by Neal Asher
"Let's go," Patricia said softly.
A sharp-edged circle about five meters in diameter cleared to one side of the flaw passage, offering them a view of the Way. They seemed to float high above the lanes of traffic and the gate terminals. The ineffably glistening line of the singularity glowed hot pink just beyond the bow; for the moment, there was no sensation of motion.
Patricia turned to look back at Olmy, Lanier and Farley. Lanier smiled at her; she smiled back. Despite everything, this was kind of exciting. She felt like an indulged and pampered child, visiting a party of very peculiar adults.
We're the larvae, they're the butterflies, she thought.
Within a half hour, the flawship was moving so rapidly—just over 104 kilometers per second—that the walls of the Way became a slick blur of black and gold. They had already traveled some 94,000 kilometers and were still accelerating. Ahead, the flaw pulsed deep red. Patricia felt Farley's hand on her shoulder.
"It's amazing how much this is like a party on Earth," Farley said. "Not in Hopeh, but in Los Angeles or Tokyo. I went through Tokyo to get to Los Angeles, and then on to Florida ... There were quite a few receptions. The embassy party..." She shook her head and grinned. "Where the hell what the hell are we, Patricia? I am very confused."
"They're people, just like us," Patricia said.
"I just don't—can't always believe what's happening. Inside, I go back to when I was a little girl in Hopeh, listening to my father teach. I escape."
Bringing Ramon Tiempos de Los Angeles to read...
"All parties get boring after a while. I'd rather be working," Patricia said, "but that wouldn't be sociable. Olmy wants us to be sociable."
Suli Ram Kikura approached them, looking concerned. "Has anybody offended you?" she asked. "Or made improper offers?"
"No," Farley said. "Patricia and I are just watching."
"Of course ... you're getting tired. Even Olmy forgets these necessities—sleep and rest."
"I'm not tired," Patricia said. "I'm very alert, in fact."
"I, as well," Farley agreed. "Perhaps 'dazed' is a better word."
"You may seclude yourselves any time you wish," Ram Kikura said.
"We'll just stay in the bow and watch," Patricia said. She floated with legs crossed in a lotus, and Farley did likewise.
"We're fine," Farley said to the advocate. "We'll rejoin everybody shortly."
Ram Kikura tracted aft to a group of neomorphs challenging each other with complex puzzle-picts.
"It's not a bad place to be," Farley offered after a few minutes of silence. "These people aren't cruel."
"Oh, no," Patricia said, shaking her head. "Olmy is helpful, and I like Kikura."
"Before we left, she was talking to Garry and me about our rights in selling historical information. Or exchanging for advantage, she called it. Apparently we can access all sorts of valuable private data banks for what we have in our memories."
"So I've heard," Patricia said.
After an hour, Patricia, Heineman and Carrolson secluded themselves at the rear of the cabin. The Frant fended off the curious as they napped. Lanier and Farley were too wired to relax; they remained at the bow, watching the corridor race by. At the midpoint of their journey, after accelerating at just under six g's, the flawship was traveling some 416 kilometers per second; it then began to decelerate.
In another two hours, the flawship had slowed to what seemed a crawl, only a few dozen kilometers an hour. Below, many of the broad silver-gray disks flew majestically above the lanes. Four large twisted-pyramid structures were discernible in the distance: the terminals covering the four gates to Timbl.
Two homorphs joined them—slightly more radical models of Olmy's ilk, self-contained and largely artificial. They were dressed in blue-and-white body-suits that ballooned dramatically around the calves and forearms; one was female, though her hair was cut much like Olmy's, and the other was indeterminate. They smiled at Patricia and Farley and exchanged simple picts. Patricia touched her torque and replied; Farley flubbed her answer and made them laugh good-naturedly. The indeterminate one stepped forward, a Chinese flag suddenly picted above the left shoulder.
"We have not met," it began. "I am Sama Ula Rixor, special assistant to the President. My ancestors were Chinese. We have been discussing morphology of those times. Miss Farley, you are rare, are you not? You are Chinese, yet you have Caucasian features. Is it that you have had ... what they called cosmetic surgery, available even then?"
"No..." Farley said with some embarrassment. "I was born in China," she said, "But my parents were Caucasian—''
Patricia tracted away from the stern, toward Lanier, Carrolson and Heineman. Ram Kikura glided up to them and indicated they would be leaving the flawship soon; a V.I.P disk shuttle was already leaving the gate terminal to take them aboard.
Heineman was questioning Olmy about the identity of the Frant that had accompanied them, suspicious that it might have changed places with one of the nine other Frants riding with them. "It looks different. Are you sure it's the same Frant?"
"They all look alike when they're mature," Olmy said. "Why does it matter?"
"I just want to know where I stand with somebody," Heineman responded, reddening.
"It's really not important," Olmy said. "Once they've homogenized and passed current memory to each other, one can take up where the other leaves off."
Heineman wasn't convinced, but he decided it wasn't worth pursuing.
The V.I.P transportation disk was as wide as the flawship was long. It ascended to within thirty meters of the axis, surface crawling with glowing sheets of charge picked up in the plasma field. The glow slipped away from the disk's upper surface like phosphorescent sea foam, and a circular opening appeared in the center.
The flawship's hatches opened then, and the guests leaped out through the connecting fields in orderly pairs and triplets, hanging on to each other, tracting to the opening in the disk. Olmy took hold of Farley and Lanier and Lanier held Patricia; Ram Kikura took Carrolson's and Heineman's hands. Together, they flew with the rest of the group.
The disk was little more than an enlarged version of the cupolas that had covered the gates just beyond the seventh chamber; except for a webwork of glowing lines, it had no visible lower half, and to Heineman's consternation, no platform or support to rest on. The party simply floated in the space immediately beneath, suspended in an invisible and all-enveloping traction field which was in turn shot through with smaller visible fields. All that separated them from the vacuum—all that lay between them and the walls of the Way, twenty-five kilometers below—was a barrier of subtle energies.
Lanier saw several homorph and many more neomorph pilots and workers at the edges of the disk, segregated from the entourage. He watched a spindle-shaped neomorph weaving its way through purple traction sheets, followed by boxes from another section of the flawship. On the opposite side, the eight Frants also waited to disembark. Their own Frant had returned to its fellows and had already homogenized with them, rendering Heineman's question academic.
Lanier reached out for a tenuous purple traction line and twisted around to look at Heineman.
"How're' you feeling?" he asked.
"Lousy," Heineman said.
"He's a sissy," Carrolson said, a little pale herself.
"You should love this," Lanier chided him. "You've always been in love with machinery."
"Yeah, machines!" Heineman growled. "Show me any machines! Everything works without moving parts. It's unnatural."
The disk began its descent as they spoke. The clusters of passengers excitedly exchanged picts; Patricia floated with arms and legs spread, one hand grasping the same traction line as Lanier.
She stared down at the terminal, watching the disks enter and exit ports near the base from four directions. Many more disks waited in stacks like so many pancakes, or fanned out in spirals within a holding column.
The disk descended slowly, giving them plenty of
time to inspect the wall traffic around the terminal. Most of the lanes were filled with the cylindrical container-vehicles of many diverse shapes—spheres, eggs, pyramids and some of a blobby appearance, composed of many complex curves. Lanier tried to make sense out of it all, using what the data pillar had taught them, but couldn't—there was apparent order, but no easily discerned purpose. Patricia tracted in his direction.
"Do you understand all that we're seeing?" he asked her.
She shook her head. "Not all."
Ram Kikura broke from a cluster of brightly dressed homorphs and came their Way. "We'll pass through the gate in just a few minutes," she said. "You must know, if Olmy and the Nexus allow it, that I can make you very wealthy people."
"Wealth still means that much?" Carrolson asked dubiously.
"Information does," Ram Kikura replied. "And I've already picted with four or five powerful information distributors."
"Send us on tour like circus freaks," Heineman grumbled.
"Oh, give me some credit, Larry," Ram Kikura said, touching his shoulder. "You won't be abused. I wouldn't stand for it, and even if I turned out to be—what did you call them?—a scheister, Olmy would protect you. You know that."
"Do we?" Heineman undertoned as she departed.
"Don't be a grouch," Carrolson scolded.
"I'm being on my guard," Heineman said testily. "When in Rome, watch out for public restrooms."
Lanier laughed, then shook his head. "Hell, I don't even know what he means," he confided to Patricia. "But I admire his caution."
The disk was now level with a broad, low port in the eastern side of the terminal. The surface of the building was coated by a material resembling opalescent milk glass, with bands of brassy orange metal spaced at seemingly random intervals on the horizontal planes.
"It's beautiful," Farley said. Patricia agreed and then felt her eyes grow warm and moist; she couldn't be sure why. Her throat clutched and she wiped her cheeks as drops broke free.
"What's wrong?" Lanier said, edging closer to her.
"It is beautiful," she said, stifling a sob. Involuntarily, Lanier felt his own eyes moistening.
"We can't forget them, can we?" he asked. "Wherever we go, whatever we see—they're with us. All four billion of them."
She nodded rapidly. Olmy came up behind them and held an archaic and unexpected handkerchief over her shoulder. She took it, surprised, and thanked him.
"If you keep this up," he warned in a whisper, "you might be surrounded in a few minutes. We are not used to seeing people cry."
"Jesus," Carrolson said.
"Don't judge us on that basis," Olmy said. "Our people feel as strongly, but we differ in how we express ourselves."
"I'm fine," Patricia said, dabbing ineffectually at her eyes. "You carried this just in case we...?"
Olmy smiled. "For emergencies."
Lanier took the handkerchief and finished wiping her face for her, then waved the cloth through the air to catch a few stray drops. "Thank you," he said, returning it to Olmy.
"Not at all."
They entered the terminal. Within the hollow structure, beams of light outlined paths for vehicles to take. In the center, still perhaps a kilometer below them, was the gate itself—a vast, smooth-lipped hole leading into a featureless blueness.
"This is our second biggest gate, five kilometers in diameter," Olmy said. "The largest is seven kilometers wide and leads to the Talsit world at one point three ex seven."
"We're going down—through this one?" Heineman asked. The disk was already resuming its descent.
"Yes. There's no danger."
"Except to my mental health," Heineman said. "Garry, I wish I'd been a house painter."
They were directly over the gate now, but no detail was visible beyond the blueness. Five smaller disks moved in a squadron below, clearing a path for them. At the rim of the gate, hundreds of cylinders and other vehicles cascaded from the lanes in majestic, controlled fall.
Light guidelines rearranged to surround their disk in a column. When they had descended to a point where they were approximately level with the edge of the gate, Lanier suddenly made out details in the bottom, directly beneath. The Frant world was actually visible in the blueness, as if distorted in an old painting-on-a-cylinder that could only be seen when placed on a circular mirror. He could make out oceans, distant mountains black against an ultramarine sky, the
elongated and brillant orb of a sun.
"Jesus," Carrolson said again. "Look at it."
"I wish I wasn't," Heineman said. "Do you think Olmy has any Dramamine?"
The floating clusters of homorphs and neomorphs picted bright circles and bursts of color in appreciation. The disk vibrated, and the landscape slid smoothly into proper perspective. The guiding column of light beams vanished and they completed their gate passage, suddenly sweeping low over a dazzling white surface.
Lanier, Carrolson and Patricia tracted to a lower point of the disk, near the boundary of the webwork lines of force, so that they could see the horizon of the Frant world. To each side, lines of cylinders and other vehicles were spaced between hovering disks disgorging cargo. Lanier turned full circle, surveying the mountains and sea beyond the white-paved gate reception area. He had never seen a sky so intensely blue.
Like a blowtorch describing an arc in the sky, a meteor plummeted toward the distant sea's surface. Before it struck, a web of pulsed orange rays lanced out from the horizon and shattered the meteor. More beams sought out and destroyed the crazily weaving fragments. Only dust remained to hit the ocean or land.
"That's the story of their life, in a nutshell," Ram Kikura said, pointing to where the meteor had met its end. "That's why the Frants are Frants." She took Lanier's hand and then reached for Patricia. Olmy gathered the other three around them. "Come. We'll disembark soon. It's a bit heavier here; you'll need belts at first."
The disk came to its assigned landing area. The transparent fields beneath them rearranged as they approached the white pavement, and the webwork of bright lines reformed into a vortex.
"The President's advocate and the Director of the Nexus will go down first," Ram Kikura said. "We follow, and then the Frants, and then the rest."
Oligand Toller, Hulane Ram Seija and their aides—two fish-shaped neomorphs and three homorphs, drifted toward the center of the vortex and were smoothly deposited on the pavement beneath the disk. Olmy urged his group down, and they tracted along the same path, feet touching ground a few meters from the President's party.
After months in Thistledown and the Way, Timbl's pull was something of a shock, like suddenly being saddled with heavy bricks. Patricia's knees sagged and her leg muscles protested. Heineman groaned and Carrolson's face looked strained.
Bus-sized, square, low-slung vehicles rolled up on large white wheels. As each person entered, Frants wrapped lift belts around them to lessen the effect of the heavier gravitation. Neomorphs, practically helpless without traction fields, were given special full-float belts that could be adjusted to fit their wide range of shapes.
"You should enjoy this," Ram Kikura told them as the bus rolled off the white pavement onto a broad, brick-colored road. "We're going to the beach."
The Frant world, she explained, served as a resort for humans and several other oxygen-breathing beings in the Way. Because the level of ultraviolet from the bright yellow-dwarf star was higher than humans were used to, an atmospheric shield had been erected over several thousand square kilometers. The resort lay in the shield's shadow.
"The ocean has few large carnivorous life forms—none that would want to eat humans, anyway—and the environment is clean. It's ideal. The vacation spot of choice for all who can afford to go—which is virtually any corporeal citizen."
The resort's long, low main building was in an ideal location, fronting a broad white quartz-sand beach on one side of a half-moon harbor. Each room had a patio and transparent doors with a choice of undisguised real scenery or vario
us illusart displays. The furniture, in keeping with the Old Terrestrial motif of the resort, was real and unchangeable.
They ate lunch, their first meal on the Frant world, in a restaurant decorated in late-twentieth-century style, the food served by homorphs. Mechanical workers were not in evidence. After lunch, they walked to the resort buildings and Ram Kikura inspected their rooms carefully before letting them enter. They still wore their belts, though Lanier felt he was up to doing without. He would only remove his when Heineman did, however, and Heineman seemed content to leave it on.
Patricia looked around her room, then joined the others on Lanier's patio. Ram Kikura told them they could rest and swim for a few hours, and that she and Olmy would be nearby if they were needed. "They're taking a room for themselves upstairs," Carrolson said in a confidential tone after she had left. "I think they're lovers."
