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EIGHTEEN

The warm brown line of sunrise was so beautiful it made him ache inside. He could follow dawn's progress, imagine the daylight hitting cities and towns, graying skies, closing night flowers and opening day flowers, closing owl's eyes and opening people's eyes. Beneath the clouds, woven over the green lands and blue-black seas, were many white specks he knew weren't snow-capped mountains. He asked Anna what they were.

"Cities," she said.

"But I see them on the horizon, like bumps."

"Some are pretty big," she said. "Bigger than mountains, anyway."

"They're everywhere."

"You've gone through the tapas, haven't you?"

"Yes, but they aren't the same. This is real."

Anna floated to the center of the bridge bubble and shielded her eyes against Earth's glare. "Look off to thirty degrees, just beyond the edge of the ship's hull."

He pressed against the transparent material and followed the line of her finger. There was a tiny sparkle of light floating in space, which he could just barely resolve into a circle if he squinted. "What is it?"

"The first space station to carry a permanent staff. One hundred fifty meters across—tiny little thing. It's kept as a museum now. It was hoisted—let's see—fifty years after you left Earth. You might have lived to see it."

"I have lived to see it," Kawashita said. "There are advantages to being a Rip van Winkle."

"If we sit here much longer, we'll probably see five or ten ships in parking orbits. It's a crowded sky."

Three landers were prepared, each carrying fifty passengers. The Peloros carried only a few tons of material cargo, which was being prepared for ship-to-surface transmission. Nestor took Kawashita into the transmission chamber and pointed out the items that could legally be broken down into energy and radiated to surface receivers for reconstruction.

"I have six works of art from a human colony around Epsilon Eridani. Certified original works have tagged atoms implanted in them which scramble a signal so they can't be transmitted. Exotic materials—organics, perfumes, drugs, and so on—are difficult to transmit because their structures haven't been completely analyzed, and loss of detail can be disastrous. Humans and anything but the simplest living things are forbidden by law—not because we can't send them down and re-create them but for philosophical reasons.

"I've been told that anyone who understands how matter is put together doesn't have any doubts that received and original objects are the same, but there's a big emotional question involved. Most members of Hafkan Bestmerit allow transmission of known living creatures, but by Earth standards that's barbaric. Myself, I'm not so certain—but I won't volunteer for a test, either."

"I've read that most things can be duplicated. What does this do to the economy?"

"You'll see. Come on—we've got a lander to catch. Economics still decree that we use launch windows."

"The Perfidisian ship came to the surface to pick me up. Why can't the Peloros?"

"They may have been richer than I am, I don't know. At any rate, the Peloros refuses to have anything to do with an atmosphere. She tells me it's a personal prejudice, but frankly I think it goes deeper than that." She grinned and took him by the arm, leading him around the curve of the ship to a vehicle bay.

 

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Framed