She closed her eyes, conscious now of her racing heart. Drawing a few deep breaths, she strove to calm herself. Then she checked her atrium—and her heart boomed louder.
“Why is there no network?” she asked aloud.
The house responded without actually answering her question: “There will be an orientation session for the community in just a few minutes. When you’re ready, follow the path outside your front door. Everything will be explained.”
She arose, staggering a little against the unaccustomed angular force of the rotating deck. A poor simulation of gravity, she decided sourly, and so much weaker than the gravity she’d grown up under at Deception Well that she worried an awkward move might launch her into the ceiling.
Clothing budded off an active surface of the inner walclass="underline" a beige tunic and pale-green leggings, the same thing she’d been wearing in the zero-gravity environment of Long Watch. She dressed quickly. Then said, “Show me my image.”
A full-size projection appeared within the interior wall. She studied herself for a few seconds. It all looked right, except for her wide-eyed expression of fright. She ran fingers through the layers of her short white-blond hair, smoothing it, pushing it behind her ears, striving for calm. Pressed her palms against her still-queasy stomach. She’d had her physiology adjusted for the zero gravity aboard Long Watch; she would need a similar mod for this horrid circular motion.
Voices outside now:
Do you know what’s going on?
No! Was it supposed to be like this?
Is this really Dragon?
Concentrating on each step to keep her balance in the weird gee, she passed through the gel doorway, the touch of its parting edges soft and dry against her arms. A living room was on the other side: mats and pillows and a small kitchen in one corner. Large open windows looked out on a garden of low, spreading trees and lush shrubbery. Scattered among the verdure were neat cottages with white curved walls and miniature meadows on their roofs. Very sweet. Very civilized.
Very wrong.
The front entrance was open, its gel door retracted out of sight. She stepped outside under a low ceiling simulating a bright blue midday sky streaked with distant white skeins of clouds. She wobbled only a little.
A small stone patio flowed into a paved path where three bewildered-looking people wandered, dressed in the brightly colored, body-hugging fashions that were popular in the city of Silk; another individual appeared in the doorway of a cottage across the path, wearing a formal suit of tunic and trousers in muted colors. With relief, Pasha recognized all four as friends and colleagues. They saw her and immediately gathered around.
“Pasha! What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“This isn’t what we expected.”
“I’m just as surprised,” she agreed. And concerned.
“Where are we supposed to go?” one asked.
She said, “Let’s follow the path.”
The house had not said what direction to go, but Pasha didn’t think it mattered. The curve of the deck was easily visible despite the softening effect of the expansive garden. In either direction, there couldn’t be far to walk. She staggered a few steps, arms out for balance, but then her body began to work out how to compensate for the deck’s angular pull, and she steadied. A few more steps and her nausea began to recede.
People joined them as they walked, far more than Pasha expected to see. Urban had said he wanted up to twelve volunteers… but there were so many more. Where had they come from? Why were they here?
Among those she recognized were scientists, historians, and a scout famous from her explorations of Deception Well’s planetary surface. Others were strangers. Without a network connection her atrium could not query theirs for an identity.
She approached them anyway, she approached everyone, asking if they had a network connection. No one did.
Pasha wondered again if they really were aboard Dragon. Amid the low buzz of conversation that surrounded her, she heard that question asked again and again by others.
Before long, the path wended around a lattice wall, and then they reached a pavilion where many more people were already gathering. At the center of the pavilion was a large oval pergola covered in neat vines bearing little star-shaped flowers. The pergola sheltered a small amphitheater with a low dais facing four curved tiers of seats.
Riffan was there, smiling, urging the new arrivals to take seats as if he was some kind of authority, someone who knew what was going on. This did not sit well with Pasha. It offended her to be kept in the dark like a child. She meant to demand an explanation, but as she started toward him, those who had arrived ahead of her moved inside and she saw that Urban was also standing there.
Urban, who was master of Dragon, to whom they had all entrusted their lives. Better to direct her questions at him.
She separated herself from the anxious swirl of her friends and angled toward him. But after a few steps, she realized she was mistaken. This tall man with the dark complexion was Kona, not Urban. He beckoned to her… no, to everyone in her group. “Please,” he told them, “no questions yet. Take a seat and everything will be explained.”
Pasha was tempted to question him anyway, but a woman just behind her spoke first. “Kona! By the Waking Light, it’s a comfort to see you here! But what is this place? Are we really aboard Dragon?”
Pasha looked over her shoulder, identifying the speaker as the planetary scout.
Kona knew her by name. “Greetings, Shoran,” he said. There was fondness in his voice, but he put her off anyway. “Everything will be explained. Please take a seat.”
Shoran’s chin lowered, her eyes narrowed in a combative expression.
“Please,” Kona said in an undertone. “I need your cooperation, your example. Things have not gone quite as we expected.”
“That’s easy to see,” Shoran replied tartly. Her gaze shifted as she took in Pasha watching her. Their eyes met. Shoran inclined her head: an invitation. “Come,” she said to Pasha as if they were friends though they’d never met. “Let’s cooperate for now. We can conspire to revolution later, if the explanation does not suit.”
Pasha went with her reluctantly, leaving Kona to face his next interrogator. But then Shoran, who was a tall woman, recognized someone over the heads of those looking for seats. “Mikael!” she called out in profound relief. “There you are!” She stopped to wave.
Pasha went ahead on her own. The sooner everyone was settled, the sooner they would all learn the truth.
She took a seat in the first row, nodding to the woman on her right whom she recognized as a politician, one who’d served on Silk’s city council.
“I’m Tarnya,” the woman said, her voice rich and pleasant and possessing an equanimity absent from nearly everyone else.
“Pasha.” They gently bumped knuckles. Then Pasha turned to the stocky man seated on her left, whom she’d met before. “Alkimbra, isn’t it?” she asked, remembering he was a historian, but not knowing much else about him.
“You’re Pasha, right?” he asked as they touched knuckles. “I’m here because a friend forwarded a copy of the announcement you sent.” He gestured—at the auditorium, or the gee deck around it, or perhaps the whole strange situation. “This is not what I expected. Do you know—?”
“I don’t,” she interrupted. “I don’t know any more than you do.”
She turned her attention to the dais, deliberately ending the exchange, fretting that she could somehow be blamed for this situation—and on the dais she saw Urban. This time, she was certain it was him.