Saturn's Children

I’m not traveling alone. “You’re an aristo, you need servants,” Jeeves told me. “Take two.” To keep watch on the statue when I am not in my cabin, he assigned me a pair of munchkin assistants, Bill and Ben, who are co

But enough about all that.

Pygmalion is a fast solar clipper, able to sustain almost a hundredth of a gee continuously. Pygmalion doesn’t carry steerage — passengers are accommodated inside an airy, lightweight bubble almost twenty meters in diameter, dedicated to their comfort and amusement. It’s strictly first class, plus servants. As the Honorable and Most Adored Katherine Sorico, traveling with two of her household between a business engagement on Ci

The cause of our early departure holds court at the far end of the saloon, accompanied by a stripped-down coterie of courtiers, five flappers to keep her amused throughout the long passage. The Venerable Granita Ford is old money, about as old as it comes among our kind. Her fortune just barely postdates the death of our Creators, and it shows. (One of the curses of Rhea’s Get is our painfully tuned good taste — painful because it is so easily offended.)

Granita is humanoid, of course. Most of the early aristos are descended from lineages that served as deputies for our progenitors in social situations, as secretaries and carers, and consequently they are traditional in body plan — but like my current disguise, she has the bishojo features, colorful plumage, and flat, textureless skin that proclaims her anime, not animated. She and my nemesis on Venus could be evil twins. I study her sidelong, trying not to be noticed; she’s laughing at some witticism of thigh-slapping proportions that a flapper has just offered up, but her smiles never reach her eyes.

Midway down the lounge, the second most important potentates aboard float in stately isolation, disdaining the fawning of clients. The Lyrae twins are the sole survivors of a most singular lineage — a scientific research group — now grown rich from patent banditry, their skulls studded with instrument jacks repurposed to hold the souls of their deceased sibs. These strange scholars of the night say little and move around less. They confine their interactions to the odd fish-eyed stare at any interloper who strays too close.

And then there are the other passengers, solitary aristos and their slaves — like the Honorable Katherine Sorico. I am far from alone, but it will take much boredom to drive me into social intercourse with such as I fly with. Reza Agile, walleyed and trinocular, a bounty hunter by trade; Sinbad-15, an automatic prospecting unit made good on the groaning backs of his slaves; Mary X. Valusia, who travels in commodities of questionable origin — none of them, if you’ll harbor my opinion, are jewels in the crown of high society. They are, in point of fact, vile exploitative aristocrats one and all; and I’m resigned to spending the next three months in moody isolated discomfort.

Pygmalion does her best to keep me distracted and entertained, of course (it’s part of her function, as hostess and conductor), but I think she senses my disenchantment. I’m just glad she doesn’t make anything of it in public. Which is why I’m surprised when she makes her presence known to me while I’m puzzling over a particularly tough hand. “Your ladyship? If I may speak?”

I freeze for a moment as I ask, What would the Honorable Katherine Sorico do? then relax. “Certainly,” I say politely. (The Honorable et cetera would assume that the ship wouldn’t have the temerity to interrupt her game for something trivial. Therefore, she’d be polite. Right?)

“I can’t help noticing that you have been playing a lot of solitaire,” Pygmalion says tentatively. “If it’s not presumptuous, can I interest you in a game of bridge? I’m trying to organize one for tomorrow evening, after di

I flicker through WWtHKSD in a fraction of a second, and incline my head politely. (One of the Honorable et cetera’s quirks is a weakness for games of chance, and as one of Rhea’s Get, I have the necessary skill to participate, feign enjoyment, and lose gracefully.) “I shall consider it,” I say, offering Pygmalion a clear win. I do not relish the prospect of socializing with the other passengers, but neither do I want to stand out, if by so doing I publicize my inauthenticity. I frown at the cards magnetically clasped to the tray before me: I have a feeling this puzzle’s insoluble.

THAT NIGHT I dream my way into Juliette’s memory-maze for the first time.

It’s about time I began to fully integrate her experiences. I’ve been wearing her soul chip for more than ten days now, and even in the first few hours, echoes of her ghost began to haunt me: the lingering familiarity of Paris’s touch, a sly sharp sense of the bodies tumbling in the dojo. These are things that Juliette would know better than I. Normally one experiences déjà vu from a dead sib’s memories only if one moves within her milieu, but I’ve been having hot flashes of her character ever since I met Jeeves. Some echos of my untidy life are segueing into hers. Consequently, the first bleed-through dream comes as no surprise.

Juliette is one of my lineage, another of Rhea’s Get; but she is quite unlike me. She has odd, balletic reflexes that kick in without warning and blindside me, spi

The stars glare down like lidless, unblinking specks set deep in the sockets of a skull-like sky. It’s as black and empty as an airless crypt, and I know at once there is little atmosphere above us, even before I feel the fatty heater packs that encircle my joints under the quilted suit and heavy brocade coat that I wear. Brocade? Fabric? I glance around at the stony landscape, the low, drystone wall, seeing it in the ghostly tones of boosted vision. There’s moonlight… I look up at the tiny, fleeing pebble in the sky, racing from horizon to horizon, and when I look higher still I see the ghostly knife-edge of Bifrost, slicing the sky in half. That’ll be Phobos. Of course, I’m on Mars. (I have a ghost-memory of an alibi; a formal ball in a pleasure dome on Olympus, and a stealthy nighttime spider-ride while a body-double zombie covers for me for the duration of a dance card.) I look around again, carefully sca