RHYPAROGRAPHY! KELOIDAL ANAMNESIS! IVRESSE!

Genar-Hofoen walked through it all, soaking it all in, refusing all the offers and suggestions, politely turning down the overtures and come-ons, the recommendations and invitations.

ZUFULOS! ORPHARIONS! RASTRAE! NAUMACHIA HOURLY!

For now, he was content just to be here, walking, promenading, watching and being watched, sizing up and — with any luck — being sized up. It was evening — real evening — in this level of Tier, the time when Night City started to become busy; everywhere was open, nowhere was full, everybody wanted your custom, but nobody was really settling on a venue yet; just cruising, grazing, petting. Genar-Hofoen was happy to be part of that general drift; he loved this, he gloried in it. This was where he felt most himself. For now, there was simply no better place to be, and he believed in entering into the experience with all due and respectful intensity; these were his sort of people, here was where his sort of thing happened and this was his sort of place.

PILIOUS OMADHAUNS INVITE RASURE! LAGOPHTHALMISCITY GUARANTEED WHEN YOU SEE THE JEISTIECORS AND LORICAS OF OUR MARTICHORASTIC MINIKINS!

He saw her outside a Sublimer sekos set under the rotundly swollen bulk of a building shaped like a giant resistor. The entrance to the cult's sacred place was a brightly shining loop, like a thick but tiny rainbow layered in different shades of white. Young Sublimers stood outside the enclosure, clad in glowing white robes. The Sublimers — each tall and thin — glowed, too; their skin glowed gently, pallid to the point of unhealthy-looking bloodlessness. Their eyes shone, soft light spilling from the wide, open whites, while the same half-silvery light was projected from their teeth when they smiled. They smiled all the time, even when they were talking. The woman was standing looking at the pair of enthusiastically gesticulating Sublimers with an expression of amused disdain.

She was tall, tawny-skinned. Her face was broad, her nose thin and almost parallel with the planes of her cheeks; her arms were crossed, her body tilted back from the two young people, her weight taken on one black-booted heel as she looked down that long nose at the shining Sublimers. Her eyes and her hair looked as dark as the featureless shadowrobe which hid the rest of her frame.

He stopped in the middle of the street and watched her arguing with the two Sublimers for a few moments. Her gestures and the way she held her body were different but the face was very similar to the way he remembered her looking, forty years ago; just a little older, perhaps. He had always wondered how much she'd changed.

But it couldn't be her. Tishlin had said she was still on board the Sleeper. They'd have mentioned if she'd left, wouldn't they?

He let a group of squatly chortling Bystlians pass him, then sauntered a little way back up the street, studying the architecture of the giant valve bulging over it from the opposite pavement and sniffing from his cloud cane in a vague, bored manner while watching a line of dark bombs flit out of the darkness above to fall and detonate somewhere beyond the line of barrel-like resistors that formed the other side of the street; bright yellow-orange explosions lit up the sky and debris rose slowly and fell. Further up the avenue, some sort of commotion surrounded a large animal.

He turned and looked back down the crowded street. At that moment a giant blue-gold shape slid under his feet, rushing silently along within the mercury stream beneath the diamond plate. The girl arguing with the Sublimers turned, glancing at the street as the blob went gliding past. As she looked back to the two young glowing people she caught sight of him watching her. Her gaze settled on him for a moment and the flicker of an expression — a glimmer of recognition? — passed briefly over her face before she started talking to the Sublimers again. He hadn't had time to look away even if he'd wanted to.

He was wondering whether he ought to go over to her now, wait and see if she stepped back into the thoroughfare and maybe approach her then, or just walk away, when a tall girl in a glowing gown stepped up to him and said, "May I help you, sir? You seem taken with our place of exaltation. Do you have any questions you'd like to ask? Is there anything I can do to enlighten you?"

He turned to the Sublimer. She was almost as tall as he; her face was pretty but somehow vacuous, though he knew that might have been prejudice on his part.

Sublimers had turned what was a normal but generally optional part of a species" choice of fate into a religion. Sublimers believed that everybody ought to Sublime, that every human, every animal, every machine and Mind ought to head straight for ultimate transcendence, leaving the mundane life behind and setting as direct a course as possible for nirvana.

People who joined the cult spent a year trying to persuade others of this before they Sublimed themselves, joining one of the sect's group-minds to contemplate irreality. The few drones, other AIs and Minds that became persuaded of the merit of this course of action through the arguments of the Sublimers tended to do what any other machine did on such occasions and disappear in the direction of the nearest Sublimed Entity, though one or two stuck around in a pre-Sublimed state long enough to help the cause. In general, though, the cult was regarded as rather a pointless one. Subliming was seen as something that usually happened to entire societies, and more as a practical lifestyle alteration than a religious commitment; more like moving house than entering a sacred order.

"Well, I don't know," Genar-Hofoen said, sounding wary. "What exactly do you people believe in again?"

The Sublimer looked up the street behind him. "Oh, we believe in the power of the Sublime," she said. "Let me tell you more." She glanced up the avenue again. "Oh; perhaps we ought to get off the street, don't you think?" She held out her hand and took a step back towards the pavement.

Genar-Hofoen looked back, to where things were getting noisy. The giant animal he'd noticed earlier — a sexipedal pondrosaur — was advancing slowly down the avenue in the midst of a retinue and a crowd of spectators. The shaggy, brown-furred animal was six metres tall, splendidly liveried with long, gaudy banners and ribbons and commanded by a garishly uniformed mahout brandishing a fiery mace. The beast was surmounted by a glitteringly black and silver cupola whose bulbously filigreed windows gave no hint of who or what might be inside; similarly ornamented bowls covered the great animal's eyes. It was attended by five loping kliestrithrals, each black tusked creature pawing at the street surface and snorting and held on a tight lead by a burly hire guard. A knot of people held the procession up; the pondrosaur paused and put its long head back to let out a surprisingly soft, subdued roar, then it adjusted its eye-cups with its two leg-thick fore-limbs and bobbed its head to either side. The gaggle of promenaders began to disperse and the great beast and its escorts moved forward again.

"Hmm, yes," Genar-Hofoen said. "Perhaps we'd better move out the way." He finished the 9050 and looked round for a place to deposit the empty container.

"Please; allow me." The Sublimer girl took the field-goblet from him as though it was some sort of holy object. Genar-Hofoen followed her onto the sidewalk; she put an arm through his and they proceeded slowly towards the entrance to the sekos, where the woman was still standing talking to the other two Sublimers with her look of ironic curiosity.

"Have you heard of Sublimers before?" the girl on his arm asked.

"Oh, yes," he said, watching the other woman's face as they approached. They stopped on the pavement outside the Sublimer building, entering a hushfield in which the only sound was gently tinkling music and a background of waves on a beach. "You believe everybody should just sort of disappear up their own arses, don't you?" he asked with every appearance of innocence. He was only a few metres from the woman in the shadowrobe, though the compartmented hushfield meant he couldn't hear what she was saying. Her face was much like he remembered it; the eyes and mouth were the same. She had never worn her hair up like that, but even its shade of black-blue was the same.