Corrine pulled off a pair of surgical gloves. I want you to go home and relax for the rest of the afternoon. No more work today, I don't want you stressed; the symbiont neurons don't need to be drenched in toxins at this stage. And no alcohol, either.
Am I going to have a headache?
A hypochondriac like you, I wouldn't be at all surprised. She winked playfully. But it's all in your mind.
•••
I walked home. The first chance I'd had to actually appreciate the real benefit of the habitat. I walked under an open sky, feeling zephyrs ripple my uniform, smelling a mlange of flower perfumes. A strange experience. I'm just old enough to remember venturing out under open skies, taking backpack walks through what was left of the countryside for pleasure. That was before the armada storms started bombarding the continents for weeks at a time. Nowadays, of course, the planet's climate is in a state of what they call Perpetual Chaos Transition. You'd have to be certifiable to wander off into the wilderness regions by yourself. Even small squalls can have winds gusting up to sixty or seventy kilometres an hour.
It was the heat which did it. The heat from bringing the benefits of an industrial economy to eighteen billion people. Environmentalists used to warn us about the danger of burning hydrocarbons, saying the increased carbon dioxide would trigger the greenhouse effect. They were wrong about that. Fusion came on-line fairly early into the new century; deuterium tritium reactions at first, inefficient and generating a depressing quantity of radioactive waste for what was heralded as the ultimate everlasting clean energy source. Then He3 started arriving from Jupiter and even those problems vanished. No more carbon dioxide from chemical combustion. Instead people developed expectations. A lot of expectations. Unlimited cheap energy was no longer the province of the Western nations alone, it belonged to everybody. And they used it; in homes, in factories, to build more factories which churned out more products which used still more energy. All over the planetary surface, residual machine heat was radiated off into the atmosphere at a tremendous rate.
After a decade of worsening hurricanes, the first real mega-storm struck the Eastern Pacific countries in February 2071. It lasted for nine days. The UN declared it an official international disaster zone; crops ruined over the entire region, whole forests torn out by the roots, tens of thousands made homeless. Some idiot newscable presenter said that if one butterfly flapping its wings causes an ordinary hurricane, then this must have taken a whole armada of butterflies to start. The name stuck.
The second armada storm came ten months later, that one hit southern Europe. It made the first one seem mild by comparison.
Everybody knew it was the heat which did it. By then more or less every home on the planet had a newscable feed, they could afford it. To prevent the third armada storm all they had to do was stop using so much electricity. The same electricity which brought them their newly found prosperous living standard.
People, it seems, don't wish to abandon their wealth.
Instead, they started migrating into large towns and cities, which they fortified against the weather. According to the UN, in another fifty years everybody will live in an urban area. Transgenic crops were spliced together which can withstand the worst the armada storms throw at them. And the amount of He3 from Jupiter creeps ever upwards. Outside the urban and agricultural zones the whole planet is slowly going to shit.
Our house was near the southern edge of Eden's town, with a long back lawn which ran down to the parkland. A stream marked where the lawn ended and the meadowland began. The whole street was some tree-festooned middle-class suburb from a bygone age. The house itself was made from aluminium and silicon sandwich panels, a four-bedroom L-shape bungalow ranch with broad patio doors in each room. Back in the Delph arcology we had a four-room flat on the fifty-second floor which overlooked the central tiered well, and we could only afford that thanks to the subsidized rent which came with my job.
I could hear voices as soon as I reached the fence which ran along the front lawn, Nicolette and Jocelyn arguing. And yes, it was a picket fence, even if it was made from sponge-steel.
The front door was ajar. Not that it had a lock. Eden's residents really did have absolute confidence in the habitat personality's observation. I walked in, and almost tripped on a hockey stick.
The five white composite cargo pods from the Ithilien had been delivered, containing the Parfitt family's entire worldly goods. Some had been opened, I guessed by the twins, boxes were strewn along the length of the hall.
It's stupid, Mother! Nicolette's heated voice yelled out of an open door.
And you're not to raise your voice to me, Jocelyn shouted back.
I went into the room. It was the one Nicolette had claimed. Cases were heaped on the floor, clothes draped all over the bed. The patio door was open, a servitor chimp stood placidly outside.
Jocelyn and Nicolette both turned to me.
Harvey, will you kindly explain to your daughter that while she lives in our house she will do as she's told.
Fine. I'll bloody well move out now, then, Nicolette squealed. I never wanted to come here anyway.
Great, caught in the crossfire, as always. I held up my hands. One at a time, please. What's the problem?
Nicolette is refusing to put her stuff away properly.
I will! she wailed. I just don't see why I have to do it. That's what it's here for. She flung out an arm to point at the servitor.
I fought against a groan. I should have realized this was coming.
It'll pack all my clothes away, and it'll keep the room neat the whole time. You don't even need bloody affinity. The habitat will hear any orders and get the chimps to do as you say. They told us that in the orientation lecture.
That thing is not coming in my house, Jocelyn said flatly. She glared at me, waiting for back-up.
Daddy!
The headache I wasn't supposed to be having was a hot ache five centimetres behind my eyes. Jocelyn, this is her room. Why don't we just leave her alone in here?
The glare turned icy. I might have known you'd be in favour of having those creatures in the house. She turned on a heel and pushed past me into the hall.
I let out a long exhausted breath. Christ.
I'm sorry, Daddy, Nicolette said in a small voice.
Not your fault, darling. I went out into the hall. Jocelyn was pulling clothes from an open pod, snatching them out so sharply I thought they might tear. Look, Jocelyn, you've got to accept that using these servitor creatures is a way of life up here. You knew about the chimps before we came.
But they're everywhere , she hissed, squeezing her eyes shut. Everywhere, Harvey. This whole place must be ringing with affinity.
There is nothing wrong with affinity, nothing evil. Even the Church agrees with that. It's only splicing the gene into children they object to.
She turned to face me, clasping a shirt to her chest, her expression suddenly pleading. Oh, Harvey, can't you see how corrupt this place is? Everything is made so easy, so luxurious. It's insidious. It's a wicked lie. They're making people dependent on affinity, bringing it into everyday life. Soon nobody will be free. They'll give the gene to their children without ever questioning what they're doing. You see if they don't. They'll create a whole generation of the damned.
I couldn't answer, couldn't tell her. Christ, my own wife, and I was too stricken to say a word.
Please, Harvey, let's leave. There's another ship due in ten days. We can go back to Earth on it.
I can't, I said quietly. You know I can't. And it's unfair to ask. In any case, Delph would fire me. I'm nearly fifty, Jocelyn. What the hell would I do? I can't make a career switch at my age.