“Everyone needs a good laugh,” grunted Menelaus, tearing the loose, huge collar from his neck and flinging it into the air. “Now we’re fixing to take our French leave of this crowd, and shin out. Nova! Gid-YAWP!”
And in a moment the steed, as the wind, flew past the pillar supporting a statue of Winged Independence, and his hoofbeats were the thunder. The bridal veils and white laces flowed behind, snapping bravely, shedding roses, and the bride clung tightly to her dark-faced, glittering-eyed groom. Perhaps she smiled, but her face was pressed to his chest. The crowd roared and parted, a frightened Red Sea.
The beast was as magnificent a steed as modern genetic meddling could make him: so it was astonishing, but not impossible, when he cleared the heads of the onlookers at the end of the lane, made it over the pilings into a rich man’s garden, danced in a cloud of dust first down the steep slope of the mountainous terrain, and then galloped madly up the further slope, leaping from rock to sliding rock as nimbly as a goat, mane and tail like flame.
All the photographers, both professional and merely curious, sent their bees flying after, but Quito was a city known for privacy, because the mountain winds often blew the tiny instruments astray. One or two bolder fellows, or more curious, followed on foot the trail of dust a few score yards down the slope, but gave up the chase as the sorrel’s long legs opened the distance on the uphill run, and the bride and groom were carried in a leap over the crest and out of sight. One man tried to follow on an antique petrol-powered motorcycle no doubt lent to him from a collector, but he had not practiced the old skills, and he left his machine in a heap when it struck a rock; hoots and whistles greeted him as he climbed painfully back up slope.
The remaining members of the photography cadre, sitting atop their electric carriages with cameras and lens-tubes enough to equip a small astronomical observatory, exchanged lost shrugs and bewildered smiles. Meanwhile the mounted Swiss, the only men there truly able to see the horsemanship, good and bad, that Menelaus displayed, raised their swords and lances and shouted, “Acriter et Fideliter!”
Yorvel laughed until he lost his breath, and sat on the ground, pulling a hip-flask of whiskey from underneath his borrowed uniform. “No woman is truly a bride until she is stolen away on horseback! That is what horses are for! Like in all the old tales! A magnificent gesture! Madness, like all magnificent gestures, of course. But a good madness, most needful and proper to the mental health: like the shock of a stiff drink, just the thing to put a man in his right spirits. It would be madness to be sane and sober on a day like this.” And he mopped his brow with his handkerchief, laughing and drinking and roaring with merriment until he wept.
2. The Celestial Tower
Above the city loomed the Celestial Tower; titanic, cyclopean, rising straight from the crown of a mountain and upward as far as the eye could see. It dwindled with perspective to a point, like a highway seen in the desert.
Except that this, Menelaus thought, was surely a highway to the sky.
Menelaus had been following the old railroad tracks for some time as the sun settled in a welter of red into the sea. Rania rode with her body leaning against his chest and, despite that the ride must have been uncomfortable, did not complain.
It was dark now, and insects were singing. The scent of forest below the mountain slopes hung in the night air, and the distant chattering of animals could be heard. The city was still around them, but modern Patagonian cities were miraculously quiet: Menelaus noticed again the lack of the machine noise. It was also a splendor of lights, like constellations, down the slopes and underfoot. Here were Colonial-era buildings, held in spotlights for the tourist trade: the Plaza de la Independencia, there were the many churches, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the old Archbishop’s Palace. In a world where a tourist could arrive from any continent in a matter of minutes, the beautiful places of the Earth were kept spotless. The light shone, and Menelaus felt as if he were treading the galaxy underfoot, or a carpet of diamond dust.
The suburbs were like islands in the sky, with bridges linking the paved areas. But half a mile from any building in any direction might be found a sudden slope, rock and flints, not good for foundations. A high civilization merely a stone’s throw from empty wasteland.
They were high. From here the volcanoes that punctured the mountains to each side of the city could not be seen, but Menelaus knew where they were. He could have found them in his sleep.
Guagua Pichincha was westward, toward the sea; Cayambe Reventator was to the east; Chacana, Antisana, and Sumaco trailed away to the southeast; Cotopaxi was due south. In the distance, more than eighty miles away south, Tungurahua and Sangay. Far to the north, the peak of Galeras. All were active to some degree, with artificial vents opened to relieve pressure in a controlled fashion. Galeras was more active than the others, suffering a major burn that had been postponed for the wedding: now a plume of smoke like a second tower reached toward the stars, bending in the wind only a bit. Its upper reaches were torn and dissipated into grayish clouds. The lower parts looked so dark and sturdy, nearly the same color as the Celestial Tower, but as if built of smoke.
The volcanoes unnerved him. Controlled? He hoped so, even though the old and worn systems of volcano-preemption were from the previous rulers of this place, older even that the Coptic Order, the Late Hispanosphere. It was the years Menelaus slept through, but still ancient history.
Around him was a land of fire, cities perched on peaks moated by cliffs over empty air. The massive geothermal energy of the place was what allowed the Celestial Tower to be here.
He reined his sorrel and looked up.
The middle reaches of the tower, far above, were still blushed rose with the light of a distant sunset. This alpine glow made the tower seem to float, weightless in the twilit heavens, a supernatural apparition.
Farther above, the towerlight was a vertical streak of yellow gold, where the upper regions were still in direct sunlight. And yet again above that, craning back his head and squinting, Menelaus could barely make out a harsher gleam, a glint, where the sun’s radiation, undiluted by any atmosphere, splashed onto the tower side in naked vacuum.
The tower-top itself, the spaceport called Quito Alto, shined faint and distant at the very vanishing point of the perspective. Normally, it was not so bright as to be seen by the naked eye. Now, however, it outshined the evening star. It was a star that neither rose nor set.
“Our honeymoon suite,” he said.
She said, “I thought you would like to be near the canopy of space, my old home.”
“When did they erect this?”
“Never.”
“What?”
She giggled, a sound like silver chimes. “They lowered it. None of the weight sits on the ground. Seventy years ago, during the high point of Hispanosphere ascendancy. The King of Spain wanted an enduring monument to his tyranny, and he thought there would be traffic from a moonbase, asteroid mining, expeditions, and, yes, a colony on Ganymede or Titan.”
“What happened?”
“War interrupted.”
“Which one?”
Rania just shrugged. “The Yellow War.”
“Which one was that? What was it about?”
Rania spoke in a soft, haunted voice. “You may ask the survivors for details. Inspect your coffins dated between 2333–2338. Both sides experimented on captured civilian populations with RNA-spoofing. The bloated monstrosities and boneless knots of flesh were biosuspended, because there was no way to keep them alive. They are now your wards.” She looked up.
Menelaus wore a puzzled frown, as if he had not realized that the fate of those slumbering souls was now his responsibility.