Edna spoke on of human things, family stuff, lesser events than the destiny of the solar system. Bella hung on every word, as a grandmother would. But it was all so strange, even to Bella, who had served in space herself. Edna’s language was peppered with the unfamiliar. You found your way around a spinning space habitat by going spinward or antispinward or axisward… Even her accent was drifting, a bit of Bella’s own Irish, and a heavy tinge of east coast American—

the navy was essentially an offshoot of the old U.S. seaborne navy, and had inherited much of its culture from that source.

Her daughter and granddaughter were growing away from her, Bella thought wistfully. But then, every grandmother back to Eve had probably felt the same.

A soft chime warned her that the plane was beginning its final approach. She stored the rest of Edna’s message and transmitted a brief reply of her own.

The plane banked, and Bella peered down at the city.

She could clearly make out the tremendous footprint of the Dome. It was a near-perfect circle about nine kilometers in diameter, centered on Trafalgar Square. Within the circumference of the Dome much of the old building stock had been preserved from the sunstorm’s ravages, and something of the character of the old confident London remained, a pale sheen of sandstone and marble. But Westminster was now an island, the Houses of Parliament abandoned as a monument. After the sunstorm the city had given up its attempts to control its river, and had drawn back to new banks that more resembled the wider, natural course that the Romans had first mapped. Londoners had adjusted; you could now go scuba diving among the concrete ruins of the South Bank.

Outside that perimeter circle, much of the suburban collar of London had been razed by the fires of sunstorm day. Now it was a carpet of blocky new buildings that looked like tank traps.