Harman nodded. “It’s early Lost Age. Some say it’s as old as Paris Crater, maybe even as old as the city that was here before the crater. It’s a symbol of the city and the people who built it long ago.”
“Interesting,” Hannah said again. A thousand feet tall, the rough representation of a naked woman appeared to be made of some clear polymer. The head was sometimes obstructed by low clouds, then briefly visible, and Hannah could see that the face was featureless except for a gaping grin between red lips. Black coiled springs fifty feet long spiraled like curls from the spherical head. The legs were spread wide, feet hidden from view behind the dark buildings to the west, but the thighs bunched as thick and wide as Ardis Hall. The breasts were huge, globular, absurd, alternately filling and emptying with broiling, photoluminescent red liquid, levels now rising, now filling, now waterfalling down the insides of the belly and legs, then sometimes rising again all the way to the raised arms and smiling face. The light from the glowing belly and breasts and massive buttocks painted the tops of taller structures around the crater a ruby red.
“What’s it called?” she asked.
“La putain enormé,” said Ada.
“What does it mean?”
“No one knows,” said Harman. He instructed the voynix to turn left onto a rickety bridge and they clip-clopped onto what had once been an island when water flowed in the river of dry skulls, toward the ruins of a building that once must have been quite large. Now a low dome glowing with a purple light sat inside the tumbled walls like a strange egg in a nest of scattered stones.
“Wait here,” Harman told the voynix and led the two women through the overgrown ruins and into the translucent dome.
A slab of white stone about four feet high sat in the center of the space. There were gutters at the base of the slab and drains in the stone floor. Behind and above the slab rose a crude statue of a naked man carved from the same white rock. The man held a bow and a notched arrow.
“This is marble,” said Hannah, running her hand over the surface of the block. She knew stone. “What is this place?”
“A temple to Apollo,” said Harman.
“I’ve heard of these new temples,” said Ada, “but I’ve never seen one before. I thought it was rare—a few altars in the forest done as a gag, that sort of thing.”
“There are temples like this all over Paris Crater and in the other big cities,” said Harman. “Temples to Athena, Zeus, Ares . . . all the gods in the turin tale.”
“The drains and gutters . . .” began Hannah.
“To drain the blood of the animals sacrificed,” said Harman. “Mostly sheep and cattle.”
Hannah stepped back from the slab and crossed her arms over her chest. “The people wouldn’t . . . kill the animals?”
“No,” said Harman. “They have the voynix do that. So far.”
Ada stood at the open doorway. Rain dripped down the glowing portal, turning it into a purple-tinted waterfall. “What was this place . . . before? The ruins?”
“I’m pretty sure it was a Lost Age temple,” said Harman.
“To Apollo?” Hannah’s body was rigid, her arms folded tight against her body.
“I don’t think so. In the rubble here are bits and pieces of statuary—not gods, not people, not voynix . . . not quite . . . demons, I think. An old word for them was ‘gargoyle’—but I’m not sure what they signify.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Ada.
Across the river of skulls and west again toward the crater, the broad boulevards ended where the Lost Age buildings became crowned with newer, taller structures—some very new, probably less than a thousand years old—a rising latticework of black buckylace and rain-glistening bamboo-three. Hannah called up a function to find Daeman, and the rectangle of light floating above her left palm glowed now amber, now red, then green again as they took stairways and lifts from street level to mezzanine level, from mezzanine level to the hanging esplanade fifteen stories above the old rooftops, then up from esplanade level to the residential stacks. Hannah paused at the esplanade rail to look down, mesmerized as most first-time viewers are as they stare into the unblinking red eye miles and miles below in the bottomless black circle of the crater; Ada had to pull her away with a hand on Hannah’s elbow and lead her to the next lift and stairway.
Surprisingly, it was a person, not a servitor, who answered the door at Daeman’s domi. Ada introduced her group, and the woman, who looked to be in her mid-forties as all three and four Twenties did, identified herself as Marina, Daeman’s mother. She led the way down warmly painted hallways and up interior staircases and through common rooms to the private areas on the crater-side of the domi complex.
“The servitor brought the message you were coming, of course,” said Marina, pausing outside a beautifully carved mahogany door, “but I haven’t told Daeman. He is still . . . perturbed . . . by the accident.”
Harman said, “But he doesn’t remember it?”
“Oh, no, of course not,” said Marina. She was an attractive woman and Ada could see the resemblance to her son in her red hair and pleasantly stocky build. “But you know what they say about such things . . . the cells remember.”
But they’re not the same cells, thought Ada. She said nothing.
“Will it upset Daeman to see us?” asked Hannah. To Ada’s ear, the young woman sounded more curious than concerned.
Marina made a graceful shrugging motion with her hand, as if to say “We shall see.” She knocked on the door and opened it when Daeman’s muffled voice bid them enter.
The room was large and draped with richly colored fabrics, floating silk tapestries, and lace curtains around Daeman’s sleeping area, but the far wall was all glass opening onto a private porch. Lamps in the large room were set low, but the brightly lighted city’s edge beyond the balcony curved away on both sides, and more constellations of lanterns, glow globes, and soft electric lights were visible half a mile away across the dark crater. Daeman was sitting in a nesting chair by the rain-streaked window, staring out as if pondering the lights. He blinked at the sight of Ada, Harman, and Hannah, but then waved them over to the circle of soft furniture. Marina excused herself and closed the door behind her as the three took their seats. The glass doors had been opened and the cool air coming through the screens smelled of rain and wet bamboo.
“We wanted to see you how you were doing,” Ada said. “And I wanted to apologize in person for the accident . . . for not taking better care of my guest.”
Daeman smiled and shrugged, but his hands were trembling slightly. He set them on his silk-robed knees. “All I remember is something large crashing through the trees—and the smell of carrion, I remember that—and then waking up in the firmary crèche-tank. The servitors here told me what happened, of course. It would be amusing if the idea weren’t so . . . revolting.”
Ada nodded, leaned closer, and took his hand. “I do apologize, Daeman Uhr. The allosauruses have come onto the estate only very rarely in recent decades and the voynix are always there to protect us . . .”
Daeman frowned but did not remove his hand from hers. “Evidently they didn’t do a very good job protecting me.”
“That is strange,” said Harman, crossing his legs and tapping the corrugated-paper arms of his chair. “Very strange. I can’t remember the last time a voynix failed to protect a human in such a situation.”
Daeman looked at the older man. “You’re used to situations where recombinant animals eat people, Harman Uhr?”
“Not at all. I meant situations where human beings are in jeopardy.”
“I apologize again,” said Ada. “The security failure on the part of the voynix was inexplicable, but my own carelessness was inexcusable. I’m sorry that your weekend at Ardis Hall was ruined and that your sense of harmony was perturbed.”