CHAPTER TWO
Zee woke before dawn and managed to slip out of the archaic-seeming bed without disturbing Adya. He looked at her for a moment. She was dreaming, and her skin showed chaotic ripples of color.
He unpacked his travel suit and went out. He didn’t see Daslakh anywhere, but didn’t worry. His mech friend had a habit of vanishing and then appearing out of nowhere. Zee’s private joke with Adya was that it went off to the “Daslakh Dimension.” Given the surprising abilities the mech occasionally displayed, Zee wasn’t entirely sure it was just a joke.
The house told him where to find Adya’s father: Achan Elso was in the Water Salon, which turned out to be a room half filled by a pool, with a little canal leading out through the garden to the sea. Achan sat on the edge of the pool in a smart-matter bodysuit, currently in neutral mode.
“Wasn’t sure you’d show,” he said. “Have you ever swum in a sea?”
“A couple of times—Raba had a pool in the spin section, and I did some in Summanus and on Mars.”
“Good. At least you won’t panic. Here, put this on.” He tossed Zee a thick collar. “Fastens in front.”
Zee put it on. It was some kind of semi-smart material, with a bulge the size of an orange at the back of his neck, and two nodes the size of his thumb on the front. Some text prompts appeared in his visual field as it linked up with his data implant. “enable arterial tap y/n?”
“Should I enable it now, or wait until we’re in the water?”
“Oh, you can go ahead. It won’t activate until it knows we’re under. Be sure to empty your lungs when you enter. Since you’re new to this, you’ll probably prefer these, as well.” Achan handed Zee a simple transparent mask that fit over his face, a pair of gloves, and a pair of over-slippers. Zee put them on. When he enabled the “arterial tap” he felt the collar bond to the skin of his neck and a slight pricking sensation on either side of his larynx.
“I’m ready,” he said.
Achan jerked his head in a come-along motion, then slid into the water. His suit shifted as he did so, sprouting fins on feet and hands, and unfurling four ridges running down its back from shoulders to knees.
Zee took a breath and let it out, then followed. The gloves and slippers became fins, and he could feel the lump at the back of his neck shift and open. When he tried to peek over his shoulder he could only catch glimpses of what looked like a short cape made of frilly ribbons. The mask on his face protected his eyes, and sealed his nose and mouth. He exhaled the last traces in his lungs, and the mask let the bubbles out without admitting any seawater.
After a second he realized he wasn’t breathing, and didn’t feel the need. The frilly ribbons were pulling all the oxygen he needed out of the water.
“Come along,” said Achan via implant, and led the way down the canal. Zee followed, admiring the elaborate mosaic decorating the sides and floor of the canal. Apparently there was nothing in the Elso house that wasn’t beautiful.
The water was surprisingly warm, and when they reached the end of the canal it got warmer.
“Mind the step,” said Achan as they swam out into open ocean. Beyond the mouth of the canal there was—nothing. Zee could see the lights of the sea farm under the floating mansion, but beyond that the water darkened to absolute blackness.
“How deep is it?” he asked.
“About five kilometers,” said Achan. “We won’t be descending so deep this dawn. The fish favor the surface and the warm water around the farm. Here, have a spear.” He took a double-pronged spear from one thigh and handed it to Zee. Its handle extended to a meter long when Zee grasped it. “You can take fish and arthropods. Mammals, cephalopods, and anything human-shaped are citizens. With birds you should ask first, though none of the sub-Baseline seabirds are worth eating anyway.”
The two of them descended. After a few minutes of swimming Zee began to respect the older man’s physical condition. It wasn’t like moving in free fall—you had to keep working or you’d stop.
“I can’t believe we’re really going out to catch some live animals for food. Won’t it mess up the ecosystem or something?”
Achan’s laugh sounded in Zee’s head. “This sea was seeded for predators—dolphins, orcas, and cephalopods, mostly. Legacy humans and merfolk have nearly no effect. Without apex predators it would become a soup of starving seafood. There was a time when they did net-fishing, sending out tons of frozen flesh to the Ring and the many moons. This is the oldest ocean in the Uranus system. It’s been a stable ecology for thousands of years.”
“Has your family been here all that time?”
“Alas, no. The Families took charge at the fall of the Theocracy, about eighteen hundred years ago. Before that the Elso name is tricky to trace. They may have been in the Old Belt. But now our roots here are deep and durable.”
Ten meters down they passed the bottom of the house and gardens and entered the realm of the farm. The mask over Zee’s eyes adjusted to protect against the glare from an array of lights, brighter than any sunlight he had seen, which stretched more than a kilometer down into the ocean beneath the mansion. The lights were mounted on wide rings around a thick mast or cable which disappeared in the depths below. The cable itself was overgrown with kelp, wakame, and other kinds of seaweed Zee couldn’t identify. Somewhere down at the bottom was a fusion power plant, making a warm upwelling that brought up nutrients from the deep layers. Single-celled organisms made the water cloudy, and shoals of little silver fish moved through the densest concentrations. Zee watched in fascination as hundreds of little fish moved in unison like a swarm bot.
“Do they have implants to stay linked up like that?”
“Not at all. It’s instinct. Entirely evolved, no technical tweaks.”
The little fish suddenly scattered as a half-meter fish with yellow fins shot through the center of the school, snapping at some which failed to escape.
“Yellow jack! Get it!” said Achan, and lunged at it with his spear. The weapon lengthened in a split second to more than two meters, but the head was a few centimeters behind the jack’s tail.
Zee aimed his own weapon ahead of the fish but was too low. By the time either man could retract his spear for another try the jack was gone.
“It’s harder than it looks,” said Achan. “I head home with empty hands about half the time. You shouldn’t feel a failure if you find no fish on your first foray.”
The moment Achan said that it suddenly became very important for Zee to get a fish before the two of them surfaced. He wished he had Daslakh’s senses, or indeed anything beyond his two basic human eyeballs.
He tested the spear. The harder he squeezed the handle, the longer and faster it extended. By really clenching his fist he could get it to about three meters. Aiming was the real trick, but Zee did have the advantage of years of nulesgrima training. Thrusts with the palo were an important technique in that sport, so he had developed a pretty good sense of where his tip was going. He’d fought nuledors with really uncanny tip control, who could tap exactly the same spot several times in a row while spinning. Zee wasn’t in that league, at least not yet.
Achan led the way past the outer ring of lights to the central spine, where long fronds of seaweed waved in the rising water. “A likely location to look for lobsters and prawns.”
Zee hung back, keeping his attention outward, to where the fish swam. He was hoping to bag something impressive. Maybe that would win over Adya’s father.
There! Something big cruised slowly through the dimness beyond the cloudy water. It moved its tail side to side, not up and down, so it wasn’t a cetacean. The thing was three meters long, at least. A shark? Zee had seen images of sharks. Would Miranda’s ecological engineers have imported something big enough to think of dining on humans?
His desire to impress Achan was momentarily replaced by a desire to not get eaten. Zee held his spear ready. If it came at him he’d get one good shot at it, so he didn’t want to miss.
“Good morning,” said the newcomer via comm implant. She came into the light and turned from low-visibility blue-green to a luminous yellow. “You must be Mr. Elso’s guest. I’m Thoe. Farm manager.”
“Morning,” said Zee.
He had never been introduced to a mer before. Some subtypes followed the legendary model, with a perfectly human torso wedded to a fish or cetacean tail. Thoe’s form was more rationally designed: a recognizably human body with a very deep ribcage, and a long muscular tail extending a meter past her feet that ended in asymmetrical fins like a shark’s tail. Wide frilly gills sprouted from the sides of her neck, but she had nostrils as well.
“Are there any fish nearby?”
“Thousands! Our daily productivity is about ten grams per cubic meter. That’s total biomass. About a hundred tons of table-grade protein. So help yourself!”
“Ah, Thoe! I see you’ve found Adya’s friend Zee. We’re enjoying some exercise before breakfast. This is Zee’s first time in a real ocean.”
“Oh, I meant to tell you—Kataltiram didn’t pick up their shipment this morning.”
“I hope you reminded them to send a bot,” said Achan patiently.
“I did. They said they won’t be ordering from us anymore.”
“No orders! What’s wrong?” Achan turned dark in the blue-green water.
“I don’t know. They just said no more orders.”
“This is intolerable! As soon as I’ve had my breakfast the Kataltiram siblings are going to hear from me, you may be sure! Come on, Zee. We’re done down here today.”
Mystified, Zee followed Achan back to the surface. A slight nagging worry about pressure and gases in solution in his blood led him to query the Elso house system about it. The response was reassuring: Miranda’s minimal gravity added an extra atmosphere of pressure for every hundred meters below the surface—and using gills rather than tanked air meant that everything equalized as he swam.
When Zee and Achan surfaced in the Water Salon they found Adya and her mother waiting at a table set for four. Platters of steamed rice cakes, crisp rolled crepes filled with something spicy smelling, boiled eggs, and filets of cured eel waited in the center of the table, but the ladies had already gotten into the tea.
Achan rinsed off the brackish seawater and stood with his arms out as a bot vacuumed him dry. Everyone could see how dark red he was, and Adya looked from her father to Zee and raised her eyebrows as they made eye contact. Zee just looked puzzled and shrugged. No need for comms.
Since her husband just glowered and loaded his plate with eggs and crepes, it fell to Adya’s mother to maintain conversation. “Did you have a pleasant swim, Zee?” she asked as he sat down after getting dried off.
“Oh, yes. We went down to look at the sea farm. Amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Zee bit into a crepe roll and suddenly discovered he was ravenously hungry. In just a couple of minutes he completely emptied his plate and went back for seconds.
“I hope you’re not too tired,” said Adya. “I’d like to go see Sundari later today.”
Zee took inventory of the slight soreness already developing in his muscles. “How far is it?”
“Just a few kilometers.” She saw the expression that briefly crossed his face and added, “We can take a couple of impellers. I haven’t done any serious swimming since I started my research trip. Going all the way to Sundari’s would wear me out.”
From their glances at each other and the way Adya’s mother turned a little red to match her husband, Zee figured they were communicating via implant. He paused between rice cakes to ask, “How many children do you have? I remember Adya mentioned three sisters.”
“We have four daughters: Sundari and Uma were the first pair, followed ten years later by Adya and Kavita,” said Adya’s mother. “We stopped with four. Sundari and Kavita live here in Miranda. Uma married one of the Urrakams. She and her spouse spend most of their time in hibernation—part of some long-term project of theirs. They’re due to wake up again in another two years.”
She looked at her husband again, and then stood up. “Excuse us. We have to go deal with some tiresome business matters. Leave what you don’t want. The bots will deal with it.”
When the two of them left the room, Zee spoke quietly. “I see what you were talking about last night. It looks like everybody’s having money problems.”
“I checked media feeds while you were in the water. There’s an economic downturn going on in Miranda—mostly predictable cycles bottoming out, but apparently there were some unexpected disruptions that came at exactly the wrong time. I think the family’s been hit hard. My parents hate to talk about money—Daddy’s not interested and Mother likes to keep it private. We can ask Sundari about it when we see her this afternoon. She isn’t squeamish about making a profit.”
She was silent for a moment, staring into the distance—not interacting with the datasphere, just thinking. Finally she spoke again. “Zee, there’s something you should know. The Sixty Families don’t just have children because they like them, or to continue the line. We’re assets. A marriage is an alliance. My parents may decide that they need me to join the Elso family to some clan with more wealth.”
“Would you do it?” he asked, looking into her eyes very seriously.
“Of course not!” she said, but there was just a little hesitation before she answered.
The two of them spent the rest of the morning touring the house. Adya kept switching between telling Zee about the historical or artistic importance of some of the furnishings and decorations, and talking about her childhood.
“This is the Stone Gallery. The floor’s native Miranda rock sliced thin and polished. Kavita and I used to see how far we could slide on it—you need to put down a cloth to get any distance. That’s Radha Elso,” she said as she pointed at a projected image of a plump, grandmotherly looking woman. “She ran the Coordinating Committee and was pretty much the boss of Miranda for twenty years. Her nephew Sampath built this house.”
“So how does the whole Sixty Families setup work?” Zee asked as they strolled along the line of portraits. “I looked it up and I still don’t understand.”
“It’s not complicated, really. You just have to look at how it actually works and ignore the formal titles, which are all eighteen hundred years old and don’t mean what you think they do.”
“Okay, so the Sixty Families run everything. Your father is Minister of Preservation and a magistrate and a commodore, and your sister’s husband runs the Philosophical Institute. What does that really mean?”
Adya pointed at the empty space above them, and one of the portraits turned into an image of spaceships touching down on the surface of Miranda, disgorging combat bots and armored humans decorated with colorful shifting patterns. They fought against humans wearing saffron-yellow tabards over silver combat suits.
“When the gang of—let’s be polite and call them ‘privateers’—overthrew the Theocracy and set themselves up as the rulers of Miranda, they divided up all the Theocracy’s economic assets into equal shares. Each ship captain got one share, and they called themselves the Hundred Captains. A few decades later people started referring to their class as the Hundred Families. Since then there’s been some attrition and now we’re the Sixty Families. We still control about half of Miranda’s total wealth.”
“So those titles of your father’s are just honorary?”
“Oh, no. No, quite the reverse. The Hundred Captains also parceled out the various functions of government. Each of them got one or more positions or departments to run, and of course they divided up military forces so nobody could play emperor. They all meet in the Coordinating Committee, and that’s where policies and joint projects get voted on. Naturally there are factions. Whoever can organize a majority of seats on the CC can run things to suit themselves.”
“And they divide up the tax money to reward their supporters.”
Adya looked at him in surprise. “Tax money? Miranda doesn’t have any taxes. That’s what all the wealth of the Sixty Families is for: officeholders have to fund their own departments. If you can’t afford an office, you give it up, or maybe swap with someone who can pay for it. I’m afraid my father’s offices are all pretty cheap, but we Elsos still control four votes on the Coordinating Committee. When coalition margins are tight, that’s a lot.”
“So the people in government pay for it themselves? And nobody ever dips into the treasury for a little graft?”
“Oh, of course they benefit themselves. It’s expected. If you’re building transport infrastructure, naturally you give priority to places where you own property. That sort of thing. It’s not even illegal. But consider the other side of it: nobody else pays taxes at all. Sixty million biologicals and an equal number of mechs keep everything they earn, and let a bunch of inbred rich people pay all the costs of government. That’s probably the main reason the Sixty Families have lasted as long as they have.”
Daslakh appeared suddenly on the ceiling as its shell changed from camouflage matching the background to high-visibility orange. It dropped off and floated gently to the floor.
“How do you run a whole moon with nothing but humans in charge? Why not just get a higher-level intellect to manage your government?”
“The Theocracy did that. They had a fourth- or fifth-level mind which was given divine status. The poor thing eventually decided to become one with the Universe, and broadcast its mental state out into space, leaving behind a bunch of melted processors and blank storage. The cult was still trying to recruit a replacement when they were overthrown. So now we have an all-biological regime. The mechs up on the surface really don’t care. They have never involved themselves in Miranda politics.”
“You’d be surprised how fast one gets tired of lording it over a bunch of talking animals and having to deal with all their little problems,” said Daslakh.
Zee raised a finger. “If you have to pay for your department, what happens when one of the Sixty Families runs out of gigajoules?”
“Well, in the old days the head of the family would probably commit suicide out of shame. That doesn’t happen much anymore. If you can’t afford any seats on the Committee, your family may hang on for a while. Sometimes they can manage a comeback, regenerating enough wealth to get back into the game. But with no political power and status, they usually just fade away. Die out, go offworld, merge into another. That’s why we’re down to sixty from the original hundred.”
“Now I think I understand why your family doesn’t like me.”
“You don’t have anything to offer them,” Adya said bitterly, turning a muddy orange shade Zee had never seen before. “And what I want isn’t important.”
“We could just leave.”
“Yes . . .” Her color got bluer and she sounded very sad. “But they’re my family, Zee. I can’t just . . .”
He put his arms around her. “Never mind. It’ll be all right. We’ll figure something out.”
She finished showing Zee and Daslakh the house and then the three of them returned to the Water Salon to put on gills. Adya also got out a pair of impellers—simple devices consisting of a hand bar between two little water jets for propulsion. A little thumb slider controlled speed.
With Daslakh perched on his head, Zee followed Adya down the channel again, out into the ocean. She set a course to the west, descending at about a forty-five-degree angle. The brilliant glow of the Elso mansion’s sea farm faded behind them, and as they got out into dark water Zee began to see other farms in the distance.
“Is the whole ocean like this? Farms?”
“That’s what it’s for. We’re almost a hydrosphere habitat. Sundari and her husbands live on the bottom.”
At about four kilometers down Zee began to see lines and grids of light on the sea bottom, and the moving lights of vehicles. Adya adjusted course toward a brighter spot which resolved into a town as they approached.
The structures on the bottom were a mix of utilitarian blocks of graphene or ceramic, and diamond domes holding gardens lit by miniature suns. Adya led him toward a large structure, a dome perched atop a narrow tower, like a mushroom on a stalk. The flat underside of the dome section had several openings leading into a decorative lagoon inside. Luminous jellyfish and colorful fish swam in the lagoon, and brilliant corals and anemones grew on the sides.
A dolphin wearing gills shot toward them, and Zee’s implant identified her as Sundari Elso-Lele. Adya’s sister. Apparently dolphins in Miranda, like humans, went in for chromatophores in their skin, because Sundari went from excited pink to medium yellow and finally to a pale green as she circled the two of them.
“Kav told me you were home but I wasn’t sure if I should believe her. Come to the parlor so we can chat.”
They followed her into a shallow pool inside the garden bubble. The smart-matter floor formed itself into seats which raised Zee and Adya out of the water. Sundari balanced on her tail with her head out of the water—easy enough in Miranda gravity.
Sitting close to her Zee could see other differences between Sundari and dolphins he had met elsewhere. Her gills folded into a pair of bulges on either side of her dorsal fin. Her flippers were functional arms, with broad webbed hands. She took a plate of mackerel rolls off the edge of the pool and passed it to Zee after taking one for herself. “I can indulge myself when my husbands aren’t home. They get squeamish about eating dead things.” In the air her voice sounded like Adya with a lungful of helium.
“How are Krek and Iaak?” asked Adya. “I wanted Zee to meet them.”
“Busy. All of us are very busy these days. We had to cut back on staff so the boys are doing a lot of the sales work themselves. They’re meeting with some offworld buyers today—octopus from the Ring. We’re only moving half as much as we did last fiscal year. Fortunately, live fish are a staple for cetaceans and cephalopods, but all the humans in Miranda are living on printed food. Even the Families, when nobody’s watching.”
“Our house seemed so empty,” said Adya.
“Yes. Creepy, isn’t it? Just Mother and Daddy and some bots in that huge place.” Sundari fixed one eye on Zee, and he could tell she was exchanging private comms with Adya.
“It’s all right. I’m not keeping anything secret from him,” said Adya.
“Just making sure. He might think it’s vulgar, like Mother and Daddy. Addie, the truth is they’re nearly broke. Some of it’s Daddy’s fault—he’s been careless about finances for too long. But most of it’s just a string of really bad luck. They got overextended, and when some unexpected expenses came up, they had to take out loans. But then the revenues didn’t come back and they couldn’t make payments, so the lenders foreclosed, and that just made the cash flow situation even worse.”
“How broke do you mean when you say broke?”
“I’m converting one of the guest cottages here for them to live in when they lose the house. When, not if.”
“And Daddy will have to leave the Committee.”
“The Leles are furious. My mother-in-law thought marrying her boys to me was a step up for the family, but now it seems the other way around. Remember when she started calling herself Ataa ‘Elso-Lele?’ Well, she’s dropped the ‘Elso’ part and is trying to talk me into doing it too. And all I can say is not yet.”
“What about my Oort payload?” asked Adya.
Sundari’s response was silence and a puzzled ripple of turquoise down her body.
“It could fix everything,” Adya continued. “Great-grandmama told me about it before she died. She advanced some credit to one of the Oort communities—the way she put it, it was almost charity. A million gigajoules, maybe a bit more. This was back in the 9500s. Anyway, she didn’t expect much return, but in 9529 they launched a payload to her, a ton of chameleon particles and support machinery.”
“When did it arrive? I don’t recall anything like that.”
“It hasn’t. Not yet, anyway. It takes a long time to travel ten thousand AU, even at a hundred kilometers a second. Four hundred seventy years, which means the payload should be here about a month from now. One reason I came back is so that I can take possession when it lands.” Adya looked at Zee, turning mauve as she did. “I was keeping it a secret to surprise you.”
“I take it this payload is valuable?” he asked.
“Spot price for chameleon particles is eleven million gigajoule credits per gram,” said Daslakh. “If it’s really a full ton, you’re looking at more than a trillion gigs.”
“Great-gran said the Oort people promised she’d be paid in full plus interest. I think they expected her to sell the rights to it while in transit,” said Adya.
“Addie, I don’t recall seeing any trillion-gig assets when we were trying to fix Mother and Daddy’s finances. I’m afraid it must have been sold long ago, or maybe the payload was lost.”
“But it’s mine,” said Adya, turning orange. “Great-gran said so. She even got the house to record it. She said, ‘I know you love old things and secrets, little Adya, so I’m giving you this one. It could turn out to be worthless, or it could make you richer than your parents. Will you take the risk?’ I said yes, and she told the house to record her verbal bequest.”
“I think that must have been overlooked somehow. Mother and Daddy had to bundle a whole lot of family assets to raise cash. Maybe it got included by mistake. They did have Vasi evaluate everything, so maybe it isn’t worth as much as you think. Great-grandmama got a bit odd in her last years.”
“She wasn’t odd, she just didn’t like some of Daddy’s political allies, and said so. I’m not sure she was wrong. Why aren’t they helping him?”
“They might be, if he wasn’t being such a bother about preserving the Cryoglyphs.”
“Those are important!”
Sundari made a sibilant noise with her blowhole. “I’ve had this same argument with Daddy too many times. Let’s talk about something else,” she said.
So Adya and Sundari talked about friends, and relatives, and all the Miranda gossip Adya had missed during her absence. After two long swims and a big breakfast, Zee found himself struggling to stay awake. His seat was warm and soft, the air was humid and scented by the giant flowers blooming in the garden, and he didn’t think anyone would notice if he closed his eyes, just to rest them for a moment.
“Hey.” Daslakh prodded Zee in the calf. “You’re snoring, and Adya’s too polite to do anything about it.”
His implant indicated that nearly an hour had gone by. Adya was looking at him with an amused expression but Sundari was resolutely ignoring his faux pas. “. . . I am concerned about Kavita, though,” she said.
“What now?” asked Adya with a sigh.
“She’s been seen with the most impossible people. Gamblers and criminals.”
“Isn’t that just part of being a celebrity? Doing all sorts of things to attract attention? She’s certainly good at that.” Adya’s voice when she said the last sentence had a note of cattiness Zee had never heard from her before.
“It’s one thing to be adventurous, but some of those people are actually dangerous, and could easily be taking advantage of her. I worry about her—especially in the current situation. Daddy won’t be able to get her out of trouble if she does something foolish.”
Adya turned pale yellow. “Sundari—are we paying for this Constructors’ Jubilee she’s putting on? Can we afford it?”
“No, and no. This year’s the Musina family’s turn to throw the party, and poor Virasata Musina’s absolutely hopeless at organizing any kind of social event. She just wants to stay home and design new fish. Kavita offered to do it for her. Vira was so grateful it was almost pathetic. This spares her the bother of putting on the Jubilee, and Kavita gets to spend Vira’s money. Which is good, because Mother and Daddy are already living on credit.”
“Playing to her strengths,” said Adya.
“What’s this Jubilee?” asked Zee. “Your sister said something about it at dinner yesterday.”
“It’s a party in honor of the people who first colonized Miranda and created the ocean under the ice, back in the Third Millennium,” said Adya.
“The Hundred Captains started the custom to give themselves a little legitimacy,” said Sundari. “Nobody cares about people who’ve been dead for thousands of years.”
“Actually, there are indications that a similar festival was celebrated during the Demos period,” Adya put in.
“‘Actually . . .’” her sister mimicked, and Adya turned a dusty rose color as Sundari gave a very dolphin-sounding laugh.
“It’s the biggest event of the social season, and all the Sixty Families will be there. Usually they hold the ball up on the surface, in the domed park at the traditional landing site in Elsinore Regio. There’s a lot of other stuff about the same time, all through Miranda—flying races, water ballets, genetic art exhibits, music—”
“All paid for by one family or another. But the actual Jubilee party is the capstone,” said Sundari. “It’s a month from now and everybody’s already deciding what to wear, who to be seen with, and who to snub. I’m afraid Mother and Daddy may get a lot of snubbing this year.”
“So what has Kav got planned?”
“She said something about a tribute to Miranda’s armed forces, but it’s all a big secret. I hope she doesn’t do something in poor taste. Or—I don’t know, perhaps it would be for the best if she did. A supernova ending for the Elso family.”
“Don’t say that,” said Adya. “I’m sure we’ll find a way through this.”
Sundari turned deep blue. “Addie, I’ve tried. Mother has tried. The family finances are just a disaster.”
“We’ve got to do something!”
Sundari waited a moment before answering. “There is, of course, the traditional solution for when one of the Sixty Families needs cash.”
Adya got redder. “Mother alluded to something like that. Has she got anyone lined up?”
“She has been very close-mouthed about it. I expect she doesn’t want any word to get out until the marriage contract is signed and you and your new partner are properly bonded.”
“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. I’m already bonded to Zee, no neuro pruning required, and I intend to stay that way.”
Sundari was silent for a moment, then said, “It’s not my problem anymore. I am a Lele now, and we’re managing pretty well. Not Sixty Families level yet, but if we get through the current slump, I can hope one of my children marries back into the oligarchy. As my sister you’ll always be welcome here.” After a slight pause she added, “Though it would probably be wise to make sure Mother and Daddy aren’t around if you come to visit.”
A long awkward pause followed, and Zee finally broke it by stretching and saying, “Well, I guess we ought to be getting back up to your parents’ house.”
Adya nodded, looking thoughtful. “Yes. I still haven’t shown you everything.”
“There is a bit more to Miranda than the Elso residence,” said Sundari. “Have you taken him to the outer surface, or to any of the cities?” She turned an eye to Zee. “If you like physical sports you can go flying—in Miranda gravity even dolphins can manage it—or sledding in the ice caves. With the Jubilee coming up I’m sure there will be concerts and performances. This may be our last season as part of the ruling elite, so you two should make the most of it.”
Since they’d been breathing pressurized air in Sundari’s home, Adya and Zee had to swim back to the surface in a slow spiral, to let any dissolved gases escape through their gills. Daslakh once again rode as a passenger on Zee’s head.
“Adya, I’ve got a kind of a personal question,” it said via comm. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“No, go ahead.”
“Why are we even here? It’s pretty obvious your family just want to use you as a token to monetize their social status. This load of chameleon particles has either disappeared or been sold off without your permission, and there isn’t much point in trying to sue your parents over it. So why not, y’know, leave? See if Pelagia wants some company on the trip to wherever she’s going. I’m just an ordinary mech so I can’t quite understand why you would want to stay.”
She swam on for a moment before answering. “They are my family, Daslakh. That’s important in Miranda. I know my parents are sometimes a bit silly, or bossy, or snobbish, but . . . they’re still my parents. Most of my genes come from them, they got me gestated and raised me. They made me who I am.”
“Sure, but don’t they have to stop, eventually? Let you take over making yourself?”
“I’m afraid we’re deep in hard-wired irrational human behavior patterns here, Daslakh. I can’t just choose not to care.”
As the water above began to brighten, Adya suddenly turned her impeller to the north. “There’s something I want to show you. Sundari said we were spending too much time at home, so you should see Miranda’s greatest natural wonder.”
They cruised just below the surface for a couple of kilometers, and the waters around them became full of lights and schools of fish. Zee began to see other swimmers—mostly dolphins and mers, but with a few legacy humans wearing gill suits.
Ahead he could see a dazzling constellation of lights in the sea, and they surfaced in a circular harbor surrounded by buildings covered in flowers.
“This is Dudeka,” said Adya as she led the way up the shallow steps to the promenade surrounding the harbor. “It’s one of the oldest sea-surface towns in Miranda. People come from all over to get sashimi and noodles here.” Adya led Zee through the streets to the center of town.
Whoever had laid out Dudeka had tried to avoid any long straight vistas. All the streets were circle segments, with occasional round plazas. Flowering vines covered all the buildings, and stretched over the streets in places, filling the air with sweet scents. The people they passed wore little beyond gill collars and socks, except for a few children in elaborate costumes.
At the precise center of Dudeka a tower stretched up to the sky—literally, as a sign in Zee’s visual field announced “surface access 021-32 south.”
“I take it we’re going to look at the big cliff?” asked Daslakh.
“Verona Rupes. It’s the highest natural cliff in the Solar System. The whole area’s a preserve, but there’s a pressurized roadway with a nice view of it a few kilometers away. You can ride a bubble the length of the escarpment.”
“We’ll just take it as given that there’s no point in suggesting you look at images, or maybe send your viewpoint aboard a ballistic drone,” said Daslakh.
“It’s not the same,” said Adya, and Daslakh said exactly the same words at the same time with the same inflection.
“Well, it isn’t,” she said, turning a little red.
“I think looking at the cliffs sounds wonderful,” said Zee. “Daslakh, if you’d rather do something else, that’s fine. We can meet up back at Adya’s parents’ house.”
“When we get up top I’ll go check on the big fish,” said Daslakh. “Make sure she hasn’t committed any atrocities while we were gone.”
They boarded the elevator and for a moment felt something close to Martian gravity as it accelerated upward. As it rose from the peak of the tower they had a great view of Dudeka and the blue ocean stretching away in all directions.
“That’s our house over there,” said Adya, pointing at one little island near the horizon. “If you don’t want to swim back from Dudeka, we can take a bubble.”
“I want to just sit and ride—which makes me think we should swim back after all. After hibernating aboard Pelagia we both need to get in shape.”
“Zee, I’m sure your implant is doing its best to keep your muscles toned up.”
“It’s always good to do just a little bit more,” he said.
Daslakh disembarked from their bubble at the surface level, and scuttled off to find transport to the spaceship hangars. Adya told the bubble to head for the Verona Rupes view tube, and for a couple of kilometers neither she nor Zee said anything.
He finally broke the silence. “You told Daslakh that you still care about your family—but you spent calendar years away from here chasing a historical footnote.”
“A footnote which might protect all biological life from an existential threat,” she pointed out. “Including the Elsos of Miranda. I don’t know if it’s a legend or not anymore, but I do know that the danger from the Inner Ring intelligences is real. Someone should do something about it.”
“And you’re that someone?”
“Why not? I’ve got an upgraded genome—they augmented Mother’s DNA to make all four of us girls. It seems like such a waste to limit myself to status competition and running family businesses. I could do something bigger!”
“It looks like someone should have been paying attention to your family’s holdings before now.” Zee shook his head. “It’s just amazing to me that your sister and you are clones. You’re completely different.”
Adya let another kilometer of tunnel pass by in silence before answering. “I think it all comes down to something my mother used to say. When we were little, I remember her telling people that I was the smart one and Kav was the popular one.”
“Sounds like she was proud of both of you.”
“That’s not how Kav and I heard it. To us it meant that Kav was the dumb one, and I was the one nobody liked.”
“That’s—” Zee began, and stopped before he could say “ridiculous.” He started over. “Plenty of people like you. There’s me, there’s Daslakh, there’s Pelagia. That crook in Summanus was certainly interested in you.”
“I certainly didn’t like him, so I don’t know if that counts. Anyway, that’s only four people in the whole Solar System, and one of them’s dead.”
Now it was Zee’s turn to be silent before speaking again. “Remember that pair of old humans we met on Mars?”
“You mean the couple who were about to move out to the Kuiper Belt? Tanry and Ivaz? I liked them.”
“Me too. They’ve obviously been together for a long time.”
“A very long time,” said Adya.
“Right, and they were leaving Mars, leaving the whole inner system behind. All their friends, family, everybody. They didn’t seem to mind.”
“They’ve got each other,” said Adya, and then stopped. “I see. Do you really think we could stay together for centuries?”
“I’d like to try.”
Just then the bubble left the dark tunnel and passed through the transparent-walled tube raised on kilometer-tall pylons to give a good view of the cliffs looming ten kilometers away. The great disk of Uranus hung overhead, currently a thick crescent. The light of the Sun, blurred into a dusty reddish blob by the habs and collectors of the Main Swarm, shone over the landscape to the east, lighting up the vast cliff of Verona Rupes, turning the pale blue light from Uranus into mauve.
“Wow,” said Zee softly.
The great cliff rose straight and smooth, twenty kilometers high in places. Only at the very bottom did the vertical face become a slope. The bubble tube followed a gentle curve, so that at any point the occupants had an unobstructed view. As the bubble reached its closest point Zee had to crane his head back to see the top of the cliff taking a bite out of the crescent of Uranus in the sky.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” said Adya. “It’s funny—we’ve both seen much bigger things. Orbital rings, habs, elevators, balloon cities. Amazing feats of engineering and materials, when you think about them. But somehow a big chunk of ice shoved up millimeter by millimeter over millions of years by convection currents gives us a feeling of awe.”
“I’m a little surprised nobody ever tried to fool with it,” said Zee. “Carve it into a big relief sculpture or something.” The vast smooth cliff face looked like a blank screen.
“No, we’ve always been very protective of our natural wonder. Even back when the population was mostly mechs. When the early terraformers started making the ocean under the surface, they were careful to avoid this region. There’s nothing but rock and ice underneath us, all the way to the core. I mean, there had to be some sections left unmelted, just to keep the outer crust stable, but they made sure that Verona would survive.”
“Is your father in charge of this? You said he’s Minister of Preservation.”
“He used to be,” said Adya. “About ten years ago the Committee moved all the natural formations from Preservation to Environment. Now Preservation only controls sites of cultural or historic interest. I think it was a favor to Daddy, so he could afford to keep his seat on the Committee.”
They rode in silence, Zee still fascinated by the view. “Do people climb it?” he asked after a minute.
Adya laughed and turned pale rose. “I was wondering when you were going to ask about that. Yes, there’s one section open to climbers—but the waiting list is years long and you can’t use anything which affects the cliff face. No axes, no pitons, nothing like that. Free climbing only.”
“Wouldn’t be too bad in this gravity.”
“You’d think so, but people have managed to kill themselves trying. Anything less than a kilometer up is safe, but beyond that a fall can be fatal—especially since most climbers wear very light suits to save mass. Once you get above four kilometers, not even the toughest suit can protect you if you fall.”
Zee regarded the cliff top, twenty kilometers above them. “You’d have a long time to feel stupid before you hit,” he said.