Nights Dawn (№7) - A Second Chance at Eden

«You didn't like her?»

«I didn't say that. And you should be nicer to someone who's scheduled to cut your skull open in an hour. Penny was just naturally difficult, one of the highly strung types. It upset a lot of people.»

«But not you?»

«Doctors are used to the whole spectrum of human behaviour. We see it all. I was quite firm with her, she respected that. She did argue about aspects of her treatment. But radiation sickness is my field. And a lot of what she said was due to fear.»

«You're talking about her cancer treatment?»

«That's right.»

«How bad was it?»

Corrine dropped her gaze. «Terminal. Penny had at most another three months to live. And that last month would have been very rough on her, even with our medical technology.»

«Christ.»

«Are you sure it wasn't a suicide?» she asked kindly. «I know what it looked like, but—«

«We did consider that, but the circumstances weigh against it.» I thought of the chimp, the bag, putting the pistol together in stealthy increments, the sheer amount of effort involved. «No, it was too elaborate. That was a murder. Besides, surely Penny Maowkavitz would have had plenty of available options to kill herself that were a damn sight cleaner than this?»

«I would have thought so, yes. She had a whole laboratory full of methods to choose from. Although a bullet through the brain is one of the quickest methods I know. Penny was a very clever person, maybe she didn't want any time for reflection between an injection and losing consciousness.»

«Had she talked about suicide?»

«No, not to me; and normally I'd say she wasn't the suicide type. But she would know exactly what that last month was going to be like. You know, I've found myself thinking about it quite a lot recently; if I knew that was going to happen to me, I'd probably do something about it before I lost my faculties. Wouldn't you?»

It wasn't something I liked to think about. Christ. Even death from old age is something we manage to deny for most of our lives. Always, you'll be the marvel who lives to a hundred and fifty, the new Methuselah. «Probably,» I grunted sourly. «Who knew about her illness?»

«I'd say just about everyone. The whole habitat had heard about her accident.»

I sighed. «Everyone but me.»

«Oh, dear.» Corrine grinned impetuously. «Penny was exposed to a lethal radiation dose eight months ago. She was on a review trip to Pallas, that's the second habitat. It was germinated four years ago, and trails Eden's orbit by a thousand kilometres. Her division is responsible for overseeing the growth phase. And Penny takes her duty very seriously. She was EVA inspecting the outer shell when we had a massive ion flux. The magnetosphere does that occasionally, and it's completely unpredictable. Jupiter orbit is a radiative hell anyway; the suits which the crews here wear look more like deep-sea diving rigs than the kind of fabric pressure envelopes they use in the O'Neill Halo. But even their shielding couldn't protect Penny against that level of energy.» She leant back in the chair, shaking her head slowly. «That's one of the reasons I was chosen for this post, with my speciality. Those crews take a terrible risk going outside. They all have their sperm and ova frozen before they come here so they don't jeopardize their children. Anyway . . . the spaceship crew got her back here within two hours. Unfortunately there wasn't anything I could do, not in the long term. She was here in hospital for a fortnight, we flushed her blood seven times. But the radiation penetrated every cell, it was as if she'd stood in front of a strategic-defence X-ray laser. Her DNA was completely wrecked, blasted apart. The mutation—« Breath whistled painfully out of Corrine's mouth. «It was beyond even our gene therapy techniques to rectify. We did what we could, but it was basically just making her last months as easy as possible while the tumours started to grow. She knew it, we knew it.»

«Three months at the most,» I said numbly.

«Yes.»

«And knowing that, somebody still went ahead and murdered her. It makes no sense at all.»

«It made a lot of sense to somebody.» The voice was challenging.

I fixed Corrine with a level gaze. «I didn't think you'd give me a hard time over being a company man.»

«I won't. But I know people who will.»

«Who?»

Her grin had returned. «Don't tell me Zimmels didn't leave you a bubble cube full of names.»

My turn to grin. «He did. What nobody has told me is how widespread Boston's support is.»

«Not as much as they'd like. Not as little as JSKP would like.»

«Very neat, Doctor. You should go into politics.»

«There's no need to be obscene.»

I stood up and walked over to her window, looking down into the small courtyard at the centre of the hospital. There was an ornate pond in the middle which had a tiny fountain playing in it; big orange fish glided about below the lily pads. «If the company did send a covert agent up here to kill Maowkavitz, he or she would have to be very biotechnology literate to circumvent the habitat personality's observation. I mean, I couldn't do it. I don't even understand how it was done, nor do most of my officers.»

«I see what you mean. It would have to be someone who's been up here before.»

«Right. Someone who understands the habitat surveillance parameters perfectly, and who's one hundred per cent loyal to JSKP.»

«My God, you're talking about Zimmels.»

I smiled down at the fish. «You have to admit, he's a perfect suspect.»

«And would you have him arrested if he is guilty?»

«Oh, yes. JSKP can have me fired, but they can't deflect me.»

«Very commendable.»

I turned back to find her giving me a heartily bemused stare. «But it's a little too early to be making allegations like that; I'll wait until I have more data.»

«Glad to hear it,» she muttered. «I suppose you've also considered it could have been a mercy killing by some sympathetic bleeding-heart medical practitioner, one who was intimate with Penny's circumstances.»

I laughed. «Top of my list.»

Before I went for the implant, they dressed me in a green surgical smock, and shaved off a three-centimetre circle of hair at the base of my skull. The operating theatre resembled a dentist's surgery. A big hydraulic chair at the centre of a horseshoe of medical consoles and instrument waldos. The major difference was the chair's headrest, which was a complicated arrangement of metal bands and adjustable pads. The sight triggered a cascade of unpleasant memories, newscable images of the more brutal regimes back on Earth. What one-party states did to their opposition members.

«Nothing to worry about,» Corrine said breezily, when the sight of it slowed my walk. «I've done this operation about five hundred times now.»

The nurse smiled and guided me into the chair. I don't think she was more than a couple of years older than Nicolette. Should they really be using teenagers to assist with delicate brain surgery on senior staff?

Straps around my arms, straps around my legs; a big strap, like a corset, around my chest, holding me tight. Then they started immobilizing my head.

«How many survived?» I asked.

«All of them. Come on, Harvey, it's basically just an injection.»

«I hate needles.»

The nurse giggled.

«Bloody hell,» Corrine grunted. «Men! Women never make this fuss.»

I swallowed my immediate short-and-to-the-point comment. «Will I be able to use the affinity bond straight away?»

«No. What I'm going to do this afternoon is insert a cluster of neuron symbiont buds into your medulla oblongata. They take a day or so to infiltrate your axons and develop into operational grafts.»

«Wonderful.» Sickly grey fungal spores grubbing round my cells, sending out slender yellow roots to penetrate the delicate membrane walls. Feeding off me.

Corrine and the nurse finished fixing my head in place and stood back. The chair slowly tilted forwards until I was inclined at forty-five degrees, staring at the floor. I heard a hissing sound; something cold touched the patch of shaved skin. «Ouch.»

«Harvey, that's the anaesthetic spray,» Corrine exclaimed with some asperity.

«Sorry.»

«Once the symbionts are functioning you'll need proper training to use them. It doesn't take more than a few hours. I'll book your appointment with one of our tutors.»

«Thanks. Exactly how many people up here are affinity capable?»

She was busy switching on various equipment modules. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a holographic screen light up with some outr

«Just about all seventeen thousand of us,» she said. «They have to be, there's no such thing as a domestic or civic worker up here. The servitor chimps perform every mundane task you can think of. So you have to be able to communicate with them. The first affinity bonds to be developed were just that, bonds. Each one was unique. Clone-analogue symbionts allowed you to plug directly into a servitor's nervous system; one set was implanted in your brain, and the servitor got the other. Then Penny Maowkavitz came up with the idea of Eden, and the whole concept was broadened out. The symbionts I'm implanting in you will give you what we call communal affinity; you can converse with the habitat personality, access its senses, talk to other people, order the servitors around. It's a perfect communication system. God's own radio wave.»

«Don't let the Pope hear you say that.»

«Pope Eleanor's a fool. If you ask me, she's a little too desperate to prove she can be as traditionalist as any male. The Christian Church has always been antagonistic to science, even now, after the reunification. You'd think they'd learn from past mistakes. They certainly made enough of them. If her biotechnology commission would just open their eyes to what we've achieved up here.»

«There's none so blind . . .»

«Damn right. Did you know every child conceived up here for the last two years has had the affinity gene spliced in when they were zygotes, rather than have symbiont implants? They're affinity capable from the moment their brain forms, right in the womb. There was no pressure put on the parents by JSKP, they insisted. And they're a beautiful group of kids, Harvey, smart, happy; there's none of the kind of casual cruelty you normally get in kindergartens back on Earth. They don't hurt each other. Affinity has given them honesty and trust instead of selfishness. And the Church calls it ungodly.»

«But it's a foreign gene, not one God gave us, not part of our divine heritage.»

«You support the Church's view?» Her voice hardened.

«No.»

«God gave us the gene for cystic fibrosis, He gave us haemophilia, and He gave us Down's syndrome. They're all curable with gene therapy. Genes the person didn't have to begin with, genes we have to vector in. Does that make those we treat holy violations?»

I made a mental note never to introduce Corrine to Jocelyn. «You're fighting an old battle with the wrong person.»

«Yeah. Maybe. Sorry, but that kind of medieval attitude infuriates me.»

«Good. Can we get on with the implant now, please?»

«Oh, that?»

The chair started to rotate back to the vertical. Corrine was flicking off the equipment.

«I finished a couple of minutes ago,» she said with a contented chuckle. «I've been waiting for you to stop chattering.»

«You . . .»

The smiling nurse began to unstrap me.

Corrine pulled off a pair of surgical gloves. «I want you to go home and relax for the rest of the afternoon. No more work today, I don't want you stressed; the symbiont neurons don't need to be drenched in toxins at this stage. And no alcohol, either.»

«Am I going to have a headache?»

«A hypochondriac like you, I wouldn't be at all surprised.» She winked playfully. «But it's all in your mind.»

I walked home. The first chance I'd had to actually appreciate the real benefit of the habitat. I walked under an open sky, feeling zephyrs ripple my uniform, smelling a m

It was the heat which did it. The heat from bringing the benefits of an industrial economy to eighteen billion people. Environmentalists used to warn us about the danger of burning hydrocarbons, saying the increased carbon dioxide would trigger the greenhouse effect. They were wrong about that. Fusion came on-line fairly early into the new century; deuterium tritium reactions at first, inefficient and generating a depressing quantity of radioactive waste for what was heralded as the ultimate everlasting clean energy source. Then He3 started arriving from Jupiter and even those problems vanished. No more carbon dioxide from chemical combustion. Instead people developed expectations. A lot of expectations. Unlimited cheap energy was no longer the province of the Western nations alone, it belonged to everybody. And they used it; in homes, in factories, to build more factories which churned out more products which used still more energy. All over the planetary surface, residual machine heat was radiated off into the atmosphere at a tremendous rate.

After a decade of worsening hurricanes, the first real mega-storm struck the Eastern Pacific countries in February 2071. It lasted for nine days. The UN declared it an official international disaster zone; crops ruined over the entire region, whole forests torn out by the roots, tens of thousands made homeless. Some idiot newscable presenter said that if one butterfly flapping its wings causes an ordinary hurricane, then this must have taken a whole armada of butterflies to start. The name stuck.

The second armada storm came ten months later, that one hit southern Europe. It made the first one seem mild by comparison.

Everybody knew it was the heat which did it. By then more or less every home on the planet had a newscable feed, they could afford it. To prevent the third armada storm all they had to do was stop using so much electricity. The same electricity which brought them their newly found prosperous living standard.

People, it seems, don't wish to abandon their wealth.

Instead, they started migrating into large towns and cities, which they fortified against the weather. According to the UN, in another fifty years everybody will live in an urban area. Transgenic crops were spliced together which can withstand the worst the armada storms throw at them. And the amount of He3 from Jupiter creeps ever upwards. Outside the urban and agricultural zones the whole planet is slowly going to shit.

Our house was near the southern edge of Eden's town, with a long back lawn which ran down to the parkland. A stream marked where the lawn ended and the meadowland began. The whole street was some tree-festooned middle-class suburb from a bygone age. The house itself was made from aluminium and silicon sandwich panels, a four-bedroom L-shape bungalow ranch with broad patio doors in each room. Back in the Delph arcology we had a four-room flat on the fifty-second floor which overlooked the central tiered well, and we could only afford that thanks to the subsidized rent which came with my job.

I could hear voices as soon as I reached the fence which ran along the front lawn, Nicolette and Jocelyn arguing. And yes, it was a picket fence, even if it was made from sponge-steel.

The front door was ajar. Not that it had a lock. Eden's residents really did have absolute confidence in the habitat personality's observation. I walked in, and almost tripped on a hockey stick.

The five white composite cargo pods from the Ithilien had been delivered, containing the Parfitt family's entire worldly goods. Some had been opened, I guessed by the twins, boxes were strewn along the length of the hall.

«It's stupid, Mother!» Nicolette's heated voice yelled out of an open door.

«And you're not to raise your voice to me,» Jocelyn shouted back.

I went into the room. It was the one Nicolette had claimed. Cases were heaped on the floor, clothes draped all over the bed. The patio door was open, a servitor chimp stood placidly outside.

Jocelyn and Nicolette both turned to me.

«Harvey, will you kindly explain to your daughter that while she lives in our house she will do as she's told.»

«Fine. I'll bloody well move out now, then,» Nicolette squealed. «I never wanted to come here anyway.»

Great, caught in the crossfire, as always. I held up my hands. «One at a time, please. What's the problem?»

«Nicolette is refusing to put her stuff away properly.»

«I will!» she wailed. «I just don't see why I have to do it. That's what it's here for.» She flung out an arm to point at the servitor.

I fought against a groan. I should have realized this was coming.

«It'll pack all my clothes away, and it'll keep the room neat the whole time. You don't even need bloody affinity. The habitat will hear any orders and get the chimps to do as you say. They told us that in the orientation lecture.»

«That thing is not coming in my house,» Jocelyn said flatly. She glared at me, waiting for back-up.

«Daddy!»

The headache I wasn't supposed to be having was a hot ache five centimetres behind my eyes. «Jocelyn, this is her room. Why don't we just leave her alone in here?»

The glare turned icy. «I might have known you'd be in favour of having those creatures in the house.» She turned on a heel and pushed past me into the hall.

I let out a long exhausted breath. «Christ.»

«I'm sorry, Daddy,» Nicolette said in a small voice.

«Not your fault, darling.» I went out into the hall. Jocelyn was pulling clothes from an open pod, snatching them out so sharply I thought they might tear. «Look, Jocelyn, you've got to accept that using these servitor creatures is a way of life up here. You knew about the chimps before we came.»

«But they're everywhere ,» she hissed, squeezing her eyes shut. «Everywhere, Harvey. This whole place must be ringing with affinity.»

«There is nothing wrong with affinity, nothing evil. Even the Church agrees with that. It's only splicing the gene into children they object to.»

She turned to face me, clasping a shirt to her chest, her expression suddenly pleading. «Oh, Harvey, can't you see how corrupt this place is? Everything is made so easy, so luxurious. It's insidious. It's a wicked lie. They're making people dependent on affinity, bringing it into everyday life. Soon nobody will be free. They'll give the gene to their children without ever questioning what they're doing. You see if they don't. They'll create a whole generation of the damned.»

I couldn't answer, couldn't tell her. Christ, my own wife, and I was too stricken to say a word.

«Please, Harvey, let's leave. There's another ship due in ten days. We can go back to Earth on it.»

«I can't,» I said quietly. «You know I can't. And it's unfair to ask. In any case, Delph would fire me. I'm nearly fifty, Jocelyn. What the hell would I do? I can't make a career switch at my age.»

«I don't care! I want to leave. I wish to God I'd never let you talk me into coming here.»

«Oh, that's right; it's all my fault. My fault the children are going to live in a tropical paradise, with clean air and fresh food. My fault they're here in a world where they don't have to take a stunpulse with them every time they step outside the house in case they're raped or worse. My fault they're going to have an education we could never afford to give them on Earth. My fault they're going to have a chance at life . And you want to take it away because of your stupid blind prejudice. Well, count me out of your proud poverty of existence, Jocelyn. You go running back to that ball of disease you call a world. I'm staying here, and the children are staying with me. Because I'm going to do the best job of being a parent I can, and that means giving them the opportunities which only exist here.»

Her eyes narrowed, staring hard at me.

«Now what?» I snapped.

«What's that on the back of your neck?»

My anger voided into some black chasm. «A dermal patch,» I said calmly. «It's there because I had an affinity symbiont implant this afternoon.»

«How could you?» She simply stared at me, completely expressionless. «How could you, Harvey? After all the Church has done for us.»

«I did it because I have to, it's my job.»

«We mean so little to you, don't we?»

«You mean everything.»

Jocelyn shook her head. «No. I won't have any more of your lies.» She put the clothes down gently on one of the pods. «If you want to talk, I shall be in the church. Praying for all of us.»

I didn't even know there was a church in Eden. It seemed a little strange given the current state of relations between the Vatican and the habitat. But then there's always that more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner piousness to consider.

I really ought to make an effort not to be so bitter.

Nicolette had slumped down onto the bed when I went back to her.

«You had a row,» she said without looking up.

I sat on the mattress beside her. She's a lovely girl; perhaps not cable starlet beautiful, but she's tall, and slim, and she's got a heart-shaped face with shoulder-length auburn hair. Very popular with the boys back in the arcology. I'm so proud of what she is, the way she's growing up. I wasn't going to let Earth stunt her, not with Eden able to offer so much more. «Yes, we had a row.» Again.

«I didn't know she was going to be so upset over the chimps.»

«Hey, what happens between me and your mother isn't your fault. I don't want to hear you blaming yourself again.»

She sniffed heavily, then smiled. «Thanks, Dad.»

«Use the chimps in here all you want, but for God's sake don't let them into the house.»

«OK. Dad, did you really have a symbiont implant?»

«Yes.»

«Can I have one? The orientation officer said you can't really expect to live here without one.»

«I expect so. But not this week, all right?»

«Sure, Dad. I think I want to fit in here. Eden looks gorgeous.»

I put my arm round her shoulders and kissed her cheek. «Do you know where your brother is?»

«No, he went off with some boys after the orientation lecture.»

«Well, when he comes in, warn him not to allow the chimps into the house.»

I left her to herself and went into the lounge. The bubble cube Zimmels had given me was in my jacket pocket. I settled down in the big settee, and slotted it into my PNC wafer. The menu with the file names appeared; there were over a hundred and fifty of them. I checked down them quickly, but there was no entry for Corrine Arburry.

Content I had at least one sympathetic ally, I started to review the masters of the revolution.

My second day started with Penny Maowkavitz's funeral. Rolf and I attended, representing the police, both of us in our black dress uniforms.

The church was a simple A-frame of polished aluminium girders with tinted glass for walls. I estimated nearly two hundred people turned up for the service, with about eighty more milling outside. I sat in the front pew along with the Governor and other senior Eden staff from the UN and JSKP. Father Cooke conducted the service, with Antony Harwood reading a lesson from the Bible: Genesis, naturally. I knew him from Zimmels's files, another of Boston's premier activists.

Afterwards we all trooped out of the church and down a track into a wide glade several hundred metres from the town. Fashol

A small shallow hole had been dug at the centre of the glade. Pieter Zernov stepped up to it and put a large jet-black seed in the bottom; it looked like a wrinkled conker to me.

«It was Penny's wish that she should finish up here,» he said loudly. «I don't know what the seed is, except it was one of her designs. She told me that for once she had forgone function, and settled for something that just looks damn pretty. I'm sure it does, Penny.»

As Pieter stood back an old Oriental man in a wheelchair came forwards. It was a very old-fashioned chair, made from wood, with big wheels that had chrome wire spokes, there was no motor. A young woman was pushing him over the thick grass. I couldn't see much of her; she had a broad black beret perched on her head, a long white-blonde ponytail swung across her back, and her head was bowed. But the old man . . . I frowned as he scooped up a handful of ash from the urn Fashol

«I know him, I think,» I whispered to Rolf.

That earned me another of those looks I was becoming all too familiar with. «Yes, sir; that's Wing-Tsit Chong.»

«Bloody hell.»

Wing-Tsit Chong let Penny's ashes fall from his hand, a small plume of dry dust splattering into the hole. A geneticist who was at least Penny Maowkavitz's equal, the inventor of affinity.

Father Leon Cooke cornered me on the way back to town. Both genial and serious in that way only priests know how. He was in his late sixties, wearing the black and turquoise vestments of the Unified Christian Church.

«Penny's death was a terrible tragedy,» he said. «Especially in a closed community like this one. I hope you apprehend the culprit soon.»

«I'll do my best, Father. It's been a hectic two days so far.»

«I'm sure it has.»

«Did you know Penny?»

«I knew of her. I'm afraid that relations between the Church and most of the biotechnology people have become a little strained of late. Penny was no exception; but she came to a few services. When confronted with their approaching death, people do tend to show a degree of curiosity in the possibility of the divine. I didn't hold it against her. Everyone must come to faith in their own way.»

«Did you hear her confession?»

«Now, my son, you know I can never answer that. Even more than doctors, we priests hold the secrets of our flock close to our hearts.»

«I was just wondering if she ever mentioned suicide?»

He stopped beside a tree with small purple-green serrated leaves, tufty orange flowers bloomed at the end of every branch. Dark grey eyes regarded me with a humorous compassion. «I expect you have been told Penny Maowkavitz was a thorny character. Well, with that came a quite monstrous arrogance; Penny did not run away from anything life threw at her, not even her terrible illness. She would not commit suicide. I don't think anybody up here would.»

«That's a very sweeping statement.»

The tail end of the mourners filed past us; we were earning quite a few curious glances. I saw Rolf standing fifteen metres down the track, waiting patiently.

«I'll be happy to discuss it with you, perhaps at a more appropriate time.»

«Of course, Father.»

A guilty smile flickered over Leon Cooke's face. «I talked to your wife, yesterday.»

I tried to maintain an impassive expression. But he was a priest . . . I doubt he was fooled. «I don't expect she painted a very complimentary picture of me. We'd just had a row.»

«I know. Don't worry, my son, it was a very modest row compared to some of the couples I've had to deal with.»

«Deal with?»

He ignored the irony. «You know she doesn't belong in this habitat, don't you?»

I shifted round uncomfortably under his gaze. «Can you think of a better place for our children to grow up?»

«Don't dodge the issue, my son.»

«All right, Father, I'll tell you exactly why she doesn't care for Eden. It's because of the Pope's ludicrous proclamation on the affinity gene. The Church turned her against this habitat and what it represents. And I have to tell you, in my opinion the Church has made its biggest mistake since it persecuted Galileo. This is my second day here, and I've already started to think how I can make my posting permanent. If you want to help, you might try and convince her that affinity isn't some satanic magic.»

«I will help the two of you any way I can, my son. But I can hardly contradict a papal decree.»

«Right. It's funny, most couples like us would have divorced years ago.»

«Why didn't you? Though I'm glad to see you haven't, that's an encouraging sign.»

I smiled wryly. «Depends how you read it. We both have our reasons. Me; I keep remembering what Jocelyn used to be like. My Jocelyn, she's still in there. I know she is, if I could just find a way of reaching her.»

«And Jocelyn, what's her reason?»

«That's a simple one. We made our vows before God. Richer or poorer, better or worse. Even if we were legally separated, in God's eyes we remain husband and wife. Jocelyn's family were Catholics before the Christian reunification, that level of devotion is pretty hard to shake off.»

«I get the impression you blame the Church for a lot of your situation.»

«Did Jocelyn tell you why she places so much weight on what the Church says?»

«No.»

I sighed, hating to bring up those memories again. «She had two miscarriages, our third and fourth children. It was pretty traumatic; the medical staff at the arcology hospital were convinced they could save them. God, it looked like she was being swallowed by machinery. It was all useless, of course. Doctors don't have half as much knowledge about the human body as they lay claim to.

«After the second time she . . . lost faith in herself. She became very withdrawn, listless, she wasn't even interested in the twins. A classic depression case. Everything the hospital did was orientated on the physical, you see. That's their totem, I suppose. But we were lucky in a way. Our arcology had a good priest. Quite a bit like you, actually. He gave us a lot of his time; if he'd been a psychiatrist I'd call it counselling. He made Jocelyn believe in herself again, and at the same time believe in the Church. I'm very grateful for that.»