Chapter 11 - The Floating City

Mr. Grey captained his small ship through the Toscamo morning. The oars slashed the dark little waves on either side, slid into the diluted wine, pushed the boat along with hardly a ripple, and emerged softly back into the air. He drifted through the town quietly and alone. None of the houses shone with interior light or sounded with activity. They cast mute shadows on him as they passed, like war-hulks abandoned and left to float vacantly.

Soon, however, Mr. Grey’s back and arms and legs grew tired. His mechanical dispositions suited him to the rhythm of rowing, but his body paid the same energy tax as any other. The labor leeched his stamina.

Mr. Grey set the oars up and let the boat coast by the silent houses. He stared into the flood. Its surface lay like pitch in the sun’s unhappy, obscured light; a heavy, sloshing body of wine and water, impenetrable to the eye. In an ordinary mood Mr. Grey might have worried over what unseen creatures glided invisibly beneath the oily surface. Mr. Grey did not worry. He sat still, and drifted, and stared without seeing.

Presently, a repeated splash - louder than that made by oars - drew Mr. Grey notice. He looked sideways down one of the improvised canals. His settled spine cracked as he turned.

Coming at him between the houses was a tall bug. It trod the pitchy water on round feet-disks. Its legs - all twelve - pumped up and down like a steam swan’s. Mr. Grey almost expected some mechanical hissing of vapor and pistons to sound off, but the creature only made a deep, resonant chirring as it plashed closer. Its thorax and trapezoidal head were both armored in thick bands of insect chitin. Two loopy antennae projected from its front.

The creature’s path took it on a direct line with Mr. Grey’s little boat, and it showed no sign of stopping.

Mr. Grey said, “Pardon me, good sir!”

The creature brought down the leg it had raised, sending ripples that rocked Mr. Grey’s canoe. It turned its geometric head towards him, devoid of visible eyes, nose, or mouth. From somewhere in its thorax - the same place making the chirring noise - it spoke in a vibrating voice. “Looking for transit?”

“I’m… sorry?” he said, caught off guard by its ability to speak.

The bug went on unperturbed. “Not local? No problem. Need a ride?”

“Well that’s… Thank you, of course. I won’t impose.”

“Looking raisined-out in that lug,” vibrated the insect convincingly. “I got nowhere to be soon. Last chance. Free strider ride for a hard up traveler.”

“If you happened to be passing the Starharbor embassy…”

The chitin at the creature’s flanks fluttered. Mr. Grey watched a rope ladder unroll from its top. The last rung splashed delicately on the wine, next to Mr. Grey’s canoe.

“Roll it up when you’re on. Otherwise the rungs get under my feet.”

Mr. Grey knocked against the strider’s side as he climbed the swaying ladder. He apologized. Reaching the top of the tall bug, he found a flat space on its back; complete with a soft sitting rug, and a wooden shelf for luggage. Mr. Grey had no luggage. He rolled the ladder into a tight bundle at its anchor point, then settled into the plush passenger space.

The strider reached a round foot forward and gently pushed Mr. Grey’s canoe aside.

“It feels wrong to just leave the boat. Do I need to find a dock?”

“No,” said the strider. Mr. Grey felt the word vibrate through its thorax.

“I don’t want it to get in peoples’ way.”

“Vessel Control will get it. Where’d you want to go?”

“Would the Starharbor embassy be convenient for you?”

“Not inconvenient.”

The hard chitin frame shifted as the bug began to move.

It stopped almost instantly. Both Mr. Grey and the bug heard a gasp from the shadows of one hastily arranged waterstreet. Mr. Grey’s eyes dropped between the homes. The eyes recognized, and tried to repulse, a familiar figure.

Ms. Maysey.

Ms. Maysey came rowing out of the liquid alley, gasping from exertion. She lifted an arm from the oars and waved imploringly to Mr. Grey.

“I know her,” said Mr. Grey. “I think she wants aid too.”

“Unroll the ladder then.” The strider set all twelve paddle-feet down and waited.

Mr. Grey let the rope ladder unfurl. Ms. Maysey churned a few final strokes through the lake, pulled up alongside the towering bug, and climbed aboard. On reaching the top she crawled to a seat on the soft rug across from Mr. Grey. He rolled the ladder up again, while she gasped breathless thanks to both him and the bug.

“Thought for sure… be pulling all day…” She shook morning dew from the furs of her micehair and searched her puffy robe’s many pockets for the tobacco pipe and striker. She turned to the jutting antennae of the wine strider. In a whistling, timid voice, she said, “Quick jaunt to Where-the-Canvas-Dries. If you, by chance, know where it’s floating? Three shiny pebbles, is it?” She set the just-found pipe and striker on the carpet and dove back into the robe in search of her purse.

She stopped halfway through her rustling search and looked at Mr. Grey. “I hope you’re heading that way.”

“I’m going to the Starharbor embassy,” said Mr. Grey.

“Oh dear! Of course, you plotted your course first. I was visiting that Canvas-Dries shop before the morning rush is all…”

“The shop’s on the way,” cut in the strider. “Peeked the new float layout during my morning coffee-caramel. Get comfy.”

The strider left conflicting ripples on the opaque lake’s thin wine as it plied the misty morn. Mr. Grey looked between Ms. Maysey and the antennae (feeling that the latter was the best place to address the strider). “I’m sorry, I misunderstood how this worked,” he said. “The treasure fare…”

The bug interrupted him. “Forget it. I’m stretching my legs. It’ll be a low-fare day anyway.”

“You haven’t ridden? It’s better - from my perspective of course - than highwheels,” Ms. Maysey turned to the antennae. “And you striders reallytruly are so knowledgeable. And so easy to talk to.”

The bug chirred.

Mr. Grey stared vacantly onto the lake’s unreflective surface. Ms. Maysey lit up. Silence ruled while she smoked her protective pipeful. The houses drifted by like headstones.

Ms. Maysey tapped her ashes out over the strider’s flank. She squeaked out a laugh and said, “Another top-priority parchment to deliver?”

Mr. Grey turned his eyes to her. “What’s that?”

“At the embassy. Are you here on top secret senior-pencil-pusher business?”

“Genuinely, it’s only time off. Although I had originally meant to catch up with clients who hadn’t…”

“Just as I conjectured!” she said. She turned to the antennae again. “Mr. Grey’s one of the Regional Justice Center’s most diligent, persevering workers, and I think it’s admirable. I myself am trying to take my sabbatical slowly. Nothing strenuous on the mind or heart. For my good health. And Toscamo reallytruly is such a relaxing country. Even during last night’s storm.”

The strider’s thorax rumbled unnervingly. It seemed to be chuckling. “Yes it is. You’re in a fuddly country. If your friend’s a worker, he’s in the wrong moat.”

“It hasn’t been all work-” Mr. Grey began.

Ms. Maysey interrupted him. “I do think it would have been even better if I’d seen some of your famous flower gardens. How disappointing to miss out on those. Not that your new farms are bad!” She quickly backpedaled. “I love beans, of course. I grew up around bean factories. So did Mr. Grey here. And either one of us will tell you plainly; your beans are top tier.”

“Maybe they’re nice,” said the strider. It crinkled its chitin bands in a shrug. “But you’re right. The house roofs once danced with petals. Now look. Mud and sprouts.”

Mr. Grey raised a finger to interject. He wanted to mention Pots’s garden of mushroom-flowers, at the bottom of the Oh Well. He wanted to share how Pots sometimes held practices in the garden. He wanted to tell how Pots’s striped mushroom seat squealed like packing peanuts whenever she applauded him or corrected a wrong note. And Mr. Grey thought they’d love to hear how the polka-dot mushrooms changed spots depending on the notes he played, wrong or right.

Ms. Maysey and the strider were too busy discussing the bean gardens. They pointed out to each other the ones on the tops of houses, with soil still dark from last night’s storm. Mr. Grey said nothing. He hadn’t wanted Ms. Maysey’s extra company when she’d first come gasping at them from the alley. He’d wanted quiet, not talk.

But now, Mr. Grey found himself the trio’s third wheel. Quiet was his to take.

Mr. Grey let his thoughts drift with his eyes, which drifted with the things in the lake.

There were houses. There were other loose canoes, not yet picked up by Vessel Control. There were messages in bottles. Paddles and gaggles of ducks and geese mingled over a breakfast of gummy minnow. He saw rafts of livestock rocking among the houses, densely packed and lowing with the moos of flat, wide cows.

Mr. Grey noticed a mossy wooden waterwheel rolling just below the surface. Only the wheel’s top arced above the wine’s oily dunes. The strider pumped its twelve legs up and down neatly between the turning wooden blades as they passed above. Its own circled feet added ringed ripples to the wheel’s waves. Ms. Maysey’s mice squeaked with oohs and aahs. Mr. Grey thought it acted more as an air wheel, in its mostly sunken state. He tried joining the dialogue with the droll thought.

The joke stopped in his throat. Ms. Maysey and the strider were still gabbing about the farms with a natural flow. Ms. Maysey had completely forgotten her pipe.

“I think all those rows of stems are kind of cute,” said Ms. Maysey.

“How do they grow in Starharbor?” asked the strider.

“Also on stems. You only ever see them dried though. After the factory. Here, you get to see your food’s source.”

“Suppose so. Still, the flowers were prettier.” The word ‘prettier’ came out especially grumbly and resonant from the bug’s thorax.

“Was there a famine?”

“Not famine.”

“I saw a famine once. The factory forgot to deliver to Smithersfield. Some pushers I knew in the cubicle hedge went eatless for several shifts. The Three Day Famine, they called it. Lots of shouldering.”

“There was hunger. The Wind was sulky. No rain. Low lakes. But many feel the wine would have bloomed again.”

“I wish you’d listened to them. Instead of whoever dug up all your flowers.”

Mr. Grey saw the name coming, wished it wouldn’t, but held no place in the dialogue to divert it.

“Someone from your home,” said the strider. “Some lady. Jodee Coats. She gave us beans. She convinced everyone the cure to eatlessness was farms from your moat.”

“I didn’t know a Starharborean made the call.” Ms. Maysey elbowed Mr. Grey. She added, half-joking, “Well, she can’t have been all wrong then.”

Mr. Grey saw a chance to speak. He said, “I think it comes to this; is the added food worth the flower loss?” He looked between Ms. Maysey and the strider’s antennae. “Are her changes for the better?”

The strider smacked a wet double tap on the water before Ms. Maysey could speak. It had pulled up next to a floating shop; two stories of leather stretched over wood-frame. The curly antennae pointed at Ms. Maysey. “This is where you get off.”

Ms. Maysey unfurled the ladder and patted the strider’s chitin twice in appreciation. She called, “Good luck on your secrets!” to Mr. Grey as she descended. Then she gathered up the bunches of her robes, bustled into the shop, and disappeared.

Wordlessly, the strider pattered towards the embassy. The city began to wake. Mr. Grey heard the vibrating churr of other striders behind the floating homes. He heard canoe oars splashing in the adjoining alleys. He fixed his eyes back on the unreflective surface of the floodwine. He didn’t glance at the roof gardens full of beans. But, he wondered.

‘Were they for the better?’ That hadn’t been answered. Mr. Grey’s companions had spent the ride discussing their thoughts. They’d run out of time for his question. He wondered about Ms. Maysey. What secret parchments did she suspect he filed? What kind of mission did she suspect him of? ‘Nothing grand’ was the answer. Mr. Grey had only wanted to find Jodee Coats. But she’d gone to Glory Days, where Mr. Grey couldn’t follow. He thought for a time that taking up the violin again might buy his ticket. But that had been a murky plan. It fell apart too in the end. Mr. Grey’s time in Wine Medo had turned into the non-work outing Mr. York had proscribed. A regular vacation, the kind many a Starharbor native only saw in dreams.

But Mr. Grey worried. Not about his lost treasure; he worried about his lost time. He reached a hand into his pocket. He felt his ticker’s broken face.

Mr. Grey drummed his fingers absentmindedly on the strider’s chitin. “You need something, friend?” asked the strider. “We’re almost there.”

“No… I mean, yes actually. Sorry. You’ve been so kind to take me this far. Would you mind taking me back? Now that I think about it, I’m not going to the embassy.”