Some conceived in city memory had as many as six parents. Tapi was biparental, with a predisposition toward masculinity. He had been born, achieving active status, six years before, both parents in attendance, one of only thirty children quickened in city memory that year. His body image at that time had been a six year old boy, Polynesian in appearance—Polynesians and Ethiopic blacks had been considered the most beautiful of the human races in Ram Kikura’s youth—and extremely puckish in behavior. Indeed, Ram Kikura had begun to call her son Robin instead of Tapi, but as he had matured and sobered (though never losing the spark of Robin Goodfellow), Tapi prevailed. For the first year of their son’s life, Ram Kikura and Olmy stayed in constant personal attendance, leaving city memory only for pressing duties, which were few. They had established several fantasy living spaces, allowing Tapi to grow in several simulated eras almost simultaneously.

The wonder of city memory was the flexibility of mental reality. With most of the resources of Hexamon libraries a part of the memory matrix, construction of simulated environments was a matter of a few moments’ effort. The wisdom of historic time—as documented and as perceived by the Hexamon’s greatest scholars and artists—was available to Tapi, and he had thrived on it.

Then difficulties had arisen, not with Tapi but with the Hexamon itself. The political winds had shifted and some had even hinted at re-opening the Way. The neo-Geshel party had grown in strength, countering the best prognostications of the Naderite political advisers. Olmy had felt the cold draft of history compelling him to prepare…

And as the next few years passed, he spent less and less time in person with Tapi, leaving the duty of fatherhood to permanently downloaded partials. Ram Kikura had also found less time, but still maintained close contact with Tapi. Tapi had never shown resentment, nor had his growth slowed, but Olmy often felt the pangs of regret.

The downline buffer was given access and Olmy’s original was loaded directly into the city memory crèche. Tapi waited for him, his self-designed image now that of a young man, a good approximation of what a natural son of his parents might have looked like—Olmy’s build and unaltered eyes and lips, Ram Kikura’s nose and high cheekbones, a handsome young male with the few stylish flaws that were the hallmark of intelligent body-design. They embraced, an electric concatenation of physical and mental mergings that in an earlier time might have been considered embarrassingly intimate for father and son, but which was the norm in city memory. Olmy measured his son’s progress from that embrace, and Tapi was given a healthy dose of parental approval.

Picts and speech were unnecessary in city memory, but resorted to nonetheless; direct mind-to-mind communication was laborious and time-consuming, used only when precise communication was necessary.