ever heard of that. You ought to write it up. I could use some decent articles.”
“Okay!” said Svir. Then he noticed the dorfox. “He’s glazing over,” he said, indicating the animal’s eyes.
Tatja agreed, “So I see. We better cut things short. It’s almost supper time anyway. Let’s take a quick look at the print deck, and leave the editorial offices for later.”
They went up another stairway and entered a low room filled with noise and whirling machinery. Svir wondered if all vessels were this crowded. It destroyed the romantic air he had always associated with far sailing. He kept a close hold on the dorfox and petted him comfortingly. This was no place for Ancho to run about unprotected.
There were two printing presses in the room, but only one was in operation. At one end of the machine, a yard-wide roll of sea-paper unwound and slid between rotating drums. The upper drum was inked, and with every swift revolution it pressed print on at least twelve feet of the flowing paper. Beyond this first pair of drums, a second pair did the same for the underside of the sheet. The paper finally moved under a glass flywheel that chopped it into neat, yard-square sheets that landed in a small dolly, ready to be taken to the cutting and binding section. The machine was driven by a spinning shaft that connected to windmills outside.
One of the printmen looked up angrily and started toward Svir. Then he noticed Tatja, and his manner changed. Up close, Svir saw that the inkstained face belonged to Brailly Tounse. “Day, ma’am,” Tounse shouted over the din. “Anything we can do for you?”
“Well, if you have a couple of minutes, could you describe your operation, Brailly?”
Tounse seemed momentarily surprised, but agreed. He took them down the print line and traced the progress of the paper through the machine. “Right now we’re doing almost five thousand impressions an hour; that’s about one hundred thousand pages after cutting. Sometimes we go for days scarcely idling, but when we move into the Drag we have to make up for every minute of it. I’m pushing these machines at their limit now. If you could get us a hundred ounces of iron, Miss Grimm, we could make more steel bearings, and run these things as fast as the wind can blow.” He looked at Tatja expectantly.
She smiled and shouted back, “Brailly, I’ll bet there isn’t a thousand ounces of iron in the whole barge.”
Svir was confused. Since when did a printmaster ask an editor for mechanical help—and for something as ridiculous as iron! Perhaps the fellow was just teasing, though he certainly looked serious enough.
Tounse grimaced, wiped a greasy hand over his bald head, leaving a broad black streak. The man was obviously exhausted. “Well,” he said, “you might stick around and watch us install new boards on the other machine.” He waved at the idle printing press.
Tounse’s crew brought in sheets of rubbery printboard. The elastic base made it possible for them to stretch the type across the drum and fasten down the edges. The dur-sap type gleamed dully in the light. In a few moments it would be black with ink. When the first sheets were properly tied down, the workers moved down the line and tacked four more on the underside press. Then they hand-fed twenty feet of paper through the machine.
Tounse nodded to the man at the clutch. The gearing engaged. Perhaps the fellow released the clutch too fast. Or perhaps the gearing was fatigued. Whatever the cause, the machine was transformed into a juggernaut. Gears splintered and paper billowed wildly about him. The first print drum precessed madly and then flew off its spindle, knocking Tatja and Tounse against the first machine. The glass blade at the far end of the room shattered, and slivers flew everywhere. Whirling chaos lasted several more seconds.
Tounse seemed on the verge of breaking down himself: he had schedules to keep. Svir stepped around the wreckage to help Tatja.
“Svir—where’s Ancho!”
The dorfox was gone. Tatja bounced to her feet and swore. “Tounse! Forget your damn machines. We’ve got to find that animal.” Soon Tounse and his whole crew were searching the print deck for Ancho. Svir wondered briefly if the dorfox could be deceiving them with an “I’m-not-here” signal. Ancho hadn’t pulled a trick like that in five years, though gran’ther Hedrigs claimed it was the dorfoxes’ most common defense in the wild. If Ancho had not been killed in the mangle, he was probably scared witless. Panic would drive him outside and to some higher deck.
Svir left the others and ran outside. He glanced quickly about and ran up to the next level. Soon he had reached a deck of masts and windmills. He stopped, gasping for breath. From the sails and rigging above him came a continuous, singing hum. He was alone except for a single sailor in a short semiskirt. She was climbing a rope ladder that stretched down from the tallest mast. Svir wondered what she was doing. The rigging should be adjustable from the bridge; besides, it was too windy to climb safely. Then he looked past the girl. Almost forty feet above her, he saw Ancho’s furry form. Svir ran toward the mast.
The dorfox continued up the rope. He had panicked completely. Ancho was trying to retreat from all the things that frightened him, and up was the only direction left. Svir debated whether he should follow the sailor, then saw that it would just upset her precarious balance. The wind blew the ladder into a clean catenary form. As the sailor rose higher, she was forced to climb with her back to the ground and the rope above her. Ancho was radiating helpless distress—even down the deck it made Svir faint with fear. For a heart-stopping instant it looked as if she were going to fall. Her feet slipped from the rope and she hung by one hand from beneath the ladder. Then she hooked her leg around the ladder and inched forward. She was no longer climbing. One hundred fifty feet above the deck, the ladder was blown horizontal.
Finally she reached Ancho. She seemed to coax him. The dorfox clutched at her neck. The two came slowly down the long, curving ladder.
The girl collapsed at the base of the mast. Ancho released his tight hold on her and scuttled over to Svir.
Svir held the whimpering animal as he helped the sailor to her feet. She was a bit taller than average, with black hair cut in short bangs. At the moment her face was very pale. “That was a brave thing you did,” said Svir. Without doubt, she had saved the animal’s life. “You really know how to handle those ropes.”
The girl laughed weakly. “Not me. I’m a translations editor. Llerenito editions mainly.” She spoke in brief, anguished spurts. Her mind knew she was safe now, but her body did not. “That’s the first time I ever climbed them. Oh gods! Every time I looked down, I wanted to throw up. Everything looked so far away and hard.”
She sat back down on the deck. She was shaking as much as Ancho. Svir put his hand on her shoulder.
“I like to come up here on my free time,” she said. “Your animal came running across the deck like his tail was on fire. He just grabbed the ladder and climbed. I could tell he didn’t want to climb, but he was terrified of whatever chased him. Every few rungs, he’d stop and try to come down. I—I had to do something.”
As she spoke these words, Tatja arrived. She ran over and inspected Ancho with a careful, expert eye.
She didn’t say anything for several seconds, though she favored the girl with a long, calculating glance.
“Pleased.” The girl smiled hesitantly.
“Tatja, Coronadas climbed almost to the top of the mast to save Ancho.”
“Yes, I saw the last of it. That was a brave rescue.” She petted Ancho. “I just hope we haven’t wrecked the dorfox. We were fools to take him along this morning.” She looked up at the sun, which was just past the zenith. “We might as well get some dinner. It’s too late to start any training. We can begin this evening.” Svir wrapped Ancho in his jacket, and they returned to the lower decks.
Eight
The sun was three hours down before they began. The night was clear and Seraph lit both sea and barge in shades of blue.
Tatja had used paperboard partitions to simulate a hallway within Benesh’s keep. She had constructed the mock-up on a deck out of the wind and hidden from the view of other ships. “I’ll admit it’s pretty crude, but we don’t need anything elaborate just yet,” she said. “The dimensions are the same as inside the Keep. You can see side passages opening off the main one.”
