Now We Are Ten: Celebrating the First Ten Years of NewCon Press Page 3

  We never open them. They are stowed, nine bags, in Rosh’s storage unit.

  The gifts were small but exquisitely packaged. They looked like kittens in the bottom of the big blue bag. The labels were handwritten. I sat in the back seat of the car and ripped open the one addressed to me.

  Laine Corcoran’s gift to me was a small, plastic figure, the size of my thumb. It was a big-arsed, big-titted girl with the head and skin of a leopard. She wore hot pants, a crop top, pointy ears and big hair, and she carried a ball in her right hand. I thought at first it was one of the action figures Conrad used to fill his room with, before he went to his dad, then I saw a tiny logo on the back. It was a mascot for a sports team. I couldn’t recognise the sport.

  I never thought of sport on the moon.

  A 3-D printer had made it. 3-D printers made everything on the moon. Corcoran Construction was experimenting with them in the building trade.

  It had cost Laine a fortune to send this from the moon to me. I put it back in the box, refolded the packaging as best I could, and hid the gift under the others. No one would ever look. I was cold to the bone now and shivering hard. I went back into the hotel. Sara was opening the third bottle of Baileys.

  Pyramid

  Nancy Kress

  One & Two

  The first two floors are mostly filled with parties. People move excitedly in and out of various rooms, laughing and talking, showing off what got them in the door. Many of them are young. Drink flows freely. In private rooms, a lot of inventive sex occurs. There are dozens of rooms, corridors, indoor gardens. The din is enormous, happy, and unceasing.

  Many of these young people don’t realize that the structure is a pyramid. When they were outside, the slopes of the pyramid were shrouded in clouds. Or else the young people were too busy with their own affairs, as young people often are, to look up.

  Not everyone is euphoric. In a few of the rooms, discussions are earnest rather than celebratory. Theories are debated, or fine points of execution, or history. These discussions can become quite heated. Names are called, efforts disparaged. Sometimes people fling up their hands and walk out of the room, scowling. Two or three times there have been fistfights.

  In other of the rooms, mostly at the back of the structure, an older group sits sombrely, looking as if they are holding a funeral. These people seldom make trips to the refreshment table or the cash bar. The people here would be better off if they left the pyramid entirely, and a few of them do.

  Most of the furniture on these two floors is worn, a little seedy. Sofas bear the imprint of generations of butts. The carpet is threadbare, the art on the walls a mixture of sentimental kitsch and proletariat paintings decades out of date.

  A staircase, broad and well-worn, rises from the middle of the first floor up to the third. The partiers glance at it frequently. The steps are worn in the centre, the risers scuffed from being kicked by eager shoes. The staircase is made of sturdy wood reinforced with steel. It will outlast the pyramid itself.

  Someone ascends the staircase, and there is a momentary pause as people watch her go.

  *

  Three & Four

  Floors three and four are almost as noisy as the ones below, but the food and wine are better, although not that much better. Most of the people look and behave much the same as those below. However, everyone here has succeeded not just once, but at least twice. A few people stand out: there a man so straight and confident that people wonder audibly if he is a military officer. Here a woman that causes whispers when she passes. A few people on Floor Three look frankly crazy. The din is just as loud as below.

  It has an undertone, however, of anxiety. The number of earnest groups in back rooms has increased. The arguments are less theoretical, more personal. There is less sex.

  This time the staircase going up is off-centre. It is narrower than the staircase below, and carpeted. The carpet looks a little dingy, beige tending toward brown.

  A man goes toward the staircase and ascends it. He goes straight from the third floor to the fifth. Everybody on both floors notices him. After a second of silence, the chatter and arguments resume.

  *

  Five

  This is the first floor with furniture in good condition. It looks as if it is replaced often. The crowd here is noticeably smaller, although all ages are represented. For the first time, liquor and food are passed by white-clad waiters rather than having to be queued for at the bar or buffet table. The waiters’ coats could use laundering. All the bad art has disappeared, replaced by colourful, unframed posters that are changed often.

  The amount of sex has dropped off noticeably, but the amount of drinking has increased. Still, the parties on this floor are happier than the ones on Three and Four, nearly as happy as those on One. People laugh and toast each other and compare efforts.

  The staircase rising to the floor above again sits in the centre of the room, rising gracefully in iron spirals. The treads are narrow and the risers high; it takes more sustained effort to ascend. A spotlight shines on the staircase. Occasionally, the spotlight brightens, as if searching.

  *

  Six

  This is the most anxious floor of all. Everyone here has completed more than one successful effort, or they would have stayed on Five. Multiple successful efforts are, in fact, the hallmark of Six. But people here talk very little about efforts. They circulate, chattering lightly, flirting and telling stories, but all the time their eyes appraise each other. Who is next – you? Her? Not him, surely – I never thought much of anything he did.

  It is not a happy floor. Yet, there are pockets of contentment, people sitting on brightly coloured pillows on the floor, talking among themselves or to outsiders.

  This is the first floor to contain outsiders, people who did not enter through the door on One. Perhaps they came over bridges spanning the cloud-filled spaces between buildings. There aren’t many outsiders, but everyone wishes to talk to those who have come. Some circle the outsiders tentatively, waiting to be noticed; some crash right to their sides and start talking; some seek others to introduce them. About half the outsiders carry small cameras.

  The waiters who carry around food and drink wear clean jackets. They offer decent wines, canapes that have been freshly made in a kitchen somewhere.

  The posters on the wall are printed on better quality paper, but they change just as often.

  The staircase is solid cherry, carpeted in green, and very few people ascend it.

  *

  Seven

  The outsiders on the seventh floor outnumber the people who have come up the staircase. There are only a dozen or so of the latter at any time. The outsiders cluster around the others, eagerly talking and asking questions about the singular, unusual efforts that have carried people to Seven.

  This floor is furnished well. The sofas are all new – somehow, they are always new – deep and cushiony. The posters are printed on high-quality stock and framed in rich woods: ebony, teak, mahogany. The wine is excellent. Waiters, like outsiders, outnumber those coming from below. Many of the waiters cast jealous eyes on the guests, usually but not always when no one is looking.

  So do some of the outsiders.

  There is no carpet here. The floor is marble, luxurious but highly slippery. The staircase floats around the room, sometimes nearly invisible. You have to squint to see it.

  The people who have come up from Six are flushed, happy, expansive. Most of them converse eagerly, although a few stake out a corner of a deep sofa or club chair and shake their heads when anyone approaches. Both types, talkers and non-, glance at the next staircase. A few boast that the outsiders should visit them when they are on Eight. The desire to see what lies on Eight is palpable, like a too-rich perfume.

  Most people do not stay on Seven very long. Their visits are measured in weeks, sometimes only one week. They descend the staircase back to Six, or, more rarely, make it to Eight.

  *

  Eight

&n
bsp; Eight is, oddly, more full than Seven. Nearly everyone who mounts the floating staircase to this floor, stays. This creates a sense of security that lets muscles relax, stomachs unclench, eyes shine with the certainty that nothing will be taken away from them. Outsiders besiege them, many of whom are pretty girls. The food is exquisite, the wines superb, the waiters and other attendants obsequious. Money permeates the air – is the air. Efforts lie piled around the room to be admired. On Seven, each party-goer had only one, but here some people have four, nine, even twelve. The posters have been replaced with original paintings. People talk about their boats, planes, theatres.

  The party – for it is a party – is pretty much non-stop.

  Yet there are two more floors in the pyramid. The staircase to Nine is conspicuous, made of pure gold. Most people ignore it. This is an older crowd, and they know this is as high as they will go. It is high enough. From the windows, they can see that they are well above the clouds.

  *

  Nine

  Yet, a few do mount the ninth staircase – maybe one a year. Two, in a great year. At any given time, Nine holds no more than half a dozen people. They, too, can look out the window at the clouds, or wave down at the crowds outside. To the people on the sidewalk, they glitter. More than a few consider them gods.

  Yet, curiously, Nine is less opulently furnished than eight. Perhaps no one feels they need to try so hard. The sofas and tables are good without being ostentatious. The carpet is a natural Berber. Tables are long and polished. Each person has his or her own table, piled with both their efforts and with offerings from the crowd below. How do the offerings arrive on the tables? No one really knows, but every morning they are there.

  On the wall hang not posters nor colourful paintings, but portraits of the people who live here. They are identified by their first names alone: Neil. Ursula. George. The walls between portraits are really only narrow strips of stone, slanting sharply upward as the pyramid reaches its apex. Between the stone are vast windows with panoramic views. The people on Nine see everything.

  In one corner stands the last staircase. Wood again, narrow, a little rickety. The people on nine don’t look at it, except for the outsiders. The outsiders speculate about it all the time.

  *

  Ten

  Everyone on Ten is dead.

  They lay stacked in coffins, and yet the stacking seems respectful rather than careless. The room has a high, pointed ceiling; the walls slant inward sharply and are all made of glass. There are no visitors here; the dead people are known only by the efforts they have thrown from the windows when they entered. Those efforts fluttered in the breeze and then descended slowly through the clouds to the land below – more slowly, it sometimes seemed, than the laws of physics permitted.

  The sun shines through the wide windows during the day, the moon and stars at night.

  There is no higher to go, and no more time to go there. No chatter or party. Yet everyone below would do anything, anything at all, to lie up here one day. Even – as was once said by someone on the tenth floor of a different pyramid – rob his mother, if that’s what it took.

  There are cobwebs in the dusty corners of this room, and some of the coffins are Victorian, decorated with scrolls and hair brooches hundreds of years old. Yet the names on the coffin, due to some perpetual angle of sunlight or starlight, shine brightly. Jules. Mary. Isaac, Arthur, Philip, Robert. Octavia. Alice.

  In another contradiction of normal physics, when the pyramid falls – and they always do, always – this top floor will fall last. Or maybe it will not fall at all, just detach and sail higher, higher, toward some unforeseeable space, far beyond time.

  We can hope.

  Liberty Bird

  Jaine Fenn

  This is the moment. That first glimpse of space, coyly revealed by the widening doors. Kheo gives his instruments the attention they require, but his eye is drawn downwards, to the banded glory of Yssim, the cold and distant light of the stars beyond.

  His exit is faultless. The Clan insisted he pre-program it, rather than take even the miniscule risk of their favoured son screwing up and dinging his yacht on the hangar doors. That would never do, not with the whole world watching.

  *

  Some impulse had made Kheo visit the engineering hangar three days before the race. He should either have been preparing himself mentally with relaxation and centring exercises – as his family would prefer – or drinking, gambling and womanising in the lowtown rings – as the media would expect – but he had a sudden desire to be alone with his yacht, without the tech crew fussing around.

  The hangar was the largest open space on the liner and the ship’s spin provided near-normal gravity here. After two months away from Homeworld, the echoey open space and illusion of full weight were disconcerting. In the low lighting Liberty Bird was a point of colour, although her red and blue hull was muted by the oily shadows.

  Kheo reached up, tracing the fusion yacht’s perfect lines, his hand passing just below the Clan crest emblazoned on her side. Someone had left the steps in place; it was only logical he use them to climb into the cockpit. He sighed as he sealed the canopy. Liberty Bird was the only birthright he wanted. Yet the race she had been built for might not be held many more times and if his family had their way this would the last time he would be permitted to compete. That made claimimg his third win even more important.

  He started at movement glimpsed out the corner of his eye. Someone out there, down on the hangar floor. A thief? A saboteur from a rival clan who had somehow got onto the Reuthani liner? His heart raced. The net was buzzing with stupid gossip: with no one to keep them in check any more, ancient clan rivalries were getting out of hand.

  No, just Chief Mechanic Sovat. Kheo liked Sovat, respected him. Yes, that was what he felt: respect. Sovat often worked late, went above and beyond.

  Except Sovat didn’t appear to be working. More like waiting. Another of the tech team walked in, a younger man whose name only came to Kheo after a moment’s thought. Greal: junior propulsion specialist, university educated, rather effete for the rough-diamond world of the yacht-techs. Why were this mismatched pair meeting here so late? Not for something nefarious, he hoped. They appeared to just be talking, standing close.

  Oh. Had he really seen –? Did they really just –?

  Sovat stepped back, then looked around. Kheo shrank down in the seat, holding his breath. The Chief Mechanic’s gaze passed over him, and he turned back to his companion. More brief words, then the two men left, Greal following close to Sovat. Kheo had no doubt they were headed somewhere more private.

  Kheo clears the great wheel of the hangar-deck at a pace the watching cameras will no doubt find pedestrian. Of course, speed is relative: the liner is in a high, fast orbit around the gas giant far below. The first thrust of acceleration as he brings the main engines online is deceptive; he actually needs to lose orbital velocity before the start of the race.

  He rotates Liberty Bird and peels away from the Reuthani Clan liner; the huge blunt needle is strung with spoked rings, their sizes and positions determining their place in this microcosm of clan life: engineering, living suites, gardens, entertainments and accommodation for the few thousand citizens permitted to accompany their betters off-world for this annual jamboree. In a touching if tacky gesture, a block of portholes in the central midtown ring have been selectively lit to spell out the words Good Luck Kheo.

  All around Yssim, other Pilots are leaving their liners. Most clans, including his own, only field one Pilot these days. Some clans no longer participate in the Flamestar Challenge. Other clans no longer exist.

  The yachts head for the Royal Barge, a smaller vessel in a lower orbit around the gas giant. Though the Barge now lacks any royalty, tradition still dictates that the race starts from there. It will take several hours to reach the Barge, and the formal start of the race. The approach is critical to a good start. In his five previous races, Kheo has tuned his coms into the razzmataz
z that surrounds the biggest event in high society’s calendar. All across the system, pundits are discussing the latest form reports released by the clans for their teams and mulling over the detailed ion-stream data. Every other year, Kheo has revelled in the sense of being at the heart of it all yet free, out in the vastness of space.

  Not this time. He selects some roots-rock – not his usual sort of music, but it should blast his head clear – and stares out into the beauty of the void, urging his mind to remain blank.

  *

  Kheo was expected to show his face at the hangar the next day, both as a courtesy to the techs working on his behalf and to attend a briefing on the current configuration of the ion-streams. He had been looking forward to the tactical discussion of routes and fuel management, to sharing the respectful camaraderie of the men. Instead he was uneasy, almost nervous. He made himself chat to the usual people; act normal.

  And everything was normal. In the daytime bustle, Kheo wondered if he had been mistaken; perhaps he even dreamt the encounter he had witnessed the previous evening. He spent enough time imagining such things.

  Sovat was as brusquely efficient as ever when he took Kheo over the latest engine test results. There was no sign of Greal.

  Sovat was the last to leave the briefing room, and he paused, as though waiting for Kheo to say something. When Kheo failed to speak, the Mechanic turned to follow his fellow techs out.

  Kheo took a different route back to the suite-decks, choosing rarely used corridors and secondary float-tubes, doing his best to avoid the crew, minor family and hangers-on with their ready smiles. He spent the journey trying to work out whether the look Mechanic Sovat had given him had been an invitation.