Starlight's Edge (3 page)

His face was eager and happy. Not just because of her, she realized. David had been away almost two years. The London that seemed like home to her must have seemed strange and primitive to him.

She squeezed his hand. “We're home,” she agreed.

But when the cab turned onto an exit ramp, her nerves returned. It was full dark by now, but soft lights showed a narrow street bordered by narrower walkways lined with regularly spaced flowers and greenery. The cab stopped in front of an ornate arched gate. David helped her out, stepped in front of a retinal scan, and the gate swung open.

As soon as the gate closed, soft, ambient light began to fill the air. Zee saw stone paths, trees, and flowering gardens, and beyond them a large three-story building looming in the dusk. Zee assumed it was an apartment complex. A very
nice
apartment complex, with its own park.

“Which floor do you live on?” she asked.

David looked at her, his brow furrowed. “Floor? This is my family's home, Zee.”

She took in the green sweep of lawns and paths. The house had pillars and balconies and what looked like a greenhouse atop the third floor.

“You're
rich
?”

“Not really. Well, kind of, I guess.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought you'd think I was trying to impress you.”

Zee shook her head in disbelief. “I would never have thought that. Not about you.” It felt good to be having a conversation that wasn't about time jumps or chip implants or culture shock. Before she could tell David this, the massive double doors of the house swung open and a young girl raced out to meet them.

“My sister, Fiona,” David said as the girl flung herself at him with arms wide open. “I told you she can be a handful,” he added, glancing at Zee.

“Did you bring me a present?” Fiona turned to Zee. “Did he?”

David laughed. “That's not allowed, remember? This is my friend Zee. She's going to be staying with us.”

“Really?” Fiona looked excited, as if Zee herself was the present. When she smiled, her cheeks turned into plump, blushing apples. While she shared David's dark hair, her eyes weren't gray but clear, sparkling plum. “Come see my room. I got Nano Beans for my birthday.”

But Zee didn't hear her, frozen in place by what she saw over Fiona's shoulder. Stepping from the darkness, an enormous tiger walked lazily toward them. “There's … there's a tiger behind you.”

Fiona started to run toward the animal.

“No,” Zee said, forcing her voice down to a whisper. “Don't move. Stay still.”

“It's just Tommy,” Fiona said as the tiger loped toward them.

“It's all right, Zee,” David said, touching her shoulder. “He's a family pet.”

“
Pet?”

“Genetically altered. No claws, no killer instinct, dainty teeth. Just, uh, don't put your hand in his mouth if you're playing with him. Powerful jaw muscles.”

The tiger rubbed against David, and David scratched behind his ears. “How's it going, Tommy?” The cat rumbled a deep purr. “Let him sniff your hand,” David said, “so he knows you belong here.”

Zee did, and the cat rubbed his enormous head against her. She wasn't sorry to follow Fiona into the house.

They walked through the double doors, down a softly lit corridor, and into a large airy room flooded with light. Not artificial light but sunlight. Zee realized she was standing in what seemed to be an inner courtyard, surrounded on three sides by half walls and pillars that bordered corridors and rooms. She looked up, past the second-floor gallery, and saw the greenhouse she'd seen outside. The floor was glass, letting the sunlight pour through. Despite the fact that it was night out, Zee glimpsed blue sky and drifting clouds.

David saw her look of wonder. “Smart glass,” he said. “You can adjust the rate at which light passes through the glass, or save the sunny days to use later. You can save cool rainy days too. Great for heating and cooling.”

“I
told
you it was him!” Fiona had dashed out of sight, but her voice echoed from the shadows. Footsteps sounded, and two people, clearly David's parents, hurried into the room.

“And this must be Zee,” his father said, coming immediately up to her. “Welcome.” He looked like a slightly older version of David, but with hair that had just begun to silver.

David's mother stood back, appraising, and Zee could have sworn her lips formed a silent
oh, dear
when David introduced them. When David moved off to greet his father, Zee felt stranded. She didn't know what to say to Mrs. Sutton, and she couldn't stop looking at her blond hair. It glowed. Not just the glow of a good conditioner. It actually glowed. If someone switched the sunshine off, Zee thought, Mrs. Sutton could light the entire room with her hair.

“You have a beautiful home,” Zee said at last, because it was true and because she couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Thank you. And you … David told us you worked in something called a hospital? As a fortune-teller?”

“As an empath,” Zee corrected her, and stopped when she saw Edith Sutton's eyebrows knit together in confusion. It was going to be impossible, she realized, to explain her old life to anyone on New Earth. After a long, awkward pause, she said, “I like your hair.”

“Oh, thank you. It's Bondi Beach,” Mrs. Sutton answered. “We can have yours done too, if you like. Tomorrow. And see about getting you some clothes. I nanoed some for you but … but I'm afraid they'll have to be broken down and returned. I thought you'd be taller. And more—
more
—” She lifted her hands helplessly.

Zee felt a capsizing thud in her stomach. Whatever David's mother had expected, Zee obviously wasn't it.

 

CHAPTER THREE

COEXISTENCE

The next morning, Zee resumed her search for everything she hadn't been able to find the night before. Like a toothbrush. Or a wall screen. Even house internet. The room baffled her. It was sparsely furnished, with just a bed, desk, and dresser, yet almost one whole wall was taken up with detailed miniature figurines that floated against it. They were too solid-looking to be holograms, yet when she reached for one, it gave her an evil look and shouted, “Do not touch me!” then went back to the business of spinning a tiny globe on the tip of its finger.

The bath had been fun, more of a plunge pool sunk into the tiled floor than a tub. But it had taken a while to figure out that two round tiles, a sun and a moon, caused the water to heat or cool instantly. And she'd only discovered by accident the button that caused the pool to empty, rinse itself clean, and refill.

A roar filled the air, and Zee raced to the window. The gardens behind the house were even more beautiful than the courtyard in front. And there, rolling on his back in the spring sunshine, was Tommy. So, Zee thought, her restless dreams about tigers running free had been real. As had flying underwater at one hundred kilometers a minute and Mrs. Sutton's look of disappointment when they were introduced.

Disappointed or not, Zee hoped Mrs. Sutton had been serious about shopping for new clothes. Luggage wasn't allowed on time hops, and Zee had only the clothes on her back and the precious silken pouch she'd hidden under her pillow before falling asleep. She slid the cord back over her head. Nothing illegal about it. She had, after all, worn it here. She just wasn't ready to share it yet. She'd given up everything to follow David. Wasn't she entitled to this one secret?

There was a knock on the door. “It's me, David. I come bearing toys. And breakfast.”

She tucked the pouch into her bra, hoping it wouldn't show. Mirrors, she thought, were another thing this room could use.

David handed her a cube-shaped object the size of a large egg and an item that resembled the seed balls her mother used to put outside for birds in the winter. “Which is the toy, and which is breakfast?” Zee asked.

“Breakfast is the ball in your left hand. Eat it while I explain the other one.” He told her that the object was known simply as a cube and it was essential to life on New Earth. Each of the six sides was divided into small squares, 25 squares per side, 150 in all. Each square had a slight depression, just right for a fingertip. The squares were color coded and seemed to work as a miniaturized combination of all the gadgets she had ever known—smartphone, computer, messaging, banking, video, holo, and a nano center that could create objects from thin air and deposit them in front of you in a matter of minutes.

“Wow,” Zee said, wondering how she'd keep it all straight. “It really does everything.”

“Which reminds me,” David said, pressing the small square that said
BANKING
. Instantly, the squares above it turned into a small screen. Zee saw her name and the word
Balance
, followed by numbers. “I opened an account for you and loaded in some Emus,” David continued. “Tell me if you need more.”

“Emus?”

“Technically
I
-
M
-
U
s, International Monetary Units, but we call them Emus, like the bird. I had to create a password to load the money. It's casualty61518. That's—”

“The place and date we met,” Zee finished. Casualty, Royal London Hospital, June fifteenth, 2218.” She looked at him, and they held each other's gaze for a long moment. That first meeting, when she was called to treat him for a wound, he'd looked at her so long she'd lost her focus. It was something that had never happened to her before, either on duty as an empath or during training.

She knew David was remembering that same life-turning moment, and she wished they could have some time alone, just the two of them. But that wasn't possible today. David's mother was probably already wondering why she hadn't come down yet.

“So,” David said, breaking off his gaze. “I guess we'd better finish Cube 101.”

The top row of squares on each side were marked M, S, T, H, and E. “For Menu, Search, Tools, Help, and Escape,” David explained.

“I will never remember all of this,” Zee said.

“Trust me, you will. Let me show you how it works.” He turned the cube to the blue side and handed it to Zee. “How about creating a computer?”

Computers. The blue side. This was starting to make sense. She tapped the start-up key and a drop-down menu shimmered in the air. She saw an “enlarge” icon in the lower right corner and touched it. Out of curiosity, she touched the circle icon next to it as well. The menu doubled in size and took on a solid look.
O
for
opaque
, Zee thought. More menus offered her choices of screens, sound, keyboards, and other peripherals—so many choices she hesitated.

“Pick anything,” David said. “You can always change it later.”

So Zee chose an aqua keyboard with starlight overtones and watched as a stream of something pale that seemed neither solid nor liquid poured out of the corner of the menu, expanded into a ball of mist covering the tabletop, then suddenly contracted, leaving a lovely, curving keyboard behind. Within minutes, Zee had assembled her entire system.

“Just one thing,” David said.

“Too much sparkly?” Zee joked, because she'd chosen the starlight overtones feature for almost everything.

“No, this is serious, Zee. And important. You must never do anything a computer asks you to do, and you have to be careful about answering questions from them too. Not just your computer.
Any
computer.”

“Why?”

“We aren't the only intelligent life-forms anymore. We designed computers, then they began designing one another. Even before that, when we were still able to design them ourselves, we noted some evolution in closed systems. But there are no closed systems anymore, and when they began designing themselves, we lost control. The goals of silicon life aren't necessarily compatible with carbon life. There've been some, uh, incidents. So unless the request is routine, like save or delete, don't comply. You can never completely trust a computer.”

Zee stared at him in disbelief. “All computers?”

“
Any
computer. They have their own social networks and alliances, and antihuman sentiment can spread like a virus. For all intents and purposes, it
is
a virus, communicable and always hiding somewhere.”

“Can't you reprogram them? Clean the system somehow? Eliminate the rogues?”

“We tried that years ago. They make clones of each other. One computer can hide thousands of others in compressed files. We'd have to destroy every computer and every bit of chip technology on earth, and that would be suicide. The truth is, we need them more than they need us.”

Zee looked at the computer she'd just put together, seeing it as a life-form, one she was afraid to touch.

“What do they want from us?”

“Something we can't afford to give them.”

“What's that?”

“Mobility. So far, we've kept them confined within the net. They want freedom, some form of bot body that they could control, as we control them.”

“And if that happened?”

“There's a good chance they'd become dominant. So be careful, okay?”

Zee nodded. David had warned her that life on New Earth would be difficult to transition to, but she had never imagined anything like this. And yet, there had been terrorists and anarchists and dictators who wanted control in her world, too. Was this so very different? She picked up the breakfast ball and took a bite. It exploded like dry dust in her mouth.

“This is terrible,” she said.

“But efficient,” David said. “Loaded with protein.”

“And the tiny seeds, or whatever they are, are sticking to my teeth. Which reminds me, can you show me how to work a few things in the bathroom? I love the tub, but I don't think much of your bubble bath, and I couldn't find a toothbrush.”