“I suppose it does take some getting used to,” Suzenne said quietly from beside me. “I grew up with it, of course, so to me it seems perfectly natural.”
“I guess it would,” I said, following the curve upward with my eyes. It was mostly more of the same, though the pattern of farm and forest had been varied and there was what looked like a large lake visible part way up. I tried to follow the curve all the way up, but began to lose it in the glare of the sun.
The sun? “I see you have the ultimate light fixture,” I commented, pointing. “I hope that’s not a real fusion generator.”
“It’s not,” Suzenne assured me. “We don’t have any problem with generating heat inside the colony—it’s dumping the excess we sometimes find troublesome, particularly during the winter season. No, our sun is just a very bright light source, running along inside a tunnel through the rotational axis. It fades in at this end of the chamber in the morning, crosses slowly to the other end throughout the day, and then is faded out to give us some twilight. Then it’s sent back across during the night and prepped for the new day. It’s not the same as living on a planet, I suppose, but it’s the closest arrangement the designers could come up with and it’s probably pretty accurate.”
I squinted up at it. The light was bright enough, but not the blinding intensity of a real G-type sun. “Looks like it’s getting toward evening.”
“About another hour to sunset,” she said. “And yes, we do call it sunset. I’m afraid that’s not going to leave you much time to look around tonight.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I assured her. “We’re not very far off your schedule ourselves, and I for one could do with an early night.”
“That will work best for us, too,” she said. “I’ll arrange for rooms for all of you, and you can look around and meet King Peter in the morning.”
“Sounds good.” I looked up again as another thought struck me. “You don’t have any stars, of course.”
“Not real ones,” she said. “But the various city lights look a little like them from the opposite side. And there are observation rooms at the bow for anyone who wants to see the stars for real.”
“The landscape looks pretty real, too,” I commented. “But you seem to have forgotten about mountains.”
She smiled. “Not really. You’re standing on one. If you’ll excuse me, I have to see to our transportation.”
She walked away. Grimacing slightly, I crossed to the far edge of the balcony. Making sure I had a solid grip on the railing, I looked down.
And found myself gazing down the slope of a rocky cliff at a pasture a kilometer or more below.
“Do you believe this?” Bilko commented, coming up beside me and glancing casually down. “Mountain climbing the easy way—you can start at the top if you want to.”
“You really think people climb this?” I asked, taking a long step back from the edge.
“Oh, sure,” Bilko said. “Probably designed that way on purpose. In feet, if you look around, you can see different-grade slopes all around this end of the chamber. I’ll bet they ice some of them up in the winter so that the really committed nutcases can ski, too.”
I grunted. “They’re welcome to it.”
“Personally, I’d rather have a good game of skill myself.” Leaning an elbow on the railing, he nodded casually off to the side. “Speaking of nutcases, did you happen to notice the crowd of cardsharps over there?”
Frowning, I turned to look. Cardsharps was the current cutesy slang term for cops among Bilko’s gambling buddies; but all I could see over there was Suzenne and a half dozen men in coveralls maneuvering a compact multi-passenger helicopter out of a hangar carved out of the rock. Between us and them, the two uniformed men she’d had up above were standing their stolid guard. “Since when do two men constitute a crowd?” I asked.
“Oh, come on, Jake, use your eyes,” Bilko chided. “Those aren’t techs rolling out that helicopter. They’re cops, every one of them.”
I threw him a look, turned back to the techs. “Sorry, but I still don’t see it.”
“It’s your innate honesty,” Bilko said. “Take my word for it, they’re cops.”
“Fine,” I said, stomach tightening briefly with old memories. “So they’re a little nervous and want to keep an eye on us. So what? Don’t forget, we’re the first outside contact they’ve had in 130 years.”
“I suppose,” Bilko said reluctantly. “It’s just that a mix of uniformed and non-uniformed always makes me nervous. Like they’re trying to con us.”
Suzenne turned and beckoned us toward her. “Which qualifies as working your side of the street, no doubt,” I commented as Bilko and I headed across the balcony toward her.
“Hey, I play a clean game,” he protested. “You know that.”
“Sure,” I said. “Just do me a favor and don’t try to draw cards with the pilot until we’ve actually landed, all right?”
Rhonda and Jimmy, who’d been admiring the view from a different part of the balcony, reached the helicopter the same time we did. Kulasawa, who’d wandered off on her own, arrived maybe ten seconds behind us. “We’re ready to go,” Suzenne said. “Rooms are being prepared for you in the guest house across from the Royal Palace. It’s not nearly as grand as the name might imply,” she added, looking at Kulasawa. “As I said, titles really aren’t that important here.”
“Of course,” Kulasawa said. “Should we have brought some food from the transport?”
“A meal will be awaiting you,” Suzenne promised. “Nothing fancy, I’m afraid, but it should tide you over until the more formal welcoming dinner tomorrow.”
“And my research equipment?”
“It will be brought to the guest house tonight,” Suzenne said. “Along with the rest of the cargo.” She looked around the group. “Are there any other questions before we go?”
“I have one,” Jimmy said hesitantly, looking warily at the twin helicopter blades hanging over our heads. “You’re sure it’s safe to fly in here?”
“We do it all the time,” Suzenne assured him with a smile. “Bear in mind that the chamber is over thirteen kilometers long and that it’s five kilometers from the ground to the sun tunnel. There really is plenty of room.”
“And now,” she continued, looking around again, “if there are no other questions, please go ahead and find a seat inside. It’s time for us to go.”
The Royal Palace was indeed not nearly as fancy as its name had implied. Situated near the center of the city I’d seen from the balcony, it much more resembled an extra-nice government building than it did a medieval castle or even your basic presidential mansion.
But it had a helipad on the roof, and the guest house Suzenne had mentioned was right across the street, and for me that was what counted. What with the long flight and strain of finding and getting to the Freedom’s Peace—plus the two short nights that had gone before—I discovered midway through the helicopter ride that I was unutterably tired.
The meal Suzenne had promised, consisting of a buffet of cold meats, cheeses, fish, bread, and fruit, had been laid out in the common area of the suite we’d been booked into. I wolfed down just enough to quiet the rumblings in my stomach and then went in search of my bed. My room was quiet and dark, the bed large and comfortably firm, and I was asleep almost before the blankets settled down around me.
I awoke to sunlight streaming in through a gap in the curtains and a smell of roast chicken in the air that reminded my stomach that the previous night’s meal hadn’t been much more than a gastronomic promissory note. Throwing on yesterday’s clothes, I made a quick trip to the attached bathroom and headed out into the common area.