Running a hand across her lover’s Gordian bun, the girl confessed, “I’m going to live outside the ship.”
“On another world?”
She shook her head. “No. I mean on the ship’s hull.”
“But why?”
She wasn’t entirely serious. These were words, and fun. Yet she felt a surprising conviction in her voice, explaining, “There are people who live out there. Remoras, I think they’re called.”
“I’ve never heard of them,” the boy admitted.
So she explained the culture. She told how the Remoras lived inside elaborate suits, eating and drinking nothing but what their suits and bodies produced. Worlds unto themselves, they were. And wherever they were on the ship’s hull, half of the universe was overhead. Near enough to reach, beautiful beyond words.
She was a strange girl, the boy concluded. In important little ways, he suddenly didn’t like her very much. He heard himself say, “I see,” without a shred of comprehension. Then with a forced sincerity, he promised, “I’ll come visit you there. Sometime. Okay?”
She knew that he was lying, and somehow that was a relief.
They stared off into the distance, in different directions, struggling with the shared problem of extracting themselves from this awkward place.
After a few moments, the boy gave a little cough and said, “I see something.”
“What?”
“In the iron river. There.”
In horror, she asked, “Is it one of us?”
“No,” he remarked. “At least, I don’t think so.”
The girl started to dress again, forgetting two seams as she struggled to get ready for a rescue attempt. When had she ever been a bigger fool, coming here like this? Unprepared, and doing this with this extremely ordinary boy?
“Where is it?” she called out.
With a marksman’s care, he pointed upstream, and she laid her head against his long arm, squinting now, peering through the clouds of rising fumes to find herself watching a round silvery lump, something that looked odd as can be, immune to the heat and calmly bobbing its way down the iron river.
“That’s not one of us,” she said.
“I told you it wasn’t,” he snapped.
Then he said something else, but she didn’t hear him. She had pushed her helmet over her head and scrambled out of their hiding place, and in her heavy, ill-fitting fire-suit, she was racing down the hillside, shouting and waving, begging for anyone’s attention.
They had just enough time to unwrap a pair of new safety lines, making loops at the ends and running down to where the iron river was narrowest, flinging the loops out at the strange silvery object.
One line fell short, tangled in newborn slag and melted. But the second line fell on the silvery surface, its loop tightening around some kind of thumb-like projection. Eleven grandchildren grabbed the line, and tugged, and screamed hard in one voice, and tugged. The second line was melting in that open blast furnace, but the object was close to shore, its invisible belly rubbing against half-molten ground. Three more expensive, nearly irreplaceable lines were destroyed before they could drag their prize out of the river, and if not for a favorable eddy and the river’s cutting a new channel on its north, they wouldn’t have retrieved the object at all.
But they had it now, and that was something.
The prize proved to be a little larger than a big person tucked into a tight ball, and it was stubbornly massive. Moving that much mass proved to be hard work, particularly while it was still radiating the iron’s heat. But later, after several kilometers of practice and the crushing of two makeshift sleds, the grandchildren learned that simply rolling their prize was easiest. Whatever the object was—and it could have been just about anything—the cold metal ground didn’t seem to dent it or even smudge its mirrored face.
They were halfway home when they were discovered. A lone figure appeared on the main trail, jogging up into the shadow of a virtue tree, then standing motionless, watching as they worked their way closer.
At a distance, it was obvious that this was a captain. A woman, wasn’t she? She wore a captain’s clothes and a captain’s disapproving face, but when everyone saw whose face it was, they gave a collective sigh of relief.
“Hello, Madam Washen!’ a dozen voices called out.
With another captain, there would have been immediate miseries. But not with smart old Washen. She had a reputation for understanding what was perfectly obvious to any happy grandchild, and for knowing how to punish without killing the happiness, too.
“Having fun?” she inquired.
Of course they were. Didn’t it look as if they were having fun?
“Not entirely,” the ancient woman admitted. She looked at each of their faces, saying, “I count twelve,” with an ominous tone.Then she sighed and shook her head, asking, “Where’s Blessing Gable? Was she with you?”
“No,” they said together, with a mixture of surprise and relief. Then one of the boys explained, “She’s way too old to float with us.”
The girl who liked Remoras realized what had happened. “Blessing has gone missing, hasn’t she?”
The captain nodded.
“To the Waywards, maybe?” Blessing was a quiet girl, and if she was too old for them, she was the perfect age for that nonsense.
“Maybe she’s left us,” Washen admitted with a sad, resigned tone. Then without another word, she stepped past the grandchildren.
Their prize sat in the middle of the trail, bright despite the tree’s shadows.
Someone asked, “See what we found?”
“No,” said Washen. As a joke. Then her long fingers played across the still-warm surface, the dark old eyes staring at her own distorted reflection.
“Do you know what it is?” asked the boy who wanted to live by the sea.
Washen fingered the knobs, and instead of answering, she asked. “What do you think it is?”
“A piece of the old bridge. The one you came down on.” The boy had given the matter some thought, and he was proud of his careful reasoning. “After it tumbled down, the iron swallowed this piece and kept it until now. I think.”
Several others voiced their agreement. Wasn’t it obvious?
The captain didn’t seem to think so. She looked at the Remora girl, then with her calm and smooth and happy voice asked, “Any other guesses?”
Someone asked, “Is it hyperfiber?”
“I don’t know what else it would be,” Washen admitted.
“But the bridge was ruined by the Event,” the Remora girl offered. “In our history books, it says it was made brown and weak, somehow, and all its little bonds kept breaking apart. Somehow”
Washen winked, making the girl feel important, and smart.
“And it isn’t just hyperfiber,” the girl added, talking too quickly now. “Because it’s so heavy, and hyperfiber isn’t. Is it?”
Washen shrugged, then said, “Tell me how you found it. And where.”
The girl tried. And she meant to be perfectly honest, though she never mentioned sex, and the story came charging out of her mouth as if she were taking credit for everything.
Her one-time lover protested. “I saw the stupid thing first,” he complained. “Not you.”
“Good eyes,” Washen offered. “Whoever was using them.”
The girl bit her own stupid, careless tongue.
“What does this look like?” asked Washen.
“A piece of the sky,” said the boy. “Sort of, it does.”