So there she was, in the flesh and still in good shape, just lacking a mind. With the monitor program confirming her visual review, she poured her consciousness back into her brain. The memory reduction was phenomenal, as was the loss of all the advanced thought routines that comprised her true personality these days. Her old biological neuron structure simply did not have the capacity to hold what she had become in ANA. It was like being lobotomized, actually feeling one’s mind wither away to some primitive insect faculty. But only temporary, she told herself—so sluggishly.
Justine drew her first breath in two hundred years, her chest jerking down air as if she were waking from a nightmare. Her heart started racing. For a moment she did nothing—not actually remembering what to do—then the reliable old automatic reflexes kicked in. She drew another breath, getting a grip on her panic, overriding the old Neanderthal instincts with pure rationality. Another regular breath. Exoimages flickered into her peripheral vision, bringing up rows of default symbols from her enrichments. She opened her eyes. Long ranks of violet bubbles stretched out in all directions around her like a bizarre artwork sculpture. Somehow her meat-based mind was convinced she could see the shapes of people inside. That was preposterous. Inside ANA she’d obviously allowed herself to discard the memory of how fallible and hormone-susceptible a human brain was.
A slow smile revealed perfect white teeth. At least I’ll get to have some real sex before I download again.
Justine teleported out of the New York reception facility right into the center of the Tulip Mansion. Stabilizer fields had maintained the ancient Burnelli family home through the centuries, keeping the building’s fabric in pristine condition. She gave a happy grin when she saw it again with her own eyes. If she was honest with herself, it was a bit of a monstrosity, a mansion laid out in four “petals” whose scarlet-and-black roofs curved up to a central tower stamen that had an apex anther made from a crown of carved stone coated in gold foil. It was as gaudy as it was striking, falling in and out of fashion over the decades. Justine’s father, Gore Burnelli, had bought the estate in Rye County just outside New York, establishing it as a base for the family’s vast commercial and financial activities in the middle of the twenty-first century. It had remained a center for them while the Commonwealth was established and had expanded outward until its social and economic uniformity was shattered by biononics, ANA, and the separation of Higher and Advancer cultures. The family still had a prodigious business empire spread across the External worlds, but it was managed in a corporate structure by thousands of Burnellis, none of whom was over three hundred years old. Gore and the original clique of close relatives, including Justine, who used to orchestrate it all had long since downloaded into ANA, though Gore had never formally and legally handed over ownership to his impatient descendants. It was, he assured them, purely a quirk for their own benefit, ensuring that the whole enterprise could never be broken up, thus giving the family a cohesion that so many others lacked. Except Justine knew damn well that even in his enlightened, expanded, semiomnipotent state within ANA, Gore was not about to hand anything over he had spent centuries building up. Quirk, my ass.
She had 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 that opened onto a veranda dripping with white wisteria. Outside, a bright low February sun shone across the extensive wooded grounds with their massive swaths of rhododendrons. There had been some fabulous parties held in there, she recalled, with 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 into the broad corridor. Justine walked through, taking in all the semifamiliar sights, welcoming the warm rush of recognition. Alcoves were filled with furniture that had been antique even before Ozzie and Nigel had built their first wormhole generator; as for the artwork, one could buy a small continent on an External world with just one of the paintings.
She padded up the staircase that curved 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 his or her 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 items of clothing 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 did not show much contrition. He simply watched with interest as she sat on the bed and laced up her boots. He had chosen the representation of his twenty-fourth-century self, which was undoubtedly the image by which he was most known: 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 had it done had been nothing more than merged organic circuitry tattoos, was all the more disconcerting thanks to the perfectly ordinary gray 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 was not improved by the way her fingers seemed to lack dexterity. She was having trouble tying the bootlaces.
“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.”
“Hmm.” She gave him a suspicious look. Even in a body, she knew the rumors that ANA gave a 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 had been 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 reorder her secondary thought routines. Her body’s macrocellular clusters and biononics were centuries out of date but perfectly adequate for the simple tasks this day would require. She called 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 had been 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 center on the big Bur
nelli 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 holing up in that old receptacle, then,” Gore said. “When are you going to join us here in civilization?”
“Not today, thank you, Grandfather.”
“Dad, lay off,” 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 inward, 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 listening to them anymore; they always ran through this argument as if it were a greeting ritual. “Shall we go, boys?”
The doors of the mansion swung open, and she walked out onto the broad portico without waiting for the others. It was cold outside; frost still was 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 southeast. Roughly triangular, it was nearly two hundred meters 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 center, with long boxes that looked as though they had 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 that 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 in her lower lip to stop herself from giggling. The starship was ridiculous, the kind of contraption Isambard Brunel would have built for Queen Victoria.
It touched down on the lawn, its landing pads sinking deep into the grass and the 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 multisegment airlock door unwound. The ambassador for the Ocisen Empire floated out, sitting on top of a hemispherical regrav sled. Physically, the alien was not 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 that ranged 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 meter 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 around so that 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 the eye stalks. Translated into English, the sled processors used a speaker on the rim to boom the reply to Justine.
“My home welcomes you,” she said, remembering the formalites.
Another of the ambassador’s eye stalks curved around 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 honor.”
“Honor 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 was not so close as to be blatantly rude but 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 poli
cy: to acquire better technology, especially weapons technology. A sizable 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 postphysical and they can help themselves to whatever’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 around slowly, as if it were having trouble with what it saw as it scanned the walls. The room’s decor was Scottish-themed, surrounding 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 mantel 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?”
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