From their quarters in Axis Nader, the five were taken by Suli Ram Kikura and the Frant to the flaw passage, around which the cylindrical precinct rotated. Their transportation was an empty shaft three kilometers long; their fall was similar to a ride in the apartment building elevator in Thistledown City, and therefore—mercifully—not too unexpected.
Carrolson enjoyed it the least of them; she had a distinct fear of precipices; not of heights per se, but of edges. She managed, however, with both Lanier’s and Ram Kikura’s encouragement. ”I’m not a goddamned old woman,” she said resentfully as they fell.
The flaw passage was a half-kilometer-wide pipe through the Axis City, with the singularity at its center. Hundreds of thousands of citizens lined the walls and floated in clutching, roiling yet very coordinated clusters along their path. Ram Kikura and the Frant conferred with the passage engineer, a female homorph who, like Olmy, was also self-contained and lacked nostrils.
The five were then introduced to the first of many city officials, the Minister of Axis Nader, a gray-haired, distinguished and hale-looking orthodox Naderite who flew a Japanese rising sun over his left shoulder. He seemed to have not an ounce of Oriental blood, but then, his form could have been artificial—probably was--and no one had time or much inclination to inquire. ”You may call me Mayor, if you like,” he said in perfect English and Chinese. These languages were now the rage of the four precincts, extending even beyond those who claimed specific ancestry.
On the flaw was a beetle-like, black maintenance vehicle not dissimilar to the one that had dismantled the tuberider. It was larger, however, equipped with a wide and well-appointed cabin, liberally decorated with rare (and genuine) red bunting.
Pictors projected very convincing fireworks around the vehicle and the flaw as Ram Kikura, the mayor and the Frant stood aside, allowing them to enter first. They took seats in a half-circle behind the controls and were gently clamped in by something they could not see.
The mayor took the controls--a Y-shaped black pillar with receptacles for the fingers of two hands—and the hatch irised shut silently.
They moved down the flaw, preceded by a faint pulse of red. Fireworks still blossomed on all sides, sometimes harmlessly intersecting parts of the crowd.
“It’s not enough just to see you on the pictors,” Ram Kikura said. “People haven’t changed much. I’d guess that maybe a third of those out there are ghosts—picted themselves, with monitors at the center of their images. See and be seen.”
“Where’s Alice?” Heineman grumbled.
“Alice who?” Ram KLIcura asked.
“Just Alice,” Heineman said. ”I can’t help feeling we’re in Wonderland.”
“Are we missing someone?” the mayor asked, turning his head and appearing concerned.
“No,” the Frant said, making its tooth-grinding noise.
The journey took a half hour, covering fifteen kilometers from the vicinty of Axis Nader to the Central City. Here, the crowds were even more dense--and more disorderly. Individuals—neomorphs predominating—tried to block the slow progress of the maintenance vehicle and were gently brushed aside by the uncurling sheets of traction fields rippling ahead of the craft.
Patricia sat patiently, saying little, occasionally stealing a glance at Lanier. Lanier’s face wore a constant half-puzzled frown.
He lifted his lip slightly at the appearance of some of the neomorphs longated snake-like curls, shiny as chrome; fish, birds and radiolarian spheres like the silicate shells of plankton; varieties of human shape that went beyond the basic descripton of homorph. Farley absorbed it all with gape-jawed fascination.
“I’ll bet I look like a rude,” she said at one point, then glanced at her companions, realizing nobody understood her.
“What’s the word I’m looking for?” she asked Lanier.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he replied, grinning affectionately.
She put her hand on his. Patricia withdrew a little into her seat.
So what is this? she asked herself. A little jealousy? Being unfaithful to Paul? Why should Garry pay any attention to you to at all? He came to find you—out a sense of duty.
She shut off that area of inquiry, seeing no need to invade a territory of great pain and uncertainty and guilt.
They left the maintenance vehicle--and the mayor of Axis Nader--behind, escorted now by the neomorph Minister of Central City and Senator Prescient Oyu. Olmy greeted them at the broad circular entrance to the Hexamon Nexus Chamber.
Within the chamber, there was confusion on all sides; homorphs, neomorphs, some with American flags picted over their shoulders—and at the center, near the podium, two wide and vibrantly living images of the flags of the Republic of China and the United States.
Cheers and music, boisterous and welcoming.
Heineman blinked and Carrolson took his arm as they were pushed along a traction field by Olmy and Ram Kikura.
Prescient Oyu, as beautiful and graceful as any woman Lanier had ever seen, took his arm and Patricia’s, and the Minister of Central City entered beside Farley.
Lanier saw several senators--or were they corpreps?—wearing the Soviet hammer and sickle. And then they were in the center of the Nexus Chamber. The senators and corpreps became quiet and all displays faded.
Director Hulane Ram Seija came to the podium and told the Nexus that their guests would soon be going to the Frant gate, to see the workings of commerce in the Way. And after that, they would be taken by Senator Prescient Oyu to meet with her father, who even now presided over the preliminaries, to a gate opening at I.3 ex 9.
Lanier had been elected spokesperson for the group. Suli Ram Kikura had suggested—against Olmy’s mild objections--that he might use this opportunity to state his case.
He moved unsteadily along a traction field to the podium and received the armillary bands of light.
He looked to all sides—and behind—before starting.
“It’s not an easy thing talking to one’s descendants,” he said. “Though ... I never had children, so I doubt if any of you are even remotely related to me. And of course, there’s the matter of different universes. Discussing these things makes me feel like a Stone Age tribesman seeing his first airplane—or spaceship. We are completely out of our element, and while we have been welcomed here, we cannot call this place home ... “ He caught Patricia’s eye and her brief expression between fear and expectation. Of what?
“But the one place we can call home is now in ruins. This is our tragedy—our mutual tragedy. For you, the history of the Death is remote, but for us it is immediate and very real. We still suffer from our memories, our experiences, and we will grieve for years to come, probably for the rest of our lives.”
What he needed to say came clear to him then, as if he had been thinking about it for days—and perhaps he had, but not consciously.
“Earth is our home—your home, your cradle, as well as my own. It is now a place of death and misery, and it is beyond the power of my friends and colleagues to remedy that ...
“But it is not beyond your power. If you would celebrate us, and celebrate our unlikely presence in this chamber, then would it not be appropriate to help us? Earth needs your help desperately. Perhaps we can rewrite history, and correct it.
“Let us go home together,” he said, feeling his throat catch.
In the first ring of seats, Olmy listened and nodded only once.
Just beyond, in the second ring, Oligand Toiler, the President’s advocate and representative in this session, locked the fingers of his two hands in his lap, his face impassive.
“Let us go home,” Lanier repeated. ”Your ancestors need you.”