like as well. I want to go virtual.”
“We will pay for the enhancements. But there will be occasions when we will want to ride along on them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Many people believe our presence within the Commonwealth is total, delivered to us through the unisphere. However, even we have limits. There are many places we cannot reach. Some are deliberately blocked, while others are simply lacking any electronic infrastructure. You could provide us access to these areas on special occasions.”
“You mean you watch us? I always thought that was just a silly conspiracy theory.”
“We do not watch everyone. However, our interests are combined with yours, and you are a part of us through innumerable memory downloads. To use an old phrase: our fates are entwined. The only way to unentwine them would be to remove ourselves from the sphere of all human activity. We choose not to do so.”
“Why not? I bet your life would be simpler.”
“And you believe that to be a good thing? No entity can enrich itself in isolation.”
“So you do watch us. Do you manipulate us as well?”
“By acting as your agent we control the flow of your life. Is that manipulation? We are data. It is our nature to acquire more, to continually add to our knowledge, and to use it. It is both our language and our currency. Human current events form a very small part of the information we absorb.”
“It’s more like you’re studying us, then?”
“Not as individuals. It is your society and the way in which its currents flow which is obviously of interest to us. What affects you affects us.”
“And you don’t want any surprises.”
“Do you?”
“I guess not.”
“Then we understand each other. So do you still wish us to act as your representative and advisor, baby Mel?”
“I’d be like your secret agent, wouldn’t I?”
“The role has parallels. But there are no dangers involved, you are simply our eyes and ears in secluded places. Don’t expect to be issued with exotic gadgets and cars that fly.”
She laughed—for the first time in a long while. Shame about the flying cars, though, that would be fun. “Let’s do it.” Because if Grandpa was serious, the SI would have to make sure she was a success.
…
The last sections of copper tubing in the espresso machine clipped back neatly into place, and Mark Vernon used a set of electromuscle pliers to tighten the seals. He screwed the chrome cover back on and flicked the power switch. Three green lights came on.
“There you go. All working again.”
Mandy clapped her hands together in jubilation. “Oh, thanks, Mark. I kept telling Dil it was buggered, but he didn’t do anything about it, just left us stewing in poo. You’re my hero.”
He smiled at the young waitress who was beaming up at him. She’d been setting fresh breakfast paninis out under the glass counter ready for the early-morning customers; huge halves of the crusty Italian bread clamped around entire meals such as fried egg, sausages, kyias, and tomatoes, or ham, cheese, and pineapple, or vegetarian omelettes. Her shift partner, Julie, was rattling pans and crockery around in the kitchen at the rear. The smell of honey-cured bacon being grilled was drifting in through the hatch.
“Pretty simple, really,” he said modestly. The small area behind the serving counter meant Mandy was standing slightly too close, and slightly too admiringly as well. “I’ll, er, get on then.” He was slotting his tools back into the small case he always carried with him. His other hand held it between them like a defensive shield.
“No you won’t. You sit yourself down there and I’ll get you a decent breakfast. It’s the least you deserve. And make sure you put a huge call-out fee on your bill for Dil. Bloody skinflint.”
“Right-o.” Mark nodded in defeat. Actually he was hungry. It was a fifteen-minute drive in to Randtown from Ulon Valley where the Vernons had their vineyard homestead. Mandy’s frantic early-morning call hadn’t given him time for a bite before he left. Hadn’t even used his toothgel yet.
He sat at a big marble-top table in one of the cafe Two For Tea’s big curving windows. A couple had already claimed the window table on the other side of the door. They were dressed in skiing clothes, and talking happily with their heads tilted lovingly together, oblivious to the rest of the world.
Bright sunlight was creeping over the Dau’sing Mountains that surrounded Randtown to the north. Mark put his sunglasses on against the light streaming in through the window as he unrolled a paperscreen—he never had liked reading directly out of his virtual vision, the print superimposed over his field of view always gave him a headache. A dozen headlines scrolled down the left-hand side, with local items opposite them, loaded into the cybersphere by The Randtown Chronicle , the only media company on this half of the continent. With all the goodwill and loyalty in the world, Mark really couldn’t haul up enough enthusiasm to read about the new loop road around the town’s western precincts, or the proposed foresting project along the Oyster Valley. So he told his e-butler to access yesterday’s pan-Commonwealth news, and followed the start of the presidential campaign. Reading between the lines on Doi’s funding efforts, she hadn’t gotten the Sheldons, the Halgarths, nor the Singhs to back her yet.
“Here you go,” Mandy said brightly as she put a plate down in front of him. It was piled high with pancakes and bacon oozing maple syrup out of every layer; the strawberries and lolabeans on top were arranged in a smiley face. A tall glass of apple and mango in crushed ice was placed next to it. “I’ll bring your toast and coffee when it’s ready.” She winked saucily and skipped off to take the ski couple’s order. Behind the serving counter the espresso machine had started to gurgle and steam comfortingly.
The smell of food was obviously spreading down the street. People started coming into the cafe as Mark was eating. Some of them were tourist types, seeking a good meal before the day’s hectic activities, looking around in appreciation at the mock Roman decor before finding a free table. Locals stood at the counter to collect their microwaved paninis and hot drinks to go. Mandy barely had time to bring him his four thick slices of toast and butter with the vanilla rhubarb jam he was especially fond of. A pains au chocolat was perched on the edge of his plate, just in case.
He eventually managed to leave Tea For Two at half past eight. Outside, it was exactly the sort of morning he had traveled three hundred light-years to immerse himself in every day. He breathed down air that had that distinct crisp chill that was only ever found at the foot of snowcapped mountains. The taller peaks and plateaus of the Dau’sings were still heavily snow-covered, including both ski fields. Mark looked up at them, his sunglasses darkening against the light from Elan’s brilliant G-9 star flooding down out of the cloudless sky. They dominated the land behind the town, forming an impressive barrier of rumpled cones and peaks. Now that Elan’s southern hemisphere was coming into springtime, meltwater was starting to run down out of the snowline, filling every crevice with gushing white rivulets. Pine variants from across the Commonwealth had colonized the lower slopes, bringing a much-needed cascade of verdure foliage. Above them, the native boltgrass still flourished, a characterless yellow-green plant with ratty strands. Away from the little oasis of foreign vegetation that humans had brought to the area, it was boltgrass that carpeted every mountain in the range, covering almost a quarter of the continent.
Small elongated triangles of golden fabric were already drifting idly across the sky as the first of the days fliers flapped their way upward in search of the thermals. They normally launched themselves off the ridges on Blackwater Crag, which rose up from the back of the town’s eastern quarter. A cable car run sliced through the forest that covered the crag, leading from its ground base behind the high school’s playing fields up to the semicircular Orbit building that protruded from the top of the broad cliff six hundred meters above the town, looking as if a flying saucer were sticking out over the edge. The restaurant it housed was an overpriced tourist trap, although the view it provided across the town and lake was unbeatable.
Every day the little chrome-blue cable cars carried tourists and flight professionals and extreme sports addicts up to the Orbit. From there they’d make their way through the forest paths to a ridge that had the wind blowing in the right direction, seal themselves into a Vinci suit, and take flight. The real professionals would spend all day soaring and spiraling in the thermals, coming back down only as darkness fell. A Vinci suit was easy enough to use: it was basically a tapered slimline sleeping bag with bird wings that had a span up to eight meters. You stood up inside it on the crest of the ridge, arms outstretched in a cruciform position, and dived forward into the chasm below. Electromuscle bands in the wings mimicked and amplified your arm and wrist motions, allowing the wings to flap and bank and roll. It was the closest humans had ever got to pure bird flight.
Mark had been up a couple of times, sharing an instructor suit with a friend who lived in town. The sensation was truly amazing, but he wasn’t about to switch jobs to do it full-time.
He walked down the sloping Main Mall toward the waterfront. The stores on either side of the walkway were a collection of Commonwealth-wide retail franchises like the Bean Here and the inevitable Bab’s Kebabs fast food, interspaced with local craft shops and the bars and cafes to provide an eclectic shopping mix.
Doors all the way along the Main Mall were being opened for business. Mark said hello to a lot of the staff, waving to even more. They were all young people, and strangely uniform in appearance; if it wasn’t for their varied skin colors they could all have been cousins. The boys had stiff hair cut short, maybe a few days’ stubble, bodies that were genuinely fit, not simply overaerobicized in a gym; they wore baggy sweaters or even baggier waterproof coats, with knee-length shorts, and trainer sandals. The girls were easy to look at in their short skirts or tight trousers, with T-shirts all showing off firm midriffs no matter how cold the day was. All of them were just filling in with these jobs: serving in the stores, waitressing, working bar, portering at the hotels, stewarding on the dive boats, hostessing the scenic tours, doing childcare for the permanent residents. They did it for one thing, to raise enough money for the next extreme experience. Randtown’s biggest industry was tourism, and what set it apart from countless other holiday destinations in the Commonwealth were the sports that were practiced in the rugged countryside surrounding it. They attracted the first-lifers, the ones moderately disaffected with the mainstream of Commonwealth life; not rebels, just thrill-junkies hell-bent on finding a quicker way down a mountain, or a rougher way to raft over rapids, or turn tighter corners on jetskis, or go ever higher for heliski drops. Older, more conservative multi-life types visited as well, staying in the fancy hotels and getting bused out to their scheduled activity each day in air-conditioned coaches. They were the ones who generated the service economy that provided hundreds of low-paying jobs for the likes of Mandy and Julie.
Mark crossed the single-lane road at the end of Main Mall, and walked along the waterfront promenade. Randtown was built around a horseshoe-shaped inlet on the northern shore of Lake Trine’ba. At a hundred eighty kilometers long, it was the biggest stretch of inland freshwater on Elan. Complementing the height of the mountains that corraled it at their center, it was over a kilometer deep in places. Lurking below the astonishingly blue surface was a unique marine ecology that had evolved in isolation for tens of millions of years. Stunningly beautiful coral reefs dominated the shallows, while conical atolls rose from the central deeps like miniature volcanoes. They were home to thousands of fish species, ranging from the bizarre to the sublime; though like their saltwater cousins of this planet they used lethal- looking spines and spindles rather than fins to propel themselves along.
