Existence

dust. People from Congo and Celebes were happy to insource.

Wasn’t this America? Call it resolution-or obstinacy-but after three rebuilds, the Statue of Liberty still beckoned.

The latest immigrants, those who filled Washington’s waistland vacuum, weren’t ignorant. They could read warning labels and health stats, posted on every lamppost and VR level. So? More people died in Jakarta from traffic or stray bullets. Anyway, mutation rates dropped quickly, a few years after Awfulday, to levels no worse than Kiev. And Washington had more civic amenities.

Waistlanders also griped a lot less about minor matters like zoning. That made it easier to acquire rights of way, repioneering new paths back into unlucky cities that had been dusted. Innovations soon turned those transportation hubs into boomtowns. An ironic twist to emerge from terror/sabotage. Especially when sky trains began crisscrossing North America.

Through her broad window, traveling east aboard the Spirit of Chula Vista, Tor gazed across a ten-mile separation to the Westbound Corridor, where long columns of cargo zeppelins lumbered in the opposite direction, ponderous as whales and a hundred times larger. Chained single-file and heavily laden, the dirigibles floated barely three hundred meters above the ground, obediently trailing teams of heavyduty draft- locomotives. Each towing cable looked impossibly slender for hauling fifty behemoths across a continent. But while sky trains weren’t fast, or suited for bulk materials, they beat any other method for transporting medium-value goods.

And passengers. Those willing to trade a little time for inexpensive luxury.

Tor moved her attention much closer, watching the Spirit’s majestic shadow flow like an eclipse over rolling suburban countryside, so long and dark that flowers would start to close and birds might be fooled to roost, pondering nightfall. Free from any need for engines of her own, the skyliner glided almost silently over hill and dale. Not as quick as a jet, but more scenic-free of carbon levies or ozone tax-and far cheaper. Setting her tru-vus to magnify, she followed the Spirit’s tow cable along the Eastbound Express Rail, pulled relentlessly by twelve thousand horses, courtesy of the deluxe maglev tug, Umberto Nobile.

What was it about a lighter-than-air craft that drew the eye? Oh, certainly most of them now had pixelated, tunable skins that could be programmed for any kind of spectacle. Passing near a population center-even a village in the middle of nowhere-the convoy of cargo zeps might flicker from one gaudy advertisement to the next, for anything from a local gift shop to the mail-order wares of some Brazilian bloat-corp. At times, when no one bid for the display space, a chain of dirigibles might tune their surfaces to resemble clouds… or flying pigs. Whim, after all, was another modern currency. Everyone did it on the VR levels.

Only with zeppelins, you could paint whimsical images across a whole stretch of the real sky.

Tor shook her head.

But no. That wasn’t it. Even bare and gray, they could not be ignored. Silent, gigantic, utterly calm, a zep seemed to stand for a kind of grace that human beings might build, but never know in their own frenetic lives.

* * *

She was nibbling at one of her active-element fingernails-thinking about Wesley, waiting at the skydock for her arrival, and trying to picture his face-when a voice intruded from above.

“Will you be wanting anything else before we arrive in the Federal District, madam?”

She glanced up at a servitor-little more than a boxy delivery receptacle-that clung to its own slim rail on a nearby bulkhead, leaving the walkway free for passengers.

“No, thanks,” Tor murmured automatically, a polite habit of her generation. Younger folk had already learned to snub machinery slaves, except when making clipped demands. A trend that she found odd, since the ais were getting smarter all the time.

“Can you tell me when we’re due?”

“Certainly, madam. There is a slowdown in progress due to heightened security. Hence, we may experience some delay crossing the Beltway. But there is no cause for alarm. And we remain ahead of schedule because of that tailwind across the Appalachian Mountains.”

“Hm. Heightened security?”

“For the Artifact Conference, madam.”

Tor frowned. She hoped that Wesley wouldn’t have any trouble coming to meet her. Things might be tense enough between the two of them, without this added irritant. He tended to get all lathered and indignant over being beamed and probed by agents of the pencil pushers’ guild… the civil servants assigned to checking every conceivable box and possible failure mode.

“For the Artifact Conference?” Tor’s thoughts zeroed in on something puzzling. “But that should already be taken into account. Security for the gathering shouldn’t affect our timetable.”

“There is no cause for alarm,” the servitor repeated. “We just got word, two minutes ago. An order to reduce speed, that’s all.”

Glancing outside, Tor could see the effects of slowing, in a gradual change of altitude. The Spirit’s tow cable slanted a little steeper, catching up to the ground-hugging locomotive tug.

Altitude: 359 meters said a telltale in the corner of her left tru-vu lens.

“Will you be wanting to change seats for our approach to the nation’s capital?” the servitor continued. “An announcement will be made when we come within sight of the Mall, though you may want to claim a prime viewing spot earlier. Children and first-time visitors get priority, of course.”

“Of course.”

A trickle of tourists had already begun streaming forward to the main observation lounge. Parents, dressed in bright-colored sarongs and Patagonian slacks, herded kids who sported the latest youth fashion-fake antennae and ersatz scales-imitating some of the alien personalities that had been discovered aboard the Livingstone Object … also called, for some reason, the Havana Artifact. A grand conference may have been called to deliberate whether it was a genuine case of First Contact, or just another hoax. But popular culture had already cast judgment.

The Artifact was cool.

“You say an alert came through two minutes ago?” Tor wondered. Nothing had flashed yet in her peripherals. But maybe the vigilance thresholds were set too high. With a rapid series of clicks on her tooth implants, she adjusted them downward.

Immediately, crimson tones began creeping in from the edges of her specs, offering links that whiffed and throbbed unpleasantly.

Uh-oh.

“Not an alert, madam. No, no. Just preliminary, precautionary-”

But Tor’s attention had already veered. Using both clicks and subvocal commands, she sent her specs swooping through the data overlays of virtuality, following threads of a security situation. Sensors tracked every twitch of the iris, following and often anticipating her choices, while colored data-cues jostled and flashed.

“May I take away any rubbish or recycling?” asked the boxy tray on the wall. It dropped open a receptacle, like a hungry jaw, eager to be fed. The servitor waited in vain for a few moments. Then, noting that her focus lay far away, it silently folded and departed.

“No cause for alarm,” Tor muttered sardonically as she probed and sifted the dataways. Someone should have banished that cliche from the repertoire of all ai devices. No human over the age of thirty would ever hear the phrase without wincing. Of all the lies that accompanied Awfulday, it had been the worst.

Some of Tor’s favorite software agents were already reporting back from the Grid.

Koppel-the summarizer-zoomed toward public, corporate, and government feeds, collating official pronouncements. Most of them were repeating the worrisome cliche.

Gallup-her pollster program-sifted for opinion. People weren’t buying it, apparently. On a scale of one thousand, “no cause for alarm” had a credibility rating of eighteen, and