Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

Virtual is right
about pantropy and post-humans, whatever might have been projected
into the black hole atmosphere can no more be your daughter than
Poole here can be your son? You are carbon and water, it is a filmy
wisp of plasma. Whatever sentimental ties you have, the light show in
that cloud has nothing to do with you.’
    ’Not sentimental,’ she said clearly. ’The ties are real, Captain.
The person they sent into that black hole is my daughter. It’s all to
do with loyalty, you see.’
    The Ideocrats, comparative masters when it came to dominating
their fellow humans, had no experience in dealing with post-humans.
They had no idea how to enforce discipline and loyalty over creatures
to whom ’real’ humans might seem as alien as a fly to a fish. So they
took precautions. Each candidate pantropic was born as a fully
biological human, from a mother’s womb, and each spent her first
fifteen years living a normal a life - normal, given she had been
born on a tent-world in orbit around a black hole.
    ’Then, on her sixteenth birthday, Sharn was taken,’ Mara said.
’And she was copied.’
    ’Like making a Virtual,’ Poole mused. ’The copying must have been
a quantum process. And the data was injected into the plasma
structures in the black hole atmosphere.’ He grinned. ’You can’t
fault the Ideocrats for not thinking big! And that’s why there are
people here in the first place - I mean, a colony with families - so
that these wretched exiles would have a grounding in humanity, and
stay loyal. Ingenious.’
    ’It sounds horribly manipulative,’ said Futurity.
    ’Yes. Obey us or your family gets it…’
    Mara said, ’We knew we were going to lose her, from the day Sharn
was born. We knew it would be hard. But we knew our duty. Anyhow we
weren’t really losing her. We would always have her, up there in the
sky.’
    ’I don’t understand,’ groused the Captain. ’After your daughter
was >copied<, why didn’t she just walk out of the copying
booth?’
    ’Because quantum information can’t be cloned, Captain,’ Poole said
gently. ’If you make a copy you have to destroy the original. Which
is why young Futurity’s superiors were so agitated when I was
transferred into this ship’s data store: there is only ever one copy
of me. Sharn could never have walked out of that booth. She had been
destroyed in the process.’
    Futurity gazed out at the wispy black hole air. ’Then - if this is
all true - somewhere in those wisps is your daughter. The only copy
of your daughter.’
    Poole said, ’In a deep philosophical sense, that’s true. It really
is her daughter, rendered in light.’
    Futurity said, ’Can she speak to you?’
    ’It was never allowed,’ Mara said wistfully. ’Only the commanders
had access, on secure channels. I must say I found that hard. I don’t
even know how she feels. Is she in pain? What does it feel like to be
her now?’
    ’How sad,’ Poole said. ’You have your duty - to colonise a new
world, the strange air of the black hole. But you can’t go there;
instead you have to lose your children to it. You are transitional,
belonging neither to your ancestors’ world or your children’s. You
are stranded between worlds.’
    That seemed to be too much for Mara. She sniffed, and pulled
herself upright. ’It was a military operation, you know. We all
accepted it. I told you, we had our duty. But then the Kard’s ships
came along,’ she said bitterly. ’They just swept us up and took us
away, and we didn’t even get to say goodbye.’
    Tahget glared. ’Which is why you hijacked my ship and dragged us
all to the centre of the Galaxy!’
    She smiled weakly. ’I’m sorry about that.’
    Futurity held his hands up. ’I think what we need now is to find
an exit strategy.’
    Poole grinned. ’At last you’re talking like an engineer, not a
priest.’
    Futurity said, ’Mara, we’ve brought you here as we promised. You
can see your daughter, I guess. What now? If we take you to the
planetoid, would you be able to talk to her?’
    ’Not likely,’ Mara said. ’The Kardish troops were stealing the old
Ideocracy gear even before we lifted off. I think they thought the
whole project was somehow unhealthy.’
    ’Yes,’ said Poole. ’I can imagine they will use this as a
propaganda tool in their battle with the Ideocracy.’
    ’Pah,’ spat Tahget. ’Never mind politics! What the acolyte is
asking, madam, is whether you will now relinquish your bomb, so