Great North Road (141 page)

A buggy pulled up in front of them. Its Hi-Q auto quested a link and told them it was assigned to drive them to their newly constructed house. The landing field octocyber loaded their bags into the boot, and they were off.

Beyond the landing field, the first district was numanetic, basic cyberblocs producing more of their own. Big cubes with black PV skin splitting off sections like geometric amoebas. Once they were free they absorbed more raw from the thick pipes threading along the side of the dirt track, expanding into set function producers. The initial stages of development had focused on microfacturing houses complete with domestic units, followed by human basics like clothes, furniture, vehicles … After that, Burradon had concentrated on churning out bioform systems.

Sid watched with delight as they drove past the onion-shaped numanetics of the bioversity seeders. Aerostats were inflating out of the pinnacles, big oval envelopes with their bulging breeder vats at the bottom, bioreactors that sucked moisture out of the muggy atmosphere to infect with dozens of species of soil bacteria that sprayed out of the bottom like a low-pressure rocket. Bacteria that multiplied rapidly, etching nutrients out of the naked minerals, preparing the ground for the next stage.

Algae would come next, establishing a textured biological component in the matrix of sand. Molds, fungi; all had their slot on the time table drawn up on the nine-year voyage.

In a couple of years’ time the first batches of insects would be released, their eggs gestated in their billions in clone vats to be scattered across the land. Finally the seeds would come, and flowers would bloom across the desert. Forests and meadows; jungles and savannas—all would rise to coat the land in a lush emerald terrestrial growth. Nature’s natural order would assume primacy, no longer requiring human assistance, and the bioform would end. Animals would charge out of their pens, enjoying their freedom along with the people who’d been transplanted here.

Just seeing the aerostats floating away to roam across the globe wherever the winds took them Sid knew he’d made the right decision. Judging by her expression, Jacinta was sharing the thought. They clasped hands, and kissed.

“Urrgh,” Zara wrinkled her nose up and turned away.

“Look,” Will shouted, pointing. “The gateway.”

Several kilometers beyond the town’s expanding boundary, the gateway was slowly being resurrected inside a massive, open-ended building. The components they’d dismantled in Newcastle had been methodically examined, refurbished, and upgraded by the constellation’s AIs on the voyage. Now a scaffold lattice rippled beneath slick triangular automata that were slowly and carefully locking the individual units back into place.

“There goes the neighborhood,” Zara said. “And we only just got here.”

“The migration over will be gradual,” Jacinta said. “It’ll have to be. Even our numanetics can’t cope with everybody all at once.”

“They said Brinkelle will be first across,” Sid said. “It’s supposed to be symbolic. Setting an example.”

“Very symbolic,” Will said. “The lightwave fleet’s been ferrying over key people for a week now.”

“Will the Aldred-avatar be going the other way?” Zara muttered snidely.

“Behave,” Sid told her mildly.

The rolling plain that the bulk of the town was built on began to dip down, and they were on a massive rugged slope that led down to an emerald sea sparkling enticingly. Streams rippled down gullies, falling down steep sections into small deep pools the water had already eroded. Switchback roads, the envy of any Italian mountain village, crisscrossed the gradient, linking long terraces bulldozed out for a swath of individual houses.

“It’s all fresh water,” Zara exclaimed happily. “And we don’t have to worry about sharks or alligators or jellyfish or adradoth or visimines. Can we go in now, Dad, please? Please-please?”

Sid looked down to the bottom of the slope, where the shore curved into a sting of small coves. Ripples lapped against the claggy saturated sand. There were people already down there, splashing about.

“If we can find the swimsuits, sure,” he said.

Zara kissed him happily. “Thank you, Daddy.”

He smiled back, perfectly content. But part of him was wondering how much longer she’d ask him for permission to do what she wanted.

The house they’d been allocated was a low villa with a lot of glass facing the sea. A long veranda ran along the front, complete with outdoor furniture.

“Wow,” Sid said as the teenagers ran on ahead, shouting to each other about which room they were going to claim for their own. “We really did leave Jesmond behind.”

Jacinta’s lips pulled back into a rictus smile. “Looks wrong without any plants,” she said wistfully. “We need a trees—palm trees. Some rosebushes at least.”

“You can always go back.”

“Oh shut up.”

Two women were walking along the terrace toward them. They could have been sisters they were so similar; one looked to be in her early twenties, while the other was probably eighteen. Sid frowned as a memory tickled him; the older one had long blond hair that blew about a lot in the wind gusting up from the sea.

“Hello there,” she said cheerfully, pushing errant strands away from her face. “Looks like we’re going to be neighbors. Rebka and I just got in from St. Libra last night.”

“Hi,” Jacinta said. “That’s great. We’ve got a couple of kids about your age.”

Sid found himself grinning. “You’re Angela,” he said.

“Yes. How do you know that?”

“I’ve been reading your file on the voyage from Earth. I’m really pleased to meet you, pet, we have a lot to talk about.”

2377

The ellipsoid lightwave shuttle slipped silently over the rolling landscape that had once been a delightful park. Today plants and trees from eight different planets, originally selected for their elegant ornamental looks, fought a losing battle against New Monaco’s native vegetation, which was seeking to reclaim the ground from the exotic foreigners. It looked like they were sinking under wave after wave of creepers and spindly blue flokgrass.

Angela’s ancillary neural plexus directed the shuttle to circle the ruins at the center of the park. She was surprised and saddened by how much the enormous mansion had decayed. It was more than quarter millennium now since she’d caught her last glimpse of the scrumptious DeVoyal palace from the rear of Bantri’s plane as it flew her to her new life, but even so …

Most of the roofing had buckled and fallen in, the shattered panels allowing centuries of rain to gush along the exquisite polished wood flooring, turning the stairs into elaborate curving waterfalls before they rusted and rotted away. That stage of decay gave the plants a better root, allowing bushes and even small trees to grow in the crumbling remains of abandoned furniture and plush fittings.

The stone walls of the central double-H structure had fared a little better, but then they were a meter thick, reinforced by a carbon-meshed concrete core. Wispy flokgrass sprouted from fractured crevices. The creepers that had marched across the parkland now swarmed up the vertical redoubt, their intrusive, persistent stem fronds attacking the stone until it began to flake and fall, carving random organic shapes amid the original gargoyles and fluting. Commanding stately façades that had once known imperial gold light shining from a thousand windows every night were now broken sagging husks of their former selves. The glittering windows empty alcoves devoid of glass.

The shuttle touched down a hundred meters from the end of the west wing. Angela was ready to bounce it back up immediately; she was nervous that any motion would send the whole time-crushed edifice crumbling into its final cataclysm. But nothing moved outside, no tremble shivering along the cracked stonework. The old place was going to survive a few years yet.

“Told you it was real,” she said to the three children clustering around her. “Come on, let’s go take a look.”

They raced out onto what had once been a lawn so flat and smooth you could’ve used it as a golf green. Their shrill happy cries absorbed by the still summer air. Try as she might, Angela couldn’t remember if New Monaco had any dangerous animals. Her natural memory was completely shot these days—everything important was stored in her adjuvant neurology, and one day she’d get around to some proper indexing. But the children all had Dn-bands around their wrists, so it didn’t matter.

She slipped some sunglasses on, warding off the sun’s glare as it blazed down out of the violet-shaded sky.

“Did you really live here, Grandmamma?” little Hollyn asked, her gold hair of coiled ringlets bouncing about as she hopped from foot to foot. Hollyn could never keep still, just like her mother Scyritha.

Angela searched along the base of the wall, seeing the deep sag in the creeper that must have been the archway to the inner courtyard. “Yes, sweets, I did. In one of the inner sections.”

“So you really are a princess?” Octavio asked with his perpetual cheeky smile.

“I was, darling, a very long time ago.”

“It must have been amazing.”

“The universe was different then, but no, not really. I enjoyed myself, but that was all.”

She allowed them to run on ahead, playing explorers while she made her way over to the grove of eight ancient oaks. This was one place she didn’t need to run a request through her adjuvant neurology to find. The last time she’d stood here the oaks were saplings, barely reaching up to her shoulder. Today they were approaching their last decades, with huge gnarled trunks, rotting bark, and dead broken branches stabbing into the quiet violet sky.

Right in the center of the grove was a simple octagonal black marble pillar. It was on a plinth, she knew, but that had long ago vanished under moss and creepers.

Angela placed a single red rose against the marble’s weathered surface. “Hello, Daddy,” she said. “I’m sorry it took me so long. But oh, you should see the life I’ve had. I think you’d be proud of me. I really do. Our family is so big now, and fabulous. You made it happen, Daddy. You had me, and I’m so grateful for that. Thank you.”

Her hand wiped away a tear that had leaked out from below her sunglasses. Then she turned and went back to the children, who had found one of the big fountain ponds. They laughed as they slid down the steep moss-covered slope.

Hollyn grinned as Angela rejoined them. Her little arm waved at the huge palace. “How many people lived here, Grandmamma? Was our family just as big back then?”

Angela smiled and tucked some of her rebellious hair back behind her ear. “No, there was just the two of us living here—me and my father.”

The children stared at her goggle-eyed, not sure if she was joking them.

“Two?” squeaked Shawanna. The little girl looked from her great-ancestor to the looming ruin, then back again. Total disbelief was written all over her.

“And an awful lot of servants—people who looked after us,” Angela explained hurriedly.

“What did you do all day?”

“Good question,” Angela admitted. “I went to a lot of parties, traveled to all the planets we had in those days. It kept me busy. I even fell in love for the first time.”

“With a prince?” Hollyn asked hopefully.

“Yes, with a prince.”

“Is he our ancestor, too?”

“No, darling. I was stupid, I let him get away. But he helped me once, when I really really needed it. That’s the reason half of you exist today. He was a true prince, you see.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know.” She looked back at the palace, seeing it as it had been in those glory days. Its fabulous rooms filled with all those glamorous empty people as they partied the weeks and years away in decadent splendor because they knew nothing else. It was nice to have those memories, but they weren’t important, not anymore. Just a golden childhood summer day to reminisce about fondly.

“Why aren’t you a princess anymore?” Octavio asked insistently.

“I grew up, darling. Everybody grew up.”

Which wasn’t true, she knew. So many of those faces that danced and laughed for eternity in her mind had gone. She let them brush against her, those dizzy ghosts, Shasta, Matiff, Housden … such beautiful people ruled by their spent, empty existence. Some redeemed, saved, others lost. And more, those desperately intense souls that shone so bright as they traversed spacetime in their own determined fashion: dear sweet Elston, Ravi, Coniff, Karizma, lovely Paresh, even wonderful old Sid … everybody she’d slowly lost down the centuries, flittering past unseen yet smiling as she held her arms wide and twirled like a fey dancer. Happy in their own way now. Angela wished them all well wherever they were. This was the one place where it was fitting for her to say good-bye to them, to cast off any lingering sorrows.

“Come along,” she said with a radiant smile, pleased to have shown off the place where it all began to the lovely scamps she was proud to have as descendants. “We’d better get back, or we’ll be in big trouble.”

The Nuii-Zanth conglobate awaited them in geosync orbit, a geode of quantum-three-state matter more than 150 kilometers across, home to eighty thousand entities who were about to adventure into the galactic core for the first time. Captain Lulu MacNamara had indulged Angela’s sentimental diversion for old times’ sake, but she was keen for their grand voyage to begin. It didn’t do to keep her waiting.