Fallen Fragon

by Peter F. Hamilton

  It wasn't until they got back to the hotel room that their muscles began to protest at the way they'd been abused. Ankles and calves ached as they stiffened up. Lawrence's shoulders throbbed as if they'd been bruised, which he could only put down to the way he'd pushed himself along with the poles. With laughter tinged by winces they stripped off and got into the bath together. Soaping each other down was an erotic foreplay that quickly evolved into full sex, sending water all over the floor. Drying each other in the big soft towels had the same effect. Then they moved out into the main room, where the bed waited invitingly.

  After their third bout of lovemaking they ordered a huge room-service dinner, complete with iced champagne. The mattress was too unstable for them to eat in bed, so they sat in front of the veranda window wearing big toweling robes and tucked in.

  "Those slopes are going to look beautiful after sunset," Roselyn said.

  The instructor had told them that when Amethi moved into the umbra the runs were all illuminated by orange and green lamps. Skiers themselves wore red and white torches on their helmets. It was as if the whole valley side was invaded by swarms of dancing starlight.

  Lawrence took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "We'll see it. Our last days here are in the conjunction night. We'll be good enough to be using the main slope ourselves by then. They say that when we're in the heart of the umbra, Nizana is like a flaming halo, as if the sun's set the edge of the atmosphere on fire."

  "I can't wait."

  They took the half-empty bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates back to the bed. Lawrence lay on the mattress, a flute of champagne in one hand, the box of chocolates in reach of the other, and Roselyn curled up beside him.

  She squirmed around for a moment until she was perfectly comfortable, then said, "Go on then."

  "Thanks." He kissed her brow, and told the room AS, "Access my personal file, entertainment section, and play Flight: Horizon, series six, episode five. Give me the standard third-person view edit."

  "Happy now?" Roselyn asked.

  She always watched Flight: Horizon with him, though he was pretty sure she was humoring him rather than developing any deep interest in the crew of the Ultema. "I am, thank you," he said with dignity. She snuggled in a fraction closer and took a sip from her own flute as the credits rolled and the signature tune began its fanfare.

  Eighty minutes later the Ultema had managed to prevent a planetary collision that would have wiped out three sentient alien species. One of the species was furious with this interference in their glorious destiny as angels of the apocalypse and came gunning for the starship with some very nasty weapons. Three of the crew had been killed before the end, two of whom had just got engaged.

  "Seven crew in three episodes," Lawrence said in dismay. "That's as many as in the whole of series four."

  "Oh dear." Roselyn's lips were pressed together to hold back her giggles. She attempted to put on a grave expression. "That's not good, then?"

  "It doesn't help their chances, no."

  "Oh, poor baby." She wriggled around until she was on top of him and gave him a wet kiss while she giggled.

  Lawrence played stubborn.

  Roselyn laughed outright. "Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that you take it so seriously."

  "I used to take it very seriously. They were good role models when I was younger. It meant a lot to me then. Now it's like having old friends around; I can appreciate it without adulating it. You showed me there's more to life than the i's. But I still claim it's a pretty good show."

  "Oh, Lawrence." She turned back to give the big sheet screen a remorseful look. "That was nasty of me. I sometimes forget how different our backgrounds are."

  "Hey." He stroked her back gently. "You couldn't be nasty if you tried."

  "Except to Alan."

  Lawrence sniggered. "That wasn't nasty; that was funny."

  "True." She lay down beside him, their faces a couple of centimeters apart. "And you were right, Flight: Horizon isn't a bad influence for a growing boy."

  "Well, I'm growing out of it now. Damn, taking an administration class at university. That's about as far away as possible from what I used to want."

  "No, it's not. Command qualities are the same no matter what fancy name you stick on them. And it will be a damn good basic if you ever change your mind and go in for officer training."

  "Ha! Training for what? Dad said it: we just run a passenger service. You should know, you've been on it. I wanted to be a part of exploring the galaxy, pushing back the frontiers. That's all over, now."

  Roselyn propped herself up on an elbow to look at him. "This is what I can never understand about you, Lawrence. You always tell me how much you hate McArthur for shutting down its exploration program. Yet you never talk about anything else but staying here and making your contribution to Amethi, to the company. That's dichotomous to the point of schizoid, especially for you."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "If you can't do what you want here, then leave and do it somewhere else."

  "There is nowhere else," he said in exasperation.

  Her perplexed look was equally impatient. "Well, not apart from Earth with its half-dozen exploration fleets, no."

  Despite the warmth of the room and her body, the lazy fizzing of the champagne in his blood, Lawrence was abruptly cold and terribly alert. What she'd said simply wasn't true. Because it contradicted his whole world, everything he'd known and done since that hot-tempered day when he'd ruined the fatworms. "What did you say?"

  "That you should go to Earth and sign on with another company if you feel so strongly about all this."

  His hands closed about her upper arms, squeezing hard. "What other fucking companies?"

  "Lawrence!" She looked from his hands up to his face.

  "Sorry." He let go. Tried to haul in his temper. It seemed to be as intense as his fright. "What companies? Are you telling me that someone is still running explorer fleets?"

  "Of course they are. Zantiu-Braun is the biggest space-active company of all, but Alphaston, Richards-Montanna, Quatomo are all still funding missions. None of the fleets are as big as they used to be before everyone started their asset-realization atrocities, but they still send out starships to survey fresh stars. And Zantiu-Braun has its portal colonies as well."

  "Somebody's still founding colonies?" His voice had dropped to an aghast whisper.

  "Yes. Lawrence, didn't you know any of this?"

  "No."

  "Shit." She was giving him a very troubled look. "Lawrence, I..."

  "I want a full datapool trawl," he told the room AS in a flat voice. "Get an askping to pull all the information you can on current interstellar exploration. Specifically, the activities of the Alphaston, Richards-Montanna, Quatomo and Zantiu-Braun companies."

  "There are no files on current interstellar exploration," the AS reported. "All information pertaining to current human starflight activities concern commercial flights and asset-realization missions."

  Lawrence emitted a punch-drunk snort, astonishment momentarily overcoming his anger. "He lied to me. He fucking lied. My father lied to me. That bastard."

  "Lawrence?" Roselyn reached out tentatively, her hand touching his shoulder.

  "This whole world is a lie. Everything I'm doing is a lie. Nothing is true." He jumped off the bed as if it had burned him, standing with every muscle tense. "I could be doing it right now. I could be on Earth at an officer academy. And what am I doing? I'm taking fucking administration. That's what I'm fucking doing. And I was so pleased about qualifying I celebrated. Celebrated! Sweet Fate ..." His fists rose up, searching for something to strike. Something to punish. The rage felt superb, making everything so clear.

  "Lawrence, calm down."

  '"Why?" he shouted. "I've been calm for four years. Which is what he wanted. That piece of shit. That's what McArthur's rigged this whole world to be—nice, quiet, obedient little drones doing as they're told to boost share prices."
>
  "Lawrence, please." Roselyn was close to tears. "Stop it."

  The hurt in her voice tripped every defensive reflex he had. Roselyn should never be upset; that was his reason for being alive. "Okay." He held his hands up, a conciliatory gesture. "Okay, you're right. This isn't you, you're not to blame." He hunted around the room, not knowing what he was looking for. Nothing here, that was for sure. "We're leaving. Get your stuff together."

  "Lawrence, we can't leave."

  "I have to." He lowered his voice, almost pleading. "Roselyn, he lied to me. He lied so big he warped the whole world around me. He trashed everything I wanted, everything I was. Can you understand that?"

  She nodded slowly. "What are you going to do?"

  "Ask him—no, make him—tell me the truth. I want to know if Amethi university degrees qualify me for another company's starship officer academy. I want to know how to get there. I want to know how much it costs. I want to know."

  * * *

  They caught a taxi from Templeton airport. Lawrence told it to drop Roselyn at her dome first, then take him on to the Newton estate. It was midafternoon Templeton time when he finally got home, and he'd been traveling for nearly twenty hours. Changing his flights around had been relatively easy. The airline was used to people leaving Orchy early with injuries that had put an end to their skiing, and passenger manifests were drawn up to accommodate last-minute additions.

  Full-spectrum lights were shining above him as he walked into the estate's main temperate dome, filling the vast enclosure with a harsh glare. The sun had fallen below Temple-ton's horizon days ago as Amethi's orbit carried it toward inferior conjunction. Somehow, the artificial lighting always seemed wrong to him, as if the engineers were using the spectrum of a different star altogether.

  Faint multiple shadows fanned out around him as he walked along the stone path. The red-and-gold climbing roses that swarmed up the pillars on either side were beginning to fade, shedding their petals across the ground. As he walked along, he heard the shouts and whoops of his siblings playing in one of the sunken lawns, so he made a right-angle turn at the end of the rose walk, taking a longer route to the house, making sure he avoided them. He didn't want anyone to know he was back. It was strange, but he still felt protective toward his siblings. They were too young to know what kind of person their father really was. That childhood innocence should be preserved: it was too precious for him to ruin in the flare of temper and reckoning.

  When he got to the landing he heard the soft murmur of voices coming from the study. He knew his father would be in there at this time, although it was unusual for someone else to be with him.

  The door was partially open. Lawrence edged closer, careful not to make a sound. His father was one of the people in the room; he knew that cheerfully confident voice anywhere. The other was female. He thought it was Miranda, the latest junior nanny, another awesome beauty in her early twenties.

  "... not even make it to the ski slopes," his father was saying in amusement. "The two of them away together for a week. Hell, he'll come back screwed senseless. I'll probably need to send an ambulance helicopter for him."

  Miranda giggled. "That's what you wanted. You said."

  "Yeah, I know. Damn, she's good at her job. Cheap at the price. And those legs of hers; have you seen them?"

  Job. The word echoed silently around Lawrence's brain. Job?

  "Yes, I've seen," Miranda said. "Why? You like?"

  "Oh yeah, I definitely like. I'm tempted to pay for a month with her myself afterward."

  "What? His girlfriend? That's really kinky, Doug. Besides, my tits are much bigger than hers. You said you like that. You always say you like that."

  "So? I'd have the two of you together. That way I get the best of everything."

  "Together?"

  "Yeah, I love a good dirty threesome. It'd be quite something, watching you and her going to work on each other."

  "You know, I think I'll enjoy that. Roselyn always looks so sweet It would be fun to fuck her. I bet she'd be really hot if you press all the right buttons."

  Without the name Lawrence could have forced himself to believe they were talking about someone else. That this was some ludicrous, appalling coincidence. Two other people going on a skiing trip. A different girl his father fancied. Someone else. Not them. Not him. Not Roselyn.

  Lawrence's trembling fingers pushed at the heavy wood door. His father was sitting behind the desk, with Miranda perched in front of him. The front of her dress was unbuttoned, allowing her breasts to spill out Her right nipple was pierced by a diamond stud. Doug was slowly licking the bud of erect flesh. He looked up in dismay as the door swung back to reveal Lawrence standing there.

  Miranda gasped and hurriedly pulled her dress together.

  "Son?"

  It was the first time Lawrence had ever seen his father flustered. The guilt and shock simply didn't belong on that ever-assured face.

  "Oh, boy. Listen, what we were saying..."

  "Yes?" Lawrence surprised himself by how calm he was. "What, Dad? It's not as bad as I think? Is that what you're going to tell me?"

  Doug's political control came back with a rueful grin. "I don't suppose I can, really."

  "You bought her."

  "It's a little more complicated than that."

  "How? How is it complicated? Did you pay for her?"

  "Lawrence..."

  Lawrence took three fast paces into the room, bringing him up to the desk. "DID YOU PAY FOR ROSELYN TO SCREW ME, YOU PIECE OF SHIT?"

  Doug flinched back from the fury. "Look, you were losing it, all right? Your school grades were rock bottom, you didn't have any friends, the psychiatrist said you were borderline emotionally retarded, unable to connect with the real world. I was seriously worried. I am your father, however good or bad I am at it."

  "So you bought me a whore."

  "Son, you had to realize how much Amethi has to offer for someone like you. I couldn't have you throw all that away. And she connected you. Call her what you like. Blame me for the way you met, and I admit it was pretty low. But look at you now, look what she's done, how much she's straightened you out. You're top of the class, you play in all the A-teams, outside school you're the one everybody socializes with. She's shown you how much there is to life here. I promise you I never lied when I said I was proud of what you've achieved."

  "Of course you're proud. I became exactly what you wanted. Why did you ever have me, Dad? Why didn't you just clone yourself?"

  "Son, please, I know this isn't easy. I mean, hell, I never thought you would fall for her quite like this."

  "Why not, she's hot, remember? What else was I going to do, a loser like me?"

  "Lawrence, you'll get over this. Admittedly"—he shrugged reasonably—"you'll probably hate me forever, but I can live with that, because I know I did the right thing."

  "No, Dad, you did not do the right thing." Lawrence turned round and walked out.

  Lawrence didn't know how he got there. He didn't even know when he got there. But sometime later that day, or week, or year, he stood outside the door to the O'Keefs' apartment. Even when it finally came into focus and he recognized where he was, he took a long time before he brought his hand up and knocked.

  It was a gentle rap with his knuckles. Lawrence barely heard it himself. He knocked harder. Then harder still. He pounded on the door, seeing it shake in the frame.

  "Open up!" he screamed. "Let me in!"

  The lock clicked back and he stopped hammering. His hand hurt. Drops of blood welled up on his grazed knuckles.

  Lucy O'Keef opened the door. "Oh. Lawrence. It's you." Her shoulders sagged, presumably with remorse. "Your father called me earlier. He said you..."

  "Where is she?" he growled.

  "I don't think this—"

  "WHERE IS SHE?"

  Roselyn eased her mother to one side. She must have been crying a long time for her eyes to be so red.

  At that moment, she'd never looked
more vulnerable and adorable. He stared at her mutely. There was nothing he could bring himself to say. Because he knew now that it was all true. And the one thing he couldn't stand was for her to have to say it to him.

  He walked off back down the corridor to the elevator.

  "Lawrence." Roselyn came out of the apartment, following him. "Lawrence, please, don't go."

  He walked faster. Then he was running. His hand slammed on the little silver button set in the wall. Mercifully, the elevator door slid open straightaway. He stepped inside and pressed for the lobby.