“I’m really not sure what Daniel does,” Adele said. “When I look at the Matrix when I’m on the hull, I just see swirls of light. But then, I can’t tell much from clouds—”
She stepped onto the platform, then gestured at the pale blue sky streaked by horsetails of vapor.
“—either. Unless they’re raining on me. Don’t they teach you whatever it is you need to know at the Academy?”
“Mistress,” Vesey said, “the patterns of the Matrix show energy levels between universes. Go here, go there, and your velocity relative to the sidereal universe increases or decreases. We understand the theory—that’s what astrogation is, after all. But you can’t take a computer out on the hull, and I don’t see how anybody can read the Matrix with his eyes alone.”
The upper platform was crowded with hawkers, touts, and pimps. The peddlers passed through them as water does a screen, but they were around Adele and her companions like goldfish feeding. The voices babbled in Universal—
“Never food like it in your lives!”
“Sheets clean this morning, on my soul as a woman!”
“The delicacy of the carving by Blind Master Shen!”
—but it was spoken in a singsong that had nothing to do with the normal accent and ictus of the lines. After a moment it was perfectly understandable, like a document printed in an unfamiliar typeface. The pack wasn’t saying anything Adele wanted to understand, of course.
Dorst’s broad shoulders led the trio through without real difficulty. Adele, last in line, saw an old fellow with a waxed mustache try to grope Vesey. She slapped him away with a practiced reflex. Nobody offered Adele indignities.
A wide roadway paralleled the line of the cliffs. Traffic was heavy, but it was almost entirely of pedestrians or slow-moving vehicles with four large wheels. They were geared for the steep slopes on all the city’s other streets.
Adele nodded and the three of them started across. On the other side were five- and six-story buildings. The windows of the lower floors advertised business premises, but the railed balconies higher up had flower boxes and lounging spectators.
“Any of the riggers can tell me things that I can’t see,” Dorst said glumly as the trio waited in mid-street for an electric-powered dray to crawl past on tracks instead of wheels. “They all think Captain Leary’s a wizard, though. Except for Old Hagar who served with Commander Bergen; she says the captain’s a babe in arms compared to his uncle.”
“Daniel says the same,” Adele agreed, “though I gather there’s more to promotion in the RCN than skill at astrogation. Daniel may have things to teach you that his uncle couldn’t.”
“Oh, heavens yes!” Vesey said. “Oh, we’re so lucky to serve under him!”
Dorst leaned forward to see past the dray. “Now!” he shouted.
They sprinted to the overlook. Traffic direction wasn’t controlled by which side of the street it was on, but the midshipmen seemed to have the spacers’ ability to look all ways at once. Adele didn’t and by now had determined that she never would, but by staying between her companions she managed to make it across with no worse problem than tripping on a crack between paving blocks. Vesey caught her.
The view was breathtaking. Though not nearly as steep as the cliffs they’d just climbed, the ground to the east sloped down for as far as Adele could see. Beyond the buildings of Spires stretched fields separated by drystone walls. The crops were planted so thinly that the predominant color was that of the russet soil, not green leaves.
“It’s impressive,” Adele said, “but with so many worlds available I don’t know why this place was colonized. And recolonized after the Hiatus.”
“Why, for its location,” Vesey said in surprise. “Twenty days from Earth, forty days from Cinnabar even before Commander Bergen’s survey.”
“Even from Pleasaunce it’s only sixty days,” Dorst added. “And I’m sure you could cut that by a third with a proper survey, which isn’t going to happen while the RCN controls the region.”
“And there’s plenty of water for reaction mass,” Vesey said. “It’s really an ideal location.”
Adele nodded slowly as she viewed her surroundings. Plenty of reaction mass, even if it didn’t fall as rain. She was a spacer now, so she had to remind herself to think like one.