He walks toward the front of the U-shaped table of solidified air that floats beneath the dead dinosaur's rib cage, slowly turns to take in faces, and blinks down captions to remind him who's who in this gathering. He frowns slightly; there's no sign of his mother. But that wiry fellow, with the beard – surely that can't be – "Father?" he asks.
Sadeq blinks owlishly. "Have we met?"
"Possibly not." Sirhan can feel his head spinning, because although Sadeq looks like a younger version of his father, there's something wrong – some essential disconnect: the politely solicitous expression, the complete lack of engagement, the absence of paternal involvement. This Sadeq has never held the infant Sirhan in the control core of the Ring's axial cylinder, never pointed out the spiral storm raking vast Jupiter's face and told him stories of djinni and marvels to make a boy's hair stand on end. "I won't hold it against you, I promise," he blurts.
Sadeq raises an eyebrow but passes no comment, leaving Sirhan at the center of an uncomfortable silence. "Well then," he says hastily. "If you would like to help yourselves to food and drink, there'll be plenty of time to talk later." Sirhan doesn't believe in forking ghosts simply to interact with other people – the possibilities for confusion are embarrassing – but he's going to be busy working the party.
He glances round. Here's a bald, aggressive-looking fellow, beetle-browed, wearing what looks like a pair of cut-offs and a top made by deconstructing a space suit. Who's he? (Sirhan's agents hint: "Boris Denisovitch." But what does that mean ?) There's an amused-looking older woman, a beady-eyed camera painted in the violent colors of a bird of paradise riding her shoulder. Behind her a younger woman, dressed head to toe in clinging black, her currently ash-blonde hair braided in cornrows, watches him – as does Pierre, a protective arm around her shoulders. They're – Amber Macx? That's his mother ? She looks far too young, too much in love with Pierre. "Amber!" he says, approaching the couple.
"Yeah? You're, uh, my mystery child-support litigant?" Her smile is distinctly unfriendly as she continues: "Can't say I'm entirely pleased to meet you, under the circumstances, although I should thank you for the spread."
"I —" His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. "It's not like that."
"What's it supposed to be like?" she asks sharply. jabbing a finger at him: "You know damn well I'm not your mother. So what's it all about, huh? You know damn well I'm nearly bankrupt, too, so it's not as if you're after my pocket lint. What do you want from me?"
Her vehemence takes him aback. This sharp-edged aggressive woman isn't his mother, and the introverted cleric – believer – on the other side isn't his father, either. "I ha-ha-had to stop you heading for the inner system," he says, speech center hitting deadlock before his antistutter mod can cut in. "They'll eat you alive down there. Your other half left behind substantial debts, and they've been bought up by the most predatory – "
"Runaway corporate instruments," she states, calmly enough. "Fully sentient and self-directed."
"How did you know?" he asks, worried.
She looks grim. "I've met them before." It's a very familiar grim expression, one he knows intimately, and that feels wrong coming from this near stranger. "We visited some weird places, while we were away." She glances past him, focuses on someone else, and breathes in sharply as her face goes blank. "Quickly, tell me what your scheme is. Before Mom gets here."
"Mind archiving and history mergers. Back yourself up, pick different life courses, see which ones work and which don't – no need to be a failure, just hit the 'reload game' icon and resume. That and a long-term angle on the history futures market. I need your help," he babbles. "It won't work without family, and I'm trying to stop her killing herself —"
"Family." She nods, guardedly, and Sirhan notices her companion, this Pierre – not the weak link that broke back before he was born, but a tough-eyed explorer newly returned from the wilderness – sizing him up. Sirhan's got one or two tricks up his exocortex, and he can see the haze of ghost-shapes around Pierre; his data-mining technique is crude and out-of-date, but enthusiastic and not without a certain flair. "Family," Amber repeats, and it's like a curse. Louder: "Hello, Mom. Should have guessed he'd have invited you here, too."
"Guess again." Sirhan glances round at Pamela, then back at Amber, suddenly feeling very much like a rat trapped between a pair of angry cobras. Leaning on her cane, wearing discreet cosmetics and with her medical supports concealed beneath an old-fashioned dress, Pamela could be a badly preserved sixtysomething from the old days instead of the ghastly slow suicide case that her condition amounts to today. She smiles politely at Amber. "You may remember me telling you that a lady never unintentionally causes offense. I didn't want to offend Sirhan by turning up in spite of his wishes, so I didn't give him a chance to say no."
"And this is supposed to earn you a sympathy fuck?" Amber drawls. "I'd expected better of you."
"Why, you —" The fire in her eyes dies suddenly, subjected to the freezing pressure of a control that only comes with age. "I'd hoped getting away from it all would have improved your disposition, if not your manners, but evidently not." Pamela jabs her cane at the table: "Let me repeat, this is your son's idea. Why don't you eat something?"
"Poison tester goes first." Amber smiles slyly.
"For fuck's sake!" It's the first thing Pierre has said so far, and crude or not, it comes as a profound relief when he steps forward, picks up a plate of water biscuits loaded with salmon caviar, and puts one in his mouth. "Can't you guys leave the back stabbing until the rest of us have filled our stomachs? 'S not as if I can turn down the biophysics model in here." He shoves the plate at Sirhan. "Go on, it's yours."
The spell is broken. "Thank you," Sirhan says gravely, taking a cracker and feeling the tension fall as Amber and her mother stop preparing to nuke each other and focus on the issue at hand – which is that food comes before fighting at any social event, not vice versa.
"You might enjoy the egg mayonnaise, too," Sirhan hears himself saying: "It goes a long way to explaining why the dodo became extinct first time around."
"Dodoes." Amber keeps one eye warily on her mother as she accepts a plate from a silently gliding silver bush-shaped waitron. "What was that about the family investment project?" she asks.
"Just that without your cooperation your family will likely go the way of the bird," her mother cuts in before Sirhan can muster a reply. "Not that I expect you to care."
Boris butts in. "Core worlds are teeming with corporates. Is bad business for us, good business for them. If you are seeing what we are seen —"
"Don't remember you being there," Pierre says grumpily.
"In any event," Sirhan says smoothly, "the core isn't healthy for us one-time fleshbodies anymore. There are still lots of people there, but the ones who uploaded expecting a boom economy were sadly disappointed. Originality is at a premium, and the human neural architecture isn't optimized for it – we are, by disposition, a conservative species, because in a static ecosystem, that provides the best return on sunk reproductive investment costs. Yes, we change over time – we're more flexible than almost any other animal species to arise on Earth – but we're like granite statues compared to organisms adapted to life under Economics 2.0."