Icy wind greeted him outside. He stood at the top of a staircase that spiraled down the cliff Crankenshaft owned. The city glimmered far below, and beyond it ragged mountains stretched into the darkness. Millennia ago a marauding asteroid had struck the planet, distorting it into a blunt teardrop that lay on its side, its axis pointed at Quatrefoil, the star it orbited. Although Ansatz was almost tidally locked with Quatrefoil, it wobbled enough so most of its surface received at least a little sunlight. Night reigned supreme only here in this small region around the pole.

Crankenshaft’s estate was high enough to touch the transition zone between the human-made pocket of calm around Nightingale and the violent winds that swept Ansatz. Yet despite the long drop to the plateau, the staircase had no protection, not even a rail. Another of Crankenshaft’s "quirks." After all, he never used these stairs.

Jato grimaced. When he came willingly, Crankenshaft always had a flycar waiting to take him home. Today he would have to go back inside and ask for a ride, a prospect he found as appealing as eating rocks.

So he went down the stairs, stepping with care, always aware of the chasm of air. Around and around the spiral he went, never looking around too much, lest it throw off his balance. He wondered how he would appear to someone down in the city. Perhaps like a mote descending a stone DNA helix on the face of a massive cliff.

The helix image caught his mind. It would make an intriguing sculpture. He could go to the library and find a text on DNA. It would have to be a holobook, though, rather than anything on the computer.

Before Jato had come to Ansatz, his computer illiteracy hadn’t mattered. As the oldest son of a water-tube farmer on Sandstorm, he hadn’t been able to afford web access, let alone a console. Although everyone here in Nightingale had access to the city web, it did him little good. However, he had figured out how to tell a console in the library to print books.