Despite his mother's pleasant ramblings on the colors of the leaves and the beauty of the scenery and Dorothy's enthusiasm for the journey, the interior of the groundcar was tense. Arcturus and his father had not spoken since their harsh words in the dining room the previous morning, and no amount of calming words from his mother could bridge the gulf, which grew wider with every minute of silence.
Arcturus kept his gaze fixed on the landscape unfolding around them as the groundcar wove its way though the low hills to the south of the city. Despite the inevitable growth of business, Korhal remained a defiantly green world, the planetary authorities long ago having had the foresight to invest in renewable energy sources and enforce stringent clean air laws.
As a result, Korhal was one of the few planets in the Confederacy to be a thriving hub of trade and industry that was also actually a pleasant place to live and visit. Arcturus had not yet ventured off world, but he had ambitions beyond Korhal's skies. He longed to travel between the stars and explore new worlds and earn his fortune with his skills, instead of simply inheriting it as his father had done.
That his father had also worked tirelessly since he had achieved adulthood never occurred lo Arcturus. Not that Arcturus disapproved of inheriting wealth, title, and position —the dynastic traditions of Korhal were well established—but he wanted to be known as a man who had gotten to the top by virtue of his own abilities. He wanted people to look at him and know that he had achieved what he had through blood, sweat, and sacrifice.
His thoughts of the future were interrupted when he caught sight of a shimmering lattice of silver through the branches of the trees, the first signs of civilization. Despite his foul mood, he smiled as he caught tantalizing glimpses of Styrling through the wide canyons of the hills.
It was a huge city, a mecca of commercial interests and a glittering symbol of all that had been achieved in the two centuries since the planet's settlement. Arcturus loved the opportunities the city offered: the wealth, the entertainment, the bustle, and the sheer, vibrant humanity of it all. Everything a person desired, and more besides, could be found in Styrling if you knew where to look.
The groundcar swept over a ridge that curved along the road, and then the city was laid out before him.
No matter how many times he saw it, it never failed to impress.
Styrling was like the frozen aftermath of a droplet that had fallen into a petri dish of mercury, a silver crown of soaring structures that stood tall and majestic in the center and which gradually diminished in size toward the edges.
A dizzying web of flyovers surrounded and penetrated the bright metropolis, like a hundred threads of dark wool woven through it, and the city shone with dazzling reflections from the mass of neosteel and glass that made up the bulk of the buildings.
The architecture of Styrling was not subtle. Most of the towers and spires belonged to one of the megacorporations or to representatives of one of the Old Families, and each of the owners sought to outdo the others with the height and magnificence of a given structure. Graceful curving walls had once bounded the extreme edge of the city, but the pressure of commerce had driven a great deal of the city's infrastructure beyond them.
The wealthiest families of Korhal kept their headquarters within the walls of Styrling, and the Mengsks were no exception.
The Mengsk Skyspire was a mighty, fortresslike edifice that towered over its nearest rivals: the Continental Building, the LarsCorp Tower, and the Korhal headquarters of the Universal News Network. Arcturus hated the Skyspire, its angular lines and neo-Gothic stylings appearing at odds with the sleek, graceful designs of its neighbors.
As far as Arcturus was concerned, it was the architectural embodiment of his father: cold, stern, and uncompromising.
The city drew closer and the traffic grew heavier, the vultures drawing back to surround the groundcars like mother hens protecting their chicks. Arcturus watched the traffic flow like a living thing around them, moving to its own internal rhythms, and as he looked at the faces within each car, he wondered at the lives he saw passing him.
Each one represented a self-contained world, around which the universe revolved, and Arcturus idly tried to fit histories to each face—trying to imagine what lives these people lived. What were their dreams and ambitions? What made them rise from their beds each day to toll in the factories and offices of Styrling?
Love? Ambition? Desire? Greed?
Watching the people as they made their way to work, Arcturus saw all human life before him—laughter, quarrels, stolid silences, and a thousand other things. He saw conversations between men and women, fathers and children, lovers and colleagues, each small world with its own hopes and dreams for the future.
A young girl with a yellow ribbon in her hair sat in the passenger seat of a car two lanes over. She noticed Arcturus looking at her and waved to him. He smiled and waved back, feeling an unaccountable closeness to these people of Korhal, feeling that in some small way they were his people. He sensed a kinship with the faces he saw around him, a bond with the people with whom he shared his homeworld that he had never felt before.
The girl's car drifted away, vanishing down an off-ramp, and Arcturus returned his attention to the city around him as they were swallowed up by its glass and steel canyons.
The tense silence in the groundcar was broken only when their journey took them around the chaotic site of the new Korhal Assembly Forum.
Or what was supposed to be the new Korhal Assembly Forum.
Towering cranes and enormous earthmoving machines stood idle around a monstrous, half-finished building of concrete and exposed steel that looked as though it had been stripped by an army of looters. A number of prefabricated cabins were arranged around the perimeter of the site, but there appeared to be no men or robots working there.
Arcturus was no judge of aesthetic, but even to his untrained eye, the building looked as though it had been spawned in the worst nightmares of a demented architect.
“Look at that," said Angus Mengsk, jabbing a finger at the unfinished building. "If there's a more visible symbol of the moral decay and corruption at the heart of the Confederacy, I don't know what it is."
"Oh, please, not this again, dear," said Katherine.
But Angus was not to be denied venting his outrage.
"I ask you, why do we need a new building for the Senate anyway? What's wrong with the Palatine Forum? Granted, it's old, but it's got character and tradition behind it. This new fiasco of a building sums up everything that's wrong with the Confederacy: money siphoned off into the pockets of corrupt officials, perverse priorities, and an arrogant indifference to public opinion. Did you know that the costs have soared to over five hundred million and counting? Oh yes, and that's from an initial estimate of sixty-three million! And where's that money gone? On insane expenses like a Chau Saran sunwood reception desk or bribes to Confederate city officials. They've been 'working' on it for the last six years, and it never seems to get finished. Oh, they say it'll be finished later this year, but look at it.... Does it look like that's realistic?"
"No, dear, it doesn't," said Katherine dutifully.
"The truth is that the one thing people know about the Confederacy is that everything costs quadruple what it ought to, thanks to the bribes you need to pay to get anything done and the dozens of new 'taxes' that suddenly seem to apply to any project that isn't intended to line the pockets of the Old Families."