Free Revenger 9780575090569 by Alastair Reynolds Page B

don’t.’
    ‘You said it was hard to jam,’ Adrana said. ‘But you didn’t say it was impossible. What would it take to do that to a skull?’
    Her question had been innocent enough. But something clouded his face when Cazaray answered us.
    ‘Nothing you’ll ever need worry about.’

 
    4
    I’d been in bigger and grander libraries than Rackamore’s, but I could safely say I’d never been in a library on a ship, or one laid out in such curvy, swoopy lines, or one that was full of such strange and old books. It was up near the front of the Monetta , built into a room that connected through to both his galley and the quarters, and I got the impression Rackamore liked it the most of any of the places on his ship.
    ‘You’ll find things easier now we’re under sail,’ he said, standing up, one booted foot resting on the rail beneath the lowest shelf. He still had his white shirt and leather waistcoat on, but he’d undone his hair so that it spilled out in a black fan across his neck and shoulders. ‘We pull twice as hard as when we’re on ion thrust, so your inner ear has even less reason to feel confused. I confess I’m never entirely at ease until the sails are out.’
    ‘Will the sails carry us all the way to the bauble, Captain?’
    ‘More or less.’ He studied me shrewdly. ‘Do you have some idea of how we sail?’
    ‘The solar wind blows on the sails, Captain. The sails move the ship. Just like a boat on water.’
    He smiled. ‘Well, not quite . Some of the worlds have small seas, and people sail on them, I know. But it’s not the same as solar sailing. A boat can sail into the wind, but we can’t – there’s no other medium for us to push against, the way a boat’s keel works against the water. So we can’t tack, in the nautical sense. But we can use orbital mechanics to our advantage. We’re in a gravity well, you see, and that means we have angular momentum to play with. The sails can add or subtract from our motion around the Old Sun, if we tilt them – and that means we can move between orbits, provided we’re patient. Which we are, most of the time. And if we’re in a hurry, there’s the ion engine. The sails can serve as energy collectors as well – they have both a reflective surface and an absorbent one, and Hirtshal can flex one or other to face the Sun. There’s no part of the Congregation we can’t reach in under two years of sail, and many worlds are only weeks or months apart – some even closer.’
    ‘How many of those worlds have you seen, Captain?’
    ‘You can drop the formality, Fura. I invited you here, didn’t I?’ But he still gave some consideration to what I’d asked. ‘It must be fewer than a hundred. Which means that for every world I’ve stood on, there are at least two hundred I’ve yet to see. And that’s just a tiny fraction of all the worlds – just the few to which we’ve given names, and found a way to live on.’ He beckoned me nearer. ‘Here. We spoke of the Book of Worlds before. I think these might be of interest.’
    It was a bit awkward, being alone with him. Adrana never cared for books as much as I did, so she’d turned her nose up when I mentioned visiting his library. I wasn’t sweet on him either, no matter what Adrana might have cooked up in her head. He was handsome enough, but he was a lot older than me and there was something stiff and serious about him that made him seem more like an uncle or a teacher. It wasn’t that I had anything against him, although I don’t suppose at that point I’d had much chance to really know him. But he was the captain and I was the newcomer, and it was the right and proper way of it that I should be timid and respectful around him.
    The truth was, though, whatever I thought of Rackamore, I was sweet on his books.
    ‘These can’t be real,’ I said. ‘There can’t be this many of them, all different from each other, all in one place . . .’
    I caught the pride in his