Free Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams Page B

extravagance. There were obelisks, pagodas, and minarets. Columns supported arches, arches supported domes, domes supported cupolas. Towers brandished horns, bartizans, mooring masts, and carved stone pinnacles with crockets. Triumphal arches crowned boulevards, and so did torii. There were stoas, cloisters, and pergolas. An enormous wheel carried entire apartments high into the sky before lowering them gently to earth, and stopped in its rotation only when someone wanted to get on or off. A brace of towers circled each other as they rose, a pair of helixes frozen in a dance.
    Buildings were made of stone, of metal, of marble, of glass, of diamond, of carbon fiber. Domes were plated with gold, with bronze, with light-absorbent fuligin, and in one case with the teeth of human children.
    Connecting the towers were arching metal bridges, transparent tubes, or cars hung from cables. Swirling between the structures were bright spots of color, people in lightweight gliders rising on the updrafts that surrounded the tallest buildings. Below, people moved in carriages, in gondolas, in cars that moved along tracks.
    A huge billboard scrolled an advert for something called Larry’s Life .
    Aristide, hands in his pockets, viewed the prodigality of Myriad City and said,

     “ The city alive with noise and light,
     The flame of youth ablaze.
     And I, in my stillness, content to be old. ”
     
    “That’s the Pablo I remember.” Daljit, seated at her desk, looked up from her work. “Why are you Aristide these days?” she asked. “Why aren’t you Pablo any longer?”
    “There are too many Pablos. I am bored with Pablos.”
    She smiled. “I thought you were content to be old.”
    “I can’t help being old,” he said, gruffly. “Pablo I can do something about.”
    “Wielding a sword in some barbarian world isn’t exactly the stuff of old age.”
    He turned from the window, took his hands from his pockets. He wore a pale shirt, pale trousers, and a dark spider-silk jacket in a style twenty years out of date.
    “The swordsmanship was incidental,” he said. “I was actually doing scholarship.”
    “Of what?”
    “The implied spaces.” He walked to look over her shoulder, at the spectra glowing on her display. “Anything?” he asked.
    “Nothing yet.”
    The room was long, with two conventional doors that swung open on hinges. The walls and ceiling were tuned to a neutral color so as not to provide distraction. Long tables with polished surfaces held a broad assortment of machines and small robots, most of them inactive. There was a smell of heat, of ozone.
    Aristide contemplated his companion. Daljit seemed compact as opposed to small, and gave the impression of having a highly organized, responsive body that didn’t require size or reach for its effects. She had expressive brown eyes beneath level brows, and a mole on one cheek that provided a pleasing asymmetry. She wore a silver bracelet with a bangle and numerous rings, which indicated that she was aware of the grace of her long hands and fingers. She wore a white high-collared tunic, knee-breeches, and silk stockings with clocks.
    She and Aristide were old friends, and spoke with the ease of a long acquaintance. Though they’d kept in touch he hadn’t seen her in person in sixty years, at which time she had been tall and bosomy and crowned by hair of a brilliant henna-red shade.
    She rested her chin on her fist as she looked at him. “What are the implied spaces, exactly?”
    He considered for a moment. “If we turn to the window,” he said, and illustrated the point by turning, “we observe the Dome of Parnassus.”
    She turned. “We do. It wants cleaning.”
    “The dome, you will observe, is supported by four arches, one at each cardinal point.”
    “Yes.”
    “Presumably the architect knew that the dome had to be supported by something , and arches were as meet for the purpose as anything else. But his decision had consequences. If you stand beneath