Sun of Suns by KARL SCHROEDER

Author:KARL SCHROEDER
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: A Tom Doherty Associates Book
Published: 2006-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

ADMIRAL CHAISON FANNING felt very small in this place. He didn't like the sensation at all.

The tourist "station" was really a city that dwarfed any place he'd seen—or even heard of—in Virga. It spread for miles across the ceiling of Virga, a glittering chandelier of towers like fiery icicles, globular dwellings hanging from long tethers, and vast spinning cylinders, each one three or four times the size of the towns of Rush. It was to the axis of one of these cylinders that the Rook had gone, under Aubri Mahallan's instruction. Now Chaison walked the streets of a city that seemed more delirium dream than reality.

Some cunning of artifice had hidden the shape of the town; it didn't appear to be rolled up and spun, as it really was. Above Chaison was an endless sky of blue, and the city's confectionary towers were laid out on a seemingly flat surface. The streets converged in perspective until they blurred into the hectic detail of buildings, people, and floating unrecognizable glowing things. Signs, some of those—but more were mobile, and some, he'd noticed, could speak.

The people were just as bizarre. They were dressed—when dressed at all—in sloppy imitations of Virga's fashions. They came in all sizes and skin tones, including unlikely shades like blue and vermillion. They crowded the streets in their millions, gabbling and waving their hands at faint squares of flickering light that buzzed around their heads like bees. Images flashed across these squares like heat lightning and everywhere there was a chaos of noise.

He and Venera had to hurry to keep up with Aubri Mahallan, who stalked through the crowd with her head down and her shoulders hunched. The strange gatekeeper who had met the Rook at the docks had insisted that no more than two natives accompany her. "Take no pictures," he had said in a sibilant accent while smaller versions of himself—identical right down to the clothes—perched on his shoulder or ran laughing down the hall behind him. "Take no items, leave anything you want."

"We've come to recover a work of art loaned to one of your museums two hundred years ago," Venera had said. "It's ours, not yours."

He'd raised an eyebrow while one of his smaller selves stuck out its tongue. "Take it up with the museum," he'd said. "Not my area of concern."

Chaison quickened his pace until he was walking abreast of Mahallan. She still looked drawn and grim. He cast about for something to say, finally deciding to directly confront her most likely complaint. "I had to let the pirates go," he said. "We might have reneged on our bargain and blown them up as they left, but then they might have gotten a rocket or two into the Rook at the same time."

After a few moments she looked over at him, an expression of distaste on her face.

"Is that why?" she asked. "Because you were afraid they'd blow up the Rook?"

"It's a sufficient reason," he said. "But no, that's not all. We did make an agreement.

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