• • •
“Trees?” Gene asked in Ragi.
“Yes,” Cajeiri said.
“You can look right at the sun,” Artur said, leaning.
“Don’t,” Cajeiri said. “It’s not good.” They had never seen the sun in a sky. For them the sun was something else. A star. A place that anchored planets. A place that anchored ships. “It’s a clock. 1200 hours, a little more.” He inclined his hand. “0100. 0200. 0300 . . . By 0800 it’s gone. It comes back around 0530.”
“Neat,” Gene said, and leaned forward to catch a look as Artur sneaked another peek. “Come on, Irene. Don’t be a baby.”
Irene made a try, and then the bus took a turn. Irene shut her eyes.
“Just like a shuttle docking,” Gene said. “Just like two ships meeting. It’s all in your head.”
“It’s fast,” Irene said, and Gene and Artur laughed.
“Silly. The shipis fast. This is just a little distance.”
“There’s a black and red machine.”
“The train,” Cajeiri said in Ragi—not knowing any ship-speak word for it. Then thought of one. “It runs on rails. Like the lifts.” He made a sideways motion of his hand. “That way.”
“We’re going on that?” Irene asked.
“Yes,” Cajeiri said. “The red one. Back there.” He tried to think of words, after all his practice, and the only words he could think of for a moment were ship things. The tunnels. The places they met. Sneaking into the access doors.
“So are we going to the city?” Gene asked.
“No,” he said. “Tirnamardi. Lord Tatiseigi. It’s his. He’s my—” He realized he didn’t know ship-speak for great-uncle. “My mother’s mother’s brother.”
“Wow. He owns a whole city?”
He shook his head, struggled again for the right word, this time for house, and was immensely frustrated. “We go to his . . . Where he lives.”
“Apartment?”
“Like. But big.” It came to him—they had no houses, either. There were no words for it. Even apartments for them weren’t rooms in a building, but rooms off a corridor. “We say adija.Big. Lot of rooms. We’ll be there for a few days, then we go to Shejidan, to the Bujavid, for my party.”
“We’ve seen pictures of the Bujavid,” Artur said. “It’s huge.”
“My father’s apartment’s there. That’s where we’ll go for my birthday. First we go to Tirnamardi. They have mecheiti there.”
“It’s going to be good,” Gene said, and his eyes were wide and bright. “This is so good. We knewit was your birthday again. We heard aboutyou. We knew you were all right. But pretty scary. A lot of scary stuff.”
That opened up difficult business. “Lots of trouble.” He had no idea where even to start telling them about the Shadow Guild and the trouble over on the coast. Or Malguri. Or what had happened at Tirnamardi before that. “But safe now. All fine.”
The bus slowed down. It was time for everybody to get out. His attention was all for his aishid for a second, for instructions, and then he realized he had forgotten to introduce them— everyonehad a bodyguard, and bodyguards knew each other, and things passed back and forth. “Nadiin,” he said in Ragi. “This is Gene-nadi. This is Artur-nadi. This is Irene-nadi. People, this is my aishid.This is Antaro. This is Jegari. This is Veijico. This is Lucasi. I wrote you about them.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Gene said.
“Nadiin,” Antaro said, with a polite little nod, Guild-fashion. “We go now.”
“They speak ship!” Irene exclaimed.
“A little, nadiin,” Antaro said with a second nod, pleased, and up front, people were getting off and they would have to catch up. “We go now. Up.”
“We move fast now,” Cajeiri said. “Don’t stop.” Up front, two of mani’s bodyguards had lingered, and they had opened the baggage compartment of the bus, taking out what they had put on. Antaro and Jegari led out, and he followed with his guests, Lucasi and Veijico behind them. Tano got out ahead of them, and there were Kaplan and Polano, mirror-faced helmets on, which made them look like machines—scarily so. But that was what bodyguards did—look as forbidding as possible if there was any chance of a threat. Everybody else was already getting on the train, and Tano went ahead of them as they caught up.
The steps were high, even for him, but veryhigh for his guests. He made it in, and Gene, with a little jump, was right behind him. Veijico and Lucasi all but picked up Artur, setting him on the steps, and Gene hauled him up the next by the hand. Irene came next, lifted up gently by Lucasi.
“Everything’s so big,” she said, staring all around her.
“ We’rejust short,” Gene said, with his big grin. They were in the car, now, and being urged away from the door. All the bodyguards were still standing, but he caught a glimpse of mani and Great-uncle, and nand’ Bren and Jase-aiji through the sea of black uniforms, settling into the seats at the rear.
One of the guards was Tano, who said, with a wave of his hand: “You and your guests may have the seats over there, with the let-down table. There will be lunch very soon.”
“Thank you, Tano-nadi,” he said with a little bow, and now, finally, they were going to be on their way and everything was going to work. “Is mani happy, and Uncle? Is everything all right?”
“Everything is perfectly fine, young gentleman.”
He hoped it was, but some of the bodyguards were still outside. Finally Kaplan and Polano came up onto the train ahead of a few of mani’s guards, and the door shut.
They were in, they were safe.
And lunch was coming.
He so wanted to introduce his guests, but it was not proper to do introductions of complete strangers to mani and Uncle in a crowded conveyance. It would have to be as if they were in two separate cars, the adults down there, and them here, at this end, and they had to be sure not to bother anybody.
“Sit here,” he invited his guests. “Food. Soon.”
“Food!” Gene said. “Excellent!”
Their own table, and very quickly iced bottles of fruit juice. No servants were present—they were all in the other cars . . . with the baggage—so it was one of mani’s guards who set down the drinks.
It was quiet, it was safe: the red car had excellent shielding—even the red velvet curtains that made it look as if there would be a window at the end of their table were for decoration only: there was no looking out. Not from this end of the car.
“We’re moving!” Irene said, with a startled look, and grabbed her drink. “Oh, this is scary! How fast does it go?”
“A little,” Cajeiri said. “Not like the ship.”
“What’s that sound?”
“Joints in the rail,” Cajeiri said.
“The other sound.”
“That’s the train. The machine.”
“Neat,” Artur said. “You can hear it breathe, can’t you?”
Breathe. He’d never thought of it like that, but Artur was right. It wasneat. And they were happy. Nobody was sick or throwing up, which Bren had cautioned him could happen to them even without windows. They were eager for lunch, and the fruit drinks were fast disappearing.
But, he realized suddenly, he had to teach them things, like not eating just anything. He had told them once about nand’ Bren having to be careful what he ate, but that was on the ship. He had to be sure nobody got sick now. Or dead. It could be really serious, with some dishes. And even some teas.
And he had to present them to mani and Great-uncle, once they got to Tirnamardi, in a way Great-uncle would approve. Great-uncle was so touchy. He had to make them understand where to be and how to talk to lords and servants.
And so many, many things there were Ragi words for, just Ragi words. Where did people born on a station far, far off from any world ever see a tree or a woods? There were words in the old archive, that they all knew. And there were vids. But not all of those words fit thingsand vids weren’t like standing next to a tree that towered over your head and dropped leaves into your hands.