Is she all right?
Oenone
asked anxiously. The mental tone reminded Athene of a wide-eyed ten-year-old.
She’s just perfect,
Sinon said gently.
Syrinx smiled up at the expectant adults peering down at her, and kicked her feet in the air.
Athene couldn’t help but smile back down at the placid infant. It’s all so much easier this way, she thought, at a year old
they are much better able to cope with the transition; and there’s no blood, no pain, almost as though we weren’t meant to
have them ourselves.
Breathe,
Athene told the baby girl.
Syrinx spluttered on the gummy mass in her mouth and spat it out. With her affinity sensitivity opened to the full, Athene
could feel the passage of the coolish air down into the baby’s lungs. It was strange and uncomfortable, and the lights and
colours were frightening after the pastel dream images of the rings which she was used to. Syrinx began to cry.
Crooning sympathy both mentally and verbally Athene unplugged the bitek umbilical from her navel, and lifted the baby out
of the sac’s slippery folds. Sinon hovered around her with a towel to wipe the girl down, radiating pride and concern.
Volscen
’s crew began to clear up the pulpy mess of the package, ready to dump it out of the airlock. Bouncing Syrinx on her arm,
Athene moved down the corridor towards the lounge that was serving as a temporary nursery.
She’s hungry,
Oenone
said. A thought which was vigorously echoed by Syrinx.
Stop fussing,
Athene said.
She’ll be fed once we’ve dressed her. And we’ve got another six to pick up yet. She’s going to have to learn to take her turn.
Syrinx let out a plaintive mental wail of protest.
“Oh, you are going to be a bonny handful, aren’t you?”
She was, but then so were all of her nine siblings as well. The house Athene had taken was a circular one, consisting of a
single-storey ring of rooms surrounding a central courtyard. Its walls were polyp, and its curved roof was a single sheet
of transparent composite which could be opaqued as required. It had been grown to order by a retired captain two hundred years
previously when arches and curves were the fashion, and there wasn’t a flat surface anywhere.
The valley it sat in was typical of Romulus’s interior, with low, rolling sides, lush tropical vegetation, a stream feeding
a series of lakes. Small, colourful birds glided through the branches of the old vine-webbed trees, and the air was rich with
the scent of the flower cascades. It resembled a wilderness paradise, conjuring up images of the pre-industrial Amazon forests,
but like all the Edenist habitats every square centimetre was meticulously planned and maintained.
Syrinx and her brothers and sisters had the run of it as soon as they learnt to toddle. Nothing harmful could happen to children
(or anybody else) with the habitat personality watching the entire interior the whole of the time. Athene and Sinon had help,
of course, both human nursery workers and the housechimps, monkey-derived bitek servitors. But even so, it was exhausting
work.
As she grew up it was obvious that Syrinx had inherited her mother’s auburn hair and slightly oriental jade eyes; from her
father she got her height and reach. Neither parent claimed responsibility for her impetuosity. Sinon was terribly careful
not to display any public favouritism, though the whole brood soon learnt to their creative advantage that he could never
say no or stay cross with his daughter for long.
When she was five years old the whispers in her sleep began. It was Romulus who was responsible for her education, not
Oenone
. The habitat personality acted as her teacher, directing a steady stream of information into her sleeping brain; the process
was interactive, allowing the habitat to quiz her silently and repeat anything which hadn’t been fully assimilated the first
time. She learnt about the difference between Edenists and Adamists, those humans who had the affinity gene and those who
didn’t, the “originals”, whose DNA was geneered but not expanded. The flood of knowledge sparked an equally impressive curiosity.
Romulus didn’t mind, it had infinite patience with all its half-million strong population.
This difference seems silly to me,
she confided to
Oenone
one night as she lay in her bed.
The Adamists could all have affinity if they wanted to. It must be horrible to be so alone in your head. I couldn’t live without
you.
If people don’t want to do something, you shouldn’t force them,
Oenone
replied.
For a moment they shared the vista of the rings. That night
Oenone
was orbiting high above the dayside of the saffron gas giant planet; it loomed through the misty particle drifts, a two-thirds
crescent which always held her entranced. Sometimes she seemed to spend the whole night watching the colossal cloud armies
at war.
It’s still silly of them,
she insisted.
One day we will visit Adamist worlds, then we’ll understand.
I wish we could go now. I wish you were big enough.
Soon, Syrinx.
For ever.
I’m thirty-five metres broad now. The particles have been thick this month. Just another thirteen years.
Double for ever,
the six-year-old replied brokenly.
Edenism was supposed to be a completely egalitarian society. Everybody had a share in its financial, technical, and industrial
resources, everybody (thanks to affinity) had a voice in the consensus which was their government. But in all the Saturn habitats
the voidhawk captains formed a distinct stratum of their own, fortune’s favourites. There was no animosity from the other
children, neither the habitat personality nor the adults would tolerate that, and animosity couldn’t be hidden with communal
affinity. But there was a certain amount of manoeuvring; after all, the captains would one day choose their own crews from
the people they could get on with. The inevitable childhood groups which formed did so around the cub captains.
By the time she was eight, Syrinx was the best swimmer out of all her siblings, her long spidery limbs giving her an unbeatable
advantage over the others in the water. The group of children she led spent most of their time playing around the streams
and lakes of the valley, either swimming or building rafts and canoes. This was around the time they discovered how to fox
Romulus’s constant surveillance, misusing affinity to generate loitering phantasms in the sensor cells which covered every
exposed polyp surface.
When they were nine years old she challenged her brother Thetis to an evasion race as a way of testing their new-found powers.
Both teams of children set off on their precarious rafts, gliding down the stream out of the valley. Syrinx and her juvenile
cohorts made it all the way down to the big saltwater reservoir which ringed the base of the southern end-cap. That was where
their punts became useless in the hundred-metre depth; and so there they drifted in happy conspiracy until the axial light-tube
dimmed before responding to the increasingly frantic affinity calls from their parents.
You shouldn’t have done it,
Oenone
chided solemnly that evening.
You didn’t have any life jackets.
But it was fun. And we had a real zing of a ride back in the Hydro Department officer’s boat. It was so fast, there was spray
and wind and everything.
I’m going to speak to Romulus about your moral responsibility traits. I don’t think they integrated properly. Athene and Sinon
were very worried, you know.
You knew I was all right; so Mother must have known as well.
There is such a thing as propriety.
I know. I’m sorry, really. I’ll be nice to Mother and Father tomorrow, promise.
She rolled over onto her back, pulling the duvet a little tighter. The ceiling was transparent, and she could just make out
the dim silverish moon-glow of the habitat’s light-tube through the clouds.
I imagined it was you I was riding on, not just a stupid raft.
Did you?
Yes.
There was that unique flash of oneness as their thoughts kissed at every level of consciousness.
You’re just trying to gain my sympathy,
Oenone
accused.
Course I am. That’s what makes me me. Am I really horrible, do you think?
I think I will be glad when you’re older, and more responsible.
I’m sorry. No more raft rides. Honest.
She giggled.
It was still heaps of fun, though.
Sinon died when the children were eleven; he was a hundred and sixty-eight. Syrinx cried for days, even though he had done
his best to prepare the children. “I’ll always remain with you,” he told the dejected group when they gathered round his bed.
Syrinx and Pomona had picked fresh angel-trumpets from the garden to be put into vases beside the bed. “We have continuity,
us Edenists. I’ll be a part of the habitat personality, I’ll see what you’re all up to, and we can talk whenever you want.
So don’t be sad, and don’t be frightened. Death isn’t something to be afraid of, not for us.”
And I want to watch you grow up and start your captaincy,
he told Syrinx privately.
You’re going to be the best captain ever, Sly-minx, you see.
She gave him a tentative smile, and then hugged his frail form, feeling the hot, sweaty skin, and hearing in her mind his
inner wince as he shifted his position.
That night she and
Oenone
listened to his memories as they fled his decaying brain, a bewildering discharge of images and smells and emotional triggers.
That was when she first found out about the nagging worry he held about
Oenone
, the tiny shred of doubt which persisted about the voidhawk’s unusual co-parent. His concern hanging in the darkened bedroom
like one of the phantasms she bamboozled the habitat receptor cells with.
See, Sly-minx, I told you I’d never desert you. Not you.
She smiled into the empty air as his distinctive mental tone sounded in her head. Nobody else ever called her that, only Daddy.
There was a curious background burble, as if a thousand people were all holding whispered conversations somewhere far behind
him.
But the next morning, the sight of his body wrapped in a white shroud being carried out of the house to be buried in the habitat’s
arbour was too much for her, and the tears began.
“How long will he live for in the habitat multiplicity?” she asked Athene after the short burial ceremony.
“As long as he wants,” Athene said slowly. She never lied to any of the children, but there were times when she wished she
wasn’t so damn noble. “Most people retain their integrity for about a couple of centuries within the multiplicity, then they
just gradually blend in to the overall habitat personality. So even then they don’t vanish completely. But at that, it’s a
lot better than any heavenly salvation which Adamist religions offer their followers.”
Tell me about religion,
Syrinx asked the habitat personality later that day. She was sitting at the bottom of the garden, watching fast bronze-coloured
fish sliding through the big stone-lined lily pond.
It is an organized form of deity worship, usually originating in primitive cultures. Most religions perceive God as male,
because they all have their roots in a time prior to female emancipation—which serves to illustrate how contrived they are.
But people still follow them today?
A majority of Adamists retain their faith, yes. There are several religions current in their culture, notably the Christian
and Muslim sects. Both convey the belief that holy prophets walked the Earth at some time in the past, and both promise a
form of eternal salvation for those who adhere to the teachings of said prophets.
Oh. Why don’t Edenists believe, then?
Our culture proscribes nothing providing it doesn’t harm the majority. You may, if you wish, practise the worship of any god.
The major reason no Edenist chooses this action is that we have extremely stable personalities. We can look at the whole concept
of God and spirituality from a vantage point built on logic and physics. Under such an intensive scientific scrutiny, religion
always fails. Our knowledge of quantum cosmology is now sufficiently advanced to eliminate the notion of God altogether. The
universe is an entirely natural phenomenon, if extraordinarily complex. It was not created by an external act of will.
So we don’t have souls?
The concept of soul is as flawed as that of religion. Pagan priests preyed on people’s fear of death by promising them there
was an afterlife in which they would be rewarded if they lived a good life. Therefore belief in your soul is also an individual
choice. However, as Edenists have continuation through becoming part of a habitat personality, no Edenists have required this
particular aspect of faith. Edenists know their existence does not end with physical death. We have, to some extent, superseded
religion thanks to the mechanics of our culture.
But what about you? Do you have a soul?
No. My mentality is, after all, the summation of individual Edenists. Nor was I ever one of God’s creatures. I am entirely
artificial.
But you’re alive.
Yes.
So if there were souls, you’d have one.
I concede your argument. Do you think there are souls?
Not really. It seems a bit silly. But I can see how Adamists believe in it so easily. If I didn’t have the option of transferring
my memories into a habitat, I’d want to believe I had a soul, too.