Worlds Enough and Time by Dan Simmons

Author:Dan Simmons [Simmons, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-04-09T05:00:00+00:00

The Ninth of Av

THIRTY days before the final fax, the posthumans threw a going-away party in the New York City Archipelago. Many of the 9,114 old-styles attended. The majority simply faxed in, but some arrived via glowing, transparent bio-zeppelins that tied up at the Empire State Building’s mooring tower, some came by oversized squidsubs, an unimaginative five hundred-some arrived on the refittedQE2, and a handful flew or floated in via personally fitted sonies.

Pinchas and Petra faxed in on the second evening of the five-day fete. They had hoped that Savi would be there but no proxnet beacon blinked and a physical search of the archipelago proved fruitless. She remained absent and invisible. Pinchas and Petra were disappointed, but they spent a few hours at the party anyway.

The archipelago was ablaze with light. Besides the glowing Empire State Building and other lighted historical towers rising out of the dark waters, clusters of candleglobes floated among the swamp conifers and above the fern forest canals, festive bulbs burned in and above theQE2 where it was moored to the Chrylser Building, the luminescent, jellyfish glow of the zeppelins above and submersibles below lighted the scene, and skyrockets exploded in an almost constant barrage of color and noise. Far above the fireworks, both the e-ring and p-ring shifted through every color in the spectrum—and some beyond the human reach of vision—in honor of the first of a thousand pre-final-fax bashes.

“Quite a wake,” said Pinchas.

Petra squeezed his upper arm. “Stop that. You promised.”

Pinchas nodded and cadged a cold drink from a passing servitor. He and Petra moved around the small square of the Empire State Building’s expanded observation deck, stepping aside to let parties of zeppeliners descend the wrought-iron spiral staircase from the mooring platform. Everyone seemed quite merry except for the occasional and inevitable voynix standing here or there like a sightless scarab forged in rusted iron and smoked leather.

Pinchas poured some of his drink over the carapace of one.

“Are you drunk?” asked Petra.

“I wish I were.” Pinchas made a fist and clubbed the hollow-sounding voynix ovoid half a meter above him. “I wish the goddamn things had eyes.”

“Why?”

“I’d stick my thumb in one.” He flicked his middle finger against the chitinous ebony ovoid. It echoed dully.

The voynix did what voynix do. It ignored him.

A posthuman in the iteration known to Petra and Pinchas as Moira floated over to them through the crowd. She was wearing a formal gold gown and her gray hair was cut close to her delicate skull.

“My dears,” she said, “are you having an absolutely marvelous time?”

“Absolutely,” said Petra.

“Marvelous,” said Pinchas. He looked at Moira and wondered, not for the first time in his two centuries and more, why all of the posts were female.

Moira laughed easily. “Good. Good. Later on, the illusionist Dahoni is going to entertain us. I understand that he plans to make theQE2 disappear. Yet again.” She laughed a second time.

Petra smiled and sipped her iced wine. “We were looking for our friend—Savi.”

Moira hesitated an instant and Pinchas wondered if she remembered who they were.

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