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warn you away."
Annja felt her body go numb as if with cold. She tried to speak. The words
stuck in her throat.
"I know," Xia said. "Patrizinho killed your lover in Feliz Lusitânia, as well.
You killed several of us, in Manaus and the gold camp. You wonder why we would
forgive you. You wonder why you don't hate us."
"Yes," Annja said.
"We'll try to make it clear to you," Xia said. "Soon."
Annja rose, went out onto the balcony. The floor, which looked like tile, gave
slightly beneath her sandaled feet. She wore a green T-shirt and blue jeans.
She wasn't too surprised they fit her, although she had yet to see anyone
inside the City of Promise itself wear any such garments. Her belongings had
all been left behind with the mercenaries.
She had wondered at her own uncharacteristic lack of adventurousness. Usually
her response to someplace new and different was an irresistible urge to poke
around. But she was off balance, suffering, as closely as she could reckon,
from massive information and cultural overload.
The doors to the balcony opened as quietly and automatically as the door to
the corridor outside. Annja stepped out into a bright morning nowhere near as
muggy as she'd expected. The city spread out before her.
The first surprise, when she had finally mustered the strength to get out of
bed that morning and peered out the balcony doors, was that it had levels. Not
just multistory buildings but actual relief.
That struck Annja as unusual. The Amazon Basin downstream from the Andean
foothills was flat as prairie farmland. Moreover the water table was so high
it was hard to build anything lasting. The plantation house and attached
chapel had presumably been constructed on enormously deep foundations of stone
or concrete. In a few decades they'd show signs of serious sinkage into the
underlying muck. To build an entire city was remarkable.
In front of Annja's building lay a large, sunken plaza. Its terraced levels
followed flowing organic contours rather than the usual strict rectilinear
lines of most city squares she'd seen. Fountains played in broad pools. Masses
of greenery formed irregular islands in the multilayered pavement. There were
so many brightly colored flower patches that it looked at first glance as if
the city had been bombarded with paint balloons from orbit.
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She saw no vehicles. Plenty of people walked about or simply sat on benches
and fountain-rims. Dozens of children, mostly wearing brightly colored smocks,
raced here and there among the adult pedestrians. She heard the sounds of
their laughter.
The buildings themselves particularly fascinated her. Their walls seemed
slightly sloped. The general pattern suggested Mesoamerican architecture. Some
buildings incorporated or were themselves outright step pyramids, the
buildings truncated and broad topped. The structures that crowned some
buildings came to near points.
She saw rounded features, as well, like towers of a Medieval castle. The city
had a more graceful, less oppressive or clunky aspect than most excavated
Central American buildings she had seen. The ancient Indians had been
constrained by the limitations of available building materials, and by the
fact that the rulers who built the great public structures wanted them to be
oppressive to remind all who saw them, whether potential invaders or their
own subjects, just who was boss.
She also thought to see elements, strangely, of Nepalese and Tibetan
architecture, in the odd dome or stepped tower or building with pagoda-like
sweeps to the eaves. Disparate as the elements were, all fit together with
wonderful harmony.
"It's beautiful," Annja said. "It looks like nowhere else on Earth."
"It reflects our influences. The tribal cultures of Africa and Amazonia, the
scientific and rationalistic cultures of the West, the spiritual learning
and millennia-old science, that Westerners always like to over-look of India
and China," Xia said.
"How is that possible?"
Xia shrugged. "From our very inception, our predecessors realized the value of
information. So we've spent centuries gathering all we can, whether through
our own researches or trading for it from others. We take what serves us, and
use it." She gestured toward the door. "Come on. Let's get out in it. You can
stand to stretch your legs."
"That's the truth," Annja said.
Chapter 30
They found Patrizinho in front of the building, which seemed to be a sort of
dormitory or apartment. He stood by a fountain surrounded by children. He held
a laughing little boy up in the air and laughed with him. He smiled happily to
see Annja and Xia, put the child back down, tousled his hair.
"Thank you," he said to the boy. "Now I have to go play with my other
friends."
"Okay," the boy said. He and his half-dozen little friends ran off laughing.
"Why did you thank him?" Annja asked.
"For sharing his laughter with me."
"It was sweet of you to take time to play with them," Annja said as they began
walking down into the sunken plaza.
He grinned. "It's part of my job."
"It helps to realize," Xia said, "that along with playing, he was teaching
them basic physical science concepts. Here we teach our children from the
start to regard learning as a form of play, rather than making it into a form
of torture, the way they do in your world. But then, the goal where you come
from is to instill habits of obedience. And after all, an eager curiosity and
propensity to ask questions is quite counterproductive from that outlook,
isn't it?"
Frowning, Annja opened her mouth to defend her society and its education
practices. But all the arguments that came to her mind struck her as feeble at
best.
"You've got many questions," Xia said. "We haven't got much time. Choose your
questions carefully then ask them, Annja."
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Again, the questions thronged forward, jostling each other. Annja found her
tongue tied when it came to the most important. So she skirted it.
"You always seem to be armed," she said. "Is there danger to defend against on
the streets of Promessa?"
Patrizinho smiled. "There's danger everywhere humans are, Annja," he said.
"Surely you of all people know that."
"It's a tradition," Xia said. "With practical roots. We had to fight to
escape. We had to fight to stay free. We had to fight to survive. And after
three centuries we must fight the greatest danger in our history." Annja
didn't have to ask what or why.
"We're no pacifists," Patrizinho said. "I know you've noticed that."
"Did you kill Mafalda?" she blurted.
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