"Well, I tinker with bikes—"
"Good. You are to report to the armorer immediately. That's aft," Carrier added helpfully.
"Okay, but what will I—" Carrier didn't even frown; he just turned his head away almost imperceptibly. Hayden got the message.
A little of the stifling gloom that had settled on him last night lifted as he headed aft, but he was still bewildered at how quickly and thoroughly he'd gotten himself into this situation. If he'd had any sort of courage he'd have killed Fanning yesterday. The fact that he hadn't, and was now effectively working for the enemy, made him feel deeply sick.
"Know where you're going, do you?" said somebody. Hayden looked down to find Martor squinting at him. "It's this way," he continued, pointing past the drooping bellies of a row of fuel tanks.
"Thanks. Hey—when I looked outside earlier, I saw we were headed into winter. What's all that about?"
Martor looked uncomfortable. "Don't know. Nobody's telling us anything, not yet anyway. You saw we split off from the main fleet? Rumor is we're going to come around behind the enemy But that don't make no sense. Enemy's farther into the suns, not out here."
"You mean Mavery?"
"Who else would I mean?"
Martor was trailing Hayden now, shifting his weight and fiddling with his hands, much more like the boy he was than the tough man he tried to be. "Winter's nothing to worry about," said Hayden. "I've been there."
"You have? Is it true that there's capital bugs with suns in their bellies? And whole countries frozen solid, guys about to stick each other with swords when their suns went out and their whole armies covered in ice now?"
"Never saw anything like mat…"
"But how would you know, since it goes on forever?"
"Forever?" Somebody laughed. "I don't think so."
An irregularly shaped box was stapled to the outer hull under a mad web of netting. The box had a perfectly ordinary door in one of its facets. The laughter had come from that direction. It sounded suspiciously like a woman's.
"You're gonna tell me that's the armorer," Hayden whispered to Martor. Martor nodded vigorously. "Thought so."
He stuck his head through the door. There was indeed a woman fitted into the intricate mess like a main cog in a watch. She was opening one of several dozen boxes crammed in around her, and was currently upside down compared to him so that all that registered at first was the halo of writhing brown hair that surrounded her face and the fact that she was dressed entirely in black save for a glimpse of scarlet silk that peeked out below her collar. He rotated politely to match her orientation and stuck out his hand. "I'm Hayden Griffin. I was told to assist you."
Her hand was warm, her grip strong. "Aubri Mahallan. Who told you to assist me?"
"Um, man named Carrier."
"Oh, him." She dismissed the man's entire existence with those two words. Mahallan had a heavy accent, bearing hard on sounds like er and oh. Right side up, she looked as intriguing as she sounded, her skin pale and perfectly unblemished like the most pampered courtier, her eyes wide in a perpetually startled look and overemphasized with black makeup. Her mouth was broad and was always twisting into one or another expression so that a constant parade of impressions flickered across her face. Just now she was pursing her lips and squinting at Hayden. "I suppose I can use you for something. And you!" She aimed her expressive gaze past Hayden at the open door. "This is the fifth time you've blocked my light this morning. Guess I'm going to have to find something for you to do as well."
"Yes, ma'am," came Martor's voice faintly from somewhere outside.
"But I can't have ignorant savages working for me," continued Mahallan as she spun and opened a porthole to let a blast of fresh air into the junk-filled cell. "Winter does not go on forever—or rather, it does, but only in the sense that you could go around the outside of a dinner plate forever. Do you understand?"
"No, sir!" said Martor, still invisible.
"Come in here!" Martor peeked around the doorjamb. Somewhere outside, a gang of airmen was engaged in a swearing contest. "And close the door, will you?" added the armorer. Hayden shifted to let Martor do that, and found himself close enough to Mahallan that he could smell her perspiration.
Her attention was fixed on Martor. "Do you believe this world goes on forever in all directions?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Martor with no trace of irony. "Rush came out of Forever, two generations ago, and we attacked the countries here. After we've cut through them all, we're going back to Forever, out the other side of the countries."
"I see we have our work cut out for us," said the armorer with an amused glance at Hayden. "Young man, do you know what a balloon is?"
"A bag for storing gas," said Martor instantly.
"Good. Well, Virga, your world, is a balloon. It is an immensely big balloon, in fact, fully five thousand miles across and orbiting in the outer reaches of the Vega star system. Virga is artificial. Man-made."
"Ma'am, that's very funny," said Martor with a stilted grin.
"It's utterly true, young man. Is it not a fact that your suns are artificial? So, then, why not the rest of the world, too?" Martor looked a little less sure of himself now. "Now, the problem is that even a fusion sun capable of heating and lighting everything out to a distance of several hundred miles is just a tiny spark in a volume this size. Especially when clouds and other obstacles absorb the light so readily. Sixty, eighty, even a hundred suns aren't enough to illuminate the whole interior of Virga. So, we have large volumes of air that are unlit, unheated—volumes of winter."
"I'm with ya," said Martor.
"But these volumes don't go on forever. They end, one way or another, at the lighted precincts of some other nation, or at Candesce if you head straight toward the center of Virga. Or they end at the skin of the world, where icebergs crowd and grind like the gnashing teeth of a god. And your asteroid, Rush, orbits very slowly around the middle of this world, tugged by the almost imperceptible gravity the air creates."
"Now you're having me on," said Martor.
Mahallan sighed extravagantly, but couldn't hide a smile. "Go on. You're taking up my air. You," she said to Hayden, "stick around and help me unpack some of these boxes."
THE SEVEN SHIPS killed their engines a dozen miles into winter. They drifted for a few minutes, then with slow grumbles of their turning engines they slid into a star formation, each one pointing out from a central point. Lines were cast from nose to nose, and the captains of six ships hand-walked across to an open port in the side of the Rook. In all directions, darkness swallowed distance and detail.
When Admiral Fanning entered the Rook's chart room he was pulled up short by the vision of the captains clinging to floor, walls, and ceiling like wasps in a paper nest. They were all identical in their black uniforms, rustling and moving slightly. He could practically hear a subliminal buzz coming from them.
He shook off the impression and glided to his chair by the chart table. "You've all been very patient with our secrecy," he said as the last visiting captain ducked past him to loop a hand through a velvet wall-strap. Now that he thought about it, the idea of these men as wasps seemed more and more apt. They were dangerous, focused—and for the most part, dumb as planks. Perfect for the job he had in mind.
"I'm sure you've had your suspicions about where we're going. I'm equally sure," he said with a smile, "that your crews have been devising all kinds of extravagant ideas of their own." There was a polite smile from the swarm in return.
"Now that we're out of semaphore-range of any potential spies, we can make a general announcement."
"It's about time!" Captain Hieronymous Flosk, the oldest and least patient of the company, leaned into the light from the chart table. The glow made his face a mask of crevasses and pitted plains. "This secrecy is ridiculous," he grated. "We don't have to skulk around hiding from Mavery. Hit them direct, and hard. You'd think that would be obvious," he sniffed.