Salvation

Yuri was sitting at the far end, with his executive assistant and tech advisor Loi next to him. He’s one of the real old-timers, born back in St. Petersburg in 2030; all broody and sullen like only Russians who emigrate from the Motherland can be. Couple that with his age, and I doubt his mouth was even capable of smiling anymore. He’d got his first telomere extension therapy about a century ago, and then progressed to gene-up to keep himself alive. If you called that living; most people call all the myriad extension therapies the undying, stretching out their existence at any price. I’ve seen people who never got rich until their eighties then go for treatments. It’s not pretty.

All those treatments and procedures had left Yuri’s appearance suspended in his late fifties, with his round face slightly bloated and his thin sandy hair shading lighter as it was infiltrated by gray strands that’d resisted the gene-up. Hooded gray-green eyes completed the image of a man who was suspicious about the whole universe.

But for Yuri an eternal fifty wasn’t so bad. As well as his deferred face there had to be replacement organs, too. For a start, no original liver could survive immersion in that much vodka. His replacement parts would all be high-end bioprinted clone cells. He was too xenophobic (and maybe snobbish) to use Kcells. The alien biotechnology was the main trade item between the Olyix and humans; cells with a biochemistry compatible with a human body, which could be assembled into organs and muscles at a significantly lower cost than gene-up treatments and printed stem cells. They had a reputation (unfounded, in my opinion) of being slightly inferior to human medical technology. But by making advanced medical treatment available to millions of people who had been too poor to receive it before, it had become the biggest boon to social improvement since Connexion Corp started providing universal egalitarian transport through its portal hub network.

I nodded respectfully at him. After all, he was my boss and the author of this whole expedition. Me, I’d seen it for the terrific opportunity it was.

As usual, Loi was wearing an absurdly expensive suit, as if he’d strayed in from Wall Street. Not too far from the truth, given he’s Ainsley’s great-grandson (one of many). Twenty-eight years old, and always keen to tell you about his shiny new quantum physics degree from Harvard—earned, not bought, as he’ll explain. Right now he was desperately validating himself by working his way up through Connexion Corp the way everyone does. Because everyone age twenty-eight pulls an assistant’s job with a department head as soon as they join. Just a regular guy, all smiles, after-work drinks with colleagues, and bitching about The Boss.

Interestingly, Callum Hepburn had chosen to sit next to Yuri. He’d arrived twenty minutes ago from the Delta Pavonis system, where the Utopial culture was based. These days he was one of their senior troubleshooters, possessing a craggy face that gene-up had failed to soften with age. His thick crop of hair was the bold silver-white that all redheads turn, rather than the insipid gray that lies in wait for most humans.

I could sense a great deal of unhappiness behind those blue-gray eyes of his. From my briefing with Ainsley I gathered Callum hadn’t exactly volunteered for the expedition. Allegedly, the Utopials with their perfect democracy can’t be ordered to do anything, no matter what level of citizenship you’ve attained (and he’s grade two). So that must be one hell of a favor domino Ainsley Zangari had knocked into Emilja Jurich—given Emilja was the closest thing the Utopials had to a leader, and therefore the only one who could pressure Callum into coming back to Earth.

And I don’t suppose having Yuri along on the expedition was helping his temperament. The two of them haven’t talked since Callum left Connexion in what I can only describe as intriguing circumstances a century ago, after he officially died.

Actually, it was 112 years ago. Whatever. That’s an impressive amount of time to hold a grudge. But then he’s Scottish, and in my experience they’re just as stubborn and dour as Russians. It says something about the artifact we’d found that those two were prepared to put personal issues aside and cooperate—however nominally. Having them together in the bus was really going to make this a full-out fun-time trip.