She bit on her knuckle for a moment, then shook her head. "No," she said. "It wasn't much of a problem." The image had frightened her—but it had told her a number of interesting things, too. She doubted the incident was a test or experiment. The rogue might prove a useful source of information. . . .”Must have been a short circuit or something, in your works, you know."

The room did not respond for some seconds. "Repairs will be made, if necessary. Do you need anything?"

"No, no thank you," Patricia said. She looked at the pictor, frowning, and again bit at her knuckle.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Forty-Nine

The Presiding Minister of the Infinite Hexamon Nexus, Ilyin Taur Engle, kept his quarters in one of Central City's six broad ventilation shafts, buried deep in the spreading Wald. Olmy had never wished to settle into a primary home, but he envied the P.M. his quarters nonetheless. There was such an air of isolation and peace in the Wald, and such a fantasy of elegance in the quarters themselves.

The six shafts ran straight from the outermost facets of Central City to the governing spheres at the precinct's core. Within each shaft, as many as ten thousand corporeals lived among the winding paths through the Wald. Their homes varied from thick clusters of communal glass floats anchored to the broad aerial roots, to small free-moving cells adequate for one or at most two homorphs, or no more than four of the average neomorphs.

The Wald was both decoration and a nod to Naderite philosophies; about a third of Central City's atmosphere needs were taken care of in the shafts, with Geshel-designed scrubbers doing the rest. Thousands of varieties of trees and other plants—some food-bearing—had been genetically altered and adapted to weightlessness. Fully a third of the Axis City's biomass was botanical and concentrated in the Wald.

One of Olmy's great pleasures was to tarzan through the Wald, flying from root to limb, drifting down the paths without benefit of traction fields. There were designated sport paths and quickways with many exercising homorphs and a few whizzing neomorphs and virtually no vehicles; he had timed himself on a thousand different occasions on the more difficult of these and had honed his time down to as little as fifteen minutes from outer facet to shaft bottom.

Now, however, he felt no need to race. He tarzaned at a leisurely pace, arms folded behind his back, legs cocked like a skater's, kicking from broad leaf to smooth-worn root surface, following well-traveled courses down the path. More valuable than speed was the time to think.