“The pirates track ships by the disturbance they leave across the Matrix,” Dorst said, reverting to the earlier subject. “They follow ships there, then drop into normal space with them and strip their sails with plasma cannon. Strymon’s patrol ships do the same thing to take pirates.”
Scattered across the landscape were buttes standing a hundred feet above the plain around them. One was topped by a man-made wall; a dusty road led to it from the city proper.
“Daniel’s talked about that,” Adele said, bringing her data unit out and—after a moment of trepidation—setting it on the stone railing instead of sitting crosslegged on the pavement to use it. The rail was flat and six inches wide, so there was no real danger that she’d bump the unit down the other side. “Woetjans and some of the other riggers say it’s quite true, that you can see wakes.”
She scrolled across a street plan of Spires till she found what she was looking for, then compared it with her own location according to the data unit’s inertial navigation system. Sexburga didn’t have positioning satellites, just a handful of ground beacons for the rare traveller who went any distance from Spires.
“There’s a pre-Hiatus church that’s been converted to a museum and library,” she said, nodding toward her display. She couldn’t point because she held a wand in either hand. “I’d like to see that. But first, shall we try a local meal? The tomato-stuffed potatoes are supposed to be the local specialty.”
“Granddad said the potato lager’s something, too,” Dorst said with enthusiasm.
“We’ll try that as well,” Adele said. She put her data unit away and started toward the nearest of the streets leading down into the city proper.
“Mundy, do you think we’ll ever learn how to see wakes?” Vesey asked in a tiny voice.
“If it’s something about starships that can be taught,” Adele said in a tone of confidence that surprised her, “Captain Leary is the best person I know to teach you. And Dorst?”
“Ma’am?”
“He’s equally skilled at picking up company when he’s off-duty,” Adele went on in the same crisp voice. “But if you study his technique, I do hope you’ll use it on women of better quality than he does.”
Dorst and Vesey both hesitated a half step, then burst out laughing. Adele allowed herself a smile as well.
She found the presence of the midshipmen oddly pleasant, rather like having a pair of intelligent dogs along to share her interests without imposing their own. This layover on Sexburga promised to be quite relaxing.
* * *
“Well, this is a bloody fort, ain’t it?” Hogg said as he hauled hard on the steering wheel to bring them around the final switchback. Hogg had rented the car to bring them to Vaughn’s party, but Daniel was half wishing he’d simply paid for a cabman to drive instead. “That or a bloody prison!”
The vehicle couldn’t manage more than twenty miles an hour with the throttle flat against the firewall, but steering required a lot less effort than Hogg put into it since the wheel adjusted power to the hub-center electric motors, speeding or slowing them as the turn required.
That offended Hogg. He needed to hear chirps and moans from a vehicle to be sure it was really under his control.
“It’s a fortress,” Daniel said, looking into the compound past the attendant at the open gate. The walls were seven feet thick. “That’s the cap of a vertical-launch missile system in the middle of the courtyard. They’re ready to fight off an attack by starships.”
Hogg stopped smoothly beside the attendant despite his effort to get the regenerative brakes to jerk them to a halt. “Bloody foreign crap!” he muttered. The comment seemed intended to inform the car that no matter how well it had been designed, it was still crap because it hadn’t been made on Cinnabar.
The attendant wore boots to mid calf, checked trousers, and a red frock coat with a gold dicky. He wasn’t dressed like a Sexburgan or like anybody else Daniel remembered seeing, though some clowns came close. Mind, the Dress Whites Daniel was wearing weren’t the most practical garments either.