The Presiding Minister of the Infinite Hexamon Nexus, Ilyin Taur Engle, kept his quarters in one of Central City’s six broad ventilation shafts, buried deep in the spreading Wald.
Olmy had never wished to settle into a primary home, but he envied the P.M. his quarters nonetheless. There was such an air of isolation and peace in the Wald, and such a fantasy of elegance in the quarters themselves.
The six shafts ran straight from the outermost facets of Central City to the governing spheres at the precinct’s core.
Within each shaft, as many as ten thousand corporeals lived among the winding paths through the Wald. Their homes varied from thick clusters of communal glass floats anchored to the broad aerial roots, to small free-moving cells adequate for one or at most two homorphs, or no more than four of the average neomorphs.
The Wald was both decoration and a nod to Naderite philsophies; about a third of Central City’s atmosphere needs were taken care of in the shafts, with Geshel-designed scrubbers doing the rest. Thousands of varieties of trees and other plants—some food-bearing—had been genetically altered and adapted to weightlessness. Fully a third of the Axis City’s biomass was botanical and concentrated in the Wald.
One of Olmy’s great pleasures was to tarzan through the Wald, flying from root to limb, drifting down the paths without benefit of traction fields. There were designated sport paths and quickways with many exercising homorphs and a few whizzing neomorphs and virtually no vehicles; he had timed himself on a thousand different occasions on the more difficult of these and had honed his time down to as little as fifteen minutes from outer facet to shaft bottom.
Now, however, he felt no need to race. He tarzaned at a leisurely pace, arms folded behind his back, legs cocked like a skater’s, kicking from broad leaf to smooth-worn root surface, following well-traveled courses down the path. More valuable than speed was the time to think.
Plastic tubes containing thick luminescent soups of bacteria, known as light-snakes or glow-worms, wound through the Wald, each a meter thick and sometimes half a kilometer long.
In glades, they would macrame across one side in dazzling bright patterns, proximity making some glow peach and red, others dull down to a rich dark gold. Homorphs often gathered in the glades to bathe in the light from the patterns; Olmy barely glanced into the few glades he passed, intent on his steady progress down the shaft.
It took him twenty minutes to reach the Presiding Minister’s quarters.
He left the main path by way of a narrow fork, and drifted through the flowering hoops formed by a tormented root. The quarters floated in the middle of the P.M.’s private glen.
The residence was designed like an old eighteenth-century terrestrial English manor house, with many modifications to allow for the lack of up and down. There were three roofs, and ways to enter the house from six different angles. Bay windows opened on three axes.
Geometric cypress growths screened one window against a glow-worm pattern at the far end of the glen.
Monitors flew up to him as soon as he emerged from the flowering hoop tunnels and identified him positively, retreating to their other duties: hedge trimming, insect watch and keeping track of the P.M.’s pets.
The house voice welcomed him and requested he enter by the bright door, facing the glow-worm pattern. The P.M. would be with him directly.
Olmy braced himself into a dormier and watched with a mix of condescension and boredom a brief picting of the household’s recent activities. When the pictor cleared, he saw an unfamiliar neomorph preceding the P.M. into the waiting room. The neomorph—vaguely fish-shaped, limbless—regarded Olmy with a crystalline fox face and pitted casual greetings, but no ID. Olmy returned the greetings with a similar deletion, recognizing one of Toilet’s aids. The neo-morph exited through the bright door, surrounded by its own midge-cloud of compact monitors.
“Getting more and more daring, aren’t they?” the P.M. asked, extending his hand. Olmy shook it. ”Now I ask you—would you trust somebody you can’t shake hands with?”
“I’ve not trusted many I could shake hands with,” Olmy said.
The P.M. regarded him with a mixed expression of humor and not-quite-hidden irritation. ”You’ve come to brief me on our newest ancestral guests.” He ushered Olmy into his broad duodecahedral internal office. The P.M.’s round desk gimbaled on the single rod at the center; seven of the walls were covered by rootwood cases containing antigue books and message blocks. Other walls held fine illusart and false windows opening onto time-delayed scenes of other rooms in the house, edited to take out whatever occupants were in them.
“The President is still upset,” Ingle said, tucking his elbows in to sit behind the desk. “I’m afraid most of the President’s council are finding it difficult to understand why you brought the five back with you.”
“I only brought one,” Olmy corrected. ”The others followed on their own, unexpectedly.”
“Yes, well, however they got here, they’re trouble. Secessionists are seeking advantages already, and concessions. They’re not far from getting all their groups together—and this certainly could unite them. It could also conve the Korzenowski faction from a radical party to a popular front. The President’s position could be endangered. Even so, he feels he doesn’t have the time to oversee these difficulties directly, what with the Jart conferences still filling his days, so he’s assigned Ser Oligand Toiler—whom you’ve met, I believe—and myself.”
“Bearers of bad news are never appreciated,” Olmy said.
“Yes? Well, whether the news itself is actually good or bad depends on how we react, does it not? Frankly, I don’t share all the President’s misgivings—some, but not all. I feel we can turn the situation—and the news—to our advantage. Perhaps we can even achieve the consensus we need to face the Jarts effectively. Now, your message said you had more news.”
“Someone has hired at least one rogue in City Memory to penetrate the guest quarters. Someone is desperate to find out what all the fuss is.”
“Yes, that much I could have guessed,” the P.M. said. “Well, then, perhaps it’s time we released all we know. It’s probably going to he common knowledge in a week or less, especially if rogues are in on it. What’s your opinion, Ser Olmy?”
“I’ve voiced it before, Set; I should testify before the Nexus.”
The P.M. considered that for a moment. ”I still have my doubts as to the wisdom of that. But you may be right. If the truth must be unveiled, let us do the unveiling, no? But delicately. Millions of neomorphs are already scared silly by the secession talk. Drop a bombshell into the middle of it—saying the Thistledown has returned to Earth? Not an easy decision. At any rate, we can’t call a full Nexus because of the Jart conferences. A partial will have to do.” He left the desk, betraying his nerves. “I’ll need a heavy session of Talsit this evening.” He crossed his arms and floated in the middle of the office, his voluminous black robes assuming billows of repose.
“You will testify in person, then, as an agent of the Hexamon?”
“The Frant and I,” Olmy confirmed.
“The Frant won’t testify; it’s against their creed to take an oath.”
“It will confirm my testimony. That’s allowed.”
“And what then, Ser Olmy? How can we restrain our curious ones—whoever hired the rogue—or the Korzenowski faction, Pneuma be kind, after that?”
“That may not be our greatest problem. There are still two thousand humans in the Thistledown; sooner or later, we have to bring them under our control. Our first guest, Vasquez, was already very close to learning how to manipulate the sixth chamber machinery. I assume others will eventually duplicate her work, despite the interdictions in the Thistledown libraries.”
“Star, Fate and Pneuma never see fit to limit our troubles, do they?” the P.M. said with a sigh that upset the billows of his robe. “Logos he praised.”
“Logos,” Olmy echoed doubtfully.
“We share a certain Geshel incredulity, don’t we?” the P.M. said, watching Olmy’s reaction carefully. ”Not wise to reveal it to everyone, however, not from this lofty position, anyway. Is there immediate danger of our ... ancestors! Such a word—is there much chance of their disturbing the sixth chamber soon?”
“Not with Vasquez in the Axis City. Not in a matter of months, or even a year.”
“Very well. First things first. I’d say it would be in our best interests, if we reveal at all—and that seems unavoidable now—to make a public show of our guests. They are extraordinary—and they might give us an advantage over the President’s opposition. I’ll have my secretaries plan an agitprop. Their advocate—your partner, Suli Ram Kikum—has she been useful?”
“Very,” Olmy said. ”But her work has hardly begun.”
“Excellent,” the P.M. said. ”But we mustn’t be too confident. If the Jarts start their offensive early or, heaven forbid, decide to open a gate into a star’s heart—then our visitors will mean next to nothing.”
Ingle shook his head, picting a chain of symbols—a gnat being consumed in a solar prominence.