Serpent's Reach by C. J. Cherryh

Author:C. J. Cherryh [Cherryh, C. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, War
ISBN: 9780356085159
Publisher: DAW
Published: 1980-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

v

House records had indicated a vehicle in the garage: systems in it seemed up and operable. Max and Merry both, by their papers, had some skill in that regard. “Go out,” she said, “and check it out by eye; I’m not inclined to trust housecomp’s word on it.”

They went. Citybank provided an atlas in printout. A sorrowfully thin atlas it proved to be, only a few pages thick, for an entire inhabited world. Newhope and Newport were the two cities, Newport seeming a very small place indeed; and the town of Upcoast was the other major concentration of population, only an administrative and warehousing area for the northern estates. The rest of the population was dotted all over the map, in the rain belts, on farms and pumping stations and farms which served as depots on the lacery of unpaved roads. Over most of the land surface of Istra was nothing but blankness, designated Uninhabited. There was the spectacular upsurge of the High Range on East; and an extremely wide expanse of marsh southward on West, marked Hazard, which given the habit of Istran nomenclature, might be the name of the place as well as its character. Small numbers were written beside the dots that were farms…2, 6, 7, and those in black; and by depots and by the cities, like-wise, but ranging up to 15,896 at Newhope.

Population, she realised. A world so sparse that they must give population in the outback by twos and threes.

In the several pages of the atlas, three were city-maps, and they were all of the pattern of Newhope. The city was simplicity itself: an eight-armed star with business and residential circles dotted along its arms and with wedges between wistfully titled Park… Park doubtless being the ambition. Reality was outside, over the garden wall, a sun-baked tangle of weeds and native trees which could not have known human attention in centuries. Newhope must have had ambitions once, in the days of its birth…ambition, but no Kontrin presence to aid it: no relief from taxes, no Kontrin funds feeding back into its economy, for beautification, luxury, art.

Most of the building-circles were warehouses: the two arms of the city nearest the Port were entirely that. There were local factories, mostly locally consumed equipment for agriculture, light arms, clothing, food processing. There were services and their administrations; worker-apartments for the ordinary run of betas; mid-class apartments and some residential circles for the mid-class well-to-do; and one arm was all elite residence-circles, like circle 4, which this house occupied. The highest ITAK officials lodged in circle 1, the lowest in 10. And the guest house was second circle of the eighth arm: the Outsider-mission’s residency, while ITAK officers were dead centre, zero-circle.

Useful to know.

There was a closing of doors upstairs. She heard footfalls, soft, wandering here and there. She punched time: the morning was well along.

The reflection in the dead screen showed her Jim standing in the doorway, and she pushed with her foot, turned the chair nearly full about.

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