Mere knelt where the river was swiftest, toes to the water, her hands coaxing her shirt to change its form.
Rococo had no choice. Her breasts wanted to be seen, and he watched them until he could feel them under his hands. His imagination did the caressing, and enjoying this one immortal pleasure, he smiled.
Then he noticed the luddy staring at her too.
Funny. A man could admire any lady, knowing that he might never touch her. And despite pride and his own high opinions of himself, that same man could accept celibacy all the way home to the Great Ship.
But this was too much of a stare. Amund wasn’t just giving a polite, appreciative glance. No, the mortal was very serious about his lust. A butcher carving his way to the bone. That’s what he looked like. Not a vicious stare, or cold, but definitely immune to humor or other distractions. To Amund, nothing in the Universe mattered as much as a creature older than hundreds of generations of luddies.
“Amund,” said Rococo.
Nothing changed. The voice that couldn’t be ignored was being ignored.
Again, louder this time, the diplomat said, “Amund.”
A name old beyond old.
The thin, sunburnt face turned slowly, grudgingly looking at his competitor’s face. A brain with more water than thought needed time to frame its response. Giving him no time, Rococo said, “Just as we planned. Wet your shirt and we start floating downstream before sunset.”
Saying nothing, Amund kicked off a pair of freshly grown boots and stepped past the bare-chested Mere, clambering down a steeply cut bank, frigid water quickly to his chest, to his chin. Then a pained voice yelled, “Hey, shirt.”
He said, “Make me a boat or drown me. You decide which.”
2.
Amund was little more than a boy when the captain came to his home. But that boy had a finished body, and being healthy as well as crafty-smart, he had several young women already helping plan out his promising life.
His future seemed to be locked inside one kind of wonderful, and Amund thought that he understood what his story would be. But then Washen strode into the Highland of Little Sins. That was a remarkable occasion on its own merit. Captains never visited the sanctuary, certainly not a captain as powerful and famous as this entity. Knowing voices claimed that she was one of the Master Captain’s favorites, and Washen brought a famous history as well as that very famous face. Amund knew the face well enough to recognize it from the high ledge. That’s where the children were told to gather while the important adults stood below, forming a neat half-circle around an immortal machine carrying a lady’s face and a god’s invincible powers.
Every Highland citizen was human. That was the law. Humans were archaic animals, noble and true, while every captain was a contraption full of mechanical parts and magic. And without question, Washen was a striking machine. Tall and graceful as a willow, not only did she look more human than Amund would have guessed, but nothing about her voice or manners seemed artificial. The local hour was twilight. With darkness spreading, the visitor bent low before the important residents. She had mastered their local language, presumably for this single occasion. With passion, Washen spoke about the honor of breathing holy air and apologized for the pollution that she had brought to them. But important matters had been pressed into her hands. She warned her audience that duty sometimes gave her little time to act. And while she was asking for an enormous favor, the captain promised to deliver ample compensation as well as the hope that this insult, horrible as it was, could be forgotten by future generations.
Amund didn’t want to be impressed, but he was. This captain had mastered certain customs, and how many minutes did that take her?
“But she’s not a ‘her,’ ” he muttered under his breath.
“What’s that?”
“What you see down there,” he said. “That’s nothing but machines wrapped inside machines.”
Where stone turned to air, he was lying on his stomach, his favorite girl beside him. She was a beauty by every measure, though less creative than some. Perhaps a little simple, and very definitely conservative. Yet Amund’s lover was charmed by that woman-faced creation, and that’s probably why she didn’t appreciate his tone, slipping out of his grasp and then crawling out of his reach.
Abandoned, Amund had little choice but to watch the drama below.
“This beautiful realm is your home, and your home lives inside my ship, and the Great Ship lives within the Galaxy,” Washen said. “As I stand here, one distant world is actively begging. It wants permission from the Master Captain to come onboard. Which is wonderful news. Captains are sworn to many jobs. But after we ensure the safety of our passengers and the safety of this vessel, our primary task is to welcome every guest that we can carry. For a reasonable fee, we make them comfortable, and we allow them to build homes among us, and we promise to carry them safely through this glorious wheel of stars.”
The Highland was a cavern furnished with jungles and jungle birds and artful crisscrossing waterfalls. It was also rich with blindfolds and stubborn indifference to everything beyond these wet green walls. Amund’s neighbors looked as if they absorbed the machine’s prattle without complaint. Didn’t they understand? Washen was stripping the situation down to its simplest, most appealing core. Amund saw the trick. This was what he would do, if his chore was to explain stars to idiots or language to dogs. And that’s why he was offended. Dressed in charm, offering up some carefully crafted words, this outrageous entity had mastered a dog’s vocabulary.
“‘Where-the-rivers-live,’ ” said the machine.
“What is that?” Amund’s lover asked. “What’s that mean?”
The boy didn’t know. And judging by faces, nobody else understood. A muddled, confused rumble filled the cavern, and Washen responded by taking a step backward before repeating that very peculiar phrase.
“‘Where-the-rivers-live.’” She
