“I don’t know their names. I was assigned to you in particular. If the Network was working properly … but it’s not.” She hesitated. “They were probably in Vox Core at the time of the attack. You might be the only survivor. So someone has to come for us. They’ll come as soon as they can. They’ll find us and they’ll take us home.”

So she said, though the sky remained blue and vacant.

*   *   *

That afternoon I scouted the area where we’d landed, keeping within sight of camp and collecting kindling for a fire. Many of the trees on this island of the Vox Archipelago produced edible fruit, Treya had said, and I collected some of that, too. I bundled together the kindling with a length of ribbony twine salvaged from the lifeship, and I tucked the fruit—yellow pods the size of bell peppers—into a cloth sack, also salvaged. It felt good to be doing something useful. Apart from an occasional bird call and the rustling of leaves, the only sound was the rhythm of my breathing, my feet moving through the meadow grass. The rolling landscape would have been soothing if not for the column of smoke still smudging the horizon.

The smoke was on my mind when I came back to camp. I asked Treya whether the attack had been nuclear and whether we ought to worry about fallout or radiation. She didn’t know about that—there hadn’t been a thermonuclear attack on Vox “since the First Orthodoxy Wars,” more than two hundred years before she was born. The history she had learned hadn’t discussed the effects.

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s not like we can do anything about it. And it looks like the wind is favoring us.” The plume of smoke had begun to feather out parallel to our position.

Treya frowned, shielding her eyes and looking to windward. “Vox is a ship under power,” she said. “We’re at the stern of it—we should be downwind of Vox Core.”

“What’s that mean?”

“We may be rudderless.”

I didn’t know what that might imply (or what might constitute a “rudder” on a vessel the size of a small continent), but it was confirmation that the damage to Vox Core had been extensive and that help might not reach us as soon as Treya hoped. I guessed she had come to the same conclusion. She helped me dig a shallow pit for the fire, but she was moody and uncommunicative.

*   *   *

We didn’t have a clock to count the hours of the day. I slept a little when the stimulants wore off, and when I woke the sun was just touching the horizon. The air was cooler now. Treya showed me how to use one of the salvaged tools to light the kindling I had gathered.