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Jon had thought, long ago, that he might want to be a teacher. History, perhaps, at college or university—he never thought he would get along particularly well with grammar school children, who struck him as far too noisy and unpredictable. Once he fell into the clutches of the Magnus Institute he put those thoughts aside with the sense that both he and his potential students had dodged a bullet. After he’d been duped into ending the old world and toiled to bring about the world that followed, he was sure no one would want him anywhere near a young person.
But things being as they were, a Pupil of the Eye—or a Keeper of the Watch, as he was being called now--didn’t have any actual duties associated with his role. Martin, as Anthologist, collected Stories and went on excursions into the wild domains for diplomacy and not infrequently, smiting. Jon didn’t like to pull his attention from the London Enclave for fear it would return to the wild if left unattended. He didn’t have the technical skills or physical strength needed to rebuild London’s infrastructure, and the Eye’s omnipresence made large groups of people daunting. What he did have was a knack for explaining things and a lot of experience learning to manage the flood of information the Eye poured into his head—both surprisingly necessary skills, given what the Change had wrought on the world’s children, both those born after and those who had still been small when Jonah ruled. Still, his teaching experience so far had been limited to tutoring Beholding aligned little ones, generally one at a time.
None of which really prepared him for the consequences of his inviting himself to chaperone a class of Reception students on a field trip to the Vast. At least Martin was with him. “You’re ruminating,” Martin said.
“How could you tell?” Jon replied.
“Well, first off, you were getting a bit fuzzy around the edges,” Martin said with a teasing fondness.
“So you’re saying I need to pull myself together, are you?”
Martin’s answer came in the form of a spluttering laugh and a slap to Jon’s back that went right through him, putting proof to his observation that Jon was indeed having trouble maintaining a corporeal form. “We’re here, by the way.”
The London Enclave School was cobbled together from the warped remains of a public school a kilometer or so from where the Magnus Institute had once stood. Walls had been repaired with scavenged stone, the rooms within were outfitted with similarly sourced furniture and supplies, and an inner courtyard was arranged so the children could enjoy outdoor recess without leaving the safety of the heavily warded building.
The apocalypse had led to a gap in births, with no children conceived during Jonah’s Watch, and a small, but gradually increasing number arriving after. There were no year one or two classes at present, but this year there was a small cohort of children in Reception—twelve to be exact. They arrived at a door bedecked with construction paper flowers.
“I believe this is our door,” he said to Martin, trying to pretend his way to confidence.
Martin was not fooled. “You’ll do fine. You’re the most important person in the world. I think you can handle a bunch of little kids.”
“I don’t want to be the most important person in the world,” he complained.
“And yet, here we are. And fortunately, you multitask quite well, so I’m sure keeping Simon Fairchild and a bunch of five-year-olds safe from each other will be a piece of cake.”
“And that’s another thing. I don’t trust Fairchild.”
“Obviously. Now scoot. I’m right behind you.”
Jon walked into the classroom, took one look at the motley crowd of small beings blinking up with varied eyes from their rough circle on the floor, turned on his heel, and walked right back out again. He did not quite discorporate, but it was a close thing and he might well have if he hadn’t walked right into Martin to bury his face in his chest. “I can’t do this,” he said.
“I think he needs a minute,” Martin said to Mx. Paolo.
The Reception teacher patted him lightly on the shoulder, scaring up a flutter of eyebees to dance around their heads. “Take all the time you need. We’ll sing some songs in the meantime.” Her presence moved away from the two of them and back toward the little ones.
Martin led Jon to a two-seater bench that was more comfortable than it had any right to be given it had only sprung into existence a moment before. Jon lowered himself onto it and leaned into Martin’s comforting bulk, A cool swirl of fog surrounded them both, shielding them from prying eyes and softening Jon’s Sight. “They don’t even have a proper classroom,” Jon began, as though that was the worst of it. The school building’s all patched up, there aren’t enough supplies, there’s no playground equipment—“
Martin’s attempt at sympathy came out more like a snort. “I don’t know about you, but the trappings of school never did a lot for me. Do they really need uncomfortable desks and worksheets? Giant classes and,” he paused with a shudder, “Standardized tests?”
Jon chuckled in spite of himself but sobered almost immediately. “Just having enough infrastructure rebuilt to run proper A levels would be a miracle at this point. Look around at the world, Martin. Can you really tell me it’s not horrible?”
Martin looked up, and Jon followed his gaze to the sky, where the clouds were spun into gossamer spiderwebs. “It is, a lot of places. But it’s getting better. We’re reclaiming it, bit by bit.”
Unfortunately, Jon had gotten himself into a state, and even if a part of himself could stand aside and know that he was all worked up over something that wasn’t--that shouldn’t be relevant to the current moment, it wasn’t as though he could just command himself to calm the fuck down. He made a noise between a sigh and a sob. “What do I even say to them? I’m sorry we wrecked your world? I’m sorry you don’t get to be whatever you want to be when you grow up because you’ll be spending your whole life trying to navigate your way out of an apocalypse?”
“You don’t. Apologize, I mean. This is the only world these kids have ever known. The old world is just a story to them.”
“Just a Story,” Jon repeated, adding emphasis.
“You know what I mean.” Martin tipped Jon’s head up so he could look into the eyes on his face.
“I stole their birthright.” He was just as stubborn a bastard as Martin thought he was.
“Stole whose birthright, exactly? Trevor wouldn’t have existed at all in the old world. Neither would Orange or Sylvia. Hawthorn would be about as pleased with the idea that he ought to have two eyes as I would be if you suggested I ought to have eight fingers.”
“They didn’t ask to be born,” Jon insisted.
“Neither do any of us. You’re the one who wanted to chaperone this trip—“
“To make sure Simon behaves himself—“
“Exactly. And you’re not going to lay your guilt trip on a bunch of five-year-olds while you do it, right?”
“Right. Okay.” Jon took a moment to concentrate on making himself presentable. Mx. Paolo was accustomed to his varying appearance, and the children were unlikely to be frightened by a monster made of static and eyebees, especially as his little eyes were common and nonthreatening enough that children frequently caught them and kept them in jars by their beds to ward against the Dark. He just felt better wearing a human shape when he did human things like chaperoning field trips.
When he walked back through the door, Mx. Paolo was leading the children through a simple little chant apparently called the Buddy Song. Martin lingered in the doorway. The song ended, and Mx. Paolo clapped their hands. “One, two, three, eyes on me.”
The children chanted back, “One, two, eyes on you,” though the eyes in question were mostly on Jon and Martin.
“The Keeper of the Watch will talk to you a bit about the Entities and explain what to expect and how to behave on our trip, then you will find your buddy and be assigned a chaperone.” They turned expectantly to Jon.
“Ah. Yes. Mr. Sims is fine. Keeper of the Watch is a bit of a mouthful. Um.” Hawthorn, a little boy with unruly chestnut hair and three eyes, one right in the middle of his forehead gave him a little wave from his spot near the front. Jon tried not to feel ashamed that the child he tutored felt the need to make him feel better instead of the other way round. They were all so little. How was he going to explain without traumatizing them before they even got out the door? “Do any of you know what Beholding is?”
A very enthusiastic hand went up. It was attached to Hawthorn, of course. “Beholding sees everything. It’s where all the eyebees come from.”
“Thank you, Hawthorn. The eyes, by the way, aren’t just part of Beholding, they’re part of my body, just scattered around all over the world.”
“Does it bother you when we catch them?” A tiny girl with blond pigtails asked out of turn.
“No, but it does hurt if you damage them, so please be gentle. Beholding is made of the part of us that emotionally resonates with—“ Reception students, right, and not all as precocious as Eye children tended to be. He made an effort to simplify his language. “That pays attention to knowing things. It’s most connected to us when we have strong feelings, when we’re afraid or angry or have a secret, or sometimes when we’re very, very curious.”
Another hand went up, a bit more timidly. Jon recognized the nearly featureless being stuffed into a long skirt and voluminous rainbow jumper he thought might have been knitted by Martin. “Yes, Orange?”
“How come the Entities like fear so much?”
“We—the Stewards and the human scientists studying them--think it’s because fear is a big, powerful emotion. When you are very afraid, your whole attention is on the thing you are afraid of—and the Powers need attention to exist. They're made out of us, and the more of us they can contain, the stronger they are. Most other emotions can’t hold your attention so strongly for so long as fear can. Right now, The Entities are lazy and use fear a lot more than they should. We’re trying to teach them better, but it’s hard because they’re rather stupid.”
“And that’s why we have Stewards, right?” interrupted the little blond girl again. Molly.
“Yes, that’s right, Molly. Remember to raise your hand so everyone gets a chance to ask and answer questions. But yes, an avatar is a person who fully represents one or more of the Entities. We are a small part of the Entity we represent, and they are a big part of us. There are a lot of avatars in the world, and a lot more people who are aligned to an Entity even if they aren’t fully avatars.”
“I’m Stranger!” Orange volunteered. “But a little bit Deception, too.”
“I’m Change,” A girl sitting on what looked like a large metal plate said. Sylvie, the Eye told him. He raised some eyebrows at the unfamiliar euphemism for the Desolation.
A whispery buzzing from the swarm of bees in the corner added, “Baba says I’m of the Multitude.”
“Yes, several of you are aligned or avatars already,” Jon said quickly, to keep the conversation from being further derailed. “A Steward is an avatar who has taken an oath—an oath is a very serious sort of a promise—to shape one of the Entities toward better behavior.”
“Sort of like a teacher!” And that would be—ah yes, Molly again.
“Yes and no. Like I said before, most of the Entities are not very smart. For some, it’s like training a big, dangerous animal—like trying to get a T-Rex to follow directions and not eat people. For others, it’s more like trying to change the course of a river. Stewards still live by sharing people’s big feelings, including fear, with the Entities, but they learn to shape how they do it in ways that help more than they hurt.”
“In Life’s Name,” a child he didn’t know added in the solemn voice that indicated a prayer, perhaps? There were a lot of new religions springing up, evolving from existing ones and borrowing from literature. Sylvia’s family is Earthseed, The Eye told him, possibly just to be distracting.
Jon tried to get back on track. “The newest Steward of the Vast has just taken his oath and has invited us to his domain for a picnic and,” he couldn’t suppress a shudder, “flying lessons. It’s important that you stay close to your companions and listen to what the chaperones say. Sometimes the Entities can convince people to do things that hurt other people, so we all have to look after each other.”
Molly’s hand shot up for a change. “Is it going to be scary?”
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, he didn’t let himself say. He took an unnecessary breath to compose himself. “Yes. That’s rather the point. The better we are at understanding our fear, the better we become at not letting it rule us.”
A little boy he couldn’t quite place, Arjun, the Eye told him, raised his hand. Jon nodded at him and he recited, “We do not belong to fear. Fear belongs to us. We are afraid so we can be brave. We are brave so we can be kind.”
“That's--quite lovely, Arjun. Remember that, all of you. Mx. Paolo, are we ready to pair up and head out?”
Mx. Paolo nodded. “Quite. Let’s see, Arjun, Molly, you will accompany the Anthologist, I mean Mr. Blackwood. Orange and Hawthorn, you are with Mr. Sims.” A chorus of grumbling arose from the children who had not been placed with the local celebrities. Mx. Paolo assigned the other pairs of children to herself and the other three chaperones, including Hawthorn’s older sibling, a teenage Steward of the Web. He was glad of the extra support. Fairchild might claim to be planning to play nice, but it would be a while before Jon trusted his intentions. “It’s a short walk to the bus, then on to the boundary. Remember to stay together. The unreclaimed domains are not safe, and we wouldn’t want to lose any of you.”
They tromped out to the bus and piled on, two to a seat. Jon’s Hawthorn and Martin’s Arjun sat together in the seat just behind Martin talking nonsense about some game or other, while Molly squished herself into Martin’s side and Orange perched uncertainly on the edge of the seat next to Jon, squeezing her fingers together and peeling them back apart, then sticking them in her mouth to bite off the ends. Jon shuddered. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?” Orange said innocently. She knew exactly what.
“Don’t bite your fingers off.”
“Why?” The question was a challenge.
“Ah. Well, it’s…” How did he tell a creature whose entire existence revolved around being strange and disturbing not to be strange and disturbing?
“No snacking on the bus,” Martin chided gently, with poorly concealed mirth.
“Stop laughing at me, Martin.” Though the admonition was, in retrospect, brilliant, given that Orange was simultaneously snacking on her fingers and snacking on Jon by doing something creepy on purpose.
The injunction against autocannibalism led to Orange braiding her fingers instead, so Jon took the opportunity to look out the window. As they reached the edge of the London Enclave, Jon cast his attention outward to get a view of the boundary between the enclave and the Vast domain. The impossible cliff that dropped into an impossible ocean was at the edge of a meadow dotted with wildflowers. Simon Fairchild stood a couple of meters from the cliff’s edge, leaning on the cane he didn’t need but which he thought gave him a grandfatherly air. He was alone here, as expected—the bare minimum to even be considered for Stewardship was the safe release of everyone trapped in the avatar’s domain. The domain itself would be preserved by the Eye until the Fairchilds found a way for it to sustain itself without unreasonable harm.
The bus pulled to a stop at the boundary and Jon gathered his wits about him. They lined up and exited the bus to the excited chatter of the children. Martin moved to the head of the group, caught Jon’s eye, and made the universal sign for “keep a lookout for those two,” pointing two fingers at Jon and then aiming them at Arjun and Molly. He held up a hand at the boundary, feeling the shape of the thing, and stepped through. Jon stayed back with his four charges, but he made sure to keep a lot of eyes on Martin and Simon Fairchild.
“…six chaperones and twelve children. And we will be leaving with the same number. All intact,” Martin was saying.
“Of course, of course,” Simon replied, a bit too flippantly for Jon’s taste. “Though I doubt there’d be much I could do about the—what is that, a Corruption avatar?”
“His name is Trevor, and we’re not sure.”
“Right, then. Ready when you are.”
Jon took that as his cue. He nudged Mx. Paolo and gestured to the boundary. Each of the chaperones crossed through the barely visible shimmer and walked their pair of children to a picnic blanket a few meters from the edge. Jon waited until the rest had gone through, not least because he still had four unpredictable little ones on his hands, including, Eye help him, Molly.
Martin jogged back to meet him and took over his pair of charges. “You could have just manifested another set of hands,” he suggested, teasing.
“Two is plenty. For the moment.”
He got a blush along with a laugh from Martin this time and counted it a win. Martin paused at the barrier with Molly and Arjun, said something quietly to them, and passed through.
“You two ready to go?” Solemn nods on both sides. Jon stepped up to the boundary, took a moment to make sure his hands were solid and clasped tightly about Hawthorn and Orange’s, and stepped across the threshold. The air of the boundary felt slightly thick, as though the domains were separated by a kind of surface tension.
The Eye drew the children’s fear and excitement through him and for a moment he exalted, energized by the wide sky and the feeling of immensity around him. The Entities’ presence was stronger outside the warded enclave, and the part of him that needed the connection to the parts of the world that were real in a different way than stones and grass and trees drank it all in.
It took a moment for him to notice the sharp, intense knot of terror at his side, and another moment—too long really—for him to recognize it for what it was and push the hungry Eye back down and away from the center of his thoughts. Hawthorn, beside him, clutched his hand so hard it threatened to dissolve back into static.
Jon dropped to his knees beside Hawthorn. “It’s a lot, I know, I’ve got you,” he murmured, trying to figure out what to do to pull the boy back. “Orange, come close, please.” The little Stranger crowded in beside them. Her presence dimmed the effect of the Eye like a shadow blocking the sun. Hawthorn’s mind was still scattered into a mess of Seeing pieces, unable to pick out where he was and what he was doing.
“Hawthorn, eyes on me!”
All Hawthorn’s three eyes met Jon’s—along with however many Orange was sporting at the moment. “Good. Remember, don’t try to force down what the Eye gives you. Let it pass through and away. Remember, the thoughts in your head are the river, and you can stand on the banks and just wave as they go by.”
“Mhmm.” Hawthorne said while struggling to comply.
“What’s your anchor?”
Hawthorn tapped his lips with a finger, then pursed them as though he were blowing out a candle while he slowed his breathing. While he worked to settle himself, Orange wrapped herself around him, not quite touching, stretching her body into a wide shield. Hawthorn leaned into her side, grounding himself on her.
Jon relaxed along with them. “Excellent work, both of you. The Entities can be stronger than each of us, but they’re not stronger than all of us, together. Shall we?”
Two little nodding heads, two little hands in his, and they made their way to where the rest of the group had settled, unnervingly close to the edge of the cliff. At least they were all sitting down.
Simon Fairchild strode back and forth at the very edge of the cliff and occasionally off the edge, arms waving and eyes bright. “The Vast is, well, it’s Vast!” he was saying. “It’s all about how big the universe is and how tiny we are. Would you like to see how big the universe is?”
“Yeah!” said a chorus of little voices.
“Wonderful!” He rubbed his hands together. “Oh, now what’s that thing we’re supposed to say? Oh yes! Will you share your Fear with me?”
“Yes!” shouted a chorus of high-pitched voices.
“Steward Fairchild, you need to be able to clearly identify those who opt out,” Jon reminded, carefully keeping his voice neutral, for now.
“Of course, how silly of me. If you want to see how big the universe is, scoot forward.” Most of the group moved forward, though a few children and two chaperones stayed back.
“Now ask me, ‘How high is the sky?’”
A dozen voices chorused, “How high is the sky?”
And the sky opened up. Time and space ballooned around them. Jon felt stretched, attenuated, his many eyes each alone in a great emptiness—and then it ended, and he was back on the ground again sandwiched between Hawthorn and Orange. Someone nearby was crying. He could hear a chaperone walking the distressed child through a grounding exercise.
Fairchild waited a few moments for the children to quiet down, then continued. “The oceans are also Vast—in the middle of the ocean, you can look in all directions—up and down, left and right, forward and back and see nothing but water and sky. If you are extra brave, come to the edge and look down into the water.”
Mx. Paolo clarified the instructions. “Everyone down on your bellies—if you have bellies—and poke your heads out over the edge. If you don’t want to try this one, go sit together back on the blanket.”
Jon helped Orange and Hawthorn arrange themselves flat on the ground, looking down into the water. He could feel the Eye’s focus narrowing, centering on Hawthorn—an Eye child having a new, terrifying experience would be a feast for it—and that child transforming the fear to wonder, as Jon hoped he could, would be a lesson for both Hawthorn and the Eye. He held the children’s hands in his, letting the vertigo flow through him and thinking of Lichtenberg lines. “Last chance for anyone who wants to skip this one,” Fairchild said merrily. “Now you say, ’How deep is the sea?’”
“How deep is the sea?” the children chorused.
The ocean rose up to meet them.
There was no solid earth beneath him anymore. The first sensation to hit him was the cold, then the rough motion of choppy waves. He pulled his charges closer to him, sacrificing a human shape to bind them in among his eyes. It was dark under the water, and there was little to see. Hawthorn began to struggle—he alone of the three of them actually needed air to breathe. Jon forced himself to wait and in an eternity or twelve seconds, the boy steadied.
Another few moments and they were back on the edge of the cliff, not even damp.
“One more activity before lunch. Back to the picnic blanket, everyone,” Mx. Paolo said, their voice tight with forced cheer. They were fully human, with a moderate affinity for the Buried and a touch of agoraphobia. Jon noticed Martin and their Web Steward, Mo, converging on her, half a dozen children clustered around the three adults like ducklings. Jon herded his pair back to the blanket once he was sure Hawthorn wasn’t too wobbly. Orange, for her part, seemed entirely unaffected.
Fairchild sat crosslegged on the ground with his chin resting in his hands, looking like a merry scarecrow. “I’ve saved the best for last, little darlings!” His gaze fell on Molly, who had inched forward until she was almost in Fairchild’s lap. He favored her with a wink before continuing. “Did you know that being weightless in space, like the astronauts before the Change, feels just like falling? Some of them fell for a whole year! They slept falling, they ate falling, they did scientific experiments falling, they even went to the bathroom falling—and that was quite a project.”
He paused for effect. “This is the essence of the Vast. The catch in your throat. The emptiness beneath your feet. The freedom and terror of falling free. When you’re ready, raise both hands up to the sky and off you’ll go!”
Molly’s hands were up over her head before Fairchild even finished the sentence. Beside Jon, Orange followed suit just as the chorus of childish screaming ramped up to earsplitting volume. Hawthorn hesitated. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Jon reminded him.
“The Eye wants me to.”
“The Eye is a brat. What do you want to do?”
Hawthorn wrapped his arms about himself. “Just Watch this time.”
“I think the Eye will like that just fine, and if it doesn’t, tough nuts.”
Hawthorn giggled. Jon wasn’t up to neverending freefall today, either. Better to stay grounded and keep a close Eye on Fairchild. When the screaming, much of it recreational, hit thirty seconds and a couple of the kids—and Mx. Paolo—seemed close to their limit, Jon turned his Gaze on Simon. The old man flicked a wrist, and the exercise ended, terror and excitement gradually settling into the almost warm sensation of relief and the murmurs of adults comforting children who’d had a bit too much. Simon’s face was pushed out into a slightly exaggerated pout.
“That was sooooo scary!” Molly squealed. “Can we do it again?”
Simon Fairchild visibly brightened. “Not now, little miss. The grownups won’t let us have any more fun today.”
“Boo.”
Jon gave his two charges a gentle squeeze. “Hawthorn?”
“M’okay. Counting by sevens.”
“Good strategy. It’s a lot to take in.”
The Eye glanced off his sanguine little Stranger, apparently bored by her lack of terror. He checked in anyway. “You all right, Orange?”
“That was fun,” she said without conviction. “Does the Eye always Look so hard out here?”
Jon shook his head. “It probably feels a bit more intense right now because I’m keeping a very close Watch on everyone. For safety.”
“Can I put my hood up?”
“Of course.”
The picnic things were spread out on the picnic blanket in the middle of a patch of clover. Jon found Martin and sat down beside him, allowing Hawthorn and Orange to mingle with the rest of the children in the middle of the blanket. Orange pulled her jumper’s hood over her face, tucked her hands into her sleeves, and spread her long skirt out to cover her legs so she looked like just a bump of brightly colored fabric on the picnic blanket.
“How did yours do?” Jon asked Martin.
Martin huffed a laugh. “Well, you saw how Molly did. We’ll have to set up a meeting with her parents and Fairchild, but as long as he’s on probation I’d discourage any unsupervised outings for the time being. Arjun was…not a fan. But it hasn’t seemed to affect his appetite any,” He gestured to the boy, who was cheerfully downing what looked like peanut butter and chutney wrapped in naan. “How did Hawthorn manage?”
“The passage out of the Enclave was the worst part, as expected. Orange was a big help."
Martin smiled. “The two of them are thick as thieves. It’s odd, given their opposing Entities.”
Jon noted, “It’s intentional. Orange took the lessons on facing and integrating fear quite seriously. She sought him out at the beginning of the school year.”
“I suppose it’s no odder than Lonely and Beholding,” Martin sighed fondly.
“You embody Lonely and Beholding in the same person. I don’t know how you manage.”
“Dissociation, mostly,” Martin joked, earning himself a gentle punch to the arm from Jon.
Mx. Paolo seemed to sense when the children were done picnicking and had begun to contemplate hijinks and called out, “One, two, three! Eyes on me!”
“One, two, eyes on you!” they shouted back.
“It’s time to pick up our picnic things. We wouldn’t want to leave a mess for Steward Fairchild.”
The busyness of lunch collection and blanket folding occupied a few more minutes. Fairchild walked them all to the boundary. “Thank you all for coming,” he said, merrily. “I hope to see you again soon.” Jon hoped he was imagining the slightly predatory lilt in his voice.
“Children, what do we say?” Mx. Paolo prompted.
“Thank you Steward Fairchild,” they responded in a singsong chorus.
They passed back through the boundary and piled on the bus. This time the kids were content to let Martin and Jon sit together. Jon leaned shamelessly into Martin, while Martin played with the eyebees nesting in his hair. “Today was a good day, yeah?” he asked.
Jon sighed. “Good enough for today.” It wasn’t enough, of course. It was never enough to make up for what he had done to the world on that October day almost eight years ago now—current public opinion in London notwithstanding. How many people had died who would not have if he’d been stronger—smarter—more attentive to what he put in front of his eyes? The current global population is four billion, two hundred five million, eight hundred sixty, the Eye was helpful enough to note.
Martin picked up on the change in his emotional weather and said, “Beholding being a twit again?”
“When isn’t it?” He made himself turn his mind to other matters. “The Fairchilds are talking about starting up a Vast-based transit system. They’ve got a good chance to be successful, given the state of the roads.”
“I Know, Jon,” Martin mumbled back, amused. “We’re booked for a couple of weeks from now—it’s about time we got caught up with how the Usher Foundation is managing the Change.”
“We?”
“Of course, we. The other Stewards have London well in hand. It’s about time we got away together.”
“On business.” He couldn’t quite hide his disappointment.
“We don’t have to spend the entire time working.”
“I suppose. But—travel by Vast?”
“We could see if The Paradox has scaled up quantum tunneling yet,” Martin offered.
“Travel by Vast it is.”