Soft-voiced Aida offered a startling variety of drinks from the car's bar, which everyone politely refused after Miles did.  Miles tilted his face to the polarized canopy to get a better look at the capital from an above-ground vantage for a change.  No actual mountains cradled Northbridge, but it had been long enough since the glaciers had retreated here for streams to have carved the moraines into something other than scraped-flat.  The native plant species, rudimentary at best, had pretty much been displaced by urban landscaping based on Earth imports.  The city was city, grown up around an infrastructure of galactic-standard transport and technology.  If Miles hadn't walked through it himself, he'd have no guess of what strangeness lay below.

The view grew more interesting when they reached the west end and approached the Cryopolis proper.

"The Cryopolis began to be developed some forty years ago," Aida informed them in good guide style, "when further extension of cryofacilities beneath the city grew too expensive.  Now Northbridge has grown out to meet it, and it has become its own municipality, named Western Hope."

"And how many representatives does Western Hope field to the Territorial Prefecture's legislature?" Miles inquired.

"Fourteen," she replied brightly.

As many as the parent city itself, though it occupied a fraction of the area.  "Interesting."

Roic's head swiveled around.  "What t' heck . . . ?"

"Pyramids!" said Dr. Durona happily, craning too.  "Dozens of 'em!  Is there a river around here called Denial?"

Miles reminded himself to repress Raven, too, at the earliest private opportunity.

Aida's permanent smile grew briefly pained, but recovered at once.  "Those are the facilities of our largest cryonics services competitor, NewEgypt."

About a kilometer of sandstone wall was pierced by a high gate, flanked by huge statues of somber seated figures sporting slim canine heads.

"I saw those before," said Roic, "back at the conference.  There was a fellow wandering around in a skimpy costume with a big plastic dog head, handing out flyers.  Seemed more like an advertisement for a Jackson's Whole bioengineering firm."

Miles could fill in that one.  "The figures are of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead," he explained.  "They had a number of other gods with animal heads—hawks, cats, cows—that had various figurative meanings.  That's actually not a dog but a jackal, which was a carrion-eating scavenger in their ancient deserts.  A natural association with death for a pre-industrial folk, I suppose."  He glanced at Aida and refrained from expanding the parallel, though he did wonder if anyone had bothered to check the translations on those hieroglyphs decorating the walls, or whether they really read something like Ptah-hotep is a louse! or Unas owes Teti one hundred wheat sheaves and a firkin of figs.

Aida glanced at the receding figures and sniffed.  "As you can see, they've taken up that era from Old Earth as their corporate theme."

More of a theme park, Miles thought.