There seldom were. Maybe that was maturity, too.
TWELVE
Grudging Respect
On the way to their audience with the Chairwoman they glimpsed zones of the city. A temple housing a single hair from the beard of some prophet whose very name was lost. Meat grilled in the open with dust-and-flies marinade. A church made entirely of cloth. One of the side effects of religious sites, Nikka remarked, was that some were so ludicrous that the whole lot fell into disrepute by association. Tonogan, who escorted them, seemed affronted that they regarded such buildings as mere examples of eccentric architecture. Nigel remembered his mother’s similar reaction to his opinions on the ideas behind the Church of England.
The Chairwoman was even less pleased. “I could look into the body found in your shaft, you know.”
“Yes, I wish you would,” Nigel answered. “He screamed dreadfully. Woke up the neighbors. Anyone you knew?”
“I would hardly—”
“My son found some gear he apparently had.” Nigel held up a chunky instrument of enigmatic tiny black boxes.
“I see not—”
“Makes you wonder what it’s used for, doesn’t it?”
In the peculiar custom of this place, their killing an agent of the Chairwoman afforded them some grudging respect, even some protection. People who mentioned the subject at all seemed to regard it as more like an audacious chess move than an act of violence, commending applause rather than revenge. The code also had ruled that the toughs sent to humiliate them were not physically augmented, as Tonogan was—a vestige of the TwenCen’s notion of a fair fight.
Every era has its oddities, but Nikka had pointed out that a constant of urban populations was the glamorizing of marginally criminal acts. This bit of theory had made Nigel bold enough to taunt Tonogan when she had come to call. Their ploy had been naughty, but somehow admirable.
The large purple woman settled on her divan and regarded them all disdainfully. “I will make you a reasonable offer on your property.”
Nikka said, “We only need enough to take us away from here. We want to keep our buildings.”
“Why? You cannot afford to return to your Lane.”
Ito said flatly, “We want the buildings. That’s final.” The family had decided on that and Nigel was pleased to see Ito showing that they could not be split, as Tonogan had tried.
Nikka said, more pointedly, “If we can’t buy a short transit, how about a long one?”
The Chairwoman’s face, which was usually animated despite looking for most purposes like a wad of dough with raisins stuck in for eyes, became blank. “How did you . . . ?”
“Old folks aren’t entirely useless,” Nikka said brightly. “I nosed around.”
“Carnivorous curiosity,” Nigel added. “She turned up the fact that the energy density in a wormhole is higher if it’s tightly curved.”
Nikka nodded. “And the cost of making a transit goes up with the energy density.”
“Umm.” The Chairwoman’s mouth turned crabby. “I did not think you would work that out.”
“Offer us terms. We want—” Nikka rattled off a long list, headed by the use of a Causality Engine—polarized, of course.
“You realize that you’ll have to make several jumps, further and further into esty-cords? And then several back?” The Chairwoman seemed genuinely interested, not merely angling for advantage.
“We’ll need pressure skins, too,” Nikka confirmed.
A curt nod. “You truly wish to risk that?”
“We must,” Angelina said. “We want to go home.”
Nigel nodded, not daring to speak. This was the crucial moment, he could feel it. Home. Back to a world he could understand, off the grand stage. For at least a while. Something told him that he would be forced back into the operatics of Earthers and mechanicals and Old Ones, eventually. But not now. Not while they still had family and blissfully finite horizons.
The Chairwoman eyed them. “You are more courageous than you look, you Walmsleys.”
She agreed to the financial details with a suddenness and phony casualness that masked a disagreeable defeat. Not that the Walmsleys had made any appreciable dent in her bureaucrat’s world, he was sure. They would not have survived that. Sometimes, Nigel thought, it was of more use to be an irritant—so long as you didn’t get slapped like a pesky insect.
Deal done, the Chairwoman was cordial. In a mannered fashion, apparently part of a set ritual marking successful negotiations, she arranged herself in a helical hammock—
apparently a sign of informality here—and remarked, “No one ever choosed this before.”
Nigel asked, “Why? We aren’t particularly brilliant. It’s obvious.”
“Obvious, yes. But untried. Dangerous.”
Nikka looked wary. “Going further in cords is how much more dangerous?”
“We of this city and Lane know more than you.” She sniffed. “We have seen the bodies.”
THIRTEEN
Only Barbarians
Of course they asked what the bodies were. Officials grimaced but did as the Chairwoman said, and within a day they were ushered into a cool, starkly lit vault.
The family had looked at each other with dismay when they realized that here, corpses from the esty were held as volumes in a kind of library. Many times the family had debated and regretted their handling of the woman’s corpse, which had precipitated their exile. Here the rare emergence of a carcass from the esty was greeted with anticipation and also a sort of dread, for invariably the cadavers proved to come from the future of the esty.
