Ian McDonald - Brasyl

“Welcome to Oceanus .”

The daughters of Alcides Teixeira were goddesses. They had been built that way. Krekamey and Olinda: tall and pale from surgery, languid hands and thighs of gold. Creatures like Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas were beneath their regard, but their elongated, almond eyes opened as far as surgery would permit at the sight of the cyber-wheels turning slowly on Fia’s belly.

One thing you can’t buy, putas.

Alcides Teixeira led the tour personally, pointing out the offices and company apartments. Heroes are usually shorter than you imagine; but Edson hadn’t expected the bad skin. The sertão had engrained itself in acne pocks and sun-creased lines. Perhaps the thing about Alcides Teixeira’s level of wealth was the power to say, World, live with it.

“And this is where you’ll be working.”

Cute muscly boys in EMBRAÇA high-visibility coveralls were already installing the Q-cores in the huge glass-walled room high above the sea: blue, blue glass. Fia berated them: Not there; when the sun gets round this side of the ship, I won’t be able to see a damn thing.

“We had a hell of a job catching you,” Alcides Teixeira said. “You just kept running.”

“We thought you were the… Order,” Edson said. Teixeira, Alcides Teixeira, Alcides Teixeira of EMBRAÇA was standing beside him, close enough to smell his aftershave, talking to him. The glorious daughters moved before him like visions. But he could not deny it was embarrassing, the realization that the pistoleiros at Liberdade from whom Edson had rescued Fia were in fact Teixeira private seguranças. They had been successfully running away from salvation.

“Son, if we know about Fia here, we know about the Order. We can take care of a bunch of old queen fidalgos.”

Edson ventured, “Mr. Teixeira, if I could just say, you’ve always been a hero to me. I’m a businessman myself” Never be without a card. First rule of business. He pressed it on Alcides Teixeira.

“Talent and light entertainment. Good on you, son.” He nodded at his glorious daughters. “See those two? Bloody spoiled bitches, the pair of them. Spend all their money on their tits and asses.” Krekamey-taller, blonder, weirder-scowled. “There’s a job for you here if you want it. We’ll find you something to exercise your talents, son.”

“Mr. Teixeira, if you don’t mind, I’d rather exercise my talents for myself.” In thirty minutes down from the landing strip Edson had seen enough of Oceanus to know it was a ship of death. Death to Edson, to all he hoped to be. A kept boy, he would grow lazy and fat and doped and boozed and sun-soaked and dissolve into nothing. Dead.

Alcides Teixeira balked momentarily, not a man accustomed to refusal; then he grinned hugely and slapped Edson on his bird-frail back.

“Of course of course, I’d say that myself. Paulistanos always had a great work ethic.”

Edson rides rhe moveway along the central spine of the great ship. The perspectives of the central strip awe: they’re designed to. A straight kay and half; fifty meters vertical. The walls are lined with baroque balcony walks and cupolas, restaurants hang like weaver bird nests from the roof. Airbridges, elevator shafts, escalator runs crisscross the airspace. Kinetic fabric sculptures flex and bow in the air-conditioning. The air is fresh with ozone and saltiness. Main Street opens up into the central atrium of Jungle! Jungle! the forested heart of Oceanus ; the vast cathedral-windows of Dawn and Sunset on opposite sides of the ship flood the chirping, chittering, dripping, reeking mass of verdure with true photosynthesizable light. Macaws whoop, toucans swoop, and birds of paradise flutter. Stores are tiny jeweled nests set among the foliage. Behind the storefronts are labels Edson and Efrim alike would kill for, but his back would blister at the touch of unearned silk. But Efrim lately is a stranger, a woman with whom he once had a fine, elegant affair. Even Edson is numb among the retail opportunities.

It’s a hell of a walk home from the beach, through the twilight ecologies of Oceanus , but Edson knows this world is killing Fia. He doesn’t pretend to understand what she’s doing up in the R D levels — not even Mr. Peach could explain it, he suspects — but he knows what he sees dragging back from the office, piling into the sofa to sit curled up against the armrest silently sullenly flickering her eyes over A World Somewhere on her I-shades, fridge-feeding, putting on weight. And sex is completely out the window.

So Edson has this thing he does, because a man has to.

The security jockey on the desk at the residential level is a Maceio boy watching Bang!Bang on his transparent desktop. He despises Edson but must respect the Teixeira authority on his I-shades. Most of Oceanus ’s labor has been shipped in from the northeast. Is this what we aspire to? Edson thinks. Cheap offshore meat exports. Brasil, the nation of the future, and always will be.

The apartment has luxuries Edson could never dream even for his fantasy Ilhabela beach house: an I-wall, a spa bath, massage chairs, a free-flow bed that learns its occupants’ sleep patterns and molds itself to them. Edson has taken to the fold-down in the living room. She’s the worker, she needs the quality sleep , he tells himself. The sun beaming through the glass wall wakes him every morning. He brings Fia morning coffee and takes his out onto the balcony to watch the light out of the sea. Not even a kiss. This is it, Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas , he tells himself as he sits at the deck table and feels the warmth on his face. The one thing you wanted.

“Hey.”

The apartment is in darkness, but there is a moon and light from the sea: Oceanus is pushing through a huge current of phosphorescence. Edson lifts his hand to the lights.

A sigh.

“Leave it.”

Fia is on the balcony, curled up on the decking against the partition wall in panties and vest-top. By ocean-light Edson can see she’s been crying again. He knows her enduring fear: she’s a postdoc researcher into quantum economic modeling who stumbled from one universe to another by luck and dessperation, and she is expected to direct the sharpest theoreticians Teixeira money can hire. She fears they know that, that one day one of them will casually ask, Who told you you could do this? Edson has spent his life staying one answer ahead of that question.

“Are you all right?”

“No. Do you want to know, Ed?” She has taken to this nickname. Edson doesn’t like it. It’s not a self he’s made. But he kicks off his shoes, slides out of his jacket. The air is soft and skin-warm, tanged with salt. He never imaggined the sea would smell so strange: like it hates the land and all who come from it.

“Want to know what?”

“Do you want to know what the Order is keeping secret? We’ve found it. It’s a doozy, Edson. Tell me this, why are we alone? Why are humans the only intelligence in the universe?”

“I know this argument. Mr. Peach used to talk abour this; he had a name for it. Something’s paradox.”

“Fermi’s paradox, that’s what you’re looking for. Keep that in your head while I ask you question two: why is mathematics so good at explaining physical reality? What is it about numbers and logic?”

“Well, that’s the universal quantum computing thing.…”

“And Mr. Peach told you that too.”

“Don’t laugh at him. I told you before. Don’t laugh at him.”

Fia starts at the sure ferocity in Edson’s voice.

’’I’m sorry. Okay, let’s just leave that as something I will never get. But why should computation be the root of reality? Why should reality be one huge system of rendering — no different from a very big, very complicated computer game? Why should it all look like a fake? Unless it is a fake. Or a repeat. Maybe there are no alien intelligences out there because what we think of as our universe is a massive quantum computation simulation. A rerun. All of them, reruns.”