The girls turned away from Troblum and the trolley that followed him in, chattering away brightly among themselves. He looked down at the cylinder as it turned transparent. Inside it contained a strut of metal a hundred and fifteen centimetres long; at one end there was a node of plastic where the frayed ends of fibre-optic cable stuck out like a straggly tail. The surface was tarnished and pocked, it was also kinked in the middle, as if something had struck it. Troblum unlocked the end of the cylinder, ignoring the hiss of gas as the protective argon spilled out. There was nothing he could do to stop his hands trembling as he slid the strut out; nor was there anything to be done about his throat muscles tightening. Then he was holding the strut up, actually witnessing the texture of its worn surface against his own skin. He smiled down on it the way a Natural man would regarded his newborn child. Subcutaneous sensors enriching his fingers combined with his Higher field-scan function to run a detailed analysis. The strut was an aluminium-titanium alloy, with a specific hydrocarbon chain reinforcement; it was also two thousand four hundred years old. He was holding in his own hands a piece of the Marie Celeste-, the Starflyer's ship.
After a long moment he put the strut back into the cylinder, and ran the atmospheric purge, sealing it back in argon. He would never physically hold it again, it was too precious for that. It would go into the other apartment where he kept his collection of memorabilia; a small specialist stabilizer field generator would maintain its molecular structure down the centuries. As was fitting.
Troblum acknowledged the authenticity of the strut and authorized his quasi-legal bank account on Wessex to pay the final instalment to the black-market supplier on Far Away who had acquired the item for him. It wasn't that having cash funds was illegal for a Higher, but Higher culture was based on the tenet of individuals being mature and intelligent enough to accept responsibility for themselves and acting within the agreed parameters of societal norm. I am government, was the culture's fundamental political kernel. However there was a lot of flexibility within those strictures. Quiet methods of converting a Higher citizen's Energy and Mass Allocation, the so-called Central Dollar, to actual hard cash acceptable on the External Worlds were well established for those who felt they needed such an option. EMA didn't qualify as money in the traditional sense, it was simply a way of regulating Higher citizen activity, preventing excessive or unreasonable demands being placed on communal resources, of whatever nature, by an individual.
As the trolley headed back out of the apartment, Troblum hurried to his bedroom. He barely had time to shower and put on a toga suit before he was due to leave. The glass lift took him down to the basement garage where his regrav capsule was parked. It was an old model, dating back two centuries, a worn chrome-purple in colour and longer than modern versions, with the forward bodywork stretching out like the nose-cone of some External World aircraft. He clambered in, taking up over half of the front bench which was designed to hold three people. The capsule glided out of the garage and tipped up to join the traffic stream overhead. Ageing internal compensators could barely cope with such a steep angle, so Troblum was pressed back into the cushioning as they ascended.
The centre of Daroca was a pleasing blend of modern structures with their smooth pinnacle geometries, pretty or substantial historical buildings like Troblum's, and the original ample mosaic of parkland which the founding council had laid out. Airborne traffic streams broadly followed the pattern of ancient thoroughfares. Troblum's capsule flew northward under the planet's bronze sunlight, heading out over the newer districts where the buildings were spaced further apart and big individual houses were in the majority.
Low in the western sky he could just make out the bright star that was Air. It was the project which had attracted him to Arevalo in the first place. An attempt to construct an artificial space habitat the size of a gas giant planet. After two centuries effort the project governors had built nearly eighty per cent of the spherical geodesic lattice which would act as both the conductor and generator of a single encapsulating force field. Once it was powered up (siphoning energy directly from the star via a zero-width wormhole) the interior would be filled with a standard oxygen nitrogen atmosphere, harvested from the system's outer moons and gas giants. After that, various biological components both animal and botanical would be introduced, floating around inside to establish a biosphere lifecycle. After that, various biological components both animal and botanical would be introduced, floating around inside to establish a biosphere lifecycle. The end result, a zero-gee environment with a diameter greater than Saturn, would give people the ultimate freedom to fly free, adding an extraordinary new dimension to the whole human experience.
Critics, of which there were many, claimed it was a poor — and pointless — copy of the Silfen Motherholme which Ozzie had discovered, where an entire star was wrapped by a breathable atmosphere. Proponents argued that this was just a stepping stone, an important, inspiring testament that would expand the ability and outlook of Higher culture. Their rationale won them a hard-fought Central Worlds referendum to obtain the EMAs they needed to complete the project.
Troblum, who was first and foremost a physicist, had been attracted to Air by just that rationalization. He had spent a constructive seventy years working to translate theoretical concepts into physical reality, helping to build the force field generators which studded the geodesic lattice. At which point his preoccupation with the Starflyer War had taken over, and he'd gained the attention of people running an altogether more interesting construction project. They made him an offer he couldn't refuse. It often comforted him how that section of his life mirrored that of his illustrious ancestor, Mark.
His capsule descended into the compound of the Commonwealth Navy office. It consisted of a spaceport field lined by two rows of big hangars and maintenance bays. Arevalo was primarily a base for the Navy exploration division. The starships sitting on the field were either long-range research vessels or more standard passenger craft; while the three matt-black towers looming along the northern perimeter housed the astrophysics laboratories and scientific-crew-training facilities. Troblum's capsule drifted through the splayed arches which the main tower stood on, and landed directly underneath it. He walked over to the base of the nearest arch column, toga suit surrounding him in a garish ultraviolet aurora. There weren't many people about, a few officers on their way to regrav capsules. His appearance drew glances; for a Higher to be so big was very unusual. Biononics usually kept a body trim and healthy, it was their primary function. There were a few cases where a slightly unusual biochemical makeup presented operational difficulties for biononics, but that was normally remedied by a small chromosome modification. Troblum refused to consider it. He was what he was, and didn't see the need to apologize for it to anyone in any fashion.
Even the short distance from the capsule to the column made his heart race. He was sweating when he went into the empty vestibule at the base of the column. Deep sensors scanned him and he put his hand on a tester globe, allowing the security system to confirm his DNA. One of the lifts opened. It descended for an unnerving amount of time.
The heavily shielded conference room reserved for his presentation was unremarkable. An oval chamber with an oval rock-wood table in the middle. Ten pearl-white shaper chairs with high backs were arranged round it. Troblum took the one opposite the door, and started running checks with the Navy office net to make sure all the files he needed were loaded properly.