The Reality Dysfunction

  The image and voice faded from the news studios, along with the aromatic scent of blossom. But not the shy half-smile, that lingered for a long time.

  Christ: young, pretty, rich, and smart. How about that!

  By the end of the day, Tranquillity had received eighty-four thousand invitations for Ione. She was wanted at parties and dinners, she was asked to give speeches and present prizes, her name was wanted on the board of interstellar companies, designers offered their entire portfolio for her to wear, charities begged her to become their patron. Old friends treated her as though she was a reincarnated messiah. Everyone wanted to be her new friend. And Joshua—Joshua got very grumpy when she spent the first evening reviewing Tranquillity’s summaries of the incredible public reaction rather than spending it in bed with him.

  He was also none too happy that Lady Macbeth’s refit was still a fortnight short of completion. Over the next twenty hours, seventy-five charter flights were organized to carry recordings of Ione around the Confederation. The news company offices were engaged in a ferocious ratings war; they were desperate to break the scoop on as many worlds as possible, as soon as possible. Starship captains cursed their earlier binding contracts to deliver mundane cargoes, and some even broke them.

  Those that didn’t have immediate contracts named wholly unreasonable prices to the news companies, which were paid without question.

  Right across the Confederation, the sensation-hungry devoured Ione, rekindling an avid interest in the black sheep branch of the Saldana family; and even briefly pushing the old Laymil enigma into the limelight again.

  Merchants became extremely wealthy on Ione fashions and Ione accessories.

  Bluesense directors remodelled their female meat to look and feel like her. Mood Fantasy bands composed tracks about her. Even Jezzibella announced she looked cute, and said she’d like to fuck her one day.

  The news agencies on Kulu and its Principality worlds treated her appearance as a minor footnote. The royal family didn’t believe in censoring the press, but the court certainly didn’t see her appearance as anything to celebrate. Black-market sensevise recordings of her sold for an absolute fortune right across the Kingdom.

  It was one of the abandoned cargo contracts which brought Joshua his first charter two days later.

  Roland Frampton was a merchant friend of Barrington Grier, which was how he heard of the Lady Macbeth and how she would be ready to depart in fourteen days.

  “When I get my hands on that bastard Captain McDonald I’ll have him broken up for transplant meat,” Roland said angrily. “The Corum Sister won’t get another cargo contract this side of Jupiter, that I do promise.” Joshua sipped his mineral water and nodded sympathetically.

  Harkey’s Bar didn’t have the same appeal by day, although the term was ambiguous in a starscraper. But people’s biorhythms were in tune with the habitat light-tube; his body knew this was midmorning.

  “I paid good rates, you know, not like I was ripping him off. It was a regular run. Now this bloody girl comes along, and everyone goes berserk.”

  “Hey, I’m glad we’ve got a Saldana back running things,” Barrington Grier protested. “If she’s half as good as the last two Lords, this place is going to be swinging.”

  “Yeah, well, I haven’t got no quarrel with her,” Roland Frampton said hurriedly. “But the way people react.” He shook his head in bemusement.

  “Did you hear what the news companies were offering captains for the Avon run?”

  “Yeah. Meyer and the Udat got the Time Universe charter to Avon,” Joshua said with a grin.

  “The point is, Joshua, I’m up shit creek,” Roland Frampton said. “I’ve got my clients screaming for those nanonic medical supplements. There are a lot of wealthy old people in Tranquillity, the medical industry here is big business.”

  “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”

  “Cards on the table, Joshua, I’ll pay you three hundred and fifty thousand fuseodollars for the flight, with an extra seventy thousand bonus if you can get them back here in five weeks from today. After that, I can offer you a regular contract, a flight to Rosenheim every six months. Not to be sneered at, Joshua.”

  Joshua glanced at Melvyn Ducharme, who was stirring his coffee idly. He had come to rely a lot on his fusion engineer during Lady Mac’s refit; he was forty-eight, with over twenty years’ solid starflight experience behind him. The dark-skinned little man gave a small nod.

  “OK,” Joshua said. “But you know the score, Roland, the Lady Mac doesn’t leave that bay until I’m happy she’s integrated properly. I’m not rushing it and botching it just for the sake of a seventy-thousand-dollar bonus.”

  Roland Frampton gave him an unhappy look. “Sure, Joshua, I appreciate that.”

  They shook on it and started to work out details.

  Kelly Tirrel arrived twenty minutes later, dropped her bag on the carpet, and sat down with an exaggerated sigh. She called a waitress over and ordered a coffee, then gave Joshua a perfunctory kiss.

  “Have you got your contract?” she asked.

  “We’re working on it.” He gave the bar a quick scan. Helen Vanham wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  “Good for you. God what a day! My editor’s been having kittens.”

  “Ione caught you all on the hop, did she?” Barrington Grier asked.

  “And then some,” Kelly admitted. “I’ve been researching for the last fifteen hours without a break, going through the Saldana family history. We’re putting together an hour-long documentary for tonight. Those royals are one bunch of weird people.”

  “Are you going to present it?” Joshua asked.

  “No chance. Kirstie McShane got it. Bitch. She’s sleeping with the current affairs editor, you know, that’s why. I’ll probably wind up as fashion correspondent or something. If only we’d had some advance warning, I could have prepared, found an angle.”

  “Ione wasn’t sure about the timing herself,” he said. “She’s only been thinking about public appearances for the last fortnight.”

  There was a murderous silence as Kelly’s head slowly turned to focus on Joshua. “What?”

  “Er ...” He felt as though he’d suddenly been dumped into free fall.

  “You know her? You’ve known who she is?”

  “Well, sort of, in a way, I suppose, yes. She did mention it.”

  Kelly stood up fast, the motion nearly toppling her chair. “Mention it! You SHIT, Joshua Calvert! Ione Saldana is the biggest story to hit the whole Confederation for three years, and you KNEW about it, and you didn’t tell me! You selfish, egotistical, mean-minded, xenoc-buggering bastard! I was sleeping with you, I cared ...” She clamped her mouth shut and snatched her bag up. “Didn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Of course. It was ...” He accessed his neural nanonics’ thesaurus file. “Stupendous?”

  “Bastard!” She took two paces towards the door then turned round. “And you’re shit-useless in bed, too,” she shouted.

  Everyone in Harkey’s Bar was staring at him. He could see a lot of grins forming. He closed his eyes for a moment and let out a resigned sigh.

  “Women.” He swivelled round in his chair to face Roland Frampton. “About the insurance rates ...”

  The cavern wasn’t like anything Joshua had seen in Tranquillity before.

  It was roughly hemispherical, about twenty metres across, with the usual level white polyp floor. But the walls’ regularity was broken up by organic protuberances, great cauliflower growths that quivered occasionally as he watched; there were also the tight doughnuts of sphincter muscles. Equipment cabinets, with a medical look, were fused into the polyp; as though they were being extruded, or osmotically absorbed. He couldn’t tell which.

  The whole place was so biological. It made him want to squirm.

  “What is it?” he asked Ione.

  “A clone womb centre.” She pointed to one of the sphincters. “We gestate the servitor housechimps in these
ones. All of the habitat’s servitors are sexless, you see, they don’t mate. So Tranquillity has to grow them.

  We’ve got several varieties of chimps, and the serjeants, of course, then there are some specialist constructs for things like tract repair and light-tube maintenance. There are forty-three separate species in all.”

  “Ah. Good.”

  “The wombs are plumbed directly into the nutrient ducts, there’s very little hardware needed.”

  “Right.”

  “I was gestated in here.”

  Joshua’s nose wrinkled up. He didn’t like to think about it.

  Ione walked over to a waist-high, steel-grey equipment stack standing on the floor. Green and amber LEDs winked at her. There was a cylindrical zero-tau pod recessed into the top, twenty centimetres long, ten wide; its surface resembled a badly tarnished mirror. She used her affinity to load an order into the stack’s bitek processors, and the pod hinged open.

  Joshua watched silently as she placed the little sustentator globe inside. His son. Part of him wanted to put a stop to this right now, to have the child born properly, to know him, watch him grow up.

  “It is customary to name the child now,” Ione said. “If you want to.”

  “Marcus.” His father’s name. He didn’t even have to think about that.

  Her sapphire eyes were damp, reflecting the soft pearl light from the electrophorescent strips in the ceiling. “Of course. Marcus Saldana it is, then.”

  Joshua’s mouth opened to protest. “Thank you,” he said meekly.

  The pod closed and the surface turned black. It didn’t look solid, more like a fissure which had opened into space.

  He stared at it for a long time. You just can’t say no to Ione.

  She slipped her arm through his and steered him out of the clone womb centre into the corridor outside. “How’s the Lady Macbeth coming along?”

  “Not so bad. The Confederation Astronautics Board inspectors have cleared our systems integration. We’re starting to reassemble the hull now, it should be finished in another three days. One final inspection for the spaceworthiness certificate, and we’re away. I’ve got a contract with Roland Frampton to collect some cargo from Rosenheim.”

  “That’s good news. So I’ve got you to myself for another four nights.”

  He pulled her a bit closer. “Yeah, if you can fit me in between engagements.”

  “Oh, I think I might manage to grant you a couple of hours. I’ve got a charity dinner tonight, but I’ll be finished before eleven. Promise.”

  “Great. You’ve done beautifully, Ione, really, you just blew them away. They love you out there.”

  “And nobody’s packed up and left yet, none of the major companies, nor the plutocrats. That’s my real success.”

  “It was that speech you made. Jesus, if there were elections tomorrow you’d be president.”

  They reached the tube carriage waiting in the little station. Two serjeants stood aside as the door opened.

  Joshua looked at them, then looked into the ten-seater carriage. “Can they wait out here?” he asked innocently.

  “Why?”

  He leered.

  She clung to him tightly afterwards, trembling slightly, their bodies hot and sweaty. He was sitting right on the edge of one of the seats, with her as the clinging vine, legs bent up behind his back. The carriage’s air-conditioning fans made a loud whirring sound as they recycled the unusually humid air.

  “Joshua?”

  “Uh huh.” He kissed her neck, hands stroking her buttocks.

  “I can’t protect you once you leave.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t try to beat anything your father did.”

  His nose nuzzled the base of her chin. “I won’t. I’m no death wisher.”

  “Joshua?”

  “What?”

  She pulled her head back and looked straight into his eyes, trying to make him believe. “Trust your instincts.”

  “Hey, I do.”

  “Please, Joshua. Not just about objects, people too. Be careful of people.”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  He rose up, with Ione still wrapped round his torso. She could feel him getting hard again.

  “See those hand hoops?” he asked.

  She glanced up. “Yes.”

  “Catch hold, and don’t let go.”

  She reached up with both hands and gripped a pair of the steel loops on the ceiling. Joshua let go of her, and she yelped. Her toes didn’t quite reach the floor. He stood in front of her, grinning, and gave her a small shove, starting her swinging.

  “Joshua!” Ione forked her legs at the top of the arc.

  He moved forward, laughing.

  Erick Thakrar floated into bay MB 0-330’s control centre towing his bag.

  He stopped himself with an expert nudge against a grab loop. There was an unusually large number of people grouped round the observation bubble. He recognized all of them, engineers who had worked on the Lady Macbeth’s refit. All of them had been working long shifts together for the last couple of weeks.

  Erick didn’t mind the work, it meant he had won his place on the Lady Macbeth’s crew. A stiff back and perpetual tiredness was a price worth paying for that. And in another two hours he would be on his way.

  The buzz of voices faded away as people became aware of him. A vacant slot around the observation bubble materialized. He steadied himself and looked out.

  The cradle had telescoped up out of the bay, taking the Lady Macbeth with it. As he watched, the starship’s thermo-dump panels unfolded from their recesses in the lustreless grey hull. Cradle umbilical couplings withdrew from the rear quarter.

  “You are cleared for disconnection,” the bay supervisor datavised. “Bon voyage, Joshua. Take care.”

  Orange candle-flames ignited around the Lady Macbeth’s equator, and the chemical verniers lifted her clear of the cradle with a dexterity only a master pilot could ever achieve.

  The engineering team whooped and cheered.

  “Erick?”

  He looked round at the supervisor.

  “Joshua says to say sorry, but the Lord of Ruin thinks you’re an arsehole.”

  Erick turned back to the empty bay. The cradle was sinking slowly back towards the floor. Blue light washed down as the Lady Macbeth’s ion thrusters took over from the verniers.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered numbly.

  There were four separate life-support capsules in the Lady Macbeth, twelve-metre spheres grouped together in a pyramid shape at the very heart of the ship. With the expense of fitting them out coming to a minute fraction of the starship’s overall cost, they were well appointed.

  Capsules B, C, and D, the lower spheres, were split into four decks apiece, with the two middle levels following a basic layout of cabins, a lounge, galley, and bathroom. The other decks were variously storage compartments, maintenance shops, equipment bays, and airlock chambers for the spaceplane and MSV hangars.

  Capsule A housed the bridge, taking up half of the upper middle deck, with consoles and acceleration couches for all six crew-members. Because neural nanonics could interface with the flight computer from anywhere in the ship, it was more of a management office than the traditional command centre, with console screens and AV projectors providing specialist systems displays to back up datavised information.

  Lady Macbeth was licensed to carry up to thirty active passengers, or if the cabin bunks were removed and zero-tau pods installed, eighty people travelling in stasis. With only Joshua and five crew on board, there was a luxurious amount of space available. Joshua’s cabin was the largest, taking up a quarter of the bridge deck. He refused to change it from the layout Marcus Calvert had chosen. The chairs were from some luxury passenger ship decommissioned over half a century ago, hinged black-foam sculptures which looked like giant seashells in their folded positions. A bookcase held acc
eleration-reinforced leather-bound volumes of ancient star charts. An Apollo command module guidance computer (of dubious provenance) was displayed in a transparent bubble. But the major feature, from his point of view, was the free-fall-sex cage, a mesh globe of rubberized struts which deployed from the ceiling. You could bounce around happily inside that without any danger of crashing into inconvenient (and sharp) pieces of furniture or decking. He intended to get into full practice with Sarha Mitcham, the twenty-four-year-old general systems engineer who had taken Erick Thakrar’s place.

  Everyone was strapped in their bridge couch when Joshua lifted the Lady Macbeth off bay 0–330’s cradle. He did it with instinctive ease, he did it like a chrysalis opening its wings to the sun, he did it knowing this was what his spiralling DNA had been reconfigured to do.

  Flight vectors from the spaceport traffic control centre insinuated their way into his mind, and ion thrusters rolled the ship lazily. He took them out over the edge of the giant disk of girders using the secondary reaction drive, then powered up the three primary fusion drives. The gee-force built rapidly, and they headed up out of Mirchusko’s gravity well towards the green crescent of Falsia, seven hundred thousand kilometres away.

  The shakedown flight lasted for fifteen hours. Test programs ran systems checks; the fusion drives were pushed up to producing a brief period of seven-gee thrust, and their plasma was scanned for instabilities; life-support capacity was tested in each capsule. The guidance systems, the sensors, fuel tank slosh baffles, thermal insulation, power circuits, generators ... the million components that went into making up the starship structure.

  Joshua inserted Lady Mac into orbit two hundred kilometres above the craterous lifeless moon while they took a rest for ninety minutes. After a final, formal report confirming overall performance efficiency matched the Confederation Astronautics Board’s requirements, he powered up the fusion drives again, and accelerated back in towards the hazy ochre gas giant.