“I just wanted to say so long and thanks for the company. I enjoyed our talks. Maybe we’ll bump into you guys again while we’re here,” Bob said. Through a glass exit across the floor behind Bob, Hunt could see the school party chattering and jostling as they climbed aboard a bus that was bright pink with green stripes. It was an odd-looking vehicle, running on balls half-contained in hemispherical housings instead of wheels. The center portion of its roof rose into a large, bulbous projection of just the right proportions to immediately suggest a female breast.
“Not staying at the hotel here, then?” Hunt observed as they shook hands.
“No. We decided to take the plunge straight in. A Jevlenese school that we got in touch with in the city offered to put everyone up, so we went for it. Might as well see what it’s all about here, eh? Hell, we can see the inside of a BW any day of the week.”
“Good thinking,” Hunt agreed. “Enjoy the sights.”
“You too. See you around, maybe, Vie.”
The two men who had come to collect the UNSA group were Americans, Hunt discovered when he at last joined them. There was no real reason why he should have been surprised, since the traffic of Terrans toJevlen had been pretty free, but it wasn’t something he had been expecting.
One’s name was Koberg; the other’s was Lebansky. From their tight-jawed impassivity and overall bearing, they had to be military, Hunt guessed, and was proved right: both were U.S. Secret Service, formerly military police, currently attached to PAC security on Jevlen.
“Security?” Hunt looked puzzled. “I thought JPC turned that proposal down.”
“Yeah, well, that was for a UN force,” Koberg agreed. He gave the impression of being tactfully evasive. “I guess a few things have been happening on the quiet that maybe you won’t have heard about. You know how these things are: Some of our people kind of decided to go ahead anyhow, in a low-visibility way. You might call it a precautionary insurance.”
“Maybe the chief will explain it better when we get back,” Lebansky suggested.
They led the group out of the same exit that the school group had used, just as the pink bus was puffing away. A smaller ground vehicle was waiting for them, similar to a minibus, again riding on balls instead of wheels. Inside were two more men, Jevlenese this time, one in the driver’s station in front, the other seated by the door. Neither of them spoke any Terran languages, but the driver said something over a communications link that sounded like a confirmation that the party had been picked up.
“Today we travel the slow way,” Koberg said as they moved off. “There’s normally a fast—transit tube system into the city, but it’s not running.”
“Hell, what do you mean, ‘normally’?” Lebansky challenged. “The darn things are never running. This is normal.”
“Just when this side of the city’s going to be packed for a big rally that’s going on today,” Koberg said. “Purple-spiral loonies. Ever hear of them?”
‘‘A little,’’ Hunt said.
“You’ll see plenty of’em today,” Lebansky promised.
Jevlen had been developed as the home world of the Jevlenese within the Thurien civilization, and as such its layout reflected a human worldview rather than anything predominantly alien. Al-though Ganymean influence was inevitable, the geometry and architecture conformed to more familiar notions of style and consistency—which came as a relief to those who, after seeing the Vishnu, had prepared themselves for worse.
The metropolis was higher than anything that contemporary Earth had to offer, rising in the center to a monolithic fusion of towers, ramps, terraces, and bridges that dwarfed anything from home in scale and breathtaking concept; but the avenues passing amid the flyovers and disappearing into the central zone at various levels remained avenues, the levels remained levels, “up” meant the same thing everywhere, and surface and line in all directions extrapolated with reassuring predictability.
At any rate, those were the qualities inherent in the city’s fixed, unchanging aspect: the imprint of its origin, stamped in the same way that the underlying rock strata impart fundamental character and form to a landscape. But the promise that had been written into the soaring lines and broad vistas was just an empty voice echoing from long ago. The vision of those who had conceived the city had not been fulfilled.