“If it weren’t for the loonies and the grangers wanting all of space’s resources for themselves—”
“…Must have put them up to it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, but let’s be honest: your average shimp isn’t exactly Einstein. Somebody…”
The pad buzzed. “Yeah?”
“Your first day was that bad?” a sympathetic voice answered.
Ben. She shot up straight on the divan. He laughed: “I was going to ask you to join me for an evening in the park. Maybe some other time?”
She rubbed her face. “Central Park?”
He gave her a look like “Where else did you think I mean?” and shrugged. “I thought you might find the new Solaria exhibit interesting. Most newcomers do.”
“I’m not a—” the Solaria exhibit had been built after she’d moved to the colony. A lot of things are new around here. “I’ll meet you at the Columbus Circle gate in fifteen minutes.”
She was there in ten minutes, still in her Qi Pao. He was waiting for her. A bot read his credit strip with a smile, again before she could protest, and he led her through the gate with a strong hand.
“Sooner or later I’m going to pay you back,” she threatened.
“Paybacks are a bitch,” he agreed. Then he pointed ahead of them. “In fact, here’s your big chance. I came here betting that you haven’t had any dinner either.”
Her stomach churned, and she almost balked this time. “You can’t be serious. Frankly, I’ve never been able to figure out how those things stay in business.”
“Nostalgia. People like to imagine how wonderful the good old days were. Besides, this one makes the best dogs in the whole Park. Promise; you’re speaking to a hot dog connoisseur.”
The bot served up its wares with lickety-split efficiency. The steamy aroma of boiled meat swirled from its cart and filled her head; despite her misgivings, it did make her hungry. “So where’s this S’laria ’xhibit,” she said, in mid-munch.
Ben laughed. “Patience. One does not hurry through Central Park. Central Park is not a net order catalog. It’s a shopping mall. A shopping mall of history. Of the past. Of the future.” Ben spread out his arms. “Take this first level. A faithful reproduction of the Park the way it was in the late twentieth, early twenty-first century.” He chuckled. “Minus, of course, the stuff nobody wants to remember, like the vagrants and garbage.”
They sat on a bench in the playground, and watched a group of playing children while they finished their dogs. One of the children was a shimp, not that this appeared to make any difference. Lisa wondered how long that situation would last.
“Thanks for asking me out,” she said.
Ben pulled back from a bite and stared at her. “Please be careful where, or at least how loudly, you use that expression. Unless you want to get me lynched—I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” He looked perplexed for several moments before comprehension crossed his face. “I am a stupid shimp. I didn’t mean… I swear, Allison was the last thing on my mind.”
The statement took Lisa aback. How did Ben know about her confrontation with Julia L’uboleng this afternoon? No, of course he didn’t know. He didn’t have to. It was just a coincidence. “I wondered how long it would take to get back to that subject,” she said.
“I thought you were going to handle it yourself,” he answered.
She slumped. “What is there to handle? I’m guilty, that’s all. Nothing you or anyone can say is going to change that. The only thing lacking is a court to pass sentence.”
“If you wanted a sentence, why did you come back here?”
Go on, say it. To seek asylum, that’s why. “Sounds like a pretty cheap guilt trip I suppose, doesn’t it?”
“Most guilt trips are. Must be why so many people take them.” Ben raised a hand as she opened her mouth: “I suppose now you’ll tell me that, as a hom, you share the guilt of your whole species for what they’ve done to my people. If you do that, I swear I’ll abandon you here and now, to the muggers and rapists.”
“To the—” she coughed violently.
“Muggers and rapists. Central Park used to be famous for them. It’s one of those unpleasantries they haven’t tried to recreate. Sometimes I wonder why not: it might fix our eyes on the future better if the real past were thrown up to us once in a while. Most people today seem to think that their parents had it better than they do. A dose of reality might wise them up.” Ben took the empty hot dog wrapper from her hand, and deposited both recyclables in the bin next to the bench. Then he twisted to face her more directly. “But back to your alleged guilt. I find the prosecution’s guilt by association argument, however vile the species in question, specious and irrelevant. It’s almost as bad as Original Sin, although I admit to a lack of experience in this area—that is, in feeling guilty about it.
“Does the prosecution have any other articles of evidence it wishes to introduce? Any further arguments? I didn’t think so. Therefore, by the power invested in me by the state of plain old fashioned horse sense, I find the defendant not guilty of all charges.” He reached out, and touched her lightly on the head. “Now, let’s go see that Solaria exhibit.”
They left the children, still playing peacefully if exuberantly. She wasn’t sure exactly when or where her hand slipped into Ben’s; maybe it was right after they started walking, or perhaps it wasn’t until they’d almost reached the gate to the lower levels; but she wasn’t really conscious of the contact until the latter.
They descended into darkness. An entire new level had been built to house the exhibit; they glided into it like a shuttle gliding through silent space.
Ben’s touch on her arm startled her. “Are you all right?”
She sensed him watching. “I’m—OK. It’s just a little creepy. I’ve never liked darkness.”
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened with a soft whoosh. To reveal…
Ben waited for her to reclaim her senses before explaining, “Supposedly, this is what you would see if you stood on the surface of the Sun and looked upwards. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”
She looked down reflexively, and pulled in a breath so sharp it hurt her lungs. An ocean of hot plasma boiled sullenly beneath filters that permitted only the alpha hydrogen light through. Ghostly prominences and solar flares swirled around her.
She gazed upwards and outwards. All around them planets shone with the reflected solar fury. Venus was the brightest of them, a yellow gem Lisa felt she could reach out and pluck out of space. It was followed by the only slightly less brilliant jewels of Mercury, Earth, and Jupiter. Beyond that—she could not pick out Mars and Saturn from the backdrop of stars and the broad pale river of the Milky Way.
She left the breath out. “You could have warned me.”
“What kind of sadist do I look like?”
“We can stroll around, can’t we?”
Ben nodded readily. “It’s all just a great big hologram. Things aren’t as far away as they look. Here, I’ll show you.”
He took her by the hand again, and they stepped off the platform and started towards the jewel of Earth. The sapphire grew into a blue world with churning white clouds much faster than she expected. They even passed directly through the Moon; maria, mountains, Moon bases and all, as though they were all made from vapor. A hundred thousand kilometers high, they hovered over the graceful sphere, two omniscient aliens studying mankind’s home like a biologist studying a drop of pond water.
Similar reverence was paid to the other planets. They spent several hours, neither speaking, each seeming to know the other’s thoughts simultaneously. Finally, they returned to the elevator, and rode the silent shaft back to the world they had come from. That world was close to night itself; twilight had already begun to distort its solidity into shadows and murky shapes.