Chapter 12

The bats were just beginning to come out by the time I made it to the polis.

Avians had apparently never been successfully adapted to the habitat, for reasons we still didn’t understand; the only birds we ever saw were flightless rails, parrots, and some ground-hugging species. But bats had thrived, especially in the canyon and rainforest biomes, from where they emerged each evening to hunt for insects. We had taught the children to spot them at dusk by listening for the faint rustle of wings.

Slowing to a canter at the outskirts of the city softened the echo of hoofingers against the facades of small, hermetically sealed, uniformly white buildings that stood like mausoleums on either side of the road. Entering one of the city’s broad radial avenues and approaching the tower felt like a procession before an assembly of spectres.

After a few minutes the low buildings fell away, replaced by green sectors of parkland. Beyond a border of evergreens, the broad half-circle of a flat plaza of permacrete glowed under the sunline, almost blindingly white. The opposite bank of the river reflected the same design, creating a circle with the tower at its center, surrounded by greenery.

Bridging the waterway, pairs of elegantly curved buttresses swept upwards, supporting the base of the tower a dozen meters above the ringriver. Following and extending the curve of its supporting pillars, the cylindrical tower continued to taper as it rose for two hundred meters before being capped with a dome, its mirrored surface reflecting the entire habitat. Twenty times the height of the next tallest building in the polis, the tower completely dominated the city.

Drawing closer I could make out a pedestrian bridge directly under the tower spanning the river, suspended from the buttresses. Over the entryway to the bridge, arched ramps led up to the tower’s floating base. Following its own orders, the factotum climbed the smooth incline of the nearest ramp, bringing itself to a stop in front of a portal and lowering itself to its haunches.

Sliding from the back of the facto, the soles of my feet soaked the heat of the lightline-baked stone as I stretched. A soft breeze swirled through the open archway, carrying the scent of ripening fruit, wheat, and pollen from the summerland plains.

“Son.”

Mother’s voice was almost lost in the vast open gallery. Half-hidden within the dim light inside, she stood with her hands held together, posed in the midst of her creation.

Through the transparent walls of the tower’s rotunda, I could see lights coming on throughout the city in response to the deepening dusk. We stood apart for a long moment, looking at each other across the distance.

My steps had no echo, as if the gallery floor was covered in a blanket of fresh snow. As I came closer, I saw Mother make the tiniest motion to embrace me before holding it in check, causing me to stop short. There was something almost fragile about her, a wordless nervous tension.

“Mother.”

Her eyes moved fractionally up and down. “You’ve changed. Grown. Ship says you’ve reached Prime.”

I nodded. The AI had told me the same thing several days ago. Engrammed gene alterations had added another twenty kilos of muscle to my frame, but I would never grow higher than my current two meters. According to Ship, I had attained my biological peak. Over the next few years my body would harden into homo liberas maturity, replacing the calcium in my bones with a collagen-ceramic composite. Outwardly, barring catastrophic injury or further self-modification, I’d remain unchanged for the next thousand years or more.

“I feel that there was some sort of celebration associated with that achievement, in the past.” Mother shrugged. “I can’t remember it now.”

“We thought about marking the occasion. Couldn’t come up with an appropriate ritual. You were always better at those.” I paused. “You haven’t changed. I mean, you look the same.”

She did. Her hair was a little longer than I remembered, and pulled back in a ponytail now, but it remained the same deep lustrous brown. And she wore clothes: a high-necked white smock with a deep open vent, piped pockets and charcoal leggings. Aside from those cosmetic changes, she was unaltered; physically, she appeared to be the same age Zuri was now.

“Would you mind ⁠—” A small motion with one hand caused me to look back to my left. Approaching from behind, a factotum held open a pearlescent grey robe with black edging.

Suddenly I realised that I was naked. I’d continued to avoid clothing outside the most extreme biomes; after decades of life by the ringriver, my nudity was quite unconscious. “Oh. Sure.” Sweeping my arms back, I felt the automaton slide the robe over my shoulders, folding and overlapping the cloth to seal the dark inner lining against my skin. Presented with split-toed jika-tabi, I slipped the soft shoes onto my feet.

As light continued to rise in the gallery, balancing the fading rays of the sunline outside, I took another moment to appreciate the world my mother had made.

The base of the tower was an airy open circle, with the enormous open portals, one facing the bow, the other aft, framed by the building’s buttresses. Above my head the space rose to a hammered copper dome, shining from a thousand small lights scattered across its surface. Feeling a flash of a sense-memory, I confirmed my suspicions with Ship: each of those tiny points represented the current location of a star as seen from the Cupola at this very moment. The overall effect was sublime.

Noticing the direction of my gaze, Mother smiled. “I found a lode of copper in the asteroid. There are still things to be discovered there.”

“It’s stunning.”

Her smile widened to include just a hint of shy pride. “Thank you. Drink?” Another faceless factotum stepped forward with a clear cylindrical flask of water.

“Thank you.” Parched from the ride, I drank thirstily. The water was palatable enough, but bland and vaguely chemical, as if it had been drawn from the river and strained of all life.

“I have so many things to show you.” As she moved beside me, I realised that there was a bounce to her, a kind of coiled energy that I had never seen before. Her eyes were wide as she talked, almost gleeful with excitement.

“I’m at your pleasure.”

She grinned ⁠— grinned! ⁠— and took my arm in hers, leading me towards one of the buttresses. “While I don’t recall the ceremonies, I recall that Prime is ⁠— was ⁠— regarded as an age of emancipation. The point at which one could take on greater adult responsibilities. I’ve decided to do the same for you.” Doors slid open at the base of the buttress, and we stepped inside a spherical capsule. “Send us down. Fourth sub-level, unit twelve.”

Frowning, I turned my head towards her. “Down?” She nodded.

An evoc request fired to Ship closed the doors and slid the capsule backwards and outwards, relative to the ship’s rotation. Reaching out, I grabbed the rail that ran around the equator of the car’s interior. I hadn’t been inside a capsule since the twin’s visit to the Cupola, and had never ventured underground.

My sense of direction shifted as we fell, descending through pitch-black darkness. Rocked by the motion, my body brushed against my mother’s as we were both pressed spinward.

Tilting to compensate for a new vector, the floor of the capsule shifted. We swept down, curving along the asteroid’s beam towards the bow. The blackness surrounding us suddenly disappeared, and I stared outwards, mouth open in awe.

Light from the capsule’s interior barely illuminated the merest fraction of the vast galleries blurring by us. Carved within of the asteroid rock, enormous manufactories held white makers the size of polis buildings, ranks upon ranks of them fading into darkness. Fleets of sleek delta shuttlecraft waited before hangar doors. I glimpsed warehouses filled with fab feedstock, empty staging areas, cool computanium vaults for Longshot’s AI.

Completely unrecognizable spaces, half-filled with mangled equipment pushed so tightly against bulkheads that they formed walls unto themselves, fled past us. Others remained obscured, sealed behind the bulging grey sprayed polymer surfaces of emergency airlocks.

Turning away from the cavernous spaces speeding outside, I looked at her. “Is this where you went?”

“What?” Her eyebrows rose.

“When we were children.”

“Oh.” She considered that for a moment. “Sometimes. It’s where the primary damage is. But I can’t be here too often. Radiation.” Catching my wide-eyed expression, she shook her head. “Don’t worry. We won’t be down here long enough to worry about dosage.”

Dark rock embraced us once more, removing the cavernous galleries from sight. Spinning slowly, the capsule began to lose speed, aligning itself with a dock in the transparent tunnel.

Stepping from the capsule as the airlock hissed open, we emerged into a T-intersection of rectangular tunnels. Lighting panels mounted on the rock ceiling created a dashed line of illumination that disappeared into blackness in both directions as far as I could see. It was cold enough to steam my breath.

“We’re fifty meters beneath the frostline now, well outside the habitat’s thermal gradient.” My mother’s voice echoed in the tunnel. “Don’t touch the walls, unless you want to leave a layer of skin behind.” Without hesitation she walked forward, steps ringing on the tunnel’s grated metal walkway.