Accelerando (49 page)

He points at the wall of the crater. A tree diagram begins to grow from the bottom left corner of the wall, recurving and recomplicating as it climbs toward the top right, zooming and fracturing into taxonomic fault lines. “Life on Earth, the family tree, what paleontology has been able to deduce of it for us,” he says pompously. “The vertebrates begin
there
”—a point three-quarters of the way up the tree—“and we've got an average of a hundred fossil samples per megayear from then on. Most of them collected in the past two decades, as exhaustive mapping of the Earth's crust and upper mantle at the micrometer level has become practical. What a
waste
.”

“That's”—Pierre does a quick sum—“fifty thousand different species? Is there a problem?”

“Yes!” Sirhan says vehemently, no longer aloof or distant. He struggles visibly to get himself under control. “At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were roughly two million species of vertebrate and an estimated thirty or so million species of multicellular organisms—it's hard to apply the same statistical treatment to prokaryotes, but doubtless there were huge numbers of them, too. The average life span of a species is about five megayears. It used to be thought to be about one, but that's a very vertebrate-oriented estimate—many insect species are stable over deep time. Anyway, we have a total sample, from all of history, of only fifty thousand known prehistoric species—out of a population of thirty million, turning over every five million years. That is, we know of only one in a million life-forms, of those that ever existed on Earth. And the situation with human history is even worse.”

“Aha! So you're after memories, yes? What really happened when
we colonized Barney. Who released Oscar's toads in the free-fall core of the
Ernst Sanger,
that sort of thing?”

“Not exactly.” Sirhan looks pained, as if being forced to spell it out devalues the significance of his insight. “I'm after
history
. All of it. I intend to corner the history futures market. But I need my grandfather's help—and you're here to help me get it.”

Over the course of the day, various refugees from the
Field Circus
hatch from their tanks and blink in the ringlight, stranded creatures from an earlier age. The inner system is a vague blur from this distance, a swollen red cloud masking the sun that rides high above the horizon. However, the great restructuring is still visible to the naked eye—here, in the shape of the rings, which show a disturbingly organized fractal structure as they whirl in orbit overhead. Sirhan (or whoever is paying for this celebration of family flesh) has provided for their physical needs: food, water, clothes, housing, and bandwidth—they're all copiously available. A small town of bubble homes grows on the grassy knoll adjacent to the museum, utility foglets condensing in a variety of shapes and styles.

Sirhan isn't the only inhabitant of the festival city, but the others keep themselves to themselves. Only bourgeois isolationists and reclusive weirdoes would want to live out here right now, with whole light-minutes between themselves and the rest of civilization. The network of lily-pad habitats isn't yet ready for the saturnalian immigration wave that will break upon this alien shore when it's time for the Worlds' Fair, a decade or more in the future. Amber's flying circus has driven the native recluses underground, in some cases literally: Sirhan's neighbor Vinca Kovic, after complaining bitterly about the bustle and noise (“Forty immigrants! An outrage!”), has wrapped himself in an environment pod and is estivating at the end of a spider-silk cable a kilometer beneath the space-frame underpinnings of the city.

But that isn't going to stop Sirhan from organizing a reception for the visitors. He's moved his magnificent dining table outside, along with the
Argentinosaurus
skeleton. In fact, he's built a dining room within the dinosaur's rib cage. Not that he's planning on showing his full hand, but it'll be interesting to see how his guests respond. And maybe it'll flush out the mystery benefactor who's been paying for all these meatbodies.

Sirhan's agents politely invite his visitors to the party as the second sunset in this day cycle gently darkens the sky to violet. He discusses his plans with Pamela via antique voice-only phone as his silent valet dresses him with inhuman grace and efficiency. “I'm sure they'll listen when the situation is made clear to them,” he says. “If not, well, they'll soon find out what it means to be paupers under Economics 2.0. No access to multiplicity, no willpower, to be limited to purely spacelike resources, at the mercy of predatory borganisms and metareligions—it's no picnic out there!”

“You don't have the resources to set this up on your own,” his grandmother points out in dry, didactic tones. “If this was the old economy, you could draw on the infrastructure of banks, insurers, and other risk management mechanisms—”

“There's no risk to this venture, in purely human terms,” Sirhan insists. “The only risk is starting it up with such a limited reserve.”

“You win some, you lose some,” Pamela points out. “Let me see you.” With a sigh, Sirhan waves at a frozen camera; it blinks, surprised. “Hey, you look good! Every inch the traditional family entrepreneur. I'm proud of you, darling.”

Blinking back an unaccustomed tear of pride, Sirhan nods. “I'll see you in a few minutes,” he says, and cuts the call. To the nearest valet: “Bring my carriage, now.”

A rippling cloud of utility foglets, constantly connecting and disconnecting in the hazy outline of a 1910-vintage Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, bears Sirhan silently away from his wing of the museum. It drives him out onto the sunset path around the building, over to the sunken amphitheatre, where the mounted skeleton of the
Argentinosaurus
stands like a half-melted columnar sculpture beneath the orange-and-silver ringlight. A small crowd of people are already present, some dressed casually and some attired in the formal garb of earlier decades. Most of them are passengers or crew recently decanted from the starwhisp, but a handful are wary-eyed hermits, their body language defensive and their persons the focus of a constant orbital hum of security bees. Sirhan dismounts from his silvery car and magics it into dissolution, a haze of foglets dispersing on the breeze. “Welcome to my abode,” he says, bowing gravely to a ring of interested faces. “My name is Sirhan al-Khurasani, and I am the prime contractor in charge of this small corner
of the temporary Saturn terraforming project. As some of you probably know, I am related by blood and design to your former captain, Amber Macx. I'd like to offer you the comforts of my home while you acclimatize yourselves to the changed circumstances prevailing in the system at large and work out where you want to go next.”

He walks toward the front of the U-shaped table of solidified air that floats beneath the dead dinosaur's rib cage, slowly turns to take in faces, and blinks down captions to remind him who's who in this gathering. He frowns slightly; there's no sign of his mother. But that wiry fellow, with the beard—surely that can't be—“Father?” he asks.

Sadeq blinks owlishly. “Have we met?”

“Possibly not.” Sirhan can feel his head spinning, because although Sadeq looks like a younger version of his father, there's something
wrong
—some essential disconnect: the politely solicitous expression, the complete lack of engagement, the absence of paternal involvement. This Sadeq has never held the infant Sirhan in the control core of the Ring's axial cylinder, never pointed out the spiral storm raking vast Jupiter's face and told him stories of djinni and marvels to make a boy's hair stand on end. “I won't hold it against you, I promise,” he blurts.

Sadeq raises an eyebrow but passes no comment, leaving Sirhan at the center of an uncomfortable silence. “Well then,” he says hastily. “If you would like to help yourselves to food and drink, there'll be plenty of time to talk later.” Sirhan doesn't believe in forking ghosts simply to interact with other people—the possibilities for confusion are embarrassing—but he's going to be busy working the party.

He glances round. Here's a bald, aggressive-looking fellow, beetle-browed, wearing what looks like a pair of cutoffs and a top made by deconstructing a space suit. Who's he? (Sirhan's agents hint: “Boris Denisovitch.” But what does that
mean
?) There's an amused-looking older woman, a beady-eyed camera painted in the violent colors of a bird of paradise riding her shoulder. Behind her a younger woman, dressed head to toe in clinging black, her currently ash-blond hair braided in cornrows, watches him—as does Pierre, a protective arm around her shoulders. They're—
Amber Macx?
That's his
mother
? She looks far too young, too much in love with Pierre. “Amber!” he says, approaching the couple.

“Yeah? You're, uh, my mystery child-support litigant?” Her smile is distinctly unfriendly as she continues. “Can't say I'm entirely pleased to meet you, under the circumstances, although I should thank you for the spread.”

“I—” His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. “It's not like that.”

“What's it supposed to be like?” she asks sharply, jabbing a finger at him. “You know damn well I'm not your mother. So what's it all about, huh? You know damn well I'm nearly bankrupt, too, so it's not as if you're after my pocket lint. What do you want from me?”

Her vehemence takes him aback. This sharp-edged aggressive woman isn't his mother, and the introverted cleric—believer—on the other side isn't his father, either. “I ha-ha-had to stop you heading for the inner system,” he says, speech center hitting deadlock before his antistutter mod can cut in. “They'll eat you alive down there. Your other half left behind substantial debts, and they've been bought up by the most predatory—”

“Runaway corporate instruments,” she states, calmly enough. “Fully sentient and self-directed.”

“How did you know?” he asks, worried.

She looks grim. “I've met them before.” It's a very
familiar
grim expression, one he knows intimately and that feels wrong coming from this near stranger. “We visited some weird places, while we were away.” She glances past him, focuses on someone else, and breathes in sharply as her face goes blank. “Quickly, tell me what your scheme is. Before Mom gets here.”

“Mind archiving and history mergers. Back yourself up, pick different life courses, see which ones work and which don't—no need to be a failure, just hit the ‘reload game' icon and resume. That and a long-term angle on the history futures market. I
need
your help,” he babbles. “It won't work without family, and I'm trying to stop her killing herself—”

“Family.” She nods, guardedly, and Sirhan notices her companion, this Pierre—not the weak link that broke back before he was born, but a tough-eyed explorer newly returned from the wilderness—sizing him up. Sirhan's got one or two tricks up his exocortex, and he can see the haze of ghost-shapes around Pierre; his data-mining technique is crude and out-of-date, but enthusiastic and not without a certain flair. “Family,” Amber repeats, and it's like a curse. Louder: “Hello, Mom. Should have guessed he'd have invited you here, too.”

“Guess again.” Sirhan glances round at Pamela, then back at Amber, suddenly feeling very much like a rat trapped between a pair of angry cobras. Leaning on her cane, wearing discreet cosmetics and with her medical supports concealed beneath an old-fashioned dress, Pamela could be a badly preserved sixtysomething from the old days instead of the ghastly slow suicide case that her condition amounts to today. She smiles politely at Amber. “You may remember me telling you that a lady never unintentionally causes offense. I didn't want to offend Sirhan by turning up in spite of his wishes, so I didn't give him a chance to say no.”

“And this is supposed to earn you a sympathy fuck?” Amber drawls. “I'd expected better of you.”

“Why, you—” The fire in her eyes dies suddenly, subjected to the freezing pressure of a control that only comes with age. “I'd hoped getting away from it all would have improved your disposition if not your manners, but evidently not.” Pamela jabs her cane at the table. “Let me repeat, this is your
son's
idea. Why don't you eat something?”

“Poison tester goes first.” Amber smiles slyly.

“For fuck's sake!” It's the first thing Pierre has said so far, and crude or not, it comes as a profound relief when he steps forward, picks up a plate of water biscuits loaded with salmon caviar, and puts one in his mouth. “Can't you guys leave the backstabbing until the rest of us have filled our stomachs? 'S not as if I can turn down the biophysics model in here.” He shoves the plate at Sirhan. “Go on, it's yours.”