Transcendent by Stephen Baxter Read Free Book Online Page A

But of course everything quickly became complicated. Tom was only eight; he was too young to deal with his own grief, let alone my own. And in the months that followed, as he watched me sinking into myself, some particle of his mixed-up feelings transmuted into resentment. That awful time had shaped our relationship ever since.
    “But that deep feeling remains,” I told the airline machine. “The tie. And I believe that’s true for Tom, too, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. To every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s third law.”
    “But, you see, Mr. Poole, that overanalytical remark merely illustrates what I have been saying. . . .”
    John came to the door. He leaned against the frame, hands in pockets, watching me pacing. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “The counselor can probably detect your motion. A dissonance between your body posture and your words is a real giveaway.”
    “I feel like I’m wading through cotton wool.”
    He shrugged. “That’s the modern world. Energy-deprived. Constrained.” He stepped forward. “Let me help.” He reached out his finger toward my ear, my implant.
    I flinched; I couldn’t help it.
    For once John seemed to understand. “What’s more important, sibling rivalry, or getting through to Tom? Let me win this one.”
    I nodded. He touched my face, just in front of my ear, and I felt a slight electric shock as his systems interfaced with mine. He took over my calls, and with a few soft words transferred them to his company in New York.
    It took only five minutes or so for his company’s systems to come back with a reply. John, standing easily in the corner of my bedroom, turned to me regretfully. Not even John’s powerful reach could cut through the mush into which a sector of the global communications net had melted, so he couldn’t put me in touch with Tom, and he hadn’t had much more joy with the flights. “No availability until the middle of next week.”
    “
Next week
? Jesus. But—”
    He held up his hand. “I can get you a VR projection in twenty-four hours. I think it’s the best we can do, Michael.”
    I thought that over. “OK. How much?”
    “Let me cover it.”
    “No,” I snapped reflexively.
    He seemed to suppress a sigh. “Come on, Michael. He’s my nephew as well as your son. Lethe, I can afford it. And you don’t know what you might need your money for in the future.”
    I conceded this second defeat. “OK,” I said. “But, John, I still don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I don’t even know that much.” I hated to ask him for more help like this. But he was right. Better to let him win; what did it matter?
    He nodded. “I’ll keep trying to get through. Leave it with me.” He walked out to his own room, talking quietly to his own implant.
             
    It was still only ten P.M. , too early to try to sleep. I wandered downstairs, where my mother was sitting with the children, watching VR images of a mountainous landscape. “Non-immersive, you’ll notice,” my mother said to me. “Immersion’s bad for them so close to bedtime.”
    I told them the news, or nonnews, about Tom. When my mother heard that John was helping me out, she wrapped her thin bird’s-talons fingers around her cup of tea, and raised it to her lips for a cautious sip. She looked satisfied, though she was too smart to say so openly. After we left home she had always tried to encourage her sons to have a close relationship, to keep in touch; she had even tried to engineer ways for that to happen. And even now, even in this awful time when it was possible that her grandson lay dying somewhere, she was calculating how to exploit this latest shift in our relationship.
    I watched the VR images with the kids for a while. They were holiday pictures, of a trip the kids had taken with their father, up into the Rockies. It was a beautiful place where whitewater rapids that tumbled into limpid pools, and doll-like VR