xxii. Kiyoshi had ridden on a Voidstream before. The boss-man’s private spaceship, the Angel, was one. But Adnan Kharbage’s model beat the Angel all to hell in the luxury stakes. Instead of several round decks stacked on top of each other, it had a single cabin running the length of the fuselage, which spun to simulate 0.3 gees of gravity. Rich executives were supposed to be inured to the Coriolis effect, and know not to look up. To help with that, the ceiling—a holographic partition that seemed to bisect the cabin lengthways—displayed a realtime optical feed. So it was like flying in a real leather recliner through the stars. Kiyoshi accepted a glass of pinot noir. It came with a little dish of real cashew nuts and raisins, which the cabin attendant, a blandly pretty robot, brought on a tray. Michael, accustomed from birth to this kind of luxury, hugged his complimentary blanket and ate Swiss chocolates from a bag. When the Voidstream reached orbit, he pointed out his old school on the overhead feed—a sedately rotating torus, a franchise of a top Former United Kingdom public school.
