Carnival

“But it’s not a religious holiday?”

“It’s a spiritualobservance,” she said. “Some follow it more than others. Simple food, no alcohol, meditation, and a focus on community service and charitable giving. A time of renewal, when the jungle dries in the heat before the rains.”

“Contemplation,” he said, shaping it with his lips as if tasting it. “How long is that?”

“Fifty days,” she said.

She saw him ru

“It’s a pretty good party,” she answered, and met his wrinkled nose with a grin. “It takes awhile to recover.”

She took him on a tour of the administrative center first, Shafaqat trailing them attentively. Seeing her own city through new eyes was an interesting process. He asked questions she’d never considered at any depth, although she was sure there were scientific teams at work on every one of them, and she knew some of the common speculations about this and that and whatever the Dragons might have intended: What are the colors for? Do you have any idea what the shapes of the buildings represent?

It was her city, after all. She’d been born here, and what seemed to Katherinessen alien and fabulous was to Lesa no more than the streets she’d grown up on, the buildings in whose shadows she had played.

“Why do the walls hum?” he asked eventually, when she’d been forced to shake her head and demur more times than she liked to admit.

“The ghosts,” she said, pleased to finally have an answer.

He laughed, as she’d intended, and lifted his fingers to his face to sniff whatever trace of the blossoms lingered there. “You’d expect them to smell sweet,” he said, gesturing to a heavy, wax‑white bloom. “Ghosts?”

Lesa knew what he meant. The New Amazonian pseudo‑orchid had a citruslike scent, not floral at all. “The haunted city, after all,” she said. “The walls hum. Sometimes you see shadows moving from the corners of your eye. Sometimes House takes it upon itself to make arrangements you didn’t anticipate. We still don’t know everything Penthesilea is capable of.”

“But you live here?”

“In a hundred years, it’s never acted in any way contrary to our interests. When the foremothers arrived, there was nobody here but the khir. It took care of them, too.”

“The pets.”

“Domesticated by the Dragons. We think. Symbiotes or pets.”

“And left behind when the Dragons–”

“Went wherever they went. Yes.”

“Reading the subtext of your remarks, the city adapts?”

“House. We call it House. And yes. It understands simple requests, makes whatever we need that’s not too complicated–appliances or electronics or fluffy towels–and cleans up. Most people don’t notice the hum. You must have sensitive hands.”

“The hum is its power source?”

“Or maybe its heartbeat. If it’s alive. But it’s probably just a vast, abandoned fog, still cleaning up after the family dog mille

Katherinessen didn’t answer for a minute. They were leaving the government center and the streets were starting to fill up. Not just the pedestrian galleries, but the roadways themselves were full of women and men, heads crowned with garlands and necks hung with beads, swathed in gaudy, rustling paper costumery that Katherinessen seemed to be making an effort neither to reach out for nor flinch away from.

“That’s sad,” he said. “When you think about it. You don’t know what happened to the Dragons?”

“We don’t,” she said, both alert to his prying for information and fighting the urge to trust him. Everything she could read on him said he was honest–as honest as a double agent could be–and the chip’s information confirmed everything she thought she knew. She had to raise her voice to carry over the street noise, the melodious thunder of a steel drum. “But I believe they died. Somehow.”

His eyes were shadowed under the hat when he turned them on her, but they still caught fragments of light and glowed like sunlit honey. “You have a reason to think so?”

“Miss Katherinessen,” she said, leading him around the crowd gathered about the musicians, out of the shade gallery and into the hotter, less‑crowded street, while Shafaqat followed five steps behind. “I guess you’ve never had a pet?”

It could have been a facetious question, but he saw by her eyes that she was serious. “No,” he said. “Tamed animals aren’t permitted in the Coalition. It’s u

“A lot of animals have symbiotes,” she said, threading through the pressing crowd.

Michelangelo would have a fit. All these people, and not just close enough to touch, but packed together so that one could not avoid touching. The streets were a blurof people, brightly clothed, drenched in scent or sweat or both, hatted and parasoled against the consuming light. The clamor of music was everywhere, instruments he recognized from historical fiche and instruments he didn’t recognize at all, and ancient standbys like saxophone, trombone, and keyboard synthesizer, as if the entire city had spontaneously transformed into something that was half marching band and half orchestra.

Pedestrians threw money to some musicians. Others had no cup out, and accepted beads or garlands of flowers or offerings of food. He couldn’t follow one song for more than a bar or two–they laddered up each other and interwove, clashing. The sheer press of people was as dizzying as the heat.

Vincent surreptitiously dialed his wardrobe down and hurried to keep up with the warden. “You don’t think it’s immoral to enslave animals?”

“I don’t think it’s slavery.” She paused by what he would have called a square, a pedestrian plaza, except it was anything but square. Or geometrically regular, for that matter.

He should have known better than to continue the same old argument, but if he could resist an opening, he wouldn’t have the job he did. “And what about treating your husband as chattel? Is that not slavery?”

“I’m not married,” she snapped, and then flushed and looked down. Shafaqat coughed into her hand.

Vincent concealed his smile, and filed that one under touchy subjects. “And?”

“No,” Pretoria said. “It’s not slavery either. You hungry?”

She looked him straight in the eye when she changed the subject, which was how Vincent knew she was lying. And her smile when he rocked back said she saw him noticing. That would be entirely too convenient.

“I could eat,” he said, though the bustling mall reeked of acid sweetness and perfumes and scorched flesh.

“This is the place to get lunch. I think we can find you something that was never self‑aware, although you may be forced to eat it seasoned with a flying insect or two.” She extended her arm, which he took.

“I can live with the death of a few bugs on my conscience.”

“Hypocrite,” she said. But she laughed. “Doesn’t it get tiring being so damned morally superior all the time?”

Kusanagi‑Jones managed to forget Vincent’s absence quickly. Miss Ouagadougou was pleasant, efficient, and capable, and there was a lot of work to accomplish. The three largest pieces would form the backbone and focal point of the display. Two of the three were twentieth‑century North American–one just a fragment, and both remnants of a much larger public artwork.

Kusanagi‑Jones didn’t think those anything special. Perhaps they’d be more meaningful in context, but it seemed to him that their status as cultural treasures was based on their provenance rather than on their art. They were historical works by women; it might be enough for the New Amazonians, but Kusanagi‑Jones hoped his own aesthetic standards were somewhat higher.

The third piece, though, he couldn’t denigrate. Its return was a major sacrifice, big enough to make him uneasy. The level of commitment betrayed by the Cabinet permitting such a treasure to slip beyond its grasp indicated desperation. Desperation, or no actual intent to let the sculpture go for long.