The road out to the pagoda was becoming uncomfortably unfamiliar. I found Hoi Yin sitting in one of the lakeside veranda's wicker chairs, hugging her legs with her knees tucked under her chin. She was crying quite openly.
Second time in a week, she said as i came up the wooden steps. People will think I'm cracking up.
I kissed her brow, then knelt down on the floor beside her, putting our heads level. Her hand fumbled for mine.
I'm so sorry, i said. I know how much he meant to you.
She nodded miserably. Steinbauer killed both of Eden's parents, didn't he?
Yes. I suppose he did, ultimately.
His death . . . it was awful.
Quick, though, if not particularly clean.
People can be so cruel, so thoughtless. It was his greed which did this. I sometimes think greed rules the whole world. Maowkavitz created me for money. Steinbauer killed for money. Boston intends to fight Earth over self-determination, which is just another way of saying ownership. Father Cooke resents affinity because it's taking worshippers from him—even that is a form of greed.
You're just picking out the big issues, i said. The top one per cent of human activity. We don't all behave like that.
Don't you, Harvey?
No.
What are you going to do about the stockpile? Give it to the board, or let Boston keep it?
I don't know. It's still classified at the moment, I haven't even told the Governor. I suppose it depends on what Boston does next, and when. After all, possession is nine-tenths of the law.
My dear Harvey.her fingers stroked my face. Torn so many ways. You never deserved any of this.
You never told me; do you support Boston?
No, Harvey. Like my spirit father, I regard it as totally irrelevant. In that at least I am true to him.she leant forwards in the chair, and put both arms around me. Oh, Harvey; I miss him so.
Yes, I know I shouldn't have. I never intended to. I went out to the pagoda purely because I knew how much she would be hurting, and how few people she could turn to for comfort.
So I told myself.
Her bedroom was spartan in its simplicity, with plain wooden floorboards, a few amateur watercolours hanging on the walls. The bed itself only just large enough to hold the two of us.
Our lovemaking was different from the wild exuberance we had shown out in the meadow. It was more intense, slower, clutching. I think we both knew it would be the last time.
We lay together for a long time afterwards, content just to touch, drowsy thoughts merging and mingling to create a mild euphoria.
There is something I have to say to you, hoi yin said eventually. It is difficult for me, because although you have a right to know, I do not know if you will be angry.
I won't be angry, not with you.
I will understand if you are.
I won't be. What is it?
I am pregnant. The child is ours.
«What!» I sat up in reflex, and stared down at her. «How the hell can you possibly know?»
I went for a scan at the hospital yesterday. They confirmed the zygote is viable.
«Fuck.» I flopped back down and stared at the thick ceiling beams. I have a gift, the ability to totally screw up my life beyond either belief or salvation. It's just so natural, I do it without any effort at all.
After twelve years of celibacy, contraception was not something I concerned myself over any more,hoi yin said. It was remiss of me. But what happened that morning was so sudden, and so right . . .
Yes, OK, fine. We were consenting adults, we're equally responsible.she was watching me closely, those big liquid gold eyes full up with apprehension. my lips were curving up into a grin, like they were being pulled by a tidal force or something. You're really pregnant?
Yes. I wanted to be sure as soon as possible, because the earlier the affinity gene is spliced into the embryo, the easier it is.
«Ah.» Yes, of course.
I feel there is a rightness to this, Harvey. A new life born as one dies. And a new life raised in a wholly new culture, one where my spirit-father's ideals will hold true for all eternity. I could never have borne a child into the kind of world I was born into. This child, our child, will be completely free from the pain of the past and the frailty of the flesh; one of the first ever to be so.
Hoi Yin, I'm not sure I can tell Jocelyn today. There's a lot we have to sort out first.
She looked at me with a genuine surprise. Harvey! You must never leave your wife. You love her too much.
I . . .guilty relief was sending shivers all down my skin. christ, but i can be a worthless bastard at times.
You do, hoi yin said implacably. I have seen it in your heart. Go to her, be with her. I never ever intended to lay claim to you. There is no need for that simplicity and selfishness any more. Eden will be a father, if a father figure is needed. And perhaps I will take a lover, maybe even a husband. I would like some more children. This will be a wonderful place for children.
Yeah, so my kids tell me.
This is farewell, you know that, don't you, Harvey?
I know that.
Good.she rolled round on top of me, hunger in her eyes. hoi yin in that kind of kittenish mood was an enrichment of the soul. Then we had better make it memorable.
• • •
My seventh day in Eden was profoundly different from any which had gone before, in the habitat or anywhere else. On the seventh day I was woken up by the human race's newest messiah.
Good morning, Harvey, said wing-tsit chong.
I wailed loudly, kicked against the duvet, and nearly fell out of bed. «You're dead!»
Jocelyn looked at me as if I had gone insane. Perhaps she was right.
A distant mirage of a smile. No, Harvey, I am not dead. I told you once that thoughts are sacred, the essence of man; it is our tragedy that their vessel should be flesh, for flesh is so weak. The flesh fails us, Harvey, for once the wisdom that comes only with age is granted to us, it can no longer be used. All we have learnt so painfully is lost to us for ever. Death haunts us, Harvey, it condemns us to a life of fear and hesitancy. It shackles the soul. It is this curse of ephemerality which I have sought to liberate us from. And with Eden, I have succeeded. Eden has become the new vessel for my thoughts. As I died I transferred my memories, my hopes, my dreams, into the neural strata.
«Oh my God.»
No, Harvey. The time of gods and pagan worship is over. We are the immortals now. We do not need the crutch of faith in deities, and the wish fulfilment of preordained destiny, not any more. Our lives are our own, for the very first time. When your body dies, you too can join me. Eden will live for tens of thousands of years, it is constantly regenerating its cellular structure, it does not decay like terrestrial beasts. And we will live on as part of it.
«Me?» I whispered, incredulous.
