A Night Without Stars

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Consequently, many Commonwealth citizens had generously volunteered to move back to Earth temporarily to help counsel the refugees as they acclimatized to their new circumstances. Florian had been deeply touched. More than anything, that proved the Commonwealth was a society where he truly belonged.

  ANA and the counsellors were helping to reunite families and friends. They were also diplomatically separating Eliters from former PSR officers, as well as keeping an eye on known criminals. Once things began to calm down, people had to make a lot of decisions. Commonwealth medical treatments could rejuvenate them, their Advancer gene sequences could be repaired and upgraded; biononics was a strong option. Education packages and training were available (probably a necessity if you wanted to live in a modern technological society). Then, of course, they had to face their final decision: where to live.

  At the Welcome Ceremony, the Commonwealth had formally offered the refugees their own planet, so they could live among people they knew and preserve what remained of their culture. Florian still grinned at the idea of that – Here, have an entire planet; we’ve got more than we need. After all, the Raiel had already found an ocean planet for the Vatni; and the Macule Units had been delivered to a fresh world, where their gene banks could re-establish their entire biosphere. A New Bienvenido was tempting to many, although every existing Commonwealth world had extended an open invitation to the newcomers.

  For himself, he hadn’t quite decided what to do and where to go. He’d spent the last couple of months in London, occupying a grand apartment in Kensington overlooking Hyde Park, sharing its luxurious rooms with his mother, Lurji and his wife Naniana, and his complete handful of a niece Zoanne. It was a blissful and addictive happy family life he’d never known before, with Aunt Terannia and Matthieu in the apartment underneath. Commonwealth medical technology had swiftly repaired Matthieu’s hands, and he was playing the guitar again. They’d all been avoiding thinking about the opportunities that now lay open to them, content with a quiet life.

  However, the Welcome Ceremony had made him realize it wasn’t a decision he could put off for much longer. There had been a moment where Timothy Baker had called Florian up onto the stage to shake his hand and present him to the assembled dignitaries. Apparently Baker was one of the oldest humans alive – a fact never more obvious than when you met him in the flesh. It had only been a brief handshake, a few private words, when the president had asked what he was going to do now. Florian had mumbled he wasn’t sure, and just knew he was being judged for saying that. ‘The Commonwealth can give you a good life,’ Baker had told him. ‘It’s up to you, of course, but take my advice: don’t waste it.’ And for an instant, the ancient man had looked terribly sad before smiling and greeting the next guest.

  Florian had managed to duck out of the official reception after an hour or so. Laura Brandt had pleaded, teased, and coaxed him along to a nightclub in Paris – only three trans-stellar wormhole stations and a quick teleport away. Who knew that Mother Laura was actually quite fun, and sassy, and friendly, and a good dancer? So here he was in some kind of medieval cathedral, sitting in a big curving settee that seemed to vibrate like a purring cat, with music that was far too loud and weird, semisolid lightblobs that oscillated their way through the air like angry sparrows.

  The sticky mauve cocktails with bubbling vapour that Laura ordered helped damp down the initial discomfort. By the third, he was quite chilled. It helped that Corilla had joined them on the settee. If anyone had learned how to embrace Commonwealth society, it was Corilla. She was busy telling them how she’d started her quantum physics degree at Oxford University when he caught sight of a tall blonde on the other side of the dance floor, wearing a very small black dress. She kept looking at him when the gyrating bodies parted. He was awarded a sultry smile.

  ‘Justine Burnelli,’ Corilla said with breathless excitement in his ear. ‘She helped get rid of the Void. She’s even more famous than we are.’

  ‘Really?’ News that the Void had transcended had always seemed slightly unreal to Florian – just another aspect of living in the Commonwealth with ten impossible things happening every day.

  ‘Very rich, too,’ Corilla said in a slightly slurred voice. ‘You should go over and say hi.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Laura said. ‘She’s like a thousand years old. I remember her from before we left the Commonwealth. Looks like a seraph, but she’s a real hardass. Her whole family is hardwired that way.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ Florian said – and now he, too, seemed to be slurring somehow. He’d almost said: thanks, Mother. But he’d made that mistake with Laura once already today at the Welcome Ceremony, and it wasn’t something you repeated. Besides, he couldn’t quite see her in the wholesome matronly terms history lessons at school portrayed; in her new re-life body, Mother Laura looked absolutely stunning, especially in a clingy scarlet dress with so many interesting splits. Shame she didn’t seem to like Corilla much. For some reason they were acting like rivals.

  ‘So do you know where you’re going yet?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘No idea. Still catching up with my brother. We hadn’t seen each other for years, you know. I like family life.’

  ‘Awww.’ Corilla smiled at him, her hand squeezing his leg in a sisterly fashion.

  He smiled back as she wobbled in and out of focus. A bot held up another silver tray of the mauve cocktails for them.

  ‘Cheers!’

  The three of them chinked their glasses and drank. Corilla downed hers in one. Laura took a long sip, giving Florian an intimidatingly level stare over the bubbling vapour. He found it impossible to look away, unless it was at one of those splits in her dress. Which he began to realize were very exciting in a bad, bad way. With Mother Laura? He was abruptly sober. And her smile widened in recognition.

  ‘There’s no need to rush a decision,’ she said. ‘You should take a while, look round to see what the Commonwealth can offer you. Maybe find someone who could show you.’

  ‘That’d be a blast,’ Corilla said merrily. ‘Hey, we could scope it out together. What do you say, Florian? I’ve only been to nine planets since we got here.’

  ‘Nine?’ he asked slightly enviously, which judging by Laura’s expression was the wrong way of saying it.

  ‘Oh, wow, is that her?’ Corilla demanded, gazing at something over his shoulder. ‘For real?’

  Florian turned to see Paula leading a teenage girl over to them. Except it wasn’t quite Paula as he remembered. She seemed to have aged ten years.

  He stood up and peered forwards as Paula pushed through a scarlet and emerald lightblob. ‘Paula?’ There was a lot of quizzing in his tone.

  She produced a wry smile. ‘Yes, Florian. I’m the original. Pleased to meet you, finally.’

  ‘Uh, right. Likewise.’ Florian knew he was blushing; his cheeks were terribly hot when she gave him a very Parisian kiss on both of them.

  ‘And this,’ Paula said in a slightly pained voice, ‘is Mellanie. We go back together all the way to the Starflyer War – though it seems longer sometimes. Okay, you’ve been introduced; favour repaid. I’m out of here.’

  ‘Er, hello,’ Florian said automatically to the teenager with long golden hair. Paula was turning to leave. ‘Wait,’ he blurted. ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘Happen?’

  ‘Well, there’s two of you. I know that’s a huge no.’

  She grinned knowingly, and it was reassuringly familiar, even though she wasn’t his Paula. ‘Trust me, Florian, there’s only one Paula Myo. And that’s me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ve assimilated my Bienvenido memories. My spare body will be put in storage.’

  ‘Will be?’

  ‘Ah, you are quite sharp, aren’t you? I remember.’

  He shrugged, for what could you actually say to that?

  ‘She has one last thing to do,’ Paula said. ‘Which is fair enough; I always finish my cases.’ She chuckled. ‘And as y
ou looked after me so well . . . if Mellanie asks you to go for a walk with her, think very carefully before agreeing.’

  ‘Okay. Thank you.’

  He turned round to face Mellanie, and decided she was probably the sexiest girl he’d ever seen. He had no idea how she did that; her nose was long and her chin too prominent to be classically beautiful, but the way she carried herself, the wayward self-confidence, impish smile . . . There was something primal about her, as if she’d just walked out of a Pliocene forest. Okay, strange first impression. And for some reason Laura and Corilla were spiking her with disapproving looks.

  ‘So?’ Mellanie said with a husky purr. ‘The Hero of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard himself. Did you really stand between a horde of alien cannibals and a crowd of helpless children?’

  ‘Oh. Well. You know.’

  ‘I don’t.’ Her finger tapped playfully at the base of his throat. ‘But I’d love to hear all about it.’

  *

  Nigel walked along the Martinique loop for most of the afternoon. It was a tropical environment, five thousand kilometres wide, with a twenty-seven-thousand-kilometre circumference, revolving slowly to produce a point-eight-five gravity effect on its inner surface. Three other loops were interlocked with it, in turn knitted with more loops. The inside of the Dyson shell contained thousands of them, all rotating at varying speeds in the most fantastically complex piece of clockwork humans had ever created. The underside of the loops contained terminus strips, wormhole-linked to coronal flowers in close orbit above the A7 star, scalloped rings of exotic matter absorbing the searing light to shine it across the shell’s interior.

  Looking up, he could see the full multitude of loops in their awesome three-dimensional lattice-chain, stretching away into a distance that gave a far greater impression of infinity than naked space ever did. Some sections were in darkness as the terminus strips fluctuated their emissions, creating night-times for the loops.

  It was a sight that still mesmerized him, despite watching it grow and develop – the first nest of a true post-scarcity society, where accomplishments were driven by culture and artistic whimsy rather than economics. A home that encouraged self-development and experimentation. Biononic transforms were already laying claim to the air between the loops, humans bodyshifting to giant avians that soared amid the churning thermals. Oceanic loops were alive with the first colonies of aquarian bodyshifters. While outside the shell, rock-like transforms clung barnacle-fashion to the surface. Already they were trialling integral solar sails. By the time the next generation of Dyson shells were complete, they’d be able to surf the ion gales between them.

  So many possibilities awaited. But for now he was content to keep his human identity.

  ‘You are so rooted in the past,’ Ozzie had taunted on one of his increasingly rare visitations.

  ‘You have to know where you’ve come from to see where you’re going,’ Nigel had replied.

  ‘But, dude, you’ve stopped going anywhere.’

  And onwards he walked. Across tropic loops, and sub-tropics, arctic wastes to windswept moors, and more exotic environments garnered from the records of the Commonwealth Navy’s exploration division and reproduced with interesting twists, content simply to examine the newness and diversity first hand. An old factory boss performing an everlasting quality-control check.

  Late afternoon, local loop time, he emerged from a line of royal palms that were only just taller than him and onto a long sloping beach. Small waves lapped against the fine silver-white sand. Kilometres out to sea, coral isles jutted enticingly up out of the clear water. He took his boots and socks off, and walked along the shoreline.

  After a while he sat down and watched the astonishing array of fish venturing into the shallows. When he tipped his head back, he could follow the Martinique loop’s turquoise and green cartography curving above him. It was two thirds sea, with lush emerald vegetation spreading across the small continents and various archipelagos. Its only fault was how small the palms and ferns were, but then it had only been commissioned seven years ago.

  They’d learned a lot from terraforming Zoreia. Thousands of asteroid-sized biovat stations formed a bracelet swarm around the Dyson shell, growing the necessary bacteria to bring the loop soils to life. Equally vast clone houses grew the seeds.

  Such quantities meant they didn’t have to wait decades for the biota to establish itself. What had taken years on Zoreia was complete in weeks here. Already photosynthetic vegetation was established on seventy per cent of the loops – though, of course, trees still had to grow. Fast-grow versions had been rejected. The humans of the Dyson shell wanted a genuine feel to their environment. Nigel still laughed at the irony of that.

  In a couple of hundred years, the jungles and landscapes would have a decent primordial feel to them. He watched clouds streaming over the edge of the loop, floundering in wispy curlicues as they lost the integrity provided by the artificial gravity. Intra-loop weather currents was still a huge challenge for the shell climatology engineers. They were having to intervene more than any simulation modelling suggested.

  Nigel rather liked that. We haven’t perfected everything yet.

  ‘Can you bump these waves up?’ he asked Central. Induced gravity pulses could simulate the more basic effect of moons, given the loops didn’t have any. Now there’s a thought for a shell.

  ‘What sort of size are you looking for?’ Central asked.

  ‘I just thought I might go surfing. Give me some decent ocean rollers, maybe? That way I can rip down tubes like they did off Hawaii back in the day.’ His neural augmentation rose to run routines calculating the kind of gravity field orientation and power necessary to create the required effect.

  ‘When have you ever done that?’ Central queried.

  ‘First time for everything.’

  ‘Ozzie was right. You are regressing while everyone else is moving off into the new.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘Would you like me to select a surfboard based on your size and ability?’

  ‘My size?’ He looked down his chest, which was rather well muscled these days. Muscles he’d earned by all his exercise, not bought with biononic manipulation. He grinned at the foolish vanity. Maybe Ozzie is right, I am sliding back into the primitive. But that’s allowed. The loops can embrace any foible.

  ‘Nigel, I am detecting a quantum field displacement point coming towards us.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A node similar to myself. This one is travelling FTL.’

  ‘You mean we’re being visited by another post-physical?’

  ‘It doesn’t have the same field depth as myself, but it is decelerating from nine hundred lightyears an hour.’

  Nigel sat up fast. ‘Holy shit!’

  ‘The trajectory indicates it could have come from the Commonwealth galaxy.’

  ‘Ah! The infamous deterrent fleet?’

  ‘A strong possibility, yes.’

  Nigel’s primary routine meshed with Central, allowing him to observe the twist in reality hurtling towards them. It reached the star system’s outer comet belt and dropped to ordinary hyperdrive speeds before approaching the Dyson shell. A signal was transmitted.

  ‘This is Paula Myo. I’d like to visit Nigel Sheldon, please. And I am bringing a guest.’

  Nigel laughed. ‘Who else? Give her my coordinates.’

  The quantum fluctuation changed, a swirl of energy rising up out of the field interstice and phase shifting into two physical structures. They teleported into the Martinique loop beach.

  He raised his arm in a cheery greeting as Paula materialized five metres in front of him. Paula, younger than the last time he’d seen her, which was unusual. ‘Twice in fifteen years. I’m flattered.’

  ‘Hello, Nigel.’ She stood aside, and Nigel saw who it was standing behind her.

  Over a thousand years of experience in controlling his emotions, neural augmentation running routines to objectify any situation, meant nothing n
ow. For it was her standing there, wearing her familiar brown suede skirt and white blouse, the wide-brimmed hat he’d bought her perched at a spry angle on her lush red hair. ‘No,’ he moaned incredulously.

  ‘You’re dead. I saw Uracus kill Bienvenido.’

  ‘It didn’t kill us,’ Kysandra said. ‘The Void expelled us.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  ‘Intergalactic space. Deep intergalactic space, actually. It’s taken a while to get back; we had a few problems there. Nothing I couldn’t handle.’ There were tears brimming in her eyes, as if she was scared of something.

  Nigel put his trembling arms around her. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If only I’d known, I would never have stopped looking. I would have found you, no matter what.’

  ‘Well, now I’ve found you. And you’re the real you, this time.’

  His grip tightened. ‘Yes, you have. And I’m not going to let you go again. Not ever.’

  ‘You have no idea how much I wanted to hear that!’

  ‘Oh, I do. Because that’s what I’ve felt every day since I lost you.’ He kissed her.

  Kysandra smiled through her tears as she stroked his face. ‘You know what? That was almost worth waiting two and a half centuries for.’

  By Peter F. Hamilton

  The Greg Mandel series

  Mindstar Rising

  A Quantum Murder

  The Nano Flower

  The Night’s Dawn trilogy

  The Reality Dysfunction

  The Neutronium Alchemist

  The Naked God

  The Commonwealth Saga

  Pandora’s Star

  Judas Unchained

  Chronicle of the Fallers

  The Abyss Beyond Dreams

  Night Without Stars

  The Void trilogy

  The Dreaming Void