Until she stood beside him, Washen was oblivious to the deep valley spread out below them, long and rather narrow, its flat floor covered with a mature stand of black-as-night virtue trees.
“Black as night,” Washen whispered.
Her son rose to the bait. Shaking his head, he said, “Mother. There s no such thing.”
As night, he meant.
In his world, he meant.
This was lucky ground. When the world’s fiery guts began to pour out on all sides, this thick and durable slab of crust had fallen into the great fissure. The virtue jungle had burned but it hadn’t died. Its roots could be a century old, or older. As old as the human tenure on Marrow, perhaps. There was a rich, eternal feel to the ground, and perhaps that’s why the children had chosen it.
The children.
Washen knew better, but despite her careful intentions, she couldn’t think of them as anything but young, and in some profound sense, vulnerable.
“Quiet,” Locke whispered, not bothering to look back at them.
Who was talking here? she wondered. But she didn’t ask.
Then with nothing but his own deeply callused flesh between himself and the iron, Locke jumped from perch to perch, grunting softly with each impact, then pausing just long enough to glance up from below, blinking against the bright skylight as he added with an almost parental concern, “And keep close to me. Please.”
His parents’ field boots had fallen apart decades ago. They wore clumsy sandals made from mock cork and rubber, and they had to work to stay with him. On the valley floor, in the living shadows, the air turned slightly cooler and uncomfortably damp. Blankets of rotting vegetation had fallen from the canopy, leaving the ground watery-soft, a rotting organic stink still smelling utterly alien to Washen. A giant daggerwing roared past, intent on some vital business. Washen watched the animal vanish into the gloom, then reappear, tiny with the distance, its cobalt-blue carapace shining in a patch of sudden skylight.
Locke turned abruptly, silently.
A single finger lay against his lips. Just for a moment, in that light, he looked like his father. But what Washen noticed most was his expression, his gray eyes showing a pain and worry so intense that she had to try and reassure him with a touch.
Diu had wormed the secret out of their son. The children were meeting in the jungle, and these meetings had been going on for more than twenty years. At irregular intervals, Till would call them to a secluded location, and it was Till who controlled everything that was said and done.
“What’s said?” Washen had asked. “What’s done?”
Locke wouldn’t explain. First he shook his head with defiance and shame. Then with a quiet disappointment, he admitted to them, “I’m breaking my oldest promise by repeating any of this.”
“Then why tell?” she had pressed.
“Because.” Locke’s expression was complicated, his soft gray eyes changing with each blink. Finally a compassionate, halfway fearful look settled on him, and he explained, “You have every right to hear. So you can decide for yourselves.”
He cared for his parents. That’s why he broke his promise, and that’s why he had no choice but to bring them here.
Washen wouldn’t think of it any other way now.
A few more quiet steps, and she found herself staring at the largest virtue tree that she had ever seen. Age must have killed it, and rot had brought it down, splitting the canopy as it crumbled. Adult children and their little brothers and sisters had assembled in that pool of brilliant blue-white sky-light, standing in clumps and pairs, some wearing hammerwing tails shoved into their hair. Soft quick voices merged into a senseless buzz. Till was there, pacing back and forth on the wide black trunk. He looked fully adult, ageless and unexceptional, wearing a simple breechcloth and two bracelets, one of steel and the other gold. His dark braids resembled a long rope. His young, almost pretty face showed a timid, self-conscious expression that gave Wishen the strangest little moment of hope. Maybe this was nothing but the old game swollen up into some kind of social gathering. Till would perform for the children, telling his elaborate stories that no sensible mind could believe but that everyone, in one fashion or another, would take pleasure from.
Locke didn’t look back or say a word. He simply pressed ahead, through a low wall of lambdas and out into the bright busy clearing.
“Hello, Locke,” said twenty voices.
He said. “Hello,” once, loudly, then joined the oldest children in front.
Obeying their promise, his parents knelt in the jungle, ignoring the hiss and sputter of a thousand little bugs. Nothing happened.
A few more children filtered into view, and there was quiet conversation, and Till, oblivious to it all, continued to pace. Maybe this was all that would happen. It was certainly easy to hope so.
Till stopped.
In an instant, the worshipers fell silent.
With a quiet voice, Till asked, “What do we want?”
“What is best for the ship,” the children answered, each with his own quiet voice. Then together, in one voice, they said, “Always.”
“How long is always?”
“Longer than we can count.”
“How far is always?”
“To the endless ends.”
“Yet we live—”
“For a moment!’ they cried. “If that long!”
The words were absurd, and chilling. What should have sounded ludicrous to Washen wasn’t, the prayer acquiring a muscular credibility when hundreds were speaking in a smooth chorus, every syllable endowed with a practiced surety.
“What is best for the ship,” Till repeated.
But the words were a question. His narrow and very appealing face was filled with a curiosity, a genuine longing.
Quietly, he asked his audience, “Do you know the answer?”
In a muddled shout, the children said, “No.”
“Do I know the answer?”
Quiedy, respectfully, they told him, “No.”
“True, and true,” their leader professed. “But when I’m awake, I am searching for what is best. Best for our great ship, and for always. And when I sleep, my dream self does the same.”
“And so do we,” his followers chanted.
Then Washen thought, No, it wasn’t a chant. It was too disheveled and honest-sounding, each one of them making the solemn vow to himself.
There was a brief, unnerving pause.
Then Till asked, “Do we have business today?”
“We have newcomers!’ someone cried out.
For a slippery instant, Washen thought they meant her and Diu. She glanced over her shoulder, looking at Diu for the first time: he appeared calm in that electric, perpetually busy way of his, and he seemed thankful for the look. One hand took her by the arm as Till’s voice shouted, “Bring them up here.”
The newcomers were genuine children. Seven-year-old twins, as it happened. Brother and sister climbed the rotting trunk slowly, as if terrified, trembling hands clinging to the fluted velvet-black bark. But Till offered his hands, and with a crisp surety, he suggested deep breaths. “We’re your brothers and sisters,” he reminded them, more than once. Then when they finally smiled, he asked, “Do you know about the ship?”
The little boy glanced at the sky, saying, “It’s very old.”
“Nothing is older,” Till confided.
“And it’s huge.”
“Nothing can be larger. Yes.”
His sister fingered her navel, waiting to feel brave. When Till looked at her, she lifted her gaze and told everyone, “It’s where we came from. The ship is.”
The audience laughed at her.
Till lifted a hand, bringing silence.
Her brother corrected her. Quietly and fiercely, he said, “The captains came from there. Not us.”