"What for?"
Mildred looked puzzled. "We arranged to go on a tour of VISAR space. You and Christian said you'd show me some Thurien planets, and we were going to say hello to the Ganymean friends of yours in the ship that's on Jevlen."
Hunt's brow furrowed. "There must be some confusion. I've no idea what you're talking about."
Danchekker interjected, "We called you this morning, Vic. The h-space tour, with a visit to the Shapieron."
Hunt searched back through his memory but could recall nothing. He shook his head helplessly. "Well, sure, I'll come along, no problem. It would be great to see Garuth and his people again. And I'm sure you mean it. But I honestly never said anything about this."
"Well, we're about ready to depart," Danchekker said. "But we'll wait until you get yourself organized." He sounded a trifle irritable, as if he didn't believe Hunt's denial and saw it as a somewhat lame excuse for having forgotten.
"I'll be right there," Hunt said, and cleared down. He looked back at Eesyan. "Would you excuse me? Chris and Mildred are asking if I could join them at short notice about something."
"As you wish," Eesyan replied.
"Where are the nearest couplers?"
"There's one right here." Eesyan indicated a partitioned space next to the monitoring panels. "It's free now."
Hunt took his leave and entered. He felt a little irked by Danchekker's attitude of uncompromising certainty, when it was obvious there was some kind of mixup. Could he really be getting that doddery? he asked himself. But the flicker of doubt passed. No, the downhill bike ride felt smooth and reassuring, without wobbles, he decided as he eased himself back into the recliner. He hadn't forgotten anything.
CHAPTER NINE
Vranix was an old Thurien city located on one of the northern continents, famous for its art centers and museums, and as a cultural repository. It was also noted for some of the most spectacular Thurien architecture, which in the years of the city's growth had flourished as perhaps the most extreme of Thurien art forms at the time. Hunt and Danchekker had "been there" before, in their first virtual visit to Thurien. It seemed a suitable place to include in the itinerary that she and Danchekker still insisted Hunt had helped draw up to give Mildred a preliminary overview of Thurien society-but by unspoken mutual assent they had stopped talking about it. In the evening they would rejoin the rest of the group physically for dinner.
They were standing in a large, saucer-shaped space, inside which circles of tiered seating rose to an enclosing rim. Hunt and Danchekker watched as Mildred gazed up at the three slim spires of what looked like pink ivory, converging above their heads before blending into an inverted cascade of terraces and levels broadening and unfolding upward for an inestimable distance… And then she frowned in puzzlement. For beyond, where the sky should have been, the scene mushroomed out into a fusion of forms and structures of staggering dimensions extending as far as the eye could see in one direction, while forming the shore of a distant ocean in the other. They were looking over the entire city of Vranix. But it was all hanging over their heads, upside down. They waited, seeing how long it would take Mildred to figure it out.
"My God!" she said after a lengthy pause. "All that topsy-turvy wonderland we came through inside. It turned us completely over somehow, and we didn't realize it… at least, I didn't. But you said you'd been here before. This has to be underneath. We've walked out like flies on a ceiling."
"Right on," Hunt complimented. The three spires "rising" around them surmounted an enormous tower dominating the city, and supported a circular platform that contained the place they were in-actually a small amphitheater used for various events and social gatherings. But the amphitheater was on the underside of the platform, not on top.
"Is it… I mean, is it real?" Mildred asked, looking down and from side to side as if checking her other senses. "Or something that VISAR is putting into our heads?"
"Oh, it exists precisely as you perceive it," Danchekker assured her. "A whim exercised by the Thurien architects of long ago, probably to show off their dexterity with the new science of integral gravitic structural engineering, which was developed at around that time. The Thuriens use it extensively, as you will already have gathered."
"So is that why I feel normal?… No, wait a minute. VISAR can inject the right stimuli to make you feel normal, anyway, can't it? What I'm trying to say is, if we were really here physically… there, whatever… would we still feel normal, with everything just looking wrong? Not upside down. The local gravity is normal but inverted?"
"Precisely so," Danchekker confirmed.
A Thurien who had been pacing slowly out by the rim when they appeared from one of the ramps from the interior, and who was now only a short distance away, changed direction toward them. The Terrans turned to face him as he drew closer. His face was lined and seemed old, his furrowed crown a subdued mix of streaky browns and grays that gave the impression of being faded.
"Forgive me if this is an intrusion," he said. "I am not familiar with the ways of Terrans. But it's the first opportunity I've had to speak with people from your world."
"Not at all," Hunt said cheerfully. "It would be a long way to come and not want to talk to anyone." He introduced himself and the others and added, "All in Thurios." When meeting in a virtual recreation of a setting, it was customary to state where one was located physically. It was evident that the Thurien was actually somewhere else also; had he been physically at the tower in Vranix, and therefore not neurally coupled into the system, he wouldn't be interacting with them. "Mildred is writing a book on your society. We're giving her a quick introductory tour of Thurien."
"My name is Kolno Wyarel. On Nessara, a planet of Callantares, a star you've probably never heard of." His manner became more relaxed. "But I was Thurien-born originally… a long time ago, now."
"With a system like this, you're never really away," Mildred observed. "Has it changed much?"
"Oh, Vranix never changes much."
"Is Vranix the part of Thurien that you're from?" Danchekker inquired, making a heroic effort at being genial.
"I studied music and philosophy here." Wyarel looked around. A faint smile touched his features. "It is where my wife, Asayi, and I met when we were young. Our favorite memories are of these places. So every once in a while we come back here to relive them a little."
"Will she…" Hunt wasn't sure if Wyarel meant that they came here together, or that Wyarel came to be reminded. He broke of the question that he had begun to frame, realizing that it might be indelicate.
The Thurien understood and gave a short laugh. "Yes, she's fine. She was supposed to be here by now, but no doubt she got distracted by something. VISAR says she isn't online yet. Don't worry about it. It happens all the time. She's somewhere in the same house as me."
"A universal proclivity of the female, it would appear," Danchekker observed.
"Oh, don't pontificate so, Christian," Mildred chided. "What do you do now on… where was it?… Nessara," she asked Wyarel.
"It's what I suppose you would call a tropical planet, teeming with forests and life. Warm and humid by our standards, but you get used to it. We retired there to be among the life, and to contemplate. There is an inner awareness that learns to open out to these things."
"There used to be teachings like that on Earth, but we seem to have turned away from them." Mildred glanced at the two scientists with her. "Such things seem to be considered as gone out of style." Danchekker humphed and rocked from one foot to the other, refusing to be goaded.
"That's only natural. But it will be temporary," Wyarel said. "A culture must attend to its material needs before it can rise beyond them, just as we must eat before we can create the works that are to be found in Vranix. Thuriens have discovered and mastered the physical universe. Now we are discovering ourselves."