'The vertebrates begin
'That's' – Pierre does a quick sum – 'fifty thousand different species? Is there a problem?'
'Yes!' Sirhan says vehemently, no longer aloof or distant. He struggles visibly to get himself under control.
'At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were roughly two million species of vertebrate and an estimated thirty or so million species of multicellular organisms – it's hard to apply the same statistical treatment to prokaryotes, but doubtless there were huge numbers of them, too. The average life span of a species is about five megayears. It used to be thought to be about one, but that's a very vertebrate-oriented estimate – many insect species are stable over deep time. Anyway, we have a total sample, from all of history, of only fifty thousand known prehistoric species – out of a population of thirty million, turning over every five million years. That is, we know of only one in a million life-forms, of those that ever existed on Earth. And the situation with human history is even worse.'
'Aha! So you're after memoriesy yes? What really happened when we colonized Barney. Who released Oscar's toads in the free-fall core of the Ernst Sanger, that sort of thing?'
'Not exactly.' Sirhan looks pained, as if being forced to spell it out devalues the significance of his insight.
'I'm after
* * *
Over the course of the day, various refugees from the Field Circus hatch from their tanks and blink in the ringlight, stranded creatures from an earlier age. The inner system is a vague blur from this distance, a swollen red cloud masking the sun that rides high above the horizon. However, the great restructuring is still visible to the naked eye – here, in the shape of the rings, which show a disturbingly organized fractal structure as they whirl in orbit overhead. Sirhan (or whoever is paying for this celebration of family flesh) has provided for their physical needs: food, water, clothes, housing and bandwidth, they're all copiously available. A small town of bubble homes grows on the grassy knoll adjacent to the museum, utility foglets condensing in a variety of shapes and styles.
Sirhan isn't the only inhabitant of the festival city, but the others keep themselves to themselves. Only bourgeois isolationists and reclusive weirdoes would want to live out here right now, with whole light-minutes between themselves and the rest of civilization. The network of lily-pad habitats isn't yet ready for the Saturnalian immigration wave that will break upon this alien shore when it's time for the Worlds' Fair, a decade or more in the future. Amber's flying circus has driven the native recluses underground, in some cases literally: Sirhan's neighbor, Vinca Kovic, after complaining bitterly about the bustle and noise ('Forty immigrants! An outrage!'), has wrapped himself in an environment pod and is estivating at the end of a spidersilk cable a kilometer beneath the space-frame underpinnings of the city.
But that isn't going to stop Sirhan from organizing a reception for the visitors. He's moved his magnificent dining table outside, along with the Argentinosaurus skeleton. In fact, he's built a dining room within the dinosaur's rib cage. Not that he's planning on showing his full hand, but it'll be interesting to see how his guests respond. And maybe it'll flush out the mystery benefactor who's been paying for all these meatbodies.
Sirhan's agents politely invite his visitors to the party as the second sunset in this day cycle gently darkens the sky to violet. He discusses his plans with Pamela via antique voice-only phone as his silent valet dresses him with inhuman grace and efficiency. 'I'm sure they'll listen when the situation is made clear to them,' he says. 'If not, well, they'll soon find out what it means to be paupers under Economics 2.0. No access to multiplicity, no willpower, to be limited to purely spacelike resources, at the mercy of predatory borganisms and metareligions -
it's no picnic out there!'
'You don't have the resources to set this up on your own,' his grandmother points out in dry, didactic tones.
'If this was the old economy, you could draw on the infrastructure of banks, insurers, and other risk management mechanisms -'
'There's no risk to this venture, in purely human terms,' Sirhan insists. 'The only risk is starting it up with such a limited reserve.'
'You win some, you lose some,' Pamela points out. 'Let me see you.' With a sigh, Sirhan waves at a frozen camera; it blinks, surprised. 'Hey, you look good! Every inch the traditional family entrepreneur. I'm proud of you, darling.'
Blinking back an unaccustomed tear of pride, Sirhan nods. 'I'll see you in a few minutes,' he says, and cuts the call. To the nearest valet: 'Bring my carriage, now.'
A rippling cloud of utility foglets, constantly connecting and disconnecting in the hazy outline of a 1910- vintage Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, bears Sirhan silently away from his wing of the museum. It drives him out onto the sunset path around the building, over to the sunken amphitheatre, where the mounted skeleton of the Argentinosaurus stands like a half-melted columnar sculpture beneath the orange-and-silver ringlight. A small crowd of people are already present, some dressed casually and some attired in the formal garb of earlier decades.
Most of them are passengers or crew recently decanted from the starwhisp, but a handful are wary-eyed hermits, their body language defensive and their persons the focus of a constant orbital hum of security bees. Sirhan dismounts from his silvery car and magics it into dissolution, a haze of foglets dispersing on the breeze. 'Welcome to my abode,' he says, bowing gravely to a ring of interested faces. 'My name is Sirhan al-Khurasani, and I am the prime contractor in charge of this small corner of the temporary Saturn terraforming project. As some of you probably know, I am related by blood and design to your former captain, Amber Macx. I'd like to offer you the comforts of my home while you acclimatize yourselves to the changed circumstances prevailing in the system at large and work out where you want to go next.'
He walks toward the front of the U-shaped table of solidified air that floats beneath the dead dinosaur's rib cage, slowly turns to take in faces, and blinks down captions to remind him who's who in this gathering. He frowns slightly; there's no sign of his mother. But that wiry fellow, with the beard – surely that can't be – 'Father?' he asks.
Sadeq blinks owlishly. 'Have we met?'
'Possibly not.' Sirhan can feel his head spinning, because although Sadeq looks like a younger version of his father, there's something wrong – some essential disconnect: the politely solicitous expression, the complete lack of engagement, the absence of paternal involvement. This Sadeq has never held the infant Sirhan in the control core of the Ring's axial cylinder, never pointed out the spiral storm raking vast Jupiter's face and told him stories of djinni and marvels to make a boy's hair stand on end. 'I won't hold it against you, I promise,' he blurts.
Sadeq raises an eyebrow but passes no comment, leaving Sirhan at the center of an uncomfortable silence.
'Well then,' he says hastily. 'If you would like to help yourselves to food and drink, there'll be plenty of time to talk later.' Sirhan doesn't believe in forking ghosts simply to interact with other people – the possibilities for confusion are embarrassing – but he's going to be busy working the party.
He glances round. Here's a bald, aggressive-looking fellow, beetle-browed, wearing what looks like a pair of cutoffs and a top made by deconstructing a space suit. Who's he? (Sirhan's agents hint: 'Boris Denisovitch.' But what does that mean?) There's an amused-looking older woman, a beady-eyed camera painted in the violent colors of a bird of paradise riding her shoulder. Behind her a younger woman, dressed head to toe in clinging black, her currently ash-blonde hair braided in cornrows, watches him – as does Pierre, a protective arm around her shoulders. They're – Amber Macx? That's his mother? She looks far too young, too much in love with Pierre.
'Amber!' he says, approaching the couple.
'Yeah? You're, uh, my mystery child-support litigant?' Her smile is distinctly unfriendly as she continues:
