She frowned, looking back at the harbor now hundreds of feet below. The question reminded her that she wanted to find Daniel data on the natural history of all the planets in the region. That should be possible on Sexburga.
“The Sailing Directions mention rumors of large animals on South Land,” she went on. “Sexburga has two continents, North and South, but South isn’t settled and isn’t often visited.”
The young peddler with the candy trays leaned forward. “South Land is haunted, lady,” he said with polite earnestness. “Nobody lives there, nobody goes there except foreigners.”
“The Tombs of the Ancients are there,” added a local woman, a substantial person holding a basket woven in slant patterns in varicolored straw. “The Ancients still live in them, but they only come out when nobody’s looking.”
The other peddlers nodded, all those who could hear over the sounds of the car rising. A more distant man held a whispered conversation with the woman with the basket, then nodded enthusiastic agreement.
“My grandfather heard about the ghosts,” Dorst said. “I don’t think he ever went there. What do the Directions say, mistress?”
“There are regular rock formations that look like the foundations of buildings,” Adele said, speaking carefully. She was repeating what she’d read, and she didn’t want to give the impression that she had an opinion beyond the words in the Sailing Directions. “Some people have conjectured that they’re the remains of the first settlement, but judging by wind erosion they’re far too old for that. The official explanation is that they’re natural.”
“There’s nothing natural about the ghosts, lady,” the man with the candy trays said fiercely. “You keep away from South Land. There’s plenty of fun for rich spacers here in Spires, you bet!”
That was indeed a safe bet. This funicular rose very steeply, but the one halfway around the bowl to the left followed a notch at no more than 45 degrees. Spaced along the tracks were three taverns that had been cut into the cliff face. Bunting fluttered from their railings, and at the uppermost a naked girl danced on a barreltop to lure custom. There were mounting platforms set where the slow-moving cars would just clear them, but Adele couldn’t imagine people as drunk as the spacers who’d descended in this car managing to board on the move.
“They must cater to riggers,” said Dorst, who seemed to have been thinking along the same lines.
“And they’re not thinking very hard about anything except the first drink,” Vesey added. “If I had to spend all my duty hours out on the hull, I might feel the same way.”
The car was nearing the upper terminus; brakes within the take-up drum began to groan as they slowed the rig. Down in the harbor a bell chimed faintly, calling watch changes within a ship which had been opened to the world around it.
“M-Mundy?” Dorst said. “They say . . . that is, I’ve heard that Captain Leary can read the Matrix. Is that true?”
“What?” Adele said. Why were they asking her about shiphandling? That was their business! “Well, yes, I suppose so. I believe I’ve heard him say as much.”
“But how, mistress?” Vesey said. Her face was screwed up with the tension of someone who knows there’s a secret key to the universe and that someone else has it. “I can memorize the sail plan, but then Captain Leary goes topside and takes a reef here, changes an angle there. And I don’t see any reason for it, but when we next check our position we’ve gained six hours!”
“I calculated the time from Cinnabar to Sexburga,” Dorst said. “Without allowing anything for position checks and using the course plotted by Commander Bergen, the best time mathematically possible was twenty-one days, ten hours and fifty-one minutes. But Commander Bergen himself made the distance in twelve hours less than that, and Captain Leary cut off three and a half more days.”
The car shuddered to what Adele thought was a halt. She would have stepped—up a handsbreadth—to the platform, but she noticed that the peddlers were waiting. She waited also; thus the final jolt upward didn’t throw her onto her face.