Olmy walked across the lobby and stood near the credit counter, one eyebrow lowered as if in puzzlement. He turned to the broad illusart window and spotted the Frant in the courtyard, sitting patiently on an empty light-sculpture pedestal. The window made it appear that the Frant was in a luxurious Earth garden, complete with glowing sunset. The Frant would appreciate that, Olmy thought.

He picted graphicspeak at the credit counter and received a confidential response: the apartment was blocked, as were all apartments in the building. None could be occupied or even viewed until the present interdict was revoked.

Those orders had been issued after the last of the Naderite families had been transferred from the cities. Only public buildings had been left open for the use of the last scholars, finishing their exodus studies. The Earth people had already put some of those facilities to use, the Thistledown City Library chief among them.

He picted a Nexus coded icon into the credit counter and said aloud, "I have authorization to temporarily revoke interdict."

"Authorization recognized," the counter replied."

“Open and decorate unit three seven nine seven five."

"What decor do you wish?"

"As it was when occupied by the Olmy-Secor-Lear Triad family."

"You are of that family?" the counter asked politely.

"I am."

"Searching. Decoration completed. You may ascend."

Olmy took the lift. In the round cloud-gray hallway, walking a few inches above the floor, he felt a most unfamiliar and unpleasant emotional tug—the long-past pain of dreams forgotten or lost, of youthful hopes destroyed by political necessity.

He had lived so long his memories seemed to contain the thoughts and emotions of many different people. But one set of emotions still transcended the others, and one ambition remained foremost. He had worked for centuries on behalf of the ruling Geshels and Naderites, never playing favorites, that someday he might be allowed this opportunity.

His apartment number glowed red at the base of the circular door, the only glowing number in the hallway. He entered and stood for a moment in the surroundings of his childhood, engaged in a brief moment of nostalgia. The furnishings and decor were all here, reflecting his natural father's attempt to duplicate the apartment they had been driven from in Alexandria. They had spent two years here, awaiting decisions on their case before their triad family could be moved to the newly finished Axis City.

They had been the last family to live in these buildings, and Olmy had had considerable opportunity to explore the co-op memory and experiment with programming. Even in his childhood, he had shown a proclivity for things technical that dismayed his orthodox Naderite parents. And what he had discovered in the building's memory five centuries ago, quite by accident, had changed the direction of his life. . . .

He sat in his father's sky-blue chair before the apartment data pillar. Such pillars were now obsolete in the Axis City, used only as charming antiques, but he had spent hundreds of hours as a child in front of this very device and found it familiar and comfortable to work with. Picting his own coded icons, he activated the pillar and opened a custom channel to the building's memory. Once, the memory had served the needs of thousands of tenants, keeping their records and acting as a depository for millions of possible decor variations. Now it was virtually blank; Olmy had the impression of swimming in a vast dark hollowness.