Now We Are Ten: Celebrating the First Ten Years of NewCon Press

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Sovat – Appis – was in the hangar, amongst the honour guard of techs who stood respectfully silent while their Pilot crossed the floor to his yacht. Kheo gave him no more regard than was normal, including him in the faint nod of gratitude to his crew as he passed.

  Only when he took his seat in Liberty Bird did he fully wake up. He performed the usual pre-flight checks with a combination of the utmost care and little conscious thought. By the time the hoist had inched him into the hangar’s massive airlock, he was as ready for his fate as he had ever been.

  *

  The trajectory alteration is subtle; a matter of a few degrees in one plane. The difference between passing through a volume of space with no appreciable matter in it, and the lower path, where the number of molecules in the vacuum might constitute the start of an atmosphere. Enough of an atmosphere to cause drag and test Liberty Bird’s engines, certainly. But the ultimate shortcut – if it works.

  He is deep in the ion-streams now, their flickering representations dancing around his yacht. Every other racer is above him; some still appear to be ahead, but they have further to go. It is too early yet to know if his crazy ploy will bring victory.

  His com flashes: the support team requesting emergency contact. No mean feat given the ionic interference; they must be juicing up the signal with everything they’ve got. If he answers, will it be Appis Sovat on the com? He is Chief Tech, after all. The prospect of hearing Sovat’s voice again makes Kheo hesitate. Then he catches himself and turns his attention to his console. The drive readout is already edging out of the safe zone, and there’s a constellation of amber warnings. Suddenly one of them spikes red: a jolt thrums through his yacht. What was that? Ah, navigational thrusters. Even this is too much atmosphere for them. Well, he’s stuck on this course now. As for what happens once he’s on the far side, whether they’ll blow clear ... first make it to the far side, then worry about that.

  The ship feels wrong. It’s a subtle sensation, a faint vibration, but if he carries on, it’s only a matter of time before structural integrity begins to fail.

  His life is so complicated. The tension of duty and desire. His inability to be himself. And always he has taken what seemed like the easiest path, only to find complications besetting him. Not now though. Now everything truly is simple. He will either win this race, or die trying.

  Another red light: radiation warning. There is only so much energy his suit and canopy can protect him from. The view outside is more spectacular than ever, like a great forest of energy, the psychedelic ion-streams like twisted trunks of impossible trees.

  This in itself is the easy way out, of course. Yes, even as he defies death, he’s still a coward.

  The vibration becomes a shudder. Suddenly Kheo is scared. At least his body is: racing heart, dry mouth, dizzy head.

  What am I doing? This insane stunt isn’t bravery: it’s avoidance, the ultimate avoidance.

  The ship begins to shake. The drive readout spikes into the red. He reaches for the console but everything’s moving, wild forces pulling at him. And even if he could get his hands on the controls, what could he do? The course is set. Too late to change it now.

  I’m a fool. A coward and a fool.

  A great concussion hits, throwing him in every direction at once. He is going to die, here, now. Die without facing himself.

  Massive constriction – but I was expecting an explosion! – and he is wrapped in chilly gel. As the sedatives kick in he realises two things: he has lost the race and he is still alive. When, seconds later, the drugs ease his stressed system into therapeutic unconsciousness, his last thought is that the former doesn’t matter, only the latter.

  *

  The media love it. Kheo Reuthani’s miraculous escape after his death-or-glory bid for victory eclipses Umbrel Narven’s win. Kheo feels sorry for her.

  The rescue clipper barely arrived in time to stop Liberty Bird drifting into the nearest ion-stream, an experience he would not have survived even encased in crash-gel. By the time his yacht was hauled in, he had received enough radiation to increase his risk of long-term health problems – and to destroy any chance of him giving Clan Reuthani an heir.

  Mother visits him in hospital. “I’ve seen your results.”

  She could be talking about an exam he failed. “I guess the wedding’s off then.” He tries not to sound triumphant. He feels sorry for Leilian Fermelai too. He does not, for once, feel sorry for himself.

  “Not necessarily. There may be a medical work-around to the, ah, fertility issue. Perhaps even some advance from out-of-system.”

  “Ah, so you’d accept outsider medicine to solve the Clan’s problems, then?”

  “One must adapt.”

  A shame, then, that she had not pressed his father to adapt to the proactive approach many Clans had instituted after the Liberation, of taking sperm or egg samples from their Pilots in case of such accidents. “Yes, one must. I’m sorry, Mother. I won’t marry that poor girl just to save face. Let Prinbal have his chance. He wants to lead the clan more than I do anyway.”

  He is treated to the rare spectacle of his mother lost for words.

  *

  The general consensus is that he had a lucky escape. If his drive had not cut out when it did, Liberty Bird would either have shaken itself to bits, blown up or been crushed by Yssim’s atmosphere. Kheo keeps his opinion on the matter to himself.

  He is still welcome in the hangar, where work is underway to ensure that Liberty Bird will race again. He might even be the one to fly her, when and if his father forgives him for declaring Prinbal the Reuthani heir. Assuming the Flamestar is still going then.

  It is only natural that Sovat leads the repair work. And it is only natural that Kheo and he should take the chance to talk about the state of Liberty Bird.

  Their conversation, held in the meeting room while the techs work outside, begins with an assessment of the damage, and what is being done to fix it. Kheo looks at Appis Sovat’s hands twice, and his face once. He realises that the Chief Mechanic loves the yacht as much as he himself does, perhaps more.

  “She was lucky, wasn’t she?” asks Kheo. “Well, we both were. Liberty Bird, and me. Losing power at exactly the right moment to bounce us off Yssim’s atmosphere.” He hopes his words don’t sound too disingenuous.

  “So they say.”

  Kheo seizes his chance. “You don’t think it was luck then?”

  “It was fortunate the engine shut down soon as the rads and outside density reached critical. But not luck, sirrah, no.”

  “Ah.” There had been a move, immediately after the Liberation, to install overrides to stop Pilots overdriving their engines but it had been deemed unnecessary, and insulting to the Pilots. “I... see.” Kheo picks his next words carefully. “Having such a fortunate shutdown wouldn’t be hard to arrange for someone with the right skills.”

  “I imagine not, sirrah.” The tech’s tone is careful.

  Kheo ploughs on. “But one would have to ask why anyone might arrange for such a thing.”

  “I’ve seen it before, sirrah.” Sovat is looking at him directly now; he can feel it. “More than once.”

  “Seen what?” says Kheo slowly. He manages to raise his gaze as high as the tech’s chest.

  “The boys who can’t live with themselves.”

  “Wait, you think I made the choices I did just because I... because you... You know nothing about me, Technician!” Except the one thing Kheo wished the man didn’t know. His embarrassed anger lets Kheo meet Sovat’s eyes.

  “True enough, sirrah.” The tech’s voice and gaze are gentle. “And I’m not saying there’s just the one cause. But that’s part of it: us being what we are. It’s not worth dying for, you know.”

  “It’s pretty damn hard to live with.”

  “Hard for others to live with, yes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that, sirrah: we’re what we are. It’s those around us that make it a problem.” />
  “Unless we get caught.”

  The tech shrugs, though it is a considered gesture. “That’s still true, for now. But not every change is for the worst.”

  “No, it isn’t. Listen, I know I’m not, er, your type... but if I did want some advice about, well, safe places, where people like me, like us...?”

  “I’d be happy to give it.”

  “Thank you.” Kheo hesitates. “And thank you for knowing what I needed even if I didn’t. Had anyone found out what you did –”

  “I’m better at my job than that, sirrah.”

  “Even so, you risked your career for me.”

  “A career don’t matter a s–spit compared to a life, sirrah.”

  Kheo nods. “Quite so. Good night, Engineer Sovat.”

  Alone in the briefing room, Kheo exhales. He calls up the plans for his yacht. The thought that he might never pilot Liberty Bird again is hard to face, but face it he will. Who knows, perhaps when contact with the rest of the universe strengthens he might fly something more amazing, perhaps even travel between the stars? Now that is a good dream to hold onto.

  After a while he shuts down the display and goes to find his mother. There is something he needs to tell her.

  Zanzara Island

  Rachel Armstrong

  “They vow to amend their lives, and yet they don’t;

  Because if drown’d, they can’t — if spared, they won’t.”

  Byron, Canto 5, Don Juan

  The blood-gorged mosquito splattered on Ines’ leg. Being hypersensitive to everything, the pregnant woman felt the tiny feet and stylets steal a bead of blood. Now the exploded body, too full to avoid her crushing blow, smeared her skin around a swelling punctum. She rubbed her belly. This was no time to contract any mosquito-borne disease with the baby girl growing inside her. Yet she was fortunate that the genetically modified mosquitoes of Zanzara Island bred few females. Chances were, she would not be bitten again for a while as the lothario, hairy-nosed, pollen-feasting males were woefully short of mates. Now, there was one less female on which the desperate suitors could lavish their long-legged attentions.

  Pedro sighed, his attention on Gabriella. “There she goes again. That kid’s definitely not all there.”

  “Leave her alone. She’s just playing.”

  Gabriella’s lips were moving but, being downwind, her father could not make out what she was saying. She appeared to be giving a running commentary while pushing a clump of plastic and debris away from the Venice shoreline with a stick. For the first few seconds it appeared to be reluctant to move and got repeatedly sucked back into the shore but soon, with persistent coaxing, it found a favourable current and sailed outwards into the lagoon.

  Ines tried to silence Pedro’s further commentary, but he objected.

  “At thirteen you’re supposed to have outgrown imaginary friends.”

  The neat little clump of matter bobbed on the waves and sparkled momentarily under a shard of sunlight.

  “But why ten? You have no fingers or toes?”

  Foamy bubbles split and dissolved into the waves. Gabriella had read that these were the souls of mermaids that, not being human, would not go to heaven. They would silently dance on the surface of the sea for all eternity, without having experienced any kind of real feelings at all.

  “Is consciousness a feeling?”

  The morning was already melting into afternoon but it was too hot to be properly hungry. Tempers were starting to fray with the rising heat of the city. Even on the waterways where it was possible to bathe in the lagoon breeze, the traffic choked with rage. A gondolier nonchalantly tipped his ribboned hat at the backed-up string of river traffic he’d created when making an illegal broadside turn. Voices, fists and tempers rose above the engines and Pedro shook his head. Canal rage was endemic in the waterways.

  “Gelato time.”

  Ines, who in Gabriella’s opinion was the very embodiment of ‘third time lucky’, taught English and French at the Liceo Foscarini, the oldest high school in Venice. She had a no-nonsense approach to life and sympathetically linked arms when talking about important things. In fact, the child and her stepmother shared many things in common, including a common ancestry that had been established through DNA samples they’d donated to the Genographic Project, which was a research programme that used genetics and ancient documents to trace the origins of the first inhabitants of Venice. Their forefathers had migrated to the Veneto from modern-day northern Turkey even before many Italians sought refuge in the lagoons from the invasion of Italy by Attila the Hun and the Germanic Lombards in the 5th Century. Although very little was still known about their forefathers, their ancestral line had actually built the very fabric of the city. They sunk poles, drained the earth with canals and put bricks around the aqueous foundations of a fledgling settlement where none should have been possible.

  “When your mother died, your father’s new girlfriend was not ready for a family,” Ines explained. “She left him with little more than broken kitchenware and a shopping list of complaints neatly laid out on the kitchen table.”

  “Oh.”

  “But you have me and your father now. We’re a team. I want to be there for you and your new little sister. We’ll be a family together.”

  “Okay.”

  Gabriella could not remember her own mother, who had apparently been so sad after childbirth that even electrical shock treatment applied directly across her head, could not help reunite her with the miracle of life.

  “Limone prego.”

  Pedro watched his daughter sweep the dripping ice with her tongue. She pulled it into a point and demolished the softening crystals while scouring the water’s edge. Without so much as a backwards glance, she was on her belly again at the waterside in animated conversation with a small pile of bobbing flotsam. This sun-fractured fragment of plastic swung like a magnetic compass between two tangles of algae. One was green and surface dwelling, while the other was brown and lurked several inches below the waves like a shadow, feeding on longer wavelengths. None of the entangled bodies appeared to be able to agree on where they should be along the shoreline.

  “But how do you know you’re you?”

  Pedro shook his head. Why did she always wear that same turquoise shirt? Why could his daughter not be more feminine? Or at least show more of an interest in her appearance, like other girls her age? Was Gabriella punishing him?

  Ines gently threaded her fingers through his hand, with a reassuring squeeze. Having waited patiently for his daughter to show some kind of reaction to her inevitable abandonment issues, Pedro was devastated that they never arrived. Each day Gabriella’s eyes stayed dry, he feared that the delayed grief would manifest in other, potentially catastrophic, ways.

  “What do you mean that thinking and feeling are the same?”

  Being part of the Venice Polizia di Stato, Pedro and his colleagues patrolled the waterways in pursuit of smugglers, illegal immigrants, gangs, and traders. He’d seen his share of catastrophe. Yet, amidst the chaos caused by thefts, attacks and disputes, waterways congestion was the main issue that urgently needed confronting. Not only was the gondolier service thriving but new vaporetto lines had also entered service along with private hotel boats and city tours. The volume of boats and frayed tempers severely clogged the official routes to the islands. Yet, while collisions between vessels were recorded, drownings were not.

  The day was sweltering and Pedro and Ines took refuge in the shade. He flicked through the news articles on his smart phone, while Ines spread a tatty book on her lap and began to read Don Juan. Around the reclining couple’s feet, tiny lizards threaded through cracks in the paving stones, licking male mosquitoes from the air like dew. Gabriella found shelter from the sun under a bridge where plastics, algae, limpets, barnacles, engine oil and bacterial biofilms had secured tenuous attachments to the brickwork and formed a complex micro-reef where the water met the air. Shellfish tightly clenched the brickwork and barnacles gre
w into briccole like a second skin. Once these anchors had taken hold, the assorted assemblages found it much easier to loiter along the shoreline, like hair around a sink plughole. Apparently discussing a new configuration between the various shoreline bodies, Gabriella did not notice that the gargantuan shadow cast by a 12-deck cruise liner had eclipsed the sun. As she launched her little seedling island, the excited tourists glided past like gods on clouds, cheering and pointing at St. Mark’s Square, the Doge’s Palace and the Bridge of Sighs. While children waved up at the smiling crowds from the shoreline, canal water was backed-up into local toilets.

  A plastic water bottle jerked its way down from one of the towering balconies arriving in the water several seconds after the cruise ship had gone.

  “What do you mean ‘food’? Ines says plastic never, ever goes away.”

  Pedro felt the sudden chill of the passing liner and instinctively drew his knees to his chest. He didn’t want to think of work. Yet the imposing shadow reminded him of the twenty-five strong team of captains and a pair of tug boats which were assigned to board cruise ships outside the lagoon to protectively guide them through the city. The luxury liner boom contributed significantly to air and water pollution in the city and sucked out sediment from the lagoon. Now, there was less than one-third of the original salt marsh left. Adding insult to injury, these beasts also injected over two million tourists each year into the streets, which were already under constant siege from the side-effects of mass tourism. Venice’s very fabric was buckling under the products of its own success.

  “What’s a quorum?”

  “Like a family of ten then?”

  “But that means you never get to do anything by yourself.”

  Gabriella’s little clump of matter ducked and dived in the colossus’ wake, disappearing from view as she fashioned more impromptu sculptural collages. The carefully sculpted flotsam migrated with other debris like seedling cells, compelled by the umbilical draw of the setting sun. Each of these tiny bodies struggled like weak swimmers to join in eddies that skirted the briccole and made their way towards a barely perceptible vortex situated around a hundred metres south of San Michele. Napoleon had forged this island cemetery, to deal with the unsanitary issue of burying bodies after he’d invaded the city. San Michele itself was formerly two islands and become one when the canal between it and san Cristoforo della Pace was filled in during the early 19th century. Now, Gabriella had inherited the responsibilities of her forefathers in producing a new kind of settlement within the Venice bioregion. Together, child and Ecolevithan were thought-linked through the assembly of a strange, distributed, organically fashioned embryogenesis. As in the Venice of the ancients this fledgling settlement was an unnatural construction – a synthesis between humans and ecosystem. Instead of a city fashioned in inert materials, a whole new kind of entity began to take shape.