*

This version of his personality was strange. Not unpleasant, but definitely different. Nigel knew they were his own thoughts running through the ANAdroid’s bioconstruct brain. The inbuilt gaiamotes still connected him to his real self as he went upstairs to the hotel suite with Kysandra, just as they simultaneously linked him with the second ANAdroid sharing a room in the hotel’s servants’ quarters with Madeline and Russell. Identity wasn’t the problem. It was the responses that were difficult. For all its excellent duplication of his own neural pathways, the bioconstruct brain didn’t facilitate spontaneous emotion. Instead he had to analyse situations and extrapolate what he should be feeling. The bioconstruct brain was fast enough and the secondary routines good enough to produce appropriate expressions without delay. Ironically, of course, not having emotions didn’t bother the ANAdroid; he simply knew that any real version of himself would be bothered.

There was also the problem of ex-sight perception. Without a shell (which this artificial brain could generate perfectly), anyone on Bienvenido would know his thoughts were different, wrong. Best case scenario they’d think him a psychopath, unfeeling and cold, disconnected from his fellow humans. More likely they’d assume he was a Faller. But then, as the ANAdroid didn’t sleep, he was never likely to be caught with his shell down. In fact, maintaining it constantly was handled by a secondary routine.

He was confident he could pass for human in the city. Kysandra had certainly never realized the ANAdroids were all Nigel-copy personalities. A subtle variation in the emotional responses of each one was easy enough, making them appear distinct and different. But she was young and naive. Living in Varlan would be the real test.

As Nigel and Kysandra said goodnight and retired to their separate rooms upstairs (Kysandra claimed the huge bed in the master bedroom, of course), he walked into the Rasheeda’s lounge bar. At this time of the evening, coming up on midnight, the room was quite full, with most of the booths occupied. He sat at the bar, choosing the middle one of three empty stools.

‘Dirantio,’ he told the barman. An almond-flavoured spirit his real self enjoyed the taste of. Taste made no difference to him, and the ANAdroid body would never metabolize the alcohol, but he should sound as if he knew what he liked.

‘Ice with that, sir?’ the barman asked.

‘Yes, please.’

There was the distinctive swish sound of silk as she sat on the stool next to him. He turned to look at her. Fresh mascara had been added. He wondered if she’d been crying, slapped about by her pimp back in the booth for her earlier failure.

‘Now, where’s that barman gone?’ she asked, not quite to herself.

‘Getting me some ice. He’ll be back in a moment.’

‘Oh, good. I like my drink chilled.’

‘Really? What do you like to drink?’

‘Me? Oh, white wine, mostly. Sometimes a Finns. When I’m in the mood.’

‘I would love to buy you one of those.’

She did the slow appraising blink. ‘Can you afford one? You seem rather young.’

‘I’ve just arrived in the city today. It’s kind of a tradition for the men in our family. We spend a couple of years at the university partying and making contacts and maybe even going to a lecture or two before we get dragged back home to manage the estates like every other boring ancestor since the landing.’

‘Oh, really? Where is home?’

‘Kassell. Ever been?’

‘No.’

‘Well, maybe one day. I’d be happy to show you round.’

‘If that offer is still open, I think I’ll risk a Finns.’

‘Glad I caught you in the right mood, er . . . ’

‘Bethaneve.’

‘Hello, Bethaneve. I’m Coulan.’

4

From Varlan, they took the express to Portlynn, which sat at the end of the Great Central Line, three thousand miles as the mantahawk flew, but the track headed north to Adice first, then curved round the Guelp mountains as it sliced through the middle of Lamaran. By the time they finally pulled in at Portlynn, the train had travelled closer to four thousand miles, stopping twenty times and taking four days.

Portlynn had sprung up as a trading town at the end of Nilsson Sound, a huge inlet slicing deep into the heart of Lamaran. It was also the estuary to the river Mozal, whose massive tributary network multiplied across the wetland basin which stretched right across to the Bouge mountains a thousand miles to the east, and down to the Transo mountains in the south. This close to the equator, and with guaranteed rainfall, the rich soil was perfect for stonefruit, banana, breadfruit and citrus plantations, as well as extensive rice paddies. The river network made travel easy and cheap, with no need to invest in expensive train lines that would have needed a multitude of bridges.

The regional capital extended over across dozens of estuary mud islands. Its buildings were all wooden, which came as quite a change for Kysandra after all the stone and brick towns the express had just travelled through. Wood imposed natural limits on the height of the buildings, so instead of going up, the town sprawled outwards, colonizing the marshy ground. There were bridges between the islands, but there was no logic to their positions, and they were all narrow – for pedestrians, not carts. Sometimes you’d have to go round three or four islands before reaching the one neighbouring the one you started at. All real travel in Portlynn was by boat along the channels, which were constantly being dredged clear. The buildings themselves were all built on stilts, thick hardwood trunks driven deep into the alluvial silt to provide stability and protection from the monsoon season floods.

Nigel booked them into the Baylee Hotel, a big three-storey structure close to the east bank docks, where the town’s largest warehouses stood at the end of long wharfs. Fast sailing clippers and steam-powered sea barges were berthed along them, with teams of mod-dwarfs and stevedores loading and unloading cargoes all day long.

It took two days to gather supplies then hire a boat to take them upstream. But at daybreak on the third morning Nigel, Kysandra, Fergus, Madeline and Russell walked along the rickety bridges to Kate’s Lagoon at the south end of the city. Nigel had hired the Gothora, a sturdy steam-powered cargo boat, with a hull built out of anbor planks, one of the hardest woods on Bienvenido. A tiny crew cabin at the rear had berths for Captain Migray and his three crew: Sancal, Jymoar and the engineer Avinus. They certainly couldn’t fit Nigel and the rest in with them, so they’d rigged the first of Gothora’s two holds with a simple bamboo frame covered in canvas, allowing the passengers to spend the trip under cover, along with their trunks and supplies. The other hold was rigged with a simple open-sided awning, and used as a stable for the five terrestrial horses which they would ride across the desert, and the three mod-horses that would go with them, carrying their provisions.

Portlynn was just coming to life when Migray cast off and steered them out of Kate’s Lagoon into the three-kilometre-wide mouth of the Mozal. The water was a thick ochre red from the silt it carried, and it flowed so swiftly at the centre that boats going upstream had to travel close to the side where the current wasn’t as tenacious. Even so, Gothora burnt a lot of logs and didn’t make much headway for the morning of the first day.

The riverbanks for the first fifteen kilometres up from the mouth were still wild despite the heavy cultivation a few kilometres inland. Gothora chugged past a continuous wall of marshes and jugobush swamps, one boat in a long procession of cargo vessels setting off upstream. Five hundred metres to starboard, vessels laden with freshly picked crops were racing past, catching the current downstream to dock in Portlynn where their payload would be transferred to trains or the big seagoing ships.