She loved to see the Expedition train strung out across the Lowland’s arid plain, with its spindling-drawn wagons, the chains of servants and bearers, the gleaming coach that transported her father and his precious books, even the small flock of runner-birds. If the weather was fine the Philosophers themselves would walk, marching into the Lowland’s mysteries, arguing endlessly. The Lowland Expedition was a grand gesture of the civilization of the Shelf that had spawned it–and it was brave too, for all the explorers knew that they could never go home again, whatever they discovered.
Down there was Tomm, one of the junior cartographers. Whenever Enna flew Tomm always wore a special red cap so she could pick him out, a bright red dot in the dusty line of Philosophers. At twenty-one he was just a year older than Enna herself–and he was her lover, though that was a secret to all but her closest friends, and certainly to her father, or so she hoped. When he saw her, he waved. But his waving was sluggish, like an old man’s.
On Old Earth time was layered. When she rode her balloon up into the air, she was ascending into quicker time. If Tomm’s ears had been sensitive enough he would have heard her heart fluttering like a bird’s, and conversely when she looked down at him he was slowed, trapped in glutinous, redshifted time.
