Ayla knew that she was born for the ocean, and not the skies.
She was wearing dark synthetic polymer pants this morning along with a lustrous white top with red-accented sleeves that came partway down over her hands. The shirt’s fitted hood was raised to conceal her black, chin-length, shaggy hair, and the ring was tucked away on the inside. She was not wearing her typical spaceport shocksuit today because the man who escorted her from the Accipiter Hawk to the HMS Beagle let her know—politely, though instantly—that it would not be permitted on the dirigible, and subsequently waited patiently on the dock while she went back and changed.
The man had some of the most interesting and exaggerated features Ayla could ever remember seeing. She was surprised when she finally admitted to herself that she found him strangely handsome despite such a distinctive appearance, and although he looked powerful enough to break human femurs with his bare hands, his disposition seemed entirely docile. Considering the nature of the meeting she was about to have, Ayla concluded that the man gave the perfect impression: professional and accommodating, but quietly austere.
Although she felt she should probably follow him in silence, she wanted to use the opportunity to see what she could learn about him—or more importantly, about men in his position. She wondered how much he truly understood about his condition, how much he was able to think for himself, and frankly, whether or not he was at all intelligent. She brought up the matter of the shocksuit, presented the theory she’d formulated while changing out of it that the airship used a flammable gas—probably hydrogen—in order to float, and therefore anything that could generate a spark was probably not a very smart thing to bring aboard. Instantly, Ayla regretted saying something that she feared the man would not comprehend, but was surprised when his response came without hesitation. If the airship’s envelope were filled with hydrogen, he explained, any leaking gas would flow safely upward rather than accumulating inside the gondola where it could be inadvertently ignited. The same was true of other lifting gasses such as helium, ammonia, methane, neon, and nitrogen. Additionally, the gondola was electrically grounded, so it was unlikely that a spark would travel upward toward the envelope. All that said, the HMS Beagle did not use any of the aforementioned gasses. Instead, the airship in which her meeting was to take place was kept afloat by a complete lack of all gas—or rather, by a vacuum sphere. Lacking the mass (and hence weight) of the gas itself, a near-perfect vacuum produced approximately 7 percent more lift than hydrogen and 16 percent more lift than helium, making it more effective than any lifting gas could ever be. Historically, the problem with vacuum-sphere airships was that the structure required to resist the outside pressure imposed by the vacuum would end up being too heavy for the vacuum to lift—much heavier than a structure designed simply to contain concentrations of gasses such as helium or hydrogen. The envelope of the HMS Beagle, though, was a molecularly assembled, extremely lightweight, and atomically perfectly carbon-lattice sphere that got stronger the more outside pressure was exerted on it, thus easily supporting what was believed to be the very first—and possibly still the only—large-scale vacuum sphere airship on the entire planet.
With that, the man stepped humbly aside and allowed Ayla to precede him on the gangplank. She did her best not to appear as incredulous, dumbfounded, and embarrassed as she actually felt while she waited on the forward deck for the man to withdraw the walkway, then pilot the airship back up to its reserved position beneath the dome.
Shortly thereafter, Ayla was astonished once again as the room she was escorted to was as decadent a space as she had ever experienced. Underfoot was a magnificent and intricate starburst pattern pieced together out of various-colored grains of the closest material to real wood she had ever seen. There was a standing-height table in the center of the room—also seemingly wooden—that Ayla initially thought was designed to look like the random cross section of an irregular tree trunk, until she recognized the shape from Costa’s nautical charts as the continent of Africa. The glass walls around her sloped outward so that one could lean forward and look out over almost the entire multitiered marketplace below, and the light coming in was both filtered and diffused so that the room had a warm and bright feel.
The office felt spacious, but more for its lack of furnishings than for its actual volume. Ayla judged it only a small fraction of the entire volume of the gondola, and couldn’t help but wonder what else went on up there.
She believed the man standing on the other side of the desk was Jumanne Nsonowa. He was tall, thin, rigid, and easily the blackest man Ayla had ever seen—almost certainly pure African, if the pigmentation was natural. In startling contrast to the man’s skin tone were bright white curling and looping tattoos that started below his eyes, meandered across his cheeks, and continued all the way down into his black silk dashiki, evoking both a primitive mask and a partial skull recovered from an ancient burial ground. Although he was facing her—even looking directly at her—he did not appear to see her. His hands were behind his back and his eyes glittered as though reflecting a spectacular pyrotechnic grand finale; however, Ayla knew that the photons did not come from an outside source, but from his contact lenses. The man’s bald scalp bulged with an array of evenly spaced nodes that appeared to be joined by silvery subcutaneous filament.
Ayla was not sure she could bring herself to interrupt whatever it was the man was doing. She pulled her hood back simply to give herself something to do, and to create some commotion she hoped the man would notice. The glittering in his eyes gradually faded, and the way he cocked his head at her indicated that his attention had returned to the here and now.
“Ayla Novik,” the man said with very careful enunciation. The tone of his voice fell somewhere between a cello and a double bass, and even in four short syllables, Ayla could detect the heavy African influence. “Welcome to the HMS Beagle.”
“Thank you,” Ayla replied. She tried to smile but was conscious of the fact that what she actually conveyed was probably much closer to bewilderment at her unfamiliar surroundings than true congeniality.
“I prefer to stand,” the man declared, “but I will have a chair brought in for you if you would like to sit.”
“No,” Ayla said immediately. Allowing this man to literally look down on her even more than he already did would not be a very strong position from which to negotiate. “I prefer to stand, as well.”
“Very good,” the man said. He invited her to approach the table with a graceful gesture. When he placed his palms on the smooth, rich surface, Ayla saw that his wrists, hands, and fingers were tattooed in a manner similar to his face. She expected the surface of the table to illuminate with the man’s workspace—perhaps even for a holographic interface to resolve into sharp focus—but the desk remained both analog and static. To all appearances, it was simply an intricately carved slab of lumber.
Ayla joined the man in the center of the room, and as he did not offer his hand, she likewise kept hers to herself. Her eyes involuntarily darted up to Nsonowa’s scalp, then back down.
“It is a BCI,” he explained. “A brain-computer interface. My grandmother was a pioneer in the field of neural interfaces.” He examined her head, presumably searching for evidence of nodes of her own. “Have you ever tried one?”
Ayla shook her head. “I’ve seen them, but no, never tried one.”
“It is primitive compared to what the Coronians now use, but I’m afraid that I am too old to adapt to new technology.”
The man did not look to be much older than early to mid-forties, but it occurred to Ayla that these people were so far removed from her world that it was possible they aged at an entirely different rate. For all she knew, he might have been be sixty, eighty, or a hundred twenty. If the Coronians had found a way to stop the aging process, it was even possible that he could be functionally immortal. At this point in her life, Ayla considered herself pretty well traveled, but she couldn’t begin to imagine the kinds of places and things this man
had seen.
“I’ve been admiring your ship from below for years,” she said. She knew praise was no way to preface a negotiation, but it was all she could think of to say. And the notion that she might be in any position to negotiate at all was probably delusional, anyway. She was on his ship—a guest in his exotic floating world—and she had no doubt that if there was a deal to be made here today, he would almost certainly be the one to dictate the terms. “I must admit, I never thought I’d actually get a chance to see it up close.”
The man smiled in a way she could tell was well rehearsed. It seemed more tolerant than any genuine indication of warmth. “We are very pleased to have you on board.”
“Do you mind if I ask you something, Mr. Nsonowa?”
“Please, call me Jumanne,” the man said by way of consent.
“This table,” she began, “and the floor. They aren’t real wood, are they?”
“They are real wood, yes,” the man told her. “But they are not organic wood.”
“What do you mean?” Ayla asked. “What’s the difference?”
“Do you know what a molecular assembler is?”
Ayla’s eyes reflexively widened before she had a chance to check her reaction. “You have an assembler?”
“Indeed, we have several,” the man said—pleased, yet somehow not quite arrogant. “That is how we are able to exist up here almost entirely autonomously.”
“Which leads me to my next question,” Ayla said. She gave the man a look that was both expectant and hopeful. Nsonowa nodded in a way that told her she had not entirely exhausted his patience just yet, but that she was one step closer. “Why do you live all the way up here? Why not just lease space in the port like everyone else?”
“I imagine it is for the same reason you make your home out on the sea,” the man responded. “So I do not get my throat slit in my sleep. I think we both would agree that staying alive is well worth the trouble.”
“So you don’t live up here to get around local laws?”
The man’s face went from pleasant to slightly circumspect. He took a brief moment to study her before responding. “To which local laws do you refer, Ayla Novik?”
“The local laws that prohibit human trafficking.”
“Ah,” the man said. His smile returned, but Ayla could tell from his eyes that its meaning had changed. “So now we are talking business.” A few pixels illuminated on the periphery of the man’s pupils, but he appeared to ignore them. “I assure you that we are subject to all the same laws up here as those below.”
“Then how do you do what you do?”
Nsonowa regarded his guest for a moment as though considering where to start. “How familiar are you with the Maldive Islands Spaceport human trafficking statutes?”
“Familiar enough to know that what you do should get you banned.”
“If that is what you think, Ayla Novik, then you have not read them carefully enough. You see, MIS defines human trafficking as the trade of Homo sapiens for profit.”
“I hope you’re not about to try to convince me that you don’t do what you do for profit.”
“Whether or not it is for profit is of no consequence,” the man said. “What is important is that you and I are the only Homo sapiens aboard this ship.”
Ayla looked at the man with overt cynicism. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” the man said, “that the rest of my crew is Homo neanderthalensis, or what are commonly called Neos.”
Ayla narrowed her eyes at the man. She pointed at the door behind her without turning. “Are you telling me that that man out there isn’t human?”
“Theta is human,” Nsonowa assured her, “and he is a man. But he is a man of a different human species.”
“Theta?”
“It is his designation. Theta 1138. His version, followed by a sequential serial number.”
“So the way you get around local laws is by cloning,” Ayla stated. She didn’t intend for her tone to be as accusatory as it probably sounded.
“Not I,” the man said. He pointed a long, slender finger upward. “The Coronians do the cloning. I only do the negotiating.”
“Why would the Coronians want to clone Neanderthals?”
The man touched his fingertips together in front of his chest. “The Coronians are not just interested in the future of the human species, Ayla Novik. They are also interested in the past.”
“I don’t understand,” Ayla admitted as she shook her head. “If that man is a Neanderthal, why is he so . . .”
“Intelligent? Articulate? Civilized? Indeed, Theta is all of these things, and many more.”
“Shouldn’t he be more like a—I don’t know—like a caveman, I guess?”
There was a touch of patronization in the man’s smile. “The common perception of Homo neanderthalensis is very much untrue. They are not only more physically robust than we, but they also have a larger cranial capacity, which means that with the right education and training, they are capable of greater intelligence, even without neuroprosthetics.”
Ayla looked at her host with poorly concealed skepticism. “If Neos are stronger and smarter than we are, then how do you . . .” She took a moment to search for the right word. “How do you control them?”
“A very good question, Ayla Novik.” The man put his hands back down on the table. “You see, our Neos are cultivated without biological autonomic nervous systems. Their heart rate, respiration, digestion, salivation, perspiration—all of their automatic functions—are controlled by a neural implant, and that implant is controlled by us. Do you understand?”
Ayla took a moment to internalize what she was hearing. “I get that,” she said, “but how does that help your clients?”
“Those who come to us seeking protection are fitted with a vital sign monitor calibrated to their Neo’s implant. In order to keep himself alive,” the man said, “your Neo must keep you alive.”
“So what about things like . . .” She hesitated and looked at Nsonowa in a way that invited him to speculate as to what she was getting at.
“Sexual impulses?” the man offered.
“Something like that,” Ayla said. “What would prevent him from enslaving me? As long as he kept me alive, he could do anything he wanted, right?”
“Our Neos do not produce standard testosterone,” the man explained. “The properties that increase bone density and musculature are enhanced while the properties that promote sexuality are almost entirely eliminated. Our Neos are as close to asexual as it is possible to be.”
Ayla nodded. She bit her lip and ran her finger along the horn of Africa. “What kind of money are we talking about here?”
The man’s eyebrows went up. “Money?”
“Currency. Caps. Watts. What’s today’s market price for a Neanderthal clone bodyguard?”
The man lifted one side of his mouth in a curious smile. “You cannot pay in caps, Ayla Novik. You must know that the energy you possess originally came from the Coronians, so why would they ask for it back?”
“Maybe the caps are for you.”
“I can assure you that those who work for the Coronians also have no need for caps.”
“Then what do you and the Coronians have need for?” Ayla asked. “Are you going to tell me how this works, or shall I keep guessing?”
“Since the Coronians do not need power, what they ask for instead is a favor.”
Ayla gave the man a long, narrow-eyed look that she knew conveyed her misgiving. “What kind of a favor?”
“That we do not yet know. But it will be a favor that you are in a unique position to deliver.”
“Bartering seems a little old-fashioned for the species of the future, doesn’t it?”
The man wagged his finger. “Not old-fashioned, Ayla Novik. Opportunistic. You see, the Coronians may have all the energy of the sun, but what they do not have is physical presence down here.” He illustrated by drawing a circle on the table and dotting
it in the center. “They can never touch the earth as we do, which means they can never shape and sculpt it as we can. They can only compel and coerce others into doing what they cannot do for themselves.” He placed his fingertips back on the table and leaned forward. “Whatever they ask you to do, Ayla Novik, it will be an expression of their will, and for however long it takes, you will act as their eyes and as their hands.”
“How will I know what it is?”
“We will contact you through the same channels you contacted us.”
“When?”
“When we are ready.”
The man’s hands returned to their position behind his back, which Ayla inferred was an indication that their meeting had just come to an abrupt end.
“Well, they’d better make it quick,” she said. “I don’t know how much longer I can hang around this place.”
“As you say,” Nsonowa said, “it will be quick.” His eyes began to fill with light once again. “Please wait on the forward deck. After we have docked, Theta will escort you back to your ship. It was very good to meet you, Ayla Novik. Be safe.”
Ayla started to turn, but stopped. The man no longer seemed to be registering her presence. “Let me ask you one more thing,” she said, but this time she did not wait for his consent. “How do you really control them?”
The sparkling in the man’s eyes faded, which Ayla knew meant that he was about to give his immediate surroundings his full attention once again. He watched her for an uncomfortable moment, then raised his eyebrows. “Do you feel I was dishonest with you?”
“There’s either something you’re not telling me, or you’re going to have a very bloody revolt on your hands any day now.”
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