And there was not the cacophony of sound he might have expected: instead all those voices spiraled up and out of earshot, like doves loosed in an auditorium. He stood with his mouth open, as though to catch rain upon his tongue, his eyes closed because you can’t look into the sun. He felt dazed with unthinking joy. It wasn’t until someone else elbowed him, though with an apology this time, that he opened his eyes and began looking around with intense curiosity, suspicion almost, trying to figure out how it was done.
At first he couldn’t tell. But as his eyes grew accustomed to the light he began to get a fix on the immense space soaring above him. Somewhere, very very high above the trees, above the clouds even, and the radiant sun, there seemed to be wires, or catwalks, or some kind of grid that moved in subtle ways, so that his eyes were never quite able to focus on what was there. When he turned to look around, he saw in the distance numerous mezzanines and balconies and glass elevators that did not climb any walls—there were no walls that he could see—but crept along glowing green cables that slanted above the crowds like a spider’s draglines, moving toward some unimaginably distant apex. When he looked down he saw earth, and stones. There was a faint purl of running water, the smell of crushed ferns. But he saw no pebbles, no twigs or fallen leaves. And when he began to walk, slowly, as he used to on the beach at Moody’s Island looking for shells, he saw that all the stones were fairly large, and flat. When he tried to nudge one with his foot it didn’t move. None of them did. He strolled past several trees, white birches with great masses of granite grouped around them, like benches, where people sat and laughed. Ferns grew beneath the trees, and moss; but when he looked carefully he could see that the ferns were set in some kind of elaborate planter, designed to look like stone. So were the trees. He noticed other things—faucets poking up from the ground like mushrooms, cables threaded along tree trunks like vines. After a few minutes even some of the people started to look odd: they smiled at him, but their gaze remained on him a little too long: if he glanced back they would still be staring at him, and only pretending to have a conversation. He wondered if they were security guards, or if someone in this vast complex actually paid people to sit around in mountain-climbing gear and look as though they were enjoying the great outdoors.
This thought brought Trip to his senses. He tried to look purposeful, jostling into people until he found an information kiosk where he was directed to yet another glass booth from which enclosed walkways radiated like the arms of a sea star. He went inside and sat on a patchwork sofa as another security dog nuzzled his legs, waiting as a guard buzzed Nellie Candry’s office.
“You’re all clear.” The guard watched Trip sign a logbook, then pointed him down one of the enclosed walkways, to an elevator. A minute later Trip got off at the thirtieth level, dizzy and slightly nauseated by the ride.
“Welcome to Agrippa Music,” a voice announced. Trip opened his mouth to respond, snapped it shut when he saw there was no one there. “Bien venu à Agrippa Music,” the voice went on, repeating the welcome in Japanese and German and Spanish. “Living in the Light…”
Everywhere he looked there were video screens showcasing various Agrippa acts. It took him a moment to find the door, cobalt glass with AGRIPPA MUSIC spelled out in shifting holographic letters. Behind it a young man sat monitoring phone calls.
“Hi!” he called cheerily as Trip entered. Silvery plasmer implants hid his eyes, but he didn’t wear a mask, and his smile seemed genuine. “You must be Trip Marlowe! Come on in, come on in!” He adjusted his body mic and announced, “Nellie? Your date’s here,” then gestured at a chair. “Sit down, honey, she’ll be right with you.”
Trip’s heart sank when Nellie Candry stepped into the reception area, alone. “Aren’t you sweet to ask Marzie out!” she said, then laughed. She wasn’t wearing a mask today, or heavy makeup. Beneath a sheen of light foundation her scars had the silvery roughness of beech bark; the cicatrices left by petra virus gleamed like lacquer. “Hey, don’t worry—she’s upstairs, waiting for you. Did you think you were going to be stuck with me ?”
“He should be so lucky!” the receptionist cried as Nellie pulled Trip through another door.
“So. The Museum of Natural History.” Nellie grinned as they padded down a hall carpeted with thick spongy black rubber, the second life of a hundred old steel radials. “Is that where you nice Xian boys go on a first date?”
Trip tried to smile. “Yeah, I guess. I’ve never been, actually. I wanted to see the planetarium.”
Nellie laughed again; it made the vertical gashes on her cheeks move in a strange way, as though they were composed of a different material than the rest of her face. “The planetarium! God, that’s great! Real James Dean, huh?” Trip looked at her blankly. “You know, Rebel Without a Cause ? Oh shit, never mind. They never finished the renovation there, you knew that, right? Here we are.”
They turned a corner, and she took him by the arm.
“Listen,” she said in a lower voice. They stood in a softly lit alcove before a set of black glass doors with Nellie Candry etched in gold script. “I just want you to know this is a really nice thing you’re doing. It really means a lot to Marz. She’s had a hard time in the last year or so, coming from a war zone, you know? She and I are still getting used to each other, and she hasn’t really made any friends at the Brearley School yet. So it’s a pretty big deal that someone like you would take her somewhere. She’s just a kid, you know?”
A flutter of panic in Trip’s chest: how old was she, anyway?
Nellie rattled on. “But I figured, well, we’re nice guys, right?” She cocked her head and gazed at him with those disconcertingly lovely eyes. “Us Christians. I mean Xians. You especially. I mean, I probably wouldn’t let her go out with that guy from Slag Hammadi, you know?”
Trip blushed, but already Nellie was steering him through the black doors and into her office. There were posters tacked to the walls, rollaway stands holding video monitors and VCRs and, surprisingly, piles of old-fashioned silver film canisters. In one corner leaned some kind of staff, topped with a grotesque wooden mask and deer’s antlers.
“My secret life,” Nellie confessed. She paused to rub a strip of acetate between her fingers. “I started out as a maker of documentary films. Then I got sick—”
She grimaced. Trip looked away from her scarred face, to her hands, and noticed that she wore a dull gold ring like Marzana’s. “—though actually, I’ve got another film project I’m working on now. This A&R stuff, it’s just a day job, you know? Not that I don’t take it seriously,” she added, grinning. “Okay, Marzie! Company!”
Nellie edged past Trip and slid behind a tiny banana yellow desk strewn with IT discs and promotional gadgets: Viconix dispensers, crucifix penlights, body gloves. Atop her telephone perched a snowy owl mask. “Here he is. Now, if you guys can hang here for just a minute—”
“Hey,” said Trip, trying to keep his voice from breaking. “Marz. Hi.”
Marz lifted her head and peered out from between the arms of the chair in front of Nellie’s desk.