Finally, a ringcar pulled up before him, and its driver left the vehicle. Nolan climbed into the small, spherical cocoon, all metal and glass on the outside, merely a bench and a set of hand controls inside. He pulled the rudder to the left, and the car glided into the entry lane, the middle of the three traffic levels. As soon as the lane above him cleared out, he pulled the rudder back and angled upward, increasing his speed with a squeeze of his hand. The great stone hallway of the Centrifuge unrolled before him, honey yellow, filled with a bee’s hive of scurrying shapes, curving to the left in a continuous unbroken circle. The gates flashed by on his right, and he skimmed along in the highest lane until he reached his own. Then he dropped to the middle level, pulled up at the gate, and exited onto the street. From there, he took a slow, lumbering bus to his own neighborhood.

It was the fashionable district for indigo bachelors. Nearly everyone on the bus was dressed in clothes remarkably similar to Nolan’s, and they all lived in apartment buildings that he easily could have mistaken for his own. A few miles away were the expensive multistory houses where the Higher Hundred families lived when they were in the city, but for an unmarried blueskin man, this was the only acceptable place to live.

There was a small pile of mail awaiting Nolan outside the door to his apartment. Bills; a letter from his mother; the fashion magazine he subscribed to, though he rarely read it. And a note from Leesa. He opened that first.

As he read, he absently toyed with the medallion he wore, a disk stamped with Leesa’s clan device, which she had given him the day they became engaged. Her handwriting was large, looped, and lazy. Every time he read it, he imagined her speaking in her usual languid, unimpassioned tones, and he automatically slowed the pace at which he consumed her words.

“Nolan: Is it as hot in the city as it is in-country? Today Bettahelia and I did nothing but sit on the porch drinking lemonade and watching the wind move the grass in the field. We didn’t even speak more than five sentences to each other, and she was with me the entire day. I think her visit has gone on too long, but I’ve been too fatigued to tell her so. Maybe she will leave by the end of the week.