But his passengers this time, the older man with the military bearing, and the young woman with him—they were different, very different from the officials who came and stared, as if gluefeet were merely some odd species of animal life kept penned up for study.
Part of it was the shock on their faces. They were surprised. They had not seen this before, or heard about it, or had any expectations about it. Everyone else who came through on the free-runners was either a bored bureaucrat like the young hard-featured man, tired of seeing it all, struggling to turn a blind eye to what was right in front of him, or else they arrived on the scene with their minds made up. They were angry, or horrified, or dripping with sympathy, long before they got to Ring Park.
Not these two. They were astonished by what they saw.
But there was something more. It was not until his wife returned with their food rations, and he saw the look on her face, that it came to him. That look. No doubt he wore the same expression himself. That was the whole point.
“
It was the strangest thing,
”
Elber said to Jassa as she sat down next to him.
“
Two more uppers just went by on the tour.
”
“
What
’
s so strange about that?
”
she asked, taking Zari from him.
“
They come and look at us all the time.
”
“
Nothing,
”
said Elber.
“
But it was the looks on their faces. They were uppers, all right, posh, clean clothes. They
’
d been fed okay—maybe a little thin and pale, but not much. And the free-runner
’
s driver treating them right. Uppers, for sure. But—but the looks on their faces. They were like us. Like
us.”
Jassa looked at him and frowned.
“
What do you mean,
‘
like us
’
?
”
“
Those two. You could see it, in their faces, in their eyes, even from far off. Shocked, and scared, surprised—
and something more. It was there in their eyes to see. They
’
d lost everything, been lost to all, and got dropped into a new world they didn
’
t know.
“
Those two,
”
he said again.
“
They were as lost and far from home as we are. Maybe more.
”
Sparten led them briskly through the glittering upper lobby and directly under the hexagonal overhead viewport. Norla had only the briefest of chances to look up at the massive bulk of SCO Station looming overheard. Even then, she had to break into a trot to catch up with the other two, nearly stumbling in the noticeably higher gravity. She had forgotten how much of a nuisance variable gravity was aboard a spinning station.
Directly below the overhead viewport was a circular open space in the deck, or floor, whatever one might call it here, with a low railing around it. The opening took up about half the space under the overhead viewport and was centered exactly under it. Norla looked down and saw a vast atrium, a great open space, circular in cross section. It extended five levels down. On each level below her there were people leaning on the railings, looking up or down or across, pointing things out to each other.
Norla looked straight down to the lowest level. She saw three wedge-shaped pools of still water, the barest of ripples ruffling their mirrored surfaces. She looked down into the pool directly beneath her, and spotted her own far-off reflection, framed by the view out the hexagonal overhead port above her. Down there in the still water, she could see the reflection of SCO Station looming up behind her. Between the water wedges were three walkways that met at a central circular dais, exactly in the center of the lowest level. Norla looked up, craning her neck to see SCOStation overhead and figuring the sight lines. If one stood at that central dais on the lowest level, one could look straight up at the viewport in Ring Park through which Norla had seen the station.
Koffield glanced down at the atrium, but did not break stride. He kept right on, still with his secured container, and Sparten kept pace with him. Norla lingered at the railing for a moment longer, then hurried to catch up. She found them waiting for her in yet another elevator car.
This one was a more conventional sort of windowless box. She stepped inside, the door shut, and they proceeded down. No one spoke. As they moved still farther away from the axis of rotation, Norla
’
s apparent weight increased still further, up to about three-quarters of Earth gravity. The sensation of getting heavier made it seem as if she were riding an elevator moving up, not down, leaving her more confused than ever by this inside-out, upside-down building. She watched the numbers on the display count down from
Upper Level,
to
5,
to
4, 3, 2,
and then
Main Level,
where the base of the atrium was. She expected the car to stop and the doors to open there, but instead it kept going. The display blanked out, as if the level they were going to had no name, no number.
The elevator came to a halt, and the door slid open. They stepped out, Norla going first.
She had only time to see they were in an office, with a man at a desk ahead and off to the left, before the fumes hit her. The pungent odor of burning leaves assaulted Norla
’
s nose, and she blinked back sudden tears as a haze of smoke clawed at her eyes and throat. She sneezed twice, hard, then coughed violently.
All she could think of was that, somehow, the bad air caused by the refugee crisis had all somehow pooled down here, at the very base of the Gondola. Half-blinded by her tears, she turned back toward the elevator car. They had to get out of here, head back up, alert the life-support people—
“
Sorry about that,
”
a flat, laconic voice said.
“
I forget sometimes it hits some people pretty hard. Wait a sec while I jack up the air blowers and the scrubbers.
”
A low rush of cool, clean air enveloped Norla. She coughed once or twice more, then breathed easier.
She rubbed her eyes and blinked to clear them. The world blurred and shimmered before it settled down to reveal that the man behind the desk had stood up to face them. He glanced down at his desk and closed some sort of control panel, then looked back toward his visitors.
He was a round-faced, tough-looking, angry-looking man. Short, heavyset, almost squat. He was very dark-skinned and his scalp was utterly hairless. His eyes were brown, deep-set, and penetrating, the whites of his eyes oddly yellowed. He was scowling as he looked at them, but somehow Norla got the impression that it had nothing to do with them. A scowl was the expression that his face fell into naturally.
“
Come on in,
”
he said, and picked something up from a shallow container on his desk and stuck one end of it in the corner of his mouth. It was a brown cylinder about fifteen centimeters long and about a centimeter and a half wide. His face twitched, and the end of the cylinder glowed orange for a second. He took the thing out of his mouth, blew a stream of smoke out into the air, and put the thing back in his mouth.
Norla stared in fascination. She had heard of such things, but she had never actually seen anyone smoking a cigar before.
“
I
’
m Commander Karlin Raenau,
”
the man said.
“
They got me running this shop these days. Come on in and have a seat.
”
Raenau glanced over at Sparten.
“
No need for you to hang around,
”
he said.
“
You go get some real work done.
”
“
Yes, sir,
”
Sparten said, then saluted and withdrew. Norla watched as he stepped back into the elevator and the doors shut—and was startled to realize that the elevator shaft did not extend this far down. When the car rose into the ceiling, it left nothing behind but a blank spot in the floor in the center of the vast circular office. A ceiling hatch irised shut after the car was gone.
“
He
’
s a good boy, but he gets me nervous,
”
Raenau said to no one in particular. Raenau sat back down behind his desk and gestured for Norla and Koffield to sit on the visitors
’
chairs facing him. Raenau regarded his guests thoughtfully and did not speak at first.
Norla took advantage of the moment to glance around the office. She began to realize that the vanishing elevator was far from the only strange feature of the place. The room was circular in its floor plan, half again as wide around as the main deck of the
Cruzeiro do Sul.
The ceiling was gunmetal grey, but the floor and walls were done in a single shade of flat matte silver. It was not until she noticed the faint image of a ship wheeling past under the floor and up one side of the wall that she realized the entire room, except for the ceiling, was made of adjustable-reflectance glass, smart glass, all of it cranked up to maximum opacity.
There was a woven decorative hanging, with an abstract pattern, suspended from a freestanding frame that stood behind her chair, where it was directly in Raenau
’
s line of sight as he sat at the desk. What looked like a big decorative folding screen, with a fanciful pattern of swimming fish on it, stood to the side of the desk, opposite where the elevator car had been. It was too big an object, and too carefully positioned, in a spot too inconveniently close to the desk, for something just intended to be pretty. Norla guessed it was some sort of data display.
There was a thick, lush, intricately decorated carpet under Raenau
’
s desk and the area in front of it, where she and Koffield sat. There were three or four groupings of furniture scattered about the open floor, each likewise with a decorative carpet beneath it, and with hangings or folding screens nearby. There was nothing actually hung from, or suspended from, the walls themselves.
The room seemed to take up the entire level of the building. There were no doors in any of the walls, and plainly there was nothing but stars and space beyond the opacified wall. Norla looked up into the ceiling and noted several other irised-shut hatches of various sizes. Some of the hatches were large enough to drop a compact kitchen or washroom into the room. Clearly the room was designed to be configured in a half dozen ways.
Big as the room was, it was nowhere as large across as what she had seen of the upper levels of the Gondola. She realized that this one office was hanging off the underside of the rest of the structure all by itself, a blister set into the base of the deepest tower, with no way in or out but through the ceiling.
“
Lots of toys in here,
”
Raenau said, and Norla realized that he had been watching her as she looked around them.
“
I don
’
t ever use them much. I needed a place to work, and they gave me a button-pusher
’
s playground.
”
“
That
’
s all adjustable-reflectance glass, isn
’
t it?
”
Norla asked, gesturing at the floor and walls.
“
Multiglass, that
’
s right. Hardly ever use that at
all.
Wanna see?
”
Before either of them could answer, Raenau stabbed his finger down on a button and twisted a knob.
The lights died, dropping the chamber into utter blackness. Then the floors and walls faded away into nothing at all. Norla cried out in surprise and alarm. Even the unflappable Anton Koffield let out a faint gasp of surprise. Norla closed her eyes tight, held the arms of her chair in a death grip, and forced herself to calm down. She let go the arm of her chair and slowly opened her eyes, looking straight ahead at Raenau.
Or at least where Raenau should have been. There was nothing there but a small, faint dot of orange that flared and faded, flared and faded. Then she realized it was the end of his cigar, the ember glowing as he puffed on it.
She looked down, at the black outline of the carpet, and the planet swooping past it down below. The stars wheeled past, and a small orbital tug came into view. Norla stood up, swallowed hard, and walked toward the edge of the carpet, hesitated a moment, then stepped out onto the absolute nothingness beyond. She heard the click of her heels on the deck, and could feel the solidity of the deck under her. But for all of that, when she looked down she saw
nothing
there beneath her. She looked down between her feet and watched the universe, the stars, the planet, the darkness of the void wheeling past in stately procession.
She realized her hands were clenched into fists and forced them to relax. She looked behind herself, at the decorative fabric on the frame, right where Raenau could see it from his desk. Now she understood the carpets and the carefully positioned hangings all around the room. Even when the glass was set at maximum opacity, there was a certain amount of see-through. No one wanted to see the ghost of the planet swooping past out of the corner of his eyes every couple of minutes. She noted there was no such hanging
behind
Raenau
’
s desk. Either the man hadn
’
t thought of it, or else he felt it would be to his advantage to have his visitors distracted.