Even the clouds cooperated. The thin haze of the upper cloud deck served to filter the sunlight so that the intensity of the Sun here was little more than the Earth's solar constant.
Hypatia was not the largest of the floating cities, but it was certainly the richest, a city of helical buildings and golden domes, with huge open areas and elaborate gardens. Inside the dome of Hypatia, the architects played every possible trick to make us forget that we were encapsulated in an enclosed volume.
But we didn't see this part, the gardens and waterfalls, not at first. Leaving the barque, we entered a disembarking lounge below the city. For all that it featured plush chaise lounges, floors covered with genetically engineered pink grass, and priceless sculptures of iron and jade, it was functional: a place to wait.
It was large enough to hold a thousand people, but there was only one person in the lounge, a boy who was barely old enough to have entered his teens, wearing a bathrobe and elaborately pleated yellow silk pants. He was slightly pudgy, with an agreeable, but undistinguished, round face.
After the expense of our transport, I was surprised at finding only one person sent to await our arrival.
The kid looked at Leah. “Doctor Hamakawa. I'm pleased to meet you.” Then he turned to me. “Who the hell are you?” he said.
"Who are you?” I said. “Where's our reception?"
The boy was chewing on something. He seemed about to spit it out, and then thought better of it. He looked over at Leah. “This guy is with you, Dr. Hamakawa? What's he do?"
"This is David Tinkerman,” Leah said. “Technician. And, when need be, pilot. Yes, he's with me."
"Tell him he might wish to learn some manners,” the boy said.
"And who are you?” I shot back. “I don't think you answered the question."
The not-quite-teenager looked at me with disdain, as if he wasn't sure if he would even bother to talk to me. Then he said, in a slow voice as if talking to an idiot, “I am Carlos Fernando Delacroix Ortega de la Jolla y Nordwald-Gruenbaum. I own this station and everything on it."
He had an annoying high voice, on the edge of changing, but not yet there.
Leah, however, didn't seem to notice his voice. “Ah,” she said. “You are the scion of Nordwald-Gruenbaum. The ruler of Hypatia."
The kid shook his head and frowned. “No,” he said. “Not the scion, not exactly. I am Nordwald-Gruenbaum.” The smile made him look like a child again; it make him look likable. When he bowed, he was utterly charming. “I,” he said, “am the sultan of the clouds."
Carlos Fernando, as it turned out, had numerous servants indeed. Once we had been greeted, he made a gesture and an honor guard of twenty women in silken doublets came forward to escort us up.
Before we entered the elevator, the guards circled around. At a word from Carlos Fernando, a package was brought forward. Carlos took it, and, as the guards watched, handed it to Leah. “A gift,” he said, “to welcome you to my city."
The box was simple and unadorned. Leah opened it. Inside the package was a large folio. She took it out. The book was bound in cracked, dark red leather, with no lettering. She flipped to the front. “Giordano Bruno,” she read. "On the Infinite Universe and Worlds." She smiled, and riffled through the pages. “A facsimile of the first English edition?"
"I thought perhaps you might enjoy it."
"Charming.” She placed it back in the box, and tucked it under her arm. “Thank you,” she said.
The elevator rose so smoothly it was difficult to believe it traversed two kilometers in a little under three minutes. The doors opened to brilliant noon sunlight. We were in the bubble city.
The city was a fantasy of foam and air. Although it was enclosed in a dome, the bubble was so large that the walls nearly vanished into the air, and it seemed unencumbered. With the guards beside us, we walked through the city. Everywhere there were parks, some just a tiny patch of green surrounding a tree, some forests perched on the wide tops of elongated stalks, with elegantly sculpted waterfalls cascading down to be caught in wide fountain basins. White pathways led upward through the air, suspended by cables from impossibly narrow beams, and all around us were sounds of rustling water and birdsong.
At the end of the welcoming tour, I realized I had been imperceptibly but effectively separated from Leah. “Hey,” I said. “What happened to Dr. Hamakawa?"
The honor guard of women still surrounded me, but Leah and the kid who was the heir of Nordwald-Gruenbaum had vanished.
"We're sorry,” one of the women answered, one slightly taller, perhaps, than the others. “I believe that she has been taken to her suite to rest for a bit, since in a few hours she is to be greeted at the level of society."
"I should be with her."
The woman looked at me calmly. “We had no instructions to bring you. I don't believe you were invited."
"Excuse me,” I said. “I'd better find them."
The woman stood back and gestured to the city. Walkways meandered in all directions, a three-dimensional maze. “By all means, if you like. We were instructed that you were to have free run of the city."
I nodded. Clearly, plans had been made with no room for me. “How will I get in touch?” I asked. “What if I want to talk to Leah—to Dr. Hamakawa?"
"They'll be able to find you. Don't worry.” After a pause, she said, “Shall we show you to your place of domicile?"
The building to which I was shown was one of a cluster that seemed suspended in the air by crisscrossed cables. It was larger than many houses. I was used to living in the cubbyholes of habitat modules, and the spaciousness of the accommodations startled me.
"Good evening, Mr. Tinkerman.” The person greeting me was a tall Chinese man perhaps fifty years of age. The woman next to him, I surmised, was his wife. She was quite a bit younger, in her early twenties. She was slightly overweight by the standards I was used to, but I had noticed that was common here. Behind her hid two children, their faces peeking out and then darting back again to safety. The man introduced himself as Truman Singh, and his wife as Epiphany. “The rest of the family will meet you in a few hours, Mr. Tinkerman,” he said, smiling. “They are mostly working."
"We both work for His Excellency,” Epiphany added. “Carlos Fernando has asked our braid to house you. Don't hesitate to ask for anything you need. The cost will go against the Nordwald-Gruenbaum credit, which is,” she smiled, “quite unlimited here. As you might imagine."
"Do you do this often?” I asked. “House guests?"
Epiphany looked up at her husband. “Not too often,” she said, “not for His Excellency, anyway. It's not uncommon in the cities, though; there's a lot of visiting back and forth as one city or another drifts nearby, and everyone will put up visitors from time to time."
"You don't have hotels?"
She shook her head. “We don't get many visitors from outplanet."
"You said ‘His Excellency,’ “ I said. “That's Carlos Fernando? Tell me about him."
"Of course. What would you like to know?"
"Does he really—” I gestured at the city—"own all of this? The whole planet?"
"Yes, certainly, the city, yes. And also, no."
"How is that?"
"He will own the city, yes—this one, and five thousand others—but the planet? Maybe, maybe not. The Nordwald-Gruenbaum family does claim to own the planet, but in truth that claim means little. The claim may apply to the surface of the planet, but nobody owns the sky. The cities, though, yes. But, of course, he doesn't actually control them all personally."
"Well, of course not. I mean, hey, he's just a kid—he must have trustees or proxies or something, right?"
"Indeed. Until he reaches his majority."
"And then?"
Truman Singh shrugged. “It is the Nordwald-Gruenbaum tradition—written into the first Nordwald's will. When he reaches his majority, it is personal property."
There were, as I discovered, eleven thousand, seven hundred and ei
ght cities floating in the atmosphere of Venus. “Probably a few more,” Truman Singh told me. “Nobody keeps track, exactly. There are myths of cities that float low down, never rising above the lower cloud decks, forever hidden. You can't live that deep—it's too hot—but the stories say that the renegade cities have a technology that allows them to reject heat.” He shrugged. “Who knows?” In any case, of the known cities, the estate to which Carlos Fernando was heir owned or held shares or partial ownership of more than half.
"The Nordwald-Gruenbaum entity has been a good owner,” Truman said. “I should say, they know that their employees could leave, move to another city if they had to, but they don't."
"And there's no friction?"
"Oh, the independent cities, they all think that the Nordwald-Gruenbaums have too much power!” He laughed. “But there's not much they can do about it, eh?"
"They could fight."
Truman Singh reached out and tapped me lightly on the center of my forehead with his middle finger. “That would not be wise.” He paused, and then said more slowly, “We are an interconnected ecology here, the independents and the sultanate. We rely on each other. The independents could declare war, yes, but in the end nobody would win."
"Yes,” I said. “Yes, I see that. Of course, the floating cities are so fragile—a single break in the gas envelope—"
"We are perhaps not as fragile as you think,” Truman Singh replied. “I should say, you are used to the built worlds, but they are vacuum habitats, where a single blow-out would be catastrophic. Here, you know, there is no pressure difference between the atmosphere outside and the lifesphere inside; if there is a break, the gas equilibrates through the gap only very slowly. Even if we had a thousand broken panels, it would take weeks for the city to sink to the irrecoverable depths. And, of course, we do have safeguards, many safeguards.” He paused, and then said, “but if there were a war . . . we are safe against ordinary hazards, you can have no fear of that . . . but against metastable bombs . . . well, that would not be good. No, I should say that would not be good at all."
* * * *
The next day I set out to find where Leah had been taken, but although everyone I met was unfailingly polite, I had little success in reaching her. At least, I was beginning to learn my way around.
The first thing I noticed about the city was the light. I was used to living in orbital habitats, where soft, indirect light was provided by panels of white-light diodes. In Hypatia City, brilliant Venus sunlight suffused throughout the interior. The next thing I noticed were the birds.
Hypatia was filled with birds. Birds were common in orbital habitats, since parrots and cockatiels adapt well to the freefall environment of space, but the volume of Hypatia was crowded with bright tropical birds, parrots and cockatoos and lorikeets, cardinals and chickadees and quetzals, more birds than I had names for, more birds than I had ever seen, a raucous orchestra of color and sound.
The floating city had twelve main chambers, separated from one another by thin, transparent membranes with a multiplicity of passages, each chamber well lit and cheerful, each with a slightly different style.
The quarters I had been assigned were in Sector Carbon, where individual living habitats were strung on cables like strings of iridescent pearls above a broad fenway of forest and grass. Within Sector Carbon, cable cars swung like pendulums on long strands, taking a traveler from platform to platform across the sector in giddy arcs. Carlos Fernando's chambers were in the highest, centermost bubble—upcity, as it was called—a bubble dappled with colored light and shadow, where the architecture was fluted minarets and oriental domes. But I wasn't, as it seemed, allowed into this elite sphere. I didn't even learn where Leah had been given quarters.
I found a balcony on a tower that looked out through the transparent canopy over the clouds. The cloudscape was just as magnificent as it had been the previous day; towering and slowly changing. The light was a rich golden color, and the Sun, masked by a skein of feathery clouds like a tracery of lace, was surrounded by a bronze halo. From the angle of the Sun it was early afternoon, but there would be no sunset that day; the great winds circling the planet would not blow the city into the night side of Venus for another day.
Of the eleven thousand other cities, I could detect no trace—looking outward, there was no indication that we were not alone in the vast cloudscape that stretched to infinity. But then, I thought, if the cities were scattered randomly, there would be little chance one would be nearby at any given time. Venus was a small planet, as planets go, but large enough to swallow ten thousand cities—or even a hundred times that—without any visible crowding of the skies.
I wished I knew what Leah thought of it.
I missed Leah. For all that she sometimes didn't seem to even notice I was there . . . our sojourn on Mars, brief as it had been . . . we had shared the same cubby. Perhaps that meant nothing to her. But it had been the very center of my life.
I thought of her body, lithe and golden-skinned. Where was she? What was she doing?
The park was a platform overgrown with cymbidian orchids, braced in the air by the great cables that transected the dome from the stanchion trusswork. This seemed a common architecture here, where even the ground beneath was suspended from the buoyancy of the air dome. I bounced my weight back and forth, testing the resonant frequency, and felt the platform move infinitesimally under me. Children here must be taught from an early age not to do that; a deliberate effort could build up destructive oscillation. I stopped bouncing, and let the motion damp.
When I returned near the middle of the day, neither Truman nor Epiphany were there, and Truman's other wife, a woman named Triolet, met me. She was perhaps in her sixties, with dark skin and deep gray eyes. She had been introduced to me the previous day, but in the confusion of meeting numerous people in what seemed to be a large extended family, I had not had a chance to really talk to her yet. There were always a number of people around the Singh household, and I was confused as to how, or even if, they were related to my hosts. Now, talking to her, I realized that she, in fact, was the one who had control of the Singh household finances.
The Singh family were farmers, I discovered. Or farm managers. The flora in Hypatia was decorative or served to keep the air in the dome refreshed, but the real agriculture was in separate domes, floating at an altitude that was optimized for plant growth and had no inhabitants. Automated equipment did the work of sowing and irrigation and harvest. Truman and Epiphany Singh were operational engineers, making those decisions that required a human input, watching that the robots kept on track and were doing the right things at the right times.
And there was a message waiting for me, inviting me in the evening to attend a dinner with His Excellency, Carlos Fernando Delacroix Ortega de la Jolla y Nordwald-Gruenbaum.
Triolet helped me with my wardrobe, along with Epiphany, who had returned by the time I was ready to prepare. They both told me emphatically that my serviceable but well-worn jumpsuit was not appropriate attire. The gown Triolet selected was far gaudier than anything I would have chosen for myself, an electric shade of indigo accented with a wide midnight black sash. “Trust us, it will be suitable,” Epiphany told me. Despite its bulk, it was as light as a breath of air.
"All clothes here are light,” Epiphany told me. “Spider's silk."
"Ah, I see” I said. “Synthetic spider silk. Strong and light; very practical."
"Synthetic?” Epiphany asked, and giggled. “No, not synthetic. It's real."
"The silk is actually woven by spiders?"
"No, the whole garment is.” At my puzzled look, she said, “Teams of spiders. They work together."
"Spiders."
"Well, they're natural weavers, you know. And easy to transport."
I arrived at the banquet hall at the appointed time and found that the plasma-arc blue gown that Epiphany had selected for me was the most conservative dress there. There were perhaps thirty people present, but Leah was cle
arly the center. She seemed happy with the attention, more animated than I'd recalled seeing her before.
"They're treating you well?” I asked, when I'd finally made it through the crowd to her.
"Oh, indeed."
I discovered I had nothing to say. I waited for her to ask about me, but she didn't. “Where have they given you to stay?"
"A habitat next section over,” she said. “Sector Carbon. It's amazing—I've never seen so many birds."
"That's the sector I'm in,” I said, “but they didn't tell me where you were."
"Really? That's odd.” She tapped up a map of the residential sector on a screen built into the diamond tabletop, and a three-dimensional image appeared to float inside the table. She rotated it and highlighted her habitat, and I realized that she was indeed adjacent, in a large habitat that was almost directly next to the complex I was staying in. “It's a pretty amazing place. But mostly I've been here in the upcity. Have you talked to Carli much yet? He's a very clever kid. Interested in everything—botany, physics, even engineering."
"Really?” I said. “I don't think they'll let me into the upcity."
"You're kidding; I'm sure they'll let you in. Hey—” she called over one of the guards. “Say, is there any reason Tinkerman can't come up to the centrum?"
"No, madam, if you want it, of course not."
"Great. See, no problem."
And then the waiters directed me to my place at the far end of the table.
The table was a thick slab of diamond, the faceted edges collecting and refracting rainbows of color. The top was as smooth and slippery as a sheet of ice. Concealed inside were small computer screens so that any of the diners who wished could call up graphics or data as needed during a conversation. The table was both art and engineering, practical and beautiful at the same time.
Carlos Fernando sat at the end of the table. He seemed awkward and out of place in a chair slightly too large for him. Leah sat at his right, and an older woman—perhaps his mother?—on his left. He was bouncing around in his chair, alternating between playing with the computer system in his table and sneaking glances over at Leah when he thought she wasn't paying attention to him. If she looked in his direction, he would go still for a moment, and then his eyes would quickly dart away and he went back to staring at the graphics screen in front of him and fidgeting.
Asimov's SF, September 2010 Page 15
