The vote on the microprobes had been close: seventy-two percent in favor, just over the required two-thirds majority, with five percent abstaining. Citizens created since the arrival at Vega were excluded… not that anyone in Carter-Zimmerman would have dreamt of stacking the ballot, perish the thought. Paolo had been surprised at the narrow margin; he was yet to hear a single plausible scenario for the microprobes doing harm. He wondered if there was another, unspoken reason which had nothing to do with fears for the Orphean ecology, or hypothetical culture. A wish to prolong the pleasure of unraveling the planet's mysteries? Paolo had some sympathy with that impulse, but the launch of the microprobes would do nothing to undermine the greater long-term pleasure of watching, and understanding, as Orphean life evolved.
Liesl said forlornly, "Coastline erosion models show that the north-western shore of Lambda is inundated by tsunami every ninety Orphean years, on average." She offered the data to them; Paolo glanced at it, and it looked convincing, but the point was academic now. "We could have waited."
Hermann waved his eye-stalks at her. "Beaches covered in fossils, are they?"
"No, but the conditions hardly—"
"No excuses!" He wound his body around a girder, kicking his legs gleefully. Hermann had been scanned in the twenty-first century, before Carter-Zimmerman even existed, but over the teratau he'd wiped most of his episodic memories and rewritten his personality a dozen times. He'd once told Paolo, "I think of myself as my own great-great-grandson. Death's not so hard, if you do it incrementally. Ditto for immortality.
Elena said, "I keep trying to imagine how it will feel if another C-Z clone stumbles on something infinitely better—like aliens with shortened wormholes—while we're back here studying rafts of algae." Her icon was more stylized than usuaclass="underline" sexless, hairless and smooth, the face inexpressive and androgynous.
Paolo shrugged. "If they can shorten wormholes, the might visit us. Or share the technology, so we can link up the whole Diaspora. But I know what you mean: first alien life, and it's likely to be about as sophisticated as seaweed. It breaks the jinx, though. Seaweed every twenty-seven light years. Nervous systems every fifty? Intelligence every hundred?" He fell silent, abruptly realizing what she was feeling: electing not to wake again after first life was beginning to seem like the wrong choice, a waste of the opportunities the Diaspora had created. Paolo offered her mind graft expressing empathy and support, but she declined.
She said, "I want sharp borders, right now. I want to deal with this myself."
"I understand." He let the partial model of her which he'd acquired as they'd made love fade from his mind, heaving only an ordinary, guesswork-driven Elena-symbol, much like those he possessed for everyone else he knew. Paolo took the responsibilities of intimacy seriously; his lover before Elena had asked him to erase all his knowledge of her, and he'd more or less complied the only thing he still knew about her was the fact that she'd made the request.
Hermann announced, "Planetfall" Paolo glanced at a replay of a scour probe view which showed the first few entry capsules breaking up above the ocean and releasing their microprobes. Nanomachines transformed the ceramic shields (and then themselves) into carbon dioxide and a few simple minerals—nothing the micrometeorites constantly raining down onto Orpheus didn't contain—before the fragments could strike the water. The microprobes would broadcast nothing; when they'd finished gathering data, they'd float to the surface and modulate their UV reflectivity. It would be up to the scout probes to locate these specks, and read their messages, before they self-destructed as thoroughly as the entry capsules.
Hermann said, "This calls for a celebration. I'm heading for the Heart. Who'll join me?"
Paolo glanced at Elena. She shook her head. "You go."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes! Go on." Her skin had taken on a mirrored sheen; her expressionless face reflected the planet below. "I'm all right. I just want some time to think things through, on my own."
Hermann coiled around the satellite's frame, stretching his pale body as he went, gaining segments, gaining legs. "Come on, come on! Karpal? Liesl? Come and celebrate!"
Elena was gone. Liesl made a derisive sound and flapped off into the distance, mocking the scape's airlessness. Paolo and Karpal watched as Hermann grew longer and faster-and then in a blur of speed and change stretched out to wrap the entire geodesic frame. Paolo jumped away, laughing; Karpal did the same.
Then Hermann constricted like a boa, and snapped the whole satellite apart.
They floated for a while, two flesher-shaped creatures and a giant worm in a cloud of spinning metal fragments, an absurd collection of imaginary debris, glinting by the light of the true stars.
The Heart was always crowded, but it was larger than Paolo had seen it, even though Hermann had shrunk back to his original size so as not to make a scene. The huge muscular chamber arched above them, pulsating wetly in time to the music, as they searched for the perfect location to soak up the atmosphere.
They found a good spot and made some furniture, a table and two chairs—Hermann preferred to stand—and the floor expanded to make room. Paolo looked around, shouting greetings at the people he recognized by sight, but not bothering to check for signatures. Chances were he'd met everyone here, but he didn't want to spend the next few kilotau exchanging pleasantries with casual acquaintances.
Hermann said, "I've been monitoring our modest stellar observatory's data stream—my antidote to Vegan parochialism. Odd things are going on around Sirius. We're seeing megaKelvin X-rays, gravity waves… and some unexplained hot spots on Sirius B." He turned to Karpal and asked innocently, "What do you think those robots are up to? There's a rumor that they're planning to drag the white dwarf out of orbit, and use it as part of a giant spaceship."
"I never listen to rumors." Karpal always presented as a faithful reproduction of his old gleisner body. Leaving his people and coming into C-Z must have taken considerable courage; they'd never welcome him hack.
Paolo said, "Does it matter what they do? Where they go, how they get there? There's more than enough room for both of us. Even if they shadowed the Diaspora, even if they came to Vega—we could study the Orpheans together, couldn't we?"
Hermann's cartoon insect face showed mock alarm, eyes growing wider, and wider apart. "Not if they dragged along a white dwarf! Next thing they'd want to start building a Dyson sphere." He turned back to Karpal. "You don't still suffer the urge, do you, for… astrophysical engineering?"
"Nothing C-Z's exploitation of a few megatons of Vegan asteroid material hasn't satisfied."
Paolo tried to change the subject. "Has anyone heard from Earth, lately? I'm beginning to feel unplugged." His own most recent message was a decade older than the time lag.
Karpal said, "You're not missing much; all they're talking about is Orpheus: the new lunar observations, the signs of water. They seem more excited by the mere possibility of life than we are by the certainty. And they have very high hopes."
Paolo laughed. "They do. My Earth-self seems to be counting on the Diaspora to find an advanced civilization with the answers to all of the Coalition's existential problems. I don't think he'll get much cosmic guidance from kelp."
"You know there was a big rise in emigration from C-Z after the launch? Emigration, and suicides." Hermann had stopped wriggling and gyrating, becoming almost still, a sign of rare seriousness. "I suspect that's what triggered the astronomy program in the first place. And it seems to have staunched the flow, at least in the short term. Earth C-Z detected water before any clone in the Diaspora—and when they hear that we've found life, they'll feel more like collaborators in the discovery because of it."