Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [12]
her father had always been a just man.
She’d heard the castle was a municipal health spa now.
Anybody who is anybody, they said, spends New Year’s Eve at Kibero.
The ball was held on a wide balcony that jutted out of the caldera’s rim. Standing at the white marble balustrade, it was possible to look out over the rolling grasslands of the caldera proper.
A forest was a smudge on Io’s close horizon. Genevieve could see animals moving about, a glimpse of something big and grey among the trees. Above, the dome gave the illusion of a clear blue sky. Jupiter was a vast indigo shadow directly overhead, the sun an improbably small point of brilliant light. You couldn’t see the far wall of the caldera at all.
Other guests were looking out as well: a party wearing formal suits and sashes marked with corporate symbols. Genevieve recognized the chair of IIe Aiye, a core system conglomerate with defence interests. She was talking to a small man wearing a purple IMC sash.
Genevieve caught a woman from ElleryCorp watching her. The woman turned away and whispered something to her companion.
Gossip no doubt. About the Duke of Callisto’s new concubine.
An aristo. You’re kidding me! I swear it’s true. A provincial family, but old. Who would have thought Walid had the time for such things? What does his wife think? Do you really think he cares?
‘Lady Genevieve, I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you.’
Lady Leabie Susan Inyathi Forrester, fifteenth Baroness of Io, was a slender dark-skinned woman with black eyes. Platinum, silver and amethyst were plaited into black hair, pulled back to accentuate high cheekbones. A cloak, no, a blanket made of some non-synthetic material, was pinned at the shoulder with the azure and blood-red sigil of her family.
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‘My Lady.’ Genevieve curtsied politely. ‘My Lord Walid sends his apologies but he is detained by a meeting of the Imperial Council. He promises faithfully that he will make all efforts to arrive before the festivities conclude.’
The Baroness laughed. ‘Politics, eh?’ she said. ‘Who needs it?’
Genevieve felt herself flush. She wasn’t sure how to answer.
‘The Empire must be governed –’
‘Of course it must,’ said Lady Forrester. ‘Let’s just be thankful that people like Walid are willing to do it. Now, there are people I want you to meet.’
She linked arms with Genevieve, who realized that what she’d taken for sleeves were in fact an interlocking mass of blue and white bracelets.
Genevieve found herself being gently but firmly drawn into the social whirl, the chatter about clothes and who’d been promoted or demoted and the state of the Empress’s health. ‘What do you think of the palace?’ asked her hostess.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Genevieve.
‘Built by the fifth Baron in 2870,’ said Lady Forrester,
‘although each of us have added to it in our time. I’m particularly proud of the animals. We created them, you know. Terran species from before the Dalek invasion. Worked them up from a genebank that one of my ancestors salted away for a rainy day.
Amazing what you can turn up in the family vault, isn’t it?’
‘Amazing,’ said Genevieve.
A library: a Centcomp search engine or discrete database. A smart system to allow the systematic access of information via puterspace. A technology refined over a millennium until a single human being, providing they had the proper funds and clearance, could learn anything known by the human race.
Genevieve was one of the few members of her generation who knew a library could be something else as well. That it could be a room full of physical information storage, books, disks, cubes.
Information you could touch with your hand.
Like the library she found in the palace at Kibero. A narrow, high-ceilinged room to the south of the main hall. A row of three 36
identical rosewood federation tables running down its centre, shelves lining the walls from floor