“I am,” Washen replied.

“And you’re the Second Chair, sir?”

“I suppose,” Pamir rumbled.

The two captains had recently become Submasters. The precise reasons for their promotions were complex and a little sordid and inevitably quite sad. But to a boy’s mind, the story was obvious. The Waywards were evil and dangerous souls who had risen up from that secret world, Marrow. Washen and Pamir had done heroic deeds, beating back their enemies, and their new epaulets had been earned by their bravery and undiluted loyalty to the Great Ship. The Master Captain herself, with nothing in her heart but gratitude, had bestowed these high offices on their proven, glorious shoulders, and now everyone should sleep easy through the night.

“You’re here for the meeting,” the boy told them.

He was walking beside Washen. They made an unusual pair—the small boy with short straight hair and a stocky build, and the tall, willowy woman with the pretty face and the basalt black hair worn in a tight bun. Washen nodded and glanced down at her companion, and with a false nonchalance, she asked, “Do you live nearby?”

“Up there,” he replied, waving at the hill rising before them.

“Hunting for a local guide?” Pamir teased.

Washen conspicuously ignored him.

With pride, the boy announced, “This is the oldest city on the Great Ship. That’s why we call it Alpha City. Or the First City. Or just Alpha.”

“I know,” Washen purred.

“The Master Captain always holds her most important meetings out there, on those big rocks out there.”

“So I understand.”

“Have you ever been to one of those meetings?”

Washen shook her head. “I don’t believe so. But there’s always the chance that I don’t remember.”

“So why walk up this way?”

“That’s a wonderful question,” Washen allowed.

“Because we’re lost,” Pamir offered, remaining a step behind the First Chair and her new best friend.

Other pedestrians laughed with a nervous glee, but the boy seemed to disapprove of their mood. He frowned for a moment, then he decided to warn Washen, “There’s nothing important up here. Nothing at all.”

“Is that what you think?”

Was this some kind of trap? The boy concentrated before repeating his warning. “It’s an old neighborhood. The houses can’t be torn down, unless they happen to fall down. And they can’t fall down, because everybody is supposed to keep them strong.”

“Because this is an historic district,” Washen explained. She winked at the boy. “The first people to board the ship built those houses. That makes them important. And one or two captains were born up there, as I understand it.”

The boy seemed genuinely surprised. “Which captains?”

“Just some little ones,” Washen said.

“I’m going to be a captain,” her new friend announced. Then he glanced up at Washen with a sudden wariness, and finding something agreeable in her expression, he looked back at the Second Chair. “I’m going to be a captain soon. Very soon.”

Pamir was a tall, imposing man. Unhandsome and typically surly, he had little interest in charm or false smiles. His heavy rough-hewn face was perfectly capable of frowning at any crew member or passenger, at any time and for the smallest good reason. But this was a child, and perhaps Pamir’s new uniform and rank helped him to behave. Whatever the reason, he decided to avoid the bald truth. “Maybe you will be a captain,” he replied simply. “I wish you all the luck.”

Then through a private, heavily shielded nexus, he said to Washen, “If there’s still a ship to rule, that is.”

EVEN IN THE midst of a seemingly ordinary walk, the Submasters were busy watching over the routine and the remarkable. Buried nexuses made it possible, and their rank made escape from their duties almost impossible. The ship’s giant engines were being repaired and refurbished in a crash program. Security teams still were hunting for the last of the Waywards. Passengers and the crew had to be encouraged and kept informed, and that required a multitude of media campaigns, each tailored for a given species and the quirky local cultures. And always, rumors had to be exposed and killed in very public ways. If any hazard terrified Washen most, it was the capacity for a simple story to ripple through the public consciousness, mutating and swelling in importance as it spread out from whatever misunderstanding or half-truth had given it birth. Right now, as she strolled calmly into the ancient neighborhood, she was dealing with a persistent bit of nonsense: The captains and their families were preparing to abandon the Great Ship. It was a rumor that began the very minute the Waywards were defeated, and despite every attempt to prove it wrong, the lie continued to find life.

Today, the abandonment story was being told by an obscure species using a language of elaborate scent markers and fluorescent urines. As soon as the trouble was noticed, a team of AIs and xenobiologists began working on a countercampaign and the means of delivering it. Washen was alerted, and while walking on the narrowing road, she examined and canceled half a dozen plans. “Too much;” was her general assessment. “A light touch,” she demanded. “Get a captain to pee the truth in public,” she suggested; and then she looked up, surprised and more than a little pleased to find a familiar scene greeting her.

A grove of ageless oaks and walnuts covered a piece of land just large enough to appear endless from the edges. The heavy interlocking limbs and thick green leaves produced a shade so compelling that only a few Lipanian murkshrubs managed to survive on the stony black ground. The single break in the canopy was above and alongside one low-built house. Obviously conceived by engineers, the structure was solid and balanced and slightly drab, fashioned from carved basalt and cultured diamond. Martian trusses and Roman arches lent strength and an accidental elegance, and the false sunshine poured over it, granting it a false brilliance. The front door stood shut—a thick white door made of smart plastics and brass nourishes—and for a little while, it seemed as if no one was at home. Washen gave a greeting, but she couldn’t hear the door calling to the inhabitants, and it certainly didn’t speak to her. Perhaps the house was abandoned, she thought. If it were empty, she would buy it. She had time enough to make that decision and briefly imagine living here again, then to suffer the first tugs of regret. She didn’t belong in this place. The girl who had lived here once was gone, and it was a foolish thing to wish for.

The boy was still hovering nearby. She turned to him, asking, “Whose home is this?”

“It’s somebody’s,” he blurted with authority.

Then a face appeared behind one of the diamond windows, and Washen felt a giddy, almost intoxicating sense of relief.

“See?” the boy added.

But the face vanished with a strange swiftness, and the door remained closed and silent. With his patience spent, Pamir stepped up and used a heavy fist, pounding until a set of locks turned liquid and flowed into the jamb. The door opened grudgingly. The peering face belonged to a little human woman. She now appeared in the gap, and with a whispery little voice said, “Yes, sir. Yes, madam. What is wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Washen insisted. “I used to live here, that’s all.”

The boy gave a low laugh and ran off to tell what he had just learned.

“And if it’s no trouble,” the Submaster continued, “I’d love the opportunity for a quick tour, please.”

A hard pain struck the woman. Several hundred of her neighbors and presumed friends were standing back in the shadows, watching everything. She stared out at them, a grimace slipping loose for a moment. Then she buried her rage, and with a soggy voice muttered, “I can’t stop you from looking.”

Her discomfort was contagious. Washen flinched, and said, “I know this is an imposition, ma‘am. And if you tell us, ‘Go away,’ we most certainly will.”