“Yes, he did.”
“I guess the Diggers must have sent some scouts out across 166 Thirty. They would not have been aware that they were crossing a border. See, it is nothing more than an imaginary line.”
Ty couldn’t help laughing. “Einstein, if we ever get out of this, I’m going to send you to charm school.”
“Huh?”
“Etiquette classes for Ivyns. How to talk to people of other races.”
“Why?”
“Never mind. I interrupted you. Go ahead.”
“Those scouts must then have seen some Red border troops. Neoanders.”
“And if you were in their moccasins, what would you think when you first laid eyes on a Neoander?”
“Bug-eyed, no. Monster, yes.”
Ty nodded. “With due respect for Bard and his kin, it would have been better if the first Spacers they encountered had been Dinans.”
“What of the Neoanders?” Einstein asked.
It took Ty a moment to follow. “Hmm. If they saw the Diggers while the Diggers were seeing them, they’d have reported it.”
“Red knew about the Diggers. Maybe a long time ago.”
“Knew, or at least suspected,” Ty agreed. He could feel parts of his brain relaxing as the mystery dissolved. “They put their intelligence assets to work on it. Ariane started sniffing around for clues. Used her connections to Survey for all they were worth. Pulled strings to get assigned to the Seven. And brought home the prize.”
“If you want to think of Marge as a prize,” Einstein responded. Searching the boy’s face in firelight, Ty couldn’t tell whether this was deadpan humor or just more social cluelessness. It didn’t matter though.
“The Pingers!” Einstein called out, as if it were obviously the next topic.
“Sonar Taxlaw said they were sea people—before Donno shut her up,” Ty said.
“Do you think he beats her?” Einstein asked.
It was such an emotional can of worms that Ty considered it carefully before answering. Once in his life, before the war, he had fallen for a girl as quickly as Einstein had for Sonar Taxlaw. That one brief experience with stupid blind love sufficed to make it possible for him to acknowledge its reality and respect its power.
“I think,” he said, “that their society is comfortable with corporal punishment to the point where what keeps people like her in line is the fear of it. Not the reality. I think there’s nothing you can do about it and that if you do so much as look sideways at Donno he will kill you. But you can probably get away with small gestures of kindness toward the Cyc—assuming you’re ever allowed near her again. If you show her too much favor she will be punished. If you touch her, we’re all dead.”
“Why?”
“Because this is one of those cultures that is psychotic about female reproductive organs. Now, let’s get back to the Pingers. Name mean anything to you?”
“No. You?” said Einstein. Ty’s peroration had affected him terribly and reduced him to monosyllables.
“I have a vague recollection,” Ty said, “but I would have to look it up to be sure.”
“‘Sea people’ suggests boats,” Einstein said. “But—”
“But we’d have noticed those.”
“Maybe it’s a contingent of Diggers that hides in the thick forests along the coast,” Einstein tried.
“Donno claimed all the land, though,” Ty said, “and said the Pingers had jurisdiction over the oceans.”
“So what’s your theory?”
“I don’t have one,” Ty said. He was lying.
This ended the evening’s conversation. They rolled out sleeping bags and bedded down. Ty slept surprisingly well. He woke up once, to the howling of wild canids. The volcanic eruptions that had been making the Ashwall so thick seemed to have abated, for the stars had come out and the habitat ring was now visible in the southern sky, the Eye shining somewhere above the Galápagos. The canids had spied it too, apparently.