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achieve early interstellar recognition. It never worked. Even sub-orbital machines were the apex of a pyramid, huge and old, resting on things like subsistence agriculture. It was no good trying to fly before you could eat.
Joel leaned over and punched up a meal on the console dumbwaiter, which extruded a laden table. He caught Kin’s eye and grinned again. Joel often grinned. Palaeolithic genes had somehow met again at his conception, and a slab face like Joel’s had to smile frequently lest it frighten small children. When his face brightened it was like the dawn of Man. They spoke, and not merely with words. Between them they were four hundred years old. Now words were mere flatcars on which towered cargoes of nuance and expression.
Kin looked down at the table again.
‘It’s familiar,’ she said. ‘Uh, I’m trying to remember—’
‘One hundred and thirty years ago. We got married, remember? On Tynewalde. There was that mad religion—’
‘Icarus Risen,’ said Kin suddenly. ‘Hell, I’m sorry. And you even remembered the menu. How romantic.’
‘Actually I had to look it up in my diary,’ he said, pouring the wine. ‘Were you my fifth wife? I neglected to make a note.’
‘Third, wasn’t it? You were my fifth husband.’
They looked at one another and burst out laughing.
‘Good times, Kin, good times. Three happy years.’
‘Two.’
‘All right, two. Good grief! That time on Plershoorr, wasn’t it, when we—’
‘Don’t dodge. Why a Watcher?’
The temperature fell like collapsium. Beyond the cabin windows Kingdom was turning from a landscape to a disc, sunlight driving the terminator ahead of it.
‘Uh. Life gets a bit stale. On treatment alone I’d never live as long as a Watcher: nice to see a new world grow; see what the future holds; it’ll be as good as visiting a new universe—’
‘You’re gabbling, Joel. I know you, remember? I’ve never known you bored. I recall you spending two years learning how to make a wooden cartwheel. You said you’d never rest till you had mastered every skill. You said you’d never learned to spear a seal, or cast copper. You said you were going to write the definitive work on robot pornography. You haven’t, yet.’
‘Okay. I’m ducking out because I’m a coward. Is that good enough? Things are going to happen soon, best place’ll be in a freeze box.’
‘Things?’
‘Trouble.’
‘Tro—’ She paused. ‘Chang said that.’
‘The big pioneer? I talked to him yesterday, when they were all in orbit. He’s getting out before the storm breaks too.’
‘ What are you talking about? ’
He told her. Kin had reported the visit of Jalo. She had also reported his ability to produce high-denomination Day notes.
‘The Company examined that methuselah bill you sent in, Kin.’
‘A forgery.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘Wish it had been. It was – sort of genuine. Only we didn’t print it. The numbers were all wrong. All the codes were wrong. Not inaccurate, you understand. It was just that they aren’t our numbers. We haven’t issued those numbers yet.
‘Now think about it. There’s a process for duplicating Company currency. Think what that means, Kin.’
She thought about it.
Company scrip was subject to so many hidden checks and codes that any forgery would have to be a duplication. And you couldn’t duplicate a Day bill even by running it through the works of a strata machine, because the Company owned all the machines and one hidden key in every thick plastic note would fuse the whole thing. No one could duplicate Company currency. But if they could—
Multiple-centenarians would be the first to suffer. Company scrip was so reliable it was a wealth in its own right. But if Day bills were just bits of plastic, if the market was flooded with ten or twenty times the real amount – the Company wouldn’t exist. Its wealth was its credibility, and its credibility was the hardness of its currency.
Gene surgery merely stopped you dying. You