House of Suns

by Alastair Reynolds

  Shatterlings were supposed to be a bit cleverer than that.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘It’s not good,’ I said, after I had run every possibility through Dalliance’s course plotter.

  ‘How not good?’ Purslane asked, leaning against a floating console, one foot tucked behind the other.

  ‘Fifty-five years. That’s how late we’re going to be. Even if you were to push Silver Wings to the limit and leave me to make my own way there, you still wouldn’t shave more than a year off that figure.’

  ‘Fifty-five years does not sound so excessive when it has already been two hundred thousand years since your last reunion,’ Hesperus said, staring up at the huge map of the galaxy painted on my displayer, marked with the winding red line that showed our progress to date. The details of this final part of our circuit - our stopover around the Centaurs’ world, our detour to Ateshga and now the last sprint to the reunion - had been enlarged below the main image, since a few hundred lights was barely a scratch against the vast territory we had already crossed. ‘Or am I mistaken?’

  ‘No, you’re not mistaken,’ I said. ‘In any other situation, we wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over fifty years, or even a hundred. But you’re not supposed to be this late for a reunion. No one ever shows up precisely at the agreed time, but most of the Line members will have arrived within a year or two. There’ll be a handful of stragglers who come in somewhere inside the first five years, and one or two who get there inside ten, but they’ll be looked on sternly. Anyone showing up later than that will either have had prior dispensation to be late, or they’d better have a cast-iron excuse.’

  ‘Which we don’t,’ Purslane said.

  ‘You could not have been expected to anticipate Ateshga’s treachery,’ said Hesperus.

  ‘No, but Ateshga didn’t end up costing us all that much time. The mistake was placing too much faith in the Centaurs.’ Purslane was giving me a dark look as she said this.

  I held up my hands in mock surrender. ‘I admit it, all right? The horses were a bad idea. The point isn’t to pick over my mistakes but to see how we can make the best of a bad situation. I’ll get the Doctor Meninx business out of the way first: let Fescue and the others have their pound of flesh. Then I’ll wheel on Hesperus and show them what a good, industrious Gentian I’ve been.’

  ‘And me?’ Purslane asked. ‘Do I get to share in any of your glory?’

  ‘Only if you’re prepared to admit we consorted. Otherwise it could get a little tricky.’

  ‘They’ll work out we consorted when we both show up late. No point even thinking of hiding that.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve got a point there.’

  Purslane crossed her arms. ‘Yes, I do. So we’ll both be taking credit for Hesperus.’

  ‘For my part,’ Hesperus said, ‘I will speak well of you, and of everything you have done for me.’

  ‘You’ll have your work cut out by the time I’ve finished stating my manifold grievances,’ said Doctor Meninx.

  ‘You’ll only have a thousand days and nights,’ I said, ‘so I’d get an early start if I were you.’

  The avatar’s expression turned furious. ‘You would do well not to mock me, shatterling.’

  ‘Mocking you was the furthest thing from my mind, Doctor.’ I clapped my hands cheerily. ‘Now: the practical arrangements. Purslane and I will be entering abeyance as soon as we’ve finished editing our strands, which shouldn’t require more than a day or so. Doctor Meninx: I presume you’ll be putting yourself asleep until we reach the reunion system?’

  ‘What I do in my tank is my own business.’

  ‘All I was going to ask was, is there anything you would like Hesperus to keep his eye on while the rest of us are under?’

  ‘Keep his eye on?’ the avatar asked, with instant suspicion.

  ‘I will not be entering abeyance,’ our golden guest informed the avatar. ‘I have already volunteered to assist Campion by monitoring his other sleepers, ensuring that nothing untoward happens to them. I would be happy to extend the same courtesy to you, Doctor Meninx.’

  ‘You will do no such thing!’ The avatar looked at Campion with a mixture of indignation and real fear. ‘He must not come near my equipment, shatterling! He has designs on it!’

  ‘I have no designs on you or your equipment,’ Hesperus said. ‘If I wished you harm, Doctor Meninx, you would already know it. I was only offering a kindness.’

  I raised a calming hand. ‘Easy, Hesperus - I know you meant well, but from the doctor’s point of view it would probably be better if you didn’t interfere.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘You’re being very stupid,’ Purslane told the avatar.

  ‘The stupidity lay in entrusting myself to Gentian Line. Everyone told me I’d be better off with the Marcellins.’

  Hesperus suddenly looked interested. ‘What exactly was it you wanted with the Vigilance?’

  ‘Many and various things, none of which are of the slightest concern to you.’

  ‘There’s no reason not to tell us,’ I said.

  ‘You have never asked me before - why now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because Hesperus is curious. Because I never thought to ask you before. I’d had enough of the Vigilance on my last circuit - all I wanted to do was drop you off and get away from those giants as quickly as possible.’

  ‘We shouldn’t press Doctor Meninx,’ Purslane said. ‘He’s a scholar and entitled to his privacy.’ She was using reverse psychology, knowing that our intellectually vain guest would not be able to resist the bait.

  ‘Well, if you insist on knowing,’ the avatar said, waiting a beat until it was certain it had our undivided attention, ‘the principle focus of my enquiries is the Andromeda Priors. In common with the Vigilance, I hold that the Absence is the result of organised activity by alien sentients. Intentionally or otherwise, they have caused something to happen to their galaxy. As a sentient, resident in a similar spiral galaxy, I naturally have at least a passing curiosity concerning the event in question. If the Andromeda Priors did something foolish, then it is in our interests not to repeat that mistake. It is my strenuous conviction that the Vigilance has become too engrossed with the acquisition and cataloguing of data to take a step back and see what that data actually reveals. A lone scholar, dedicated to his task, might be able to see patterns, inferences, that the Vigilance has failed to detect. That was my hope. That is still my hope, in the unlikely event of my ever reaching my destination.’

  ‘I share your concerns,’ Hesperus said.

  ‘Really?’ the avatar asked, sounding bored.

  ‘Really. I cannot deny that I felt a flicker of recognition from the moment the Vigilance was first mentioned. My conviction has only grown stronger since then. Could it be that I was sent to this sector on a quest similar to your own?’

  ‘To gather information on the Priors?’ Purslane asked.

  ‘Possibly. Or to learn something else known to the Vigilance.’ Hesperus paused. ‘Might I ask you something, Doctor Meninx, from one lost scholar to another?’

  ‘Ask away,’ the avatar said idly.

  ‘Does the phrase “House of Suns” mean anything to you?’

  Something passed across the paper face, as quickly as the shadow of a cloud on a sunny day. ‘And if it did?’ the figure asked.

  ‘I would ask what those words mean to you.’

  ‘The words mean nothing. If they had some significance, I would have heard of them.’

  ‘Where did you hear of the House of Suns?’ Purslane asked. ‘It sounds like a Line, like the House of Flowers or the House of Moths. But there’s no such Line as the House of Suns.’

  The golden face turned to address her. ‘It must have meant something to me once, but now I cannot say. All I am certain of is that the phrase is in some way related to the Vigilance: the two chime against each other, as if they once shared some obvious connection.’

  ‘What did the trove say?’ I said. />
  ‘Nothing. Which is to say, that phrase has occurred a great many times, in a great many societies, but none of the instances appear to be the thing I am looking for. I think I would know it if it were; there would be a sense of rediscovery.’

  ‘The phrase means nothing,’ Doctor Meninx said.

  ‘Just because you haven’t heard of it?’ Purslane asked.

  ‘It’s immaterial. The Vigilance would never have entertained him anyway. They won’t deal with machines. Machines bring the diseases of machines: the infections and parasites that infiltrate and corrupt archives, intentionally or otherwise. That is why Machine People have always been forced to utilise human proxies in their affairs with the Vigilance. Is that not so, Hesperus?’

  ‘Exactly so, Doctor Meninx.’

  ‘Then I need hardly point out that your quest would have been futile. They would never have admitted one such as you into their data sanctums. You would have been better off staying in the Monoceros Ring.’

  ‘Unless this objection was already anticipated,’ Hesperus said, as if a thought was taking shape as he spoke. ‘Could it be, Doctor, that the Machine People required direct access to the Vigilance, without the intercession of human proxies? Could it be that my mission was so sensitive that only I could view the archives?’

  ‘You would still have been turned away - or dismantled.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’ Hesperus lifted up his left arm and removed the golden plating, exposing the organic forearm that had already caused Meninx so much distress. ‘It may be that you have solved the mystery, Doctor. When I left the Monoceros Ring, my precise objective could not have been known to me - any more than you knew exactly what you would be doing when you originally left your homeworld. Later on, it must have become clear that it was necessary to consult the Vigilance. That was why I began to disguise myself, to assume the form of a biological human. I must have begun with this one limb as a proving exercise, to ensure that the work could be completed satisfactorily, before proceeding with the complete transformation.’

  ‘Convenient supposition,’ Doctor Meninx said, but he did not sound completely sure of himself.

  ‘Makes a kind of sense to me,’ I said. ‘Hesperus did the one arm, then got waylaid by Ateshga before he could change the rest of himself. He wasn’t disguising himself to blend in with the rest of humanity, but just to get past the Vigilance and through to their archives. Do you reckon it would have worked, Hesperus?’

  ‘I suppose I must have been confident of success.’

  ‘But there’s so much of you you’d have had to conceal,’ Purslane said. ‘You might have been able to look human, but I don’t see how you’d have been able to pass any kind of examination.’

  Hesperus put the plating back on his forearm. ‘I can only speculate that I had already given thought to this problem. Clearly, much of my existing cognitive volume would have been given over to biological componentry - muscle and sinew - requiring that I compress or discard certain faculties for the duration. My skeleton would have been mechanical, and dense with processors, but it could also have been embedded with various devices capable of tricking scanning systems into thinking they were seeing bone and marrow. All the same, I would have been intensely vulnerable to both injury and detection. The risk would not have been taken unless it was imperative to access that information.’

  ‘If they’d found you out,’ Purslane said, ‘there’s no way the Vigilance would ever have dealt with machines again - even via human proxies. You would have known that, and yet still considered it worth the risk.’

  ‘It must have been something very, very important,’ Hesperus said, sounding amazed and doubtful at the same time, as if he did not quite believe he could ever have embarked on something so perilous.

  ‘You’re playing into his hands,’ Doctor Meninx said. ‘Can’t you see? He’s latched onto the Vigilance because it allows him to explain away that arm - there’s no other reason.’

  ‘If I did not have an interest in the Vigilance,’ Hesperus answered patiently, ‘what was I doing in that region of the Scutum-Crux Arm?’

  ‘He’s got a point there,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve heard enough,’ the avatar said, turning on its heels with a papery scuff. ‘You are being manipulated, shatterlings—manipulated and lied to. The sanest thing you could do now is to compel it back into its cage. Give Hesperus free roam of this ship and I very much doubt that any of us will ever emerge from abeyance. I shall certainly not rate my chances very highly.’

  When the avatar had stalked away, Hesperus said, ‘I am sorry to be the cause of so much disharmony. Perhaps the doctor is correct: a great many things would be simpler if I were to return to the cage.’

  ‘You’re doing no such thing,’ I said.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Purslane agreed. ‘Meninx can rot in his tank, for all I care. I’m beginning to wish the Centaurs had let a few predators slip through their impasse when he went for that swim.’

  Two days later Purslane and I made love, then parted. She whisked back over to Silver Wings of Morning, flashing across space in a heartbeat. She entered her cryophagus, while I entered my stasis cabinet, set the time-compression dial and administered two eye-drops of Synchromesh. She would dream as the machine cooled her body down to the edge of death; I would skip over the years in a few instants of subjective thought.

  My mind was searingly calm. We had forged our threads, creating two self-consistent narratives. We were going to be fifty-five years late, but we had survived another circuit and we had a guest who was going to make everything all right for us.

  I thought of Purslane lying against me, wishing she was still there. Making love was, a game of echoes. We had shared memories so many times that when I made love to her, I knew exactly how it felt to be Purslane. I could taste and feel her other lovers and she could taste and feel mine, each experience reaching away like a reflection in a hall of mirrors, diminishing into a kind of carnal background radiation, a sea of sensuous experience. I had been a girl once, then a thousand men and women and all their lovers.

  The stasis field locked on. The Synchromesh took hold. I hurtled into my own future, while my ship ate space and time.

  PART TWO

  One day the little boy came again. I went up to the belvedere and watched his shuttle arrive. This time I knew that we would spend the whole of the afternoon in Palatial; that no other toys mattered now. The anticipation induced a warm, glittery tingle in my belly. It was nearly a year since I had shown him into that secret world for the first time and in the intervening visits it had come to dominate our imaginations like nothing else.

  By then I knew a little more about the boy, and where he came from. Like mine, his family had prospered in the Conflagration, which was the name the adults gave the brief, sharp war that had encompassed the Golden Hour in the eleventh year of the new century. It had happened nearly thirty years earlier, but because my childhood had been dragged out across three decades by developmental inhibitors, I had some memory of it. I had been much too young to understand the nature of the thing itself, but I recalled a time when the adults talked in unusually low and strained voices, and when they could often be found walking in the halls with story-cubes, cradling them like the skulls of dead friends, anxious for the latest scintilla of news or rumour.

  My family’s specialisation was biology, with a particular aptitude for the subtleties of human cloning. Cloning is a technology like making paper: it is not difficult if one knows how to do it, but extraordinarily tricky to invent from scratch, and fraught with pitfalls that may only be circumvented by a Byzantine arsenal of tricks and stratagems, many of which resemble the shamanic rituals of folk medicine. The art was a thousand years old, but there were still only a handful of practitioners who really understood it, and my family was one of them. Before the Conflagration, when the opposed forces were re-arming, we made armies of soldiers, squadrons of pilots. Our clones were famed for their loyalty, but also for their tactical intell
igence and independent thought. They could function as autonomous units, lying low on the edge of the battle zone, activating as needed without direct control from the central authority. After the war, many of the survivors had been granted full citizenship rights.

  The little boy’s family had supplied the armies and squadrons of the other side, but with machines, not organic beings. Sometimes they were controlled by human minds, but as often as not they had been given enough intelligence to function on their own. There were other heavy manufacturing concerns making battle machines, just as there were other cloning specialists. But we were the best at what we did, and his family was the best at making engines of war. Though there were tribunals, inquiries and sanctions in the years following the Conflagration, both families came through them relatively unscathed and remained in business. The wheeled robots that came down the ramp with the little boy were not just his bodyguards, but were made by his own family. Their machines were everywhere now, more prevalent than they ever had been before the war.

  My family, having allied itself on the other side of the ideological schism between the organic and the mechanical, retained a healthy distrust of machines. As I have mentioned, for all its rambling vastness, there were few in the house. Most of the robots present were there to assist with the constant enlargement and reshaping of the house’s basic architecture. Almost everything else was done by human servants, or cloned nannies.

  ‘I know why it’s called the Golden Hour now,’ I said to the little boy as we made our way through the house to the playroom, and the waiting enchantment of Palatial.

  ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘I bet you don’t.’ Because he said nothing, I took that as licence to continue. ‘It’s because of light. Nothing can go any faster than it, including any messages we send. That’s all very well if you’re on a planet, or a moon. But after we moved into space, we got further and further apart. You couldn’t have normal conversations any more - it took too long for the words to get there and back. That’s why you and I can’t have a conversation unless we’re together, in the same house. Your home’s on the other side of the Sun right now—if I said “hello”, I’d have to wait hours before you said “hello” back. Eventually, people realised that they didn’t like being so far apart from each other - it made them feel lonely and cut-off. They wanted to live in space because that meant they could do anything they wanted, but not be so spread out that it took hours to talk to each other. So they came up with the Golden Hour, which is where most of us live. The story-cube says it’s a torus around the Sun, like a doughnut. It’s an hour wide, as the speed of light goes. There are planets in it, and some moons, but also millions of Lesser Worlds, just like this one. If you’re in the Golden Hour, the longest you’ll usually have to wait for a reply will be two hours, and often it’s a lot less than that. The story-cube says it took nearly ten centuries for human civilisation to settle into this configuration’ - I liked long words, especially ones that the story-cube had taught me - ‘but that now we’ve found it, it’ll be good for thousands of years, perhaps even tens of thousands. Don’t you feel excited to be part of that? We could be friends for ever and ever!’