IN FIVE YEARS, AMETHI’S CLIMATE HAD UNDERGONE A PROFOUND DEGREE OF alteration. The changes wrought by HeatSmash had become self-sustaining and were now accelerating on a scale that allowed human senses to register them. Locals were calling it the Wakening. Instead of surprise and delight at seeing a single cloud, they now welcomed the sight of a small patch of sky through the sullen cloud mantle.
Now that the overall air temperature had risen several degrees above freezing, the Barclay’s Glacier meltdown exhaled water vapor into the atmosphere at a phenomenal rate. Giant cloud banks surged out from the thawing ice sheet, reaching almost up to the tropopause where they powered their way around the globe. In their wake, warmer arid air was sucked in, gusting over the ice where it helped transpiration still further, keeping the planet-sized convection cycle turning.
When the clouds rolled over the tundra they began to darken, condensing to fall as snow. By the time the flakes reached the ground they were miserable gray smears of sleet. Great swaths of slush mounted up over the entire planetary surface, taking an age to drain away in stubborn trickles that were often refrozen by fresh falls. On the continental shelves, muddy rivers slowly began to flow again, while across the dead ocean beds, the deep trenches and basins were gradually filling with water. The thin viscous sheets of dirty liquid that rolled sluggishly downslope across the sands carried along the crusting of salt that had lain there undisturbed since the glacier had formed. It was all dragged down into the deepening cores of the returning oceans, dissolving to produce a saturated solution every bit as dense and bitter as Earth’s Dead Sea.
Above it, meanwhile, the air was so clogged with hail and snow that flying had become hazardous. Spaceplanes were large enough to power their way up through the weather, but smaller aircraft remained sheltered in their hangars for the duration. Driving also was difficult, with trucks newly converted into snowplows running constantly up and down the main roads to keep them clear. Windshield wipers were hurried additions to every vehicle. Major sections of the Amethi ecology renewal project had been suspended until the atmospheric turbulence returned to more reasonable levels. The insects already scheduled for first release were as yet uncloned; silos holding the seed banks were sealed up. Only the slowlife organisms remained relatively unaffected, carrying on as normal under the snow until they were unlucky enough to be caught by a fast flush of water. Lacking even rudimentary animal survival instinct, they never had the sense to wriggle or crawl away from the new torrents raking across the land.
This particular phase of Amethi’s turbulent environmental modification was proceeding as expected, claimed the climatologists, it was just more vigorous than most of their AS predictions. Some quick revisions incorporating new data estimated the current turmoil wouldn’t last more than a few years. Specific dates were not offered.
Lawrence rather enjoyed the Wakening, secretly laughing at all the chaos it had brought to McArthur’s meticulously laid plans and the amount of disturbance it caused his father. This was nature as it existed on proper planets, playing havoc with human arrogance, exactly what he wanted to witness firsthand in star systems across the galaxy where alien planets produced still stranger meteorology. However, after the first nine months or so of Amethi’s whiteouts and oppressive obscured skies, even he grew bored with the new phenomena.
That boredom was just one of the contributory factors suggested to his parents for his continuing behavioral problems. By the time he reached sixteen his thoroughly exasperated father was already sending him on weekly trips to Dr. Melinda Johnson, a behavioral psychologist. Lawrence treated the sessions as a complete joke, either exaggerating grossly or simply answering every question with a sullen yes or no depending on how pissed off he felt at the time. It probably helped disguise just how alienated he was from the rest of Amethi’s society, which was why she never made any progress with him. Lawrence knew he was growing up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He should have been an American astronaut in the 1960s or a deepspace astrophysics officer in the last decades of the twenty-first century when starships first set out to explore the new worlds around Sol. Yet telling that to the professionally sympathetic Dr. Johnson would have been a huge admission of weakness on his part. No way was he giving in to her. She, and everything she stood for, the normality of Amethi, was the problem, not the solution. So the lies and moods just kept on swinging a little further each time, picking curiously at the envelope of acceptability as if it were an interesting scab. All the while he built a defensive shell of stubborn silence around himself, which grew progressively thicker each time his father raged and his mother showed her quiet disapproval. Nothing apart from i-media interested him, nothing apart from gaining more i-media time motivated him. He had few friends, his teachers virtually gave up, and sibling rivalry at home began to resemble a full-blown war zone. With his hate-the-world attitude and his rampaging hormones, he was the basic teenager from hell.
That was why his father had totally surprised him one morning at the breakfast table when he said: “I have to go to Ulphgarth tomorrow for a conference, fancy coming with me?”
Lawrence glanced round his siblings, waiting for them to answer, then realized everyone was staring at him, including his father. “What, me?”
“Yes, you, Lawrence.” Doug Newton’s lips twitched with his usual lofty amusement.
“Why?” Lawrence grunted suspiciously.
“Oh dear.” Doug Newton rubbed his fingertips against his temple. “Well, quite. Why indeed? To reward your exemplary behavior, perhaps? Or your grades? Or just for keeping your data access costs below the K-pound mark this month? Which do you think, Lawrence? Why should I be nice to my eldest son?”
“Why do you always do that? Why are you always so damned sarcastic? Why can’t you just ask me like a normal person?”
“As opposed to the way I put the question?”
Lawrence turned bright red as Janice and Ray started sniggering at his expense. He glared around at everyone, angry with himself for being caught out. But it was such an unusual thing for Dad to ask … “Well, what’s there, anyway?” He managed to sound as if nothing in the universe could ever interest him in Ulphgarth. Not that he’d actually heard of it before.
“A first-rate conference center, where we’re discussing the final stage bidding with contractors for the new Blea River bridge.”
“Oh yeah, thanks, like I’m really gonna want to be a part of that.”
“Which is what I shall be attending, while you can just stay in the five-star resort hotel next door. One of my aides has pulled out, leaving a room already paid for. You can sleep in as late as you like, or even for the whole five days if you want. You can have room service meals on a twenty-four-hour-a-day basis. There’s a fully equipped sports center and pool free to guests. The dome lighting is rigged for tropical climate if you want to lounge around getting a tan. Your room includes unlimited datapool access. There’s live music every night. And you don’t have to see me or even have a meal with me the entire time. So … do you want to give your mother a break for a few days before term starts?”
Lawrence looked across at his mother, who was smiling gamely. Her stress lines had become permanent since his last brother had been born. He knew she was taking prescription antidepressants, washed down with vodka, and hated her for being so weak. He hated himself even more for being so harsh on her. It was this whole fucking stupid world that was rotten. “I … Yeah. Great. Sounds cool. Thanks.”
“Thanks. Good Fate, wonders never cease on this planet, do they?”
Lawrence scowled again.
Three days later, he wasn’t actually enjoying himself, but he was relaxing. The hotel building was in a dome all by itself, a fifteen-story triangle of broad glass-fronted balconies right in the center where guests could look out over humid, verdant parkland. It seemed as if every bush and tree was sprouting some kind of brightly colored flower. Branches and leaves had been infused with a vitality lacking to ordinary plants—you could virtually watch the glossy shoots growing. The tough Bermuda grass was mown every night by the gardening robots, but it was still like walking over a layer of thick sponge in the morning.
Lawrence lay back on the sun lounger, shifting his shoulders around on the cushioning until he was completely comfortable. The big lights overhead were warmer than the ones in the tropical dome of his family’s estate, sending out rays that soaked right through him. He’d found a spot on the broad curve of paving that surrounded the big circular swimming pool, away from everyone else, but close enough to the open bar to signal to the waiter. Amazingly, nobody bugged him about how old he was when he ordered drinks! He’d started out on beers yesterday before moving on to the list of cocktails. Some of them were pretty disgusting despite the intriguing colors and foliage, and he’d almost gone back to beer. Then he found margaritas.
The girl was in the pool again. Lawrence moved up the backrest slightly so he could see the whole area without having to turn his head. He was wearing mirrorshades with a built-in audio interface to his bracelet pearl, while optronic membranes covered his eyes underneath. So he could either play some i’s or sneak a look at the people in the pool or even doze off, and nobody would be able to tell. Yesterday he’d been playing Halo Stars and guzzling down his beers before he noticed her.
She was, he guessed, about sixteen, blond, her thick straight hair cut off level with her shoulders, and tall with legs that were fabulously athletic. In fact her whole body was lithe and trim. He could see that easily enough thanks to the small black bikini she’d worn.
Lawrence had spent the rest of the afternoon watching her and sipping his margarita. There was a whole gang of kids messing about around the pool, from his own age down to about seven or eight. Conference kids, he guessed, left to themselves while the adults discussed the intricacies of bridge building. He didn’t join in. For one thing he wasn’t so hot on socializing. Never knew what to say to a complete stranger. And then there was his body. He wasn’t self-conscious, of course. But out here in the open wearing just his swim trunks he was keenly aware how much heavier he was than the other seventeen-year-old boys. Despite his height and general size, which the school’s coaches were convinced would be advantageous for football and field events, he had no interest in joining any of the teams and wasting valuable i-hours by training. That lack of exercise meant that unlike the rest of his year his puppy fat hadn’t burned off. It was unusual in a world where most children had been given some degree of germline v-writing to improve their general physiology, as he could see around him. It wasn’t just the girl who glowed with health. Even so, she stood out: the other girls having fun in the pool were attractive, but she was stunning. He couldn’t say why he found her so irresistible, exactly. She had a narrow face, with wide lips and prominent cheekbones, features that were attractive, but not outstanding. And her gray eyes were never still, always taking in the world around her with wonder. In the end he decided that was her magic—she was so full of life. Others obviously agreed with him; she had a harem of boys longer than a comet’s tail following her around.
He watched silently as she splashed about in the pool. Then the group were diving and jumping in. Chasing about around the side, throwing each other in. Lobbing a ball about. Rushing over to their sun lounger to grab a quick gulp of Coke before jumping back in. All the while she was laughing and shouting.
She levered herself up out of the water directly ahead of Lawrence, lean muscles taut, water glistening over her skin. His breath grew hot as he pictured that incredible body shivering in delight while he ran his hands over her, taking as much time as he wanted. Sweet Fate, he wanted to fuck her badly. Really badly. His cock was growing hard inside his trunks. He had to hurriedly activate the bracelet pearl, optronic membranes wiping out the sight of her behind a deluge of astronomical data.
Running away would have looked odd. And he’d seen Naomi Karamann using one of the sun loungers on the other side of the bar. She was—allegedly—his father’s executive assistant. Lawrence didn’t have to be told she was the same as all the assistant nannies who came and went on a near-monthly basis. A beautiful girl in her early twenties, with dark ebony skin and a very full figure. She walked about the side of the pool in a scarlet swimsuit designed for provocation rather than swimming. At no time had she shown any interest in the conference. The night before, Lawrence had seen his father and her join a big group of businessmen for dinner in the hotel’s restaurant. She’d been dressed in some silver backless gown, her hair glittering with embedded gold.
No doubt if she saw him acting strangely his father would hear about it. So he stayed immersed in Halo Stars, gliding over the astonishingly detailed cityscapes of alien cultures. The i-media game was the new market leader. It was an import from Earth, where teams of designers and AS extrapolators must surely have spent years generating the concept. It featured a large band of inhabited stars wrapped around the center of the galaxy, where hundreds of alien races coexisted in a peaceful commonwealth. The first-person player was the pilot of a trade and exploration ship, the Ebris. Whatever settled world the ship landed on, there was some problem or requirement that could be solved by tracking down a resource that another world in the Halo possessed, be it technological, artistic, raw material, medical, or even spiritual. Lawrence was in the middle of a sequence where he was making his way toward a domain that had bred the methane-grazing botanical organisms that a species of sentient octopeds needed to complete their colonization of a new planet. But he could only get the botanicals by trading them for a specific mineral that formed on low-gravity planets with an argon atmosphere. To do that he first had to put together a survey and mining team. Once that was done he would fly scouting missions through a dozen likely star systems, hunting for the right class of planet. And this particular segment had already opened up several further opportunities for his ship.
The sheer wealth of detail, both economic and physical, was astounding. The stars, planets, stellar phenomena and species of the Halo were so real. They’d even got the quasar locations right. The whole thing interlocked perfectly; in the three months since he uploaded the base chapter he hadn’t found a single continuity flaw. Flying his ship around the arc of the magnificent glow thrown off by the galactic heart he felt as if he were on a genuine training mission at McArthur’s starship officer academy—as it should have been if the company wasn’t so stupid. Small wonder the import company with the license was making a fortune.
After scanning three star systems with swarms of microsatellites he finally found one that had the kind of planet he was looking for. He landed the Ebris at the end of a valley cloaked in a turquoise grass, where a binary of yellow and green dwarf stars were setting in the saddle of the hills. Tomorrow he would supervise the mineral extraction. He noted several potentially dangerous-looking animals slinking through the long grass, loaded their profile into the ship’s computer, then saved and exited.
On the opposite side of the pool, the girl was lying on her sun lounger, big gold-orange glasses over her eyes. Several of the younger kids were clustered around, laughing and giggling together. Three of the more persistent boys were sitting on the edge of the sun lounger next to hers, squashed together uncomfortably. Each was doing his best to be charming, witty, knowledgeable and casual. She occasionally laughed at their jokes and joshing. From where Lawrence was it looked as if she was just being polite rather than genuinely amused.
His margarita ice had melted in the bottom of the glass, producing an undrinkable slush. Naomi Karamann had disappeared. Several adults were in the pool and more were walking across the lawn from the hotel. The day’s conference had obviously finished. Lawrence picked up his towel and went back inside to order another room-service meal.
That was yesterday. Today, he’d come down early, by his standards, before ten o’clock. His reward was the well-positioned sun lounger and the girl’s prompt appearance. This morning she was in a white bikini, but she was just as lively as she had been before. He found himself smiling at the way she enjoyed herself so effortlessly. Two of the smaller girls arrived with her, chattering excitedly, one no more than eleven while the younger was about six or seven. He realized the three of them were all sisters, sharing roughly the same facial features. That explained why the older boys of the wishful harem had been so tolerant of them yesterday.
It wasn’t long before the whole group was gathered together again. Laughs and shrieks carried across the humid landscape as they began pushing each other into the water. Lawrence tensed when one of the older boys, around his own age, shoved the girl in with too much force. But she broke the surface smiling. He let out a sigh, wishing there were some way he could go over and introduce himself and ask if he could join in. It would seem weird now, though, after he’d spent a day slobbing out by himself, mark him out as a creepy freak. What could he say, anyway? Does anyone want to link in to Halo Stars? He didn’t think this physically active bunch would have much interest in i’s. And she certainly wouldn’t.
He told the bracelet pearl to return to the game, and the shadowed valley materialized around him. A small convoy of hoverjeeps roared out of the Ebris’s lower cargo hold, with him navigating in the lead vehicle. A satellite survey map was projected onto the windshield, showing him the direction he needed to take. And some distant animals were growling aggressively, hidden by the blue grass.
“Hi there, can you help us out?”
Lawrence told the bracelet pearl to suspend the game. His membranes cleared and he was looking up at the girl. She was standing at the side of his sun lounger, dripping wet and glorious. He pulled his mirrorshades off in a hurried awkward motion, twisting the earpieces out.
“Sorry, what?” Was he staring too hard? The dome lights were directly above her, forcing him to squint. Damn it, I must look a total idiot.
“Can you help us?” She held out a ball. “We need one more to make the teams even.”
“Teams?” He could have smacked himself one. He sounded so dumb.
“Yes. We’re playing water polo. We’re one short.”
She had a lovely accent, her voice all blurring and soft. Where had that come from? “Er, yeah, sure.” He pushed himself up, standing beside her, holding in his belly. She was only a couple of centimeters shorter than him. For some reason that made no sense, he liked that. But then he liked everything about her. She was utter perfection. “I haven’t played for a while. I’m probably a bit rusty.” He’d never played before.
“That’s okay. Myself, I’ve never had a game in my life. And I don’t think too many of us know the rules anyway.”
“Oh, great. Probably best if I’m goalie. Do less damage there.” Ask her what her name is, you asshole. Ask!
She smiled brightly. “I fancied that gig myself.”
“Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
She lobbed the ball at him, which he just managed to catch. “Were we interrupting anything?” She gestured at the mirrorshades and bracelet.
“No. Not at all. I was just going through an i-media, that’s all. It’s stored.”
“Fine.” She turned and started back to the pool. “Got him!” she yelled at her friends. The harem of boys greeted the news with unwelcoming smiles.
“Uh, I’m, er, Lawrence.”
“Roselyn.” She dived cleanly into the water.
It was almost the last he saw of her for the next twenty minutes. Water polo was every bit as bad as he imagined it would be. Twenty minutes in water five centimeters too deep to stand comfortably, while people power-slammed the heavy, wet ball at him. Chlorine spray got in his eyes. He swallowed liters. His breath was hauled down painfully, feeling wretchedly exhausted.
The game finally dissolved into some kind of ending, which was mainly an argument about the score. Twenty, thirty, probably. A lot of shots had got past him. He wheezed up out of the chrome steps with a shaky hold on the rails.
“Are you all right?”
Roselyn was in front of him, squeezing water from her hair.
“Yeah, I’m good.” He was too puffed to pull his belly in anymore.
“I fancy a drink.” Her expression was mildly expectant.
Lawrence couldn’t believe this was happening. “Me too,” he blurted.
He received a barrage of evil-eye stares from the harem as he walked with her over to the open-air bar. Several of the boys called out at her to join in with their latest game. She just waved and told them maybe later.
“I need a break,” she told Lawrence. “Jeez, where do they get their energy from?”
“I know what you mean. I’m here to chill out.”
She sat on the stool right at the end of the wooden bar, which meant nobody but Lawrence could sit next to her. He held back on a smirk as he sat down.
“You here by yourself?”she asked.
“No, with my father. He’s at the conference.”
“Right.” She asked the waiter for a Coke.
“Me too,” Lawrence said. It would look like he was showing off if he went for a margarita. “Where’s your accent from? I haven’t heard anything quite like it before. It’s very nice,” he added hurriedly. It didn’t look like she’d taken offense, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Dublin.”
“Where’s that?”
She burst out laughing.
He grinned bravely, knowing he’d been stupid again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Dublin’s in Ireland, on Earth. We arrived three days ago.”
“Earth?” he said, amazed. “You came from Earth? What was the flight like? What did you see?” It seemed wholly unreasonable that girls as young as her two sisters had experienced a real live starflight while here he was, forever trapped in protective domes under an opaque sky.
Her small nose wrinkled up. “I didn’t see anything. There’s no window. And I had motion sickness the whole way. Not as bad as Mary, mind. Urrrgh, we must have used up the whole ship’s supply of paper towels.”
“Mary?”
“My sister.”She pointed at the elder of the two sporting in the water. “The other one’s Jenny, there.”
“They look like they’re okay kids.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. I’ve got five younger brothers and sisters myself. I know what it’s like.”
“Five. Wow. Your parents must be pretty devout Catholics.” “Ah. I know that’s a religion: right? There’s not much religion on Amethi. People here all tend to know the universe is natural.”
“Do you now?”
“Yeah.” He got the feeling he was being teased, somehow. “So why did you come here?”
“My father died.”
“Oh shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, well …”
“That’s all right. It was over a year ago now. It was a car accident. Very quick. All the people at the hospital said he wouldn’t have felt anything. I’ve got used to it. Still miss him tons, though. But we were stakeholders in McArthur, and there was a lot of insurance, so Mother decided to cash it all in and make the proverbial new start. I’m glad she did. Leaving Dublin took me away from the bad memories, and Earth’s pretty crappy these days. This place is just fabulous.”
“Er, yeah.”
“What’s the matter with it?”
“Nothing. You’re right. It’s just that nowhere you live can be exotic. That’s only ever somewhere else.”
Her smile lingered for a long time. “Very profound, there, Lawrence. I’d never thought of that before. So do you think I’m going to be bored with Amethi in a while?”
“Actually, no. It’s starting to liven up a bit right now.”
“Come on, let’s go and see it.” She picked up her glass of Coke and stood.
“What?”
“Amethi. Let’s go see it.”
“Sure. Okay.” He smiled at how impulsive she was.
Roselyn set off across the lawns with Lawrence hurrying to keep up. She kept asking what various plants and bushes were. Some of them were similar to those planted within the family’s estate, but for the life of him he couldn’t give them a name. She didn’t seem to mind.
They arrived at the rim of the dome, where the nullthene was anchored in a band of concrete. Thick moss had swamped the crumbling gray surface, though it couldn’t get a grip on the slippery nullthene itself. Roselyn pressed herself up against it.
“How can you not find that incredible?” she asked. “I’ve only got this bikini on, and I’m a millimeter away from an arctic blizzard.”
“That’s technology, not geography. But you’re right. It’s pretty spectacular.” He was looking at her back, the way she’d arched herself slightly to rest her hands against the thin nullthene. Her skin was smooth and mildly tanned; intriguing bands of muscles slid around just below the surface. “Of course, the technology isn’t perfect. And in some cases it’s too good.”
“What do you mean?”
“McArthur worked out the general effects HeatSmash would have on the environment, but they didn’t always follow it through to its conclusion. When the snow started falling, it landed on the domes just like every solid surface. Trouble is, nullthene is a perfect insulator. The cold doesn’t get in, but neither does the heat leak out. So the snow stuck, especially up on the top of the domes where it’s flatter. When the original designers came up with the particular domes we employ, they made allowances for the next stage of HeatSmash, when it will rain. The nullthene can take the weight of water running down the outside, but nobody thought about the piles of snow that would accumulate up there. There were splits and mini-avalanches in every city. It was damned dangerous. A ton of snow can kill you just as easy as a ton of steel if it falls on you. Over a dozen people were killed, and plenty of buildings were damaged. We had to shore up the support grids in every dome. All the civil engineering robots on the planet were switched over to reinforcement work. It took months, cost a fortune, and everyone’s still arguing about who’s to blame and what sort of compensation there should be.”
She gave him a quick, incredulous glance, then gazed out at the flurry of tiny hailstones drumming against the nullthene. The tundra outside was completely white, even the rugged tufts of grass were no more than spiky white mounds. “It’s still impressive to me. All this is the result of human ingenuity.”
“Amethi wasn’t like this when I was younger. All I ever saw was a frozen desert.”
“But to change a whole planet. And not through ecocide.”
“Ecocide?” He was beginning to think he should start paying a bit more attention in school. She knew so much more about the universe than he did.
“On most planets that people have colonized there’s an existing biosphere,” she said. “And none of them are compatible with terrestrial biology. So we come along and kill it off with gamma blasts or toxins and replace it with our own plants and animals. Ecocide, the worst kind of imperialism there is.”
“It’s only the area around settlements that’s cleared, not entire planets.”
“Spoken like a true galactic overlord. Each habitable planet had its own indigenous species. They’re unique and evolved to live in a reasonable balance. Then we come along and introduce competitive species, our own. At first terrestrial biology zones are enclaves wrapped around our settlements, but then the population rises and the zones expand until they’re in full-blown conflict with the natives. And we always back ours up with technology, giving ourselves the edge. Eventually, every planet we’ve ever landed on will have its indigenous life swamped by ours, and become a poor copy of Earth. That’s what some projections say, anyway.”
“That’s all a long way off.”
“Yes. But we’ve set it in motion.” She gave the icy landscape a sad smile. “At least we’re not guilty of it here. Do you fancy some lunch?”
Lawrence would have liked to be able to think back to the last time he’d been alone with a beautiful girl, strolling through a lush parkland setting. It had never happened, of course. There’d been no girlfriends, just blue-i’s, and fantasies over girls at school. Now here it was, the real thing, and it was so easy he kept wondering if he’d fallen through a wormhole into some alternative universe. Roselyn was gorgeous, she seemed to like him, or at least accept him, and she was easy to talk to. Chatter, actually, which he’d never done with anyone, let alone a girl. But when they got back to the pool they sat together in the restaurant—at a small table with only the two seats—and carried on talking. Lawrence ordered a cheeseburger with extra bacon and a large portion of fries; Roselyn asked for a tuna salad.
She was, she explained, only staying at the hotel for a few days. “It’s a sort of treat for us, Mother said; we’re here to recover from the starflight just until our apartment is ready. Then we move straight into Templeton and start school. What a bore.”
“I live in Templeton,” Lawrence blurted.
“Great, maybe we can meet up some time. I’ll have to get settled in first, though. I’m going to Hilary Eyre High; it’s supposed to be very good.”
He swallowed some of the burger before he’d even chewed, clogging his throat. “My school.”
“Pardon?”
“I go there!”
His yell drew another round of glowers from those members of the harem who had wandered in for lunch, hoping Roselyn would be sitting at one of the large tables.
She smiled delightedly. “That’s fabulous, Lawrence. You’ll be able to show me around and introduce me to everyone. There’s nothing so horrible as starting somewhere new when you don’t know a single person, don’t you think?”
“Uh, yeah, I’d hate it.”
“Thanks, Lawrence, that’s really sweet of you.”
“No problem.” He was desperately trying to think who the hell he could introduce her to. Alan Cramley might play along, and one or two others. Worry about it when the time comes, he told himself. All that matters is managing to stay with her right now. Don’t blow it. Just don’t say anything dumb or pathetic. Please!
After lunch they went back to the poolside. Roselyn put on a white blouse and settled back on her sun lounger. Lawrence took the one beside her, bringing his bracelet and towel over. It turned out she’d never heard of Halo Stars. He found that puzzling; it must surely be one of Earth’s major i-media games. But he spent a while explaining and showing her the game before some instinct told him to shut the hell up and move on to another topic.
When she asked him what he was doing that evening he said: “Dunno. Nothing yet.”
“I’m going to listen to the band in the hotel bar. They’re very good. I heard them last night, too. I didn’t think I saw you there.”
“No. I was … out. But, er, I’d like to go with you. If you’re free tonight.”
She appeared satisfied with that. He’d noticed slight dimples appear when she was pleased with something. It wasn’t a smile, more like demure approval. “Date then.”
Lawrence smiled wide, covering his urge to howl out in victory. A date! But … had he asked for a date and been accepted? Or even more unlikely, was she the one wanting a date with him? It didn’t matter. He had a date!
“I just love dancing,” Roselyn said contentedly.
Lawrence nearly groaned out loud.
How could it be so easy to get a date with the loveliest girl on Amethi for the one thing he was completely useless at? He spent ninety minutes getting ready in his room. That was seven minutes in the shower using up most of the hotel’s stupid poxy-sized complimentary soaps and deodorants. Three minutes getting dressed in his pale green trousers and gray-blue shirt, with a black-and-gold waistcoat; just about the smartest set of clothes he owned. Mother had insisted he bring them in case his father wanted him to go to dinner—thanks, Mum! And eighty minutes with his optronic membranes presenting him with a phantom dance instructor; he had to access the hotel’s i-tutorial class for that, because he certainly didn’t have anything like it in his own memory chips. Thankfully he did at least know a few of the basics; his family had two or three formal parties each year when he was expected to partner obnoxious great-aunts and revolting ten-year-old nieces on the floor. It was just a question of brushing up.
Only when he checked himself in the mirror when he was on the way out did he realize he didn’t know what sort of band it was, nor the type of music they played.
It was Lucy O’Keef, Roselyn’s mother, who answered the door when he knocked. She was younger than his own mother and possessed a lot more energy. Lawrence was reminded of an aunt on his father’s side of the family, one of those independent women who spent a couple of months each year doing consultancy or software design work, and the rest of the time partying and playing tennis. Clever, active, healthy, pragmatic and good fun. He could also see where Roselyn inherited her beauty from: they shared the same small nose and pronounced cheeks.
“So you’re Lawrence.” Her voice was husky with amusement.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come in. She’s almost ready.”
The O’Keefs had a suite with three bedrooms. This meant the younger sisters were in the lounge, giggling. He’d met them that afternoon, and the three of them had spent a short, sparky time establishing boundaries. True, like all younger children, they were irritating, but they were too wrapped up in the wonder of a new world to be completely odious. He took their teasing in good humor, reminding himself that Roselyn would have to endure his own siblings one day. That is … he hoped she would.
When she came out of her bedroom she was wearing a simple navy-blue dress with a skirt less than halfway down to her knees. It made her even more alluring than her bikinis.
“Have fun,” Lucy said.
The bar was of a type indigenous to five-star hotels the universe over. Straight ahead of the door was a small semicircular marble counter with dozens of liquor bottles displayed on mirrored shelves. Deep settees and plush chairs were arranged around small tables. A high ceiling was cloaked by low lighting. And inevitably, a grand piano stood on a central podium where a tuxedoed crooner would sit and entertain elderly guests for the evening with tunes never less than a century old.
Tonight a less respectable culture had taken over. The band up on the podium was all electric, playing power ballads. Bottles of beer were cooling in tubs of ice on the bar, and a buffet had been laid out along one wall. Half the floor was given over to dancing, where holoprojection rigs sent iridescent seaswell waves crashing across the energetic boppers in showers of dazzling kaleidoscopic spray.
Lawrence recoiled slightly as the elevator doors opened on the lobby. He wasn’t used to quite so many people packed together. There were a number of the teenagers from the water polo game in there, throwing themselves about enthusiastically. Roselyn grinned wolfishly at the sight and grabbed his hand, pulling him through the doors.
In the end it didn’t matter that he didn’t know how to dance like the others. There were too many hot bodies pressing in against him to allow any vigorous moves. He just shuffled about, watching Roselyn. She danced a dream, swaying in lithe slow motion, her arms flexing in time to the rhythm.
They grabbed food from the buffet and talked by shouting over the music. She drank her beer straight from the bottle. They danced some more. Drank some more.
With blood pounding, his skin sticky with sweat and alcohol humming sweetly in his head, Lawrence folded his arms around her in the middle of all the swaying people. She flowed up against him, resting her head on his shoulder for a slow number. Golden light broke over her, shimmering into deep violet. They smiled in lazy unison. Lawrence tilted his head forward, and they were kissing.
The band called it a day at two o’clock in the morning. Lawrence and Roselyn were among the five couples left standing.
“That was lovely,” she murmured. “Thanks, Lawrence.”
When the elevator doors closed, they kissed some more. There was an urgency about it this time. Lawrence pushed his tongue deep into her mouth. Then the elevator door opened. They kept on making out all along the corridor. He slid his hands all over her back before finally clutching at her buttocks. Somehow, he didn’t have the courage to grasp her breasts or slide his fingers up inside her skirt.
“I can’t,” she said breathlessly in his ear. Her tongue licked at him, making him quake. “Mother will wonder where I’ve been.” The door to her suite opened.
“Tomorrow?” he gasped.
“Yes. See you at the pool. Nine o’clock.”
His head was spinning so hard it was a miracle he even made it back to the elevator, never mind his own room.
I can’t. That’s what she said.
Lawrence dropped on his bed, still fully clothed, as the room wobbled about dangerously. She was talking about sex. With me. We were kissing all night. When he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply he could still feel where she’d rested against him. The skin she’d touched seemed to glow hotly.
But what had she meant when she said yes? All he’d asked was: tomorrow? Nothing else, it had been completely open. And she’d said Yes. Yes.
The sleep that should have arrived instantaneously thanks to all that beer he’d guzzled eluded him for hours.
Lawrence was sitting on a sun lounger by the pool by twenty to eight. He was the first guest to get there. Several gardening robots scuttled out of his way as he walked across the lawn. A faint mist from the irrigation system hovered over the grass, making the blades glisten under the coral light. Visually, it was an inspiring start to the day.
Roselyn arrived at ten to nine wearing a loose midnight-black toweling robe and carrying a shoulder bag. They grinned at each other; Lawrence tried not to make it too uncertain and sheepish.
“You’re early,” she said.
“Didn’t want to miss any of the day.”
“Are you all right? You look tired.”
“I’m fine. Didn’t sleep much. My feet ached after all that dancing.”
“Poor thing.” She kissed the top of his head and plonked herself down on the sun lounger opposite. “Have you had breakfast?”
“Not really.” He’d rushed out as soon as the alarm woke him. Hadn’t even cleaned his teeth—probably a tactical error if he hoped to kiss her again.
“I know just what you need.” She went over to the bar, which was still closed up, and started talking into the phone handset. A few minutes later two waiters arrived carrying trays.
They sat up at the bar, peering under the silver lids covering a profusion of plates and dishes. Roselyn made him swallow a couple of pills first: headache and stomach settler. He was only allowed to sip his iced orange juice for a few minutes until they took effect.
She’d ordered popped rice, yogurt with fruit slices, scrambled egg with hash browns, sausages, bacon, black pudding, button mushrooms and tomato, then finishing up with crepes in honey. There was toast and blood-orange marmalade if he wanted it, too. And a pot of Assam tea.
“This is good,” he said loyally. Normally he got up at about half past ten and breakfasted on hot chocolate and chocolate cookies. Actually, although the yogurt and fruit was a bit crummy, the rest of it was pretty tasty.
Roselyn spread some of the marmalade on her toast. Apart from the yogurt and fruit it was all she had. “Most important meal of the day.”
His mother always said that, but coming from Roselyn he could understand and appreciate the meaning. “Any plans for today?”
“Just going to hang,” she said lightly.
“Me too.”
She rested her elbow on the bar and put her chin in her palm to give him a quizzical look. “You’re funny, Lawrence. I’ve never met a boy quite like you before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Half the time you act like you’re terrified of me.”
“I’m not!” he protested indignantly.
“Good to know. You’ve got lovely eyes, halfway between gray and green.”
“Oh. Um, thanks.”
She broke off a corner of toast and popped it in her mouth. “Which is your cue to give me a compliment. Any part of me you like?”
A strength of will that he never knew he had stopped him from looking directly at her chest. Instead he gazed right back into her shining gray eyes. “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” he said softly, and blushed.
For a moment she held still; then a wide smile spread across her lips. “That sounded like a pretty good beginning to me. For someone who comes over all reticent, you’ve got the moves, Lawrence.”
“That wasn’t a move. That’s what I really think.”
Her hand touched his knee, squeezing gently. “You’re really sweet. I didn’t understand that. I thought you were just being Mr. Chill, sitting back while the rest of us were charging around the pool like crazed kangaroos. Like some big wolf eyeing up the flock to decide which one to eat.”
“Sorry, but you’re a really terrible judge of character. I was sitting there because I didn’t know what to say to anyone. Stupid really.”
“No. Not stupid. There’s never anything wrong in being yourself. I think I was hoping you weren’t a phony like those lads who’ve been trying to chat me up these last few days.”
He grinned. “It’s like you’re a boy magnet. I was watching, you know, when I was sitting being Mr. Chill; their tongues were rubbing against the floor when they trailed after you.”
“You should have heard some of the lines. ‘I’d love to show you around.’ ‘Dublin sounds just like my dome, you must visit.’ As if some polythene greenhouse could possibly be like a thousand-year-old city. Jeez! I came off a starship, not the ark. It’s like they’re all country cousins from Einstein County.”
“Right,” he said cautiously.
“Einstein County.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Where everyone’s a relative, to be sure.”
Lawrence burst out laughing. “God, you are just so amazing.”
She pulled a modest face and did some make-work tidying of their trays. All the while they just smiled at each other. He’d never been so perfectly comfortable with anybody before.
“Did you have a boyfriend back in Dublin?”
“Not really. I was quite keen on one. We went out a couple of times. Nothing happened. Well … nothing too serious, anyhow. Thank Mary. We both knew I was leaving, see. I figured out in the end he thought that meant whatever he wanted would be for free. I wouldn’t be there afterward, so he wouldn’t have to go through all that emotional crap to dump me for the next girl. Can you believe it? What an asshole.”
“He’s bonkers. If I’d been him, I would have found a way to follow you here. Stowed away or something.”
“Dear Mary, what have I gone and found?” She stroked his cheek, almost as though she was testing to see if he was real. “So what about you, Lawrence, have you got a girlfriend? You can be truthful with me, now. I won’t mind.”
“Nothing for you to mind. I don’t have anybody.”
“Now I know I’m on an alien planet. Let me tell you, in Dublin you’d have been triple-dating at least.”
“Any chance the two of us can go back there together?”
“There now, just when I think you’re smart you go and say something like that. Dublin’s the same as the rest of Earth; it’s old and tired. And we’re both here now. On a planet that’s got a future without any of the problems others have. Are you still so sure there’s not a big fella up there rolling the dice for us? Seems to me I couldn’t be this lucky naturally.”
“I’m the lucky one.” He leaned forward quite deliberately and kissed her. Her hands went around his head, mussing up his hair, holding him closer as they grew more passionate.
People were talking noisily as they walked over from the hotel to the pool. Lawrence and Roselyn ended the kiss and stared at each other. He didn’t feel a trace of embarrassment. Quite the opposite, he felt certainty without arrogance. Both of them knew what they’d started, and knew that the other knew. It was almost relaxing.
“Won’t be long before my sisters get here,” she muttered.
“Oh, great.”
They both laughed, and made their way back to the sun loungers. The newcomers were mostly the younger kids. None of them paid much attention to Lawrence and Roselyn.
“We’ll have to wait half an hour for our food to go down before we swim,” she told him.
“Right.” He watched eagerly as she slipped out of her robe. Today it was a scarlet bikini, and he stared without shame. She blew him a mock-coquettish kiss and settled back on the sun lounger.
Her sisters arrived soon after. Lawrence greeted them with a cheery hello. The four of them chattered away, with the young girls giggling every time the band and dancing of last night was mentioned.
When they all jumped and dived into the pool later on, he endured the girls’ attempts to push him under and bounce the big beach ball off his head, retaliating by diving and grabbing their ankles underwater. They laughed and shrieked happily.
He was quite surprised when Roselyn eventually said: “That’s it for me.” He threw the beach ball as far as he could, laughing as Mary and Jenny raced off in pursuit.
Roselyn was squeezing her hair dry when he got back to the sun lounger. He held out a hand, which she took hold of. “I need a fresh towel,” he said. There was a moment of horrendous vertigo while she gave him a level gaze. Then she nodded. “All right,” she murmured. “It had better be your room, though.”
He regressed to his original self for a while. All he could do on the walk back to the hotel was give her sheepish, nervous looks. She was equally timid, almost as if she were puzzled by who she was with and where they were going. In the elevator, they kissed again, but it was awkward this time. When he closed the door of his room, anxiety was making his fingers tremble.
Roselyn gestured at the broad balcony with its glass wall. “Can you shut the curtains? I know it’s silly, but …”
“No.” He almost ran across the room to pull the heavy fabric along the rail. When he finished the room was suffused with a warm golden glimmer, and Roselyn’s superb body was cloaked in alluring shadow. She was looking at the big double bed, a slightly forlorn expression on her face. That wasn’t what he wanted at all. He wanted her to be smiling and begging him to hurry.
“Look,” he said in despair, “we can really just collect some towels if you want.”
She turned from the bed and held out her arms for him. “No,” she said when they were touching. “I don’t want towels.” She kissed him again, and this time the old heat was back. “And I know exactly what you want.”
“You.”
She slipped free and took a step away. Her hands reached behind her back, flicking the bikini top’s clasp. The scrap of cloth fell from her, exposing wonderfully pert breasts.
“You’re beautiful, Roselyn,” he said, so quietly it was as though he was speaking to himself. Cursing his clumsiness, he closed his fingers around her nipples, tweaking the dark erect buds of flesh. He heard her inhale, a hiss of pain. She frowned in protest.
“Sorry. Sorry.” He eased his grip slightly, but never let go. He couldn’t do that; he’d never believed she would be so firm, so smooth, warm.
She took his hands gently and slid them up to her shoulders so she could kneel before him. Lawrence whimpered as she pulled his trunks down. She looked at his rock-hard erection with a blank curiousness, then tilted her head back to smile up at him. When she stood up he pulled hurriedly at her bikini bottom, tugging it down her legs. One hand kneaded her breast while the other ran down her belly, feeling the soft pubic hair, the wetness and the heat.
He half-pushed, half-carried her onto the bed. Their hands clutched at each other, mouths open, licking, sucking, devouring and tasting flesh. Breathing came hard and harsh. The sensations she left across his skin were driving him crazy.
Lawrence knew from all the i-blue shows he’d accessed how you were supposed to go slow, to caress and stroke a woman, to arouse her, to consider her feelings. But in the heat and semidarkness he could barely remember the facts he’d been shown. In the here and now he’d got the most beautiful and randiest girl in the universe panting and twisting underneath him. Her delectable legs were flung wide. There was a quick flinch of apprehension scarring her face as he penetrated her; it changed to a kind of dismayed delight. “Oh bloody hell,” she grunted. “Just go easy, all right?”
“Of course,” he promised. “Of course.” As if he would ever do anything else. He began to move in a slow rhythm, as gently as he possibly could. He couldn’t believe it was possible for anything to be this exquisite. Her incredible body squirmed beneath him, because of him. The grip she had on his cock was raw ecstasy. Little moans and surprised gasps of excited joy kept bursting from her clenched teeth. Gentle and slow became impossible. He thrust into her fast and furious, fucking hard just like that vision the very first time he laid eyes on her. He came in great shudders while she cried out.
They rolled apart, him gasping for breath amid the wonder and glory. His head lolled over to see her chest heaving, and he just about came again. He was in love, smitten, besotted, obsessed. He would kill for her. Die for her.
He smiled in simple-minded happiness. “I’m yours, Roselyn. I mean it. You own me now.”
The corner of her mouth lifted up, the nearest to a smile she could manage. Her expression was troubled, reluctant.
“What?” he cried.
“Lawrence. Please. Don’t be so rough.”
He wanted to throw up. He was the worst shit in the world. He’d hurt Roselyn, the only person who’d ever loved him. Hurt her! “Oh shit. I’m sorry.” His fingers shook as they hovered above her. He was too afraid to touch her now. “I didn’t mean to. Please, oh please.”
“Shush. It’s all right.” She turned onto her side, and stroked his brow. “I’m all right. Just a bit sore, that’s all.”
“We won’t do that again, ever. I promise.”
“Yes, we will, Lawrence.”
“But it hurt you,” he protested.
“Lawrence, it was our first time. You’ll … We’ll learn to make it different.” She grinned wryly. “The rest of the human race doesn’t give up so fast, now, does it?”
“No.”
She licked around his ear. “If I get as much pleasure out of it as you did just now, would you want to stop?”
“Oh, Fate no. No way.”
“Well, then?”
“You want to try again?” Astonishingly, his cock was growing hard again at the mere thought.
“Not that, exactly. Not for a while. Can we try something else instead?”
“Sure!”
That was it for the rest of his holiday. Three days spent up in his room, the pair of them naked on his bed. Bodies locked together and writhing heatedly as they experimented with each other. They rested when they were too tired or sore to carry on, going back down to the pool for a swim, or eating in the outside restaurant. After walking the dome’s perimeter they’d go back upstairs for another few hours of total physical excess. Lawrence accessed an i-sutra file, and they worked their way enthusiastically through the positions and different acts. The furniture was sturdy enough to be useful, and the big marble bathtub with its powerful spar nozzles was simply glorious fun.
Their lovemaking was only possible during the day. Roselyn insisted she still had to go back to her suite for the night. He didn’t mind. He didn’t mind anything she said or did. She was his for the day, and the definition of night was pushed back later and later every time. On the last day she didn’t leave him until three o’clock in the morning.
“Our apartment is in the Leith dome,” she told him as they clung to each other on top of the rumpled sheet in those last few hours. “Is that very far from you?”
“No. I got a trike for my last birthday. I can ride round in less than ten minutes. Or if we cut through the public ’tweendome tunnels and walk it’s about twenty-five minutes. Probably best while we’re in the Wakening.” In his mind he was working out the best route, which domes to go through.
“So it will be easy for us to see each other?” she asked anxiously.
“Very.” He stroked his fingertips along the curve of her hips, the way he’d found excited her most.
She snuggled up against him, bestowing a multitude of quick playful kisses along his neck. They tickled.
“And you’ve got my dp-code?”
“Yes.” He moved on top of her, pinning her arms down. “I’ll call you as soon as I get home. I’ll call you an hour later. I’ll call you an hour after that.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be a possessive bitch. I just want you.”
“You’ll be in Templeton a day after me. We’ll see each other first thing in the morning at school.”
“All right.” She nodded slowly, as if they’d been discussing a legally binding contract. “I’ll wait till then.”
The limousine that picked up Lawrence and his father early the next morning took five hours to drive back to their home. Lawrence sat back in the leather seat and stared out moodily at the thick dancing snowflakes. The only thing he saw was Roselyn, curled up in his arms, smiling fondly as they soaked in each other’s warmth.
“Is your bracelet pearl broken?” Doug Newton asked.
“Huh?” Lawrence shifted his attention back inside the limo. “No, Dad, it’s fine.”
“But you’re not using it.”
“Don’t feel like it.”
“Hell, we’d better go direct to the hospital emergency department.”
“Dad?”
Doug caught the tone, and suddenly focused hard on his son. Indigo script faded from his optronic membranes. “Yes?”
“We’ve got house rules for everything.”
“Look, Lawrence, I don’t invent them specifically to annoy you. They exist so that we can all live under the same roof in a vaguely civilized fashion.”
“Yeah. I know all that. But you’ve never said what the rules are about girlfriends.”
“Girlfriends?”
“Yeah.”
“But you haven’t … oh. You kept that very quiet, son. Do we get to meet her?”
“I don’t know, Dad, what are the house rules about that? Is she even allowed to visit?”
Doug Newton eased himself back into the seat and gave Lawrence a long look. “All right, son, you’re virtually old enough to use your voting shares, so I’m not going to treat you like a total child. In return I expect the same courtesy. Okay?”
“Yeah, right.”
“There are two sets of house rules. Your girlfriend will be very welcome to visit. In fact, as you damn well know, your mother will insist on it the instant she finds out you have one. When the young lady comes around, the pair of you can do what you want. Play tennis, soccer, go swimming, study together; all that jazz. She will also be welcome to join us for meals when she’s here. What she cannot do is stay the night, not in your room. Understand?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“The other set of rules are very simple, and they are the same as in real life. You do not get caught. Neither myself, your mother, and especially not your brothers and sisters, are ever to be put in the position of walking into a room and finding you screwing her ass off. Do you understand that?”
Lawrence knew his cheeks were bright red; he could feel them burning. This was turning into a hell of a week for fundamental life changes. “I get it, Dad. Don’t worry, that won’t happen.”
“Glad to hear it. Just make sure the lock on that cave of yours works properly.”
“It does.”
Doug Newton shook his head in bemusement. “I’ll say one thing, son, you never fail to amaze me. I take it she is real, not an i-program.”
“Of course she’s real!”
“Thank Fate for that. Does she have a name?”
“Roselyn O’Keef.”
“Not sure I know an O’Keef family.”
“They’re not an Amethi family, Dad. They just got here.”
“Really? Well, that means they have a decent stake then.”
“Is that all you care about, that they’re rich or players?”
“As it happens, yes, it does matter to me. But as we both know by now, what matters to me doesn’t even register with you.”
“It does. It’s just …” Lawrence didn’t want to say the wrong thing right now. He’d never talked with his father like this before. All this honesty was almost making him feel guilty for earlier behavior. He supposed he had been slightly inconsiderate to his parents recently. But life here wasn’t easy. They always seemed to want so much for him and from him.
“I know.” Doug held his hands up. “I’m an ogre. You think you’re different to me? If you ever find the time to talk to your grandparents, ask them about the fun they had bringing me up.”
“Really?”
“Like I said: if you ever talk to them.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“That’s my son.”
As soon as he got home, Lawrence loaded her dp-code into his den’s desktop pearl and asked the AS to connect him. Her face filled the sheet screen, smiling down at him. The faint freckles dusting her cheeks were the size of his palm. They talked for an hour. He called her another three times that day before finally going to bed to sleep. During the night, he woke up twice, reaching for her. In those blurred moments before he was fully awake he was unsure if she wasn’t just a dream. It was a terrifying experience.
Hilary Eyre High was in the center of its own dome, a three-story H-shape structure, big enough to provide first-class educational facilities for fifteen hundred pupils. The ground around it was mostly sports fields, with a constant all-year-round climate, approximating the start of a temperate zone autumn. It was an unusual sight for kids who’d grown up in a city where each dome took pride in its horticultural layout. There were no trees at all, just a flat expanse of verdant grass, interrupted by various styles of slim white goalposts.
Not quite as unusual, though, as the sight of Lawrence Newton standing on the steps ninety minutes before the new term officially started. Despite the weather, he’d driven his trike to school to make certain he wasn’t late. Now he was shuffling his feet about impatiently as he tried to look at all nine ’tweendome tunnel arches simultaneously. Pupils were emerging from the twisting caverns to walk toward the school’s glass entrance hall. Already, several groups were forming on the plaza outside, friends catching up with each other, sports teams bonding before the term’s action, pupils behind on their coursework (usually Lawrence) desperately searching for a crib to download, in-crowds being cool together.
He saw her easily enough even when she was a hundred meters away. Shouted and stuck his hand up, ignoring the curious glances. She saw him and smiled. Waved back. He ran over and they embraced in the middle of amused onlookers. That kind of public kissing was against school regulations. Lawrence didn’t care.
“You’re here,” he said dumbly.
“Yes.” She grinned around nervously. “I didn’t have anything else to do today.”
They were attracting just too much attention for Lawrence to pretend to be blasé. He put his arm around her, and they walked to the side of the steps.
Roselyn said the trip from the hotel had been fine. The apartment in the Leith dome was okay, except for some problem with the building’s network cables. They only had a few pieces of basic furniture, so her mother wanted to go around all the stores that weekend.
“Are these clothes all right?” she asked, fingering her sleeve. She was wearing a long dark skirt, with a white blouse and jade-green sweater. With her hair held back in an enameled butterfly clasp it made her look very prim.
Lawrence found the style arousing. “You look perfect.” True, some of the other girls wore clothes that cost a lot more, but it sure as hell didn’t make them more attractive.
He saw Alan Cramley giving them a sideways look, focused more on Roselyn than himself. They shared a lot of the same low-grade classes, although Alan had recently turned into a soccer maniac and was actually quite good at the game, which gave him considerably more kudos than Lawrence in their year’s food chain.
Alan leered behind Roselyn’s back and gave Lawrence a quick thumbs-up. Lawrence’s immediate annoyance that anyone should disrespect his beautiful girlfriend in such a fashion was more or less canceled out by the gender bond approval. He’d never had that before.
“So what do I do now?” Roselyn asked.
Lawrence spent the rest of the morning taking her through registration, then showing her the layout of the building. He introduced her to as many people as he could—just about everyone he knew, actually. It didn’t take him long to notice that with Roselyn by his side their greetings were warmer than they used to be, girls as well as the boys.
After lunch in the canteen they went back to the entrance hall, which was housing the sign-up session for that term’s sports and activities. Roselyn put her name down for badminton, track training, girls’ soccer, piano and accountancy.
“What are you after?” she asked brightly after they’d done a complete round of the tables.
“Not sure,” he mumbled. He’d never even been to a sign-up session before. They did another slow circuit of the hall. Software development was the first choice for extra studies: he reasoned that whatever he wound up doing in adult life, that would come in useful, and it would help supplement his coursework. There was a flight club, which almost made him say: “I didn’t know this was here.” Flying would be cool; he’d played enough i-simulations (normally involving alien fighters and dogfights) to know he’d enjoy the real thing, and the whole concept was still a powerful totem left over from his old ambition to pilot starships. He put his name down for it, which won a smile of approval from Roselyn. It was games that gave him a real headache. In the end he went for cricket, mainly because the training was the same afternoon as her soccer, so they’d stay behind together, but also because it was about the most nonenergetic game he could find in the syllabus.
They had to part for the afternoon when classes started, but he waited for her in the entrance hall afterward and asked her home.
“You should know,” he said apologetically, “Mum’s been badgering me to bring you back. I can put her off for a couple of days, but it’s like trying to stop Barclay’s Glacier from melting. It’s got to happen sometime.”
“That’s okay. I’d like to meet her.”
“You would?” he asked cautiously.
“Yes.”
“Oh. Okay, good. Uh, I brought my trike. We can get home on that.”
“A trike? Lawrence! I’ve only got these clothes. I can’t go outside.”
“I know. I’m not totally stupid.”
He led her down to the garage at the edge of the dome. His trike stood almost by itself in the rack, a small machine with two rear wheels powered by a hihydrogen combustion engine that was encased in metallic purple bodywork. A sleek elongated bubble of plastic gave the driver and passenger a degree of cover from the elements, although it was open along both sides. The three broad tires had deep snow treads, but even so he could never open it up beyond fifty kilometers per hour without risking a skid. Ten years ago every teenager in Templeton either had one or wanted one, but the Wakening had severely curtailed their use—yet another sign that Lawrence had been born into the wrong age.
He dived into the bin beneath the seat and pulled out two pairs of thermal overalls. “See?”
“Oh yes.” Roselyn rolled her eyes. “Really useful when you’re wearing a skirt.”
“Er …” Lawrence knew his face was coloring.
“It’s all right. I’ll manage.” She started to hitch the fabric up.
When she was riding pillion, with her arms tight around him, Lawrence steered them through the thermal cycle lock and out onto Templeton’s roads. There had been a light drizzle of hail that lunchtime, which the snowplows had brushed away. The road surface was slick with antifreeze fluid that curdled with melted water, producing the dull shimmer of oil-rainbow patterns. Despite his thermals and helmet, he was glad of the bubble’s protection. The wind chill was ferocious.
Templeton’s domes glowed with a steady opalescence under the low, forlorn gray sky. The cityscape had acquired a blunter, more industrial-looking architecture these days, appearing less complete than it had during his childhood. The delicate fringe of grass and raoulia plants scrabbling for life along the side of the roads had virtually disappeared. Concrete drainage ditches had been dug in the icy mud along every major route, with excavation mounds piled carelessly alongside. The only remaining signs of botanical life to be found were the rancid green streamers of algae that clotted the deep thaw channels slicing through the scree.
Dome air intake vents were now all fitted with new filters to keep the powdery snow and sticky sleet out of the fans and heat exchange mechanisms, great boxy affairs of galvanized metal held together with crude rivets, standing on legs of steel I-beams. Similar ugly encrustations adorned the factories, additional shielding hastily erected over inlets and grilles.
Worst of all, for Lawrence, was the rust. He’d never realized there was so much metal involved with the city’s construction, blithely assuming its component parts were all sophisticated modern composite, held together with intricate molecular bonds. But they weren’t: metal remained the cheapest and easiest method of fabrication. Templeton had been screwed, riveted, nailed, reinforced and bolted into a cohesive whole like every other human conurbation since the Iron Age. And now it was paying the price of that cheapness in Amethi’s Wakening climate. Rust oozed from every structure. It was the city’s sweat, exuded from a million filthy pores. Grubby red-brown stains dribbled and wept along each surface, sapping its strength in an eternal drip of oxidation.
Lawrence was actually relieved when they turned onto the ramp down to the small underground garage that served his family’s estate. There was nothing outside for him now. Amethi was squeezing the humans back into their ghettos of technology, veiling the landscape they aspired to conquer. One time at school, the teacher had told them how Scandinavian countries suffered the worst suicide rates on Earth during their long nights; Lawrence understood why, now. It wasn’t just coincidence that the hours he spent with i-dramas and games had increased steadily since the Wakening started.
The steps up from the garage opened out into the semiarid dome. Roselyn looked round at a desert of rugged rocks and white sand. Glochidiate and tomentose cacti of every shape flourished amid the wiry scrub grass, their umbellate flowers forming vividly colored crowns. Palms and fig trees encircled quiescent oasis pools where lizards baked on flat rocks around the edges. After the drive from school, the air was wonderfully warm and dry.
“Doesn’t anyone live here?” she asked.
“No, the house is in the main dome. This is like an environment park. We’ve got six.” He caught her troubled expression. “What’s the matter?”
She wouldn’t meet his gaze, and if anything the question just upset her further.
“Roselyn, please.”
She was suddenly in his arms, and crying. It was heartbreaking to see her so distraught. He felt as if he was about to cry himself. All he wanted was for her to stop. Every feeling he ever had for her was suddenly intensified. And even through the tears she was beautiful.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,” she sobbed.
“Do what? What is it? Is it me?”
“No. Yes. Sort of. What you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m being so weak. But nothing’s stayed the same after Dad died. Everything’s different every month. Sometimes it seems like I have to face something new every day. I hate it. I just want to stay in the same place and have a dull boring routine each day, just so it’ll give me some stability.”
“Hey, it’s all right.” He stroked her back gently. “You’re here to stay on Amethi, and believe me there’s nothing more boring and routine than Hilary Eyre High.”
She still wouldn’t look at him. “I checked up on you.”
“You did?”
“Yes. Your family’s got a seat on McArthur’s Board, Lawrence.”
“Yeah. So?”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Because it never came up. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I thought … You’re rich, and you’ll have a million connections and friends here. I know how much society and position means to this world. And I just got here, and we’re not rich. I thought I was your little bit of holiday fun. You’ve had me now. I thought that was it, I wouldn’t see you again, and you’d be laughing about how easy I was to all your friends. And then you were waiting for me this morning, and …” Her tears had returned.
He cupped her cheeks with his palms and gently tilted her head so she had to look at him. “I never thought that. I can’t believe you thought it. Roselyn, you’re going to have to put up with me for the rest of your life, because I’m never going to find anybody as wonderful as you. Never. And if anybody should be worried, it’s me. You’re going to take one look at all the jocks at school and realize what a mistake you’ve made.”
“No!” Her hand found the back of his head, and pulled him down for a kiss. “No, Lawrence. I don’t want some brain-dead jock. I want you.”
They stood still for some time, arms wrapped around each other while the geckos and salamanders filled the dome with strange calls. Eventually, Roselyn smiled meekly and wiped her hand across her face, smearing the tear trails. “I must look a mess.”
“You look beautiful.”
“That’s very sweet, but I’m not going to meet your mother like this.”
“Er … we can stop off at my den first, I suppose.”
Lawrence experienced a mild tingle of doubt as he opened the garage door. Looking at his den with Roselyn standing beside him, he was uncomfortably aware of how … well, nerdy it must seem. His own private empire. As such it revealed a little too much about his real self.
Roselyn walked into the middle, and turned a slow circle, taking it all in. “It’s very—”
“Sad? Egomaniacal? Tasteless?”
“No. Just that it could only belong to a boy.”
Roselyn ran her hand along the back of the battered leather settee. She looked at Lawrence. He stared back.
The bottom of the door hadn’t reached the ground before they were tugging frantically at each other’s clothes.
“What do you do in here?” Roselyn asked afterward. She was lying along the settee, her head resting comfortably in his lap.
Lawrence was still having trouble with the concept of a naked girl in his den. The two factors simply didn’t compute. Although, now he thought about it, having sex in here had been severely exciting. The forbidden fruit syndrome. “I don’t do a lot. It’s just somewhere that I can come and relax, be myself.”
“Okay, I can understand that. There’s times I wish my dearly beloved sisters never existed, and I was cooped up on a starship with them for a month. No escape. But what do you do, when you’re being yourself?”
“Nothing really interesting, I guess. I used to be quite into electronics and stuff. That’s what most of the junk is, I just haven’t got round to fixing it all. I do a lot of homestudy in here. Play a lot of i-games.”
“Like the Halo Stars?”
“That’s a new one, actually.” He stopped, slightly abashed. But then he did have a nude girl half sprawled over him. You couldn’t get more personal than that. “When I was younger, I’d spend hours watching my favorite show up on the big sheet screen.”
“What was it?”
“I doubt you’ve heard of it. Flight: Horizon.”
Her nose wrinkled up. “I think I know the name. It’s an old sci-fi show, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. About a starship exploring the other side of the galaxy. Amethi only imported one series, though. I’ll never know what happened to them, and if they made it home.”
“Why didn’t you send a message to the distribution company back on Earth? It can’t cost that much to get the other series sent.”
“I tried that a thousand times, but I never get any answer. I guess the company’s folded.”
“Nothing is ever lost from the datapool, that’s why it’s expanded beyond its homogeneity globe. It’s not that the original network design was faulty, people just kept adding so much memory capacity that the interconnectivity broke down. There are whole sections that are almost autonomous, other sections don’t know what’s in them, or even that they exist. If you need anything slightly quirky these days, you’ve got to load in a dozen different askpings and hope one of them finds a metalink for you. When I was looking up Amethi, some of the data took days to get back to me. Nothing mainstream, just the peripherals, early survey reports, start-up finances, that kind of thing. Specialist stuff. There are even rumors about closed-pools existing, sections that only have internal metalinks, and their AS controllers don’t know they’re no longer linked to the outside.”
“That sounds crazy. You can’t lose information in Amethi’s datapool. One askping will find you anything.”
“That’s because it’s still small. Earth’s datapool breakdown was inevitable. There’s too much data to be indexed in a single source, and the more the index is distributed the weaker the metalinks become. They’re talking about giving it official subdivisions. Except, if you don’t know where all the original data is stored, how are you going to rearrange it?”
“No wonder I couldn’t get an answer.”
“If you like, I can send a message to a friend I know. She can load an askping for the show.”
Lawrence tumbled off the settee. He wound up kneeling in front of Roselyn, who was regarding him with intrigued amusement. “You can get the rest of the episodes for me?”
“We can find out if they exist, yes. Entertainment is still mainstream. Unless it’s over a century old, of course. Even then, it’s pretty easy.”
“Please.” He clamped his hands on her knees. “I would be eternally grateful, and I will sign that in blood.”
“Humm.” She pondered the notion for a moment, eyes unfocused on the ceiling. “There is one thing I’d like.”
“It’s yours.”
She took hold of his hand and licked his fingers one by one, ending with a kiss at each tip. Then she began to move him slowly across her body until the place he touched made her gasp. “That,” she murmured huskily. “I like that.”
Every day for a week Roselyn went back to the Newton family estate after school. Sometimes they drove on the trike, but often they’d walk through the ’tweendome tunnels. It wasn’t until the third day she was introduced to Lawrence’s mother and brothers and sisters. He worried about the meeting a lot more than she did, wincing every time his mother was “nice” or asked a personal question; glaring at his siblings when they shouted a crass comment. Roselyn sailed through it with a grace he envied as much as he admired.
After that initial encounter was over, he wasn’t obliged to bring her into the house every time, although it was made very clear she was to come to a meal whenever she was visiting. And it would be lovely to meet her mother for lunch one day. Soon.
“Parents,” she sighed when Lawrence glumly relayed this latest development. “They never book themselves into the nursing home. They just stay home and embarrass their children.”
He glanced up from licking her navel. “You know what’ll happen, don’t you? My mum will start introducing your mum to eligible men.”
Roselyn shifted around. They’d put a blanket on the settee now; the leather used to stick to her bare skin. “I doubt it.”
He heard the tension in her voice. “Sorry. You don’t talk much about him.”
“No.” She let out a long breath. “I don’t. There’s not much to say. He was a great father, I loved him lots. Then one day he was gone, and everything I thought was my world went with him. And just when I thought my life was going to be completely shitty from then on, I came here.” She pinched a roll of flesh around his waist, which made him squirm. “And there you were waiting for me.”
“Something else we’ve got in common. My life was pretty shitty, too, until I met you. I don’t mean it was as bad as you losing your father, no way. Mine was all self-inflicted, most of it, I guess. Easier to bring that to an end.”
“Well, I’m going to inflict some more suffering on you.”
“What?”
“Lawrence, I can’t keep coming back here after school.”
“Why not?” he asked, shocked. “Don’t you like this?”
Her grin was dangerous as she clambered on top of him. “Oh yes, to be sure, I like this. Way too much, in case you hadn’t noticed. Two weeks with you, and I’ve turned into a complete slut.” She pushed her breasts toward his face.
“Me too.” He licked her nipples, urgent for the taste of them. Even after all this time he was still amazed at what she let him do. His own bravery in suggesting things was surprising, too. It was as if neither of them owned a single inhibition between them.
Roselyn lifted herself out of his immediate reach. “I’ve got to start doing some serious homestudy. Amethi’s schools are ultra-fast-tracked compared to dear old Ireland’s. If I’m not careful, I’m going to wind up the biggest dunce this planet has ever seen.”
“You won’t.”
“Lawrence! I will. I’m serious now, I have got to get my homestudy done.”
“Do it here,” he said simply. “There’s datapool access. You’ve got your bracelet pearl with you. No problem.” His hand went up ready to fondle her breast.
Roselyn sat back, hands on hips, to stare down at him. “You know what’ll happen if I come here to do it. You’ll start cuddling up and then we’ll wind up fucking, and I’ll never get anything done. Do you want me to be a total idiot?”
“Of course not. But—” He couldn’t bear the idea of not seeing her outside school. “I won’t get fresh with you until you’ve finished your course-work. Promise. Just, please, come back here in the afternoons. Please?”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
His finger drew a cross on his chest. “Absolutely.”
“Okay then.”
“Great!”
“But, we go to the house first. Do our homestudy there.”
“Ow, what?”
“That’s the deal. We work together in the lounge or somewhere. That way neither of us can lapse.”
“Oh hell. All right.”
“And afterward”—she leaned down again, taunting—“afterward, we can come back down here, and I’ll show you how grateful I am.”
“Will you?”
Her tongue licked around the outside of his lips at the same time he could feel her nipples brushing against his chest. The provocation was a beautiful torment.
“Oh yes,” she whispered.
“How grateful is that, exactly?”
“So grateful, I won’t be able to talk, my mouth will be too busy.”
Lawrence’s moan was almost a whimper, his eyes were half shut, pleasure blurring his vision with tears. Trepidation made him tremble as he felt her hand curl lovingly around his balls. Then—bastardFate—her other hand pinched the fat at the side of his belly, and he juddered free.
Her beautiful face was pouting with disappointment. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t like that,” he grunted shamefully.
“You mean this?” Her hand reached for the band of fat again.
“Yes!” He shifted sharply out of her way. “There’s no need to remind me I’m overweight.”
Roselyn frowned. “You are your body, Lawrence. Just like me.”
But your body is fantastic, he avoided saying. Whereas mine … “I know. I keep meaning to get into better shape.” He shut his mouth quickly, before anything else stupid could escape.
“Really?” Her face lit up, and she kissed him enthusiastically. “That would be such a turn-on for me.”