Diaspora

"Not to another scape. Here. Over the edge."

Gabriel regarded ver dubiously, but he rose to his feet. "Why?"

"It will make you feel better."

"I doubt it."

"Then do it for me."

He smiled ruefully. "All right."

They stood on the edge of the rock, feeling the dust swirl down around their feet. Gabriel said, surprised, "It makes me uneasy, just knowing that I'm going to give tip control of my icon. Must be something vestigial. You know even winged exuberants had a strong reaction against free fall? Diving was often a useful maneuver for them, but they retained an instinctive desire to put an end to it as soon as possible."

"Well, don't panic and fly off, or I'll never forgive you. Ready?"

"No." Gabriel craned his neck forward. "I really don't like this."

Blanca squeezed his hand and stepped forward, and the laws of the imaginary world sent them tumbling down.

9

DEGREES OF FREEDOM

Carter-Zimmerman polis, interstellar space

58 315 855 965 866 CST

21 March 4082, 8:06:03.020 UT

Blanca felt obliged to visit the Hull at least once a year. Everyone in Carter-Zimmerman knew that ve'd chosen to experience some subjective time on the trip to Fomalhaut—despite Gabriel's decision to remain frozen for the duration—and there was really only one acceptable reason for doing that.

"Blanca! You're awake!" Enif had spotted ver already, and he bounded toward ver on all fours across the micrometeorite-pitted ceramic, sure-footed as ever. Alnath and Merak followed, at a slightly more prudent velocity. Most of the Osvalds used embodiment software to simulate hypothetical vacuum-adapted fleshers, complete with airtight, thermally insulating hides, infrared communication, variably adhesive palms and soles, and simulated repair of simulated radiation damage. The design was perfectly functional, but since each space-going clone of Carter-Zimmerman polis was barely larger than one of these Star Puppies, having the real things as passengers was out of the question. The Hull was just a plausible fiction, a synthetic scape melding the real sky with an imaginary spacecraft hundreds of meters long; thousands of times heavier than the polis, it could only have been real if they'd postponed the Diaspora for a few millennia in order to manufacture enough antihydrogen to fuel it.

Enif almost collided with ver, but he swerved aside just in time, barely maintaining his grip. He was always showing off his finely honed Hull-skills, but Blanca wondered what the others would have done if he'd misjudged the adhesion and launched himself into space. Would they have violated the carefully simulated physics and magicked him back down? Or would they have mounted a somber rescue mission?

"You're awake! Exactly one year later!"

"That's right. I've decided to become your vernal equinox, keeping you in touch with the rhythms of the home world." Blanca couldn't help verself; ever since ve'd discovered that the Osvalds' outlook made them lap up any old astrobabble like this as if it was dazzlingly profound, ve'd been pushing the envelope in search of whatever vestigial sense of irony might have survived their perfect accommodation to the mental rigors of interstellar travel.

Enif sighed happily, "You'll be our dark sun rising, a nostalgic afterimage on our collective retina!" The others had caught up, and the three of them began earnestly discussing the importance of remaining in synch with the Earth's ancient cycles. The fact that they were all fifth generation C-Z homeborn who'd never been remotely affected by the seasons didn't seem to rate a mention. When Carter-Zimmerman polis was cloned a thousand times and the clones launched toward a thousand destinations, the vast majority of citizens taking part in the Diaspora had sensibly decided to keep all their snapshots frozen until they arrived, side-stepping both tedium and risk. If a snapshot file was destroyed en route without having been run since the instant of cloning, that would constitute no loss, no death, at all. Many citizens had also programmed their exoselves to restart them only at target systems that turned out to be sufficiently interesting, eliminating even the risk of disappointment.

At the other extreme, ninety-two citizens had chosen to experience every one of the thousand journeys, and though some were rushing fast enough to shrink each trip to a few megatau, the rest subscribed to the curious belief that flesher-equivalent subjective time was the only "honest" rate at which to engage with the physical world. They were the ones who required the most heavy-handed outlooks to keep them from going insane.