Equipment bay panels had been removed all around the fuselage, revealing ranks of spherical fuel tanks, as well as the shiny intestinal tangle of actuators, life-support machinery, and avionics systems. Shannon Kershaw and Susan Nyberg were floating over one open equipment bay, both wearing navy-blue one-piece jump suits, smeared with grime. Nyberg was waving a hand-held scanner over some piping, while Shannon consulted her PNC wafer.
I grabbed one of the metal hand hoops sprouting from the Dornier’s fuselage, anchoring myself a couple of metres from them. How’s it going?
Tough work, boss, Shannon replied. She glanced up and gave me a quick impersonal smile. It’s going to take us days to recover all the gold if you don’t appoint someone to assist us. We’re not really qualified to strip down astronautics equipment.
You’re the closest specialist I’ve got to a spacecraft technician, I can hardly give this job to a regular maintenance crew. And you should think yourself lucky I gave you this assignment. I was in the cyberfactory cavern yesterday evening when the recovery team finished flushing the enzyme goop out of the inspection tunnels. It took Zernov’s biotechnology people eight hours to restore the organ and its ancillary glands to full operability. Then we had to wait another hour while the tunnel atmosphere was purged.
Did you get the body? Nyberg asked.
Most of it. The bones had survived, along with the bulk of the torso viscera. We also found the pistol, and some of the buttons from his tunic. Those enzymes were bloody potent; the organ employs them to break down bauxite, for Christ’s sake. We were lucky to find as much of him as we did.
Shannon screwed up her face in disgust. ‘Yuck!’ I think you’re right, we’ll just carry on here.
Excellent. How much gold have you collected so far?
Nyberg pointed to a big spherical orange net floating on the end of a tether. It was stuffed full of parts from the Dornier capsule – coils of wire, circuit boards, sheets of foil. About a hundred and fifty kilos so far. He substituted it everywhere he could. In the circuitry, in thermal insulation blankets, in conduit casing. We think the radiator panel surfaces might be pure platinum.
I shifted my gaze to the mirror-polished triangular fins jutting from the rear of the Dornier’s fuselage. The billion-wattdollar spacecraft. Christ.
I don’t understand how he ever hoped to get it all back to Earth, Nyberg said.
He probably planned to assign the Dornier to one of the tanker spaceships on a run back to the O’Neill, Shannon said. Plausible enough. Nobody seemed to query this capsule being withdrawn for maintenance so often. I checked its official UN Civil Spaceflight Authority log; the requests to bring it into the drydock hangars all originate from the Cybernetics Division. We all regard computers as infallible these days, especially on something as simple as routine maintenance upgrades. Which is what these were listed as. She held up an S-shaped section of piping, wrapped in the ubiquitous golden thermal foil.
What’s the total, do you think? I asked.
Not sure. Now Steinbauer has wiped the Cybernetics Division computer, all we have left to go on is that bogus log Maowkavitz downloaded earlier. I’d guesstimate maybe seven hundred kilos altogether. You’d think the Dornier’s crew would notice that much extra mass. It must have played hell with their manoeuvring.
Yeah. I took the piping from her, and scratched the foil with my thumbnail. It was only about a millimetre thick, but it still had that unmistakable heavy softness of precious metal.
Shannon was burying herself in the equipment bay again. I hauled in the orange net, and shoved the piping inside.
Harvey, Corrine called.
The subdued mental timbre forewarned me. Yes?
It’s Wing-Tsit Chong.
Oh crap. Not him as well?
I’m afraid so. Quarter of an hour ago; it was all very peaceful. But the effort of countering Steinbauer’s distortion was just too much. And he wouldn’t let me help. I could have given him a new heart, but all he’d allow was a mild sedative.
I could feel the pressure of damp heat building around her eyes. I’m sorry.
Bloody geneticists. They’ve all got some kind of death wish.
Are you OK?
Yeah. Doctors, we see it all the time.
You want me to come around?
Not now, Harvey, maybe later. A drink this evening?
That’s a date.
*
The road out to the pagoda was becoming uncomfortably familiar. I found Hoi Yin sitting in one of the lakeside veranda’s wicker chairs, hugging her legs with her knees tucked under her chin. She was crying quite openly.
Second time in a week, she said as I came up the wooden steps. People will think I’m cracking up.
I kissed her brow, then knelt down on the floor beside her, putting our heads level. Her hand fumbled for mine.
I’m so sorry, I said. I know how much he meant to you.
She nodded miserably. Steinbauer killed both of Eden’s parents, didn’t he?
Yes. I suppose he did, ultimately.
His death . . . it was awful.
Quick, though, if not particularly clean.
People can be so cruel, so thoughtless. It was his greed which did this. I sometimes think greed rules the whole world. Maowkavitz created me for money. Steinbauer killed for money. Boston intends to fight Earth over self-determination, which is just another way of saying ownership. Father Cooke resents affinity because it’s taking worshippers from him – even that is a form of greed.
You’re just picking out the big issues, I said. The top one per cent of human activity. We don’t all behave like that.
Don’t you, Harvey?
No.
What are you going to do about the stockpile? Give it to the board, or let Boston keep it?
I don’t know. It’s still classified at the moment, I haven’t even told the Governor. I suppose it depends on what Boston does next, and when. After all, possession is nine-tenths of the law.
My dear Harvey. Her fingers stroked my face. Torn so many ways. You never deserved any of this.
You never told me; do you support Boston?
No, Harvey. Like my spirit father, I regard it as totally irrelevant. In that at least I am true to him. She leant forwards in the chair, and put both arms around me. Oh, Harvey; I miss him so.
Yes, I know I shouldn’t have. I never intended to. I went out to the pagoda purely because I knew how much she would be hurting, and how few people she could turn to for comfort.
So I told myself.
Her bedroom was Spartan in its simplicity, with plain wooden floorboards, a few amateur watercolours hanging on the walls. The bed itself only just large enough to hold the two of us.
Our lovemaking was different to the wild exuberance we had shown out in the meadow. It was more intense, slower, clutching. I think we both knew it would be the last time.
We lay together for a long time afterwards, content just to touch, drowsy thoughts merging and mingling to create a mild euphoria.
There is something I have to say to you, Hoi Yin said eventually. It is difficult for me, because although you have a right to know, I do not know if you will be angry.
I won’t be angry, not with you.
I will understand if you are.
I won’t be. What is it?
I am pregnant. The child is ours.
‘What!’ I sat up in reflex, and stared down at her. ‘How the hell can you possibly know?’
I went for a scan at the hospital yesterday. They confirmed the zygote is viable.
‘Fuck.’ I flopped back down and stared at the thick ceiling beams. I have a gift, the ability to totally screw up my life beyond either belief or salvation. It’s just so natural, I do it without any effort at all.
After twelve years of celibacy, contraception was not something I concerned myself over any more, Hoi Yin said. It was remiss of me. But what happened that morning was so sudden, and so right . . .
Yes, OK, fine. We were c
onsenting adults, we’re equally responsible. She was watching me closely, those big liquid gold eyes full up with apprehension. My lips were curving up into a grin, like they were being pulled by a tidal force or something. You’re really pregnant?
Yes. I wanted to be sure as soon as possible, because the earlier the affinity gene is spliced into the embryo, the easier it is.
‘Ah.’ Yes, of course.
I feel there is a rightness to this, Harvey. A new life born as one dies. And a new life raised in a wholly new culture, one where my spirit-father’s ideals will hold true for all eternity. I could never have borne a child into the kind of world I was born into. This child, our child, will be completely free from the pain of the past and the frailty of the flesh; one of the first ever to be so.
Hoi Yin, I’m not sure I can tell Jocelyn today. There’s a lot we have to sort out first.
She looked at me with a genuine surprise. Harvey! You must never leave your wife. You love her too much.
I . . . Guilty relief was sending shivers all down my skin. Christ, but I can be a worthless bastard at times.
You do, Hoi Yin said implacably. I have seen it in your heart. Go to her, be with her. I never ever intended to lay claim to you. There is no need for that simplicity and selfishness any more. Eden will be a father, if a father figure is needed. And perhaps I will take a lover, maybe even a husband. I would like some more children. This will be a wonderful place for children.
Yeah, so my kids tell me.
This is farewell, you know that, don’t you, Harvey?
I know that.
Good. She rolled round on top of me, hunger in her eyes. Hoi Yin in that kind of kittenish mood was an enrichment of the soul. Then we had better make it memorable.
*
My seventh day in Eden was profoundly different from any which had gone before, in the habitat or anywhere else. On the seventh day I was woken up by the human race’s newest messiah.
Good morning, Harvey, said Wing-Tsit Chong.
I wailed loudly, kicked against the duvet, and nearly fell out of bed. ‘You’re dead!’
Jocelyn looked at me as if I had gone insane. Perhaps she was right.
A distant mirage of a smile. No, Harvey, I am not dead. I told you once that thoughts are sacred, the essence of man; it is our tragedy that their vessel should be flesh, for flesh is so weak. The flesh fails us, Harvey, for once the wisdom that comes only with age is granted to us, it can no longer be used. All we have learnt so painfully is lost to us for ever. Death haunts us, Harvey, it condemns us to a life of fear and hesitancy. It shackles the soul. It is this curse of ephemerality which I have sought to liberate us from. And with Eden, I have succeeded. Eden has become the new vessel for my thoughts. As I died I transferred my memories, my hope, my dreams, into the neural strata.
‘Oh my God.’
No, Harvey. The time of gods and pagan worship is over. We are the immortals now. We do not need the crutch of faith in deities, and the wish fulfilment of preordained destiny, not any more. Our lives are our own, for the very first time. When your body dies, you too can join me. Eden will live for tens of thousands of years, it is constantly regenerating its cellular structure, it does not decay like terrestrial beasts. And we will live on as part of it.
‘Me?’ I whispered, incredulous.
Yes, Harvey, you. The twins Nicolette and Nathaniel. Hoi Yin. Your unborn child. Shannon Kershaw. Antony Harwood. All of you with the neuron symbionts, and all who possess the affinity gene; you will all be able to transfer your memories over to the neural strata. This habitat alone has room for millions of people. I am holding this same conversation simultaneously with all the affinity-capable. Like all the thought routines, my personality is both separate and integral; I retain my identity, yet my consciousness is multiplied a thousandfold. I can continue to mature, to seek the Nibbana which is my goal. And I welcome you to this, Harvey. This is my dana to all people, whatever their nature. I make no exception, pass no judgement. All who wish to join me may do so. It is my failing that I hope eventually all people will come to seek enlightenment and spiritual purity in the same fashion as I. But it is my knowledge that some, if not most, will not; for it is the wonder of our species that we differ so much, and by doing so never become stale.
You expect me to join you?
I offer you the opportunity, nothing more. Death is for ever, Harvey, unless you truly believe in reincarnation. You are a practical man, look upon Eden as insurance. Just in case death is final, what have you got to lose? And if, afterwards, you reconfirm your Christian beliefs, you can always die again, only with considerably less pain and mess. Think about it, Harvey, you have around forty years left to decide.
Think about it? The biological imperative is to survive. We do that through reproduction, the only way we know how. Until now.
I knew there and then that Wing-Tsit Chong had won. His salvation was corporeal, what can compete against that? From now on every child living in Eden, or any of the other habitats, would grow up knowing death wasn’t the end. My child among them. What kind of culture would that produce: monstrous arrogance, or total recklessness? Would murder even be considered a crime any more?
Did I want to find out? More, did I want to be a part of it?
Forty years to make up my mind. Christ, but that was an insidious thought. Just knowing the option was there waiting, that it would always be there; right at the end when you’re on your deathbed wheezing down that last breath, one simple thought of acquiescence and you have eternity to debate whether or not you should have done it. How can you not contemplate spirituality, your place and role in the cosmos, with that hanging over you for your entire life? Questions which can never be answered without profound thought and contemplation, say about four or five centuries’ worth. And it just so happens . . .
Whatever individuals decided, Wing-Tsit Chong had already changed us. We were being forcibly turned from the materialistic viewpoint. No bad thing. Except it couldn’t be for everybody, not the billions living on Earth, not right away. They couldn’t change, they could only envy, and die.
An enormous privilege had been thrust upon me. To use it must surely be sinful when so many couldn’t. But then what would wasting it achieve? If they could do it, they would.
Forty years to decide.
*
The events of the tenth day were virtually an anticlimax. I think the whole habitat was still reeling from Wing-Tsit Chong’s continuation (as people were calling it). I couldn’t find anyone who would admit to refusing the offer of immortality. There were two terminal patients in the hospital, both of them were now eager for death. They were going to make the jump into the neural strata, they said; they had even begun transferring their memories over in anticipation. It was going to be the end of physical pain, of their suffering and that of their families.
Corrine was immersed in an agony of indecision. Both patients had asked for a fatal injection to speed them on their way. Was it euthanasia? Was it helping them to transcend? Was it even ethical for her to decide? They both quite clearly knew what they wanted.
The psyche of the population was perceptibly altering, adapting. People were becoming nonchalant and self-possessed, half of them walked round with a permanent goofy smile on their face as if they had been struck by an old-fashioned biblical revelation, instead of this lashed-up technobuddhist option from life. But I have to admit, there was a tremendous feeling of optimism running throughout the habitat. They were different, they were special. They were the future. They were immortal.
Nobody bothered going to Father Cooke’s church any more. I knew that for a fact, because I accompanied Jocelyn to his services. We were the only two there.
Seeing the way things were swinging, Boston’s council chose to announce their intentions. As Eden was ipso facto already diverging from Earth both culturally and by retaining the use of advanced biotechnology, then the habitat should naturally evolve its own government. The kind of true consen
sual democracy which only affinity could provide. Fasholé Nocord didn’t get a chance to object. Boston had judged the timing perfectly. It was a government which literally sprang into being overnight. The people decided what they wanted, and Eden implemented it; a communal consensus in which everybody had an equal say, everyone had an equal vote, and there was no need for an executive any more. Under our aegis the habitat personality replaced the entire UN administration staff; it executed their jobs in half the time and with ten times the efficiency. The neural strata had processing capacity in abundance to perform all the mundane civic and legal regulatory duties which were the principal function of any government. It didn’t need paying, it was completely impartial, and it could never be bribed.
An incorruptible non-bureaucratic civil service. Yes, we really were boldly different.
Boston’s hierarchy also announced they were going to launch a buyout bid for all the JSKP shares. That was where the ideological purity broke down a little, because that aspect of the liberation was handed over to the teams of Earthside corporate lawyers Penny Maowkavitz and her cohorts had been grooming for the court battle. But confidence was still high; the cloudscoop-lowering mission was progressing smoothly; and I had formally announced the existence of the precious metal stockpile, which our consensus declared to be the national treasury.
*
On the twelfth day, the old religion struck back.
I was out on the patio at the time, swilling down some of the sweet white wine produced by Eden’s youthful vineyard. I’d acquired quite a taste for it.
And I still hadn’t decided what to do about my family. Not that it was really a decision as such, not handing down the final verdict for everyone to obey. The twins were going to stay in Eden. Jocelyn wanted to leave, now more than ever; the non-affinity-capable had no place at all in Eden. It was a question of who to support, whether to try and browbeat Jocelyn over affinity.