She stood on the lip of the highest platform. The amphitheatre was a pit, far below, but she had no fear of heights. The star-filled sky beyond the dome was huge, inhuman. And, through the subtle glimmer of the dome walls, she could see the tightly curving horizon of this little world of ice.
She closed her eyes, visualising the pattern of haloes, just as it had been when Lieta had launched herself into space. And then she jumped.
Though she had no audience, she had the automated systems assess her. She found the bars glowing an unbroken green. She had recorded a perfect mark. If she had taken part in the competition, against these kids half her age, she would have won.
She had known what Luru was had been talking about. Of course she had. Where others aged, even her own sister, she stayed young. It was as simple as that. The trouble was, it was starting to show.
And it was illegal.
Home was a palace of metal and ice she shared with her extended family. This place, one of the most select on Port Sol, had been purchased with the riches Faya had made from her Dancing.
Her mother was here. Spina Parz was over sixty; her grey, straying hair was tied back in a stern bun.
And, waiting for Faya, here was a Commissary, a representative of the Commission for Historical Truth. Originally an agency for ferreting out Qax collaborators, the Commission had evolved seamlessly into the police force of the Coalition, government of Sol system. This Commissary wore his head shaved, and a simple ground-length robe.
Everybody was frightened of Commissaries. It was only a couple of generations since Coalition ships had come to take Port Sol into the new government’s deadly embrace, by force. But somehow Faya wasn’t surprised to see him; evidently today was the day everything unravelled for her.
The Commissary stood up and faced her. ‘My name is Ank Sool.’
‘I’m not ageing, am I?’
He seemed taken aback by her bluntness. ‘I can cure you. Don’t be afraid.’
Her mother Spina said wistfully, ‘I knew you were special even when you were very small, Faya. You were an immortal baby, born among mortals. I could tell when I held you in my arms. And you were beautiful. My heart sang because you were beautiful and you would live for ever. You were wonderful.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Spina looked tired. ‘Because I wanted you to figure it out for yourself. On the other hand I never thought it would take you until you were forty.’ She smiled. ‘You never were the brightest crystal in the snowflake, were you, dear?’
Faya’s anger melted. She hugged her mother. ‘The great family secret…’
‘I saw the truth, working its way through you. You always had trouble with relationships with men. They kept growing too old for you, didn’t they? When you’re young even a subtle distancing is enough to spoil a relationship. And—’
‘And I haven’t had children.’
‘You kept putting it off. Your body knew, love. And now your head knows too.’
Sool said earnestly, ‘You must understand the situation.’
‘I understand I’m in trouble. Immortality is illegal.’
He shook his head. ‘You are the victim of a crime – a crime committed centuries ago.’
It was all the fault of the Qax, as so many things were. During their Occupation of Earth the Qax had rewarded those who had collaborated with them with an anti-ageing treatment. The Qax, masters of nanotechnological transformations, had rewired human genomes.
‘After the fall of the Qax the surviving collaborators and their children were given the gift of mortality.’ The Commissary said this without irony.
‘But you evidently didn’t get us all,’ Faya said.
Sool said, ‘The genome cleansing was not perfect. After centuries of Occupation we didn’t have the technology. In every generation there are throwbacks.’
‘Throwbacks. Immortals, born to mortal humans.’
‘Yes.’
Faya felt numb. It was as if he was talking about somebody else. ‘My sister—’
Her mother said, ‘Lieta is as mortal as I am, as your poor father was. It’s only you, Faya.’
‘We can cure you,’ Sool said, smiling. ‘It will be quite painless.’
‘But I could stay young,’ Faya said rapidly. She turned to Sool. ‘Once I was famous for my Dancing. They even knew my name on Earth.’ She waved a hand. ‘Look around! I made a fortune. I was the best. Grown men of twenty-five – your age, yes? – would follow me down the street. You can’t know what that was like; you never saw their eyes.’ She stood straight. ‘I could have it all again. I could have it for ever, couldn’t I? If I came out about what I am.’
Sool said stiffly, ‘The Coalition frowns on celebrity. The species, not the individual, should be at the centre of our thoughts.’
Her mother was shaking her head. ‘Anyhow, Faya, it can’t be like that. You’re still young; you haven’t thought it through. Once I hoped you would be able to – hide. To survive. But it would be impossible. Mortals won’t accept you.’
‘Your mother is right,’ Sool said. ‘You would spend your life tinting your hair, masking your face. Abandoning your home every few years. Otherwise they will kill you. No matter how beautifully you Danced.’ He said this with a flat certainty, and she realised that he was speaking from experience.
‘I need time,’ she said abruptly, and forced a smile. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? Just as I’ve been given all the time anybody could ask for.’
Spina sighed. ‘Time for what?’
‘To talk to Luru Parz.’ And she left before they could react.
‘I am nearly two hundred years old,’ said Luru Parz. ‘I was born in the era of the Occupation. I grew up knowing nothing else. And I took the gift of immortality from the Qax. I have already lived to see the liberation of mankind.’
They were in a two-person flitter. Faya had briskly piloted them into a slow orbit around Port Sol; beneath them the landscape stretched to its close-crowding horizon. Here, in this cramped cabin, they were safely alone.
Port Sol was a Kuiper object: like a huge comet nucleus, circling the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto. The little ice moon was gouged by hundreds of artificial craters. Faya could see the remnants of domes, pylons and arches, spectacular microgravity architecture. But the pylons and graceful domes were collapsed, with bits of glass and metal jutting like snapped bones. Everything was smashed up. Much of this architecture was a relic of pre-Occupation days. The Qax had never come here; during the Occupation the moon had been a refuge. It had been humans, the forces of the young Coalition, who had done all this damage in their ideological enthusiasm. Now, even after decades of reoccupation and restoration, most of the old buildings were closed, darkened, and thin frost coated their surfaces.
Luru said, ‘Do you know what I see, when I look down at this landscape? I see layers of history. The great engineer Michael Poole himself founded this place. He built a great system of wormholes, rapid-transit pathways from the worlds of the inner system. And having united Sol system, here, at the system’s outermost terminus, Poole’s disciples used great mountains of ice to fuel interstellar vessels. It was the start of mankind’s First Expansion. But then humans acquired a hyperdrive.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘Economic logic. The hyper-ships could fly right out of the crowded heart of Sol system, straight to the stars. Nobody needed Poole’s huge wormhole tunnels, or his mighty ice mine. And then the Qax came, and then the Coalition.’
‘But now Port Sol has revived.’