Then Seeker, too, slipped into sleep, and dreamed with flux curled up inside his head, inducing no resonance in his companion: a very private dream, and a strange one. For in that dream his body was transparent, like living glass; and he was on a world that was not this one; yet he was not afraid.
SIXTY-FIVE
MOLSIN, 2603 AD
Closer and closer, the sky-cities moved to Conjunction, their trajectories coming together despite the vagaries of air currents, even the occasional macro-vortex. The strengthening or loosening of political ties and commercial interests were as important to the final configuration as the altitude of laminar flows or the lift capacity of this city compared to that. Not counting D-2 and a handful of other urban babies, nine hundred and twenty-seven cities were coming together high above the Amber Spot.
Condensing from a planet-ranging patternless spread to a globular formation, shrinking inwards to a predetermined centre, they came at leisurely, controlled velocities. There would be no single city at the configuration’s heart. Instead, the core must form itself first; then the other cities could begin to attach themselves, building the formation outwards in concentric shells.
Gaggles and flocks of cities, drawing together.
First Popper, Dubrovnik and Dalton formed a horizontal triangle, extruding vast, thick spars to join themselves together. They would be the middle tier. Later the spars would hollow out, granting intercity access; but while the joining was in progress, they remained solid.
Above them, another triangle formed, these three pulling themselves closer together, creating a tighter, smaller shape. Then Cohenville-Feynmanton-Gaussburg floated into place, above Popper-Dubrovnik-Dalton, and rotated to a forty-degree offset. Spars grew at angles to fasten the two triangles together. Soon after that was done and tests confirmed the structural integrity, the Whitton-Strossville-Aéroparis formation floated underneath, rotated into position, and fastened itself to the cities above.
Two small triangles, above and below a larger triangle: the hub was done.
The first hollow, spherical shell was a five-layer grouping, with varying numbers of cities at each level. From top to bottom, once the shell was complete, the layers were: on top, Kakujing by itself; then Sakharovgorod-Penrose-Pneumos-Bernersley-Neumannstadt forming the second layer down; with Franklin2-Hodgekinston-Yukawa-Darwin9-Melville-Newton-IrEinstein forming the central ‘ring’. Below that was Lahore2.0-Reynoldston-Gödelburg-Emelianenkogorod-Dennettminster; while the singular Cantorℵ (which everyone but lawyers called The Big Aleph) formed the lowest point.
Twenty-eight cities in place; only eight hundred and ninety-nine (plus babies) to go.
Five careful days later, after a flurry of final checking, a single message propagated through every corridor and hall, every private dwelling and public space:
Conjunction achieved.
The tunnel-surfers were the worst: kids with superb intuitive control of quickglass, chasing each other whooping through the crowds. They sailed just over other people’s heads, propelling themselves by flicking strands of quickglass, or whipped along centimetres below the ceilings, hanging from fast-flowing strips. Falls were rare but frequent enough to jeopardize the innocent.
Roger saw one such fall – a teenage girl dropping as she failed to swing from one extruded handle to another – but Rhianna gestured, flinging up floor-tendrils to catch the girl and lower her feet-first. ‘Thanks,’ the girl called, forming a slideway that carried her along the mall floor to a clear area, where she embedded her fists and feet in the wall and caused it to carry her upwards once more. There were smiles among the thronging adults, which Roger took to mean that such sports were nothing new, evoking youthful memories.
‘It’s Conjunction,’ said Rhianna. ‘Everyone needs to go a little wild on occasion.’
‘Even so …’
He was approximately his old self, and she was reacting as if he were the unchanged Roger. But they both knew he could dig deeper, and react faster and differently compared to a mere six standard days before.
‘Better inside,’ she said, ‘than out on the hull. That’s what the law clamps down on.’
‘Are they from Deltaville, do you think?’ Roger gestured at another group hurtling past overhead. ‘Or passing through from elsewhere?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Right now, there’s only one titanic city called Conjunction, and that’s it.’
All of Molsin’s humanity in one massive place. There was no need to point out the strategic implications; Rhianna had been way ahead of him, declaring that this was the flashpoint if Helsen was about to do something.
‘I’ve got assets from other cities as well as Deltaville,’ she said now, ‘and they’re all spacing themselves out, passing through as much of Conjunction as they can.’
Helsen had stolen an autodoc capable of altering her features and her DNA signature. None of Rhianna’s assets – for asset read agent – were likely to sense the darkness that warped Helsen and perhaps controlled her.
‘It’s impossible. Spotting Helsen, I mean.’
‘Not as much as you think.’ Rhianna pointed at his tu-ring. ‘You’ve a few little extras in there, haven’t you?’
‘Maybe.’ But keeping secrets from your director in the field, when they could affect operational effectiveness, was a no-no. Commodore Gould had suggested Roger was a natural; so perhaps he should act as if he were already an intelligence officer, and Rhianna was local-controlling him. ‘Meaning yes. I’ve a massive amount still to explore. As far as I can tell, Dad dumped a copy of everything he had into here.’
‘Good to know. There are some tricks available to us’ – she wobbled her hand, tu-ring in front of Roger’s face – ‘which you’ll learn. There’s a range of possible alterations to Helsen’s DNA, but not an infinite range, certainly not if she planned on avoiding a lengthy time in coma. Likewise the grosser physical work: she won’t have altered her limb length and gait, unless she was willing to compromise her ability to run and dodge.’
‘Oh.’
‘Just because the cities don’t like to spy on their inhabitants’ – Rhianna’s smile momentarily showed innocent joy, mirroring the teenage girl earlier – ‘doesn’t mean they can’t. Quickglass is quickglass, and my people will make use of it.’
If Dad’s work on Fulgor had included running a network of agents, he had never hinted at it. Roger wondered what psychological mastery was required to recruit someone and be certain that you were not betraying yourself to the authorities.
‘You could do your socialite thing again.’ Roger pointed at her functional clothing and practical hairstyle. ‘Get recognized, get on the newscasts with me standing beside you.’
‘When Helsen attacked before, she was expecting you to be a softer target, and she didn’t expect me at all. I don’t think the Judas goat thing will work a second time. She’s either going to carry on with her operation if there is one, or go deep into hiding.’
‘Marvellous. So is there any point in being here in Deltaville in particular?’
Rhianna looked at him.
‘You want to go back to Barbour to see Leeja Rigelle?’
‘Er, no …’ He had not thought of Leeja for two days or more. ‘I didn’t realize you knew about her.’
‘Backtracking your details wasn’t hard,’ said Rhianna. ‘Pity Helsen’s proving less–Oh, hello. It’s the new observers.’ She blinked as her smartlenses flickered. ‘We have three possible sightings from urban surveillance. In three different cities.’
The lenses cleared.
‘Let’s have nice a cup of daistral,’ she said.
It was not what he expected, but it made sense: inside a cocoon of quickglass – privacy booth, less noticeable than usual, this being a festive occasion – Rhianna brought up a sequence of real-holo images, tiny dots glowing inside transparent city-representations. She had been dumping new observer-agents in place, with wider parameters. A sheaf of sighting possibilities had arrived before Rhianna shut off all outside comms, indicating twenty-three possible locations, each annotated in subsidiary holovolumes. Some were multiple sightings of the same individual; but there were seven different people involved, and potentially none of them was Helsen: none of the probabilities quite reached seventy per cent.