The right of Jaine Fenn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company

This eBook first published in 2010 by Gollancz.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

eISBN : 978 0 5750 8905 1

This eBook produced by Jouve, France

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.jainefenn.com
www.orionbooks.co.uk

James: this one’s for you. For past and future friendship and for years of technical advice, some of which I’ve even listened to.

‘Strike dear mistress
And cure his heart’
‘Venus in Furs’, The Velvet Underground

‘We are no monsters, we’re moral people
And yet we have the strength to do this
This is the splendour of our achievement
Call in the airstrike with a poison kiss’

‘Nemesis’, Shriekback

PROLOGUE:

NERVES SHEATHED IN SILVER

Above, golden sunlight sparkles off an azure sea. Down here, white light shines on clean, cold surfaces. The green-and-orange robes of the woman walking between the sealed tanks, monitoring stations and interface consoles are a splash of colour in the otherwise antiseptic lab. The hem of her robe has a subtle batik pattern on it picked out in white and midnight blue: a breaking wave against a starfield.

The same design appears as a logo on the breast pocket of the older man who walks beside her, though he’s dressed in a white shirt and grey slacks. His skin is several shades lighter than hers, and has an unhealthy pallor due in part to spending too much time under artificial light. She has listened to what he has to say, and now she responds, ‘So this last one is definitely viable?’

He nods. ‘The transference is almost complete; I’ll be starting the first test runs today. We have a ninety-seven-point-five per cent chance of a completely successful encoding.’

‘Good. That’ll give us twenty-eight from the original thirty-five. ’ She smiles mirthlessly. ‘Five fewer than last time; good job it’s a seller’s market.’

‘Will the buyers want to come down here? Last time, one of them did.’ He shivers at the memory, decades-old but still enough to thrill and chill him in equal parts.

‘So Mother said. Frankly, I have no idea. It’s not like we can tell them what to do.’

‘How about the new batch? Any word yet?’

‘No.’ Her reply doesn’t invite further conversation and he draws back, expecting her to leave. Then she says, ‘I’ve seen your latest test results.’

‘Which tests?’ he asks warily.

‘Yours. Not the project’s.’

‘Oh.’

‘You should have told me yourself.’

‘Yes, I . . . I probably should.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and makes to put a hand out to him, withdrawing it when he flinches away.

‘I need to get on,’ he says, not looking at her. ‘If that’s all right.’

‘Of course.’ She walks back towards the elevator, leaving him alone in the lab.

He returns to his workstation, the only one active. He spreads his hands over the console’s tactile interfaces, then blinks to co-ordinate his optical displays with the tank readouts. He feels a momentary disorientation as his consciousness enters a limited unity with the machinery and what is held within—a state few human minds can achieve. The sensation passes and his view of the featureless black oblong in its nest of wires and cables is overlaid with a familiar pattern in glowing silver: a central column emerging from a rough-edged oval, and a tracery of fine lines branching out from the column. The dark patches in the cortex are in the usual areas: memory, sensation, emotion, all functions now surplus to requirements.

His hands dance over the controls, programming the test. After forty years’ experience he can almost do this in his sleep, but he still barely catches a nutrient-feed imbalance which, left unchecked, could disrupt the final transition.

The irony that his own brain is degenerating beyond science’s ability to heal is not lost on him. He is determined to complete this last encoding before he succumbs, just as he has said he would.

Finally the parameters for the current test are set. He applies the stimulus slowly, with an instinctive feel for how much is required when. How much
what
, he is careful not to consider. Not only because this is where science shades into more arcane disciplines, but because then he would have to think about the reactions he is producing in human terms, and that would mean using words like
distress
and
pain
.

He makes the final adjustments.

The tank shimmers, as though straining at the edge of reality, then flickers out of existence. Almost before his dual sight registers the disappearance, the tank is back in the real world. By the time he’s dealt with the brief backwash of nausea, his overlays are back online too.

He calls up the results. The test was flawless. He was being pessimistic when he said ninety-seven-plus per cent: it will be more like ninety-nine-plus.

He smiles, though with his own mortality catching up on him, he finds himself briefly thinking about what he’s doing, and who he is doing it to.

As he has hundreds of times before, he reminds himself to take the long view. In effect, they are already dead before they arrive at his lab.

And what he does here, though unseen and uncelebrated, is essential to the human race. It is vital work.

Holy work.

CHAPTER ONE

Taro was watching clouds. He loved the way they shifted and evolved, like they were alive, and he still couldn’t get over the sheer scale of these great floating masses of water vapour.

Nual had suggested, with a rare burst of dry humour, that it was a good job he liked clouds, given that Khathryn’s sky was usually covered in them. Apparently, sunny days were few and far between here. That was fine with Taro. He’d spent all his life, up to a couple of weeks ago, in an artificial environment less than twenty klicks across. He was still getting used to the idea of an infinite universe. Looking up into an empty sky made his balls twitch.

Right now, standing in scrubby grass on the cliff-top near the house that had belonged to Nual’s one-time guardian, he was giving the clouds more attention than they deserved. He could’ve stayed inside: it was cold and damp out here, and Nual hadn’t asked him to follow her. But she hadn’t forbidden him either, and he wanted to be there for her if she needed him.

Even though he knew this was a moment he couldn’t share, his eyes kept straying to the lone figure at the edge of the cliff. Nual had been standing there for a while now, looking out over the heaving grey sea, her body held rigid, her mind locked tight. When she raised her arms, Taro’s resolve not to intrude on her grief wavered. He watched as she opened the urn, though he was too far away to see the ashes fly off on the wind.

He’d met Elarn Reen briefly, when they’d both been scared and on the run. He’d tried to help her. He’d failed.

Nual had once told him that Elarn was the last person she’d trusted, seven years before she met - and chose to trust - Taro himself. Given the unpleasant end Medame Reen had come to, that wasn’t a very reassuring thought. It was one of many worries Taro didn’t allow himself to dwell on. Over the last few weeks he’d experienced changes he could never have imagined back in Khesh City: big, scary changes. At least he no longer had to worry about where the next meal was coming from, and, as far as he knew, no one wanted him dead - both major improvements on the recent past.

At the cliff edge Nual lowered her arms, then turned and started back towards the house. Taro went to meet her, but when she looked up and saw him, the surprise on her face jolted him; she must have been so wrapped up in her mourning that she hadn’t even sensed him. Tears glistened on her cheeks. For a moment he felt an odd mental jostling, his desire to get close warring with her half-apologetic exclusion. Though the sensation was familiar, this time she’d have to be way more forceful if she wanted him to back off. He half expected she would, but she stopped and waited, letting him come up and put his arms around her. He pulled her to his chest, her head tucking in under his chin.

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