Afsan bowed. “I cast a shadow in your presence.”
Keenir made a grumbling sound and Afsan’s eyes were drawn to the scar on the captain’s face, still inflamed although it was fading with time. It seemed to dance in the lamplight. “What do you want?”
Afsan found himself stammering. “I need to talk to you, sir.”
Keenir looked down his muzzle. Finally: “Very well. Come in.” The old captain walked back into his cabin. His tail had almost completely regenerated. It was as long now as one of the captain’s grizzled arms, but still not long enough to reach the floor, and therefore of only limited aid in balancing the oldster’s tremendous bulk. The tickings of his stick marked each pace back to his worktable. Afsan marveled at how the twisted length of wood managed to support Keenir.
On the walls of the cabin hung a variety of brass instruments, including several sets of articulated arms with scales marked on them. The captain’s worktable reminded Afsan of Saleed’s, back in the basement of the palace office building. Strewn across it were charts of the planets and moons. Indeed, although it was hard to tell viewing them upside down, some of them seemed to be in Saleed’s own hand.
Keenir lowered himself onto his dayslab, the wood groaning. “What is it, eggling?”
Eggling. The word seemed destined to haunt Afsan for the rest of his days. The captain had to take him seriously—he had to!
“Captain, when do we head back?”
“You know the schedule as well as I do. A pilgrimage ship must hold directly beneath the Face for ten even-days and ten odd, unless weather or other circumstances prevent that. We’ve held this spot"—Afsan detected a certain weariness in the captain’s tone—"for seventeen of the required twenty.”
“And how will we head back?”
“What do you mean, how? We’ll hoist the sails, and the steady wind—that same wind we tacked against all the way here—will blow us back.” Keenir clicked his teeth in satisfaction. “You’ll see this ship move then, lad! Nothing moves faster than the good ship Dasheter when the wind is at its back!”
“And what if we went the other way?”
“What other way?”
“You know, continued on, into the wind. Continued east.”
From Afsan’s vantage point, perpendicular to the crowded desk, he could see Keenir’s tail jerk behind his stool. Keenir had tried to thump it against the floor, but it didn’t reach.
“Continue on, lad? Continue on? That’s madness. We’d end up sailing upriver forever.”
“How do you know that?”
Keenir puffed his muzzle in exasperation. “It’s in the books, eggling. Surely you’ve read the books!”
Afsan bowed slightly. “Of course, sir. Believe me, an apprentice does little but read. Perhaps I should try my question another way. How did the authors of the books know that the River continued on endlessly?”
Keenir blinked twice. He had obviously never thought about this. “Why, from other books, I’d warrant.”
Afsan opened his mouth to speak, but Keenir raised his left hand, claws slightly extended. “Hold your tongue, boy. Grant me some intelligence. Your next question was going to be, And how did the authors of these earlier books know the truth?’ ” Keenir clicked his teeth in satisfaction. “Well, they knew it through divine revelation. They knew it directly from God.”
Through force of will, Afsan kept his own tail from thumping the deck in frustration. “And all knowledge is gained thus? By divine revelation?”
“Of course.”
“But what of the discovery by the Prophet Larsk of the Face of God itself? That was only a hundred and fifty kilodays ago, long after the end of the age of prophecy told of in the holy writings.”
“Prophets come when they are needed, lad. Obviously God beckoned Larsk on, to sail farther and farther until he came upon the Face.”
“There’s no chance Larsk simply stumbled onto the Face by accident? That he sailed so far east out of—out of curiosity?”
“Eggling! You will not speak thus of the prophet.”
Afsan bowed quickly. “My apologies. I meant no blasphemy.”
Keenir nodded. “Saleed said you were prone to speaking without thinking, lad.”
Speaking without thinking! Afsan felt the muscles of his chest knot. Speaking without thinking! Why, I speak because I am thinking. If only others would do the same— “Honorable Captain, did you ever eat plants as a child?”
Keenir scowled. “Of course. Gave me a monstrous bellyache, too. I imagine every youngster tries to eat things he or she shouldn’t.”
“Exactly. You were doing a different kind of thinking, sir. You had seen some animal—a hornface, perhaps, or an armorback, or maybe a turtle—munch away on some plant. You said to yourself, ‘I wonder what would happen if I ate some plants myself.’ And you found out—you got sick. We, and the other carnivores, such as the terrorclaws and even the wingfingers, can’t eat plants. We can’t digest them.”
“So?”
“So, that’s a way of looking at the world that scholars use. You make an observation: some animals eat plants and some do not. You propose an idea, a pre-fact, shall we say, a statement that might be a fact or might not: I can eat plants, too. Then you perform a test: you eat a plant. You note the results: you get sick. And you draw a conclusion: my pre-fact was in error; it is not a true fact. I cannot eat plants.”
“Afsan, you credit youngsters with too much thought. Observations! Pre-facts! What nonsense. I just stuck some leaves in my mouth and swallowed. I’d done the same thing with dirt, with pieces of wood, and so on. It wasn’t some grand test. It was just the silliness of childhood.”
“Good Captain, forgive me, but I don’t think so. I believe you did go through every one of the steps I described, but so quickly, so seamlessly, that you might not have been aware of it.”
Keenir’s tone was hard. “You are presuming a great deal, eggling.”
“I meant no presumption, but surely—” Afsan thought better of what he was about to say, stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “Scholars have found that there is value in this method of inquiry.”
“Well, if it got you to stop eating plants, I suppose there is.” Keenir clicked his teeth in self-satisfied amusement.
“May I tell you of some other observations I’ve made?” asked Afsan.
“Lad, I’ve got chores to perform.” He looked pointedly down his muzzle. “I suspect you do, too.”
“I will be brief, sir. I promise.”
“By the prophet’s claws, lad, I don’t know why people put up with so much from you. Somehow, even Saleed takes you seriously. And you’ve got the ear of the crown prince.” Keenir was silent for a moment, and Afsan thought about what he’d said. Saleed takes me seriously? Ha! At last, the old captain spoke again. “Very well, Afsan. But I’ll hold you to your promise of brevity. There’s only a few days until we set sail again, after all.”
Afsan decided that it would be politic to click his teeth in appreciation of Keenir’s joke. Then: “I’ve been making observations with the far-seer and with my own unaided eyes. I’ve seen that the Face of God rose into the sky as we moved east, until, as now, it’s at its highest point. It can rise no farther into the sky, for it sits directly overhead. I’ve seen, too, that it goes through phases, just as the moons do, and just—as I’ve learned by looking upon them through the far-seer—as some of the planets do.”
Keenir raised his muzzle, exposing the underside of his neck, a gesture of mild concession. “I’ve used the far-seer myself to have a peek at the planets. I was mildly intrigued by that. Told Saleed about it, but he dismissed what I’d seen.”