“Just leave her alone. She’ll be perfect.” Hysan folds his arms and keeps smiling.
Our car whisks out of the spaceport into rolling green fields. I’ve never seen this much tall grass in my life. So much solid land, it doesn’t seem real. Our hover-car skims over the greenery, and I twist to look around. The fields stretch to every horizon.
“Where’s the city?” I ask. Mathias is also craning and searching.
“It isn’t far,” says Hysan. “We’re almost there.”
Ahead, a light glints in the sky, then disappears. Odd. I stare in that direction and see another flash. “Was that an aircraft?”
Right in front of us, a wide swath of sky begins to flash and spark, from the ground all the way up to the clouds. Then our car runs straight into it.
For a moment, we seem to be sliding through the heart of a diamond.
Hysan grins at our reactions. “The city wall. Its mirage technology masks Moira’s capital from uninvited guests. Without a proper key, it’s impenetrable.”
The mirage wall reminds me of Hysan’s veil collars, and I wonder if he borrowed the technology from Moira.
As we cross out the other side, Mathias spins in his seat to keep scanning the wall, but my eyes are only for the city. It’s built like a needle shooting into the sky. “It looks like sterling silver,” I say.
“Osmium-iridium alloy,” says Hysan. “One of the most durable metals in the galaxy. Moira designs her cities to leave maximum acreage for growing grain.”
With a whoosh, our car begins to rise up the face of the needle, and all three of us move to the right side for a better view. The needle is so massive, it fills our window.
We ascend past a series of wide platforms, cantilevered out like leaves. They’re parking lots for hover-cars. We don’t stop, though. We’re still rising, and when I look down, the distance thrills me. Up here, the needle tapers to a point at the top, and I can see the shining gold capstone at the very peak, crowned by Virgo’s green peridot glyph, an emblem of connected lines representing the Triple Virgin.
We soar to the highest level, just under the capstone, where a circular port slides open, rimmed in beacon lights. No one’s here to meet us, but Hysan opens the car door. “This is our stop. This private port leads directly into Moira’s compound.”
As soon as we step out, monitoring devices swivel from the eaves to scan us. Again the extra gravity weighs me down as we trudge through a set of sliding metal doors into a vestibule where ultraviolet spotlights rove over our bodies. “Decontamination,” Hysan tells us. “Moira does all she can to protect her genetically modified wheat.”
“Free shower and laundry in one,” I say with a nervous laugh.
Once we’re properly sanitized, we step into a long, narrow corridor lined with giant wallscreens. Holographic films balloon out from them, filling the hallway with soft, flickering color, and the competing voiceovers blend like babbling water. The overall effect is relaxing.
Slumping under my own weight, I walk through the bubbles of moving light, watching reports about weather, crop insurance, soil amendments, and off-world pests. Hysan hurries on through the next pair of doors, but I stop to watch a slow-motion capture of a swelling wheat bud. Its fine, silky threads wave like antennae.
Just as I pass the last giant screen, I glimpse my own face in the news and almost trip. My picture’s floating beside the classic Capricorn depiction of a starving Ophiuchus caught in the fat coils of a snake.
The image cuts to a crowd of teenagers in Acolyte uniforms holding up posters at some kind of rally. Before I can make out what’s happening, the newsfeed shifts to a revolt of immigrant Scorp workers on a Sagittarian moon.
Mathias and Hysan are waiting up ahead, so I shake off the picture and hurry to catch up. Whether or not Nishi’s message is being taken seriously, at least she’s channeling attention to our cause. Ophiuchus can’t possibly like the spotlight, even if it hasn’t officially found him yet.
Together, the three of us enter a gilded antechamber where twenty gray-haired courtiers stand in a formal receiving line. “Your welcoming committee,” says Hysan.
“Don’t let them scare you,” whispers Mathias. “You were born for this, Rho.”
I lock eyes with him, surprised to find in their blue depths that he really means it. Bolstered by Mathias’s confidence, I step forward. Up close, the grim courtiers look like ordinary executives in their dark robes and tasseled caps. Olive-skinned with iron-gray hair, they have eyes the color of moss. All three men’s mustaches are waxed into exaggerated curlicues at the ends, and one of the women has chartreuse freckles. They wear numerous rings on their fingers, ears, and eyebrows.