Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  DIAMOND DOGS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  TURQUOISE DAYS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  “[Turquoise Days] showcases Reynolds’s flair for exotic locales, startling concepts, and crisp language.”

  —Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

  “[Diamond Dogs is an] exhilarating first-person account space caper [that] feels more like a gothic planetary noir with fabulous amoral mercenary antiheroes . . . [Turquoise Days is an] exciting outer space thriller [that] hooks the audience . . . The well-written stories keep the audience locked into one sitting . . . fabulous.” —Midwest Book Review

  “Two excellent stories.” —SF Revu

  “The tales kept me fascinated.” —Philadelphia Weekly Press

  “Reynolds illuminates more of his vividly conceived universe and explores the individuals and groups that bring those worlds to life. A good choice.” —Library Journal

  “A return to a fantastic universe . . . Diamond Dogs is undoubtedly one of the best interpretations of the ‘fatal puzzle’ idea. Reynolds builds some truly interesting characters and, even in the novella’s limited length, manages to develop them as the story progresses. Some of the puzzles themselves are based on engaging concepts . . . [It] fits in nicely with any other book in the series, with the same techno-gothic atmosphere delivered via Reynolds’s capable prose. It’s an excellent read, and keeps up a brisk pace throughout. The story’s peppered with all manners of allusions, which add a nice personal feel to the work. It’s fun to catch them when they pop out of the woodwork.

  “[Turquoise Days’s] scenery is vivid and unusual, and it’s exciting to have some more light shed on the mysterious Pattern Jugglers . . . there’s [a] good payoff at the end, as Reynolds closes the story quite nicely . . . An appreciated addition to the universe of Revelation Space. Reynolds shows us a broader scope of the world he’s created, as well as his talent as a writer . . . If you enjoyed the full-length novels, then you’ll love [these novellas].” —Dragonsworn

  “[Diamond Dogs is] another excellent story, creating gothic vistas and believable far futures . . . One of Reynolds’s techniques is to gradually unfold the background as the story develops, which he uses to good effect [in Turquoise Days] . . . The planetary setting is one which you hope Reynolds will return to, as it is genuinely inventive and original.” —Best SF

  “The story that Alastair Reynolds gives us in Diamond Dogs brings new insights . . . a startling and ambitious story that anyone who was drawn to the questions raised by Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? will enjoy.

  “[Turquoise Days has] the flash and burn you’d expect from an author who has made his reputation as a practitioner of the high-octane propelled, techno-jargoned, noirish Flash Gordon oeuvre.” —SF Site

  “This collection of two novellas is a rare find . . . I could not put [Diamond Dogs] down . . . [Turquoise Days is an] excellent story . . . There was a steady dramatic buildup throughout the whole piece with little pockets of drama and mystery interspersed throughout . . . There’s great sense of wonder ... Nicely done!” —SF Signal

  “I am an enormous fan of Reynolds’s work. It seems he can’t put a foot wrong at the moment, providing as he does everything I want in a science fiction story—startling originality, daring concepts and ideas, rich characterizations, and the technical skills to pull them all together. Diamond Dogs is yet another small but perfectly formed masterpiece to add to the Reynolds canon . . . [He] has a knack of keeping you reading. It might be three in the morning and you’ve got work the next day, but you still need to turn that page to find out what happens. And then the page after that! He is an ingenious and endlessly inventive writer, filling his work with twists and turns that make for compulsive reading. His descriptive prose can be awesome at times. The various horrors played out in the Spire are truly chilling . . . Diamond Dogs is glam-goth science fiction played loud and is destined to become as much of a classic as the Bowie song that inspired the title. Don’t miss it!” —SF Revu

  “The book can be read—and enjoyed—without the reader being familiar with the continuum in which it’s set . . . This is genuine science fiction, its premises logical and convincing, a believable—if distinctly disturbing—future presented in compelling prose . . . very difficult to put down.” —SF Crowsnest

  “Noteworthy.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Diamond Dogs is a rare fusion of hard SF and splatter-gore horror, a disturbing tale which nonetheless tempts the reader to keep going . . . Turquoise Days is an extraordinarily well-written novella, and a commendable addition to Reynolds’s richly imagined universe.” —SciFi Dimensions

  Revelation Space

  Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year, Chronicle

  One of the Best First Novels of the Year, Locus

  “Clearly intoxicated by cutting-edge scientific research—in bioengineering, space physics, cybernetics—Reynolds spins a ravishingly inventive tale of intrigue.” —Publishers Weekly

  Redemption Ark

  Best SF Novel of the Year, Chronicle

  One of the Best SF Novels of the Year, Locus

  “The best of the new breed of space opera. Wild action on a grand scale spans well-imagined and developed worlds—bold and new with sharply defined differences in both characters and the changed definitions of humanity.”

  —The Denver Post

  Absolution Gap

  One of the Best SF Novels of the Year, Locus

  One of the Top Ten Science Fiction Novels of the Year, SF Site

  “A book of great fascination, rich description, and memorable action.” —Locus

  Ace Books by Alastair Reynolds

  REVELATION SPACE

  CHASM CITY

  REDEMPTION ARK

  ABSOLUTION GAP

  DIAMOND DOGS, TURQUOISE DAYS

  CENTURY RAIN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsi
bility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DIAMOND DOGS, TURQUOISE DAYS

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Orion Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2002 by Alastair Reynolds.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-4406-2200-7

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Thanks to Peter Crowther of PS Publishing and Marty Halpern and Gary Turner of Golden Gryphon Press for giving me the opportunity to write these novellas.

  DIAMOND DOGS

  ONE

  I met Childe in the Monument to the Eighty.

  It was one of those days when I had the place largely to myself, able to walk from aisle to aisle without seeing another visitor; only my footsteps disturbed the air of funereal silence and stillness.

  I was visiting my parents’ shrine. It was a modest affair: a smooth wedge of obsidian shaped like a metronome, undecorated save for two cameo portraits set in elliptical borders. The sole moving part was a black blade which was attached near the base of the shrine, ticking back and forth with magisterial slowness. Mechanisms buried inside the shrine ensured that it was winding down, destined to count out days and then years with each tick. Eventually it would require careful measurement to detect its movement.

  I was watching the blade when a voice disturbed me.

  “Visiting the dead again, Richard?”

  “Who’s there?” I said, looking around, faintly recognising the speaker but not immediately able to place him.

  “Just another ghost.”

  Various possibilities flashed through my mind as I listened to the man’s deep and taunting voice—a kidnapping, an assassination—before I stopped flattering myself that I was worthy of such attention.

  Then the man emerged from between two shrines a little way down from the metronome.

  “My God,” I said.

  “Now do you recognise me?”

  He smiled and stepped closer: as tall and imposing as I remembered. He had lost the devil’s horns since our last meeting—they had only ever been a bio-engineered affectation—but there was still something satanic about his appearance, an effect not lessened by the small and slightly pointed goatee he had cultivated in the meantime.

  Dust swirled around him as he walked towards me, suggesting that he was not a projection.

  “I thought you were dead, Roland.”

  “No, Richard,” he said, stepping close enough to shake my hand. “But that was most certainly the effect I desired to achieve.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Long story.”

  “Start at the beginning, then.”

  Roland Childe placed a hand on the smooth side of my parents’ shrine. “Not quite your style, I’d have thought?”

  “It was all I could do to argue against something even more ostentatious and morbid. But don’t change the subject. What happened to you?”

  He removed his hand, leaving a faint damp imprint. “I faked my own death. The Eighty was the perfect cover. The fact that it all went so horrendously wrong was even better. I couldn’t have planned it like that if I’d tried.”

  No arguing with that, I thought. It had gone horrendously wrong.

  More than a century and a half ago, a clique of researchers led by Calvin Sylveste had resurrected the old idea of copying the essence of a living human being into a computer-generated simulation. The procedure—then in its infancy—had the slight drawback that it killed the subject. But there had still been volunteers, and my parents had been amongst the first to sign up and support Calvin’s work. They had offered him political protection when the powerful Mixmaster lobby opposed the project, and they had been amongst the first to be scanned.

  Less than fourteen months later, their simulations had also been amongst the first to crash.

  None could ever be restarted. Most of the remaining Eighty had succumbed, and now only a handful remained unaffected.

  “You must hate Calvin for what he did,” Childe said, still with that taunting quality in his voice.

  “Would it surprise you if I said I didn’t?”

  “Then why did you set yourself so vocally against his family after the tragedy?”

  “Because I felt justice still needed to be served.” I turned from the shrine and started walking away, curious as to whether Childe would follow me.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “But that opposition cost you dearly, didn’t it?”

  I bridled, halting next to what appeared a highly realistic sculpture but was almost certainly an embalmed corpse.

  “Meaning what?”

  “The Resurgam expedition, of course, which just happened to be bankrolled by House Sylveste. By rights, you should have been on it. You were Richard Swift, for heaven’s sake. You’d spent the better part of your life thinking about possible modes of alien sentience. There should have been a place for you on that ship, and you damned well knew it.”

  “It wasn’t that simple,” I said, resuming my walk. “There were a limited number of slots available and they needed practical types first—biologists, geologists, that kind of thing. By the time they’d filled the most essential slots, there simply wasn’t any room for abstract dreamers like myself.”

  “And the fact that you’d pissed off House Sylveste had nothing whatsoever to do with it? Come off it, Richard.”

  We descended a series of steps down into the lower level of the Monument. The atrium’s ceiling was a cloudy mass of jagged sculptures: interlocked metal birds. A party of visitors was arriving, attended by servitors and a swarm of bright, marble-sized float-cams. Childe breezed through the group, drawing annoyed frowns but no actual recognition, although one or two of the people in the party were vague acquaintances of mine.

  “What is this about?” I asked, once we were outside.

  “Concern for an old friend. I’ve had my tabs on you, and it was pretty obvious that not being selected for that expedition was a crushing disappointment. You’d thrown your life into contemplation of the alien. One marriage down the drain because of your self-absorption. What was her name again?”

  I’d had her memory buried so deeply that it took a real effort of will to recall any exact details about my marriage.

  “Celestine. I think.”

  “Since then you’ve had a few relationships, but nothing lasting more than a decade. A decade’s a mere fling in this town, Richard.”

  “My private life’s my own business,” I responded sullenly. “Hey. Where’s my volantor? I parked it here.”

  “I sent it away. We’ll take mine instead.”

  Where my volantor had been was a larger, bloodred model. It was as baroquely ornamented as a funeral barge. At a gesture from Childe it clammed open, revealing a plush gold interior with four seats, one of which was occupied by a dark, slouched figure.

  “What’s going on, Roland?”

  “I’ve found something. Something astonishing that I want you to be a part of; a challenge that makes every game you and I ever played in our youth pale in comparison.”

  “A challenge?”

  “The ultimate one, I think.”

  He had pricked my curiosity, but I hoped it was not too obvious. “The city’s vigilant. It’ll be a matter of public record that I came to the Monume
nt, and we’ll have been recorded together by those float-cams.”

  “Exactly,” Childe said, nodding enthusiastically. “So you risk nothing by getting in the volantor.”

  “And should I at any point weary of your company?”

  “You have my word that I’ll let you leave.”

  I decided to play along with him for the time being. Childe and I took the volantor’s front pair of seats. Once ensconced, I turned around to acquaint myself with the other passenger, and then flinched as I saw him properly.

  He wore a high-necked leather coat which concealed much of the lower half of his face. The upper part was shadowed under the generous rim of a Homburg, tipped down to shade his brow. Yet what remained visible was sufficient to shock me. There was only a blandly handsome silver mask; sculpted into an expression of quiet serenity. The eyes were blank silver surfaces, what I could see of his mouth a thin, slightly smiling slot.

  “Doctor Trintignant,” I said.

  He reached forward with a gloved hand, allowing me to shake it as one would the hand of a woman. Beneath the black velvet of the glove I felt armatures of hard metal. Metal that could crush diamond.

  “The pleasure is entirely mine,” he said.

  Airborne, the volantor’s baroque ornamentation melted away to mirror-smoothness. Childe pushed ivory-handled control sticks forward, gaining altitude and speed. We seemed to be moving faster than the city ordinances allowed, avoiding the usual traffic corridors. I thought of the way he had followed me, researched my past and had my own volantor desert me. It would also have taken considerable resourcefulness to locate the reclusive Trintignant and persuade him to emerge from hiding.

  Clearly Childe’s influence in the city exceeded my own, even though he had been absent for so long.