54

The day of your journey upriver dawns bright and clear, despite a thunderous rain the night before. Villagers inspect and provision the boats.

A controller carries Vecla into your boat while Stralchus and Keimia settle into the other. Neither mystic nor warrior seems happy to be surrounded by robots, though Keimia has a small cadre of her warriors as well. Stralchus gives you a worried look, as if he knows something bad will happen.

You pay one last thought to Alexius, dying in the grove, and then the boats launch. Despite the pounding rain of the night before, the river is broad and deep, and the controllers have no difficulty rowing upstream.

The boats are well provisioned, not just with local food but with irreplaceable Byzantine equipment. You and Stralchus keep your rifles close as huge trees rise up around you, threatening to reach from one shore to the other and block out the sun with their shaggy branches. Haunting sounds emanate from the purple shadows of the jungle, cries of animals that sound like the screams of men.

The days glide by in comparative tranquility along the wide river. Villages dot the riverbanks, but Keimia eyes them suspiciously, and you never stop. At night, you make fires to ward off the jungle creatures. Stralchus experiments with the new fast-acting photography equipment before growing frustrated and giving up. But you investigate the camera and figure out how it works; you should be able to take pictures of this world, which would please Dr. Sabbatine.

Vecla attaches herself to you, literally and socially. Every night, she bombards you with questions about Byzantium while Stralchus and Keimia watch. Despite her intelligence, she does not quite seem to understand that Byzantium is in the future, not merely a large settlement far away. Keimia, by contrast, seems worried, as if your descriptions of Byzantium's grandeur have unnerved her, or as if she has started to understand her place in the vastness of the cosmos.