Free Black Steel by Steve Perry Page B

little else she'd packed in a small bag slung over the other shoulder. She had almost an hour before boarding, and she wandered through the port, looking at the displays. Since this was Koji, most of the holoprojic or real displays had religious themes. Here were the Tillbedjare Artifacts, or a stylized rendering of them, the Hand and Eye and Mind; a few meters away the Libhober display showed the Prophet Stekarie achieving his cosmic flash of Oneness. Here sat the Buddha, contemplating the Eightfold Way; there the Trimenagists Shifting Triangle pulsed and glowed, beckoning. The Siblings of the Shroud had a computer to answer questions. The Jesuits manned a recruiting station. And past that-Past that was a war memorial.
    Wu stopped in front of the memorial and stared at it. It was an endlessly changing projection of faces, taken from ID graphs, people and mues, children, men, women, dozens of them, but each dissolving into another face within a few seconds, timed so that the effect was almost hypnotic. Bearded men transformed into smooth-faced boys, old women into younger ones, mues into basic stocks.
    As each face faded and was replaced, the colors of skin and hair and eyes shifted through the ranges of all races and configurations. The family of man was indeed vast, including in it genetically altered brothers and sisters who stretched the boundaries far and wide. These were the faces of those who had died during the galactic revolution that had toppled the Confed, millions of them, and it would take a lot longer than any one person could stand here to see the cycle through. There was no sound, no identification attached to the images, just the continuing pulse of humanity.
    Whenever she traveled, Wu would pause here for a few moments. Somewhere in those constantly altering faces was her sister. She had never seen her appear; she was in the viral matrix of the computer's program, just as she continued in Wu's own memory. A heroine of the revolution she had been.
    Ah, sister. If I could only have a few minutes with you, to say all I never got to say.
    Wu turned away. So many faces. It sometimes overwhelmed her to think about it. The numbers of those who had died had no meaning, but looking upon this memorial made them real. The sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and uncles and cousins who had been caught in the sweep of history and taken away from those who had loved them continued to pulse behind her, but she could not look. She wanted to see her sister, and yet, she did not think she could bear it if ever she finally did.
    On the floor under the display were various items left by those who had come to see the memorial.
    Holographs, flowers, medals, a candy bar, coins, tiny world flags and other things that had some meaning to those who had left them, and perhaps once to those who silently appeared and faded in the flux above them. Offerings to memory they were, and even though a service din came and cleaned them all up once a day, the floor was never bare here.
    It must be getting close to boarding time.
    Wu walked away from the memorial.
    Sleel and Reason arrived at Prime and the cart rolled to a quiet stop, then opened itself. What luggage they had was easily carried, small personal items bought in port, a change of clothes, little else. They had left in a hurry.
    Sleel's breath came and went in a sigh as he stepped out onto the land of his birth and childhood. The smell was all too familiar, the feel of the air, the heat of the tropical sun. Sweat gathered under his orthoskins, seeking evaporation and failing to find it.
    "Little warm," Reason observed.
    "Yeah. This way."
    The main complex was shaped roughly like a letter G. The top curve was of biolabs and climate-controlled greenhouses, of which there were five separate-but-joined-by-tubeway buildings. The back of the letter was given over to four supply and stores buildings, as well as a formal gathering hall, almost never used. The base of the curve was a