Saturn's Children Read online

  “I might.” He plays a brief chord progression. “Can you make yourself scarce for a few hours?”

  I drain the pitcher and feel the weight in my digestive tract. “How many do you need?”

  “Make it three: I have to make inquiries.” He takes my empty pitcher and lobs it across the bar, straight into Milton’s third hand. “I’m going to miss you, girl.”

  I shrug. “It beats the alternative.”

  “Sure it does. Vamoose!”

  I vamoose.

  IT IS NOT easy to hide in a town where you are twice as tall as almost everyone else, but I have had lots of practice; when big-headed munchkins with huge dark eyes point at you and shout “Ogre!” wherever you go, you learn fast, especially in the unpoliced frontier boonies. This is not a large town, but like all Venusian stratosphere dirigibles it has infrastructure spaces—the interiors of the oxygen-filled lift cells, the skeletal support frames beneath the flooring—and I have learned them. I work my way down from Victor’s lounge to the lowest level of the oxygenated zone, tweak my metabolic cycle, and exit via an air lock into the vast shrouded spaces of the dirigible frame.

  I often come here off shift. I bring my pad and do my mail, view movies, browse wikis and strips, try to forget that I am the sole one of my kind on this world.

  I’m comfortably holed up in one of my private refuges—a niche between the number four lift cell and the transparent outer skin, with an ocean of padded balloons to rest upon and a view across the cloud-scape below—when my pad itches for attention. I lean back against the membrane, letting it cushion me, and focus on the letter. It’s from Emma, one of my wilder sibs. I haven’t heard from her for a while, I realize, and check my memory: nearly six hundred and some Earth days, to be precise. Which is odd, because we normally exchange letters every fifty or so.

  I conjure up her imago as I last updated it. She’s a honey blond model with cascading ropes of hair, symmetric high cheekbones, brown eyes with just a slight hint of epicanthic fold, and just a faint metallic sheen to her skin; as perfect and obsolete a model of beauty as any of us. But her imago looks slightly apprehensive, reflecting the emo hints encoded in her letter. “Freya? Hope you’re doing well. Can you call me back? I have a problem and could use your help and advice. Bye.”

  I make the imago repeat the message with increasing perplexity. Just twenty words, after all this time? I’m on the edge of replying, saying as much, when I check the routing and see she’s mailing via the central post office on Eris Highport. Anger dies: Her brevity makes sense, but her location is puzzling. What’s she doing out there? I wonder. Eris is way out-system, nearly twice as far out as Pluto. Eight light-hours! That’s a long way for one of us to go. Normally we don’t venture into the deep black, there’s nothing of interest to us out there. Emma and I, and a couple of others, we’re the exceptions, willing to travel off-planet—as long as there’s somewhere civilized to go to at the other end.

  No lineage is identical, and Rhea’s Get are prone to diverging from baseline faster and further than most (that’s what happens when your specifications are obsolete and your template-matriarch is dead). Even so, one of our norms is a weakness for centers of civilization. Last time I heard from Emma, she was on Callisto, working as a guide on skiing holidays across the icy outback. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that she’s fetched up in one of the Forbidden Cities, and elapsed transit time might explain the long silence, but even so ...

  “Emma, I’m moving shortly. What can I do for you?” I squeeze the message down tight, then wish it up to the post office and try not to wince when I hear the transmission cost. Her reply will get to me eventually, but it’s a pricey correspondence to maintain. For a moment I consider going to see her in person, but such a fancy is ludicrous: the energy budget, not to mention the flight time, would be astronomical. Tens of thousands of Reals, if I travel in steerage—probably millions if I want to get there in time to be of service.

  Having replied, I try to relax on my bed of balloons; but I’m too disturbed to get comfortable. Nobody else loves me enough to call, and the Domina’s threat preys on my mind. So ugly, to fall victim to an aristo’s boredom! I need to get out of here. Even if I have to indenture myself to do it? Maybe it is that urgent. I came to Venus thinking I could make a fresh start, but I haven’t made a fresh start here, I’ve just floated from one dead-end job to another, empty-headed and lonely. Has it really been nine Earth years? I must have been mad! But there’s nothing here to stay for. Time to fly away.

  DOWN NEAR THE ill-lit, cramped confines of the arbeiter barracks where the slaves sleep in racks stacked six high, I have a room of my own. It’s not much, but it’s got the basics: power point, inflatable bed, printer, maintenance toolkit, wardrobe. It’s somewhere to sleep, and dream, even though I try not to do too much of the latter—I’m prone to recurrent nightmares. I rent it for a huge chunk of my wages, and keep it as unfurnished as possible—the mass tax is fierce, and I have found public amenities cheaper than private—but it’s still the nearest thing I have to a home. There isn’t much I want to take, but still, it’s where I keep my graveyard. And I’m not going anywhere without that.

  I thread my way back through swaying fabric tunnels slung across the windswept empty, up ladders and power rails and down tracks. It’s dirty and hot, the atmosphere poorly controlled compared to the grand ballrooms and gaming salons. This is the abode of the maintenance crews who keep this airborne pleasure palace pleasing to the aristos in their staterooms on the promenade decks. The small fry live here, one deck up from the barracks of the slave-chipped arbeiters.

  My room is one of a stack of former freight containers, welded together and carved into apartments by some long-forgotten construction mantis. Some of the apartments are the size of my two fists, while others occupy multiple containers. They sway slightly when the town activates its steering turbines to avoid turbulent cloud formations: the aristos of the Steering Committee call us “ballast” and joke crudely about casting us loose if the town runs into a storm.

  As I climb the ladder to my front door, I hear a faint scrabbling sound, the chitinous rasp of polymer feet on metal decking. I tense, instantly alert. It’s coming from my room! Has one of Stone’s sibs come after me already? I move my head, listening, trying to build up an acoustic picture. Something is moving around inside. Something small and scuttling, with too many legs. Not Stone, I realize. I resume my climb, quietly and fast, and ready myself on the narrow balcony beside the door. There’s a mechanical padlock—I sealed it myself—and sure enough, someone has etched through the shackle. Flakes of white powder coat the body of the lock where it dangles from the door latch. The intruder is still moving around inside my room, evidently not expecting to be disturbed. I listen briefly, and as my “visitor” rustles around near the printer, I yank the door open and jump inside.

  My room’s a mess: bedding ripped apart, printer overturned and leaking working fluid, cached clothing strewn everywhere. The culprit squats in the middle of the chaos. I haven’t seen its like before: six skinny arms, a knee-high body bristling with coarse fur, three big photoreceptors spaced around a complex mandible assembly. It’s clutching my graveyard, the lid open as it whiffles over the soul chips of my dead siblings. “Hey! You!” I yell.

  The intruder swings its head toward me and jumps to its feet, and all its fur stands on end as it electroshrieks a blast of random microwave noise at me. Clutching my graveyard, it darts between my legs. I sit down hastily and grab it, pinning it to the floor. It’s about the size of one of the medium-sized canines my True Love’s species used as companions, back before they made us, and it shrieks continuously, as if it’s afraid I’m going to kill it. Which I just might if it’s damaged the graveyard. “Drop it!” I tell the thing. “Drop it now!” My fingertips prickle where they touch its fur, and I realize they’re sparking. Maybe it doesn’t have ears? It looks weird enough to be a vacuum dweller, oh yes.

  The thing writhes briefly,
then flops limply beneath my hand. I grab the graveyard and hurriedly put it behind me. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” I demand.

  It doesn’t reply. It doesn’t even move. A thin, acrid smoke rises between my fingertips. “Oops,” I mutter. Did I break it? I take my hand off its back and stare. The fur is coarse and feathery, and as I inspect it, I see dipolar recursion. Okay, it is a vacuum dweller—and a loud one. It has no lungs, but a compact gas bottle and a reticulation of power feeds that show that it has adapted itself to a temporary excursion down-well. This is just too weird. I pick up the graveyard and inspect it. It doesn’t seem to be damaged, but I can’t be sure, short of loading every one of its occupants, one chip at a time. Later, I resolve, slipping the case into my battered shoulder bag. “You’d better not have damaged it,” I warn the supine burglar, then in a moment of vindictive pique I kick it across the room. It stays limp until it hits the opposite wall, but then it emits a blindingly loud pulse of microwaves, folds its legs and arms, and blasts straight at my face.

  “Fuck!” I duck as it whooshes overhead, straight out the open doorway on a blast of highly illegal exhaust. The gas bottle’s not for respiration, it seems. I spin around just in case, but it shows no sign of coming back. Instead—is that a rip in the wall opposite? Whoops. Yes, it is. The little burglar just punched a hole in the outer membrane of the town. The crew won’t be happy about that, I figure. Better get out of here. I scramble down the ladder, and, carrying all of my dead sisters’ soul chips in a shoulder bag, I go in search of whatever deal Victor has lined up for me.

  Telemus and Lindy

  VICTOR’S DIVE IS barely busier than it was before I vamoosed, but there’s a stranger sitting in with Victor, and Milton nods me over as I step in the door. “Ah, Freya,” says Victor. “I’d like you to meet Ichiban.”

  Ichiban—Number One, I translate—turns blue porcelain eyes the size of dinner plates on me and bows his head, very slightly. I nearly take a step back as a reflex yells aristo! at me, but then I realize: no. He wants to look like an aristo, but he isn’t one—never can be. “I am very pleased to meet you,” I say, bowing back at him. Mindless courtesies ensue as I try to get a handle on what he is.

  “Ichiban has a minor problem that you might be able to help him resolve,” Victor explains. “It involves travel.”

  “I’d be very happy to offer any advice I can,” I agree cautiously.

  “Yes.” Ichiban nods thoughtfully. “You are very big.” He looks up at me. It’s true: I’m almost a hundred and seventy centimeters tall. An idealized replica of our Creators’ kind, in fact, unlike the super-deformed midgets who are the commonest phenotype of the nouveau riche these days. “Good thermal inertia,” adds Ichiban, unexpectedly. “And you were designed for Earth, before the emancipation.”

  Good thermal inertia? I smile as my biomimetic reflexes cut in: my cheeks flush delicately, signaling mild embarrassment or confusion. Emancipation? What’s he talking about? “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow,” I say.

  “My sponsors have an object that requires transportation from the inner system to Mars,” Ichiban says, then pauses delicately.

  So why talk to me? I wonder. Travel isn’t my strong point—it’s too expensive for those of my lineage to indulge in frequently. When you double the dimensions, you multiply the volume by eight—and hence the mass and the energy budget required to make orbit. I’m twice as tall as the next person: That’s largely why I’m stuck here, and the solar system is a playground for chibi dwarfs instead of real people. I summon up a mask of polite attentiveness to conceal my disappointment.

  “It is currently being prepared on Mercury and needs to depart in approximately eighty days. Our problem is that the object is a delicate research item of considerable value. It requires supervision and must be maintained in a shockproof environment under conditions of constant temperature, pressure, and oxygenation.” He continues to stare at me. “I believe others of your type have on occasion worked as escorts or couriers, yes?”

  Where did he get that from? I boggle briefly. “My archetype was indeed designed as an escort,” I say cautiously. Escort for what? I leave unsaid, just in case. Certain prejudices die hard.

  “As an escort for organisms of a strictly biological variety,” Ichiban agrees, nodding amiably. “Pink goo replicators.”

  I try to hide my shock. “What exactly is this research artifact?” I ask.

  “I am not able to tell you that.” Ichiban is still smiling faintly. “The details have been withheld from me for reasons of commercial confidentiality. However, I am authorized to pay for your immediate steerage passage to Cinnabar, if you will agree to meet with my colleagues and consider their assignment.” He raises a warning finger. “You are not the only contractor we are approaching. This is a task of some delicacy—our competitors would be delighted to disrupt this project— so there is no guarantee that you will be chosen. But I understand you require off-world transportation in any event, so it is my hope that we may help each other.”

  They want me to transport a biological sample? A living one? I almost reel with shock. “I—I would be delighted to help,” I stutter on automatic. “But—in steerage?”

  Ichiban’s smile fades slightly. “It will cost us dearly to put those big limbs of yours in orbit,” he warns. Which is to say, Don’t push your luck.

  I nod, resigning myself to the inevitable. A walkabout berth would be too much to hope for. “When do you want me to leave?”

  Ichiban glances at Victor. “Immediately,” he says. “You will come with me now.” And the interview’s over.

  ICHIBAN HUSTLES ME out a back alley I didn’t know about and up a steep companionway to a road where there’s a waiting rickshaw, drawn by a pair of ponyboys who give me a walleyed glare when I get in. It creaks under my weight, but Ichiban seems unconcerned. “Fly,” he tells the ponyboys, and they’re off at a trot, tails held high.

  I notice a couple of small ornithopters tracking us. “Are they yours?” I ask.

  Ichiban gives me a bland look. “Leave them to me.” He leans back in the seat and closes his eyes. A few seconds later one of the birdbots begins to smoke and veers wildly off course. The other gives us a more cautious berth.

  We turn down a side passage and draw up outside a spacious boat bay, where a tiny gondola is waiting beneath a semi-inflated gasbag on the other side of the air lock. “What’s this?” I ask.

  “Best to get you out of town as fast as possible: Get in.” Ichiban gestures at the gondola. “It’s got power and feedstock. Make yourself comfortable; it’s going to be your home for a while.”

  I examine the thing doubtfully. It’s a snug cocoon of struts and wispy padding, sitting atop a cylindrical power and feedstock adapter, with some kind of grapple under the seat. I probably outweigh it three to one. “You expect me to wear that all the way to Mercury?”

  “Yes.” He smiles blandly. “Your lift arrives in just over an hour.”

  “My—” I stop, with one leg already half-inside the cocoon. “You’ve bought me a lift ride?” I can’t help it: I end on a whine.

  “Of course.” It’s Ichiban’s turn to look slightly bemused. “How else did you expect to reach orbit this diurn?”

  I sit down gingerly and slide my other leg into the cocoon. It’s beginning to sink in. Take it, my memories urge, and I cave. My gas-exchange system is too well designed to surge; but were I of my True Love’s species, there would be damp palms and thudding heartbeats in profusion. I don’t know what I expected: a leisurely jet ride to one of the equatorial stations, perhaps, then a slot in a scheduled launch. But we’re near the north polar plateau, and that would take time. Ichiban’s backers have bought time on an orbital pinwheel, and even now it is cranking its thousand-kilometer-long arm into position, ready to dip down into the stratosphere and grab me like a floating blossom on the breeze. I lie down and let the cocoon suck me in. This has got to be costing them thousands, I realize. More than an aristo-c
lass berth. “How do I talk to—”

  “Your cocoon will tell you everything you need to know,” says Ichiban, turning away. The glittering tattoos on his shoulders and arms wink at me as he walks off.

  “Hello!” The cocoon squeaks breathlessly. “I’m Lindy! Thank you for choosing to travel with my owners, Astradyne Tours! What’s your name?”

  Source code preserve me, she sounds enthusiastic. As if I need that. “I’m Freya,” I admit. “Are you—”

  “Hello, Freya! I’ll be your spaceship for today! Are you comfortable? Feeling tense? I know how to deal with that! Let me give you a massage? I hope you don’t mind, but I see you’re a classic design! Do you have any cavities? Ooh! A gas-exchange lung! I’d better pack it well! I need to install a few probes; don’t worry, I’ll make it feel good—”

  Lindy chatters away breathlessly as her probes nuzzle and squeeze into my orifices, filling my intimate spaces front and rear, top and bottom. It’s not the intromission that offends—she is considerate and lubricious, the pulsing sense of congestion pleasant after so long without intimate contact—but I find her personality annoying. It’s like being molested by a sleeping bag that speaks in Comic Sans with little love-hearts over the i’s.

  “Ooh, that’s a big colon you’ve got! Does it go anywhere? It’s a long time since I’ve been inside one of these! Here, I’ll just hook your visuals up, and you’ll be snug inside me. How’s that?!?”

  A brief lurch, and I can see out again. She’s hooked my eyes and ears and output line up to her sensorium, and now I can see that I’m lying on the deck, cocooned inside her white tube as she squeezes slippery packing foam into all my internal spaces. It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic. I lie back and stare up at the underside of Lindy’s balloon. I wonder what my True Love’s kind would have made of this means of transport: Probably most of them would have fled screaming at the impersonal sense of violation, but a few . . . “When do we launch?” I ask, trying to ignore the warmth filling me.