All eyes focused on Kyoya.
“You do have some interesting friends,” said Mephisto.
Kyoya fired back, “Starting with you, I suppose. None of my friends would show off like that.”
“Then why—” Sayaka furrowed her brows.
“The puzzle should soon unravel,” said Mephisto.
“How’s that?”
“Simple. Accept the invitation.”
“Eh?”
“The invitation itself states that no matter where you are, somebody will be there to pick you up. Rather than fighting them, join them. You can’t beard the lion unless you venture into its den.”
“What would I want with a lion’s beard?”
Mephisto said, “What do you think, Sayaka-san?”
“Hey!” Kyoya protested. “What the hell? That’s not gonna happen, right, Sayaka?”
Sayaka said, “No, I think I will.”
“What?”
“I’ve no idea why I received an invitation, though it probably has something to do with me being the daughter of the president of the World Federation. Besides, sending out a list like that, regardless of the malicious intent, seems to be throwing down a gauntlet. I accept the challenge.”
“Cut it out,” Kyoya insisted, though clearly losing the argument. “C’mon Yamashina-san, do something.”
“To be honest,” the section chief stated, “we were hoping that’s what she would decide to do.” He continued despite Kyoya’s raised eyebrows. “Taking all the worst-case scenarios into account, the cabinet of course will be deploying android stand-ins and agents in disguise. But considering the technological sophistication of the opponent, such steps are not guaranteed to succeed. In order to get as close to the target and gather as much information as possible, we need people who can adapt and react on the spot to any contingency. Examining the guest list, that would be Sayaka-san and you.”
“Easy for you to say,” Kyoya grumbled. “No matter how many subs and stand-ins the prime minister and the cabinet send in as reserves, she’s still gonna shoulder the full load. Whose idea was that? Did her father—Mr. President of the World Federation—sign off on this?”
“Well—”
“See, Sayaka-chan? There’s no freaking way!”
Sayaka gazed back at the fuming Kyoya with an indomitable expression. “I’m going,” she said.
“Sounds settled,” Doctor Mephisto said, with a wry look at Kyoya. “There’s nothing to worry about, Sayaka-chan. You’ll have the world’s best bodyguard with you.”
Four days later, at one o’clock in the afternoon, black limousines began arriving in front of the fence surrounding Chuo Park, curiously in the same place where the patrol helicopter had crashed.
The VIPs who’d received the invitations came to the mysterious floating house. Movers and shakers in government, business and the arts. No one declined to attend. Skipping out would not only look bad, but even worse, would yield the limelight to other celebrities.
Especially with the mass media focusing their attention day and night on the enormous structure. For audiences outside Demon City, the bigger the scale of the supernatural phenomenon, the better the entertainment value.
To the peaceful world, like the Devil Quake itself, the reality show that was Demon City shook the foundations of physical law. Its very existence was a threat. Real information was limited to the local and small-scale. Everything else was treated as comedic filler.
Though the perfect attendance came down to one incontrovertible factor: bodyguards were also allowed.
The last guest arrived thirty minutes later.
The glittering panoply of celebrities was surrounded by mobile police commandos and robot troops. Among them were Kyoya and Sayaka.
Along with the camera crews and reporters, Kyoya ignored the guards and looked instead at the celebrities. Sayaka, though, focused her attention on the giant edifice hovering above their heads in the middle of the park.
Taking an unobstructed view of the miracle structure would make anybody suck in their breath in wonder. First of all, the legs holding up the enormous building.
According to the ward press releases, each of the legs rested on four square yards of land. Though invisible to the naked eye, they were perched on steel cylinders a yard in diameter buried in the ground. The legs reached skywards from the center of the cylinders, themselves only four inches across.
Structural engineers had speculated that the whole thing must weigh fifty million tons. No matter how hardened and reinforced, the four-inch-wide wires couldn’t possibly support that much mass.
But the master of this mansion had accomplished exactly that. The most august of the scientific societies appealed to the know-nothing bureaucrats, and were told that only those on the invitation list would be allowed in. There were no scientists on the list.
The wire-like legs rose until they faded into faint lines before reaching the smooth silver “plate” that formed the base of the tower. No joints or seams were visible. The surface appeared perfectly smooth. The material seemed to be the same as the legs. Magnetic resonance and ultrasonic imaging had been conducted in secret, and had revealed nothing.
Starting slightly above the “plate,” the lowest part of the base of the building surrounded the center as it rose up. A single room of this structure was a flat section covering over four acres and standing thirty feet high and made out of marble. The two “flights” of rooms combined to form a wide, winding staircase—connected here and there to the wires to trace an elegant arc through the air.
One glance at the building prompted a scholar from Israel to proclaim: “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon!” And was all more astonished to learn of the name appended to the invitations. He had recalled one of the “Seven Wonders of the World,” so-named two thousand years before by the Greek mathematician, Philon of Byzantium.
In the sixth century B.C., in the kingdom of Babylon in the south of Mesopotamia, King Nebuchadnezzar II built the gardens in the middle of the desert to please his queen, who had been born in the mountains. The gardens rose three hundred and fifty feet high. The numerous terraces on the man-made bluff were adorned with flowers and fountains. Onlookers could imagine that, from afar, it was suspended in midair, such that it was also known as “The Floating Gardens of Babylon.”