They reached Waterblossom. The riverboat was easily a hundred meters long, though so wide that that was not immediately evident. Four loading towers and a couple of three-tiered deckhouses did not much clutter her. The low freeboard was garishly painted in stripes of red and gold; the topworks were white, brass-trimmed. Her captain had said she was made of Terran and Cynthian woods, which Daedalan organisms did not attack, and driven by an electric engine. Should he be unable to recharge its capacitors otherwise, he carried a steam generator which could burn nearly anything.
Half a dozen Cynthians and two humans were on deck, cheerily helping wheel a cage toward shelter from the rain. “Ay-ah, behold
Wo Lia, the performer.” Shan U pointed. “Come aboard and meet her. We can all have a nice cup of alefruit cider.”
Diana frowned. She hated the idea of confining any creature. Still, yon beast didn’t seem mistreated. More or less mansize, it hunkered on four limbs, black-furred, its head obscured by a heavy mane. She spied a short tail, and the forepaws had an odd, doubled-up look about them. Well, who could possibly know all the life forms, all the wonders of every kind, that filled the Imperial planets, let alone the galaxy and the universe? To fare forth—!
Shan U led her over the gangplank. She passed near the cage.
“Hs-s-s, little friend,” went a whisper. Coming from low in the lungs, it sounded like an animal noise to anybody who did not know the Toborko language. “Stay calm. We will talk later. Make sure you and your camarado take passage on this boat.”
Barely, Diana reined herself in. The humans doubtless noticed how she tensed before relaxing, but could put that down to the exotic surroundings. The Cynthians doubtless paid no heed to her shifts in stance or expression.
She forced herself to look afar, out again across the river. Underneath tangled strands of mane, the face in the cage was Targovi’s.
Chapter 10
Waterblossom set forth after the thunderstorm that had been brewing reached explosion point and then spent itself. Sweeping the length of the valley with that swiftness and violence which the rapid rotation of the planet engendered, it turned the air altogether clear. From her place in the bows, Diana looked westward across a thousand kilometers or more.
This was the first tranquil moment she had had in hours. The time had been frantic during which she made her way back to Aurea, located Axor, persuaded him—not easily, because her arguments were thin at best, and her excitement didn’t reinforce them—to come along, got their baggage packed, returned through lightning-vivid cataracts of rain, settled into her tiny stateroom and improvised accommodations for the Wodenite down in the hold with the freight. Dinner had been served while the weather slacked off. Now the crew had cast loose and the boat was on her way.
Diana couldn’t hear the engine, but its purr went as a subliminal quiver through her bare feet, and she did catch a faint gurgle from aft, the turbo drive at work. Speed was low, as ponderous and heavily laden as the hull was. At first traffic teemed, everything from row-boats to hydrofoils, but as Paz fell behind, the river rolled open, a brown stretch two kilometers wide from bank to forested bank, rippling around snags and sandbars, only a couple of barges and a timber raft under tow in the distance ahead. Quiet descended, and a measure of coolness. Flying creatures darted and skimmed, light amber on their wings.
Never before had Diana seen so far over the horizonless world. Ahead of her, the river and its valley went on. As that view grew ever more remote, they dwindled, shrank together, became at last a shining thread between burnished green darknesses; yet still she could see them. Whenever an opening appeared in the woods brooding on either side of her, she likewise looked across immensity. Left, the green lightened as forest gave way to prairie that eventually blurred off in haziness. Right, beyond foothills, she glimpsed toylike snow-peaks, the mountain range that warded off the glaciers of the Daedalan ice age.
The sinking sun kindled a sudden gleam far and far ahead. Why, that must be the ocean! Diana’s pulse quickened. Vapors made the disc golden-red, softened its glare till she could gaze directly. It spread itself out until it was a great step pyramid—and out and out, stretching to become arcs of luminance curving north and south around what would have been worldedge on another planet.