3.
 In the final weeks of his stature as the Engineer I, Kery had supervised the installation of the last great steam scrubbers on Fotal, the northern continent of this largely water world. The huge white machines, made of ceramic and alloys, and shaped like a pile of 1000 foot tall broken eggs, would humidify the atmosphere of this arid region and inject enough biospores to start a rainforest. The biospores carried the seeds of a million species of plants from dozens of worlds. As the first plumes of steam shot silently into the powder-blue sky, Kery and his roughhousers had cheered. With his powerful bronzed arms, his tanned face, his blazing eyes, and white grin, he was one of them. Hands clapped him on the back as he turned from his last great accomplishment on Mirabel IV. Now he must either move on—become Engineer II or I of some other world being built, move out—retire, which he had no taste to do—or move up—become Governor. At that moment the State Bureaucrat in Place had stopped clapping, stepped forward to shake Kery’s hand, and handed him the Letter of Intent to elevate him to the Governorship. Kery had felt giddy, weak-kneed, and he could only nod.
As the airbus whistled home through the thickening atmosphere, over spreading vegetation that would in another generation become rainforest, Kery kept going over and over the fantasy in his mind. He’d come up from a cold, dank mining world, where he’d been abused by his family and wound up in an orphanage. He’d never really lived as a free man in a city. What would it be like to rule not a city, but a whole world? Would he go to the museum and retrieve a book? Would he learn to play an instrument and wear a tux to the opera? Would he marry one of the glamorous daughters of aristocracy and have children - in vitro, not to spoil her figure? Would he walk in the park and play chess with—no, the Governor was an invisible presence, the powerful fist of the State if needed, otherwise its benign helping hand. To compensate for staying out of the mainstream, he’d be rewarded with every luxury imaginable, satisfying every appetite, even learning new appetites so that he could sate those.
Menet had greeted him at the door. She’d sent the house staff home so they could be alone. After kissing him, she said: “Congratulations.”
“Thanks!”
“Then the time is almost here for you to sign my papers.”
“Oh that.”
She had blazed up, and her yelling could be heard outside. “What do you mean oh that? We’re only talking here about the rest of my life. This is what my womanhood was thrown away for. How can you be so wrapped up in yourself? How will you ever make any woman happy? You’re a loser. A loser! Go on, release me a month early, I’ll give you back your stipend, you miser.” And so on it went, and he did not have the heart to argue with her. She was right. To make up for it, he arranged for her manumission dinner to be an extra special affair, attended by her friends.
In the weeks that followed, Kery began to have visitors from Kalopolis, the new capital. He’d hardly visited there, except on Engineer business. It was a city of wide, empty streets, of 500-story skyscrapers, of airfields and gravbases. Right now its population was a blissful 100,000, and those were the builders. In the next decade, several million people would begin to inhabit the city—and millions more would settle on Mirabel IV’s several continents.
His contacts with the Government Office for Governors were a man named Flyn and a woman named Adjuni. Flyn was a wispy man, very decorous and fussy, and he made it clear from the beginning that his proudest moment would be escorting Kery to the ceremonial dais for his swearing in. Everything about the ceremony must be flawless, he said. First time he’d seen Menet, who was always ordered out of the room, and would be in and out of the pool beyond the window, he’d looked at her askance: “Where can we send her?”
Kery had shrugged lightly, not knowing it was much of an issue. “She’s my gogyrl. I’ll be manumitting her before I move to the city.”
Flyn had shaken his head vigorously. “No, that must not be. You will be holoscooped. People will peer over your walls. As the new Governor you can’t be seen with that gynefem.”
“Nobody is going to—“
“We’ll fix that,” Flyn had said.
“You’re not fixing anything until I’m ready,” Kery had told him.
Flyn had sniffed contemptuously, then lowered his head in an exaggerated bow of resignation, and stepped back. Apparently he’d just realized he was giving his future Governor orders, and the Governor was pushing back. And Adjuni would have to wait in the wings. Which would not be long. The move to the city was due in another ten days.
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