The Dreaming Void (7 page)

The Delivery Man was woken by his youngest daughter just as a chilly dawn light was rising outside. Little Rosa once again had decided that five hours of sleep was quite sufficient for her; now she was sitting up in her crib wailing for attention. And milk. Beside him, Lizzie was just starting to stir out of a deep sleep. Before she could wake, he swung himself out of bed and hurried along the landing to the nursery. If he wasn't quick enough, Tilly and Elsie would be woken up, and then nobody would get any peace.

The pediatric housebot floated through the nursery door after him, a simple ovoid just over a meter high. It extruded Rosa's milk bulb through its neutral gray skin. Both he and his wife, Lizzie, hated the idea of a machine, even one as sophisticated as the housebot, caring for the child, so he settled her on his lap in the big chair at the side of the crib and started feeding her out of the bulb. Rosa smiled adoringly around the nozzle and squirmed deeper into his embrace. The housebot extended a hose that attached to the outlet patch on her sleepsuit's diaper and siphoned away the night's wee. Rosa waved contentedly at the housebot as it glided out of the nursery.

“Goobi,” she cooed, and resumed drinking.

“Goodbye,” the Delivery Man corrected her. At seventeen months, Rosa had a vocabulary that was just starting to develop. The biononic organelles in her cells were effectively inactive other than reproducing themselves to supplement her new cells as she grew. Extensive research had shown that it was best for a Higher-born human to follow nature's original development schedule until about puberty. After that the biononics could be used as intended; one of their functions was to modify the body however the host wanted. He still wasn't sure that was such a good idea; handing teenagers unrestrained power over their own physiology frequently led to serious self-inflicted blunders. He always remembered the time when he was fourteen and had a terrible crush on a seventeen-year-old girl. He had tried to “improve” his genitals. It had taken five hugely embarrassing trips to a biononic procedures doctor to sort out the painful abnormal growths.

When Rosa finished, he carried her downstairs. He and Lizzie lived in a classic Georgian town house in London's Holland Park district. It had been restored three hundred years before, using modern techniques to preserve as much of the old fabric as possible without having to resort to stabilizer fields. Lizzie had overseen the interior when they moved in, blending a tasteful variety of furniture and utility systems that dated from the mid-twentieth century right up to the twenty-seventh, when ANA's replication facilities effectively halted human design on Earth. Two spacious subbasements had been added, giving them an indoor swimming pool and a health spa, along with the tanks and ancillary systems that supplied the culinary cabinet and household replicator.

He took Rosa into the large iron-framed conservatory where her toys were stored in big wicker baskets. February had produced its usual icy morning outside, sending broad patterns of frost worming up the outside of the glass. For now, the only true splash of color to enjoy in the garden came from the winter-flowering cherries on the curving bank behind the frozen fishpond.

When Lizzie came downstairs an hour later, she found him and Rosa playing with glow blocks on the conservatory's heated flagstone floor. Tilly, who was seven, and Elsie, their five-year-old, followed their mother in and shouted happily at their younger sister, who ran over to them with outstretched arms, babbling in her own incomprehensible yet excited language. The three girls started to build a tower out of the blocks; the higher they stacked, the faster the colors swirled.

He gave Lizzie a quick kiss and ordered the culinary cabinet to produce some breakfast. Lizzie sat at the circular wooden table in the kitchen. An antiquities and culture specialist, she enjoyed the old-fashioned notion of a room specifically for cooking. Even though there was no need for it, she'd had a hefty iron range cooker installed when they had moved in ten years earlier. During winter its cozy warmth turned the kitchen into the house's engine room, and they always gathered there as a family. Sometimes she even used the range to cook things that she and the girls made out of ingredients produced by the culinary cabinet. Tilly's birthday cake had been the last.

“Swimming for Tilly this morning,” Lizzie said as she sipped at a big china cup of tea that a housebot delivered to her.

“Again?” he asked.

“She's getting a lot more confident. It's their new teacher. He's very good.”

“Good.” The Delivery Man picked up the croissant on his plate and started tearing it open. “Girls,” he shouted. “Come and sit down, please. Bring Rosa.”

“She doesn't want to come,” Elsie shouted back immediately.

“Don't make me come and get you.” He avoided looking at Lizzie. “I'm going to be away for a few days.”

“Anything interesting?”

“There's been allegations that some companies on Oronsay have gotten hold of level-three replicator tech,” he said. “I'll need to run tests on their products.” His current vocation was to monitor the spread of Higher technology across the External worlds. It was a process the Externals got very sensitive about, with hard-line Protectorate politicians citing it as the first act of cultural colonization, deserving retribution. However, industrialists on the External worlds constantly were seeking to acquire ever-more-sophisticated manufacturing systems to reduce their costs. Radical Highers were equally keen to supply it to them, seeing it precisely as that first important stage for a planet converting to Higher culture. What he had to do on ANA: Governance's behalf was determine the intent behind supplying replicator systems. If Radical Highers were supporting the companies, he would disable the systems subtly and collapse the operation. His main problem was making an objective decision; Higher technology inevitably crept out from the Central worlds in the same way that the External worlds were always settling new planets around the edge of their domain. The boundary between Central and External was ambiguous, to say the least, with some External worlds openly welcoming the shift to Higher status. Location was always a huge factor in his decision. Oronsay was over a hundred light-years out from the Central worlds, which effectively negated the chance that this was simple technology seepage. If there were replicators there, it was either Radicals or a very greedy company pushing them.

Lizzie's eyebrows lifted. “Really? What sort of products?”

“Starship components.”

“Well, that should come in handy out there right now; very profitable, I imagine.”

He appreciated her guarded amusement. The last few days had seen a rush of starship company officials to Ellezelin, eager to do deals with the new Cleric Conservator.

The girls scuttled in and settled at the table; Rosa clambered onto the twenty-fifth-century suede mushroom that was her tiny-tot seat. It morphed around her, gripping firmly enough to prevent her from falling out, and expanded upward to bring her level with the tabletop. She clapped her hands delightedly to be up with her family.

Elsie solemnly slid a bowl of honey pops across, which Rosa grabbed. “Don't spill it today,” Elsie ordered imperiously.

Rosa just gurgled happily at her sister.

“Daddy, will you teleport us to school?” Tilly asked, her voice high and pleading.

“You know I'm not going to,” he told her. “Don't ask.”

“Oh, please, Daddy,
please.
”

“Yes, Daddy,” Elsie chipped in. “Please t-port. I like it. Lots and lots.”

“I'm sure you do, but you're getting on the bus. Teleport is a serious business.”

“School is serious,” Tilly claimed immediately. “You always say so.”

Lizzie was laughing quietly.

“That's diff—” he began. “All right, I'll tell you what I'll do. If you behave yourselves while I'm gone,
and only if,
then I'll teleport you to school on Thursday.”

“Yes, yes!” Tilly exclaimed. She was bouncing up and down on her chair.

“But you have to be exceptionally good. And I will find out; your mother will tell me.”

Both girls immediately directed huge smiles at Lizzie.

Half an hour later the bus slipped down out of the sky, a long turquoise regrav capsule that hovered just above the greenway outside the house where the road had been centuries before. The Delivery Man walked his daughters out to it, both of them wearing cloaks over their red blazers, the protective gray shimmer warding off the cold damp air. He checked one last time that Tilly had her swimwear, kissed them both goodbye, and stood waving as the bus rose quickly. The whole idea of riding to school together was intended to enhance the children's sense of community, an extension of the school itself, which was little more than an organized play and activities center. Their real education would not begin until their biononics became active. But it still gave him an emotional jolt to see them vanishing into the gloomy horizon. There was only one school in London these days, south of the Thames in Dulwich Park. With a total population of barely a hundred fifty thousand, the city did not need another. Even for Highers the number of children was low, but then, Earth's natives were notoriously reserved. The first planet to become truly Higher, it had been reducing its population steadily ever since. Right at the beginning of Higher culture, when biononics became available and ANA went online, the average citizen's age was already the highest in the Commonwealth. The elderly downloaded, and the younger ones who were not ready for migration to a postphysical state emigrated out to the Central worlds until they chose to conclude their biological lives. The result was a small residual population with an exceptionally low birth rate.

The Delivery Man and Lizzie were a notable exception in having three kids. But then, they had registered a marriage as well and had had a ceremony in an old church with their friends witnessing the event; a Christian priest had been brought in from an External world that still had a working religion. It was what Lizzie had wanted; she adored the old traditions and rituals. Not enough to actually get pregnant, of course; the girls had all been gestated in a womb vat.

“You be careful on Oronsay,” she told him as he examined his face in the bathroom mirror. It was, he acknowledged, rather flat with a broad jaw and eyes that crinkled whenever he smiled or frowned no matter how many anti-aging techniques were applied to the surrounding skin areas, Advancer or Higher. His Advancer genes had given his wiry muddy-red hair a luxuriant growth rate that Elsie had inherited. He had modified his facial follicles with biononics so that he no longer had to apply shaving gel twice a day, but the process wasn't perfect; every week he had to check his chin and dab gel on recalcitrant patches of five o'clock shadow. More like five o'clock puddles, Lizzie claimed.

“I always am,” he assured her. He pulled on a new toga suit and waited until it had wrapped around him. Its surface haze emerged, a dark emerald shot though with silver sparkles. Rather stylish, he felt.

Lizzie, who never wore any clothes designed later than the twenty-second century, produced a mildly disapproving look. “If it's that far from the Central worlds, it's going to be deliberate.”

“I know. I will watch out, I promise.” He kissed Lizzie in reassurance, trying to ignore the guilt that was staining his thoughts like a slow poison. She studied his face, apparently satisfied with his sincerity, but that only made the lie worse. He hated these times when he couldn't tell her what he actually did.

“Missed a bit,” she announced spryly, and tapped her forefinger on the left side of his jaw.

He peered into the mirror and grunted in dismay. She was right, as always.

When he was ready, the Delivery Man stood in the lounge facing Lizzie, who held a squirming Rosa in her arms. He held a hand up to wave as he activated his field interface function. It immediately meshed with Earth's T-sphere, and he designated his exit coordinate. His integral force field sprang up to shield his skin. The awesome, intimidating emptiness of the translation continuum engulfed him, nullifying every sense. It was this infinite microsecond that he despised. All his biononic enrichments told him he was surrounded by nothing, not even the residual quantum signature of his own universe. With his mind starved of any sensory input, time expanded excruciatingly.

Eagles Harbor flickered into reality around him. The giant station hung seventy kilometers above southern England, one of a hundred fifty identical stations that together generated the planetary T-sphere. ANA: Governance had fabricated them in the shape of mythological flying saucers three kilometers in diameter, a level of whimsy it wasn't usually associated with.

He emerged into a cavernous reception center on the station's outer rim. There were only a couple of other people using it, and they paid him no attention. In front of him, a vast transparent hull section rose from the floor to curve away above, allowing him to look down on the entire southern half of the country. London was almost directly underneath, clad in slowly moving pockets of fog that oozed around rolling high ground like a white slick. The last time he and Lizzie had brought the kids up there had been a clear sunny day when they'd all pressed up against the hull while Lizzie pointed out historical areas and narrated the events that made them important. She had explained that the ancient city was now back down to the same physical size it had been in the mid-eighteenth century. With the planet's population shrinking, ANA: Governance had ruled there were simply too many buildings left to maintain. Just because they were old didn't necessarily make them relevant. The ancient public buildings in London's center were preserved, along with others deemed architecturally or culturally significant. But as for the sprawl of suburban housing, there were hundreds of thousands of examples of every kind from every era. Most of them were donated or sold off to various individuals and institutions across the Greater Commonwealth, and those which were left simply were erased.