anything, they simply wish to live the life of their idol.’
‘You are deliberately denying the implication. Their entry to the Void will provoke a massive devourment phase. The galaxy will be ruined. Our Empire will be consumed. You will kill us and countless others.’
‘That will not happen,’ Justine said.
‘We are reassured that you intend to stop the Living Dream.’
‘That’s not what I said. It is
not our belief that their Pilgrimage will cause a devourment phase of any size. They simply do not possess the ability to pass through the event horizon which guards the Void. Even the Raiel have trouble doing that, and Living Dream does not have access to a Raiel ship.’
‘Then why are they launching this Pilgrimage?’
‘It is a simple political gesture, nothing more. The Ocisen Empire, nor any other species in the galaxy, does not have anything to worry about.’
‘Do you guarantee that your Living Dream group cannot get through the event horizon? Other humans have crossed over into the Void. They are the cause of this desire to Pilgrimage, are they not?’
‘Nothing is certain, Ambassador, you know that. But the likelihood—’
‘If you cannot guarantee it, then you must prevent the ships from flying.’
‘The Greater Commonwealth is a democratic institution, complicated in this case by Living Dream being both trans-stellar and the legitimate government of Ellezelin. The Commonwealth constitution is specifically designed to protect every member’s right to self-determination on an individual and governmental level. In other words we don’t actually have the legal right to prevent them from embarking on their Pilgrimage.’
‘I am familiar with human lawyers; everything can be undone, nothing is final. You play with words, not reality. The Empire recognizes only power and ability. Your computer government has the physical power to prevent this Pilgrimage, am I not correct?’
‘Ability does not automatically imply intent,’ Justine said. ‘ANA:Governance has the ability to do many things. We do not do them because of the laws which govern us, both legal and moral.’
‘It is not part of your morality to destroy this galaxy. You can prevent this.’
‘We can argue strongly against it,’ she said, wishing she didn’t agree quite so much with the Ocisen.
‘The Empire requires a tangible commitment. The Pilgrimage ships must be neutralized.’