To her mind it sounded like heresy, but she asked it anyway. ‘Like an Olyix quint?’
The pillar flickered excitedly with opalescent light.
‘A not dissimilar analogy,’ Immanueel conceded. ‘Except that once we matured, we chose to amplify our minds; our corpus are a great deal more than simple backup, which is the basis behind the quint model. My mind, for example, is perfectly interfaced with a quantum processing network as well as biological components that are subject to neurochemical and hormonal distortions. This way, I retain a complete human emotional response to my environment as well as uplifting my intellectual capacity and thoughtspeed. A different set of neurological segments amplify intuition, or whimsy. I consider that aspect to be the most connected with the birthform mind. I still dream, Yirella.’
The smile she gave Immanueel was tainted by sadness. ‘And which corpus component holds your soul?’
Immanueel clapped in admiration. ‘An excellent question. You are truly the genesis human Ainsley spoke of. It is a question that would no doubt delight the ancient Greek philosophers.’
‘And you?’
‘The soul is an abstract. It is everywhere and nowhere within the corpus. It is nothing and everything.’
‘The one flaw in rationality, yet also the path to greatness.’
‘Exactly. Our humanity, the same as yours.’
‘Completely different.’
‘I confess I was worried about meeting you, Yirella. There is a saying from old Earth: Never meet your idol. But you are everything I envisaged you would be.’
‘You haven’t had to argue with her yet,’ Dellian said in a low voice. ‘Let me know how much admiration you have left after that happens.’
Yirella gave his grinning face the finger.
‘Ah, the genesis human’s boyfriend,’ Immanueel said.
‘Has a name,’ Yirella admonished.
‘Never could be assed to learn it,’ a familiar voice announced loudly.
She turned to see a pearl-white human male striding across the floor. She knew he was male because he was naked – and anatomically correct. His facial features were easily identifiable. ‘Hello, Ainsley.’
‘Hey there, kid. Good to see you, in the flesh.’
‘The initiator couldn’t do clothes?’
‘Never had you down as a prude.’
‘Okay: The initiator couldn’t do colour?’ The android’s whiteness was absolute – eyes, hair strands, the inside of his mouth. Everything was just the same plastic material.
‘I’m being economical. Just because we’re post-scarcity doesn’t mean we should be profligate.’
‘Couldn’t be assed, then?’
‘Fucking A.’
Yirella didn’t know if she should be laughing or sneering at Ainsley’s android avatar, yet somehow she wasn’t surprised by it. ‘So what now?’
‘Congress!’ He winked, a disturbing pucker on his perfectly smooth face.
Dellian smirked.
‘Oh, Saints save us,’ Yirella groaned. She saw there were eighteen captains in the big hall. ‘Shall we begin?’ she asked Alexandre.
‘I think so, yes.’ Sie bowed slightly to Immanueel. ‘I hope you will be patient with us. Not everyone here is as fast as Yirella.’
‘Of course.’
‘Then I’d like to start by thanking you for this reception. You said you built this habitat for us?’
‘Yes. I’m pleased you like it. It took us six weeks to mature it.’
Alexandre drew a breath ready for hir next question, but Yirella held a hand up.
‘We’re not at your level, are we?’ she said.
‘Excuse me?’
She closed her eyes, focusing on what she’d seen and heard. ‘Natural gravity is a product of spacetime curvature.’
‘Yes?’
‘But you have full mastery of it. This habitat is proof of that.’
‘We do.’
‘So you can create wormholes, for which you’d have to manipulate negative energy?’
‘Yes.’
‘The same technology as the Olyix. So, you have a phenomenal amount of control over the fabric of spacetime.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Seasons. You said you timed the seasons so the wisteria would be in flower for today. That means this is an enclave, but the opposite of the Olyix one.’
‘Huh?’ Dellian grunted.
‘Now I am the one impressed,’ Immanueel said.
She turned to Del. ‘This is and is not a new habitat, depending on your observer viewpoint. It was built a short while ago, then Immanueel’s people changed the internal time flow. Inside the Olyix enclave, time flows slowly relative to an external observer, allowing them to travel to the end of the universe without suffering too much ageing and entropy. In here, time flows quickly relative to that same observer. So those trees in the forest are genuinely hundreds of years old.’
‘Fuck the Saints,’ Dellian muttered.
‘Which must take a phenomenal amount of power?’ Yirella looked expectantly at Immanueel.
‘We derive it directly from the neutron star.’
‘Wow.’
‘If we are to successfully negate the Olyix enclave, we knew we had to understand the mechanism that creates and maintains it. It was one of our first accomplishments after we extended our minds.’
Dellian looked around at the crews from the fleet. ‘Anyone still think Yirella did the wrong thing?’
Ainsley’s white hand slapped him on the shoulders. ‘My man!’
‘All right, Dellian,’ Alexandre said. ‘Let’s try and be constructive here, shall we?’
There were tiers of heavy wooden chairs arranged in a semicircle, all facing the crystal pillar. Yirella got the impression they were all handmade – and if not, someone had made a big effort to design tiny differences into the carved oak.
Immanueel sat in front of the twinkling pillar on the largest chair; its bifurcated backrest was obviously intended to accommodate a tail. The captains and crew from the fleet found themselves spaces in the rows of chairs facing their host. Yirella wound up in the front, sitting between Ainsley and Alexandre, with Dellian on the seat behind her. She knew from his buttoned-down expression that he was stifling a laugh.
‘What?’ she asked from the side of her mouth.
‘We’re in the court of the elven king now,’ he replied.
When she glanced forwards again, she had to agree. Immanueel’s size made for an imposing figure, and their chair could easily be a throne. Looked at without modern filters, the baroque rustic hall with its weight of new ages bestowed the setting a convincingly regal appearance: the benign monarch granting loyal
