Because so much of that activity was taking place below the surface, the streetscape of Change Hill was deceptively quiet, a little like an old Spanish city during siesta. Soon lost, and resigned to the fact that doing so would make her look like a tourist, Kath Two took the piece of paper out of her pocket and reminded herself of the address. She already knew it was on the south side and that she would either have to cross the bridge—which was clearly visible, arcing high above the city—or descend all the way to the floor of the vale and cross the gully at its bottom. The latter tempted her, but she knew that she would want to spend a lot of time there, looking at the place where Endurance had touched down and where Eve Dinah had walked with Dubois Harris. That was best saved for later. So she climbed, winding her way through the streets, which were paved with a stone whose reddish-brown color hid the rust stains that streaked down from every exposed bit of bedmetal. She cut across the park beside the Change, where young traders in good clothes, out on snack breaks, were sitting on benches prodding their tablets, or sprawled in clusters on the grass laughing, or playing lawn sports with colored balls.
The bridge’s northern end met the park’s edge. From far below, the bridge had looked slender and graceful, belying what she now understood was its real bulk. Here it broadened to form a massive connection with Change Hill. Even at its apogee, however, it was broad enough for twenty people to walk abreast. After turning around one last time to admire the marble columns of the Change and to hear the roar of voices within, she faced south and began to ascend. In the early going the bridge was a stairway, but as the arch gradually flattened with height, it turned into a ramp, faced in white marble, broken with occasional landings. She had been informed that the real reason for these was to prevent wheeled objects from going fully out of control. If so that purpose had been artfully concealed by turning them into little sculpture gardens where bridge climbers could pause for refreshment beneath rose-covered bowers.
While not immune to such temptations, Kath Two was at bottom a serious walker who did not like to stop once she had gotten going. She was thinking, reviewing in her mind the journey on the elevator, which had been largely uneventful. This, as she had gradually realized, was a part of its charm and of its exclusivity. It was possible to reach Cradle quickly, if you had enough money to charter, or authority to commandeer, the right vehicles. Most people used the elevator, though. Thus Cradle was separated from the rest of the human world not so much by distance as by time. Spending that much time was a sort of luxury, afforded only to a few. Of course, passengers worked en route—this explained all of those expensive restaurants and bars around the atrium, with their private meeting rooms. But Kath Two hadn’t had any real work to do. She had gone for long hours without talking to another human at all, and had done a lot of reading and watching of entertainment on screens. She had slept normally, confirming that any epigenetic shift that might have gotten started last week had been aborted.
All of this just made her want to reach the meeting place so that she could at least have an explanation from Doc, meet the missing Dinan and A?dan, and get started on whatever it was the Seven was supposed to be doing.
She maintained a brisk pace to the top of the arch but there permitted herself a few minutes’ pause. At the apex, the walkway broadened into a scenic overlook affectionately known as Hurricane Heights. The wind was so powerful here that it made her eyes water. She turned her back to it and toddled carefully over to the eastern railing, on the lee side. She blinked her vision clear and allowed herself a few minutes’ gawking down into the compounds and the streets and the Vale. The sun was setting behind her. Since they were on the equator it would set quickly. The Vale was already in shadow, but the stone walls of the compounds and the fronts of the buildings were emanating a magical pink-gold glow. Lights were coming on in windows along purple-shaded streets.
It was a real place. Not like the artificial environments of the habitat ring. Some of the larger habitats came close to possessing this quality—the sense that you were in something close to a real planetary environment. But it was always dispelled as soon as you looked up and saw the opposite side of the habitat hanging a few kilometers above your head. Here, you could look up and see endless sky, the stars coming out, the gleaming necklace of the habitat ring rising perpendicularly from the eastern horizon. The thing that made it real was the air, the sheer quantity of it, the endless variety of its movements and its smells. She wished she had a glider so that she could go dancing in it.
ACCORDING TO A LEGEND THAT WAS ALMOST CERTAINLY INCORRECT, the overlook where Kath Two was standing—the center of the bridge—was the location where Eve Dinah’s demolition charge had exploded after she had made her choice and tossed it into space.
The compromise that Dinah had forced by placing that bomb against the window of the Banana had seemed elegant and straightforward for about as long as it had taken for the bomb to go off.
In one sense, the gaming of the system had begun even before it was thought of, when Eve Julia had pointed out that she would have few babies and Eve A?da had prophesied that she would have many.