What they’d found was a starship, a living behemoth capable of FTL travel. It was not any kind of life that humanity understood, being neither a machine that had risen to sentience nor a spaceborn life-form that had evolved or been engineered into its current nature. However, the High Angel wasn’t forthcoming about its origin, saying only that its purpose was to provide a habitable environment to the planet-based species it encountered in the hope of learning about them. It was “resting” in orbit around Icalanise—for how long was also not divulged. After some negotiation over a radio channel it agreed to open three of its domes to humans, who would use the space primarily as a dormitory town for the astroengineering companies. The two most prominent clauses in the settlement agreement were High Angel’s veto on visitors and settlers, and its promise to inform its new human residents before it took flight again, whenever that might be.
Their shuttle maneuvered underneath the vast base of the New Glasgow dome and down along the tapering stalk underneath. The dome’s spaceport was situated just above the point where the pewter-colored stalk sank into the starship’s rocky outer crust, a thick necklace of airlocks and ports that ringed the structure. Several of them had shuttles attached, while larger docking cradles were holding cargo tugs that were unloading.
They docked with a slight tremble, and the plyplastic airlock irised open. “Thank you for traveling with us,” the steward said. “Please remember that after you disembark you will still be in freefall until the lift is moving.”
Oscar waited until all the passengers in front of him had gotten out before releasing his own straps. The corridor outside the airlock was disappointing: a wide silvery tube with a shallow curve taking it deeper into the stalk; there was no exotic feel to it at all. He drifted across it to the lift opposite. Like everyone else he let his fuseto soles stick him to the floor. Just before the doors closed, he saw Paula Myo and her companion glide past the lift, heading farther down the corridor.
Gravity slowly built as the lift slid up the inside of the stalk. That much Oscar could understand, they were accelerating, after all. When it stopped, he was still in a full standard gravity field. The High Angel had never explained that, or any other technical ability it possessed, like its power source, the nature of its FTL drive, how it shielded itself from particle impacts, where the mass came from to extrude its new domes.
Their lift was one of ten opening out into a big arrivals lounge. Oscar and Mac took off their overalls and dropped them into a bin, then headed eagerly for the exit. The transit building was at the center of New Glasgow’s Circle Park, an area of greenery five kilometers wide filled with so many trees it could almost be classed as forest. Behind the trees were the skyscrapers, as varied in shape and texture as those along any New York avenue. The difference here was the skyway loops that coiled around them, thin rails carrying personal pods between public stops at considerable speed. It was daytime, which meant the crystal dome above them had turned translucent, emitting a uniform white light close to Sol’s spectrum. The atmosphere was pleasantly warm, with a touch of summer humidity.
Oscar took a long moment, his head craned back, turning a slow circle. “I have to admit, this is hellishly impressive. Puts the old Second Chance into perspective, doesn’t it?”
“Different strokes…” Mac shrugged. “We developed gateways and the CST network: every planet just a step away. If we’d spent three hundred years developing starships, I expect we’d be riding around the galaxy in something like this.”
Oscar glanced at him. “You’re impressed,” he decided.
“It’s a grand chunk of engineering, I admit. But it doesn’t give me an inferiority complex.”
“Okay, okay. So how do we get to Madam Chairwoman?”
Mac pointed through the woodland ahead. Small footpaths led away from the transit building, meandering through the trees. There was a stream not far away, the glimpse of a lake past the wider trunks. About fifty meters along the path ahead was a small white pillar with three personal pods parked around it. “They’ll take us as close as you can get,” Mac said.
The pods were simple pearl-white spheres with a flattened base. The doors were open ovals on either side, protected by a translucent force field. Mac eased through and sat on the small bench seat inside. Oscar joined him. From the inside, the pod shell was transparent. The force field doors flickered and strengthened.
“Chairwoman’s office, please,” Mac said.
The pod slid along the ground for a few meters, then the path surface dilated, exposing the top of a tunnel, and they sank down into it. There was no light in the tunnel, though the pod’s interior remained illuminated.
“Whoa,” Oscar said. His hands automatically gripped at the inside of the shell, even though there was no sensation of movement through the tunnel. “Must be some kind of inertial damping.”
“Stop analyzing. Enjoy. Especially this bit.”
“What— wowshit.”
The personal pod left the tunnel vertically, soaring along one of the skyway rails at what seemed like supersonic speed. Without feeling any acceleration, they were racing parallel to one of the skyscrapers, a tall slender cone of blue steel with a red sphere perched on top. Then the skyway curved around in a leisurely arc and leveled out. Another pod was hurtling toward them. Oscar had to force himself to keep his eyes open as they flashed past each other. Only then did his rattling heart slow enough so that he could take some enjoyment from the spectacle. They were high enough now that he could see right across the dome. There was as much parkland as there was urban area, and the shapes of the big buildings really were remarkable.
“This is much better at night,” Mac said. “That’s when the crystal turns transparent; you can see Icalanise overhead. Then you really know you’re in an alien place.”
They twisted over a junction to another skyway, which sent them arching around and down toward a building that looked like a silver clamshell. The pod zipped into the huge lobby on the eighteenth floor, and stopped by a white pillar where several others were clustered, waiting.
“Better than your Merc, huh?” Mac said as they climbed out.
Oscar pulled a face. “Just different.”
One of the Chairwoman’s political staffers was waiting for them, a young-looking woman in an expensive business suit. “Welcome to city hall, gentlemen,” Soolina Depfor said. “Ms. Gall is expecting you.” She led them straight into the office of the Chairwoman of the Human Residents Association, a huge oval room that had to be inside the building’s largest central rib. Its ceiling was a half cone of stained glass whose colors undulated in a long perpendicular wave pattern. There was only one piece of furniture, a desk right at the far end; an arrangement that made it seem like an old-fashioned throne room. But then, Oscar knew, Toniea Gall had been Chairwoman of the Residents Association for over a century. Few of history’s absolute monarchs had reigned for that long.
The Chairwoman, a tall woman with blue-black skin, dressed in a traditional African tribal robe, rose to greet them as they approached. With less than a decade left before her next rejuvenation, her face was dignified and solemn. Gray strands had infiltrated her tight-cropped cap of hair. It said something of the confidence she had in herself that she didn’t bother having it dyed. But then she won every election with a substantial majority. Her few critics and opponents claimed it was because nobody else really wanted the job; it was nothing other than a figurehead position; the High Angel ran all the services in the domes with peerless efficiency. To say that was to badly underestimate her ability. The High Angel might have started off simply as a convenient dormitory town for the astroengineering companies, but now the three domes—New Glasgow, Moscow Star, and Cracacol—were home to over fifteen million souls. Two new domes, New Auckland and Babuyan Atoll, which the Chairwoman had negotiated with High Angel, were now almost fully grown and ready for human occupancy. The freeflying factories outside manufactured a small but significant overall percentage of the Commonwealth’s high technology systems. By any measure, the High Angel was a big success story, and Toniea Gall, who had arrived as a company-contract ion thruster technician with the first wave of residents, was both a mirror and champion of that success story. She was also one of the longest serving heads of state, and lately the political media had begun to talk of her as a serious potential candidate for the presidency.