“—of course. After that, I will contribute the proceeds to the effort. This is your opportunity to become part of the most significant (something) expedition ever attempted by our two cities.

“But they need something more than money. They need volunteers. Sailors.” She paused and looked down at Telio. “It will be a dangerous voyage. Not something for the faint of heart. Not something for the unskilled.”

“I fish for a living,” said Telio.

“Just what they need. I’ll send your name over.”

The audience laughed. Someone commented that Telio was lucky to have gotten such an opportunity.

Macao was back on her stage. She held up her hands. “Velascus talks about the defect each of us has, implanted by Taris, to prevent our being perfect. For you—” she looked at one of the Goompahs off to her left—“it is perhaps too great an affection for money. And for Telio over there, it may be a (something) toward jealousy. For me, perhaps, it is that I have no sense of humor.” (Laughter.) “But for each of us it is there. The individual defect. But there is another flaw that we all share, that we share as a community.

“You remember Haster?”

Yes. They all did.

“What’s Haster?” asked Kellie.

“No idea.”

“The colony failed within three years. As did the several attempts that preceded it. Why do you suppose that is? Why have so many efforts to move abroad been abandoned?”

There were several older children seated in the rear. One of them stood to be recognized. “It is wild country beyond the known lands,” she said. “Who would want to live there?”

“Who indeed?” echoed Macao. “And I put it to you that herein lies our fatal defect. Our common flaw. The characteristic that deters us. We love our homeland too much.”

WHEN THE LAST of the lights had gone out, and the cafés had emptied, Kellie and Digger wandered the lonely walkways that bordered the sea at the southern edge of the city. They were wet, and the Flickinger field produced by the e-suits was notoriously slippery underfoot, especially in such conditions. It didn’t seem to matter what sort of shoes he wore. He turned it off, and gasped in the sudden rush of cold salt air.

Kellie heard his reaction and guessed what he had done. She followed his lead. “It’s lovely out here,” she said.

The sea was rough. It roared against the rocks and threw spray into the air. A sailing ship, squat and heavy, lay at anchor. Lights poured out of the after cabin, and Digger could see a figure moving about inside.

“Do the Goompahs have the compass?” asked Digger.

“Don’t know.”

“Does Lookout have a magnetic north?”

“Yes, Dig. About twelve degrees off the pole. Why? Does it matter?”

“If they don’t have a compass, how will they navigate on that round-the-world jaunt they’re talking about?”

“Sun by day, stars by night. Shouldn’t be all that difficult. Except I don’t know how they’ll get past the eastern continent. They’ll have the same problem Columbus did.”

It was too dark to be able to make out where the horizon met the sky. Digger tried to visualize the sea east of Athens. He remembered a couple of big islands out there, and a few smaller chunks of land beyond. Then it was open ocean for several thousand kilometers.

He understood why the Goompahs had never crossed their oceans. How long had it taken before Leif Eriksson and the longboats made the run across the Atlantic? But it seemed odd that there’d been no serious effort to explore the continent on which they lived. It was true there were natural barriers, but they had sail, and they had easy access by water. They weren’t in the classic Greek situation of being penned in an inland sea.

They wandered out onto a wooden pier, and Kellie’s hand lay gently on his hip. It was a floating pier, and some of the planks were loose or missing. They kept going until they reached the far end, where they stood listening to the ocean. A few gulls were in the air. The universal creature. Any world that produced oceans and living things eventually produced gulls. Swamps gave you crocodiles. Forests always had wolves. Living worlds were exceedingly rare, but their creatures were remarkably alike. Which after all made sense. How many different ways are there to make a fish? The variations were almost always limited to details.

A lantern moved across the deck of the ship.

He liked this place. It felt a bit like an island lost in time. “You know, Kellie,” he said, “I wish there were a way we could talk with her.”

“With whom?”

“With Macao.”

“Forget it,” she said. “You’d scare the devil out of her.”

LIBRARY ENTRY

The oddest thing about the entire evening was the image on the map. Except that his skin color was a bit light, the guy on the winged rhino looked like my uncle Frank.

— Jenkins Log

Captain’s entry

Lookout.

On the ground at Saniusar.

Saturday, September 6.

MORE SURVEILLANCE DEVICES had arrived, and Kellie and Jack had spread them throughout the isthmus this time, instead of confining them to Brackel. Saniusar, the northernmost Goompah outpost, was the last of the cities to receive its allotment.

It occupied the shores of a bay and was surrounded by a ring of picturesque hills, which grew progressively higher until they ascended finally into towering mountains.

Beyond the mountains lay dense jungle, and beyond the jungle lay a broad desert, extending for thousands of kilometers, well north of the equator. Digger was beginning to understand why the Goompah world ended on the north at Saniusar.

“But they have ships,” protested Kellie. “I can understand why they haven’t crossed the seas. But running up and down the coast shouldn’t have been a problem.”

“Don’t be so sure. How far did the Greeks go?”

“But they were hemmed in. Couldn’t get beyond the Mediterranean.”

They’d been wandering the streets of Goompah cities like the wind, unseen, irrelevant. He missed Jack, and he missed being able to sit down with friends, and he missed being able to party.

He had been relatively isolated before. But it had always been in some desolate spot, remote from everything, with maybe a couple of technicians who spent all their time talking about the local grade of sandstone, or the level of humidity at a given latitude. But here, with Kellie, he was surrounded by a vibrant community whose energy crackled through the cities every day and lit up the night, and he was cut off from it all.

He touched her luminous form, her arm, her shoulder. The mild vibration projected by the external surface of the e-suit was reassuring. She moved beneath his fingers and folded herself into him. Everything was accessible through the field except her lips, which were shielded behind the hard bubble that covered her face.

They were standing outside a double-domed building on the edge of the city, looking north toward a tangle of river and valley and granite. A few of the natives were wandering about, some working, some playing with young ones, some just walking. To the west, over a few hilltops, the sea was bright and cool.

“I love you, Kellie,” he said.

Her body moved against him. She was laughing.

“What’s funny?”

“At the moment,” she said, “your choices are limited.”

“I don’t know.” He switched his e-suit off. The smell of salt air swept in. Lovely stuff. “I saw some pretty good-looking females at the park yesterday.”

The tingle blinked off with her suit. “I love you, too, Digby,” she said.

“I wish I could see you.”

“Maybe tonight, if you behave.”

He found her lips, and they stood quietly for several moments, enjoying each other. “Kellie,” he said, “I’d like very much if you would be my wife.”

She stiffened, simultaneously pulling him forward and pushing him away.

He wondered if anyone else had ever proposed to an invisible woman.

“Digger,” she said, “I’m honored.”

That didn’t sound good.

“I’m not sure it would work.”

He switched off his goggles, and the spectral form vanished. Only those dark eyes remained. “You wouldn’t have to quit,” he said. “It wouldn’t mean your career. We could work something out.”

The wind off the sea was cold. “It’s not that.”

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed. He’d long since become accustomed to disembodied eyes, and had discovered that they did actually reflect mood and emotion. He’d always assumed that only happened in the context of a complete facial expression. “Digger, I’d like very much to marry you—”

“—But—?”

“I’m not interested in any short-term arrangement. I don’t want to commit myself to you and discover that a few years from now everything’s changed and we head our own ways.”

He pulled her back into his arms. All resistance was gone, and he was surprised to notice her cheeks were damp. “You want me to sign an agreement that I’d renew?”

She thought it over. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask that. Wouldn’t do any good anyhow. I just—” She trembled. It seemed out of character. “In my family, we don’t believe in doing things halfway. You commit, or you don’t. If you commit, don’t expect that if you change your mind in five years, I’m going to shake hands and say let’s be friends.”

He was holding her tight by then. And he wanted very much to see her, but there were too many Goompahs drifting around. “It would never happen, Kellie. I love you. I want you to be my wife. Forever. No time off. No letting the lease run out.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll feel the same way when we get home?”

“Of course.” He pressed his lips against hers. “You’re a hard sell.”

“Yes I am. And if you don’t mean any of this, the price’ll be high.”

ASIDE FROM DISTRIBUTING pickups, they’d also roamed through the cities recording engraved symbols, statuary, architecture, whatever seemed of interest. They’d found a museum in Mandigol, filled with artifacts excavated from beneath existing cities. So there were Goompah archeologists.

They’d found several academies, or colleges, the most extensive of which was located in Kulnar, the home of Macao. Mirakap, an island city that was actually part of T’Mingletep, hosted concerts almost nightly. They’d recorded several, some purely instrumental, others employing singers. The Goompahs, by the way, conceded nothing to humans in the range of their voices. On the al-Jahani, Collingdale and his people seemed to have a higher estimation of native music than did Digger and Kellie.