Yuri gave her a modest shrug. ‘Immanueel is concerned that it shouldn’t just be corpus humans. It’ll be a council, with people revived from various arkships and eras. Yirella, of course. And Jessika should be able to bring a decent new perspective.’
‘Council? I think you mean a bureaucracy, don’t you?’
‘I found it quite reassuring. Even corpus humans, faced with a problem, instinctively form a committee.’
‘Presumably you’re going to be on it?’
‘I was asked. I have spent a lifetime in security, after all. And so have you.’
‘What? Oh, no. No. That’s not the mission I signed on for. I’ve done my part.’
‘And in doing so, built yourself a reputation: Saint Kandara. You know no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Besides, what else are you going to do for the next ten thousand years?’
‘A time I fully intend to spend in a corpus domain with an exceedingly slow time flow.’
Yuri’s lips flickered with a smile. ‘Saint Callum’s already agreed.’
‘Mary, colour me surprised. And Yirella? You said she’s on this committee?’
‘Yes.’ Yuri gave her a shrewd look. ‘Why? Don’t you trust her?’
‘Sure. I trust her.’
‘See, this is the kind of instinct we need on the committee.’
‘It’s not instinct, it’s . . .’
‘Prejudice?’
‘Fuck you. But have you noticed how everything Yirella suggests is inevitably what happens?’
‘Because she’s smart.’
‘So are corpus humans.’
‘They do have a reverence for her that I find a little disturbing. It’ll be good to have someone like you to act as a balance to her.’
‘Oh, Mary.’
‘Excellent. First meeting is in two days’ time. The species catalogue is available for you to access.’
‘You expect me to review six thousand four hundred species in forty-eight hours?’
‘They’re grouped into preliminary categories. But I expect we’ll be spending the first dozen sessions arguing what we do with the ones we really don’t want in a neighbouring star system.’
‘Sure.’
‘Then we have to decide what kind of human culture we want to establish when we do return everyone to Earth. With the power that corpus-level technology gives us, there will have to be restrictions on individual usage.’
Kandara just glared at him, not trusting herself to speak. As always, she wondered just how effective her gland was. ‘Right,’ she snapped.
‘Face it, who else would you trust with this? We are Saints, after all.’
London
Far Future
When he became conscious, Horatio screamed and screamed. His body fought the capturesnakes that were violating him, every limb conjuring up wild sweeping motions that strangely resulted in swathes of white cloth sweeping around him like sails caught in a storm. But even his frantic, terrified mind eventually realized there was something wrong about that – and there was no pain. He stopped thrashing and actually looked where he was: wrapped in a fresh white cotton sheet, in the middle of a big circular bed that curved up gently around him, preventing him from falling out. Two people were standing at the side of the bed, wearing stylish green tunics that marked them down as some kind of medics; their faces registered sympathy.
‘It’s okay,’ one said, smiling in reassurance. ‘It’s over. The capturesnakes are gone. You’re in recovery. And you’re doing fine. Just try and settle. Take as much time as you need. We’re here to help.’
Something about the tone infuriated Horatio; the medic was aiming for assurance but was hitting patronizing. Needs some proper empathy training. Which made him bark a laugh, because being offended at someone who’d saved him from the Olyix was about as dumb as you could get. So he did indeed settle, and steadied his breathing. ‘What happened?’
Again the smile that didn’t quite reach genuine sympathy. ‘You’ve been extracted from cocooning and re-bodied.’
‘Uh—’ What that should have been was: Gwendoline disobeyed the rules and sent security agents through to snatch you from the capturesnakes. It was touch-and-go for a while, but the emergency clinics here on Pasobla are the best. ‘Where’s Gwendoline?’
The two medics exchanged a glance. ‘Disorientation like this is common. I’d suggest you take a moment to prepare yourself for us to explain your status. But everything is going to be okay; I can’t stress that enough.’
‘I’m not disoriented,’ he said in a dangerous voice. His hands rose up – not to clench into fists. No. But then he saw those hands properly and focused on his skin. His youthful skin. A startled cry, and he was sitting up, pulling at the sheet, exposing more and more of his body. It was perfect – slim, nicely muscled, limb movements fast and assured, no joint pain. The body from nostalgic memory – the one he used to see in the mirror in the best days of late adolescence. ‘What? What?’
‘Take it easy.’
‘Don’t fucking patronize me!’ he roared. ‘Where am I? What’s happened?’
‘Okay. Simply put, the Olyix turned you into a cocoon. Then a long time later, you were rescued. Now you’re back in the Sol system, on a habitat orbiting Earth. Right now, there’s a huge ongoing operation to reseed the biosphere after the damage the Olyix siege of the cities caused. Our dear homeworld was in a new ice age when we returned, but our geotechnicians think they’ve initiated a self-sustaining reversal.’
‘Gwendoline,’ he whispered.
‘I’m sorry, but we don’t really have any information about your history. We don’t even know your name.’
‘Horatio. I’m Horatio Seymore. I lived in London. Right up until the day the Olyix returned.’
‘You’re doing well, Horatio. It sounds like your memories are integrated. Can you tell me who Gwendoline is?’
‘My wife.’
‘All right. Well, here’s the good news. We’ve established a family-tracing agency. If you can provide enough details, they should be able to tell you if she’s been re-bodied or if she’s still . . . awaiting the recovery process.’
‘She . . .’ He sank back down onto the curving bed. ‘She was on the Pasobla the day the Olyix returned.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry, then she won’t be in any of the Olyix ships the armada brought back. The Pasobla left Delta Pavonis successfully and became part of the exodus.’
‘She got away, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long ago?’ he asked softly.
‘It’s been a long time. The Olyix enclave – their home star – was a considerable distance from Earth.’
‘Just bloody tell me. How long?’
‘Approximately twenty thousand years.’
Horatio wanted to yell that they’d got that wrong, or he’d misheard, or . . . But he knew he hadn’t. Twenty thousand years. The tears came then, and he couldn’t stop them.
New York
Far Future
Ten years after their starship returned to Sol, the four of them finally portalled down to their homeworld to visit what had been New York’s Central Park, and would be again. The ground was still boggy from the seawater that had covered it until seventeen months earlier, so they stuck to the temporary pathway that had been laid out along the exact line of the mall, walking in silence. On either side of them, an army of pasty white synthetic bioforms, like squirrel-size caterpillars, were ploughing their way through the briny mud, amassing salt and other unwelcome oceanic minerals in bulging filter stomachs, leaving purified soil in their wake. Smaller, more mechanical, genten remotes skittered among them, examining the old tree stumps uncovered after Manhattan had been drained, sampling and analysing the wood, ready to replant the correct genus when the landscaping was complete.
When they reached the slope littered with the red bricks that had once been Bethesda Terrace, they paused and looked northwards. Skeletons of new buildings were spiking up into the chilly a
zure sky. The distant kilometre-high towers along the Harlem River were complete, home to the first batch of revived New York residents, while the rest of the city was still under construction, progressing south block by block.
Jessika took it all in, feeling a weird kind of nostalgia and pride. I helped these people. I did my job. Now I can finally live with them. Of course, it was always going to be a challenge rebuilding New York. As they came out of the re-life procedure – and a considerable amount of therapy – its old inhabitants set about doing what they did best: arguing loudly – about levels of authenticity, what to recreate, what to consign to history. A surprising number wanted something radically new, a statement of how they should face the future, while some, who took a long, difficult route to accepting their new existence, simply didn’t care.
She rubbed her hands against the cold, wishing she’d worn a thicker jacket. It was mid-August, but the winds blowing down from the glaciers covering the Great Lakes made summers here decidedly Nordic these days. But the ice was in retreat now, leaving behind a very different geography from what had been before.
Callum and Yuri had both gone in for the full rejuvenation process, spun off from the cocoon re-life procedure – itself a legacy from Neána biologic technology that she’d brought to Earth all those years ago. Jessika could only grin ruefully at the vanity her gift had enabled. Kandara, she was surprised to see, hadn’t tuned her appearance back to a perpetual twenties like the boys. She seemed content to settle in her biological forties, still imposingly physical, but with a whole tribal elder vibe going for her now. It helped that everyone on the planet knew who she was thanks to the legend of the Saints, and now her gatekeeper role in the alien assessment committee set up by the Alliance Parliament. People would stop and stare in nervous awe when they saw her, as if she might banish them to the other side of the galaxy as she had so many species.
I wonder if she’d do that to me? Jessika hadn’t confided to her friends – and certainly not to Kandara – but since the destruction of the Olyix enclave, she’d thought she was becoming more knowledgeable. There was information in her mind she was sure hadn’t been there before. Not some massive download triggered by the success of FinalStrike, but an awareness of more than she’d known before.
So perhaps Kandara was right all along, and there is some deep Neána control routine in my subconscious. Or maybe I’m just becoming as paranoid as ordinary humans.
‘You’re looking good,’ Jessika told Kandara. ‘Still got your peripherals?’
Kandara’s expression was contemptuous. ‘A couple of upgrades, yeah. I’m sure the corpus guys are doing a great job out there, blowing all the surviving Olyix shit up, but who wants to take the risk?’
‘They’ll never get close to us again,’ Yuri said. ‘Forty-two human settled worlds established. And fifteen hundred designated Alliance star systems beyond that, with another three thousand elected for potential bioforming. Now that’s what I call a solid boundary.’
‘You mean buffer zone.’ Kandara smirked.
‘Those stars might be part of the Alliance,’ Callum said, ‘but they’re going to belong to aliens once they’re fully bioformed. You don’t think that cages us in at all?’
‘Now that’s the Callum paranoia we all know and love.’
‘We have wormholes and portals stretching almost halfway around the galaxy,’ Kandara said. ‘We are not and never will be “caged in”. Stop thinking in pre-spaceflight terms.’
‘News from the frontier,’ Jessika said. ‘Another eight human habitat constellations have emerged to make contact in the last six months.’
‘I know,’ Yuri said.
‘Of course you do,’ Callum said, and saluted mockingly. ‘Adjutant-General, sir.’
‘Hey, they’re my headache,’ Yuri shot back. ‘We have to assess what kind of culture they’ve developed. Emilja was a little too successful with her breakaway neolibertarian movement. There are some very strange ideas on how people should live out there.’
‘Well, let’s just thank Mary she’s not around to hear you call it that,’ Kandara said.
‘Could be worse,’ Callum said. ‘They could be like the Jukuar.’
Even Jessika shuddered at the memory of last year’s crisis – the first quasi-military action the Alliance had been forced to launch upon one of their own.
‘Mary!’ a thoroughly pissed Kandara snapped, staring at Callum. ‘One mistake, out of over three thousand evaluations. Okay?’
‘It wasn’t a criticism,’ Callum mumbled.
‘How was my team supposed to know the adults could produce sub-species? The original Jukuar batch we revived agreed to the diplomatic framework of the Alliance, with all the non-aggression articles. Binding articles! They didn’t need to birth a soldier caste.’
‘Scorpions,’ Yuri said.
‘What?’
‘You all know the morality tale. Scorpions do what they do because that’s what they are. Jukuar families have their soldiers because that’s their nature.’
‘Yeah, well, we know that now,’ Callum said.
‘You can’t blame them.’
‘To analyse the Jukuar genetic code to an extent that showed us they have a selective sub-species breeding ability would be phenomenally difficult,’ Callum said. ‘We’re having enough trouble bioforming worlds for aliens with even moderately different biochemistry to ours. We’ve got to synthesize organisms from scratch to provide them with the nutrients they need.’
Kandara gave Jessika a thoughtful stare. ‘Be nice if we had some help. Any sign of the Neána showing themselves?’
‘No,’ Jessika said. ‘Not yet, anyway. But they will. One day.’
‘Well, they certainly know what we’ve done,’ Kandara said. ‘Every planet humans have settled in this crazy old Alliance of ours is broadcasting their opinions loud and clear across the galaxy. It makes the old solnet allcomments look sane. We’re well and truly in the post-Fermi Paradox era now.’
Callum chuckled. ‘So much intrigue, so many politicians demanding a democratic voice. He would have loved this, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ Kandara agreed. ‘He would.’
‘Damn right,’ Yuri said. ‘He was a DC man to the core.’
‘True,’ Jessika said, and looked around. To the south, along the markers for West 59th Street, the first few foundations had been sunk into the frosty black silt, displacing the old concrete pilings. Carbon girders were already rising up, assembled at impressive speed by genten construction remotes. ‘Do you remember when we were up there?’ she asked. ‘On the Connexion tower roof, looking down at all the people praying on this terrace?’
‘The birth of the incredible Calmissile idea,’ Kandara said.
‘Oh, bloody hell, will you ever let that go?’
Jessika laughed. ‘The missile that won the war.’
‘Is this why we’re here?’ Callum asked.
‘No,’ Jessika said. ‘We’re here to remember him. Because no one else will.’
‘He’s one of us, a Saint,’ Kandara protested. ‘Nobody will forget any of us. Mary, do I ever know that!’
‘But they didn’t know him, not like they do us. The four of us are practically the only government anyone can name.’
‘Us and Yirella,’ Kandara added gruffly. ‘If we’re Saints, she’s a fucking angel to the rest of the galaxy.’
Callum gave a sheepish nod. ‘What do you think we should do, build a memorial?’
‘Fuck no,’ Yuri said. ‘He would have hated that. He was a spook; he lived in the shadows. He lived for the shadows.’
‘It’s enough that we come here for him,’ Kandara said. ‘Not every year, that would be maudlin, and I’m not lighting candles or crap like that, either. But we will keep doing this when we can. He would enjoy the inconvenience it causes us, if nothing else.’
Yuri smiled. ‘Then here’s to the inconvenience of Saint Alik Monday, with thanks from the galaxy he liberated.’
Yirella2
London
Yirella loved the snow. Even after living on Earth for two years, she still relished going outside to experience it falling magically from the sky. That was why she insisted their house be on the northern edge of London, giving her a panoramic view of the subarctic landscape. In its new incarnation, the ancient capital city was an amalgamation of cosy villages, intended to provide residents a strongly knit community, which was essential for those recovering. For all they were now blessed with perfect new bodies and a post-scarcity interstellar civilization, the shock and abrupt transition from the invasion was overwhelming.
The village they’d settled in was called Lavender Hill. Homes were either solitary lodges, like theirs, or long stone terraces patterned in authentic Georgian style. The quaint architecture made her laugh, but the character did have a certain elegance, and it belonged in her mental image of London.
Standing in front of the curving bay window, she watched daylight fading from the comatose grey sky. The curving street outside was wide, with discreet lighting hidden amid the tall spruce trees. Snow had been cleared from the central pathway, but everywhere else it was a good thirty centimetres deep and compacted, while the boughs and twigs of the trees and bushes were varnished in tough ice. Autumn and winter lasted for at least seven months, and spring was often delayed. Everyone walked around wrapped in thick coats and long scarves, and moaned a lot about the cold. Yirella, who’d grown up in the tropics, relished all the snow and ice, the frozen lakes and frosted trees. For her, the vista was a romantic winter wonderland. Her only disappointment was that they were too far south to see the glacier that covered most of northern England.
It wasn’t an opinion Dellian shared. He never complained. But she knew.
A figure was moving cautiously along the central pathway, checking all the buildings. He stopped outside the lodge, staring up at it. Yirella used her direct meld with the civic net to pull basic information on the stranger. His name was Horatio Seymore. According to his file he was a London resident, captured in 2226, re-bodied a couple of years ago, and currently working as a therapist for newly restored kids – the most difficult cases.
The Saints of Salvation [British Ed.] Page 51
