CHAPTER 24He tensed as they walked on, the hatefully familiar jerking of his nerves a warning that all was not as it seemed. Guards had been at the junction with the lights, more at the point they had just passed, things he hadn’t noticed at his rooftop examinations. There had been lights, then, true, but not as many. And why had it been decided the women weren’t contagious? What had happened when the dead guards had failed to report?
Behind him Chatto said, “There’s the ship. Over to the left.”
The Gillian, resting before wide, open doors. The new-born day had paled the sky and in the strengthening light the hull glowed with a warm, golden promise. A scatter of chiros worked to one side of it, moving with slow deliberation as they raked and smoothed the dirt. Old men with prominent ribs
