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NINETEEN

The city of Tokyo occupied a strip of land three hundred kilometers wide, from the Sea of Japan to the Pacific. On the Pacific coast, where Yokohama and Kawasaki had once been, were five Soleri structures, each twelve kilometers tall, surrounded by a hundred thousand hectares of city greenspace, then a vast jumble of townships, each following its own architectural plan, each with over ten million citizens. The central city was a cubic Masserat structure, twenty kilometers from base to top shuttle terminals, each vertical side interrupted by a hemispheric depression lined with thousands of apartments, a vast honeycomb dripping with people. The four corner supports, once bare and for structural purposes only, were now frosted with residential districts.

No material edifice could support such a strain so the fabric of the cube was laced with thousands of intertwined energy fields. At night, light from the field junctions turned the sides of the city into lattices of red, blue, and green stars. Their glow brightened the skies for a thousand kilometers around.

The islands of Japan supported one billion human beings. The coastal waters carried interlinked floating cities. Heat production in the larger population centers was so great that the tops of forty cities glowed a dull brown-red at night. Every fifteen minutes bursts of coherent heat from the cities were shot into space, aimed by computers to avoid the complex network of shipping in orbit above. Every so often the computers misdirected fire, and a city's waste would temporarily blind a warper ship or cook the crew of a smaller vessel.

The southern island of Kyushu was a reserve, carefully maintained by gardeners and scientists. In the cities and townships lotteries were held every day, choosing the lucky citizens who would be given permits to tour the forests and sample the uncrowded life of preindustrial Japan.

Kawashita received a permanent pass. Nestor was given a more limited pass, with a total of four years' occupancy allowed to her, to be taken in periods of any size.

The governments of Japan, China, and the Hispano-Anglo Republic—the largest nation on Earth, encompassing England, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Borneo—welcomed them with special ceremonies.

"The radio temperature of the Earth is ten billion degrees Celsius," Kawashita read from his new tapas, a gift from the Hispanglo ambassador to Japan. "The total population is one hundred billion human beings. The keeping of private animals is illegal in most nations. One third of Africa is a zoo. Another third is unreclaimed wasteland from the combined effects of a misguided asteroid in 2134, and the only nuclear war, which was fought between Algeria, Libya, and Morocco in 1995. There are plans to convert this wasteland into a new African population center, with thirty Soleri structures and sixty field-reinforced Masserat structures." He put the pad down and looked outside his apartment window at the blue and purple of the horizon. Stars didn't twinkle at this altitude. The sun's brightness was grayed by polarized crystals in the glass. "Fifteen years ago a rocket bus carrying two thousand passengers hit Tokyo's central city at an altitude of nineteen kilometers. The population of Japan hit zero growth that day."

Anna was peering at a private data screen in a nook just above the dining room. Kawashita stood on the lower step of the nook and tapped her on the shoulder.

"Hm?"

"What are you looking at?"

"One of the Ring Stars went supernova forty-eight years ago. I'm looking at a lower-space transmission from the closest listening station. Want to see?"

"No, thank you. Anna, this Earth is insane."

"Crowded, yes, but I wouldn't call it insane."

"Why not?"

"Because the median income is the highest of all the human worlds. The poorest families have living allowances that would be the envy of a family on any handful of colony worlds. Franklin Wegener took the global economy and geared it to information processing, and that put Earth in a crucial position. What she couldn't have by mandate and imperialism, she took over by sheer necessity. You're visiting one of the five most important information centers in the human Galaxy—and that includes the Aighor birthworld, Myraidne, and . . . Mars? Is it Mars or the Crocerian birthworld now? Have to look it up."

"But what do they do? How do they think?"

Anna turned away from the screen. "No more wars, no more major diseases, no starvation, poverty only for those who want it, and a living environment a tiny bit better than most spacefarers put up with."

"But they've lost something."

"I'd like to know what." She returned to the screen. "Christ, what did they have around that star? I see hyperfine structures I've never heard of . . . "

"I do not know," Kawashita said, standing by the window, barely three meters from the thin, cold air of the tropopause. "Something." There was a catch in his voice. Anna swung her chair around and noticed the glitter of a tear running down his cheek. For the first time she saw Kawashita crying. She climbed out of the nook. She had never hugged him before, but she did so now without hesitation.

"I am ashamed," Kawashita said between hard sobs.

"What is it?" she asked, holding him to her.

"Where my grandparents once lived. It is covered with five kilometers of concrete and steel."

Anna wondered whether the crack-up was beginning. Half a dozen expert psychiatrists had counseled her to expect it. "Hell, Yoshio, to tell the truth, I wouldn't live on Earth for a week longer than I had to. Maybe that's what you're talking about."

"This isn't my land anymore," he said. "Not where I can search. But if what you say is true, most people are happy." He wiped his face quickly with a sleeve.

"One way or another. Happy may not be the exact word."

"So they are not like me, not like the people I knew. And I have to find answers in relation to myself. This is not the world."

"Then you'll have to find another."

"I learn day and night, and still I am ignorant. I don't have the appropriate mental conditioning for this. No matter how hard I struggle, it doesn't come naturally."

Anna squeezed him harder, as if to hold him together. "We've all known it would be difficult," she said. "Maybe we didn't really know how difficult. Perhaps we shouldn't have come back."

"Then how would I have known?" Kawashita asked. "Besides," and he backed away from her, straightening, "there are still things I must do and see."

The apartment voice announced, "Mr. Joseph Nakamura is at the door."

"Let him enter," Kawashita said, wiping his eyes quickly.

Nakamura, appointed by Independent Consolidations to chaperon them around Earth, came in wearing a smile and very little else. He was blond, with the vaguest hint of a surgically induced epicanthic fold. "Fine day out, I see," he said, walking past the window but not looking down. His eyes swept the apartment with nervous interest.

"Minus sixty degrees up here," Kawashita said.

"Sunny and fair in the tropopause. I have our schedule for today. We're due at the Kyushu visitor's center in an hour. I hear Yoshio is going to be offered a permanent residence there, on the spot of his choice. Then—"

"I'm not up for exhibition." Kawashita said. He looked imploringly at Anna. "You're my tutor, my guide. Help me out of this. I don't want to be a museum piece."

"Then," Nakamura continued, hardly skipping a beat, "we've set up a submarine tour of the Marianas trench, including a visit to the old Kraken Works. The Japanese still eat squid, you know—and the bigger they are, the more economical. After that—"

"We won't be getting that far, Mr. Nakamura, so don't bother with the rest. Yoshio doesn't appreciate the attention he's been getting, and I understand why. From here in, you can help us by serving one function only—keep our whereabouts secret."

Nakamura kept smiling. "That'd be no function at all, Anna. I'm assigned to—"

"Then your assignment is over. I can put my own people to work, and nobody will know where we are. Infact, I like that idea better. Yoshio, we're leaving the central city in a few hours—want to pack your souvenirs?"

"After my own heart," Kawashita said, heading for the next room.

"What will it be, a honeymoon?" Nakamura said jovially.

"We're not married, and we don't cohabit," Nestor said. "We're friends."

"Come on, Anna. You're known far and wide as a connoisseur of—"

"Anytime I let you finish a sentence, Mr. Nakamura, interrupt yourself for me. Voice, Mr. Nakamura would like to inspect the hallway."

"Sir," the apartment said pleasantly, "the features of central city's many corridors are famous around the Galaxy. First to be noted is the unique shifting design of the carpets, changed every hour, featuring the art of the Earth's finest—"

"Your wish," Nakamura said. "Pleasure to serve you this far. To be candid"—and his face became candid—"I think you're better off that way. More relaxing. Anytime, however, you wish to—"

"Voice!"

"—craftsmen. This way, Mr. Nakamura."

Anna sighed and returned to the screen. The apartment voice cleared a mechanical throat. "Mr. Nakamura is on his way, madam. I'm afraid there's another interruption, an insistent one."

"Who?"

"Time-and-motion planner aboard the Peloros wishes to speak to you."

"Jason DiNova. Put him onto the visit circuits."

"Any time limit before technical difficulties should interrupt?"

"No. Jason's one of us, usually. Thanks for your concern."

"Gracious madam. Here is Mr. DiNova."

A man appeared in the center of the room looking tired and upset. DiNova was just over a meter and a half in height, stocky but trim, with fierce eyes, a short chin, and a scalp half bald, half covered with wiry white hair. "Anna. You're not clear yet.' His delivery was rapid and husky.

"Gives me an advantage, Jason. Wait a second and it'll all come through."

"Ah. Okay." His eyes focused on her, and he looked around the room. "Fancy. But we've got important things to talk about. I gave you one month for Kawashita—is he here?"

"Packing."

"And you've gone over by two more months. You've lost two billion in revenues because of that and put two acquirable planets on USC's list. You've got to tell me what's coming up. I understand taking the USC guy under your wing on Kawashita's planet, but isn't this going a bit far?"

"Probably. Kawashita is a friend now, Jason. You know I give friends more time than I should."

"I've got a schedule for the next six weeks, and I'd like you to examine it before it goes into ship's planning."

"Transmit it and I'll look it over."

"Are you going to start a scene with this guy?"

Nestor's face hardened. "Don't push it."

"You ordered me to push it whenever necessary. I think it's necessary. Does he go with us, become part of recreation hours like the rest of the entourage, or do we—" He stopped. "Hell, I don't even want to suggest an alternative. You might take me up on it."

"Kawashita is an honored guest of the Peloros. He'll stay with us."

"Why?"

"Because I'm interested in what's going to happen to him, and because I like him."

"Yes, and so do I, but if I let my interests get in the way of my work, you'd have every right to restaff my billet."

"I'm glad you can't reciprocate. I have plans for Yoshio, don't worry."

"He holds a single planet, and not a very important one, as it turns out. I've had to turn down meetings with five Independent Consolidations reps—and at my guess, that means we've passed up business with a hundred planets. Anna, is this called love, or some new kind of insanity?"

Nestor turned away from DiNova's image and climbed into the screen nook. "Jason, you're getting personal."

The man held up his hands. "All in the line of duty. Remember. Don't restaff until I start insulting you during rec time."

"I'll okay ship's planning as soon as I get it. And I'll send check-ins with my position every few hours. Hire a security team, or send one down from the ship—make them discreet. We'll probably be back by week's end, and unless you've got plans to put Peloros on starshine duty—"

"Nothing at the moment, but I may have to hire her out as a dance hall to pay the orbit rental."

"—unless that happens, I don't think I'll be needed for a week."

"How's he doing?" DiNova asked.

"He's got courage. He's walking on the edge of the cliff, but he's already overcome more than the psychs said was possible. Riding out culture shock, coming to terms with himself—and all the time questioning his deepest values. Think you could do that, Jason?"

"I wouldn't want to try."

"Nor I. So let me run this through its course. We won't lose anything we really need."

"What are you going to do about the Ring Stars?"

Anna pointed to the screen. "I'm keeping my eye on them. Looks like the supernova has dusted the whole area with superheavy elements. We might stake a few claims."

"No word from the Aighors, and no word on whether the disrupters are still operating."

"Keep me informed. I'm not beyond the pale, Jason. I'm still interested and aware."

"Glad to hear it. Follow your wyrd, Anna, but keep my heart and arteries in mind, all right?"

"I'll try, Jason."

"Thank you." He looked very worn, and Nestor felt a twinge of guilt. Her slightest whims could take years off a good man's working life.

"Jason, you have my love and respect. If anything goes critical, pull me up no matter what I say. And Yoshio too, of course."

"I'll do my damnedest. Out."

"Out."

A faint haze hung in the air where DiNova's image had been. The voice spoke up. "Where may I send your commodities, madam?"

"Kodiak, Alaska, and book us right behind them. Voice, you've done well by us so far. Can you get us an agent who'll be discreet and too set in his ways to care about world news?"

"I've anticipated madam. One is waiting your instructions at this moment."

"Good. Voice, have one of your programs charged to the ASNWS Peloros. You're a first-class design."

"My children thank you."

 

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Framed