Free A Second Chance at Eden by Peter F. Hamilton

light up with some outré false-colour image of something which resembled a galactic nebula, all emerald and purple.
    ‘Just about all seventeen thousand of us,’ she said. ‘They have to be, there’s no such thing as a domestic or civic worker up here. The servitor chimps perform every mundane task you can think of. So you have to be able to communicate with them. The first affinity bonds to be developed were just that, bonds. Each one was unique. Clone-analogue symbionts allowed you to plug directly into a servitor’s nervous system; one set was implanted in your brain, and the servitor got the other. Then Penny Maowkavitz came up with the idea of Eden, and the whole concept was broadened out. The symbionts I’m implanting in you will give you what we call communal affinity; you can converse with the habitat personality, access its senses, talk to other people, order the servitors around. It’s a perfect communication system. God’s own radio wave.’
    ‘Don’t let the Pope hear you say that.’
    ‘Pope Eleanor’s a fool. If you ask me, she’s a little too desperate to prove she can be as traditionalist as any male. The Christian Church has always been antagonistic to science, even now, after the reunification. You’d think they’d learn from past mistakes. They certainly made enough of them. If her biotechnology commission would just open their eyes to what we’ve achieved up here.’
    ‘There’s none so blind . . .’
    ‘Damn right. Did you know every child conceived up here for the last two years has had the affinity gene spliced in when they were zygotes, rather than have symbiont implants? They’re affinity capable from the moment their brain forms, right in the womb. There was no pressure put on the parents by JSKP, they insisted. And they’re a beautiful group of kids, Harvey, smart, happy; there’s none of the kind of casual cruelty you normally get in kindergartens back on Earth. They don’t hurt each other. Affinity has given them honesty and trust instead of selfishness. And the Church calls it ungodly.’
    ‘But it’s a foreign gene, not one God gave us, not part of our divine heritage.’
    ‘You support the Church’s view?’ Her voice hardened.
    ‘No.’
    ‘God gave us the gene for cystic fibrosis, He gave us haemophilia, and He gave us Down’s syndrome. They’re all curable with gene therapy. Genes the person didn’t have to begin with, genes we have to vector in. Does that make those we treat holy violations?’
    I made a mental note never to introduce Corrine to Jocelyn. ‘You’re fighting an old battle with the wrong person.’
    ‘Yeah. Maybe. Sorry, but that kind of medieval attitude infuriates me.’
    ‘Good. Can we get on with the implant now, please?’
    ‘Oh, that?’
    The chair started to rotate back to the vertical. Corrine was flicking off the equipment.
    ‘I finished a couple of minutes ago,’ she said with a contented chuckle. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to stop chattering.’
    ‘You . . .’
    The smiling nurse began to unstrap me.
    Corrine pulled off a pair of surgical gloves. ‘I want you to go home and relax for the rest of the afternoon. No more work today, I don’t want you stressed; the symbiont neurons don’t need to be drenched in toxins at this stage. And no alcohol, either.’
    ‘Am I going to have a headache?’
    ‘A hypochondriac like you, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’ She winked playfully. ‘But it’s all in your mind.’
    *
    I walked home. The first chance I’d had to actually appreciate the real benefit of the habitat. I walked under an open sky, feeling zephyrs ripple my uniform, smelling a mélange of flower perfumes. A strange experience. I’m just old enough to remember venturing out under open skies, taking backpack walks through what was left of the countryside for pleasure. That was before the armada storms started bombarding the continents for weeks at a time. Nowadays, of course, the planet’s climate is in a state