Iona was all in favor of tearing the thing down and starting again but she knew planning would never agree to that. King’s Tower was sacrosanct.

Iona took a detour past the building site for the new planning department because she wanted to see how it was going. At twelve stories high it was larger than it needed to be, but then that was true of everything these days. Her own house was a prime example. From time to time they would tell her she deserved a bigger one for all her good work; she would tell them she didn’t need a bigger one, and was happy with what she had; they would assume she was just being polite, and insist she accept; and she would accept. She rarely went into the upper stories of her current house and when she did it struck her how they still smelled new.

A member of the construction team recognized Iona from a long way off and as she arrived at the edge of the site several of them came over to meet her. She recognized many former students. They surrounded her, their voices tumbling and clattering against each other as they eagerly greeted their old teacher. They asked how she was (she said fine), what the school was like these days (she said it was much the same), if she was going to retire soon (she said they wouldn’t let her). In return she complimented them on their excellent workmanship, to which they modestly replied they were just doing things the way she’d taught them. They offered to show her around the site but she told them she couldn’t stop, she was on her way to the funeral.

The atmosphere turned somber.

“We wanted to go, we couldn’t get the time off,” said one of her former students, whose name was Bridge. They asked Iona to pass on their condolences and drifted back inside.

* * *

The funeral took place at the city’s largest and newest Point of Return. It had been built as a single unit but designed as two units fused together, so it looked like the two sections had been built at different times but it was impossible to tell which came first. This effect was deliberate. As she arrived Iona remembered with a jolt that she and Weston had collaborated on the design.

The memorial parlor at the front was an attractive, old-fashioned building with a high ceiling, a sharply sloping roof, and a steeple at the front with a sundial on it. The restricted area beyond was larger, a featureless semi-cylinder with narrow windows at regular intervals. It was the third Point that had been built since the city’s foundation, meeting the demands of a greater population, and no doubt one day the call would come for a fourth, larger still. Iona pondered how she would improve on this one when that day came. You could always improve. There were always needs you couldn’t anticipate, you could only watch and see how a building functioned on a day-to-day basis.