Accelerando

untapped future, we historians have our work cut out recording the cursor of the present as it logs events. So I might as well start at home.'

'You're set on immortalism.' Pamela studies his face.

'Yes,' he says idly. 'Frankly, I can understand your wanting to grow old out of a desire for revenge, but pardon me for saying this, I have difficulty grasping your willingness to follow through with the procedure! Isn't it awfully painful?'

'Growing old is natural,' growls the old woman. 'When you've lived long enough for all your ambitions to be in ruins, friendships broken, lovers forgotten or divorced acrimoniously, what's left to go on for? If you feel tired and old in spirit, you might as well be tired and old in body. Anyway, wanting to live forever is immoral. Think of all the resources you're taking up that younger people need! Even uploads face a finite data storage limit after a time. It's a monstrously egotistical statement, to say you intend to live forever. And if there's one thing I believe in, it's public service. Duty: the obligation to make way for the new. Duty and control.'

Sirhan absorbs all this, nodding slowly to himself as the table serves up the main course – honey-glazed roast long pork with sauteed potatoes a la gratin and carrots Debussy – when there's a loud bump from overhead.

'What's that?' Pamela asks querulously.

'One moment.' Sirhan's vision splits into a hazy kaleidoscope view of the museum hall as he forks ghosts to monitor each of the ubiquitous cameras. He frowns; something is moving on the balcony, between the Mercury capsule and a display of antique random-dot stereoisograms. 'Oh dear. Something seems to be loose in the museum.'

'Loose? What do you mean, loose?' An inhuman shriek splits the air above the table, followed by a crash from upstairs. Pamela stands up unsteadily, wiping her lips with her napkin. 'Is it safe?'

'No, it isn't safe.' Sirhan fumes. 'It's disturbing my meal!' He looks up. A flash of orange fur shows over the balcony, then the Mercury capsule wobbles violently on the end of its guy wires. Two arms and a bundle of rubbery something covered in umber hair lurches out from the handrail and casually grabs hold of the priceless historical relic, then clambers inside and squats on top of the dummy wearing Al Sheperd's age- cracked space suit.

'It's an ape! City, I say, City! What's a monkey doing loose in my dinner party?'

'I am most deeply sorry, sir, but I don't know. Would sir care to identify the monkey in question?' replies City, which for reasons of privacy, has manifested itself as a bodiless voice.

There's a note of humor in City's tone that Sirhan takes deep exception to. 'What do you mean? Can't you see it?' he demands, focusing on the errant primate, which is holed up in the Mercury capsule dangling from the ceiling, smacking its lips, rolling its eyes, and fingering the gasket around the capsule's open hatch. It hoots quietly to itself, then leans out of the open door and moons over the table, baring its buttocks. 'Get back!' Sirhan calls to his grandmother, then he gestures at the air above the table, intending to tell the utility fog to congeal. Too late. The ape farts thunderously, then lets rip a stream of excrement across the dining table. Pamela's face is a picture of wrinkled disgust as she holds her napkin in front of her nose. 'Dammit, solidify, will you!' Sirhan curses, but the ubiquitous misty pollen-grain-sized robots refuse to respond.

'What's your problem? Invisible monkeys?' asks City.

'Invisible -' he stops.

'Can't you see what it did?' Pamela demands, backing him up. 'It just defecated all over the main course!'

'I see nothing,' City says uncertainly.

'Here, let me help you.' Sirhan lends it one of his eyes, rolls it to focus on the ape, which is now reaching lazy arms around the hatch and patting down the roof of the capsule, as if hunting for the wires' attachment points.

'Oh dear,' says City, 'I've been hacked. That's not supposed to be possible.'

'Well it fucking is,' hisses Pamela.

'Hacked?' Sirhan stops trying to tell the air what to do and focuses on his clothing instead. Fabric reweaves itself instantly, mapping itself into an armored airtight suit that raises a bubble visor from behind his neck and flips itself shut across his face. 'City please supply my grandmama with an environment suit now. Make it completely autonomous.'

The air around Pamela begins to congeal in a blossom of crystalline security, as a sphere like a giant hamster ball precipitates out around her. 'If you've been hacked, the first question is, who did it,' Sirhan states. 'The second is 'why,' and the third is 'how.'' He edgily runs a self-test, but there's no sign of inconsistencies in his own identity matrix, and he has hot shadows sleeping lightly at scattered nodes across as distance of half a dozen light-hours.

Unlike pre-posthuman Pamela, he's effectively immune to murder-simple. 'If this is just a prank -'

Seconds have passed since the orangutan got loose in the museum, and subsequent seconds have passed since City realized its bitter circumstance. Seconds are long enough for huge waves of countermeasures to sweep the surface of the lily-pad habitat. Invisibly small utility foglets are expanding and polymerizing into defenses throughout the air, trapping the thousands of itinerant passenger pigeons in midflight, and locking down every building and every person who walks the paths outside. City is self-testing its trusted computing base, starting with the most primitive secured kernel and working outward. Meanwhile Sirhan, with blood in his eye, heads for the staircase, with the vague goal of physically attacking the intruder. Pamela retreats at a fast roll, tumbling toward the safety of the mezzanine floor and a garden of fossils. 'Who do you think you are, barging in and shitting on my supper?' Sirhan yells as he bounds up the stairs. 'I want an explanation! Right now!'

The orangutan finds the nearest cable and gives it a yank, setting the one-ton capsule swinging. It bares its teeth at Sirhan in a grin. 'Remember me?' it asks, in a sibilant French accent.

'Remember -' Sirhan stops dead. 'Tante Annette? What are you doing in that orangutan?'

'Having minor autonomic control problems.' The ape grimaces wider, then bends one arm sinuously and scratches at its armpit. 'I am sorry, I installed myself in the wrong order. I was only meaning to say hello and pass on a message.'

'What message?' Sirhan demands. 'You've upset my grandmama, and if she finds out you're here -'

'She won't; I'll be gone in a minute.' The ape – Annette – sits up. 'Your grandfather salutes you and says he will be visiting shortly. In the person, that is. He is very keen to meet your mother and her passengers. That is all.

Have you a message for him?'

'Isn't he dead?' Sirhan asks, dazed.

'No more than I am. And I'm overdue. Good day!' The ape swings hand over hand out of the capsule, then lets go and plummets ten meters to the hard stone floor below. Its skull makes a noise like a hard-boiled egg impacting concrete.

'Oh dear,' Sirhan breathes heavily. 'City!'

'Yes, oh master?'

'Remove that body,' he says, pointing over the balcony. 'I'll trouble you not to disturb my grandmother with any details. In particular, don't tell her it was Annette. The news may upset her.' The perils of having a long-lived posthuman family, he thinks; too many mad aunts in the space capsule. 'If you can find a way to stop Auntie

'Nette from growing any more apes, that might be a good idea.' A thought strikes him. 'By the way, do you know when my grandfather is due to arrive?'

'Your grandfather?' asks City: 'Isn't he dead?'

Sirhan looks over the balcony, at the blood-seeping corpse of the intruder. 'Not according to his second wife's latest incarnation.'

* * *

Funding the family reunion isn't going to be a problem, as Amber discovers when she receives an offer of