Burning Bright

Lioe had almost forgotten she was wearing the hat, this one a small toque, suitable for Gaming, that marked her as a pilot of the Republic. “A place called Shadows,” she said. “I’m told it’s on Face Road, at the center of the Dike in Dock Road District?”

She was reciting the address from memory—no house numbers here, but all the buildings had names and were then placed within the district according to the nearest landmarks—and was relieved when the driver nodded.

“You’re a Gamer, then.”

“That’s right.” Lioe levered herself into the narrow pod. It smelled of smoke and fish, an odd, unfamiliar combination, stronger as the low door closed behind her.

“It’s a good club, Shadows,” the driver said. “Or so they tell me. I’m a home Gamer, myself.” The engine whined as he stood on his pedals to get the cab moving again.

Lioe leaned back cautiously against the thin padding, feeling the vibrations of the little motor through the soles of her feet. The cab swung left in a gentle arc that brought them out into a larger trafficway—not a busy street, only a few other vehicles, velocabs and pushcarts, moving between the bollards that marked the edges of the road. They swung left again, the driver hesitating for an instant to gauge the faster stream of traffic on the wider street, and then standing hard on his pedals to bring the cab up to their speed. The cab slid neatly into a gap between another velocab and an empty flatbed carrier belching steam, but Lioe was looking at the shape that soared above the street, cutting off the sky. The Old Dike was festooned with lights, strings and streamers of them flashing in sequence to warn off wandering helio pilots, but they only seemed to intensify the black mass of the wall itself. More light like fog flowed along its top, fading into the sky at least a hundred and fifty meters above them. Lioe shook her head, amazed and wondering, and the driver shot her a look of triumph.

“It’s something, isn’t it? That’s the Old Dike. The first-in people built it to reclaim the Old City.”

Lioe nodded, still staring, barely aware of the other vehicles now crowding the road. “What’s that on top?” she asked, after a moment. “Another road?”

“That’s Warden Street,” the driver answered. “Runs all the way along the Dike, from Lockwarden Point to the Governor’s House. There’s good shopping up there, the best shops in town for fashion, if you’re interested.”

“Maybe,” Lioe answered. It must’ve been one hell of a project, building that, she thought, even if Burning Bright’s first-ins were a different breed from the usual first settlers. Burning Bright had never been intended to be anything but an entrepot—could never have been anything else, at least under human settlement, given the minuscule landmass—and the first settlers had all been merchants and bankers, bent on turning the planet’s favorable position astride the main hyperspace channel between the Republic and HsaioiAn into solid profit. And they’d certainly done that: despite the best attempts of worlds like Ky and Attis/Euphrosyne, Burning Bright remained the busiest transshipment point for goods going from one metagovernment to the other. Even in the first years, the settlers would have had the capital to bring in the best technicians to build the Dike.

Traffic was picking up, more and more vehicles cramming the road, and crowds flowed along the walkways outside the brightly lit shops. Only the foodshops seemed to be open, but light and bright snatches of music spilled from their doorways, clear notes like plucked metal strings. She heard laughter as well, over the constant rumble of the crowd and the traffic, looked instinctively to see a woman caught in the blue-white light of a store’s display window, her head thrown back, hair spilling in untidy curls around a lined, handsome face. Her skirt—no one wore skirts in the Republic, except for ethnic festivals—was starred with little mirrors, reflecting the store’s lights like chips of diamond. And then the cab was past her, and Lioe resettled herself against the padding, wondering what she had seen. A shape flashed through the pedestrians, a man’s head and shoulders moving with unnatural quickness above the people surrounding him, and then he shot between two men and a bollard, darting into the traffic stream on a battered bicycle. No one used bicycles much in the Republic, either.

The road rose ahead of them, and Lioe was suddenly aware, over the noise of the crowds and the snarling rush of the assorted vehicles, of the dulled, steady tolling of a buoy bell. She leaned forward a little, and the driver said, before she could ask, “We’re coming up on the Straight now.”