A Night Without Stars (87 page)

“So?” Mellanie said with a husky purr. “The Hero of Bryan-Anthony Boulevard, himself. Did you really stand between a horde of alien cannibals and a crowd of helpless children?”

“Oh. Well. You know.”

“I don't.” Her finger tapped playfully at the base of his throat. “But I'd love to hear all about it.”

Nigel walked along the Martinique loop for most of the afternoon. It was a tropical environment, five thousand kilometers wide, with a twenty-seven-thousand-kilometer circumference, revolving slowly to produce a point-eight-five gravity effect on its inner surface. Three other loops were interlocked with it, in turn knitted with more loops. The inside of the Dyson shell contained thousands of them, all rotating at varying speeds in the most fantastically complex piece of clockwork humans had ever created. The underside of the loops contained terminus strips, wormhole-linked to coronal flowers in close orbit above the A7 star, scalloped rings of exotic matter absorbing the searing light to shine it across the shell's interior.

Looking up, he could see the full multitude of loops in their awesome three-dimensional lattice-chain, stretching away into a distance that gave a far greater impression of infinity than naked space ever did. Some sections were in darkness as the terminus strips fluctuated their emissions, creating nighttimes for the loops.

It was a sight that still mesmerized him, despite watching it grow and develop—the first nest of a true post-scarcity society, where accomplishments were driven by culture and artistic whimsy rather than economics. A home that encouraged self-development and experimentation. Biononic transforms were already laying claim to the air between the loops, humans bodyshifting to giant avians that soared amid the churning thermals. Oceanic loops were alive with the first colonies of aquarian bodyshifters. While outside the shell, rock-like transforms clung barnacle-fashion to the surface. Already they were trialing integral solar sails. By the time the next generation of Dyson shells were complete, they'd be able to surf the ion gales between them.

So many possibilities awaited. But for now he was content to keep his human identity.

“You are so rooted in the past,” Ozzie had taunted on one of his increasingly rare visitations.

“You have to know where you've come from to see where you're going,” Nigel had replied.

“But, dude, you've stopped going anywhere.”

And onward he walked. Across tropic loops, and subtropics, arctic wastes to windswept moors, and more exotic environments garnered from the records of the Commonwealth Navy Exploration Division and reproduced with interesting twists, content simply to examine the newness and diversity firsthand. An old factory boss performing an everlasting quality control check.

Late afternoon, local loop time, he emerged from a line of royal palms that were only just taller than him and onto a long sloping beach. Small waves lapped against the fine silver-white sand. Kilometers out to sea, coral isles jutted enticingly up out of the clear water. He took his boots and socks off, and walked along the shoreline.

After a while he sat down and watched the astonishing array of fish venturing into the shallows. When he tipped his head back, he could follow the Martinique loop's turquoise-and-green cartography curving above him. It was two-thirds sea, with lush emerald vegetation spreading across the small continents and various archipelagoes. Its only fault was how small the palms and ferns were, but then it had only been commissioned seven years ago.

They'd learned a lot from terraforming Zoreia. Thousands of asteroid-sized biovat stations formed a bracelet swarm around the Dyson shell, growing the necessary bacteria to bring the loop soils to life. Equally vast clone houses grew the seeds.

Such quantities meant they didn't have to wait decades for the biota to establish itself. What had taken years on Zoreia was complete in weeks here. Already photosynthetic vegetation was established on 70 percent of the loops—though, of course, trees still had to grow. Fast-grow versions had been rejected. The humans of the Dyson shell wanted a genuine feel to their environment. Nigel still laughed at the irony of that.

In a couple of hundred years, the jungles and landscapes would have a decent primordial feel to them. He watched clouds streaming over the edge of the loop, floundering in wispy curlicues as they lost the integrity provided by the artificial gravity. Intra-loop weather currents were still a huge challenge for the shell climatology engineers. They were having to intervene more than any simulation modeling suggested.

Nigel rather liked that.
We haven't perfected everything yet.

“Can you bump these waves up?” he asked Central. Induced gravity pulses could simulate the more basic effect of moons, given the loops didn't have any.
Now, there's a thought for a shell.

“What sort of size are you looking for?” Central asked.

“I just thought I might go surfing. Give me some decent ocean rollers, maybe? That way I can rip down tubes like they did off Hawaii back in the day.” His neural augmentation rose to run routines calculating the kind of gravity field orientation and power necessary to create the required effect.

“When have you ever done that?” Central queried.

“First time for everything.”

“Ozzie was right. You are regressing while everyone else is moving off into the new.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Would you like me to select a surfboard based on your size and ability?”

“My size?” He looked down his chest, which was rather well muscled these days. Muscles he'd earned by all his exercise, not bought with biononic manipulation. He grinned at the foolish vanity.
Maybe Ozzie is right, I am sliding back into the primitive. But that's allowed. The loops can embrace any foible.

“Nigel, I am detecting a quantum field displacement point coming toward us.”

“A what?”

“A node similar to myself. This one is traveling FTL.”

“You mean we're being visited by another post-physical?”

“It doesn't have the same field depth as myself, but it is decelerating from nine hundred light-years an hour.”

Nigel sat up fast. “Holy shit!”

“The trajectory indicates it could have come from the Commonwealth galaxy.”

“Ah! The infamous deterrent fleet?”

“A strong possibility, yes.”

Nigel's primary routine meshed with Central, allowing him to observe the twist in reality hurtling toward them. It reached the star system's outer comet belt and dropped to ordinary hyperdrive speeds before approaching the Dyson shell. A signal was transmitted.

“This is Paula Myo. I'd like to visit Nigel Sheldon, please. And I am bringing a guest.”

Nigel laughed. “Who else? Give her my coordinates.”

The quantum fluctuation changed, a swirl of energy rising up out of the field interstice and phase-shifting into two physical structures. They teleported into the Martinique loop beach.

He raised his arm in a cheery greeting as Paula materialized five meters in front of him. Paula, younger than the last time he'd seen her, which was unusual. “Twice in fifteen years. I'm flattered.”

“Hello, Nigel.” She stood aside, and Nigel saw who it was standing behind her.

More than a thousand years of experience in controlling his emotions, neural augmentation running routines to objectify any situation, meant nothing now. For it was
her
standing there, wearing her familiar brown suede skirt and white blouse, the wide-brimmed hat he'd bought her perched at a spry angle on her lush red hair.

“No,” he moaned incredulously. “You're dead. I saw Uracus kill Bienvenido.”

“It didn't kill us,” Kysandra said. “The Void expelled us.”

“What? Where?”

“Intergalactic space.
Deep
intergalactic space, actually. It's taken a while to get back; we had a few problems there. Nothing I couldn't handle.” There were tears brimming in her eyes, as if she was scared of something.

Nigel put his trembling arms around her. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. If only I'd known, I would never have stopped looking. I would have found you, no matter what.”

“Well, now I've found you. And you're the real you, this time.”

His grip tightened. “Yes, you have. And I'm not going to let you go again. Not ever.”

“You have no idea how much I wanted to hear that!”

“Oh, I do. Because that's what I've felt every day since I lost you.” He kissed her.

Kysandra smiled through her tears as she stroked his face. “You know what? That was almost worth waiting two and a half centuries for.”

To Marcus and Rebecca Lewis, for all their friendship and laughter during an amazingly long summer

Great North Road

Manhattan in Reverse and Other Stories

Fallen Dragon

Misspent Youth

Pandora's Star

Judas Unchained

The Dreaming Void

The Temporal Void

The Evolutionary Void

The Reality Dysfunction

The Neutronium Alchemist

The Naked God

The Confederation Handbook

A Second Chance at Eden

Mindstar Rising

A Quantum Murder

The Nano Flower

The Abyss Beyond Dreams

A Night Without Stars

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

P
ETER
F. H
AMILTON
is the author of numerous novels, including
The Evolutionary Void, The Temporal Void, The Dreaming Void, Judas Unchained, Pandora's Star, Fallen Dragon,
and the acclaimed epic Night's Dawn trilogy (
The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist,
and
The Naked God
). He lives with his family in England.

peterfhamilton.co.uk

Facebook.com/​PeterFHamilton

@PeterFHamilton1