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for Myrto and sent it off. I needed to get to Klevyl’s engineering assignment, since the specs had arrived while I was in the middle of finishing the analysis for Myrto, but I was taking a brief break because I couldn’t face another grind-it-out methodizer project immediately. I wasn’t sure how I ended up with such a range of assignments, except that I’d made a practice of taking anything I thought I could do.
    I was staring out the window, sipping verdyn, enjoying green cinnamint tang, forcing myself to take a dose of InstaNews—the OneCys immediate reporting net. The holo image before me was that of a fuzzy off-white toroidal octagon set in against vaguely familiar stars.
    …the high commissioner for Interstellar Transport announced early this morning in Geneva that a second forerunner Gate has been discovered…near Gamma Recluci…apparently identical to the first discovered more than twenty years ago….
    I nodded. That was bound to happen. The image shifted to a reddish building set before verdant trees, trees I didn’t recognize.
    …students at the academy level schools in Ankorplex and in Kievplex have filed petitions with the secretary director of the Federal Union…claiming that the proposal to use perceptual integrative ability tests—the so-called PIAT—effectively grants an advantage to students who have undergone genetic pre-selection…petitions also state that the use of the PIAT smooths the orbit for other subjective criteria….
    That was no surprise. Students who had greater perceptual integrating abilities had an advantage, but it didn’t matter how they got the advantage. Some norms scored high on the PIAT. The image flicked again.
    …delegate Diem offered the Union council a proposal to increase the distance penalty on privately owned gliders…claiming that the present tax-charge and ownership requirements are merely designed to prohibit private use of gliders for all but the wealthiest. “The charges mean nothing to the wealthy. Do you see them on the induction tubes?”
    With a headshake, I broke the news link and let the holo images fade. The charges certainly weren’t “nothing” to me. Probably twenty percent of what I made went to fees for the glider, and I did my own maintenance, and was careful when I used it.
    I didn’t even finish the thought because the commplate lit, and the gatekeeper informed me that I had a message. Myrto was the one I half-expected, but the image that appeared in mid-air, cutting off the sweep of the sun-splashed red stone of the East Mountains, was that of a smiling Kharl, wearing a dark gray singlesuit.
    “I know you’ve got a lot of work to catch up on. So I’m just sending this to you so that you can see and hear it when you can. It might even give you another idea for an edart composition. And no, I still haven’t heard from Elysa. I don’t expect either of us will. When you have a minute, let me know, and I’ll fill you in on what I know about what caused your reaction.” With those words, Kharl’s image vanished.
    The databloc he’d sent was a VR—of the Warsha Symphony concert that Elysa had been so successful in keeping me from attending.
    I needed a break from the routine of heavy-duty methodizing, anyway. So I blocked any incoming inquiries with direct routing to gatekeeper storage, pulled on the headset once more, let myself drop into the VR concert hall, a VR re-creation of the large hall in Vallura, and began to listen.
    I hadn’t intended to listen all the way through. After all, I’d heard the Uphyrd before. But I found myself listening first to Gate of Conquest , and then to the re-creation of The Planets . When the VR ended, I just sat behind my flat desk for several minutes, looking blankly in the direction of the window, but I didn’t really see the valley below. Even though it had been a VR, and not a live concert with all the overtones and electricity created by a real orchestra, one thing was brilliantly