But Provos was already shoving her hanging clothing over to the center. It slid along wooden rods, making a space beyond. Then the woman fetched cushions from somewhere and threw them down. Colene had a separate bed.
“Thank you,” she said, for more than just the bed, and flung herself flat. In an instant she was asleep.
OF course her green tunic was sadly rumpled in the morning; she hadn’t thought to remove it. But she found clothing laid out for her: a gray sweater, black blouse, brown knit wool skirt, and knee-length black boots. Also green underwear: a kind of loose corset extending from breast to rump. Surely the kind of clothing worn by girls of this world. She remembered that Provos had worn similar, and that was reassuring. It wasn’t exactly a familiar outfit, but neither was it totally alien.
Colene shrugged and put the stuff on. It fit her reasonably well. The sweater was actually a bit tight, because Colene was fuller in the chest than Provos. This gave her perverse pride; she had been feeling somewhat inferior compared to Nona. The skirt reached all the way to her ankles, as she was shorter than Provos. The boots were loose on her, because her feet were smaller than the woman’s, but she laced them up tight and it was all right. It wasn’t as if the soiled and rumpled green tunic and slippers were any better; that was Oria clothing. She would have to get to Earth to get her own kind of dress.
She went down the odd stairs, winding around to the bathroom, which she used. This time she was more observant, and saw that the toilet did not actually flush; it fed into a chamber which seemed to contain some kind of gray moss. Another hungry plant.
When it came to environmental responsibility, this was one savvy world.
That made Colene think. Provos seemed to have a good life here. Why had she left it? Darius had needed a woman, Seqiro had needed to escape and explore, and Colene herself had needed both the man and the horse. They all had had reason to risk the rigors of the Virtual Mode. But Provos seemed to need nothing. Why should she have taken such a step? It hadn’t been just accident; she had sought her anchor, and had been prepared for it. Oh, she had told Darius that she had remembered a mysterious blank in her future, but there had to have been simpler ways to fill that in. A piece of her puzzle was missing.
Colene wound the rest of the way down to the kitchen. There was Provos, with breakfast just ready. Remarkable timing? No, the woman simply remembered when Colene had come down.
This time the meal was a greenish pudding with blue sauce. The blue turned out to be blueberry syrup; the green tasted vaguely like cornmeal mush. It would do.
After breakfast, Provos produced knapsacks and hats. The knapsacks were functional and capacious. The hats looked like insect heads; they were shiny black with two long antenna-like projections that wavered when the hats moved. Colene would have worn such a thing only on a dare at home. Here she knew it would be standard conservative attire.
Provos nodded affirmatively.
“We have to go shopping?” Colene asked. It was mostly rhetorical; she had picked up that message from the woman’s mind.
They walked out along the path. Colene’s legs were a little stiff from all the walking in the Virtual Mode, but that was working out. They followed a winding, almost invisible path to the woods, and then no path at all, except that Provos knew where to go.
They came to a canal through the forest. It was only a few feet wide, and the trees overhung it; it would not be visible from above. As they arrived, something rushed along it. A monstrous serpent!
But Provos seemed unalarmed. She stood right by the canal as the thing slid up. It stopped, its huge body almost filling the trench so that the water level rose. There was some sort of framework associated with it, a network of wooden bars and fiber cords.
Then the woman stepped onto the snake’s back. Colene realized that this was transportation, the equivalent of a boat or bus. Feeling Provos’ certainty, she joined her on the creature. There were four seats suspended by cords between side-bars, in tandem. Provos took the first, so Colene took the second.
Provos snapped her fingers. The serpent slid forward. Its coils didn’t loop up; instead it nudged the canal on either side, and though the touches hardly seemed strong, it immediately accelerated. Colene had to hang on to the bars as her seat rocked with the swaying motion. They were moving at what seemed like a phenomenal pace, though probably it was only about fifteen miles an hour.
Colene looked around. The trees of the forest were passing swiftly behind, the more distant ones seeming to move more slowly because of the perspective. This was a fun way to travel!
The serpent swung around a turn, and the seats swung out. “Like a roller coaster!” Colene exclaimed. But not exactly; this was smoother, and all on the horizontal.
Then the snake slowed. Two more people were waiting at the next stop, a woman and a boy. The woman had the same kind of outfit that Provos and Colene wore; the boy had shorts and a cap that resembled a squished slug. Slugs and snails, that’s what boys are made of, Colene thought, smiling.
The new woman said something to Provos, and Provos replied. Maybe it was the other way around, the reply coming before the remark. Colene gathered from Provos’ mind that she did not know the woman, and that she preferred it this way. Because Provos did not want to have to explain her future absence.
Future absence. Of course—these people did not remember the past, so had no old friends. They had new friends, folk they would associate with in the future. Maybe Provos had known this other woman for decades before, but this was at the end of their acquaintance, so it counted for nothing. And it was reassuring to know that Provos would soon be leaving again; that meant that Colene would be too.
It was a bit scary to realize that at this point, Provos did not remember what had happened in the past. The adventure on Oria was lost to her, just as the coming visit to Earth was lost to Colene’s memory. Provos knew Colene only from what was to come. Perhaps to the woman it seemed odd to think that Colene knew her only from what was past. Colene depended on Provos to have an accurate memory of that coming excursion, and Provos depended on Colene to help her with past memories. They were a haphazard but feasible team.
Meanwhile the woman and the boy got on the serpent. They had of course remembered that it would arrive at this time with two seats available. Had that not been the case, they wouldn’t have bothered.
The snake moved out again. This time the ride was longer, and took them out of the forest and into a town. The buildings were similar in cross section, but much taller; they reached up twelve or eighteen stories, and had stronger guy lines. They just didn’t take up any more ground space than they had to.
The serpent halted at a convergence of canals, and they disembarked. There were many people here, all in the outfits of this realm. This seemed to be a shopping center, for the houses had transparent screens on the sides facing the central street, and their interiors had many goods and items laid out.
Provos headed up a ramp suspended between buildings, one floor, two, three, four. Colene followed, content just to watch. When they took a level hanging walk, the open faces of many buildings were available. These had foodstuffs sealed away in packages. There were breads, and jars of spreads, and tubers and bundles of herbs and eggs of all types. Everything packed for traveling.
Colene nodded. Provos knew what she was doing. She probably remembered a need for certain quantities of a number of items, and knew what Colene’s needs and tastes would be. Darius had thought or mentioned—in the presence of Seqiro it didn’t make much difference—how Provos had intercepted him near her anchor, well prepared for the journey. It had taken him some time to catch on that she remembered the future, but it had turned out to be a literal lifesaver for him. It would probably be the same for Colene.