We set off for Antarctica at once. The edge of the world. Here chaos was sculptress, castles of nature-hewn ice, ice walls, ice towers, serving nothing except the infinite glare of sun and frozen surface. We forget, I think, how the countryside we think of as “wild” has been reshaped so many times by life, how the jungle’s false chaos is really a scripted mesh of symmetry, leaf matching leaf, child parent, every life-form acting out its role as strictly as the dancer spinning on a music box. Life’s symmetry has had no hand in this Antarctic, nor adaptation, cycle, food chain. All there is as random as the Moon, and when a… shape of ice which has no name, as big as… itself, for it was the biggest thing that I had ever tried to label with a size, loomed before me, I tasted the terror that stands twin to the romance of touching a new world. Death. It was Death, beautiful and certain. We are a coddled species, reared in soft soil where we have but to cast seed to the earth for food to grow. Outside that cradle waits only freezing and starvation. Yet, like the first green sprout that raises brave leaves against the bare volcanic rock of some new island, so, bright with hope, here rose the domes of Esperanza City. Their surfaces of ice, or glass, or ice-glass, had no color different from the snow around them, yet their confidence felt like color in a world of black and white. Esperanza City has no need for spires, but we gave her spires anyway, shimmering ice-stalagmite towers sprouting dense as spring growth between her igloo domes, with flags fluttering from every turret, with science’s magic to keep them thawed. She is a hybrid city. One Hive dreamed her, planned her, invented the tools and domes and scrubbers, but it was another Hive whose hands wielded those tools, and carved her from the living, lifeless ice where only brave men step. Do you doubt which?

“The Six-Hive Transit System welcomes you to Esperanza City. Visitors are required to adhere to some requirements of both Humanist Law and Utopian Law while in this zone. Due to its unique climate, Esperanza City also has important safety regulations, including the mandatory use of thermal skin. Since our records indicate that local regulations differ considerably from your customary law code, it is recommended that you review a list of differences by selecting ‘law.’ ”

“What! Who are you? How do… oh… talking computer…” Achilles’s exclamations had started as soon as the cheery voice began its greeting, and his hand shot to his ear, already red from his fiddling with the unaccustomed tracker. “Will it say that every time I go anywhere?”

“Unless you customize the setting,” I answered. “Sorry, I didn’t think to warn you.”