“I’m afraid I’ll need to know more than that Willy,” Akash said meeting his gaze directly.
“In good time. Let us agree that my core business is discretion, but I can tell you they are established people: old families, powerful industrialists, the odd Arab prince, Russian oligarch and recently, a Chinese mandarin…”
“I am very careful about who I do business with Willy. I will require full disclosure.”
“Indeed, but first let us decide if we like each other.” Willy started the blender and the fruit and herbage swirled into a vivid green colour. “It tastes better than it looks. Please, shall we retire outside? It’s such a sunny day.”
As they walked out onto an expansive patio of black and white tiles he wondered if he had been too assertive. He had always found European and British manners convoluted. He preferred the directness of the Indians and Americans. Still, Willy was charming and he was intrigued.
As they approached the table setting he could hear the thwack-thwack of balls hitting rackets, accompanied by the occasional grunt.
Willy read his expression. “It’s Karolin and Angelika.” He walked over to the edge of the patio and Akash followed. Just below he could see a perfectly manicured grass court behind high wire. He was shocked by the sight of the girls playing barefoot to a very high standard with the older girl sending a blistering serve to her sister.
“Karolin was a junior champion. She was headed for a professional career, unfortunately she hurt her shoulder in a skiing accident a few seasons ago and she was unable to progress to the next level.”
“Still looks impressive to me,” he said as he watched the older girl lunge to return a carefully placed backhand by the younger.
“In our time we have had Graf, Hingis and Kournikova play on this court,” said Willy calmly, as if it was a common occurrence. “We are rather keen on tennis. Do you follow a sport?”
“Not at all, not even cricket.”
He was cut short by Willy yelling, “mädchen, kommen und treffen Sie unser Gast.”
“Don’t disturb them on my account,” he protested.
“I’m not; Angelika wants to meet you. You will understand.”
The girls wandered barefoot across the lawn and up the stairs to the patio. He could tell by the graceful way they moved that they were superb athletes, but he was shocked when they came into closer view. They were both classically beautiful: straw blonde hair, tanned and tall with long legs and narrow hips: the proportions of their bodies in full view because their tight sport shorts and sports bras hugged every curve. They smiled warmly. It was clear they were both sophisticated and confident, used to mixing with important people. Why wouldn’t they be? These girls led a charmed life untouched by the troubles of the world.
“Please to meet you Akashji,” said Angelika in perfect English, extending her hand and using the Indian formality (he assumed they would speak several European languages, especially French, Italian and German, the three languages of Switzerland). “I know a good deal about your work.”
It was another shock and his expression seemed to amuse Willy.
“Angelika is intellectually gifted. She is studying physics under Werner Schwartzmann at…”
“Geneva, yes, I know Werner, but… This is unexpected…”
“Do you want a drink Angel?” asked Karolin.
“Juice,” she said with casual authority. He watched as Karolin walked gracefully into the kitchen.
“She is practicing her walk; normally she walks like a boy. Her first show is in Milan in a few weeks,” said Angelika, noting the way his eyes followed her sister.
He nodded. He supposed she got her lanky beauty from her model mother. He returned his look to Angelika. She met his gaze directly and smiled, as if she assumed she was his social and intellectual equal. “Um, and you, how… I mean, what area? Wasn’t Werner working on the Higgs?”
Angelika sat and curled her legs under her, her brow lightly beaded with sweat from her exertion. “How is that I am studying complex physics at my age?”
“No, I mean, in a sense yes, but really in the sense that I have met many gifted young people, I just wasn’t expecting...”
“Centuries of careful breeding,” said Angelika in a calm, matter of fact manner, patting her brow dry with a hand towel. “Karolin and Christian are gifted too, although I seem to have inherited a sequence that governs symbolic logic. A talent and love for mathematics runs in the family and arises every now and then. Mathematics is easy for me. Karolin is studying music, she is a violinist…”
“And Christian is studying economics. Angel has always been able to calculate easily. We have always encouraged her abilities,” Willy added proudly.
“My interest is fusion, the generation of energy at the quantum level.”
He considered her very carefully. She was every bit as beautiful as her older sister, with the famous German blond hair, light olive complexion and penetrating blue eyes. In fact she was too good to be true. It was then he realised that she must have been genetically enhanced and that he was being introduced to one of Krauss’s Swiss subjects. He became flustered. He dare not reveal anything about the Crickets until he understood just what Willy already knew. They could be fishing for information. Angelika was watching him very carefully and her lips curled into a small smile, as if she had just read his mind.
“Some of us have been speculating about the possibility of teleporting energy. What do you think Akash?”
There was a flash of fear in his eyes. It was a very precise question. If he gave an honest answer he would reveal a key to his theory. If she were as knowledgeable as he was beginning to suspect, she would very quickly fill in the gaps. He realised he had just been strategically checked and his mind raced to try and find a way out. “There seems to be a physical limitation. It takes considerable energy to bend the laws of physics. Perhaps when fusion becomes a stable option we might be able to generate enough power. I am sure you have visited CERN and are well aware of the high energy requirements.”
The smile on her face changed to a smirk. She knew he had dodged her question.
“I’m afraid it is all beyond me. Perhaps you can talk with Akash later Angel, if he wishes,” said Willy, rescuing him.
Angelika stood and nodded her assent. “Of course papa, I need a shower anyway.” She stood still for a moment with her hands on her hips, daring him to look at her, well aware that her shorts hugged every crease and curve, clearly indicating she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. It was an act of pure adolescent sexual aggression and arrogance, perhaps unconscious, perhaps intended. Whatever the case, she was certainly competitive and laying down a challenge. But it was his turn to surprise her. She was not to know about the precocious Crickets. He looked at her clinically, as Alice might, assessing her genetic fitness, letting her know he was looking but was nonplussed. Then he closed his eyes slowly and turned away, refusing to watch as she walked away a little too provocatively.
“Perhaps you might like to rest?” said Willy with an amused expression. “If you wish, I have planned a night at the ballet followed by a late meal at my favourite restaurant. My wife will join us, as will Angelika. I believe Karolin is planning to go clubbing with friends and Christian has a girlfriend. You might meet them in the morning.” Willy shrugged his shoulders and attempted to lighten the mood. “They are a delight until they are six. Then they test your will every day.”
“I imagine Angelika started early?”
Willy looked puzzled for a moment and then recovered. “Yes, of course, indeed, very early.”
He didn’t want to read too much into it but it seemed to confirm that Angelika had been enhanced since early childhood.
107
Li Li
The roar of a chainsaw interrupted her thoughts, she looked into the middle distance and saw foliage shake and then fall. David, Anne and Akoi were clearing an area where they planned to build temporary housing. The tents had been adequate, but a stron
g storm had reminded them that more resilient structures would be needed. She felt a tinge of regret at the thought of felling trees and clearing vegetation, even though they were being as gentle as they could. There would be no clear felling. They wanted to integrate the colony into the landscape, not dominate it.
She wiped her brow free of sweat. Fortunately there was high cloud so she was protected from the sun’s rays. She had tanned to a chocolate colour but she could still burn if she wasn’t careful. She looked at her legs. She was filthy with dirt. She swung the mattock over her head, plunged it into the humus-rich soil and turned a sod. She was glad of the physical labour. There was no avoiding it. Even with the machinery that had arrived in the cargo hull, the building of a new colony still required sweat and effort. She swung the mattock again and turned another sod. This was the fourth bed she had turned. She had successfully germinated a number of seeds in a petri dish and now it was time to attempt basic horticulture. She had talked to Rafael and Grace and they had agreed it would have to be by trial and error. She would plant the same set of seeds in each bed, but each bed was in a different location: one received the morning sun, one the midday sun, one the afternoon sun and one was completely in the shade. Each of the beds was further divided into sections that would receive different amounts of water and nutrients. The rest was careful observation.
She swung the mattock again, setting a rhythm.
“Hey Li, look. Junji got the levitators working,” Anne yelled across the camp.
She looked up to see Constance dragging a rope connected to net containing a pile of rocks. The net was impossibly suspended from a hook floating in mid-air.
“Wow,” she exclaimed as she walked over. “That’s just too fucking weird.”
“It’s all in the rigging,” said Junji. “The fuckers will cancel gravity and lift, but we have to do the rest. I’ve got a few suggestions for improvements, mainly in terms of attachments: hooks, grips, ties, rigging, that sort of thing.”
She watched as Constance pulled at the net and it followed her like a child pulling a balloon. They had been sent some of the prototypes. Just simple, drab circular metal plates fifteen centimetres thick with an LED panel and a few dials, the underside configured to accept a basic tool kit of attachments. All the mass cancelling quantum weirdness happened inside. Turned off they were heavy, but switched on their mass could easily be adjusted. There were three sizes, each with a specific carrying capacity. They took some getting used to. They had almost lost one when it had started to lift into the air after its load had been removed. Fortunately they came with a remote and after making the wrong adjustment and sending it higher faster, Archi had hit the kill switch and it came plummeting to the ground at full mass. This had made them all nervous. The things could be dangerous if used incorrectly. It had been Archi and Junji’s job to set up safety protocols.
“Archi’s worked out how to attach slings. Using two we can shift logs. It’s going to make things so much easier. All we need to do is work out how to introduce momentum, three sixty hopefully, but just forward would be a good start, otherwise we’ll have to push or drag them.”
She watched as Constance dragged the floating net of rocks over to the growing pile and Junji release the net so the rocks crashed to the ground in a plume of dust. Yes, the technology was useful, but the more sophisticated it was, the more problematic it would be for the colony. Akash’s void technology required sophisticated manufacturing processes that would take them many decades to get even close to replicating. Until then, Akash would have to transport purpose built factories in fuselages, and that was a technical hurdle in its own right.
She returned to her garden bed and swung the mattock over her head. She heard the chainsaw roar into action and the crash of another tree. She was content, fully in her element. She realised that she wasn’t missing Earth. The night before they had watched a vid package featuring the latest news and an award winning film. She had walked out, unable to connect with what she was seeing. It all seemed far too chaotic and senseless to her. Earth was a confused planet caught in endless cycles of irrational and fearful reaction and counteraction. Masses of people had seemingly gone insane, turning away from science and reason to ever more bizarre cults, sub-cultures and conspiracy theories. Civil wars were endemic across Africa based either on tribal rivalries or conflict between Muslims, Christians and Animists. The Middle East was still in a state of violent unrest with Jordan finally succumbing to civil war. Southeast Asia had given up on democracy and turned into military dictatorships nervous about the expansion of China, especially after the collapse of North Korea. The US seemed doomed to implode, and Europe struggled to retain coherence with violent street protests in most major cities.
The film was no better. She might have enjoyed it once but the emotional and moral dilemmas it was exploring seemed silly and overwrought; neurotic might be the best description. The characters were obsessed by things that didn’t matter. So she had left the tent quietly and walked out into the still of the night. David had been teaching her how to listen and feel the land. It was impossible on Earth. There was just so much junk and pollution getting in the way. Not just physical pollution: smog, city noise and ambient light; but mental pollution: trashy ideas, overwrought emotionality, moral hysteria and a cacophony of ill-informed opinion. People no longer thought clearly, or deeply. They were subject to the latest ideological fad fed through an increasingly manipulative media. It was like a hall of mirrors with each reflection becoming more and more degraded and further from the original. Even though she had long had her suspicions, she was nonetheless alarmed when Anaïs confirmed that the established marketing and advertising firms were now intentionally creating new sub-cultures in order to create new markets. It was no longer about marketing products to spontaneous ‘street’ movements, but about cynically creating movements with their own pseudo-philosophies and metaphysical gibberish. The latest trend were the ‘Fops and Mollies’, a constructed throwback to the decadence of the seventeenth century that had started in the Harajuku district of Tokyo, complete with expensive wigs, clothes, music, dance, designer drugs and a consumerist morality of excess – an indulgence of upper middle-class children with no hope or vision for the future.
She had walked to a favourite spot overlooking an ocean glimmering with bioluminous microorganisms and had simply sat, stilling her mind and absorbing the energies of the planet: the shifts of wind, the play of sound, familiar and new scents, the feel of her skin’s reaction to shifts in temperature: all sensations crowded out on Earth. Sometimes she fell asleep in this spot; sometimes David joined her and they made love or just talked long into the night. She thought she was beginning to feel David in the same way she was beginning to feel the planet; sometimes they didn’t need to talk, to analyse, to interpret and impose a narrative. It was raw experience.
She swang the mattock over her head and turned another clod. Her back and shoulders were beginning to ache, but it was a good ache that was building her upper body strength. She paused, wiped her brow and let go a stream of piss into the soil. She turned it over with her mattock. She would not return to Earth. She was becoming a part of Eden, eventually she would become a permanent part of the soil, her flesh transforming into valuable nutrients, her atoms dissipating and recombining in a solar system far from her planet of birth.
108
Akash
As soon as he entered his room he opened his bag and pulled out his portable screen. Using his secure network he searched everything in the public domain on Willy and Greta. It was soon obvious that Greta was no ordinary model (and it was obvious where Angelika and Karolin got their good looks). For a few years she had been a supermodel linked romantically to a succession of famous men and women. It seemed she had been something of a wild child with a reputation for working with controversial photographers, totally unconcerned about being photographed naked (more explicitly than usual it seemed, judging by some the images on the net, not that he knew muc
h about the rarified world of fashion photography). Greta and Willy had been considered a celebrity couple and there were endless photographs of them at this or that event: fashion shows, gallery openings, concerts, the Cannes and the Berlin film festivals, the French Open, mixing with European royalty, film and sports stars; relaxing on yachts in the Mediterranean or skiing in the Alps.
When he did a search using just the words Sommerland and Eisenbach it became clear that Willy was simply continuing a family tradition. His mother had been a German actress, his grandmother a noted French opera singer, and it seemed Sommerland had been built by the Eisenbach family to be a summer retreat where they could entertain the rich, talented and famous. He turned to look at the room. Many of them must have stayed in this very room; minor European royalty, Hollywood stars, powerful industrialists, famous artists, writers and performers. He could not help but be impressed. Was this what they were going to offer him, entry into the world of the European glitterati?
A search for articles about Rheingold, Eisenbach and Co revealed very little. It seemed to have been very good at keeping out of the news.
When he had filled his head with enough photos by paparazzi and sycophantic articles by gossip and fashion writers, he closed the screen and his eyes, and allowed the warm summer breeze cutting across the lake to clear his mind. After a few minutes he heard a splash and the swish of water. He walked out onto his small balcony to investigate. Immediately below was a large pool with a naked figure doing laps. It was Angelika. Surely she must have realised he was staying in the room above the pool? Then he remembered something he heard about the popularity of nudism in Europe, especially amongst the Germans. And of course, there was her mother… He realised then that countless people would have swum naked in the pool and only the petite bourgeoisie would have been shocked. He could only imagine what had happened at Sommerland in the past. Still, it was odd that they would be so relaxed around a complete stranger. What exactly was the meaning of such familiarity? Was it arrogance? Was Angelika signalling that her family was above ordinary moral concerns? Was he being tested to see how sophisticated and blasé he could be, and above all, that he could be trusted around Angelika?
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