Fallen Fragon

by Peter F. Hamilton

  "Glad to hear it. Just make sure the lock on that cave of yours works properly."

  "It does."

  Doug Newton shook his head in bemusement. "I'll say one thing, son, you never fail to amaze me. I take it she is real, not an i-program."

  "Of course she's real!"

  "Thank Fate for that. Does she have a name?"

  "Roselyn O'Keef."

  "Not sure I know an O'Keef family."

  "They're not an Amethi family, Dad. They just got here."

  "Really? Well, that means they have a decent stake then."

  "Is that all you care about, that they're rich or players?"

  "As it happens, yes, it does matter to me. But as we both know by now, what matters to me doesn't even register with you."

  "It does. It's just..." Lawrence didn't want to say the wrong thing right now. He'd never talked with his father like this before. All this honesty was almost making him feel guilty for earlier behavior. He supposed he had been slightly inconsiderate to his parents recently. But life here wasn't easy. They always seemed to want so much for him and from him.

  "I know." Doug held his hands up. "I'm an ogre. You think you're different to me? If you ever find the time to talk to your grandparents, ask them about the fun they had bringing me up."

  "Really?"

  "Like I said: if you ever talk to them."

  "Yes, Dad."

  "That's my son."

  As soon as he got home, Lawrence loaded her dp-code into his den's desktop pearl and asked the AS to connect him. Her face filled the sheet screen, smiling down at him. The faint freckles dusting her cheeks were the size of his palm. They talked for an hour. He called her another three times that day before finally going to bed to sleep. During the night, he woke up twice, reaching for her. In those blurred moments before he was fully awake he was unsure if she wasn't just a dream. It was a terrifying experience.

  Hilary Eyre High was in the center of its own dome, a three-story H-shape structure, big enough to provide firstclass educational facilities for fifteen hundred pupils. The ground around it was mostly sports fields, with a constant all-year-round climate, approximating the start of a temperate zone autumn. It was an unusual sight for kids who'd grown up in a city where each dome took pride in its horticultural layout. There were no trees at all, just a flat expanse of verdant grass, interrupted by various styles of slim white goalposts.

  Not quite as unusual, though, as the sight of Lawrence Newton standing on the steps ninety minutes before the new term officially started. Despite the weather, he'd driven his trike to school to make certain he wasn't late. Now he was shuffling his feet about impatiently as he tried to look at all nine 'tweendome tunnel arches simultaneously. Pupils were emerging from the twisting caverns to walk toward the school's glass entrance hall. Already, several groups were forming on the plaza outside, friends catching up with each other, sports teams bonding before the term's action, pupils behind on their coursework (usually Lawrence) desperately searching for a crib to download, in-crowds being cool together.

  He saw her easily enough even when she was a hundred meters away. Shouted and stuck his hand up, ignoring the curious glances. She saw him and smiled. Waved back. He ran over and they embraced in the middle of amused onlookers. That kind of public kissing was against school regulations. Lawrence didn't care.

  "You're here," he said dumbly.

  "Yes." She grinned around nervously. "I didn't have anything else to do today."

  They were attracting just too much attention for Lawrence to pretend to be blase. He put his arm around her, and they walked to the side of the steps.

  Roselyn said the trip from the hotel had been fine. The apartment in the Leith dome was okay, except for some problem with the building's network cables. They only had a few pieces of basic furniture, so her mother wanted to go around all the stores that weekend.

  "Are these clothes all right?" she asked, fingering her sleeve. She was wearing a long dark skirt, with a white blouse and jade-green sweater. With her hair held back in an enameled butterfly clasp it made her look very prim.

  Lawrence found the style arousing. "You look perfect." True, some of the other girls wore clothes that cost a lot more, but it sure as hell didn't make them more attractive.

  He saw Alan Cramley giving them a sideways look, focused more on Roselyn than himself. They shared a lot of the same low-grade classes, although Alan had recently turned into a soccer maniac and was actually quite good at the game, which gave him considerably more kudos than Lawrence in their year's food chain.

  Alan leered behind Roselyn's back and gave Lawrence a quick thumbs-up. Lawrence's immediate annoyance that anyone should disrespect his beautiful girlfriend in such a fashion was more or less canceled out by the gender bond approval. He'd never had that before.

  "So what do I do now?" Roselyn asked.

  Lawrence spent the rest of the morning taking her through registration, then showing her the layout of the building. He introduced her to as many people as he could—just about everyone he knew, actually. It didn't take him long to notice that with Roselyn by his side their greetings were warmer than they used to be, girls as well as the boys.

  After lunch in the canteen they went back to the entrance hall, which was housing the sign-up session for that term's sports and activities. Roselyn put her name down for badminton, track training, girls' soccer, piano and accountancy.

  "What are you after?" she asked brightly after they'd done a complete round of the tables.

  "Not sure," he mumbled. He'd never even been to a signup session before. They did another slow circuit of the hall. Software development was the first choice for extra studies: he reasoned that whatever he wound up doing in adult life, that would come in useful, and it would help supplement his coursework. There was a flight club, which almost made him say: "I didn't know this was here." Flying would be cool; he'd played enough i-simulations (normally involving alien fighters and dogfights) to know he'd enjoy the real thing, and the whole concept was still a powerful totem left over from his old ambition to pilot starships. He put his name down for it, which won a smile of approval from Roselyn. It was games that gave him a real headache. In the end he went for cricket, mainly because the training was the same afternoon as her soccer, so they'd stay behind together, but also because it was about the most nonenergetic game he could find in the syllabus.

  They had to part for the afternoon when classes started, but he waited for her in the entrance hall afterward and asked her home.

  "You should know," he said apologetically, "Mum's been badgering me to bring you back. I can put her off for a couple of days, but it's like trying to stop Barclay's Glacier from melting. It's got to happen sometime."

  "That's okay. I'd like to meet her."

  "You would?" he asked cautiously.

  "Yes."

  "Oh. Okay, good. Uh, I brought my trike. We can get home on that."

  "A trike? Lawrence! I've only got these clothes. I can't go outside."

  "I know. I'm not totally stupid."

  He led her down to the garage at the edge of the dome. His trike stood almost by itself in the rack, a small machine with two rear wheels powered by a hihydrogen combustion engine that was encased in metallic purple bodywork. A sleek elongated bubble of plastic gave the driver and passenger a degree of cover from the elements, although it was open along both sides. The three broad tires had deep snow treads, but even so he could never open it up beyond fifty kilometers per hour without risking a skid. Ten years ago every teenager in Templeton either had one or wanted one, but the Wakening had severely curtailed their use—yet another sign that Lawrence had been born into the wrong age.

  He dived into the bin beneath the seat and pulled out two pairs of thermal overalls. "See?"

  "Oh yes." Roselyn rolled her eyes. "Really useful when you're wearing a skirt."

  "Er..." Lawrence knew his face was coloring.

  "It's all right. I'll manage." She started to hitch
the fabric up.

  When she was riding pillion, with her arms tight around him, Lawrence steered them through the thermal cycle lock and out onto Templeton's roads. There had been a light drizzle of hail that lunchtime, which the snowplows had brushed away. The road surface was slick with antifreeze fluid that curdled with melted water, producing the dull shimmer of oil-rainbow patterns. Despite his thermals and helmet, he was glad of the bubble's protection. The wind chill was ferocious.

  Templeton's domes glowed with a steady opalescence under the low, forlorn gray sky. The cityscape had acquired a blunter, more industrial-looking architecture these days, appearing less complete than it had during his childhood. The delicate fringe of grass and raoulia plants scrabbling for life along the side of the roads had virtually disappeared. Concrete drainage ditches had been dug in the icy mud along every major route, with excavation mounds piled carelessly alongside. The only remaining signs of botanical life to be found were the rancid green streamers of algae that clotted the deep thaw channels slicing through the scree.

  Dome air intake vents were now all fitted with new filters to keep the powdery snow and sticky sleet out of the fans and heat exchange mechanisms, great boxy affairs of galvanized metal held together with crude rivets, standing on legs of steel I-beams. Similar ugly encrustations adorned the factories, additional shielding hastily erected over inlets and grilles.

  Worst of all, for Lawrence, was the rust. He'd never realized there was so much metal involved with the city's construction, blithely assuming its component parts were all sophisticated modern composite, held together with intricate molecular bonds. But they weren't: metal remained the cheapest and easiest method of fabrication. Templeton had been screwed, riveted, nailed, reinforced and bolted into a cohesive whole like every other human conurbation since the Iron Age. And now it was paying the price of that cheapness in Amethi's Wakening climate. Rust oozed from every structure. It was the city's sweat, exuded from a million filthy pores. Grubby red-brown stains dribbled and wept along each surface, sapping its strength in an eternal drip of oxidation.

  Lawrence was actually relieved when they turned onto the ramp down to the small underground garage that served his family's estate. There was nothing outside for him now. Amethi was squeezing the humans back into their ghettos of technology, veiling the landscape they aspired to conquer. One time at school, the teacher had told them how Scandinavian countries suffered the worst suicide rates on Earth during their long nights; Lawrence understood why, now. It wasn't just coincidence that the hours he spent with i-dramas and games had increased steadily since the Wakening started.

  The steps up from the garage opened out into the semiarid dome. Roselyn looked round at a desert of rugged rocks and white sand. Glochidiate and tomentose cacti of every shape flourished amid the wiry scrub grass, their umbellate flowers forming vividly colored crowns. Palms and fig trees encircled quiescent oasis pools where lizards baked on flat rocks around the edges. After the drive from school, the air was wonderfully warm and dry.

  "Doesn't anyone live here?" she asked.

  "No, the house is in the main dome. This is like an environment park. We've got six." He caught her troubled expression. "What's the matter?"

  She wouldn't meet his gaze, and if anything the question just upset her further.

  "Roselyn, please."

  She was suddenly in his arms, and crying. It was heartbreaking to see her so distraught. He felt as if he was about to cry himself. All he wanted was for her to stop. Every feeling he ever had for her was suddenly intensified. And even through the tears she was beautiful.

  "I promised myself I wouldn't do this," she sobbed.

  "Do what? What is it? Is it me?"

  "No. Yes. Sort of. What you are."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm being so weak. But nothing's stayed the same after Dad died. Everything's different every month. Sometimes it seems like I have to face something new every day. I hate it. I just want to stay in the same place and have a dull boring routine each day, just so it'll give me some stability."

  "Hey, it's all right." He stroked her back gently. "You're here to stay on Amethi, and believe me there's nothing more boring and routine than Hilary Eyre High."

  She still wouldn't look at him. "I checked up on you."

  "You did?"

  "Yes. Your family's got a seat on McArthur's Board, Lawrence."

  "Yeah. So?"

  "You didn't tell me."

  "Because it never came up. What's that got to do with anything?"

  "I thought... You're rich, and you'll have a million connections and friends here. I know how much society and position means to this world. And I just got here, and we're not rich. I thought I was your little bit of holiday fun. You've had me now. I thought that was it, I wouldn't see you again, and you'd be laughing about how easy I was to all your friends. And then you were waiting for me this morning, and..." Her tears had returned.

  He cupped her cheeks with his palms and gently tilted her head so she had to look at him. "I never thought that. I can't believe you thought it. Roselyn, you're going to have to put up with me for the rest of your life, because I'm never going to find anybody as wonderful as you. Never. And if anybody should be worried, it's me. You're going to take one look at all the jocks at school and realize what a mistake you've made."

  "No!" Her hand found the back of his head, and pulled him down for a kiss. "No, Lawrence. I don't want some brain-dead jock. I want you."

  They stood still for some time, arms wrapped around each other while the geckos and salamanders filled the dome with strange calls. Eventually, Roselyn smiled meekly and wiped her hand across her face, smearing the tear trails. "I must look a mess."

  "You look beautiful."

  "That's very sweet, but I'm not going to meet your mother like this."

  "Er... we can stop off at my den first, I suppose."

  Lawrence experienced a mild tingle of doubt as he opened the garage door. Looking at his den with Roselyn standing beside him, he was uncomfortably aware of how ... well, nerdy it must seem. His own private empire. As such it revealed a little too much about his real self.

  Roselyn walked into the middle, and turned a slow circle, taking it all in. "It's very—"

  "Sad? Egomaniacal? Tasteless?"

  "No. Just that it could only belong to a boy."

  Roselyn ran her hand along the back of the battered leather settee. She looked at Lawrence. He stared back.

  The bottom of the door hadn't reached the ground before they were tugging frantically at each other's clothes.

  "What do you do in here?" Roselyn asked afterward. She was lying along the settee, her head resting comfortably in his lap.

  Lawrence was still having trouble with the concept of a naked girl in his den. The two factors simply didn't compute. Although, now he thought about it, having sex in here had been severely exciting. The forbidden fruit syndrome. "I don't do a lot. It's just somewhere that I can come and relax, be myself."

  "Okay, I can understand that. There's times I wish my dearly beloved sisters never existed, and I was cooped up on a starship with them for a month. No escape. But what do you do, when you're being yourself?"

  "Nothing really interesting, I guess. I used to be quite into electronics and stuff. That's what most of the junk is, I just haven't got round to fixing it all. I do a lot of homestudy in here. Play a lot of i-games."

  "Like the Halo Stars?'

  "That's a new one, actually." He stopped, slightly abashed. But then he did have a nude girl half sprawled over him. You couldn't get more personal than that. "When I was younger, I'd spend hours watching my favorite show up on the big sheet screen."

  "What was it?"

  "I doubt you've heard of it. Flight: Horizon."

  Her nose wrinkled up. "I think I know the name. It's an old sci-fi show, isn't it?"

  "Yeah. About a starship exploring the other side of the galaxy. Amethi only imported one series, though. I'll never
know what happened to them, and if they made it home."

  "Why didn't you send a message to the distribution company back on Earth? It can't cost that much to get the other series sent."

  "I tried that a thousand times, but I never get any answer. I guess the company's folded."

  "Nothing is ever lost from the datapool, that's why it's expanded beyond its homogeneity globe. It's not that the original network design was faulty, people just kept adding so much memory capacity that the interconnectivity broke down. There are whole sections that are almost autonomous, other sections don't know what's in them, or even that they exist If you need anything slightly quirky these days, you've got to load in a dozen different askpings and hope one of them finds a metalink for you. When I was looking up Amethi, some of the data took days to get back to me. Nothing mainstream, just the peripherals, early survey reports, startup finances, that kind of thing. Specialist stuff. There are even rumors about closedpools existing, sections that only have internal metalinks, and their AS controllers don't know they're no longer linked to the outside."