Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent
eyes.’
She stood straight. ’I could have it all again. I could have it for
ever, couldn’t I? If I came out about what I am.’
Sool said stiffly, ’The Coalition frowns on celebrity. The
species, not the individual, should be at the centre of our
thoughts.’
Her mother was shaking her head. ’Anyhow, Faya, it can’t be like
that. You’re still young; you haven’t thought it through. Once I
hoped you would be able to - hide. To survive. But it would be
impossible. Mortals won’t accept you.’
’Your mother is right,’ Sool said. ’You would spend your life
tinting your hair, masking your face. Abandoning your home every few
years. Otherwise they will kill you. No matter how beautifully you
Danced.’ He said this with a flat certainty, and she realised that he
was speaking from experience.
’I need time,’ she said abruptly, and forced a smile. ’Ironic,
isn’t it? Just as I’ve been given all the time anybody could ask
for.’
Spina sighed. ’Time for what?’
’To talk to Luru Parz.’ And she left before they could react.
’I am nearly two hundred years old,’ said Luru Parz. ’I was born
in the era of the Occupation. I grew up knowing nothing else. And I
took the gift of immortality from the Qax. I have already lived to
see the liberation of mankind.’
They were in a two-person flitter. Faya had briskly piloted them
into a slow orbit around Port Sol; beneath them the landscape
stretched to its close-crowding horizon. Here, in this cramped cabin,
they were safely alone.
Port Sol was a Kuiper object: like a huge comet nucleus, circling
the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto. The little ice moon was gouged by
hundreds of artificial craters. Faya could see the remnants of domes,
pylons and arches, spectacular microgravity architecture. But the
pylons and graceful domes were collapsed, with bits of glass and
metal jutting like snapped bones. Everything was smashed up. Much of
this architecture was a relic of pre-Occupation days. The Qax had
never come here; during the Occupation the moon had been a refuge. It
had been humans, the forces of the young Coalition, who had done all
this damage in their ideological enthusiasm. Now, even after decades
of reoccupation and restoration, most of the old buildings were
closed, darkened, and thin frost coated their surfaces.
Luru said, ’Do you know what I see, when I look down at this
landscape? I see layers of history. The great engineer Michael Poole
himself founded this place. He built a great system of wormholes,
rapid-transit pathways from the worlds of the inner system. And
having united Sol system, here, at the system’s outermost terminus,
Poole’s disciples used great mountains of ice to fuel interstellar
vessels. It was the start of mankind’s First Expansion. But then
humans acquired a hyperdrive.’ She smiled wistfully. ’Economic logic.
The hyper-ships could fly right out of the crowded heart of Sol
system, straight to the stars. Nobody needed Poole’s huge wormhole
tunnels, or his mighty ice mine. And then the Qax came, and then the
Coalition.’
’But now Port Sol has revived.’
’Yes. Because now we are building a new generation of starships,
great living ships thirsty for Port Sol’s water. Layers of
history.’
’Luru, why should I be tainted in this way? Why my family?’
’It’s common on Port Sol,’ Luru said. ’Relatively. Even during the
Occupation, and again under the Coalition’s persecution, the undying
fled to the outer system - to the gas giants’ moons, to here, a
forgotten backwater. Yes, this was a hideout for undying.’
’I know. That’s why the Coalition were so brutal.’
’Yes. Many undying escaped the Coalition invasion, and fled
further. A flock of generation starships rose from the ice of Port
Sol, even as the Coalition ships approached, commanded by undying;
nobody knows what became of them. But while they were here, you see,
the undying perturbed the gene pool, with their own taint of
longevity. It’s not a surprise that throwbacks like you, as the
Commission calls you, should arise here.’
’Luru Parz, I don’t know what to do. Will I have to hide?’
’Yes. But you mustn’t be ashamed. There is an evolutionary logic
to our longevity.’ Luru clutched a fist over her heart. ’Listen to
me. Before we were human, when we were animals, we died after the end
of our fertile years, like animals. But then, as we evolved, we
changed. We lived on, long after fertility ended.
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