I didn’t know how to answer. “That’s what I’m doing now,” I finally replied.
“Up your scale,” Shrug advised Kite. “She’s right. The clash of organizations, governments. Still possible. GEWA against GSHA. Might make a bestseller.”
“They’re even taking that away from us,” Kite said. “No wars, nothing but economic frictions behind closed doors. Nothing to make the heart pound.”
“Kite is a Romantic,” Orianna said.
That seemed to genuinely irritate him. “Not at all,” he said. “The Romantics wanted to destroy themselves.”
“Spoken like a true child of our time,” Shrug said. “Kite pushes healthy as they come. Passion — life to the limit — but no risk, please.”
Kite grinned. “I never met a passion I didn’t like,” he said. “I just don’t want to be owned by one.”
An actor portraying a waiter took my dish away.
The Omphalos stood on five hectares at the southern end of Manhattan , near Battery Park. It looked immensely strong, a cube surrounded by smaller cubes, all gleaming white with gold trim.
At the gate, on the very edge of the compound, Orianna presented her palm and answered a few questions posed by a blank-faced security arbeiter. A human guard met us, took us into an adjoining room, sat behind a desk, and asked our reasons for taking the tour.
“I’d like to talk in private with a resident,” Orianna said. I looked at her in surprise; this had not been her stated purpose earlier.
“I’ll need your true names and affiliations even to apply for a clearance,” he said.
“That leaves us out,” Shrug said. Kite nodded agreement. “We’ll wait outside.” Orianna said we wouldn’t be more than an hour or two. An arbeiter escorted them to the front gate.
The guard quickly checked our public ratings for security violations and mental status. “You’re Martian,” he said, glancing at me. “Not using a Vernor.”
I admitted that I was.
“Terries trying to impress you?” the guard asked, glancing pointedly at Orianna.
“Are you Martian?” I asked him.
“No. I’d like to go there some day.” He referred to his slate and nodded approval. “I have your CV and pictures from a hundred different LitVid sources… You’re a celebrity. Everything clears. Welcome to Omphalos Six, your first glimpse of Heaven. Please stay with your assigned guide.”
“What are your connections, besides your father owning shares?” I asked Orianna as an arbeiter took us through an underground tunnel to the main cube.
“I have a reservation for when I turn two centuries,” Orianna said. “I don’t know if I’ll use it. I might just die instead…” She grinned at me. “Easy to say now. I might go Eloi and end up on Mars or in the Belt… Who knows what things will be like then?“
“Who are we going to talk to?” I asked.
“A friend.” She held her finger to her lips. “The Eye is watching.”
“What’s that?”
“The Omphalos thinker. Very high-level. Not at all like Alice , believe me — the best Earth can produce.”
I quelled my impulse to defend Alice . No doubt Orianna was right.
The interior of the building was equally impressive. An atrium rose twenty meters above a short walkway. The walkway ended on an elevator shaft that rose to the apex of the atrium, and sank below us through a glittering black pool. Nano stone walls, floors isolated from the walls by several dozen centimeters, sprung-shocked and field-loaded to withstand external stress — and damage repair stations in each corner. Conservative and solid.
“Above us are the apartments,” Orianna said. “About ten thousand occupants. One hundred apartments are full-size, for those folks who want to log in and out every few weeks. The uncommitted, you might say. The rest are cubicles for warm sleep.”
“They spend their time dreaming?”
“Custom sims and remote sensing. Omphalos has androids and arbeiters all over the Earth with human-resolution senses. Omphalos can access any of them at any time, and there you are — they are. The occupants can be anywhere they want. Some of the arbeiters can project full images of the occupant, fake you’re talking to someone in person. If you just want to retire and relax, Omphalos employs the very finest sim designers. Overdrive arts and lit fantasies.”
From my reading, and from Orianna’s description on Tuamotu, I knew that most of Omphalos’s residents stayed in long-term warm sleep, their bodies bathed in medical nano. Technically speaking, they were not Eloi — they could not walk around, occupy a new citizen’s space or employment opportunities — but their projected life spans were unknown. Omphalos served as refuge for the very wealthy and very powerful who did not want to be voided to the Belt or Mars, yet wanted to live longer. Medical treatment that cleansed and purified and exercised and toned and kept body and mind healthy and fit — medical treatment unending — slipped through a legal loophole.
This Omphalos, and the forty-two structures like it around the world, were not beloved by the general population. But they had woven their legal protections deep into the Earth’s governments.
“Why wouldn’t you want to come here? The guard called it Heaven.”
Orianna had skipped ahead of me. She hunched her shoulders. “Gives me the willies,” she said. She called the elevator, which arrived immediately.
The elevator stopped. Orianna took my hand and led me down a hallway that might have belonged in a plush hotel, retro early twentieth. Flowers filled cloisonné vases on wooden tables; we walked on non-metabolic carpet, probably real wool, deep green with white floral insets.
Orianna found the door she wanted. She knocked lightly and the door opened. We entered a small white room with three Empire chairs and a table. The room smelled of roses. The wall before the chairs brightened. A high-res virtual image presented itself to us, as if we looked through glass at a scene beyond. A black-haired, severely handsome woman of late middle years sat on a white cast-iron chair in the middle of a beautiful garden, trees shading her, rows of bushes covered with lovely roses red and blue and yellow marching in perspective off to a grand Victorian greenhouse. Tall clouds billowed on the horizon. It looked like a hot, humid, thundery day.
“Hello, Miss Muir,” Orianna greeted the woman. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her face.
“Hello, Ori! How nice to have visitors.” She smiled sunnily.
“Miss Muir, this is my friend, Casseia Majumdar of Mars.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the woman said.
“Do you know Miss Muir, Casseia?”
“I’m sorry, no.”
Orianna shook her head and pursed her lips. “No enhancements. Always leaves you at a disadvantage. This is President Danielle Muir.”
That name I had heard.
“President of the United States ?” I asked, my face betraying how impressed I was.
“Forty years ago,” Muir said, cocking her head to one side. “Practically forgotten, except by friends, and by my goddaughter. How are you, Ori?”
“I’m high pleased, ma’am. I apologize for not coming sooner… You know we’ve been away.”
“To Mars. You returned on the same ship with Miss Majumdar?”
“I did. And I confess I’ve come here with a motive.”
“Something interesting, I hope.”
“Casseia’s being jammed, ma’am. I’m too ignorant to speck what’s happening.”
Ex-President Muir leaned forward. “Do tell.”
Orianna raised her hand. “May I?”
“Certainly,” Muir said. A port thrust from the wall, and Orianna touched her finger to the pad, transferring information to Muir.
I specked the former President lying in warm sleep behind the screen, bathed in swirling currents of red and white medical nano like strawberry juice and cream.
Muir smiled and adjusted her chair to face us. The effect startled me — even ambient sound told us we were with her, outdoors. The walls of the cubicle gradually faded into scenery. Soon we, too, were in the shade of the large tree, surrounded by warm moist air. I smelled roses, fresh-cut grass, and something that raised the hair on my arms. Electricity… thunderstorms.