A Second Chance at Eden (25 page)

‘You really are going to go back to Earth, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. I don’t want to be a ghost in a living machine. That isn’t immortality, Harvey. It’s just a recording, like a song that’s played over and over long after the singer has died. A memory. A mockery. Nothing more. Chong is simply a clever old man who wants to impose his vision of existence on all of us. And he’s succeeded, too.’ She looked at me expectantly. There was no anger or resentment left in her. ‘Are you coming home with me?’

Day twenty; one of the worst in my life. Watching Jocelyn and the twins saying goodbye at the foot of the funicular lift was a torture. Nicolette was crying, Nathaniel was trying not to and failing miserably. Then it was my turn.

Don’t go, Dad,
Nicolette pleaded as she hugged me.

I have to.

But you’ll die on Earth.

I’ll be a part of your memories, you and Nat. That’s good enough for me.
Nathaniel flung his arms around me.
Take care, son.

Why are you doing this?
he demanded.
You don’t love her this much.

I do,
I lied.
This is best for all of us. You’ll see. You’re going to have a wonderful future here, you and all the other Edenists. I don’t belong.

You do.

No, you have to cut free of the past if you’re to have any chance of success. And I am most definitely the past.

He shook his head, tightening his grip.
The ship is leaving in another twelve minutes,
Eden reminded me gently.

We’re going.

I kissed the twins one last time, then guided Jocelyn into the funicular railway car. It rose smoothly up the track, and I looked down the length of the habitat, trying to commit that incredible sight to memory.

You’re actually doing it,
Hoi Yin said. There was a strand of utter incomprehension in her mental voice.

Yes. I won’t forget you, Hoi Yin.

Nor I you. But my memory will last for ever.

No. That’s a uniquely human conceit. Although it will certainly be for a very long time.

I don’t think I ever did understand you, Harvey.

You didn’t miss much.

Oh, but I did.

Goodbye, Hoi Yin. I wish you the best possible life. And someday, tell my child about me.

I will. I promise.

*

The
Irensaga
was the same marque of ship as the
Ithilien
; our cabin was identical to the one we shared on the flight out, even down to the colour of the restraint webbing over the bunks. Jocelyn let me help her with the straps, a timid smile blinking on and off, as though she couldn’t quite believe I was coming with her.

I gave her a quick peck on the cheek and fastened myself down. We’d do all right on Earth, the two of us. Life would be a hell of a lot easier for me, but then it always is when you surrender completely. I felt a total fraud, but there was nothing to be gained now by explaining my real reason to her. And she was a mite more sceptical about the Church these days. Yes, we’d be all right together. Almost like the good old days.

I switched the bulkhead screen to a view from the spaceship’s external cameras as the last commuter shuttle disengaged. Secondary drive nozzles flared briefly and brightly, urging us away from Eden. The gap began to widen, and we started to rise up out of the ecliptic. Eden’s northern endcap was exposed below us; with the silver-white spire of the docking spindle extending up from the crest it resembled some baroque cathedral dome.

I watched it slowly shrinking, while some strange emotions played around inside my skull. Regret, remorse, anger, even a sense of relief that it was all finally over. My decision, right or wrong, stood. I had passed my judgement.

And just how do you judge the dead? For that’s what Chong is, now, dead. Or at least, beyond any justice I could ever administer.

Chong?

Yes, Harvey?

I won’t be coming back. I want you to know that.

As always, you know more than you reveal. I did wonder.

I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it to give my three children a chance at a life which may be worthwhile. Perhaps I even believe in what you’re trying to build out here. You’ve given the people of Eden a kind of hope I never knew existed before.

You are an honourable man, Harvey, you shame me.

There is something I want to know.

Of course.

Did Hoi Yin ever know it was you who killed Maowkavitz?

No. Like you, I deny her the truth to protect her. It is a failing of all fathers, and I do genuinely consider her my daughter. I was so gratified by what she has become. If only you could have seen her the day we first met. So beautiful, so frail, and so tragic. To blossom from that ruined child into the sublime woman she is today is nothing short of a miracle. I could not bear to have her soiled again. So I withheld the knowledge, a perverted form of dana. But I consider it to be a necessary gift.

Funny, because it was Hoi Yin who gave you away.

How so?

The day your body died, she asked me what I was going to do with the stockpile of precious metal. I hadn’t released the information then. Which meant the two of you had known about it all along. The only way that could happen was if your affinity command of Eden’s personality was superior to everyone else’s. A logical assumption since you designed its thought routines to begin with.

And that told you I was the murderer?

Not at once, but it set me to thinking. How could Wallace Steinbauer, who has only been in Eden for two years, have developed a method of glitching the thought routines which surpassed even your ability? Especially given that his field of expertise was cybernetics. So then I started to consider what he had done a little more closely. The most obvious question was why didn’t he simply blackmail Penny Maowkavitz when it became obvious she had discovered he was stealing the gold? She could hardly come running to me. So it would have resulted in a complete stand-off between them, because if he had gone to the JSKP board about her initial subterfuge they would then find out that he had been stealing the gold as well. At worst she would have to agree to let him continue substituting the Dornier’s standard components with the new gold ones. Even if he had remade the entire capsule out of gold it wouldn’t amount to a hundredth of a per cent of the total value of the stockpile. That would have been a very small price to pay for safeguarding the future of Boston. So I had to start looking for ulterior motives, and someone else who could manipulate the habitat’s personality. The only people who qualified on the second count were you and Hoi Yin. That left me with motive. Hoi Yin had the obvious one, she hated Penny Maowkavitz, and with good reason. But she also admitted she felt cheated that Maowkavitz hadn’t died from cancer. It was fairly macabre, but I believed her. That left you.

And do you have my motive, Harvey?

I think so. That was the hardest part of all to figure out. After all, everybody up here knew Maowkavitz was dying, that she would be dead in a few months at the most. So the actual question must be, why would you want her to die
now
? What was so special about the timing? Then I realized two things. One, you were also dying, but you were expected to live longer than her. And second, Penny Maowkavitz’s death was fast, deliberately so. With your control over Eden you could have chosen from a dozen methods; yet you picked a bullet through the brain, which is damn near instantaneous. In other words, you made sure Penny Maowkavitz never had an opportunity to transfer her personality into the neural strata. You killed her twice, Chong, you shot her body and denied her mind immortality.

With reason, Harvey. I could not allow her to transfer herself into the neural strata before me, it would have been disastrous. And Maowkavitz had begun to think along those lines, she was not stupid. She was conferring with Eden to see if such a thing were possible. Which of course it is, it has been right from the start. As she did not reveal the existence of the precious metals, so I did not reveal the full potential of the neural strata. I had to ensure that Maowkavitz did not have the chance to experiment; and as I was already aware of Steinbauer’s illegal activity, I decided to use him as my alibi. Fortunately, given his temperament his elimination was even easier to engineer than Maowkavitz’s. I had only to wait until your department uncovered his theft of the gold, then goad him into panic at the prospect of discovery. The inspection tunnel was only one of a number of options I had prepared for him depending on how he reacted. Once he was dead, he could not protest his innocence, and the case would be closed.

So all this was to protect the neural strata from what you see as contamination by the unworthy?

Yes.

Does that mean you’re not going to allow just anyone to transfer their personality into Eden after all?

No, I said anyone who is affinity-capable will now be welcome, and it is so. That is why I had to be the first. It is my philosophy which will ensure that others may be free to join me. I cannot do anything else, I feel great joy at such dana, the giving of immortality is a majestic gift. Who do you know that can say the same, Harvey? Would you be able to admit everyone to such a fellowship? Unquestioningly? For that is the power you would have were you to be first. I am the Eden personality now, if I wanted I could be the absolute dictator of the population. Certainly people I disapprove of could be refused transference, blocking them would be profoundly simple for me. But I chose not to, I chose dana. And in doing so, in opening the neural strata to everyone, by sharing it, I ensure that such unchecked power will not last, for I will soon become a multiplicity in which no one personality segment will have the ability to veto.

And Maowkavitz might not have been so liberally inclined?

Your investigation revealed to you the true nature of Maowkavitz’s personality. A woman who prostitutes her own mirrorselves and then refuses even to acknowledge them as her own. A woman who has no regard or patience with anyone whose views differ from her own. Would you entrust such a woman to found a civilization? A whole new type of human culture?

But she wanted Eden to be free and independent.

She wanted it to be politically independent, nothing more. Boston was the ultimate California vertical. She and Harwood and the others were going to use Eden to escape from Earth. They wanted a secure, isolated tax haven community where they would be free to practise their culture of rampant commercialism without interference. Eden was not to be culturally different from Earth, but simply an elitist enclave.

And you killed her because of it.

I was the physical agent; and I regret it, as the chimp revealed to you. But, still, Kamma rules us all. She died because of what she was.

Yeah, right. Kamma.

How do you judge the dead? You can’t. Not when the living depend on them as their inspiration for the future.

On the bulkhead screen Eden had dwindled to a rusty circle no bigger than my thumbnail, the illuminated needle of its docking spindle standing proud at the centre. A nimbus of tiny blue-white lights from the tugs and capsules sparkled all around, cloaking it in a stippled halo. I would remember it like that for always, a single egg floating in the darkness. The one bright hope I had left in the universe.

Only I know that the infant society which it nurtures is flawed. Only I can tell the children playing in the garden that they are naked.

After another minute, Eden had faded from the screen. I switched cameras to the one which showed me the warm blue-white star of Earth.

2091
    Lunar referendum to terraform Mars.

2094
    Edenists begin exowomb breeding programme coupled with extensive geneering improvement to embryos, tripling their population over a decade.

2103
    Earth’s national governments consolidate into Govcentral.

2103
    Thoth base established on Mars.

2107
    Govcentral jurisdiction extended to cover O’Neill Halo.

2115
    First instantaneous translation by New Kong spaceship, Earth to Mars.

2118
    Mission to Proxima Centauri.

2123
    Terracompatible planet found at Ross 154.

2125
    Ross 154 planet named Felicity, first multiethnic colonists arrive.

2125–2130
    Four new terracompatible planets discovered. Multiethnic colonies founded.

2131
    Edenists germinate Perseus in orbit around Ross 154 gas giant, begin He
₃
mining.

2131–2205
    The Great Dispersal. One hundred and thirty terracompatible planets discovered. Massive starship building programme initiated in O’Neill Halo. Govcentral begins large-scale enforced outshipment of surplus population, rising to two million a week in 2160. Civil conflict on some early multiethnic colonies. Individual Govcentral states sponsor ethnic-streaming colonies. Edenists expand their He
₃
mining enterprise to every inhabited star system with a gas giant.