The Fountains of Youth - Brian Stableford [66]
“I suppose it’s an acquired taste,” I said to Mia Czielinski, the proud owner of the most spectacular of the Cape Adare ice palaces. “I’m just not sure that I’ve got enough time and enough mental fortitude to acquire it.”
“We all have the time,” she replied, censoriously. “As for mental fortitude—how can you possibly consent to miss out on any valuable experience? If we have eternity to play with, do we not have a duty to explore its possibilities?”
I could see that she had a point. She was not merely an emortal but an emortal raised by emortal parents, who had done their work under the influence of theories very different from those to which my own parents had paid heed.
“I’m only one man,” I said to Mia Czielinski. “We’re all individuals, and it’s the differences in our experience that shape and make us.”
“Not any more,” she said. “This is the Age of Everyman, when every single one of us may entertain the ambition to experience all human possibilities.”
I remember thinking, although I was too polite and too cautious to say it aloud, that one of us had a very poor understanding of transfinite mathematics.
THIRTY-FIVE
I realized eventually that the real reason for the tightness and formality of the burgeoning Cape Adare community was the need—which the newcomers to the Cape really did experience as a need—to be in and out of one another’s homes all the time during the summer months, savoring the intricate intimacies of each and every edifice. I realized too why my neighbors had not been in the least distressed by my failure to reciprocate their invitations. They would have been conspicuously disappointed if I had. I did, however, receive one actual visitor during my final years on the cape, who turned up on the doorstep unannounced.
She was frankly astonished by my own astonishment at her sudden appearance.
“I’ve been in Antarctica for months,” she said, “mostly just over the hill in Lillie Marleen. I’ve been frightfully busy, but I’ve been waiting for you to invite me over. I did leave you a message when I arrived.”
“I must have overlooked it or not taken it in—I had no idea you were here,” I said, knowing that it was a woefully inadequate response. It had never occurred to me, as I marveled at what my neighbors had done with a new generation of shamirs, that I had been acquainted for nearly a century with one of the most prominent figures in contemporary shamir design and the person most likely to be making a fortune from ice-palace architecture.
I hadn’t seen Emily in the flesh since Steve Willowitch had ferried us to Australia in his copter. People are supposed to keep the VE images in their answerphone AIs constantly updated, but they never do. People are also supposed to use camera transmission when they phone instead of merely invoking their VE images, but they never do that either—so you never get a true appreciation of actual appearance from VE interaction, even VE interaction that hasn’t been allowed to slide into long silence. Emily had changed a great deal more than I had, but each of us was looking at a stranger.
“I should have called you anyway, message or no message,” I said, still floundering in embarrassment, “and I always meant to, but I never quite… I’ve been so fearfully busy, you see. I launched the third part of the History last month.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, in a slightly injured voice. “I shouldn’t have taken it for granted that it was safe to drop in.”
I was quick to make amends—or at least to try. “It’s always safe,” I assured her. “For you, I’m always available.”
“I thought you might be avoiding me,” she said, arching her eyebrow a little. I’d seen exactly the same arch a dozen times while we were engaged in deep and meaningful conversation in our bouncing life raft, although she’d been a mere child. The difference between our ages would have seemed utterly