“Yes,” said Captain, “but soon enough he will know the truth.” He glanced down toward Eve’s belly.

“Then I thank you for sparing me, and for holding my secret in confidence,” said Eve.

Captain considered it, and shrugged. “It seems right,” he said. “It is not precisely what El wanted; but enthroned as he is in his Palace, viewing the Land from a high seat, he does not see its complexity. This Land was made wrong. All of his efforts to make it right only spread the wrongness about in new ways. It is left to souls like me to decide what to do about it; and though I cannot see all the answers, I can guess that adding more wrongness will not help matters.” And with that Captain made his mount turn around and rode out through the gate.

Assisted by Thunk and his band, the people of Camp bent their backs taking what useful things as could be removed from the cabins and preparing them to be carried on a long journey. Two days were spent in the preparations, which only seemed to grow more complex and fall farther behind the more effort was put into them; but on the third day they all formed up, staggering under back-loads, and looked to Walksfar for some indication as to which way to start walking. “There are many places we could go,” he said, “but I believe our simplest course for now might be to walk in the footsteps of that thing.” And he pointed north toward the hill-giant, who in the last day had made a long stride westward out of the river, and seemed to have an intention of climbing up out of the valley to see what lay beyond the mountains.

Down to the river they all went, and found it much wider than it had been yesterday, and brackish with salt from the distant sea.

Chapter 47

Chapter 47

Much of the time, watching Bitworld through the LVU was literally like watching grass grow. Eventually its souls might get around to inventing paint, and then spectators in Meatspace might also have the pleasure of watching it dry. And yet millions watched it anyway because there was just enough crazy to make it interesting.

Sort of like baseball. Corvallis Kawasaki had never been a fan of that sport despite—or perhaps because of—a youthful stint in Little League and efforts on the Japanese side of his family to interest him in it. On the South Asian side they had all been cricket maniacs, and so the young Corvallis had had two vaguely similar sports to choose from, both of which were characterized by long spans of nothing happening with just enough sudden bursts of excitement to keep the fans from wandering off.