The Abyss Beyond Dreams (15 page)

One thousand two hundred and ninety-six years old he might have been, and possessing all the phenomenal emotional control only a life so long could bring, but Nigel still let out a sigh of
dismay. ‘Not Far Away again? Will that planet never stop being a problem?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘What do they want with the McLeod smartcore?’

‘Navy Intelligence suggests the Knights Guardians want to build their own T-sphere.’

‘Why don’t they just ask us for one? ANA hasn’t restricted the technology to the Central worlds. It’s just horribly complex. I can barely understand the operational
theories myself.’

‘Probably because we wouldn’t give them one that’s weaponized.’

‘Oh, that goddamn psycho woman. She’s been in suspension for six hundred years already, and she’s still casting a paranoid shadow.’

‘Never mind, darling. Three more years and our colony ships will be ready.’

‘Yeah.’ It had taken him long enough, but five years ago Nigel had finally decided to do what so many others had done, and leave the Commonwealth behind to start a fresh civilization
a long, long way away. The Sheldon Dynasty had sent out transgalactic colonies before, and Nigel had almost gone with them. But there was always one more problem to deal with, one more political
fight, one more . . . Until now. Now he was finally going to turn his back on it all for good and find time for himself. This time . . .

‘I’ll see you in a few days,’ Anine said.

‘Good.’

Nigel’s u-shadow ended the link. As the capsule raced away from Port Klye, he saw one of the airbarges lumber up into the sky and fly towards New Costa Junction. It would be using the
zero-end wormhole at the station, which opened in deep space, the most convenient and safest place to dump radioactive waste, or some other industrial contaminate material. These days it was used
almost exclusively to dump Augusta’s toxic legacy where it would do no harm. That hadn’t always been the case. The zero-end was originally built for discreet disposal to assist the
commodities market. Back in the day, surplus harvests or an excess of rare minerals had been quietly shoved out into oblivion, assisting the market price, reaping bigger profits for the financial
sectors at the expense of the consumer.

‘What were we doing?’ Nigel murmured as he visualized millions of tonnes of golden grain streaming off into the interstellar night. Cheap food that could have made ordinary
people’s lives just that little bit easier and reduced the wealth of people like himself by micro-percentage points.

Those economics were thankfully over. At least in the Central worlds, almost all of which had switched to Higher culture. So many of the External worlds continued to follow the old-style
economic and financial patterns. Their politicians claimed it gave them freedom – which Nigel just laughed at. Fortunately, there was a steady migration of citizens inwards, firstly to lead
calm and easy lives on the Central worlds before inevitably downloading their minds into ANA, which was the closest the human race had come to a technological version of heaven. So maybe those
conniving politicians did have a point. He was too much of an individualist to contemplate a download. It was interesting that most people retreated into ANA after three or four centuries knocking
about the Commonwealth, whereas those who pressed on over six or seven hundred years tended to stay in their (heavily modified and enriched) bodies, almost as if ANA was some kind of illicit
temptation and if you avoided it you could reach true maturity.

The capsule curved inland, following the main airborne traffic stream for the Cromarty Hills. Other capsules formed a fluid matrix around him, shiny metallic ellipsoids ploughing through the hot
clear air, shining so brightly under the star’s blue-white glare that they appeared to have their own halos. Beneath him was the long serpentine ribbon of the ten-lane Medani freeway,
standing above the slender river on thick pillars as it followed the floor of the shallow meandering valley all the way back to the hinterlands. Most of the road had been converted now, mutating
from a sturdy grey and black ribbon of enzyme-bonded concrete to a weird botanical symbiot colony. With the advent of regrav capsules, New Costa had been quick to abandon its roads. Roads needed
annual maintenance dollars spent on them. Air traffic only needed a smartcore controller.

Now bots crawled along the Medani freeway, laying a complex weave of biological arteries around the concrete. More bots tunnelled into the ground below the support pillars, creating a root
network to feed the modified freeway. Nutrients pulsed along the new arterial plexus, supporting an incredible diversity of vegetation. The native plants from hundreds of worlds had been
genetically adapted so that they could all be sustained by the same nutrient fluid. The end creation was a wild river of jungle winding its way through the shrinking city, curving down to parks
along the old off-ramps and intersections in a strangely exotic three-dimensional growth curve that nature could never produce.

Nigel could still remember meeting with the bunch of crazy artists who’d begged him for the opportunity to do something other than the standard flatten-and-replant policy that gripped so
many of the Central worlds’ shrinking cities. He’d agreed, not just because such a revamp might well be a truly spectacular art statement, but as a kind of acknowledgement of how
different their environment could become. It was also an oblique tip of the hat to the enigmatic Planters, who had left behind truly huge hybrid organic constructs on the worlds they’d
visited. Nigel’s Dynasty had finally cracked their nanotech inheritance, adapting it into the biononics which the Commonwealth knew. Biononics gave any and every user command of the very
molecules which made up their own bodies, as well as making new generations of replicators possible. Ironically, the technology incorporated within the bots was now also rendering whole swathes of
New Costa obsolete.

Yet, for all its population was reducing on a daily basis, New Costa was still home to over a hundred million people. The residential districts with smaller mass-grown drycoral homes where all
the low-level company workers used to live had been reduced and turned to parkland connected to the synergistic freeways. But the districts with the larger mansions and elegant condos – those
round the fringes of the city, away from the worst industrial excesses – still remained. That was where the majority of people lived now.

Nigel had an estate in the heart of the Cromarty Hills, two hundred square miles of manicured gardens and immaculate old-style parkland on the edge of the megacity. The palace in the very middle
was a ludicrous anachronism now, effectively a single-building town that had been capable of accommodating his entire household. That was back when he had a vast immediate family and an entourage
of managers and lawyers – all of whom had their own staff – who would travel between his lordly residences on many planets, settling for a few months in one then moving on like some
royal procession in medieval times. A life lived in a fashion which made the old French Sun King seem cheap and small.

The estate’s smartcore ran a final check on the capsule and its solitary passenger as it decelerated across the threshold. Enlightened he might be – relatively speaking – but
Nigel was still quite assiduous about his privacy. Especially on this day.

His u-shadow directed the capsule to land outside the lake house. A lake three miles long and two wide, with islands of rock pinnacles whose crests were covered in a thatch of verdant
vegetation. They’d taken years to craft and carve from local rock, and as far as cost was concerned, it was trivial compared to the sum his CST co-owner Ozzie had spent converting an asteroid
into his habitat home. The only normal, flattish island was in the middle, with a semi-circular white marble pavilion structure above the shore. Most of the island was well-tended forest, but it
had a lush verdant lawn stretching between the water and the building. That was where the capsule came down.

‘Who’s here?’ he asked the smartcore as he stepped out onto the lawn. Weeping willow leaves rustled softly in the warm El Iopi wind that blew out of the heart of the continent.
The humidity was as strong as always. He started to perspire almost at once.

‘There are forty-two Dynasty members currently in residence, along with a hundred and seventeen associates and estate personnel. They are occupying twenty-six buildings. As requested, the
lake house is empty, as are all buildings around the shore.’

‘Good.’ Nigel put on a pair of mirrorshades and squinted up into the sky. The glare point that was Regulus was poised above the rolling mountain crests and sinking slowly. It would
be night in a couple of hours. ‘I will be having a visitor in three hours. Their starship will be diplomatic coded. Let them through the security screen on my authority. Do not inform anyone
else of their arrival.’

‘Understood.’

Nigel hurried inside where the aircon would be on and he could get ready.

*

Five hours previously, Nigel had been on Nova Zealand, a Central world that just about qualified as H-congruous. Recella, one of his great-great-great-granddaughters, was
getting married for the first time. As Nigel had two hundred and thirty-eight children (that he knew of), it wasn’t exactly a rare event. But her mother, Koloza, was on the Dynasty board and
had also signed up for the latest colony project. Family obligation . . .

It wasn’t unknown to receive a call from the
High Angel
, just extremely rare. CST had discovered the alien arkship in orbit around the gas giant Icalanise back in 2163. It looked
like an unusually regular asteroid, except for the twelve giant crystal-roofed domes on stalks sticking out from the rocky surface. Closer inspection of the transparent domes revealed that they
contained cities. It was a Raiel ship, though there were other species living in the domes. At the time, the Raiel didn’t reveal what the
High Angel
’s purpose was; that only
became clear four hundred years later, once the
Endeavour
was turned away from the Wall stars around the Void. The Raiel had built
High Angel
, and countless other arkships, to
evacuate representative populations of sentient species from the galaxy should the Void begin its terminal expansion phase.

Ever since first contact, the Raiel had enjoyed excellent diplomatic relations with the Commonwealth, even propagating New Glasgow, a dome city on
High Angel
for humans to live in.
Then, after the
Endeavour
encounter, the Navy had been invited to join their observation of the Void. The Raiel didn’t release any of their advanced technology, despite numerous
requests, claiming they didn’t want to disrupt the Commonwealth’s natural sociotechnological development. Even with constant contact, they remained an enigma.

‘Accept the call,’ Nigel told his u-shadow. The wedding ceremony itself was over by then, and the relatively modest reception had just begun. Koloza had hired an entire resort
village in the Fire Plain, a crater in the arctic surrounded by active volcanoes that heated the land to tropical levels.

‘Thank you for talking to me,’ the
High Angel
said courteously in a smooth male voice.

Nigel grinned as Recella and her new wife took to the open-air dance floor; both girls looked blissfully happy. Somewhere beyond the resort’s armed perimeter, the cries of mighty
dinosaur-equivalent creatures rolled across the swamps. ‘You knew I would. Who refuses a call from you?’

‘Ozzie has been known to.’

‘Of course he has. What can I do for you?’

‘I would like you to meet a Raiel representative. She wishes to discuss an important topic with you.’

‘Interesting. Why didn’t she just call me direct?’

‘Your unisphere is relatively secure. However, I would expect the Commonwealth Navy Intelligence office to monitor all calls originating from me, especially one from a Raiel.’

‘Fair point. All right, I’ll meet her. Where?’

‘We would suggest somewhere that affords some privacy.’

‘I know just the place.’

*

After he’d taken a spore shower, Nigel got dressed in the lake house’s master bedroom, choosing a simple pale brown silk suit with a semiorganic lining that
contracted snugly round him. Check the mirrors to see blond hair that was still pleasingly thick, though he could do with a cut. Jaw nicely flat, cheeks not too rounded. His one concession to
cosmetic sequencing was green eyes; otherwise he’d kept his own features. Unlike everyone else these days, he didn’t hold his biological appearance in his twenties, preferring
mid-thirties to give a touch of maturity. Even today people passed judgement on purely visual clues. It mattered not that his brain was genetically and biononically enhanced beyond anything nature
could ever achieve, and the ancillary lacuna now stored every memory from his life; before such advances he’d had to edit entire decades from his mind each time he underwent rejuvenation to
avoid the inevitable clutter confusion such an excessive accumulation of experience produced. But today, with secondary routines handling recollection, every day of those thirteen hundred years was
instantly available – every mistake, triumph, love, heartbreak, political manoeuvre, discovery, disappointment, wonder and grubby deal that made his personality what it was.

‘The Raiel ship has entered Augusta’s atmosphere,’ the estate’s smartcore told him.

‘Thank you. Let it land, then shield and screen the estate. No exceptions.’

‘Understood.’

The interior of the marble lake house always made Nigel think of some Scandinavian church. It was all down to the high vaulting ceilings and plain lines, complemented by simple curving furniture
in white and grey. It was as if the place wasn’t quite finished, but they’d started using it anyway. The principal lounge had a big arched window wall looking out across the dark water
beyond the shore. The centre of the glass parted to allow Nigel out onto the lawn.

Trees from Illuminatus had been planted on the rock pinnacle islands; at night, after Regulus had departed the sky, their bioluminescence came alive, crowning the islands in a soft blue and
purple phosphorescence. Long reflection ribbons shimmered across the water like icy flames, the only visual beacons guiding visitors down.