“Another tourist,” groaned Ninan.
“No!” said Tris, half-laughing. “I spoke to that one. He’s searching for his Ghaonish grandmother!”
Ninan laughed. “He’ll find some runaway or some whore was his ancestress, and to what end?”
“Whoever she was, her grandson has money and time to indulge his curiosity,” said Kels, stung.
Ninan shook his head in disapproval. “He expects to find some ancient, noble agnate, whose matriarch will acknowledge him as her cousin.”
Tris nodded. “He’ll hang an overpriced, tasteless mask on his wall and brag to his neighbors about his exotic and aristocratic blood.”
“What if his blood truly is aristocratic?” asked Kels, knowing what the other two did not know. The Ghem agnate was among the most ancient, most prestigious of families. He reached forward, poured himself more tea.
“It hardly matters,” said Ninan. “No agnate would be pleased to find a barefaced brute on the doorstep.”
Under the mask Kels’ eyes narrowed. “He can hardly be blamed for the customs of his people,” he said in his most even voice.
Ninan turned to regard him more closely. “No doubt.”
“It’s been a long day,” said Tris, conciliatory. “And Inarakhat has spent it dealing with passengers. But now we rest, at least until tomorrow.”
“And a dull tomorrow it will be,” said Ninan. “For which, thank Iraon.”
“Thank Iraon,” Tris and Kels echoed in agreement.
Ghem Echend was the most beautiful girl Inarakhat Kels had ever seen. Echend’s mouth was firm and full, her skin a warm dark brown. Her hands were square, and strong, and graceful, as were all her movements. She seemed to laugh even when she merely spoke. But her chief beauty was her eyes, wide and gray and luminous. She never took to the fashion for masks that obscured them. Indeed, she had skirted the outer edge of acceptability, preferring masks that exposed and emphasized her eyes as much as possible.
She had kissed him on a moss-covered hillside by the river. The summer stars had been thick and silver in the sky, no other lights but the city below, and the boats passing, colored lanterns hanging in their masts, red and blue and green and gold. She tasted of flowers. It seemed to him that his heart stopped, and everything bled away from his awareness but her. He lifted a hand to touch her cheek, hardly able to believe his daring. She kissed him again, and taking that for approval he placed a single finger tentatively on the lower edge of her mask.
With both hands she shoved him hard in the chest, and he found himself lying on his back in the soft moss, with only the stars in his vision. “Not yet,” she said, and ran away laughing.
He could hardly breathe with happiness. Not yet!
Never.
Within six months, the extent of his agnate’s debts had been revealed, as well as the lengths to which his aunts had been willing to go to support their lifestyle, which had been beyond their means for quite some time.
When the expected letter, sealed in red and gold, had arrived, it had contained not an offer of marriage but a few curt lines informing him that if recently certain expectations had been raised, they were unfounded and it would be best if he realized this. It was not from Echend, but from the matriarch of her agnate.
He had stuffed a single change of clothes into a sack and gone down to the docks intending to offer his labor to whatever ship would take him farthest away from Athat. No ship would have him, so he made his way to the precinct employment bureau, where the civil servant on duty had judged him a fit candidate for the Watch. Next morning he was on a shuttle for Ghaon’s orbiting station. He had not set foot on Ghaon since.
The Crawl is not detectable by sight, nor by any scanner yet devised. It is, however, ineluctably there. Its outer boundary is littered with the wrecks of ships whose captains disbelieved the warnings. Sometimes these are whole ships, with no sign of damage except their aimless drift. Some are collections of fragments, shining eerily in the light of the warning beacons placed at intervals along the limits of the Crawl. Occasionally a ship traversing the Crawl will come across a human body, rigid and frozen, spinning in the vacuum.
In order to survive the passage through the Crawl a ship must go slowly; it takes nearly six months. In another system it would be a matter of hours. And it is well known that the use of communications equipment within the Crawl has disastrous results.
It is less well known that the Crawl may only be safely crossed by particular routes, which the Ghaons had not recorded or marked in any way. Careful of their one defense, they had been at pains to be sure that knowledge existed only in the minds of pilots authorized to make the trip. The Watch was founded not only to prevent spies from boarding the ships and to enforce the ban on communication, but to ensure that no one meddled in any way with the pilot.
The lounge on second deck was small and narrow, a few tables and chairs along the wall on one side, ports for viewing on the other. Two travelers, one in the brightly-dyed, draped robe typical of the world Semblance, the other bare breasted and skirted in ochre, sat at one table, hunched over a game board, scooping counters out of hollows and placing them around, quickly, with a quiet word every few moves. At the other end of the space Awt Emnys stood, looking out on the void. His face was shadowed, a matter of both relief and disappointment to Kels.
The eyes were Ghem Echend’s. He could not have been more certain if the two genotypes were laid out before him. Echend had not been Awt Emnys’ grandmother, but certainly some aunt or cousin of hers had left Ghaon, gone to the Gerentate.
If Kels had married Echend, he would have had children. Or his co-husbands would, it was all the same. For the first time in years he allowed himself to wonder what that would have been like. He couldn’t imagine an infant Awt with any clarity, but the dark-haired, gray-eyed young boy… a memory flowered in his mind, Kels and his father (so very tall and imposing then!) walking hand in hand down to the riverbank to see the boats come in.
Awt Emnys turned his head, displacing the shadows. He smiled as he saw Kels. “It’s you again.”
“One is always oneself,” said Kels, unaccountably disturbed by the younger man’s words.
“But you’re not always on duty,” said Awt, and came closer to where Kels stood at the other end of the viewing ports. “You all wear the same clothes, and the same masks, and I’m never quite sure who is who.” He smiled, slightly, made an apologetic gesture. “I was speaking with the Honored merchant Chis,” he said, as though it followed naturally on his previous words. “She is most gracious. She advises me to give up pursuing my ancestor and instead rent a boat and visit the coastal towns of Western Aneng, where she assures me I will find the most exquisitely beautiful scenery in all known space. Not to mention the finest arrak and the most reasonable prices on cultured pearls.”
“Ah,” said Kels, somewhat disdainfully. “She is from Western Aneng, and biased as a result. All of those are to be found in the vicinity of Athat.”
Awt gave a wry smile. “I suspect her intent is to divert me from embarrassing my grandmother’s agnate with my existence. But you advise me to tour Athat?”
“Certainly.” Athat was the loveliest city on Ghaon, spread over the mouth of the river like an exquisite mask. “There is also a forest preserve, to the south of Athat, that you may be interested in visiting. Though,” he said, frowning, thinking of Awt’s luggage, “you may need to purchase some equipment if you intend to stay there long.”