Waking up in the clinic had been one hell of a surprise. The last thing he remembered was crashing his hyperglider into an identical one piloted by Anna Kime. Saving the Commonwealth—good. Killing the wife of his best friend—not so hot. Without Anna to wreck their flight, Wilson Kime should have managed to fly unimpeded on a mission that was pivotal in the Starflyer War. Oscar could remember the instant before the collision, a moment of complete serenity. He hadn’t expected anyone to recover his memorycell. Not after his confession, that in his youth he’d been involved in an act of politically-motivated terrorism that had killed four hundred and eight people, a third of them without memorycells, mostly children too young for the inserts. The fact that he’d never intended it, that the deaths were a mistake, that they’d missed their actual target—that should never have counted in his favour. But it seemed as though his service to the Commonwealth, and ultimate sacrifice, had meant something to the judge. He wanted to think Wilson had maybe paid for a decent lawyer. They’d been good friends.
“I guess this means we won, then,” were his first words. It even sounded like his own voice.
Above him, a youthful doctor’s face smiled. “Welcome back Mr Yaohui,” he said.
“Call me Oscar. I was that longer than I was ever Yaohui.” His new identity when he went on the run for over forty years.
“As you wish.”
Oscar managed to prop himself up on his elbows. A movement which surprised him; he’d seen re-life clones several times; pitiful things with thin flesh stretched over bones and organs that had been force-grown to adolescence, unable to move for months while they painfully built up muscle mass. This body, though, seemed almost complete. Which meant the technique had improved. There had been a lot of bodyloss in the War—tens of millions at least. He’d probably been shoved down to the bottom of the list. “How long?”
“Please understand, er, Oscar, you were put on trial for your, uh, previous crime. It set quite a few legal precedents, given your, uh, state at the time.”
“What trial? What do you mean, state? I was dead.”
“You suffered bodyloss. Your memorycell survived the crash intact—legally that is recognized by the Commonwealth as being your true self. It was recovered by one Paula Myo.”
“Uh—” Oscar was suddenly getting a very bad feeling about this. “Paula recovered me?”
“Yes. You and Anna Kime. She brought both of you back to Earth.”
“But Anna was a Starflyer agent.”
“Yes. Under the terms of the Doi amnesty her Starflyer conditioning was edited out of her memories and she was re-lifed as a normal human. Apparently she went on to have a long life and a successful marriage to Wilson Kime. She was certainly on the Discovery with him when it flew round the galaxy.”
Oscar’s shoulders weren’t so strong after all; he sagged back on to the mattress. “How long?” he repeated, there was an urgency in his growl.
“You were found guilty at the trial. Your Navy service record was a mitigating factor in sentencing of course, but it couldn’t compensate for the number of people who were killed at Abadan Station. The judge gave you suspension. But as the Commonwealth clinics were unable to cope with the sheer quantity of, uh, non-criminals requiring re-life at the time, he allowed you to remain as a stored memory rather than be re-lifed before the sentence began.”
“How long?” Oscar whispered.
“You were sentenced to one thousand one hundred years.”
“Fuck me!”
He was all alone. That was probably a worse punishment than suspension. After all, he wasn’t aware of time passing during that millennia, he couldn’t reflect and repent on his wrongdoing. But in this present, life was different. Everyone he’d known had either died or migrated inwards—ridiculous phrase, a politically correct way of saying they’d committed euthanasia with a safety net. Maybe that was the point of suspension after all. It certainly hurt.
So, with no friends, no family, knowledge and skills that even museums wouldn’t be interested in, Oscar Monroe had to start afresh.
The Navy, rather understandably, didn’t want him. He explained he didn’t expect to be part of the deterrence fleet, and offered to retrain as a pilot for their exploration crews. They declined again.
Back before the Starflyer War he’d worked in the exploration division at CST. Opening new planets, giving people a fresh start, was kind of like a self-imposed penance. Except he’d really enjoyed it. So he did train as a starship pilot. Fortunately the modern continuous wormhole drive used principles and theories developed during his first life, he brought himself up to speed on its current technology applications quite rapidly.
Orakum SolarStar was the third company he’d worked for since his re-life. It wasn’t much different to any other External World starline. In fact it was smaller than most. Orakum was on the edge of the Greater Commonwealth, settled for a mere two hundred years. But that location made it a chief candidate from which to mount new exploration flights, opening up yet more worlds. They were rare events. The Navy had charted every star system directly outside the External Worlds. Expansion to new worlds was also at a historical low. The boundary between Central and External Worlds hadn’t changed much for centuries. The old assumption that Higher culture would always be extending outwards, and the ordinary humans would be an expanding wave in front of it was proving to be a fallacy. With inward migration, the number of Higher humans remained about constant; and the External Worlds provided just about every kind of society in terms of ethnicity, ideology, technology, and religion. Should any citizen feel disenfranchised on their own planet they just had to take a commercial flight to relocate. There was very little reason to found a new world these days.
In the nineteen years he’d been on Orakum, SolarStar had only launched three planetary survey flights. Two of these had been closer than the company’s long-range commercial flights travelled. Hardly breaking through new frontiers. But he had seniority now. If another outward venture came along, he ought to be chosen. Like all pilots, he was an eternal optimist.
There was no hint of that elusive mission in the company offices when he filed his flight report. He’d just got back from a long haul flight to Troyan, seventy lightyears away. A fifteen-hour trip with nothing to do other than talk to the smartcore and trawl the Unisphere for anything interesting. One day soon, he was sure, people would finally chuck the notion that they had to have a fellow human in charge. He was only sitting up in the front of the starship for public relations. In fact there were probably people sitting in the passenger cabin who were better qualified than him if repairs were ever needed. Not that they ever were.
But at least he got to visit new planets. The same ones. Over and over again.
His regrav capsule sank out of the wispy clouds to curve sedately round the house and land on the grass beside the spinney of lofty rancata trees, nearly twenty metres tall with reddish-brown whip-leaves that swayed in the mild breeze. He climbed out and took a deep breath of the warm, plains-scented air. Out beyond the horizon, Orakum’s untamed countryside was carpeted by spiky wildflowers that budded most of the year. Another reason to choose Orakum was its benign climate.
Jesaral was walking out from underneath the house. The splendidly handsome youth didn’t quite have a welcoming smile on his face, but definitely looked relieved to see Oscar. He was only wearing a pair of knee-length white trousers, showing off a tanned body that always got Oscar’s blood pumping a little faster. Jesaral was the youngest of his three life partners, barely twenty.
Which, Oscar suspected, probably qualified him as the worst Punk Skunk in the galaxy. A thousand-year-plus age gap: it was delightfully naughty.
The youth opened his arms wide and gave Oscar a big hug to accompany a long sultry kiss. Enthusiasm sprayed out heedlessly into the gaiafield.
“What’s the matter?” Oscar asked.
“Them,” Jesaral said, stabbing a thumb dismissively back at the house.
Osca
r refused to sigh. He and his other partners Dushiku and Anja had been a stable trio for over a decade. They were both over a hundred, and completely at ease with each other. At their age they understood perfectly the little accommodations necessary to make any relationship to work. It was taking everyone longer than expected to accommodate and adjust to their newcomer—who didn’t have anything like their experience and sophistication. Which was what made him so exciting in and out of bed.
“What have they done?”
“It’s a surprise for you. And I know how you hate surprises.”
“Not always,” Oscar assured him. “Depends if it’s good or bad. What’s this one?”
“Oh no. I’m just telling you there is a surprise for you. I don’t want you to be upset that it’s there, that’s all.”
Oscar used a macrocellular cluster to connect to the house’s net. Whatever was waiting inside had been skilfully blocked. That would be Anja, who developed commercial neural routines. She was one of the best on the planet.
“You have the strangest logic I’ve ever known,” Oscar said.
Jesaral smiled broadly. “Come on! I can’t wait.” He tugged at Oscar’s arm, his outpouring of enthusiasm shining like sunrise.
They hurried to the base of the pillar and climbed the wide spiral stair. It brought them out into a small vestibule, planted with colourful bushes from several worlds, their flowers reaching for the open sky above. Ten doors opened off it. Jesaral led the way into their main lounge. In contrast to the exterior, the lounge was clad in caranwood, a local variety that was a rich gold-brown.
The grain of the planks had been blended so skilfully it looked as if they were inside a giant hollowed-out trunk. Its furniture was scarlet and gold, contributing to the sumptuous feel.
Dushiku was waiting in the middle of the big room, holding out a tumbler of malt whisky, three ice cubes. He had a mischievous smile on his broad face. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks.” Oscar took the drink wearily.
“I see Jesaral’s restraint is as strong as ever.”
“I didn’t tell him,” Jesaral protested.
“So?” Oscar enquired.
Dushiku raised an eyebrow, and half turned, indicating the balcony beyond the glass wall at the far end of the lounge. Anja was standing out there, leaning on the rail as she spoke about some aspect of the gardens below. Her laughter-filled voice was just audible through the open door. Oscar knew the tone well, she was playing perfect hostess: marking her territory. Anja was astonishingly beautiful, a beauty which took a full third of her salary to maintain. Two visits to a clinic each year were considered an essential minimum, for beauty was fluid and fashions were treacherous ephemera even on Orakum. She’d returned three weeks ago from her last treatments, showing off her reduced height and dark satin-texture skin. Her face was all gentle curves veiled by a mane of thick chestnut hair swishing down past her shoulders. Huge fawn-coloured eyes peered innocently out of the shadows, projecting a girlish innocence complemented by a perpetual ingénue effervescence into the gaiafield. Her clothes were deceptively simple, a scarlet T-shirt and dark-blue swirling skirt demonstrating her compact figure’s expensive femininity.
Yet for once, Anja wasn’t impressing the person she was talking to. Oscar watched the other woman leaning on the rail. Easily half-a-head shorter than Anja, wearing a modern white dress with a slight surface shimmer, and a rust-red short-sleeved jacket. Stylish without Anja’s feminine overload. She wasn’t responding with the kind of attention Anja was used to extracting from everyone she came across. He could tell. After ten years, Anja’s body language, the tone of her voice were an open book.
And the more she failed to impress, the more huffy she got. He even allowed some of his amusement to trickle out into the gaiafield.
Anja must have sensed it. Her full lips hardened into a rebuke as Oscar walked towards the balcony. “Oscar, darling, I’ve been talking to an old friend of yours.”
The other person on the balcony turned round. Smiled shrewdly.
Oscar dropped the tumbler as his hands along with every other part of his body were shocked into loss of sensation. The crystal smashed, sending the ice cubes bouncing across the polished wood.
“Hello, Oscar,” Paula Myo said.
“Holy shit!”
“Long time no see.”
Oscar couldn’t even grunt.
Alarm was starting to seep into the gaiafield as his life partners took in the tableau.
“You two…” Jesaral said, his finger rising to point accusingly at Paula. ”I thought—”
“It’s all right,” Oscar managed to croak.
“What is this?” Jesaral said accusingly to Paula. “You said you were friends.”
“We used to be. A long time ago.”
“That old excuse. Again! Everything happened before I was born.”
“Everything did,” Oscar said. His u-shadow summoned a maidbot to clean up the broken tumbler. Only then did he finally manage a weak smile. “How are you doing, Paula?”
“Same as usual.”
“Yeah.” She hadn’t changed. Not physically. Nothing was different, except maybe her straight dark hair was a couple of centimetres longer. Unlike him, who’d been given a great new Advancer body, based on his own DNA then enriched with all the macrocellular clusters, and stronger bones, more efficient organs, and greater longevity. After eighty-six years, he still wasn’t anywhere near needing rejuvenation, although his face was now starting to show signs of his newly lived years—as Anja never tired of pointing out. But her… He guessed she must be Higher now. Somehow he couldn’t see her visiting clinics for vanity’s sake.
“You do know each other, then?” Dushiku asked uncertainly.
“Yes.” Oscar cleared his throat. “Could you give us a moment, please?”
His life partners exchanged troubled glances, flooding the gaiafield with concern and considerable irritation. “We’ll be outside,” Anja said, patting his arm as she went past. “Just yell.”
The maidbot waddled into the lounge and started sucking up the malt. Oscar backed up to a settee and sat down hard. The numbness was dissipating, replaced by a growing anger. He glared at Paula. “One thousand one hundred years. Thanks for that.”
“I recovered your memorycell.”
“You put it on trial!”
“You’re as alive now as the day you flew the hyperglider. That’s more than can be said for your victims at Abadan.”
“Jesus fucking wept! Will you stop persecuting me.”
“I can’t make you feel guilty. You do that to yourself.”
“Yeah yeah.” He sank deeper into the cushioning. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You live well.” She turned her head, studying the lounge. “Anja was quite proud of the house. I can see why.”
“My CST R&R pension fund was paid over into a trust the day the trial ended, courtesy of Wilson. You want to know what one thousand one hundred years’ interest looks like? You’re standing in it. Bloody inflation! I should have been able to buy a planet!”
“And your life partners; they’re good people. Jesaral is rather young, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Oscar growled at her. “He’s also got a very big cock.”
Paula smiled. “Did you ever get in touch with Wilson when you were re-lifed?”
“He left a message. So did Anna. They both downloaded into ANA long ago. Which frankly I don’t admire. Look, this is bullshit; what the fuck do you want?”
“I need you do a job for me.”
Oscar wouldn’t have believed it possible. He was in the same room as Paula Myo, and laughing at her. “Oh boy, did you ever lose it over the centuries. You want me to do a job for you?. You’ve got to be fucking joking.”
Paula’s answering smile veered towards immoral. “Exactly.”
Oscar’s humour vanished abruptly, leaving him with a very queasy sensation heating his stomach. “Oh shit: you’re not joking.”
/> “Of course not. It’s a perfect arrangement. Who would ever suspect such a thing?”
“No. No chance. Go and blackmail someone else. I’d rather go back into suspension.”
“Come on, Oscar, you’re not Jesaral so stop acting like him. I’m not here to threaten, I’m here to ask because I know you and I know what you want.”
“You do not know me, lady!”
Paula leaned in towards him, her eyes shining. “Oh yes I do, Oscar. We spent the last few days of your life together. I nearly died, and you did. Don’t tell me we don’t understand each other. You martyred yourself so that the human race could survive. You are an honourable man, Oscar. Screwed up by guilt, but honourable.”
Oscar was doing his best not to be intimidated by her. “That was a mad situation. It won’t ever happen again.”
“Oh really? Who do you think I work for these days?”
“I’ll take a wild guess and say ANA. You never change.”
“You’re right about ANA, but wrong about change. I am different.”
“Yeah, it looks it. The same job for thirteen hundred years. I barely recognized you. Paula, you can’t change, that is you.”
“Far Away altered me. It nearly killed me, but I understood I had to adapt. So I resequenced my DNA to edit out the compulsive behaviour trait.”
“It shows.”
“Self-determination can overcome artificial nature.”
“I’m sure the old nature versus nurture philosophers will be delighted to hear it. Why don’t you call them and let them know? Oh, yes, right. They’re all dead for two thousand years.”
“You’re trying to avoid answering me. Trying to justify your fright to yourself.”
“Wrong, lady. Utterly totally, wrong. The answer is no. No I will not help you. Would you like that clarifying? No.”