Gleda Warick's house—mansion, really, lay sprawled over most of the Twin Peaks Area. From her Lunar Room you could see the whole of the city stretched out as if for inspection. To the east, the bay and the floating housing developments, wharves and night spots on and under the water. To the west the transocean highways, ribbons of plastic floating on the still Pacific. No one could afford to run ships now and almost all surface commerce was run over the highways in caravans of atomic trucks. To the Orient, to Alaska, to the Pacific islands. A steady string of lights moving at two hundred miles per hour. Rocket trails streaked the sky as starliners splashed into the bay and burbled to the surface, hissing and steaming. Market Street—all seven levels of it—ran from the base of the hills to the bay, a multilevel slidway jammed with people. The view from Gleda's place was magnificent because of the infra-red antismog windows she had installed in the Lunar Room at a cost, incidentally, of 100,000 prots.
She had three rooms and a kitchenette. You entered her place and almost had an attack of agoraphobia. It was that big.
The place was overrun with people. I'd brought Thais, of course, resplendent in red and silver paint. Lyra Yves appeared in a solid coat of gilt, with that one breast and her left arm sheathed in flexible vinyl. Thais nudged me. "Look at that. I think it's disgusting."
I did look. I couldn't help myself. That shiny vinyl caught the eye of every man in the room. "Depraved," Thais sniffed.
Honest Pancho came in with an older man who was pointed out to me as an ethnologist from the University of California across the bay. A Professor Cripps.
Pancho, dressed in his customary green and orange enamel and embroidered cowboy boots, stumped across the room to give me the big hello.
"Jose, my boy! Good to see you...." He glanced up at the Eyespy. "Trouble with the Witch Hunters? Tsk tsk—"
"As if you didn't know," I snapped.
"You think I'd do a thing like that to a friend?"