So, generally, people had stopped having children. A few, a very few, were born, nevertheless, to parents who still intended to Sublime, but those making that choice, especially with young children, were widely treated as pariahs; most had retreated to communities of the similarly inclined in distant habs.
Cossont found herself staring at the young couple. They were very young, she thought. Maybe ten years younger than her — they must have been barely more than children themselves when the child had been born. “It’ll be lonely,” she told them.
“It’s already lonely,” the man said.
The woman said, “We know,” at the same time.
“Yes,” Cossont said, feeling foolish. “I suppose you know that.” She smiled apologetically at them.
“She’s our future,” the man said, nodding down towards the child.
Cossont nodded, wondering what sort of future it would be. No other species/civ would accept that the few per cent of the Gzilt who remained after the Sublimation would constitute a continuance of that civilisation. All the Gzilt’s deserted living places, from the home planet of Zyse itself to the smallest hab and ship, would be regarded as fair game for takeover, absorption, appropriation. Xown itself, due to the fact it was home to the Girdlecity, was earmarked for pan-cultural monument status under the care of one of the Galactic Council’s Neutral Foundations. Nobody would get expelled or thrown out of any habitat airlocks, but their worlds would fill up, sooner or later, with others; some humanoid, some not, but all aliens, all outsiders.
You couldn’t even delay very long if you did change your mind and decide to go after everybody else. The rate of subjective/absolute change within the first few hours that people spent inside the Sublime was such that leaving it much more than an hour or so was risky; you’d get there and be isolated, those who had made the transition just hours before — whether they’d been close friends, lovers, family, identical twins, clones, whatever — would already have become so changed, so ascended in complexity, that you would have virtually nothing in common. You’d be on your own, or part of a hopelessly small group, effectively contextless, unanchored to anything greater than yourself, and so likely just to evaporate, dissolving into the generality of the fabric of the Sublime, meaningless.
It was unknown whether this phenomenon was something intrinsic to the exotic physics and other fundamental natural laws of the Sublime itself, or a rule imposed by those who inhabited the realm and helped enable the transition of people and civilisations. Various civs had conducted research into the subject and confirmed the effect without pinning down the cause. Perhaps a little of each, seemed to be the tentative consensus, which was not entirely helpful.
“We’re not Resist or anything,” the woman said suddenly. She was staring at the flashes on Cossont’s jacket collar. Resist were the people who were militant Stay-behinders, holding demonstrations, instigating civil disobedience and even now arguing before the Galactic Council that the Sublime was illegal, improperly mandated. A few groups on the fringe of the Resist movement had used violence to try to make their point.
“Just civilians,” the man said.
Cossont nodded again. The couple had resigned their ranks, whatever they had been. It happened. It made you poor — it was tantamount to taking a religious vow of poverty — though being poor in a post-scarcity society that only retained money as a sort of ceremonial formality was not so terrible; it took only one person of nominally average means to support any number of those requiring alms. It also tended to make you an object of either grumbling suspicion or grudging admiration, depending.
The little girl had come further out from her mother’s jacket and was staring at Cossont now, her wide eyes reflecting the flickering orange firelight, her hands playing with a small toy, turning it over and over in her chubby, grubby hands.
“Can I hold her?” Cossont said suddenly, looking first at the woman, then the man.
“No,” the man said quickly, as the mother put an arm round the child, as though protecting her from Cossont. “We don’t allow that,” the man continued. “Too many people want to touch her, hold her.” He shrugged. “She stopped liking it.” He glanced around the cavernous space they were in. “Part of the reason we’re out here.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said to Cossont, but kept her arm where it was.
“Understand,” Cossont said. She smiled as best she could. She looked at all three of them, smiled broadly at the child, then stood slowly. “I have to go,” she said. “Best of luck.”
“Thank you,” the man said.
“You going that way?” she asked, pointing the way she had come.
The man looked wary again, just shrugged.
“If you are,” she said, “there’s a Store site in an old school; combat arbite guarding it. Shouldn’t cause you any trouble, but… just so you’re not alarmed.” She smiled once more.
The woman nodded. The child disappeared into the folds of her mother’s jacket again.
“Nice to meet you,” Cossont said.
“You too,” the man said. “Goodbye.”
“Take care,” she told them.
The woman just nodded.
Cossont turned and walked away, into the deepening shadows of the vast construction. The pale, meagre light of the fire, enhanced by her augmented eyes, lit the way for a while.
It might not even be a real child, she told herself. It might be a sophisticated toy, or one of the new artificial children they’d brought out for those who felt the need for a child’s company — little robots, basically. A screen programme she’d watched had shown one you’d have sworn was a real child, but wasn’t. Apparently they even smelled right.
Maybe such robots didn’t feel right; too heavy or too hard to the touch. Perhaps that was why they hadn’t let her hold it.
The combat arbite came alive again as she passed by. It stood again but this time kept silent and just saluted.
Cossont shook her head, flexed her shoulders and back one more time, then rotated the instrument so that it faced across the freshening wind. She took up the two bows and, with a single swift, graceful movement, sat within the instrument again, settling her backside and both feet into place, taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out as she started playing a few practice scales. Almost immediately, a small gust of wind spilled across the terrace and made the external resonating back-strings, stretched down the rear of the instrument, thrum quietly. The sound — not discordant, which with an elevenstring was always a bonus (some would say a surprise) — was muffled and quickly died away again with the departing breeze, but nevertheless drew an “Ah-ha” from her as she flexed her double set of shoulders, adjusted her grip on the two three-sided bows and prepared to play.
She’d try the second-last section of the Hydrogen Sonata; she had yet to get this right in a single pass. It was a tough part and not what she wanted to do, but she’d never get anywhere if she only did the easy stuff. The second-last section was fast and furious — even angry.
She’d think of her mother. That might help.
“I mean, look at you!”
She looked at herself; first just down, then at her reflection in the black mirror formed by the blanked-out glass wall of the main bedroom unit. She shrugged. This was a particularly graceful movement when you had four arms, she thought. “What?” she asked her mother, frowning.
Warib just looked at her daughter. Vyr checked her own reflection again. What she could see was a tallish Gzilt girl dressed in neat fatigues; dark grey skin with shoulder-length pale hair above broader than normal — but hardly grotesque — shoulders. Top set of arms a little longer and better defined than the additional set, a healthily substantial chest, a fashionably defined waist and the broad hips of a non-mammalian humanoid. Her legs were a little shorter and her back a little longer than the conventional image of Gzilt perfection, but who cared? Arguably, the four-arm look was all the better for that; it sort of balanced.