Free Engine City by Ken MacLeod

in the gravity, but he’s used to this transition; hell, he’s done free fall often enough, he’s bounded across the rusty desert of Raphael in a clumsy pressure suit, he’s earned his honorary title of Cosmonaut. Others, the first-timers, are thin-lipped and whey-faced, lurching with each sway of the train. The cheap housing slides past the windows, then the University’s crag-built complex, sprawling and soaring like everything else here, then the older, richer streets of the town center and shorefront.
    Matt detrains at the esplanade terminus and hesitates. He has never quite gotten used to being feted by his descendants. The Cairns are now the richest of the Cosmonaut clans, thanks to their monopoly of interstellar navigation that they’re exploiting as blatantly as the old merchants ever did their long-cut deal with the krakens. He has nowhere to sleep for the night, nobody apart from the brokers expecting him home, and the merchants off the Nova Babylonian ship will be at the castle, probably being entertained royally. A good party to gatecrash. On the other hand . . . 
    Nah. He’s not up for it. He needs to find his feet first. The terminus is new since eight years ago, a cavernous glass shed full of hurrying people—the three major hominid species, and saurs—and cluttered with concession stands: coffee, flowers, snacks, drugs. Announcements are murmured from cunningly focused speakers, and displayed in midair holograms that don’t quite work. The female gigant at the coffee stall has had all her hair dyed blonde and curled. Matt tries not to laugh at the thought of this car-wash-scale coiffure, smiles politely and takes his cup—thin plastic, but insulating—to a round enamel table.
    “Mr. Cairns?”
    He starts, almost splashing the coffee, and sets it down with both hands around it and glares into the smile of the young woman swinging into the seat opposite, slinging down a bag. She has a camera behind her ear like a pen, and a mike on a parallel spoke against her cheek. Her hair, eyelids, and lips are a sort of frosted gold. Behind all that she actually looks quite good. She’s wearing black leather trousers and a black T-shirt with a broad rectangular panel of multicolored abstract tapestry on the front.
    “Susan Harkness,” she says, sticking out a hand which Matt clasps as briefly as politeness permits.
    “I don’t do interviews.”
    “I’m not a journalist,” she says, fussing momentarily with the recording gear at the side of her head. “Well, I am, but I’m here on family business.”
    (He detects the increment of the local accent’s change since he’s been away: fah-armlie.)
    “You’re family?”
    “Daughter of Elizabeth Harkness and Gregor Cairns.”
    “Ah.” Matt relaxes and relents, smiling. “So I’m your ancestor.”
    “Yes,” she says, looking at him with the unabashed curiosity of a human child seeing its first gigant. “It’s hard to believe.”
    “In a good light, you can see the scars,” Matt says.
    “You’ve had cosmetic surgery?” She sounds disappointed. (Suhdge’ry .)
    “Just two-hundred-fifty-odd years of shaving cuts.” He shrugs. “And fights, of course.”
    “Of course.” She tips her head sideways a little and smiles. Matt realizes she’s putting up a good show; she’s intensely nervous about him, or about something.
    “So,” he says, over the rim of the cup, “what family business? And how did you find me?”
    She waves a hand. “Oh, I knew you had to pass through here. Mam—” She winces at herself—“Elizabeth and Gregor sent me.”
    Matt doesn’t have to ask how she recognized him. Hanging in the castle is his ancient portrait in oils. There’ve been more recent photos, too, since he came out of hiding. Decades old, but not out of date.
    “How are they?”
    “They’re well. They’re just recently back from an expedition.”
    “Space?”
    “No, sea. That Beagle tour they’ve been threatening as long as I can remember.”
    “Longer than that,” says Matt. “Well, I’m glad they finally made