The Octagonal Raven
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To Catherine…
for her honesty in a culture of hypocrisy
Earth Orbit, 375 N.E.
Had the orbital watch alert satellite contained a human being, or even a sophisticated duoclone, that being might have scanned the data and reported something like,
Object classified as cometoid…spherical-octagonal, diameter forty-three meters, density two point five, composition approximately eighty-two point four percent water…carbides and carbonates approximately fifteen percent…iron and sulfides, silicates and oxides below detection levels…orbital at trajectory at variance with origin in either Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt…
Instead, the AI merely squirted its data analysis to the Long Watch Asteroid Collision Center satellite inhabiting the L5 point above the water planet below. In turn, the AI calculated orbital mechanics, trajectory, and mass composition and, after ensuring the object did not trigger any action parameters, stored the data for later retrieval.
In time, the comet-like object intersected the thin upper atmosphere on the planet’s night side, creating a long and brilliant trail that flashed across the high latitudes and lasted but for a few long seconds before vanishing.
The thousands of particle-sized contaminants also eventually slowed and began to drift through the atmosphere toward the oceans and landmasses below.
The central AI in the Long Watch Asteroid Collision Center satellite received the report of the ice-meteorite’s dissolution and added the data to the records of others of that class.
Eventually, a human methodizer reviewed the data, frowned at the octagonal dimensions, checked it again, and then shrugged.
Raven: Vallura, 458 N.E.
Before stepping out of the foyer of my villa, I glanced at my reflection in the shimmerglass of the antique twenty-first century mirror. The dark blue singlesuit and powder blue formal short jacket still fit, even though they dated from when I’d left the Federal Service years before. I’d decided against wearing the gatekeeper’s belt repeater. The last thing I wanted—or needed—was getting calls at a social event. Besides, I’d have to turn it off at the concert anyway. I nodded, and my reflected image did so as well.
I took the side steps from the foyer down to the hangar. My single vehicle rested on the gray permacrete that could easily have held three gliders, but I certainly didn’t need that many, not as an unattached edart composer, although there had been times when the hangar had held two. Those times just hadn’t lasted all that long. Then, all the equipment I used for maintaining the glider, and making unauthorized modifications, such as removing the ground clearance governors and replacing the limited flitter gyros with the unlimited ones used by orbital shuttles, took more than one bay anyway. Automatically, before stepping inside, I checked the systems of the glider, putting the ring finger of my right hand into the covered slot where the almost imperceptible flexconnection under the edge of the nail mated with the filament slot. I could have done it with remote sensors, but that took longer, and gave me a momentary headache. Besides, I always liked the certainty and backup of a direct link.
After a microsecond where data from the glider meshed with me, I lifted my finger. Everything was normal. Although the glider was technically more than half as old as I was, its internal works were not, and it retained its perfect function and shimmering silvered green finish. The canopy slid back, and I left it back after I opened the door and slid into the seat. I almost could have walked to Kharl’s, but the walking would have upped my metabolism, and I’d have arrived sweating.
That thought brought a laugh as the hangar portal irised open. Seven thousand years since the first baths of Mohenjodaro, and we still worried about sweat and scent. I was still smiling as the portal irised shut behind me, and the glider whispered southward along the grass path that led to the upper hill. The scents of fallen leaves and damp grass filled the air of almost-evening.
To my left, out over the valley, the twilight sun was painting the Navaho sandstone bluffs to the east crimson. The contrast between the green of the cedars and the red sand and rock was never more striking than at the end of the day. I’d occasionally scanned twilight scenes, the more striking ones, sometimes with the thunderstorms rising up over the mountains, as backdrops for my edart pieces—where the scene fit.
I had to wonder why Kharl had invited me. His soiree was supposedly just a reception on behalf of the Arts Committee and the Warsha Symphony, and that meant I’d had to commit to attending the concert. I hadn’t minded. He’d always been a friend, as well as a cousin, and, in some ways, closer in spirit than my brother Gerrat. Kharl and I both understood that there’s nothing quite like a live performance, no matter what the technophiles say about VR and rec-reality. Maybe you have to have been a pilot or someone whose life depended on direct-feed interpreted reality to understand that. Gerrat certainly didn’t seem to.
I shrugged. The concert would be good, especially since I hadn’t heard a live performance of the symphonies they were doing—a performance of Uphyrd’s
Gate of Conquest
paired with an ancient work
—The Planets
by an Anglian composer by the name of Holst. There wasn’t a straight audio recording, let alone a VR performance, of the Holst piece anywhere in the net, or even in UniComm’s restricted archives. From what Kharl had told me, Dhuma, the conductor of the Warsha, had required his musicians to learn the music from transcriptions taken from the ancient paper score.
After avoiding a teenager on a magscooter, I followed a cinnamon-shimmer glider, one with the canopy polarized, the last quarter klick to Kharl’s hilltop villa. The profusion of gliders arrayed on the grass receiving pad to the south of the multilevel villa testified that I was far from the first to arrive.
The couple stepping from the cinnamon glider nodded politely, and I returned the nod and gestured for them to precede me. I didn’t know them, and that was surprising. He was tall and angular, with a not-quite jutting jaw, and she was more my sister Elora’s height, although the skin of the woman before me was a light olive shade, set off by black hair so dark and lustrous it shimmered blue. The faint scent of gardenias trailed her.
The front double doors to Kharl’s villa were wide open, but I could sense faintly the repellent screen when I followed the couple through them.
My cousin Kharl was standing in the vaulted entry hall with a red-headed woman I didn’t know, not with his wife Grete. He always seemed to be smiling, surprising to me for a doctor specializing in the more obscure aspects of nanitic medicine, and when I entered the foyer was no exception. He was talking to Rynold Tondrol and Tondrol’s consort for the affair, since Rynold never seemed to show up anywhere with the same woman, not that he had to as the sole heir to and the chief operating officer of TD Reclamation. Reclamation was a nasty business, so nasty that the Federal Union allowed the use of monoclones for the dirtiest work. The licensing requirements were stiff, but I, and most people, had trouble with disposable synthetic people. If only the ancients hadn’t buried so many toxics and radioactives.
I pulled my mind back to the reception to study the people once more. Ahead of Rynold was a norm couple, walking away and down toward the great room where dozens already mingled. Seglend Krindottir was the advocate general of Noram. I didn’t know what her husband did, except that he was a mid-level manager in the Desret conglomerate. She was known for her practicality and legendary fairness, a norm as brilliant as any pre-select, but she had refused pre-selection for her daughters, or so it was said.
Rynold gave a last bow to Kharl, and my cousin turned his attentions to the couple before me. “N’garo…Aalua…I am so glad you both could come.”
N’garo bowed. “Our apologies for being on the late side. There was some sort of rally—”
“A protest meeting,” corrected Aalua. “Something about school testing.”
“Foolish complaints about perceptual testing. Norms never understand,” N’garo continued off-handedly. “People were all over the square, and we had to take the long way to get here.”
“I’m glad you weren’t delayed that much, and I know Dhuma will be glad to see you at the reception afterwards.” Kharl focused on the olive-skinned woman. “Have you decided whether you can discover a lower effectiveness threshold for—”
“Kharl…no shop talk tonight.” The woman laughed. “N’garo hears enough medical terms at home.”
Kharl inclined his head, with a boyish grin. “Your wish…”
The two passed on, and I stepped forward.
“Daryn. I’m glad you could come.” Kharl nodded to the red-haired woman by his side, who wore a deep but muted green gown. “This is Elysa. Elysa Mujaz-Kitab.” He smiled more broadly, as if he were enjoying a joke. “Elysa…this is my cousin, Daryn Alwyn.
The
Daryn Alwyn.” He added more to me, “Elysa had some doubts. She said that someone was using your name as a cover for a scap.”
Someone using my name for a system-created artificial persona? I couldn’t help raising my eyebrows.
Elysa’s smile was warm. Even her brown eyes sparkled. “That is
not
what I said. I said I wanted to meet you.”
Kharl smiled indulgently.
I returned Elysa’s smile. “Me? Anything I say goes under the real persona, not an artificial scapegoat, and I’m not that much to meet. As you can see.”
“I couldn’t believe that an Alwyn…” She flushed.
Although the flush was doubtless artifice, if one my nanites couldn’t read, the effect was charming. “Would you like an explanation?”
“If you wouldn’t mind…and if you will forgive me for my boldness.”
“You’re already forgiven.” I raised my eyebrows to Kharl. “I’m not sure about you, cousin.” I offered my arm to Elysa.
“You never are. Enjoy yourselves.” Kharl laughed and turned to the couple who had just walked into the entry hall. “Marcyla…Elfons…”
Elysa’s fingers, cool and smooth, brushed the back of my wrist as she took my arm, holding it but lightly as we walked down the steps into the great room that overlooked Vallura. The light floral scent she wore was similar to roses, but not exactly the same. I had the feeling that everything about her was like that—almost familiar, but not.
On the inside wall behind the three-meter grand piano was a large painting—a nanite-scanned replica of an ancient Homer, showing a boat on a dark sea. I had no doubts that the scanning of the original probably cost Kharl as much as any of the most expensive works painted in the last three decades. But then, I supposed that was the point, in a way. The frame had probably been re-created in the same fashion.
The spaces along the glass expanses overlooking the valley were taken by couples and knots of people, and we found ourselves near the center of the room, standing beside an inlaid wooden table, one that held a chess board—an antique game nearly meaningless now that anyone who wanted to could instantly call upon the strategies and games of the past millennia.
“You really thought I didn’t compose my own work? That I used a scap?”
“That’s what I told Kharl,” she replied. “He laughed.”
“Scaps aren’t good at creative work.” I glanced toward the server who approached with a tray on which were two goblets of wine. “You didn’t think that I might have some creative ability…there is a certain commsystem talent that runs in the family….”
“Your sister certainly has it.”
“Why do you think that? Because she had the nerve to work her way up to the top with a competitor?”
“She seems to have…a different…outlook.”
“You know her?”
Elysa gave a minute headshake. “A friend of mine follows those things. I’m intrigued with…more artistic types.”
“You just intimated that you couldn’t believe an Alwyn could be creative.” I laughed softly as she flushed.
She was rescued by a server, a young man who, after edging through the growing crowd, offered the two goblets of wine remaining on his tray, “Sir? Lady?”
Elysa took one goblet, and I accepted the second with a nod to the server. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” The server’s smile was pleasant, professional, and that of someone brain-damped.
Idly, I wondered what the man had done, although he was a norm, since he appeared barely into his twenties.
My eyes passed by his shoulder as I recognized another semi-familiar face, that of Kymal Aastafa. I hadn’t seen that much of Kymal since I’d left Blue Oak Academy to go to The College, and he’d departed for the Byjin Collegium. He lived somewhere in the Sinoplex, and I was surprised to see his face, but as we exchanged smiles, someone tapped his shoulder, and he turned.
“You know him?” asked Elysa.
“Kymal? We went to school together years ago.”
“He’s a noted chaos theoretician, isn’t he?”
“More of an applied theoretician, if you believe the journals.” I paused. How had she known him? Kymal had lived mainly in the Sinoplex for years, only occasionally returning to Calfya, and Elysa didn’t appear to be even my age. I looked into her young-appearing face, although I would find no sign of age or youth, since most pre-selects had young-appearing faces until the decade or so before their deaths. “Mujaz-Kitab? That’s an unusual name.”
“Let’s just say that it reflects the family heritage and history. That’s as good a way as any of explaining it, and any other would become hopelessly confusing.”
I could sense both the tension and the semi-accuracy of her response, but I didn’t press the issue. If she didn’t want to say more, who was I to insist? Especially on a purely social occasion. I took a sip of the wine. It was good, and a vintage and vintner I hadn’t tasted, scarcely an unusual occurrence, since Kharl always enjoyed surprising his guests with wines no one else had discovered, or so it seemed. Wines didn’t replicate well, even with the best of scanners. My internal system let me know that it was a dolcetta, probably from the Snoma valley, a darkish red with a bouquet I couldn’t begin to describe. I like good wines, but I’m far from a connoisseur in any way, even with nanites to help. “Good wine.”
“Everything Kharl serves is the best. What would be the point otherwise?” Elysa replied.
We both laughed.
“Where did you meet him?” I asked.
“He’s family, of sorts. I’m a distant cousin of Grete’s…from Cedacy, at least recently.”
“Not quite so…social?”
“Exactly.” She raised her eyebrows.
“And from where before that?”
“One of the colonies you’ve never heard of. I lived in Hejaz for a time.”
“I see. Not exactly well known.” I’d never heard of the colony, and I should have, but she seemed to be totally truthful on that.
“No.” She flushed slightly again. “It’s not.”
In the swirl of people, I saw another norm coming down the steps—Eldyn Nyhal—with his wife. The contrast was amazing. Eldyn wore a dark Prussian blue vest over a brilliant blue singlesuit, and with a shimmering silver-like medallion—roughly oval—that seemed to shoot lightbeams. She was tiny, probably not even a hundred and fifty centimeters, and dressed in dark gray. Nyhal had been a medical researcher—the one who had tamed the pre-select plague. That had been when I was in the Service so I hadn’t been around—most fortunately. After that, he had gone into business for himself, and made a considerable fortune in developing some form of nanite processing based on the results of neglected and obscure research that he held closely. The bottom line was that he’d made nanite food processors both more effective, allowed greater directed variation in replication, and reduced their energy costs by close to twenty percent. In short, he had transformed himself from a doubtless under-compensated scientist into a very well paid food appliance magnate of sorts. His apparel was conventional enough in cut—just not in color—and several couples seemed to edge away from him.