Звезда Пандоры

“Okay. Right. I’ll talk to the supervisor.” She didn’t understand how it was at work right now. If he kicked up a fuss he’d probably wind up getting shitlisted. Don’t be so damn paranoid, he told himself. But it was hard.

His father was on the patio decking that ran along the side of the pool, sitting on a sunlounger. Marty Vernon was a hundred eighty, and eight months out of his latest rejuvenation. Physically, he looked like Mark’s younger brother. Not yet old enough to develop the thick neck and creased cheeks that was the Vernon family trait.

“Mark! Hi, son, you look like shit, come and have a beer.” Marty pulled a bottle out of the cooler sheath. His voice was high and excitable.

“Dad!” Barry, aged five, was waving frantically from the pool. “Dad, I can reach the bottom now. Watch!” He sucked in a huge breath, and ducked his head under the surface, paddling desperately. Mark waved back at his son’s splashing feet. Liz dumped little Sandy into his arms. A wet smile beamed out from the thick folds of fabric. He smiled back, and kissed her. Tiny hands wiggled about happily. “Has she had her bottle?”

“Twenty minutes ago,” Liz assured him.

“Oh.” He rather liked that chore. They’d collected Sandy from the clinic seven months ago, and that was after the stress-hell that was raising hyperactive Barry. The kids had the best genes they could afford, with Liz paying considerably more of the modification mortgage than he did. It always surprised him how much of a comfort the kids were, and how much stability they brought to his life. Liz just said: “I told you so,” every time he mentioned it. Having a family was a huge strain on both their finances, especially renting the womb tank for nine months. But although she’d gone through the whole traditional wedding ceremony with him, Liz flatly refused to have a pregnancy. “I did enough of that last time around,” she insisted. So the womb tank it was.

Mark sat on the spare sunlounger, with Sandy cradled carefully in one arm. He took the beer bottle in his free hand. Barry broke surface with a victorious yell and a lot of splashing.

“Well done, kid,” Marty shouted. “Here, go fetch this.” He chucked a dollar coin into the pool. Barry whooped, and dived down after it.

“I don’t want him worn out,” Liz admonished. “He’ll get all tempered up when he needs to go to bed.”

“Give the kid a break,” Marty complained. “He’s having a ball. And your pool’s only—what—a meter deep. That’s not going to tire him out.”

“One point five.” Mark gulped down some of the beer. It was an imported brand he didn’t recognize. He sighed and settled back into the sunlounger. That was when he noticed the girl sitting in the chair behind Marty. She was wearing a bikini top and some tight shorts, showing off a trim, tanned teenage body. “Hi, I’m Amanda.”

“Oh, hi.” Mark couldn’t help the glance he gave his father.

“My new girl,” Marty crowed loudly. His arm went around her, and she giggled.

“Great,” Mark said. “So how long have you two, er…”

“Ten days,” Marty said gleefully. “But mostly ten nights.”

Amanda giggled again.

Mark’s smile was fixed. He knew what was coming now.

“We met up in the Silent World down at New Frisco Bay. Turns out we had a lot of things in common, and… hey!”

One thing in common,Mark corrected silently and sullenly. He couldn’t believe his father had done this. Silent World was a Commonwealth-wide franchise. It was the club that all the newly rejuvenated visited. Frequently, in the first few months after leaving the clinic. They went for just one thing: sex. It didn’t matter with whom, just someone equally horny from their beautiful, youthful new body’s deluge of hormones. There was only one rule, whatever happened inside, stayed inside. You could fuck your worst enemy, or your ex, or your ex’s younger sibling or parent, or the most glamorous unisphere celeb—it didn’t matter, because it didn’t count back outside the doors, it didn’t get mentioned, it simply never happened. And Marty had gone and brought her to a family evening.

David turned up ten minutes later, Liz’s forty-five-year-old son, an accountant working in AEC’s export credit division. Then there was Kyle, Mark’s older brother (by a hundred fifteen years), and Antonio, his boyfriend; Joanne, one of Liz’s mother’s great-granddaughters. Finally, Carys Panther arrived, Marty’s older sister, driving up in a Merc coupe and wearing a thousand-dollar “casual” dress from Jacvins. Mark was glad she had found the time to come; Carys was the one multi-lifer apart from Liz who always made him feel comfortable. She was also the most glamorous person he knew. When she did work, Carys designed dramas that were occasionally made into TSIs by various media conglomerates. They tended to be pretty raunchy.