Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

The yacht radiated personality, and it was a familiar personality. He rubbed at the itching bandage on his maimed hand, trying not to think of just how urgent this part of the plan had become, after the disaster of the last few days.

Yes, this must be the right ship: it looked like its owners had done their best to disguise the deadly nature of the vessel, but it hadn't done much good; the ominous name painted on its prow-- Judgment --gave its purpose away.

Could she be so stupid as to have come here herself?

Jacoby assembled his honor guard at the infinite drop that ran around the edge of the circular docks. The yacht perched there, along with other ships, right on the rim of the hundred-foot-wide mouth of the dock structure. "Atten ... shun!" he snapped as the yacht's main hatch opened.

The woman who stepped out was young, beautiful, and regal in her poise. She was dressed in a black bodysuit with a black lace poncho over it; Jacoby could see the crisscross of a gun belt at her hips. She looked like some sort of pirate queen, but he'd never seen her before--clearly she was a late addition to the list that Inshiri had not had time to tell him about.

He bowed, not too lowly, and said, "Welcome to Fracas. Who do I have the honor of addressing?"

She scowled down at him, no sign of recognition in her eyes, either. "Tell your bosses that Princess Thavia of Greydrop is here, and I demand to know what the hell they're up to."

If the gravity hadn't been trivial up here Jacoby might have fallen over. No, this was not the real Thavia, whom he knew well and whose loyalty he could always count on. What was hysterically funny was that this woman wasn't imitating the real Thavia at all, but rather another spoiled princess Jacoby knew--and she was doing a damned fine job of it.

"Princess Thavia?" She nodded impatiently. "Well, this is an honor, then." In the microgravity she merely had to undulate slightly and her body drifted forward and down to where she could perch on tiptoe in front of him.

"My name is Jacoby Sarto," he said, slightly emphasizing his name while looking her in the eye. Not a hint that she knew him. "I'll be your liaison during your stay here," he continued, then saw that she wasn't even looking at him, but was peering in apparent puzzlement through the iron grating to their left. Thousands of feet below it, the city began.

So, clearly Venera wasn't that stupid. She'd sent a proxy--but she was still taking his bait. If he knew her--and he liked to think he did--that meant that she was not far away.

"I take it you've never been to Fracas before?"

"Never," she said slowly; her eyes were on the interior of the dock cylinder behind him, which in any normal city would have been empty space where ships could hang weightless. "What is that godawful mess?"

"Fracas is special. You'll see."

Behind her, two other people emerged from the yacht, a man and a woman. Both wore drab servants' clothes, but they moved like soldiers.

Okay. This was clearly Venera's countermove to his dangled bait--but what came next?

"The city fathers are eager to meet you," Jacoby said neutrally as he led the way into the curving steel cylinder. Here, the steel deck plating had been removed to expose the cylinder's skeleton of girders. Penetrating this by the thousand were cables, ropes, and chains of all widths and colors, each sporting a bright name tag on which numbers and letters were written. The thicket of cabling was so dense you couldn't see the three hundred feet to the other end of the cylinder, and the view was further complicated by the many cranks, coils, pulley blocks, and winches knotted into it.

Caught off guard as he was, habit made Jacoby lead the imposters along a catwalk over the miles-long drop to the city. The cables all led that way, down beneath their feet. He could only grip the rail with his right hand, but barely noticed the vertigo-inducing scenery; he was thinking hectically about what would happen next. Thavia's message had been sent, and Venera had come running--or had she? Unless she herself came within the walls of the city, this ploy would fail as miserably as his attempt to take Serenity.

They came to the head of a yin-yang stairway that led down to distant rooftops, and he watched the imposters for the expected reaction, as the full grandeur and madness of what was below came into view.

In any ordinary town wheel, this long staircase--which started out nearly vertical here at the docks, and flattened gradually as it dropped--would have led to a ribbon of planking or metal half a mile below. That ribbon would normally make a vast hoop upon which would perch gravity-dependent shops and services, hostels, hotels, and the occasional mansion of the rich. This, however, was Fracas, and it had no such hoop.

"Is this a town, or a belfry?" drawled faux Thavia as she peered over the rail at the chaos below.

Jacoby pretended to chuckle. "Fracas was never planned, the way most towns are," he explained as he began to descend. This was the point of no return for them; he could still decide that they weren't on his list, and send them on their way. But he had no sympathy for sacrificial victims; he gestured for them to follow, and his honor guard closed in discreetly behind them, in case they should balk.

"Originally," he explained, "Fracas was just a couple of buildings spinning in bolo configuration. The original owners--a farming cooperative--added a couple more houses, then somebody thought of putting a hotel here for people who'd come to look at Spyre. As you may know, Spyre used to be quite visible from here ... So then there were a dozen buildings all whirling around a central point. Then a hundred. Then a thousand ... Well, you get the picture."

The full intricacy of a necklace town like Fracas could be understood only by someone born and raised here; but the concept was simple. Fracas was a collection of spokes without a wheel, each spoke a strong cable or rope tied at the great central knot where the ships docked. The cables suspended houses and schools and factories and even short arcs of street; Jacoby pointed out one of these nearby, as it was hoisted up through the forest of buildings like a giant elevator.

"The tax situation is favorable," he added as he watched faux Thavia hop down the long rope-suspended staircase. "They spend no upkeep on a wheel since there's no wheel. Every household simply pays directly to maintain its own cable--and if you let yours deteriorate to the point that it breaks and falls on one of the lower houses, well, then, the rest of the town gets together and they lynch you! It's a simple system, very economical."

"Fascinating," said the actress, or spy, in a bored tone. "I'm going to cut to the chase. I have no intention of remaining here one minute longer than it takes to clear this mess up. I hope you're taking us to see your masters?"

"Oh, I am, I am. Right this way."

Wind was teasing his gray hair now as they entered more deeply into the city's rotation. Weight was increasing, too, and the staircase's steps became correspondingly shallower. The stairway cut through layers of city, brightly painted can-shaped buildings like giant pendulums, all thronged together and lashed to one another with catwalks and ladders. Vertical lines of cable, rigging, and rope dissected the view everywhere. Here in the thick middle of the necklace, you could only catch glimpses of blue sky to either side, while below was a chaos of rooftops. The docks had vanished above, hidden by the sparred undersides of higher dwellings.

"I suppose you can pick your level of gravity," mused the male "servant." "Put the schools on the outside where the kids will have to run in more than a g. Retire to somewhere with lower weight when you get old."

"Maybe," replied the female. Then she held up her hand to the ever-present wind that coursed through the maze of buildings. "But what happens when your house catches fire?"