“You’re soft, then,” said Rigg, but he smiled so that Loaf would know he was teasing.

“Yes, boy, jest all you like, mock me hollow, but I am soft. That’s what Leaky did to me. That and the one that gave me this scar. They took the war right out of me. But I still train for it. When I’m on land, that is. Train every day, an hour or two, using all the weapons. I can still put an arrow where I want to, within twenty rods. If I hadn’t slipped in horseflop on the battlefield he’d never have put his sword in me, that’s how good I was. And I still am, barring the changes that fifteen years of not having an opponent better than a drunken riverman makes in an old veteran.”

It was good to know that Leaky was the one who talked him out of killing his old wife. She could brag about how she would have thrown Rigg and Umbo in the river, or tossed them out on the mercy of the rivermen that first night—but Rigg understood now that Leaky and Loaf were kind people, and only had to look and talk tough because of their clientele.

“Does Leaky train with you?” asked Umbo.

Rigg expected him to get cuffed for his impertinence, but Loaf only laughed. “Who else?” he said. “No, she’s no fighter, not like me, but she puts on the pads and helps me through my steps and stings. Nobody else I know can match my reach, except her. I’m right big, you know. So we’re out at dawn, practicing an hour in full light. And it’s not a bad thing if rivermen see us at it, them as aren’t nursing hangovers. So they know that even when I’m not there, she holds her own.”

In the early afternoon of the fourth day, they saw it: the Tower of O, rising above the trees that lined the river. It was almost invisible against the lead-grey wintry sky, but they could all see it, a steel cylinder rising up and rounding off in a dome at the top.

“So we’re there,” said Umbo, and he and Rigg headed for the ladder down to the main deck.

“Wait,” said Loaf. “We won’t reach O till tomorrow noon, or later.”

“But it’s right there!” said Umbo.

“Look how hazy it is. This is clear air, and if it was as close as you think it is, it wouldn’t look that way.”

If the tower was still a day’s journey away, Rigg wondered, how could it rise so high above the trees? “How tall is it?” he asked.

“Taller than you imagine. Do you think people would make pilgrimages to see it, if it was just tall? Besides, the river takes a wide bend that way, and we’ll lose sight of it for hours, and then we come back at it from another direction before we get to see how big it really is. It’s a wonder of the world, to think any nation or city had the brains and the power to build such a thing. And yet it’s completely useless. They say it takes a day to climb to the top, but I don’t know how anybody would know that, the whole thing’s sealed off, and not because the Council of O made some law—no, it’s sealed off inside so you can’t get deep enough inside to figure out even what they built it for.”

Rigg watched the Tower of O until the light gave out so completely that it was invisible. He wondered what his father might have known about the Tower of O. He knew everything, or so it seemed. But he’d never thought to give Rigg a lesson about this place.

CHAPTER 7

O

“Was it the fold or merely a fold?” asked Ram.

“The fold was there,” said the expendable. “All nineteen of the ship’s computers report that the fold . . . was jumped.”

Expendables made no careless decisions about sentence structure. Nor did they hesitate, unless the hesitation meant something. “‘Was jumped,’ you said, but you didn’t specify that it was jumped by us,” said Ram.

“Because apparently we did not do the jumping,” said the expendable. “We emerged in exactly the position we were in at the beginning of the jump.”

“And were we still moving?” said Ram.

“Yes.”

“So what position are we in now?” asked Ram.

“We are two days’ journey closer to Earth. The physical position we were in two days ago.”

“So we came out of the fold reversed,” said Ram. “Heading the other way.”

“No, Ram,” said the expendable. “We came out facing away from Earth, just as we were when we went into the fold.”

“We don’t have a reverse gear,” said Ram. “We can only move in the direction we’re facing.”

“All the computers report that we are proceeding forward at precisely the same velocity as before. They also report that our position keeps progressing backward toward Earth.”

“So we’re moving forward and backward at the same time,” said Ram.

“Our propulsion is forward. Our motion is backward.”

“I hope you will not remove me from command if I admit to being confused.”

“I would only question your sanity if you were not confused, Ram.”

“Do you have any hypotheses that might explain this situation?” asked Ram.

“We are not hypothesizers,” said the expendable. “We are programmed instruments and, as I pointed out to you before, decisions about what to do after the jump are entirely up to our resourceful, creative, highly tested and trained human pilot.”

Ram thought about it.

•  •  •

As they started seeing the buildings of O, Rigg was amazed at how different they were. During the weeks he and Umbo had walked along the North Road, changes had been gradual. Farms had become more frequent, villages larger, buildings a bit more grand. Thatch gave way to shingle and tile, oilcloth to shutters and occasional panes of glass. Leaky’s Landing had an air of newness about it, but the town was of the same wooden construction, the same roof angles, the same alternation of cobble, gravel, and corduroy on the streets, depending on the whim of the owners of the buildings abutting them.

But the trees lining the river had concealed any such gradual changes, and the current moved them much faster, so that as they approached the docks of O it was like entering another world.

Everything seemed to be made of stone—and not the grey-brown rocks of the mountains, either, but a pale rock, almost white with streaks of warm colors in it. No moss had been allowed to grow on any of it, except down near the water—it gleamed warmly in the noonday sun.

By contrast, the Tower of O shone with the glaring coldness of a steel blade. And since it was larger by far than any other structure, and many times higher than the tallest trees, the whole city gave the impression of the pale hand of a very white woman, holding a fierce dagger upward toward the sky.

As the boat drew nearer the docks, however, that impression faded. The docks were as dirty and cluttered and busy as docks anywhere. Not all the buildings were stone after all; in fact most buildings were wooden structures, though with roofs only of tile or, to Rigg’s amazement, tin. So much metal as to cover a roof! Rigg could see that the impression that all was stone came from a few dozen large buildings that rose much higher than the jumble of wooden warehouses, taverns, and shops selling mementoes of the Tower of O. From a distance, all he had seen were the white-stone walls of those buildings; close up, he could hardly catch a glimpse of them from the narrow streets, where each story of every building jutted out beyond the one below, until at the third or fourth story houses across the street from each other were so close that, as Loaf said, “A man could take a mistress across the street and neither of them leave their house.”

Rigg expected that they would first secure lodging, but Loaf grimaced and said no.

“So we’re going to carry our packs and goods to the banker?” asked Rigg.