Quetzal spoke from inside the floater. 'Look behind us, Patera
Calde.'
They were nearer now, so near that the vast dark belly of the
thing roofed out the sky. Beneath it, suspended by cables that
appeared no thicker than gossamer, dangled a structure like a boat
with many short oars; Silk's lungs had filled and emptied before he
realized that the oars were the barrels of guns, and half a minute
crept by before he made out the blood-red triangle on its bottom.
'Your Cognizance...'
'You don't understand why they're not shooting at us.' Quetzal
shook himself. 'I imagine it's only that they haven't noticed us yet.
A wind is forcing them to hold their airship parallel to the sun, so
they're peering down at a dark city. At the moment our floater's
presenting its narrowest aspect to them. But we're turning, and soon
they'll be looking straight down at us. Let's duck inside and shut the
hatch.'
The glass showed Lake Limna now. Watching its shoreline creep
from one corner to the other, Silk thought of Oosik's needler; their
floater seemed to be tumbling through the sky in the same dilatory
fashion.
Clinging to him, Hyacinth whispered, 'You're not afraid at all,
are you? Are we up terribly high?' She trembled.
'Of course I am; when I was out there, I was terrified.' He
examined his emotional state. 'I'm still badly frightened; but
thinking about what's happening--how it can possibly have come
about except by a miracle--keeps my mind off my fear.' Watching
the glass, he tried to describe the airship.
'Pulling us up, lad! That's what she said! Think we could cut it?'
'There's nothing to cut; if there were, they'd know where we were
and shoot us, I believe. This is something else. Was it you who held
my foot, by the way? Thank you.'
Xiphias shook his head and indicated the surgeon.
'Thank you,' Silk repeated. 'Thank you very much indeed,
Doctor.' He grasped the operator's shoulder. 'You said we were
getting a vector. Exactly what does that mean?'
'It's a message you get if you float too fast, My Calde, either north
or south. You're supposed to slow down. The monitor's supposed to
make you if you don't, but that doesn't work any more on this
floater.'
'I see.' Silk nodded, encouragingly he hoped. 'Why are you
supposed to slow down?'
Oosik put in, 'Going too fast north makes you feel as if someone
were shoveling sand on you. It is not good for you, and makes
everyone in the floater slow to react. Going south too fast makes
you giddy. It feels like swimming.'
Almost too softly to be heard, Quetzal inquired, 'Do you know
the shape of the whorl, Patera Calde?'
'The whorl? Why, it's cylindrical, Your Cognizance.'
'Are we on the outside of the cylinder, Patera Calde? Or on the
inside?'
'We're inside, Your Cognizance. If we were outside, we'd fall
off.'
'Exactly. What is it that holds us down? What makes a book fall if
you drop it?'
'I can't remember the name, Your Cognizance,' Silk said, 'but it's
the tendency that keeps a stone in a sling until it is thrown.'
Hyacinth had released him; now her hand found his, and he
squeezed it. 'As long as the boy keeps twirling his sling, the stone in
it can't fall out. The Whorl turns--I see! If the stone were a--a
mouse and the mouse ran in the direction the sling was going, it
would be held in place more securely, as though the sling were being
twirled faster. But if the mouse were to run the other way, it would
be as if the sling weren't twirling fast enough. It would fall out.'
'Gunner!' Oosik was staring at the glass. 'Your gun should bear.'
As he flicked off his own buzz gun's safety, the red triangle crept
into view.
'Trivigaunte,' Hyacinth whispered. 'Sphigx won't let them make
pictures of anything. That mark's on their flag.'
Auk stood, unable for a moment to recall where he was or why he
had come. Had he fallen off a roof? Salt blood from his lips trickled
into his mouth. A man with arms and legs no thicker than kindling
and a face like a bearded skull dashed past him. Then another and
another.
'Don't be afraid,' the blind god whispered. 'Be brave and act
wisely, and I will protect you.' He took Auk's hand, not as Hyacinth
had put her own hand into Silk's a few minutes before, but as an
older man clasps a younger's at a crisis.
'All right,' Auk told him. 'I ain't scared, only kind of shook up.'
The blind god's hand felt good in his own, big and strong, with long
powerful fingers; he could not think of the blind god's name and was
embarrassed by his failure.
'I am Tartaros, and your friend. Tell me everything you see. You
may speak or not, as you wish.'
'There's a big hole with smoke coming out in the middle of the
wall,' Auk reported. 'That wasn't there before, I'm pretty sure.
There's some dead culls around besides the ones Patera killed and
the one I killed. One's a trooper, like, only a mort it looks like. Her
wings broke, I guess, maybe when she hit the ground. Everything's
brown, the wings and pants and a kind of a bandage, like, over her
boobs.'
'Brown?'
Auk looked more closely. 'Not exactly. Yellowy-brown, more
like. Dirt color. Here comes Chenille.'
'That is well. Comfort her, Auk my noctolater. Is the airship still
overhead?'
'Sure,' Auk said, implying by his tone that he did not require a
god to coach him in such elementary things. 'Yeah, it is.' Chenille
rushed into his arms.
