Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

Gree-chs, do you?’
    Nomi confronted her. ’You administered the Extirpation, pharaoh.
Your arrogance over the memories you took from us is - ’
    ’Ill-mannered,’ Hama said smoothly, and he touched Nomi’s
shoulder, seeking to calm the situation. ’A lack of grace that
invalidates her assumption of superiority over us. Don’t concern
yourself, Nomi. She condemns herself and her kind every time she
speaks.’
    Gemo glared at him, full of contempt.
    But now Jupiter rose.
    The four of them crowded to see. They bobbed in the air like
balloons, thrust into weightlessness now the drive was shut down.
    The largest of planets was a dish of muddy light, of cloudy bands,
pink and purple and brown. Where the bands met, Hama could see fine
lines of turbulence, swoops and swirls like a lunatic water-colour.
But a single vast storm disfigured those smooth bands, twisting and
stirring them right across the southern hemisphere of the planet, as
if the whole of Jupiter were being sucked into some central maw.
    As perhaps it was. There was a legend that, a century before,
human rebels called the Friends of Wigner had climaxed their revolt
by escaping back through time, across thousands of years, and had
hurled a black hole into the heart of Jupiter. The knot of compressed
spacetime was already distorting Jupiter’s immense, dreamy structure,
and perhaps in time would destroy the great world altogether. It was
a fantastic story, probably no more than a tale spun for comfort
during the darkest hours of Occupation. Still, it was clear that
something was wrong with Jupiter. Nobody knew the truth - except
perhaps the pharaohs, and they would say nothing.
    Hama saw how Sarfi, entranced, tried to rest her hand against the
lifedome’s smooth transparency. But her hand sank into the surface,
crumbling, and she snatched it away quickly. Such incidents seemed to
cause Sarfi deep distress - as if she had been programmed with deep
taboos about violating the physical laws governing ’real’ humans.
Perhaps it even hurt her when such breaches occurred.
    Gemo Cana did not appear to notice her daughter’s pain.
     
    The lifedome neatly detached itself from the ship’s drive section
and swept smoothly down from orbit. Hama watched the moon’s
folded-over, crater-starred landscape flatten out, the great circular
ramparts of Valhalla marching over the close horizon.
    The lifedome settled to the ice with the gentlest of crunches. A
walkway extended from a darkened building block and nuzzled
hesitantly against the ship. A hatch sighed open.
    Hama stood in the hatchway. The walkway was a transparent,
shimmering tube before him, concealing little of the silver-black
morphology of the collapsed landscape beyond. The main feature was
the big Valhalla ridge, of course. Seen this close it was merely a
rise in the land, a scarp that marched to either horizon: it would
have been impossible to tell from the ground that this was in fact
part of a circular rampart surrounding a continent-sized impact scar,
and Hama felt insignificant, dwarfed.
    He forced himself to take the first step along the walkway.
    To walk through Callisto’s crystal stillness was enchanting; he
floated between footsteps in great bounds. The gravity here was about
an eighth of Earth’s, comparable to the Moon’s.
    Gemo mocked his pleasure. ’You are like Armm-stron and Alldinn on
the Moon.’
    Nomi growled, ’More Gree-chs, pharaoh?’
    Reth Cana was waiting to meet them at the end of the walkway. He
was short, squat, with a scalp of crisp white hair, and he wore a
practical-looking coverall of some papery fabric. He was scowling at
them, his face a round wrinkled mask. Beyond him, Hama glimpsed
extensive chambers, dug into the ice, dimly lit by a handful of
floating globe lamps - extensive, but deserted.
    Hama’s gaze was drawn back to Reth. He looks like Gemo.
    Gemo stepped forward now, and she and Reth faced each other,
brother and sister separated for centuries. They were like copies of
each other, subtly morphed. Stiffly, they embraced. Sarfi hung back,
watching, hands folded before her.
    Hama felt excluded, almost envious of this piece of complex
humanity. How must it be to be bound to another person by such strong
ties - for life?
    Reth stepped away from his sister and inspected Sarfi. Without
warning he swept his clenched fist through the girl’s belly. He made
a trail of disrupted pixels, like a fleshy comet. Sarfi crumpled
over, crying out. The sudden brutality