Quilan started to make his way round the table. He tripped over a chair and had to fall across the table to avoid hitting the floor. Eweirl was spinning and pushing the Invisible, trying to disorient him or make him dizzy as well as get him to fall over. ‘Right!’ he shouted in the servant’s ear. ‘I’m taking you to the cells!’ Quilan pushed himself away from the table.
Eweirl held the servant before him and started marching not to the double doors which led from the bar but towards the terrace doors. The servant went uncomplainingly at first, then must have regained his sense of direction or maybe just smelled or heard the sea and felt the open air on his fur, because he pushed back and started to say something in protest.
Quilan was trying to get in front of Eweirl and the Invisible, to intercept them. He was a few metres to the side now, feeling his way round the tables and chairs.
Eweirl reached up with one hand, pulled the green eye-band down – so that for an instant Quilan could see the Invisible’s two empty sockets – and forced it over the servant’s mouth. Then he whipped the other male’s legs from under him and while he was still trying to stagger back to his feet ran him out across the terrace to the wall and up-ended the Invisible over the top and into the night.
He stood there, breathing heavily, as Quilan came stumbling up to his side. They both looked over. There was a dim white ruff of surf round the base of the seastack. After a moment Quilan could see the pale shape of the tiny falling figure, outlined against the dark sea. After a moment more, the faint sound of a scream floated up to them. The white figure joined the surf with no visible splash and the scream stopped a few moments later.
‘Clumsy,’ Eweirl said. He wiped some spittle from around his mouth. He smiled at Quilan, then looked troubled and shook his head. ‘Tragic,’ he said. ‘High spirits.’ He put one hand on Quilan’s shoulder. ‘High jinks, eh?’ He reached out and brought Quilan into a hug, pressing him hard into his chest. Quilan tried to push away, but the other male was too strong. They swayed, close to the wall and the drop. The other male’s lips were at his ear. ‘Do you think he wanted to die, Quil? Hmm, Quilan? Hmm? Do you think he wanted to die? Do you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Quilan mumbled, finally being allowed to use his midlimb to push himself away. He stood looking up at the white-furred male. He felt more sober now. He was half terrified, half careless. ‘I know you killed him,’ he said, and immediately thought that he might die too, now. He thought about taking up the classical defensive position, but didn’t.
Eweirl smiled and looked back at Visquile, who still sat where he had been throughout. ‘Tragic accident,’ Eweirl said. The Estodien spread his hands. Eweirl held onto the wall to stop himself swaying, and waved at Quilan. ‘Tragic accident.’
Quilan felt suddenly dizzy, and sat down. The view started to disappear at the edges. ‘Leaving us too?’ he heard Eweirl inquire. Then nothing till the morning.
‘You chose me, then?’
‘You chose yourself, Major.’
He and Visquile sat in the privateer’s lounge area. Along with Eweirl, they were the only people aboard. The ship had its own Al, albeit an uncommunicative one. Visquile claimed not to know the craft’s orders, or its destination.
Quilan drank slowly; a restorative laced with anti-hangover chemicals. It was working, though it might have worked more quickly. ‘And what Eweirl did to the Blinded Invisible?’ I
Visquile shrugged. ‘What happened was unfortunate. These accidents happen when people drink freely.’
‘It was murder, Estodien.’
‘That would be impossible to prove, Major. Personally I was, like the unfortunate concerned, unsighted at the time.’ He smiled. Then the smile faded. ‘Besides, Major, I think you’ll find Called- To-Arms Eweirl has a certain latitude in such matters.’ He reached out and patted Quilan’s hand. ‘You must not concern yourself with the unhappy incident any further.’
Quilan spent a lot of time in the ship’s gym. Eweirl did, too, though they exchanged few words. Quilan had little he wanted to say to the other male, and Eweirl didn’t seem to care. They worked and hauled and pulled and ran and sweated and panted and dust-bathed and showered alongside each other, but barely acknowledged the other’s presence. Eweirl wore earplugs and a visor, and sometimes laughed as he exercised, or made growling, appreciative noises.
Quilan ignored him.
He was brushing the dust-bath off one day when a bead of sweat dropped from his face and spotted in the dust like a globule of dirty mercury, rolling into the hollow by his feet. They had mated once in a dust-bath, on their honeymoon. A droplet of her sweet sweat had fallen into the grey fines just so, rolling with a fluid silky grace down the soft indentation they had created.
He was suddenly aware he had made a keening, moaning noise. He looked out at Eweirl in the main body of the gym, hoping he would not have heard, but the white-furred male had taken his plugs and visor off, and was looking at him, grinning.
The privateer rendezvoused with something after five days’ travel. The ship went very quiet and moved oddly, as though it was on solid ground but being slid around from side to side. There were thudding noises, then hisses, then most of the remaining noise of the craft died. Quilan sat in his little cabin and tried accessing the exterior views on his screens; nothing. He tried the navigation information, but that had been closed off too. He had never before lamented the fact that ships had no windows or portholes.
He found Visquile on the ship’s small and elegantly spare bridge, taking a data clip from the craft’s manual controls and slipping it into his robes. The few data screens still live on the bridge winked out.
‘Estodien?’ Quilan asked.
‘Major,’ Visquile said. He patted Quilan on the elbow. ‘We’re hitching a ride.’ He held up a hand as Quilan opened his mouth to ask where to. ‘It’s best if you don’t ask with whom or to where, Major, because I’m not able to tell you.’ He smiled. ‘Just pretend we’re still under way using our own power. That’s easiest. You needn’t worry; we’re very secure in here. Very secure indeed.’ He touched midlimb to midlimb. ‘See you at dinner.’
Another twenty days passed. He became even fitter. He studied ancient histories of the Involveds. Then one day he woke and the ship was suddenly loud about him. He turned on the cabin screen and saw space ahead. The navigation screens were still unavailable, but he looked all about the ship’s exterior views through the different sensors and viewing angles and didn’t recognise anything until he saw a fuzzy Y shape and knew they were somewhere on the outskirts of the galaxy, near the Clouds.
Whatever had brought them here in only twenty days must be much faster than their own ships. He wondered about that.
The privateer craft was held in a bubble of vacuum within a vast blue-green space. A wobbling limb of atmosphere three metres in diameter flowed slowly out to meet with their outer airlock. On the far side of the tube floated something like a small airship.
The air was briefly cold as they walked through, turning gradually warmer as they approached the airship. The atmos- phere felt thick. Underneath their feet, the tunnel of air seemed as pliantly firm as wood. He carried his own modest lug- gage; Eweirl toted two immense kit bags as though they were purses, and Visquile was followed by a civilian drone carrying his bags.
The airship was about forty metres long; a single giant ellipsoid in dark purple, its smooth-looking envelope of skin lined with long yellow strakes of frill which rippled slowly in the warm air like the mantle of a fish. The tube led the three Chelgrians to a small gondola slung underneath the vessel.
The gondola looked like something grown rather than con- structed, like the hollowed-out husk of an immense fruit; it appeared to have no windows until they climbed aboard, making the ship tip gently, but gauzy panels let in light and made the smooth interior glow with a pastel-green light. It held them comfortably. The tube of air dissipated behind them as the gon- dola’s door irised shut.
Eweirl popped his earplugs in and put on his visor, sitting back, seemingly oblivious. Visquile sat with his silvery stave planted between his feet, the round top under his chin, gazing ahead through one of the gauzy windows.
Quilan had only the vaguest idea where he was. He had seen the gigantic, slowly revolving elongated 8-shaped object ahead of them for several hours before they’d rendezvoused. The privateer ship had closed very slowly, seemingly on emergency thrust alone, and the thing – the world, as he was now starting to think of it, having come to a rough estimate of its size – had just kept getting bigger and bigger and filling more and more of the view ahead, yet without betraying any detail.