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“And were we still moving?” said Ram.
“Yes.”
“So what position are we in now?” asked Ram.
“We are two days’ journey closer to Earth. The physical position we were in two days ago.”
“So we came out of the fold reversed,” said Ram. “Heading the other way.”
“No, Ram,” said the expendable. “We came out facing away from Earth, just as we were when we went into the fold.”
“We don’t have a reverse gear,” said Ram. “We can only move in the direction we’re facing.”
“All the computers report that we are proceeding forward at precisely the same velocity as before. They also report that our position keeps progressing backward toward Earth.”
“So we’re moving forward and backward at the same time,” said Ram.
“Our propulsion is forward. Our motion is backward.”
“I hope you will not remove me from command if I admit to being confused.”
“I would only question your sanity if you were not confused, Ram.”
“Do you have any hypotheses that might explain this situation?” asked Ram.
“We are not hypothesizers,” said the expendable. “We are programmed instruments and, as I pointed out to you before, decisions about what to do after the jump are entirely up to our resourceful, creative, highly tested and trained human pilot.”
Ram thought about it.
• • •
As they started seeing the buildings of O, Rigg was amazed at how different they were. During the weeks he and Umbo had walked along the North Road, changes had been gradual. Farms had become more frequent, villages larger, buildings a bit more grand. Thatch gave way to shingle and tile, oilcloth to shutters and occasional panes of glass. Leaky’s Landing had an air of newness about it, but the town was of the same wooden construction, the same roof angles, the same alternation of cobble, gravel, and corduroy on the streets, depending on the whim of the owners of the buildings abutting them.
But the trees lining the river had concealed any such gradual changes, and the current moved them much faster, so that as they approached the docks of O it was like entering another world.
Everything seemed to be made of stone—and not the grey-brown rocks of the mountains, either, but a pale rock, almost white with streaks of warm colors in it. No moss had been allowed to grow on any of it, except down near the water—it gleamed warmly in the noonday sun.
By contrast, the Tower of O shone with the glaring coldness of a steel blade. And since it was larger by far than any other structure, and many times higher than the tallest trees, the whole city gave the impression of the pale hand of a very white woman, holding a fierce dagger upward toward the sky.
As the boat drew nearer the docks, however, that impression faded. The docks were as dirty and cluttered and busy as docks anywhere. Not all the buildings were stone after all; in fact most buildings were wooden structures, though with roofs only of tile or, to Rigg’s amazement, tin. So much metal as to cover a roof! Rigg could see that the impression that all was stone came from a few dozen large buildings that rose much higher than the jumble of wooden warehouses, taverns, and shops selling mementoes of the Tower of O. From a distance, all he had seen were the white-stone walls of those buildings; close up, he could hardly catch a glimpse of them from the narrow streets, where each story of every building jutted out beyond the one below, until at the third or fourth story houses across the street from each other were so close that, as Loaf said, “A man could take a mistress across the street and neither of them leave their house.”
Rigg expected that they would first secure lodging, but Loaf grimaced and said no.
“So we’re going to carry our packs and goods to the banker?” asked Rigg.
Loaf drew them over away from the crowded street to the open space near one of the large stone buildings. “Listen,” he said, “the boat passage and the cost of food and of your clothes have me close to broke. The places I could afford right now would be of such a low nature that we wouldn’t dare to leave our belongings in them anyhow. I’m a taverner, my boys, and I know what the dockyard inns of O are like. Everything depends on getting Mr. Cooper to convert one of these . . . items . . . to money at full value, without anyone else getting a glimpse of them. Then we can afford to stay in a respectable place without hardly making a dent in your fortune, young Rigg. That’s why we’re stopping nowhere, but finding Mr. Cooper’s bank.”
Loaf seemed to know his way through the maze of streets and only had to backtrack twice. To Rigg this seemed like a miracle, since there were few street signs high up on the buildings, and even then they weren’t always right.
“Oh, that’s the old name,” said Loaf when Umbo noticed one of them. “Then they made a boulevard and put the name on that. This is now . . . something else that I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. You don’t learn by names here, you learn by landmarks and turnings.”
“How can they have landmarks here?” said Umbo. “Every street looks just like every other.”
“If you lived here, you’d see the differences plain enough,” said Loaf. “I could ask anyone here and get directions to Cooper’s bank because he faced his building in grey stone—not to show too much pride, you see, so grey not white—and then he set a clock high on the wall. You ask anybody, ‘Where’s the banker’s clock?’ and if they don’t know, they must be a tower pilgrim because no one as lives here wouldn’t know the place.”
They passed many a food vendor, and when Umbo suggested stopping at one, Loaf just pulled him away and kept them on the road. “So you eat some greasy slab of meat and go in to see Mr. Cooper with fat dripped all over your hands and sleeves and the front of you. Then he throws us out as being the kind of people who have no house to eat in or table to sit at or napkin to drape with.”
“But we don’t have any of those,” said Umbo.
