Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross

Author:Charles Stross
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780425256770
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

An hour later, I found myself standing in Ana’s abandoned apartment, accompanied by the Serjeant and an odobenoid constable, confronting the chaos of a life interrupted.

But first, let me describe the layout of Nova Ploetsk, the interfacial port city that floats on and under the surface waters above the sunlit Kingdom of Argos.

Thirty degrees north of the equator, the Kingdom of Argos is an ill-defined zone of turbid water at the edge of the tropics. It hovers over a mantle hot spot, so its waters are warmed by convection currents from the Deep Below; north of it, the vast continental mats of leviathan grass drift in the sunlit upper waters. It extends across a diameter of perhaps ten thousand kilometers and occupies the surface waters to a depth of around two hundred meters.

Nova Ploetsk is one of the largest ports in Argos, a vast lenticular structure the upper surface of which projects just above the surface like a gigantic hydrozoan. Below it, tentacular hydrothermal power tubes dangle below the thermocline and extend their nozzles into the twilight zone, sucking up cold waters from kilometers below to cool the heat exchangers from the solar turbines that power the city. Refinery units in tank farms nestling against the underside of the city filter the deep water for rare isotopes, while around it floats the shipyard, ready to carry the mineral wealth it extracts away to customers elsewhere on Shin-Tethys—and ultimately elsewhere in the solar system. It is, by halves: an ugly industrial port city focused on resource extraction and a fleshpot servicing the needs of the miners and prospectors who roam the vast laminar ranges beneath Argos. Ugly, bustling, brash, noisy . . . and nevertheless the destination to which my sib Ana decided to relocate, in order to pursue her studies.

“We thought perhaps you might be able to help us make sense of this,” said Serjeant Bull. He had sufficient grace to look apologetic.

“Well.” I looked around. “I hardly know where to begin!”

The upper reaches of Nova Ploetsk are air-filled and dry; there is a membrane, some distance below the waterline, below which many of the chambers and avenues are partially flooded for the convenience of the hydromorph population, who had adapted themselves to the life aquatic to a sufficient degree that they had difficulty with land-based locomotion—people like the constable watching us from a moon pool in the center of Ana’s living-room floor. The Serjeant and I traveled most of the way to the condominium where Ana had lived by vaporetto, for there were enough obligate land dwellers in the bigger cities to provide such a transport service with custom—but I digress. Ana’s apartment was one of a block catering to amphibia, with wet-and-dry levels and underwater entrances. From outside, they formed a double row of cylinders perhaps eight meters high and six in diameter, rising from the side of a canal.

The bottommost level of Ana’s apartment was a comfortably furnished lounge area surrounding the watery vestibule: We had to dive briefly into the undertunnel before we could enter.

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