Chrys passed the patch to Selenite. Still uneasy, she followed Opal toward the main entrance. The entrance was a hexagonal plate of light, shimmering in every color known, Chrys suspected, even colors beyond what she could see.
Selenite's black curls fluttered in the breeze. 'What do you think?'
'The flow of space, soaring ever upward; it's extraordinary.' Chrys could scarcely imagine living and working here every day. 'The windows are magnificent.'
'Everyone says that. But just two levels below, where the roots house a nano fabrication plant, the panes are all cracked, due to a complex set of vertical and lateral stresses. The stresses extend upward, though not yet visible.' Selenite blinked to send Chrys a stress map.
In her window, virtual red lines crisscrossed the surface of the Comb, clustering like broken veins. Along the tier nearest street level, the lines clustered so thick they obscured the panes. Chrys felt her scalp crawl. 'Why? What caused this?'
'Your Eleutherians blame the client. They say the Institute took on new tenants too fast; it wasn't meant to double in size in six months.' Her tone chilled, as if the claim displeased her.
'Titan knew damn well,' muttered Selenite. 'He knew how fast the Institute needed to grow. Why else would they want a dynamic building?'
Chrys spread her hands. 'So what am I to do?'
'First, your people need to collect raw data, direct from the Comb.'
Opal waved them over to the entrance. 'Let Chrys tour the interior, dear. Remember, the interior has to grow, too.'
The entrance was a shimmering curtain. Chrys paused and took a breath.
'Welcome, Eleutherians.' The voice reverberated out of the halls of the sentient building. 'I am pleased indeed that you return to tend my growth and fine-tune my perfection.'
This sentient was a real queen bee, even worse than Eleutheria. Chrys followed Opal through the virtual curtain. In the hallway passed a human and a sentient, engrossed in conversation. The hexagonal corridor extended in the distance with a slight curve. All along the lower walls projected model designs: nanos to regenerate liver and lungs, and live drug factories; seeds to sprout bubble cars, interstellar ships, even entire planetary satellites. The sight of it all made her blood race.
Something tripped her toe. Chrys stumbled and caught herself, cursing her lack of exercise; she had to retune the coordination of her new muscles. In the brilliance of the floor, she saw a gap. The gap widened and made an angle toward the wall, where it closed, dissolving into the uprising part of the hexagon where a model spaceship hovered above a distant world.
'Just a crack in the floor,' said Opal.
'Excessive lateral expansion,' explained Selenite, 'due to torsional stress.'
In the wall shimmered a curtain of light. Opal nodded. 'This way to my office.' As she passed through, a stairway step molded to her feet, taking her up a half level to another hexagonal corridor. Avoiding more cracks in the floor, Chrys tried to puzzle out how the corridors and levels related. How the devil did people find their own offices?
The fixtures and trim fit seamlessly with the aesthetic theme. Recessed lighting grew out of hexagonal cells, and even the water fountains looked as if you might sip at honey. On the floor near the wall stood a hemispherical bowl of reflective material, half-filled with an unknown liquid. Farther down the hexagonal corridor stood a similar silver bowl, containing a smaller amount of liquid with what looked like bits of debris floating in it. 'What are those?'
Opal pointed overhead, where the ceiling appeared discolored. 'The coolant fluid leaks.'
Selenite explained, 'More excessive lateral expansion.' No doubt due to torsional stress.
Chrys shook her head. 'Like, I hate to say it, but this place could use some work.'
'Of course,' boomed the Comb's ubiquitous voice, 'my thirty-six maintenance engineers work full-time to keep me in shape.'
Opal whispered, 'They keep the place barely functioning.'
'One must have patience with a totally innovative design,' insisted the Comb.
Selenite raised her hands. 'Okay, we know all the problems. Chrys is here to address one of them. My people have analyzed Eleutheria's latest fenestration plan, and we're ready to pass it on to you.'
A light blinked in the slanting wall. 'Right here.'
'Come closer and stare at the spot,' Selenite told Chrys. 'The micros will beam their data from your cornea. Try not to blink.'
Chrys stared until the spot of wall swam before her eyes.
'It's a good start,' observed the Comb at last, 'but I don't like being inoculated at the end of my roots.' Like a kid, thought Chrys—don't stick me with a needle.
Selenite said, 'It's the only way to assure complete correction of future fenestration. We promise we'll be careful.' The conversation went on for some time, its technicalities beyond Chrys, until the Comb beamed a revised model back to Chrys for review.
Opal led the way out. 'At least it sends business your way,' she told Selenite as they walked down toward the waiting lightcraft.
Selenite nodded. 'Every client wants the biggest damned ego they can find to build the fanciest tower. Afterward, they call on me to make it habitable.'
'Not habitable,' Opal corrected. 'Respectable, from the outside. You weren't hired to fix the interior.' Before her the door of the lightcraft popped open.
'But this one had even me beat,' said Selenite. 'Titan was exceptionally secretive about his plans. He provided a set, of course, but they lacked key elements of source code. The spiral fenestration—god forbid anyone might copy that, ever.' Selenite looked at Chrys. 'If it weren't for you, I don't know what I would have done. I nearly returned my fee.'
Selenite must have been paid ten times what she passed on to Chrys, and Talion yet another ten-fold more. How many millions were wasted on supposed habitations that belonged in an art museum, while half the Underworld slept on the street?
A thunderous crash, as if Merope had knocked a thousand crystal bowls off the table. Instinctively Chrys covered her ears and crouched low, but a sharp pain stabbed her back. She cried out. In her window, the Plan Ten light came on.
From behind came more crashing and shattering. Chrys felt blood seeping beneath her nanotex. 'Don't move,' Opal warned. 'Something caught in your side. Help will come soon.'
Slowly Chrys turned to look. From the face of the Comb, a pair of adjacent windows had fallen, leaving two gaping black eyes. Below on the walkway, where the three carriers had just passed, all thirty-six maintenance engineers were swarming to clean up the jagged shards. The shards had spread across the lawn, each glinting with a spark of the setting sun.
'The damn stuff's not supposed to shatter,' exclaimed Selenite. 'The stress must have wreaked its program and stiffened the panes. Every one of those panes could be ready to shatter.'
A worm-faced medic hurried up the path. Not quite a doctor, it had only three grasping limbs. 'Plan Ten here,' the sentient called. 'We'll have you clean in no time.' His arm, or hers, Chrys could never tell, made disgusting sucking noises as it cleaned the blood and shrapnel out of Chrys's flesh. Then the other two arms sucked all over Opal and Selenite, just in case.
Chrys cleared her throat. 'Do dynatects ever offer, like, a service contract?'
Opal laughed and caught Chrys's arm. 'Service contract! There's a new one.'
'I don't know,' said Selenite. 'Would you offer a service contract for your paintings?'
'My paintings are all virtual. I keep the code and give a lifetime replacement guarantee.'
Selenite eyed Chrys speculatively. 'There's an idea. I'll talk to the Board of Directors.'
Opal eyed Chrys watchfully. 'Would the Eleutherians do it?' The carriers all seemed to doubt her control of Eleutheria.
