Peter Hamilton - Manhattan in Reverse

The first fragments hadn’t even reached the ground when I turned and hurried down to the shore where the boat was anchored. This point was critical. The whole area would be swarming with people. The unisphere was already flinging out alarms. Rescue crews and police would be dispatched within minutes. And any local citizens nearby would no doubt rush to help. My Volkep body released the warning message into the unisphere as I reached the shoreline.

After that it was a quick trip across the sea to Ridgeview. I waited on the station platform for my train back to Earth. It was an eerie experience. Everyone round me was accessing the unisphere reports of the plane crash. Nobody said anything, they were all too shocked at the disaster just outside town.

When I got back to Sydney I took a cab straight back to the apartment. The rest of me were a pleasant sensation of reassurance as I took the memory wipe drugs. The Volkep body took the array necklace from my neck, and smiled proudly. I could feel the connection with myself reducing, darkness replacing the joy and colour of my true memories. One contact remained, a single thread of experience: the alibi trip to Ormal. Damn, that stewardess was great-looking, I wish I hadn’t been so wrapped up on a mission.

Then I was alone. And the drugs kicked in, I knew nothing more.

Then I was without one of me. Just for an instant I felt regret. But I am many. The loss of a single body is irrelevant. That’s what I am, a New Immortal. That’s why I am. I continue even after the loss of one, or more. I live.

I was shivering when the glare of colour and sensation subsided into simple knowledge. Paula Myo was looking down at me, pulling her suit jacket back on. The flare of activity within her OCtattoo was subsiding.

‘Bitch!’ I couldn’t sense me. For the first time since I nested I was devoid of myself. One body with a single mind, completely alone.

‘Goodbye,’ said Paula Myo.

‘No. No!’ a Justice Directorate orderly had entered the room. He was carrying an infuser. Paula Myo nodded at him. ‘Carry on,’ she ordered.

‘Why have you done this to me?’ I cried. ‘This is inhuman!’

She turned in the door, her face blank as she stared at me. ‘You are the person who committed the crime. The whole person, now. This is your sentence. The sentence you tried to avoid. Justice has prevailed.’

The orderly pressed the infuser against my neck. I screamed, my mind crying out to the rest of me, to help me, to comfort me. There was no answer.

Nelson Sheldon was waiting in the entrance hall of the Justice Directorate as Paula came out of the lift. ‘How did it go?’ he asked.

‘Successfully. The true Dimitros Fiech is now serving his sentence.’

‘Shame about the rest of him.’

‘Not really.’

‘Oh?’

‘When suspension was first introduced, the Justice Directorate examined the idea of leaving convicts aware while their bodies slept. It was abandoned almost immediately. The experience was too much like sensory deprivation. The minds went insane very quickly under such circumstances.’

‘So how does that help us?’ Nigel asked curiously.

‘Dimitros Fiech is now unaware of his predicament. He’ll sleep soundly for the next two and a half millennia, and he’ll be offered extensive therapy when he gets out — assuming the Commonwealth is still around. Meanwhile on Merioneth…’

‘Ah. Svein Moalem’s nest knows part of him is in suspension. And as an Immortal…’

‘He’ll endure those two and a half thousand years aware of the Fiech body’s state. The punishment is shared. Or rather, it isn’t, because it’s all his. Just experienced in different ways.’

Nelson smiled. ‘We can live with that.’

‘Good, because I have no intention of returning to Merioneth.’

‘Thank you for going in the first place,’ Nelson said. ‘The Dynasty is most grateful. We don’t forget who are friends are.’

Paula grinned back shrewdly. ‘I’ll remember that.’

It was five days after Easter, and Paris was soaking up the heat from an unseasonably bright sun. Paula Myo, Deputy Director of the Intersolar Commonwealth’s Serious Crimes Directorate, slipped her shades on as soon as she emerged from the marbled archway of the Justice Courts. Her escort squad pushed past the unisphere reporters crammed on the broad stone stairs. The clamour of shouted questions merged into a single unintelligible burst of noise. Even if she’d wanted to comment on the verdict she would never have been heard. It always amazed her how stupid reporters were, as if any one of them could have gained an exclusive under this kind of circumstances.

Not that her opinion would’ve been welcomed by the large crowd of protestors shouting and jeering behind the cordon which the city gendarmes had thrown up across the big boulevard outside. They’d certainly picked up on the Easter theme. Glaring holographic placards demanded RESURRECT OSCAR NOW. FREE THE MARTYR. OSCAR DIED FOR US, SAVE HIM FOR OUR SINS.

Her deputy, Hoshe Finn, was standing beside the Directorate’s dark Citroën limousine which was waiting at the foot of the broad stairs. ‘Congratulations, Chief,’ he muttered as the malmetal door curtained open for her.

Paula took one last glance at the snarling faces of the protestors, all directing their venom at her. It wasn’t what she was used to. Disapproval and not a little bigotry because of what she was, certainly. As the one person from Huxley’s Haven, otherwise known as The Hive, to live in the Greater Commonwealth she had long since accepted her own notoriety. Like all of Huxley’s residents she was genetically profiled to excel at her job, which in her case was police work, a profession which normally brought a decent amount of approval for the conclusion of a successful case.

Not this time.

The long Citroën turned smoothly into the Champs Elysées, and headed for the Place de la Concorde.

‘You know, even I’m wondering if I did the right thing,’ Paula said quietly.

‘I doubted,’ Hoshe said, ‘until you brought the families into the office to prepare our case. You were right when you said time doesn’t diminish the crime. Their children still died, a real death, not just bodyloss.’

‘Yeah,’ Paula said. Doubt unsettled her. It wasn’t what she was supposed to feel, not with her psychoneural profiling. Everything should be clear-cut, with no room for messy little emotional distractions. Perhaps the geneticists who designed me didn’t know quite as much about DNA sequencing as they thought they did.

Ten minutes later they drove down into the modern underground garage that had been cut out below the ancient five-storey building which housed the Directorate’s Paris office. Secure gates unfurled behind them. She wasn’t really worried about anyone trying to physically confront her; although the number of displaced from the worlds lost during the Starflyer War was still alarming now, eleven months after the war had ended. The amount of homeless and destitute people roaming the streets was too high, despite the city authority’s sincere efforts to find them places in restart projects on the fresh worlds.

A lift took them up to the fifth floor and the open-plan office she commanded. Her team were all behind their desks, which was unusual enough. They shot her concerned looks, as if they were sharing a collective guilt.

Alic Hogan was rising to his feet. ‘Sorry, Chief,’ he said. ‘He didn’t have an appointment, but we couldn’t really say no…’ Alic trailed off with a subdued glance over at Paula’s own office.

The door was ajar, showing her someone sitting in front of her desk.