“Of course. It’s something of a running joke, you know, at the Antikythera Club.”
“I didn’t realize you were a member.”
Her smirk overflowed with secrets as she leaned forward. “I’m not.”
“You just hear things,” I breathed.
She nodded. “Everyone knows your nephew is the best scriptwriter on this ship. And the Antikythera Club knows why: because he’s good at breaking a complicated process down into simpler steps. TheFairweatheris an extraordinary creature, really. Adaptable. Which is to say: The shipmind can learn, and grow. It’s not so much that your nephew gives Ferry commands—it’s more like he’s teaching the shipmind how to solve its own problems.” That tempting mouth of hers turned up at the corners. “So from a certain point of view, Ruthie’s been a parent for three centuries now. How much more practice could someone need?”
“I’m fairly sure the nappies were a novel experience.” Violet laughed again, and something strained in me relaxed its fibers and unknotted. “We’re calling the baby Peregrine, until he tells us otherwise.”
“Then let’s find you some yarn for the tyke.”
I came away with a stitch chart I could adapt to fit our new small human, as well as several skeins of a cotton so soft it practically floated, in shades of blue from sky to midnight, and one of silver so I could pick out stars in duplicate stitch. After a good dinner and with a glass of port to hand, I cozied up in my bedroom window seat on the upper story,casting on the first row while the neighborhood all around me enjoyed its evening.
One stitch for the young woman playing violin on the corner, the echoes singing up and down the decks. One stitch each for the two young men strolling arm in arm out of a restaurant. Trios and groups, friends and families, I counted them all out beneath my hands as the solar lamps dimmed and the storefronts spilled gold light onto the retromatted wood planks.
One stitch each, every stitch a second, a single moment in time frozen in fiber. To give to an infant—because time was the real gift, passed from one generation to the next.
It was easy to think that time was infinite, here on theFairweather. Your body wore out and was replaced; your memories were refreshed with a sip of a drink or the press of a button. Easy to think we were standing still—but really, we were flying through the universe at incredible speeds. And the same end was waiting for us that would have met us on Old Earth. It was just going to take a little longer to get there, that was all.
The faint sound of a bell, and a pair of furtive silhouettes slipped into Violet’s store. Fellow honest knitters like myself? Or passengers more like Violet, with dangerous ideas about power and the law?
I thought the law was the necessary foundation of a solid society; she thought the authorities weren’t to be trustedwith too much power. If she was right, then I was wrong, and that rankled. But if I was right, and Violet was wrong—then why did I still want her so much?
I knit until I was sure the question wouldn’t keep me awake.
Dorothy!
The shipmind’s mental voice erupted into my dreams and dragged me into unwilling wakefulness. “Whuzzat? Ferry?” I said, trying to grasp the reins of thoughts that had been galloping elsewhere a moment before.
Your nephew is on the way over, Ferry went on, words tumbling over themselves like a shower of pebbles in my mind.He said to wake you immediately.The shipmind coughed, a trick it had picked up from Ruthie himself when there was something unpleasant to say.I think there’s a problem with the child.
“You think?” I asked, before logic caught up with me. “No, of course, you wouldn’t be able to tell, would you?”
I think I might, in time, Ferry went on.A few years, perhaps? When he’s eaten and drunk enough retromatted food that his body holds on to the molecular markers.
Well that was an image to haunt one, for certain. I imagined Peregrine’s toddler shape amorphous and misty, like the ghost of a child wandering the darkened decks.
I shivered involuntarily.
It was just before dawn, according to the nocturnal blue glow of the solar lamps. They dyed my fern shawl shadow colors as I flung it over my pyjamas and took my place in the window seat. Soon enough a pair of huddled figures appeared on the corner, breezing behind a drunk woman lounging on a bench overlooking the Greenway. Peregrine’s wails were audible even with my doors and windows shut, and I saw the woman’s head swivel around and her whole body tilt sideways, trying to follow the unwonted sound of a crying child in a place no child should be.
I hurried downstairs and wrenched open the front door.
Ruthie and John and Peregrine barged in, Ruthie wild-eyed and clutching the howling infant to his shoulder. John immediately locked the door behind them, checked the curtains were snug, and went to the kitchen to perform the same ritual there.
“Honestly,” I said, rubbing the grit from my eyes and hoping the rest of the neighborhood had either slept through the racket or failed to identify the source. “We’re going to have to teach you fellows what lullabies are for.”
Ruthie didn’t so much as crack a smile. “Someone tried to take Peregrine.”
That woke me up, and no mistake. “What? When? Who?”
“Half an hour ago. No idea who.”
John came back out of the kitchen and guided Ruthie into a chair. Ruthie sat without looking down, his face drawn and his knuckles white.
Baby Peregrine yowled and beat at one shoulder with his tiny fists. I could feel a slight hum at the very edges of my mind, which meant Ferry was probably still listening in.
