by Linda Nagata
“There could be lifeboats out there,” Skye said.
Zia started breathing heavily, her teeth gritted in cartoon rage, but she stopped fast when a couple of ado boys came by their table to offer congratulations. Zia chatted them up, while Skye leaned on the balcony rail, gazing down at the long slope of the cone-shaped city.
Silk hung on the elevator cable like a bead on a string—or maybe like a cone-shaped mountain with the thread of the elevator cable running through its core. At 300 kilometers above Deception Well, it was far beyond the atmosphere, yet all the houses, apartment buildings, parks, and walkways were on the outside slopes. People could live in the light because they were protected from the airless vacuum of space by a transparent, self-repairing canopy that rose over the city like a bubble, held up by the pressure of air.
The grand walk encircled the city’s highest, narrowest level. From the restaurant balcony, Skye could look down past the low-rise buildings of Ado Town to the green belt of Splendid Peace Park, 600 meters below. She waited until the boys moved off. Then she said, “You think I’m crazy, because I believe there could be other lifeboats out there.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you just don’t want to be, well … alone. You know you’re not alone.”
“Sooth. Zia, the point is we don’t know if there are any more … like me. Because no one’s looked.”
Zia crossed her arms over her chest. “So why don’t you look?”
“Huh?”
“Instead of whining about it, why don’t you go look?”
“How?”
“How should I know? I just know that if it’s more important to you than to anyone else, you should be doing it.”
Skye was already nodding, as ideas sprouted in her head. “Ord!”
“Yes, Skye?” The little robot poked its head over the far rim of the table. “Order food now?”
“No. Forget lunch. Remember the article you found for us on the swan burster fragment?”
“Lunch forgotten, Skye. Article remembered.”
Zia choked on her drink as Ord started to recite the article in full; Skye smiled. “Good Ord. Don’t read it to me again, okay? Just tell me who wrote it.”
“Author credit, Devi Hand, Astronomical Society.”
Skye winked at Zia. Then, using the formal address for real people—Maturus—meaning “fully aged” and abbreviated simply as “M,” she said, “M. Hand tracked that swan burster fragment. Maybe M. Hand might also have something to say about tracking lifeboats.”
“Do you think he’d be interested in talking to ados? He’s probably five hundred years old.”
Skye shrugged. “I don’t know, but it won’t hurt to ask. Let’s go find him.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Uh-uh.” Zia shook her head. “Work.”
“Oh. Sooth.” Skye frowned.
The people of Silk counted days in groups of six, for no better reason than that it suited them. So Skye and Zia had classes for three mornings, and then they were off for three mornings. Most of the afternoons they worked as interns – student helpers rotating through different professions, exploring their world from the inside out.
Zia was presently working with a team of planetary biologists. Skye was studying nanotechnology. Usually she enjoyed every minute spent under the tutelage of Yan, learning a branch of engineering in which matter was shaped atom by atom, to build precise structures that ranged from simple threads of pure diamond fiber, to tiny, complex, programmable nanomachines called Makers that patrolled the human body, defending it against disease and the breakdown that had once been caused by aging. Once, people had died after only seventy or eighty years of life. Skye had a hard time imagining such a thing, but Yan insisted it was so. “Without Makers to keep us healthy, our bodies would quickly wear down and eventually fail. It’s our Makers that allow us to go on living past our first hundred years.” Past adolescence, that is. In Silk, no one was considered fully adult—or truly real—until they were at least a century old.
Yan himself was 274 years old. He’d been one of the original immigrants to Silk, arriving at the age of two, a baby in cold sleep, just like Skye. Except he’d come on a great ship, accompanied by his parents, and they had all been revived together.
Despite his years, Yan looked as youthful and healthy as any adult. The age of real people showed only in their eyes, that seemed to see deeper than ado eyes, and in their outlook. Skye had a hard time describing exactly what that outlook was … but it had much to do with the confidence, the patience, the self-assurance they all seemed to possess. They had seen and done so much, that they often seemed to know exactly what would happen next. It was a trait she found by turns annoying or reassuring, depending on her mood.
Yan was generous enough not to teach her too much, allowing her to form her own opinions as she explored nature at the molecular scale. She loved seeing the structure of the world made real around her, feeling the strength of bonds between atoms, that joined to form molecules … it made her feel as if the mystery of existence was unfolding at her command.
She drew in a deep breath, then let it go in a long sigh. “I want to do everything at once! Why does it always feel like there’s never enough time?”
“Easy, ado,” Zia said. “We’ll fit it all in. We work now. Meanwhile, we let Ord hunt down M. Hand and make an appointment for us. Real people like to be formal, after all.” She reached under the table and caught Ord by one of its stubby legs, hauling the little robot out, while the leg stretched to twice its normal length. “Can you handle it, pet?” she asked, dropping Ord on the table. “Find this M. Devi Hand for us, and see if he’s willing to meet”—She turned back to Skye, with a questioning look—“when?”
“Tonight,” Skye said, as Ord rearranged its golden tissue, and stood on the table top, reclaiming an attitude of dignity. “Ord, see if you can get us an appointment for tonight, okay?”
“Yes Skye. Not too late though.”
Zia rolled her eyes. “And Ord, try not to embarrass us by sounding like such an annoying little babysitter, okay?”
Chapter 4
Ord had gotten the appointment with M. Hand, reporting the astronomer to be delighted at their interest in his work. “Rare enough for ados,” was the phrase the little robot reproduced for them in a soft, masculine voice. Skye wrinkled her nose, wondering if she should feel flattered or insulted at this comment. Then she decided it didn’t matter. M. Hand would see them, and this evening too. He had invited both of them to his home.
So after work Skye waited for Zia as they’d agreed, by the koi pond in Splendid Peace Park. The park encircled the base of the city like a green skirt, and all the neighborhoods spilled down the city slopes to touch on it somewhere in its circuit. She watched as three musicians set up their instruments near the water. The day was drawing to a close. Kheth’s light spilled at a sharp angle over the city’s rim, so that the musicians’ shadows ran all the way across the pond, and beyond.
Zia was late.
Several picnickers arrived, laying out blankets on the grass. Skye felt hungry watching them. She stood on her toes, to see if she could spot Zia coming down the trail from the city library, but all she saw was a little boy out walking his dokey. The furry creature looked a little like a dog. It strolled beside the boy, hardly as high as his calf.
Like the dogs Skye had seen in the VR, the dokey walked on four legs, but it also had two more limbs in front, both with little monkey-like hands. Its face was round and alert, like a flying fox. Most of its body was covered with short, thick, brown fur, except behind its ears where there sprouted tufts of green fur, and on its tail, where long green hair shimmered with every wag.
The first dokey had been created only three years ago, as a class project in a genetic engineering course. Now they were everywhere, the only kind of pet city authority had ever allowed people to have. Skye knelt, careful to keep her skirt out of the grass. She didn’t usually wear
dresses, but she had decided on one tonight because most real people appreciated a formal style. She patted her knee and smiled at the dokey. The little creature came bounding over to her. Its hands kneaded the shimmery hem of her skirt, while she stroked the soft tufts of green fur behind its ears. “It sure is cute,” she told the boy.
Ord picked that moment to slip out from behind a low gardenia hedge. “Message, Skye,” it announced.
“From who?” The dokey had turned belly-up, encouraging her to stroke the soft brown fur on its underside.
“Zia Adovna,” Ord said. “Play it now?”
Skye groaned, knowing it had to be bad news. She chucked the dokey under the chin, then stood up. The boy clucked at his little pet. It scrambled to its feet, then leaped for his hand, climbing from there onto his shoulder. “Thanks,” Skye told him. The boy waved and walked on while she turned to Ord with a sigh of resignation. “Okay. Play it.”
So Ord started talking, mimicking Zia’s voice exactly: “Bad news, ado. I’m due at my dad’s tonight. I forgot it was his birthday. You’re invited of course! Have Ord reschedule our appointment with M. Hand for tomorrow, okay?”
Skye’s hands knotted into fists. “Zeme dust!” she cursed. “Of all the nights!”
Why did things have to fall out like this? She liked Zia’s dad. He was a lydra farmer, who cloned the tentacled beasts used in zero-gravity construction. On any other night she would have been happy to stop by and help celebrate… .
But it wasn’t any other night.
Skye looked at Ord. “Let’s get something to eat,” she said. “And then you and I, we can go see M. Hand ourselves. How does that sound?”
“Sounds sweet,” Ord crooned. “Sounds nice. Home early. Good Skye.”
Full dark had fallen by the time Skye followed Ord past the exclusive district of Old Guard Heights, to the equally exclusive complex of three tapering white towers called the Ice Sisters. Ord made to enter the lobby of the tallest Sister, but Skye hesitated. “Ord, are you sure this is the right address?” Only the oldest of the real people lived in these towers. It was said some of them never came out.
“Yes Skye. Please come.”
The lobby was empty. Ord called the elevator. It was glass, and as it rose up the tower’s outer face, Skye felt as if the city was falling away from her feet. Like jumping in reverse. It carried her all the way to the top without stopping.
When the doors opened, she stepped out into a dimly lit alcove. It opened onto a wide balcony populated with tall, tropical shrubs and small flowering trees, all growing in neat planters. Through the foliage she glimpsed the formal double doors of an exclusive apartment. No hint of light leaked through the glass panes, and she began to wonder if M. Hand had forgotten her appointment. Perhaps no one was home?
The Dull Intelligence that served as major-domo for the apartment quickly banished that doubt. “Welcome Mistress Object!” it called in a cheery masculine voice that emanated from somewhere above the elevator doors. “Your host awaits you on the roof. He asks that you please follow the footlights to the stairway.”
Dim lights on the floor came to life, illuminating a slate path that wound through the shrubbery before curving out of sight. Skye nodded nervously – “All right” – but she kept a close watch on Ord, looking for any sign of tension or alarm. She trusted the little robot to know if something was suspicious, or wrong, but Ord showed no concern as it scuttled beside her.
An ornate metal railing encircled the balcony. Skye was tempted to look over, for she could hear music and voices drifting up from far below, but the path guided her away, to the other side of the rooftop. From here she could look up to the city’s summit, and beyond it, to the elevator column, its far end still glistening in Kheth’s light. Only a few stars were visible within the faint, milky wash of the nebula. The distant, ruined swan burster was a black circle drawn against that luminous sky.
She found the stairs behind a stand of dwarf banana trees. They rose in a single, narrow flight to a flat roof. She craned her neck, straining to see what might be up there, but all she could make out was a railing like the one that ringed the balcony. On the stairs, the footlights were dull red, dimming steadily with each step.
Well.
Skye drew in a deep breath of the flower-scented air. Then she straightened her shoulders and cautiously mounted the stairs. Halfway up, she paused again. Now she could just see the rooftop. It was fully encircled by the railing. No plants grew there. Skye saw only a single shadowy figure, hunched in a chair, peering intently into the eyepiece of a telescope longer than her arm.
“Hello,” Skye said softly. “M. Hand?”
“Come quickly, you’ve almost missed it.”
The figure at the telescope neither looked at her, nor sat up. His left hand though, circled in a gesture that clearly said Come here. Skye looked around for Ord, but the little robot had disappeared into the shadows. So she swallowed her misgivings and went to join the astronomer, telling herself that real people were supposed to be eccentric, and that M. Hand could be expected to be especially odd, as he must be among the oldest of the old to own such a fine apartment.
As she drew near, the astronomer slid gracefully out of his chair. Skye tried to get a look at his face, but it was very dark here, high above the city. When he bent to check the telescope’s mount, long, light-colored hair slipped in loops across his cheek. “Quickly,” he said. “Sit down and look. It’ll pass out of sight soon.”
Skye sat. She leaned forward, careful not to touch the telescope. It perched on the railing with bird-feet, its barrel pointed close to the horizon. She squirmed a little to get just the right position. Then she looked through the eye piece.
She gasped.
The field of view was bisected by a line of bright, sparkling objects. She counted six, eight, twelve spots of jewel-like light. “What is this? I never saw a line of stars like that. They look so close and bright.”
“Stars?” He sounded puzzled. “That’s the construction zoo.”
She sat up abruptly, squinting along the top of the telescope, trying to see the speckles with her own eyes. There. A thumb’s length above the horizon. She could just make them out, if she didn’t look directly at them. They appeared to be below the city, dropping toward the dark rim of Deception Well.
The construction zoo was a site in an extremely high orbit, farther out than the end of the elevator cable, where a great ship was being slowly fabricated. The ship-building had begun only five years ago, and it would be many years more before it was completed. For now the great ship existed as separate pieces growing slowly larger as raw materials were carried up the elevator column.
Also to be found in the construction zoo was a habitat for the small work crew, along with several gigantic tentacled lydra, the “construction beasts,” that did most of the assembly. Somewhere among all those other things was the lifeboat in which Skye first arrived, for city authority had decided it should be stored in the zoo.
She looked through the telescope again, studying the beautiful line of objects for a few seconds more. Then she turned to M. Hand, not trying to disguise her disappointment. “It all looks so small. I thought you’d be able to see so much more. How did you ever track that fragment of the swan burster?”
“Oh. Well not with this instrument. This is just a little hobby telescope I … I built it when I was twelve. The city’s two primary telescopes are both in orbit.”
So this was an antique instrument. She wondered how many centuries old it might be. “So you tracked the fragment with the … primary telescopes?”
“Well, no.” His voice was soft and low and almost … uncertain? She still could not make out the features of his face. “Actually, the fragments were all located and tagged in the first few years after the swan burster was hit, so all I did was track the signals from this particular fragment. The challenge came in predicting when its orbital path would bring it close to the city … close enough to stimulate the defensive
lasers, you see … ?”
She did, only too well. “So you didn’t actually find the fragment at all?”
“No. That was all done before … well, it was done before I was born. I wish I’d been in on it.”
“Before you were born? But the swan burster was shattered only twenty years ago.” As soon as she said it, she understood. Her hand went to her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle a giggle.
“What?” M. Hand demanded.
“Nothing,” she choked out. “Sorry. Except … I thought you were some awesome old man.” And she started giggling all over again.
“Oh. It doesn’t matter. Does it?”
Skye’s humor vanished as she remembered why she had come. “Actually, I think it does, M.—” She caught herself. She was not going to address him formally if he was only a dumb ado like her. “What was your first name?”
“Devi.” He said it quickly, as if afraid it might turn on him, or get away.
“Devi,” she repeated. “I think it does matter. I wanted to talk to the person who found the fragments. The person who picked them out of the dark.”
“Oh. That would be Tannasen. He helped me with my project, but he’s not in the city now. He spends most of his time aboard Spindrift.”
“The research ship.” Skye shivered as vague memories surfaced. Her lifeboat had been found by Spindrift. She’d spent over a year aboard the tiny ship, though for most of that time she’d been kept in cold sleep. Tannasen had brought her to consciousness only in the last two weeks before Spindrift returned to Silk. She’d been hardly two years old, so almost the only thing she could remember was being afraid.