Alex felt a brief uneasiness. He had asked Kate at the outset if she was fertile, and she had replied that at the moment she preferred not to be. He had believed her implicitly, and still did; but he had not asked her recently.
His stronger emotion, however, was disgust at his mother’s hypocrisy. How dare she lecture him about family tradition, when her own decision to become a Commensal, like that of Great-aunt Agatha and Cousin Juliana, had been made without regard to family needs? Commensality conferred, along with health and protection from almost every disease, an irreversible sterility. Alex, walking a pace behind his mother, surveyed her slender form. She had made the choice and now had the appearance and energy of a twenty year old, combined with a formidable libido. Her features and figure were perfection.
Lena Ligon was also, in specific ways that made Alex nervous but apparently worried Lena not a bit, no longer quite human.
It made Alex’s own skin crawl to think what lay underneath his mother’s epidermis. A hundred tailored organisms shared space in the interior of a Commensal. The one that Alex found most disgusting was the giant schistosome, a mature and genetically-enhanced worm that lay alongside and within Lena Ligon’s liver. The original parasite had been the source of weakness and debility for hundreds of millions of people. This one now guarded its terrain, the lower intestines, against all infestations. A lung fluke did the same for the chest and upper body cavity, a third genemod parasite inhabited one of the larger sulci of the brain and warded off tumor growth, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s. These were just the three big ones, many centimeters long. Scores of other body-dwellers in a Commensal ranged in size from a millimeter or two down to a handful of specialized cells. Put them all together, with their own needs and priorities, and it was no longer clear who or what controlled the agenda of Lena Ligon’s life.
It was not even clear that the changes to Lena were safe. The technology in its present form had been applied for less than three years. If the methods had been developed in a Ganymede or Mars medical research center, that would have been some reassurance; but the Commensals were leftover Great War technology, discovered in the drifting remains of a Belt weapons shop. Reputable rejuvenators hesitated to use it. Who knew the original objectives? Who knew the undocumented long-term side effects? But Lena Ligon’s feelings were fairly typical. “My dear, long-term effects are who-cares effects. We want to look good and feel good now.”
The worst thing of all, from Alex’s point of view, was Lena’s new smell. It was not exactly unpleasant, rather the opposite. His mother’s body and breath exuded a subtle, musky perfume of modified pheromones. But the odor was different. A kiss on the cheek from Lena Ligon was now a creepy experience for Alex, to be avoided whenever possible.
“Remember,” his mother said, as though reading Alex’s thoughts, “even if you find the sight, sound, and smell of this young woman rather strange, you must behave properly. If she smiles at you, smile back. If she offers you her hand, kiss it. If a subject seems distasteful to her, drop it at once. We can discuss any problems later, within the family. During the meeting, take your cues from me.”
Was his mother suggesting that Lucy-Maria Mobarak might also have become a Commensal?
It was a bit late to discuss the point. They were there. They had risen and risen, to a level of Ganymede higher than Alex had ever been except on obligatory school trips to see the stars at first-hand. This was the very highest level, with the actual surface no more than twenty meters above their heads. Alex’s first thought, that Cyrus Mobarak must have odd tastes to live in such a place, changed after a moment’s thought. The principal business of Mobarak Enterprises was fusion plants, and in the Outer System the fastest-growing use of fusion plants lay in transportation. While the number of colonized worlds grew linearly, transportation needs grew quadratically. The production of the Mobies had to be at the surface, or out in space itself.
As they stepped out onto the final level, the light changed. Alex instinctively looked up. Above his head, no more than ten meters away, stood a window with a glittering starscape beyond. His first thought — this is dangerous! — lasted only a split second. He realized that whatever the material of that window, it would be designed to withstand anything that hit it. The new Mobarak synthetics could supposedly tolerate a direct whack from a meteorite traveling at thirty kilometers a second. They could also dissipate impact energy so fast that only the top few centimeters of material were vaporized, while at the same time they photo-darkened so rapidly that the flash of light was no more than startling even from as close as ten meters.
The double doors in front of Lena and Alex were a fair copy of the ones that fronted the corporate offices of Ligon Industries. The metal plate with the sign, MOBARAK ENTERPRISES, was just as discreet. Imitation is one of the more reliable forms of flattery. Alex had secretly questioned Prosper Ligon’s assertion that Cyrus Mobarak yearned to join the Inner Circle of old money and influence. Now he was not so sure.
He was also beginning to wonder what he would find on the other side of those great double doors. Somehow, his agreement to have a simple meeting with Mobarak’s daughter had escalated. He had imagined maybe a drink together, or a quiet meal in an informal setting. Instead it had become an official family affair, with parents as chaperons. Alex was not sure he liked the idea of Cyrus Mobarak as a chaperon. The man’s reputation made anything said about Uncle Karolus or Great-aunt Agatha seem tame by comparison.
Meanwhile, the Fax who served as automatic doorkeeper had apparently satisfied itself as to their identity. The doors quietly swung open. Alex followed his mother into a huge room whose whole ceiling was a continuous window, with the naked heavens beyond. Again, Lena took no notice. Alex wondered if she knew what Nature was doing, less than twenty meters above their heads. He did, and didn’t like the thought.
It was not the mixture of rock and water-ice that made up most of Ganymede’s surface, that was no danger. The problem lay a little higher. Jupiter loomed in the sky, a million kilometers away. It gathered from the solar wind an endless supply of high-energy protons, accelerated them with its monstrous magnetic field, and delivered them as a murderous hail onto Ganymede’s frozen surface. A human in an ordinary spacesuit would cook and die within hours. The only safe way to wander the surface was in suits bearing in-woven threads of high-temperature superconductors. Charged particles followed the magnetic field lines, harmlessly around and past the suit’s surface. The human inside remained safe and snug.
Alex felt sure that his mother neither knew nor cared. Certainly, she seemed at ease as she advanced steadily toward the man standing on the richly-decorated carpet that covered the central fifteen meters of the room. The whole chamber was a recreation of some ancient Earth style, with pillars shaped as carved odalisques, red-lipped, full-bodied, and diaphanously clad, set at intervals around the walls. The furniture was all armchairs, dark and massive, with a low rectangular glass-topped table set in front of each.
The man in the middle of the ornately-furnished room was Cyrus Mobarak, known to Alex in appearance and reputation from media descriptions. Mobarak was in his fifties, shorter and more strongly-built than the video images would suggest, with a thick neck that bulged against a blue-and-white wing collar half a size too small. If Mobarak Enterprises had a “traditional” uniform for meetings like this, you would never discover it by looking at Mobarak himself. His suit was plain gray, lacking medals, decorations, or jewelry. His nose was prominent, he wore a thick shock of hair that he had allowed to gray naturally, and his brow ridges overhung pale, unreadable eyes.