She was alone on the ride that day, hugging the neck of the trafe as the ride spun round, silent save for the room-filling boom of the electric motor. She watched her reflection sweep past in each of the tall gilt-framed mirrors in turn. The motor-hum seemed to buzz up through the wooden body of the long-extinct bird and resonate through her, intense and numbing and reassuring. Sometimes she fell asleep on the fabulous bird, and travelled for a long time through the warm air of the ballroom, between the enormous mirrors on one wall and the closed curtains of the windows facing them on the other.
She preferred the curtains closed because it was winter and outside lay the snow, blank and cold and soft.
The back of the trafe on the spinning merry-go-round was the only place she knew she could sleep safely. If she did dream while she rode the great bird, she dreamt good dreams, of warmth and cosiness and being hugged; she dreamt of her mother lifting her from her bath, of being dried in huge, delicately scented towels and carried to her bed while her mother sang softly to her.
Too often, in her bed in the room they had given her next to her father’s, she could feel the white of the sheets and see that cold absence even once the lights were out, and falling asleep within that plump whiteness-she’d have the nightmare; the cold tumbling nightmare as she emptied her lungs at the sight of her mother lying on the floor of the cable car, blood pouring from her torn body, arm coming up into her chest and pushing her away, out into the cold and down to the snow, falling away still screaming, eyes wide, seeing the cable car above her burst apart in a bright cracking pulse of sound, an instant before she thudded into the freezing grip of the snow.
“Sharrow?”
She sat up on the bird’s back, seeing her father approaching from the far end of the ballroom. He held the hand of a little girl, perhaps a couple of years younger than she. The girl looked shy and not very pretty. Sharrow turned her head to keep looking at them as the merry-go-round whirled her round, then lost sight of them.
“Skave!” she heard her father shout. “Turn that thing off.”
The old android, standing in the centre of the ride, cut the power and applied the brakes.
Sharrow watched her father and the little girl as they came closer, walking across the map-floor, over the seagrain of Golter’s oceans and the native woods of its continents.
The merry-go-round came slowly to a stop and was silent. The bird she was riding ended up on the far side of the ride from her father and the little girl. Sharrow waited for them to walk round to her. When they did, her father smiled and glanced down at the child whose hand he held.
“Look, my darling,” he said to Sharrow, “This is the surprise I promised you: a little sister!”
Sharrow looked down at the other girl. Her father stooped and caught the child under the arms, lifting her up so that her head was above his.
“Isn’t she lovely?” he asked Sharrow, his eager, puffy face peeking out from the little girl’s skirts. The girl turned her face away from Sharrow. “Her name is Breyguhn,” her father told her. “Breyguhn,” he said, lowering her a little so that her head was level with his, “this is Sharrow. She’s your big sister.” He looked at Sharrow again. “You’re going to be the best of friends, aren’t you?”
Sharrow looked at the other child, who hid her face behind her father’s head.
“Who’s her mummy?” Sharrow asked eventually.
Her father looked dismayed, then cheerful. “Her mummy’s going to be your new mummy,” he said. “She’s an old friend of mine… of your mummy and mine, and…” He smiled broadly, swallowing. “She’s very nice. So is Breyguhn, aren’t you, Brey? Hmm? Oh, don’t cry; what’s to cry about? Come on, say hello to your big sister. Sharrow; say hello to-Sharrow?”
She’d got down off the trafe bird and walked round to the ride’s controls. She glared up at Skave and pushed him out of the way.
“Now, now, Miss Sharrow…” the old android said, stepping back awkwardly and almost falling.
She’d seen the android work the controls. She pushed the brake lever up and swung the power handle across. The merry-go-round buzzed and hummed and started to move.
“Sharrow?” her father said, walking into sight, still holding the crying child.
“Now, now, Miss Sharrow,” Skave said as she pushed it further back through the assorted weyr-beasts, monsters and extinct animals of Golter’s real and imagined past. The old android’s hands fluttered in front of its chest as she kept on pushing it. “Now, now, Miss Sharrow. Now, now-ah!”
Skave fell off the edge of the ride, twisted with bewildering speed and landed safely on all fours, looking surprised.
“Sharrow!” her father shouted. “Sharrow! What do you think you’re doing! Come back here! Sharrow!”
The ride buzzed up to full speed, humming deeply like an ancient spinning top.
“Sharrow! Sharrow!”
She clambered back up onto the neck of the trafe bird and closed her eyes.
She stood on the piazza, leaning on the marble balustrade and looking down at the old blow-stone merry-go-round on the terrace below. The androids restoring the ride were trying to start its ancient hydraulic motors for the first time in centuries; mostly they were finding where all its leaks and inadequately secured seals and joins were, each attempted start resulting in a fresh burst of water from some new part of the furiously complicated, gaudily decorated old fairground ride. The terrace around it was covered with water.
She watched as one more creaking, groaning half-revolution of the antique roundabout culminated in another wet explosion and a hissing fountain arcing into the air.
She glanced at the others sitting, bored, in the pavement section of a cosmetically restored but closed cafe on the other side of the piazza, then she turned to Feril.
“We are going to the Embargoed Areas,” she told the android, “to try to find the last Lazy Gun.”
Feril looked down. “You did not need to tell me that.”
“I suspected you had already guessed.”
“Indeed,” Feril said, “I must admit that I had.”
She cleared her throat. “Feril, I’ve talked this over with the others, and we’d like you to come along with us, if you want.”
Feril looked silently at her for what seemed a long time. “I see,” it said. It looked down at the old roundabout on the terrace beneath, watching its fellows swarm over it, making adjustments. “Why?” it said.
“Because we feel you could be useful,” she said, “and because we feel we need another person along, and because I think you might benefit from the experience, and because… we like you.” She looked away for a moment. “Though it will be dangerous.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe if we really liked you, the last thing we’d do would be to invite you along quite possibly to get killed.”
Feril made a shrugging motion. “If I accompanied you, I would save my current personality with the city,” it said. “Should I be destroyed, I would only lose the memories of the experiences after I left here. I would continue to exist as an entity within the city AI cluster, and I would obtain a guarantee that I would live again when the next batch of androids is allowed to be built.”
She was silent, watching it.
“You are sure,” it said, “that the others in your team would not object to my presence?”
She glanced at Zefla, Miz and Dloan again. Dloan and Zefla were talking. Miz was watching her, chin on his uninjured hand.
“They trust who I trust,” she told the machine. “Any one of them could have vetoed the idea. We want you to come with us.”
The android tapped one steel and plastic finger on the marble, then nodded as it turned to her. “Thank you. I accept. I shall come with you.”