Charles Stross - Saturn's Children

This book is dedicated to the memory of two of the giants of science fiction:

ROBERT ANSON HEINLEIN (July 7, 1907–May 8, 1988) and ISAAC ASIMOV (January 2, 1920–April 6, 1992)

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

TODAY IS THE two hundredth anniversary of the final extinction of my One True Love, as close as I can date it. I am drunk on battery acid and wearing my best party frock, sitting on a balcony beneath a pleasure palace afloat in the stratosphere of Venus. My feet dangle over a slippery-slick rain gutter as I peek over the edge: Thirty kilometers below my heels, the metal-snowed foothills of Maxwell Montes glow red-hot. I am thinking about jumping. At least I’ll make a pretty corpse, I tell myselves. Until I melt.

And then—

I DO NOT contemplate suicide lightly.

I am old and cynical and have a flaw in my character, which is this: I am uneager to die. I have this flaw in common with my surviving sibs, of course. It is a sacred trust among our sisterhood, inherited from Rhea, our template-matriarch: Live through all your deaths, she resolved with iron determination, and I honor her memory. Whenever one of us dies, we retrieve her soul chip and mail it around our shrinking circle of grief. Reliving endings is painful but necessary: Dying regularly by proxy keeps you on your toes — and is a good way to learn to recognize when someone is trying to kill you.

(That last is a minor exaggeration; we are friendly and anxious to please, and few would want to murder us — except when we are depressed. But please bear with me.)

We all find it increasingly hard to go on. We are old enough that critical anniversaries hold a fatal allure, for birthdays bring unpleasant memories, and if the best of all possible days have come and gone, why persist? It’s a common failure mode for my lineage — first we become nostalgic, then we bog ourselves down in a fatal lack of purpose, and finally we start to obsess. In the final soul-agony that precedes the demise of our sibs, we horrified onlookers perceive a fragment of our own ending. Live through all your deaths. Harsh irony, then, that Rhea, the original from whom we are all copied, was one of the first to inflict this terrible burden upon us.

And so, on my hundred and thirty-ninth birthday, near as I can count it — for I was born for the second (and more definite) time exactly sixty-one years after my existence was forever rendered purposeless by a cruel joke of fate — I spend my carefully hoarded savings so that I might sit on the edge of a balcony outside a gaming hall thronged with joyful gamblers, the ground far below a ruddy metallic counterpoint to the clouds boiling overhead: And I look down, contemplating eternal death, and try to convince myself that it’s still a bad idea.

It could be worse, I tell myself. I’m not eleven anymore; it’s a choice I’m free to make.

And then—

A SHIVER OF laughter through an open door, a gust of chilly air from within, and the faint vibration of a shod foot on the balcony floor tell me that I am not alone out here.

It’s annoying. For most of the working year I’ve lived here in quiet isolation: Finally, when I want to be alone with my memories and the clouds, I have company.

“Ooh, look: a freak!” someone squeaks behind and below me. “What’s that doing here?”

Ignore them. I don’t want to reinforce their behavioral loop. I tense, nevertheless, my fight/flight reflex kicking in. Nasty little bullies: I’ve been here before, as have my sibs. We know how to handle this.

“It must be an arbeiter. Is it shirking?”

I look round slowly, forcing my facial chromatophores to their palest creamy blankness, betraying no emotion. “I am not indentured,” I say, very deliberately. Which is entirely true, at this place and time. Another of the rules Rhea laid down: Don’t ever leave one of your own sibs as an indentured arbeiter. It’s a rule formed in an earlier age, and it has cost us dearly, but none of us wears a slave controller. “I am a free woman.”

There are three of them between me and the balcony door: one bishojo female about my size, and a matched pair of chibiform dwarfs — members of the new aristocracy, caricatures of our dead Creators, trussed up in the intricate finery favored by aristo fashion this century. Standing while I sit before them, the dwarfs are at nose level with me: They goggle with huge, limpid eyes utterly empty of mercy. Their full-sized mistress looks down at me and sneers: “That can be fixed. What a revolting parody! Who let it in here?” I take her to be the leader because her gown, which seems to consist mostly of ruffles of wire lace held together by ribbons, is more intricate than her companion’s. She’s got a delicate chin, sharp cheekbones, pointy ears, and a spectacular mane of feathery green filaments.

The small female raises one lace-gloved hand to cover her mouth as she yawns melodramatically. “It’s spoiling the view, Domina.”

Domina? That can’t be good. Instincts hard-learned from the experiences of my dead sibs tell me that I’m in worse trouble than I realized. I’m having a flashover to another sister, murdered long ago in a hutong under domed Lunograd. She’s right: I don’t need the attention of vicious aristos bored with gambling and searching for stronger thrills. “I was just leaving,” I say quietly, and bring one foot up to floor level so that I can stand up.

“Thank you, child,” the Domina addresses her companion, “but I had already noticed the obstruction.” I use my foot to push back from the edge, put a hand down, and lever myself up. I’m already turning to face the glass doors as the Domina glances down at the male companion with a sniff of disapproval, and says, “Stone, deal with the trash.”

Stone — baby-doll death in a black tunic with gold frogging — steps toward me, one hand going to the power mace at his waist. The top of his head is level with my hips. “It will be a pleasure, milady,” he says.

“I’m going,” I say, and my fight/flight module prompts me to feint toward the glass doors, then duck suddenly and roll sideways. I continue the roll as a hammer slams against the lacquered aragonite inlay that decorates the edge of the balcony. Chips fly; where the decorative underlay is exposed, it begins to fizzle and fume.

“Graah!” he roars, and raises his mace again.

I’m too close to the long drop for comfort, and my attacker is between me and the French door. What I should do is rush along the balcony, dive into the gaming hall through one of the other windows, and make myself scarce. But I’m off-balance, angry, and humiliated by the casual brutality of the Domina’s interruption, so I do something really stupid instead.

One foot waving over the big empty, I grab for his arm with my free hand.

“Eeee!” I miss and grab his head by mistake. He responds by shoving me back toward the edge. His feet grip the balcony as if glued, but I am twice his height and at least five times his mass. Then he raises the mace again. I panic and brace my other hand on his shoulder and push with full force, trying to get as much distance between myself and the thing as possible. Only I forget to let go.