By Light Alone by Adam Roberts Read Free Book Online

world! Wine is part of our worship – did you know that? We drink wine to worship our God.’
    ‘Wine,’ said George. ‘Wine.’ It was night. And after night comes day, or more night, depending on the particular time-frame you choose to apply to your perspective.

7

     
    The morning started with a Clear, to purge George of an irksome, leaden headache. He wore shades in the shower, and omitted breakfast. Marie, who had woken repeatedly in the night and who had angrily rejected his suggestion that she take a Doze, was now lying on her front like a corpse. Out of a vague sense of duty, rather than because he had any pressing reason, he went down to Leah’s old room and found the teenager – Rana, she was called – feeding Ezra, and tickling his tender, dark-brown cranial fuzz with her free hand. He had no instructions to pass on to her, and nothing to say, so he left her and walked along the hotel corridors for a while with no particular destination in mind. Portraits came to life as he passed them, offering purchases that could be immediately delivered anywhere in the world, and freezing into lifelessness behind him as he passed.
    Leah was gone.
    Mid-morning he had a very unsatisfactory meeting with Captain Afkhami. There had been no progress, she said, despite unceasing efforts by her people. She promised she would arrange a flitter to take them to Do ğ ubayazit, later that day, to liaise with the local law enforcement. They have opened a wiki on the case, she said. But there were certain administrative trivialities to be cleared up prior to that journey. She unrolled a screen and typed some phrases into it. He and his wife were married, despite the disparity of surnames? Yes, hardly unusual, in this day and age. But it is difficult for our database to process! It keeps throwing up flags. It does not like it. Denoone is not a Jewish name? What did that have to do with anything? Nothing. Of course, nothing. But her name was down in the hotel database as both Marie and Miriam, and the House AI disliked this duplication very much. Very much. The House AI liked one person to have one name. Inflexible, perhaps, but who amongst us does not understand the preference for clarity? So: was it Miriam Marie, or Marie Miriam? George started to explain that the one was an affectionate idiom for the other, when the complete pointlessness of the interaction popped up in his head like a diary reminder. He got to his feet without saying another word, and went out of the little office. He faced Afkhami the whole way out, walking backwards to the door. ‘Mr Denoone,’ said the captain, passionlessly, as he went. ‘It is important that our data records do not contain apparent contradictions. It is important for legal reasons.’
    Out.
    He walked on the terrace. The various hilarities and goofinesses of people larking in the snow seemed as alien as The Pirate Moon of Co-RoT 9 . It occurred to George, with some force, that human enjoyment was a fragile skin drawn over a great depth of potential misery. A layer of moonlight slicking the surface of the ocean silver. More than that, there was more. For the moonlight’s beauty was a lie, for no amount of shine changed the fact that the waters extended straight down black as oil for kilometres and kilometres into crushing, airless, oblivious depths.
    A ramjet passed over the sky – impossibly high, no bigger than a rice-grain, yet drawing after it, like a monarch’s weighty cloak and train, the aftermath of its profound bass-tone roar. A scratch and scuff in the blue. A tower in the sky, a needle, a triangle.
    He went back to his room. Marie was awake now, sitting on the bed. She was holding a mug of coffee: her left hand underneath the base and her right hand cupping its flank. Rana was playing with Ezra on the floor beside her. When George came through the door, his wife looked at him with eyes like loaded guns.
    ‘I’ve had another meeting with the captain,’ he said.
    Marie