nodding at her viewcoin. 'Good work, Chrys,' he said. 'All those defectors you encouraged.'
'But she left!' That lost woman, without even a namestone, ending up in a ditch somewhere. Chrys could not bear to think of it.
'Be glad for those who stayed.'
The defectors. Would they be like Rose?
'Your portrait really reached them,' he added. 'Could you show it to Jay?'
Reluctantly, Chrys followed Daeren back to the bar.
'Jay,' Daeren called, 'did you know Chrys is an artist? An artist for the 'people.' '
Jay stared at the vision from the viewcoin. For the first time the grin left his face. 'Come,' he announced suddenly. 'Come show.'
Daeren's jaw tightened. He hesitated, but at last followed Jay back through a doorway, down a dark, descending hall. The songs of the caterpillars receded behind them.
A dim light revealed two men and a woman, studying a holostage full of stellar coordinates. They turned toward the newcomers, their faces watchful, yet somehow incurious. Broken veins betrayed their status as late- stage slaves. Their hair was cut crudely, and their bodies smelled stale.
Daeren kept glancing backward at the passage. He regretted his idea, Chrys suspected. Trying to steady her stomach, she held out the viewcoin to one of the men.
Pallid circles lit up his eyes like dusty lightbulbs. Then the unkempt creature snatched the viewcoin from her hand. Chrys jumped back as the others all crowded around, their eyes ringed with off-white glow.
'Let's get out,' whispered Daeren. 'Back off, very slowly.'
Slowly their steps carried them backward till they reached the dark passage. Turning, Chrys broke into a run, stumbling blindly up and out past the bar until she caught herself, outside the curtain. She blinked in the light, the distant music from the night's show swirling in her ears.
'It's okay, Chrys.' Daeren pressed her arm reassuringly. 'You did well. Your people learned more than enough.'
'Who were those ...'
'The crew of a slave ship.'
After her show, Chrys had promised to dine with Garnet and Jasper at the Hyalite House. Like Olympus, two rows of caryatids stretched out front. These, however, were solid gold. The eyes in the golden heads watched Chrys as she passed between them with Opal and Selenite.
The caryatids culminated at an enormous golden door. The door was molded into scenes from across Valan history, in each of which a Lord of Hyalite had played some crucial part, from opening trade with the Ocean Moon to colonizing Prokaryon. Jutting out from the door, a cornucopia spilled out gemstones in intricate settings.
The door announced, 'The Lords of Hyalite await your pleasure.'
Opal nudged Chrys. 'You have to pick something, else the door won't open.'
Chrys eyed the cornucopia warily. In her experience, nothing of value came for free.
'Please,' begged the door. 'I'm so overburdened; won't you lift a bit of weight?'
Opal laughed, and Chrys found it hard not to smile. She picked out a trinket of black-flecked amber.
'The dearest of the lot; a fossil of an insect, long extinct, from a world long gone. The only specimen of its kind; worth the east wing of the Institute for Natural History.'
'Then the Institute shall have it.'
The golden tracery melted inward, revealing the patrician Lord Garnet. 'My apologies,' said Garnet smoothly, 'the door likes to have a bit of fun. We must teach him better manners.' Far above ran the ceiling, a barrel vault of electric blue. Songbirds sang and trilled. Behind Chrys the golden door slipped away; in fact, she realized, the four of them were traveling smoothly down the cavernous hall.
'All the Palace is buzzing at your exhibit, Chrys,' Garnet exclaimed, touching her hand for visitors. 'And you've joined the Committee. Such an honor to have you dine with us.'
The entrance to the dining hall was a towering arch of sapphires set in mother-of-pearl. Below stood Lord Jasper, the crag of his simian brow most impressive above his tall straight form, his sleeves extending majestically as he raised a goblet of wine. A map stone covered nearly the full breadth of his chest.
The dining was arranged symposium style, each guest reclining before a jewel-encrusted table attended by golden servers. Recalling the Olympian servers, Chrys tried to look away from them altogether, but this proved harder than she expected. She had a better idea.
The sound system connected all the far-spaced guests in intimate conversation. 'I don't believe the sentients can get away with it, do you?' A Board member addressed another guest, the wormfaced engineer with the emeralds. 'A new Elysian city—the first in ten centuries—run entirely by sentients?' Elves do this, Elves do that, thought Chrys. No matter how highborn you were, there was always someone higher yet to cluck about.
A server bowed, setting out a turkey-sized tray of sculpted hearts, layered pastries, vegetables carved into forms too lovely to eat. Chrys wondered how to take food properly while reclining. Her long hair fell across her face, and her first sip of nectar ended up on the floor, where a legless beetle scurried to mop it up.
'Don't miss the calamari,' announced Garnet, 'and the sole en croute. Shipped in fresh from L'li, and from Urulan.' Shipped across the light-years from two different worlds, when a synthesizer could have done as well.
'Just take a bite,' came Opal's whisper, artfully transmitted across the room. 'You can expect a dozen more courses.'
Chrys eyed the tray regretfully, thinking how Sister Kaol could use the remains. The next course was an entire tureen of soup, its rising steam carrying enough herbs to transport you to the very court of Urulan.
'When I last toured Urulan ...' The melodious voice of Lord Zoisite. Chrys startled, and another little servo had to scurry out to mop up her soup. A slave, she told herself. The Palace minister of justice is a plague-ridden slave —and nobody gives a damn.
'Why Jasper,' called Garnet, watching Chrys, 'I do believe one of our guests has an eye for you.'
Chrys looked up innocently. Every server in the hall was a golden cast of Jasper, the eyes two caverns beneath his majestic brow.
Jasper laughed long and hard. 'There's a first, my dear,' he told Garnet. 'Usually it's you they set their eyes on.' Putting down his glass, his fingers fluttered. He turned to Chrys. 'I hope, my dear, your people are pleased to develop the Comb. Not too tedious, I trust?'
She decided to take the plunge. 'We are most pleased to maintain that great monument,' she said. 'But my people long for their next project. Some waited forty generations, and died still hoping.'
Jasper nodded sagely. 'People must wait upon the gods.'
By the twelfth course, the golden servers started strolling with harp and theremin, while the guests rose to stretch. Chrys shook her legs, unaccustomed to reclining so long.
Alone, Jasper caught up with her. His fingers curled around a pipe of inlaid wood, balanced against his short thumb. The pipe lifted to smoke, keeping his Plan Ten anti-cancer nanos at work, but he looked more distinguished than ever. Then he removed the pipe. 'Chrys, we've something to show you.' The hallway carried them to a holostage large enough for a lecture hall. With his pipe Jasper pointed.
An ocean of sun-speckled turquoise. Out of the waves rose a pearly dome of immense proportions, full of elaborate tessellation. A city-sphere of Elysium; not Helicon, the capital she would recognize, but one of the other
