Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 594
36
It was winter in Hamburg. A thousand years of history
surrounded Marya Mounce, all of it blanketed by white. The
air smelled fresh, clean like Ventus. Had she not walked on
that other world for some weeks, she would have been
overwhelmed by Earth. As it was, she walked the streets of the
tourist-oriented Old Town with nothing but a pair of infrared
emitters bobbing along behind her, conspicuously naked save
for a school of fish that swirled around her. She had only been
here for two days, but that was long enough to learn that if the
locals saw you as an offworlder, they would take every
advantage they could.
Obviously used to the cold, unfazed by patches of snow
and ice in the streets, she passed for a local until she opened
her mouth. Her offworld accent betrayed her, but so far today
that had not been a problem.
She had picked her route carefully. After breakfast at the
quaint 27th-century inn where she and Axel lodged, she had
walked to the center of the Old Town, to view the crumbling
concrete memorial erected a thousand years ago, after the
failed insurrection of the thalience cult. It was strange and
magical for her to walk up to it and touch the rough old
surface, and know that while this spire was being built, the first
Winds were being born on far distant Ventus.
Even a year ago she wouldn’t have bothered to come