The Reality Dysfunction (Night's Dawn, #1)

by Peter F. Hamilton

Sinon died when the children were eleven; he was a hundred and sixty-eight. Syrinx cried for days, even though he had done his best to prepare the children. “I’ll always remain with you,” he told the dejected group when they gathered round his bed. Syrinx and Pomona had picked fresh angel-trumpets from the garden to be put into vases beside the bed. “We have continuity, us Edenists. I’ll be a part of the habitat personality, I’ll see what you’re all up to, and we can talk whenever you want. So don’t be sad, and don’t be frightened. Death isn’t something to be afraid of, not for us.” And I want to watch you grow up and start your captaincy, he told Syrinx privately. You’re going to be the best captain ever, Sly-minx, you see. She gave him a tentative smile, and then hugged his frail form, feeling the hot, sweaty skin, and hearing in her mind his inner wince as he shifted his position. That night she and Oenone listened to his memories as they fled his decaying brain, a bewildering discharge of images and smells and emotional triggers. That was when she first found out about the nagging worry he held about Oenone, the tiny shred of doubt which persisted about the voidhawk’s unusual co-parent. His concern hanging in the darkened bedroom like one of the phantasms she bamboozled the habitat receptor cells with. See, Sly-minx, I told you I’d never desert you. Not you. She smiled into the empty air as his distinctive mental tone sounded in her head. Nobody else ever called her th...