A low recorded announcement informed them it was time for the tram to take them back to Terminator, which would soon be catching up to their longitude-as would the sun. “Oh no!” Wahram exclaimed faintly as he heard the announcement. “We’ve only just started!”

“There are over three hundred paintings here,” Swan pointed out. “One visit will never do. You’ll have to come back.”

“I hope,” he said. “These are really magnificent. I can see why they called him Il Furioso. He must have worked every day.”

“I think that’s right. He had a place in Venice that he rarely left. A closed shop. His assistants were mostly his children.” Swan had just read this on one of the notes.

“Interesting.” He sighed and followed her to the tram.

On the ride back to the city, they passed a group of sunwalkers, and Swan pointed them out. Her guest roused himself from his reverie and looked.

“So they have to keep moving,” he said. “How do they rest, eat, sleep?”

“We eat on our feet, and sleep in carts pulled by companions,” Swan said. “We take turns at that, and on it goes.”

He gave her a look. “So you have an inexorable spur to action. I can see the appeal.”

She almost laughed. “Do you need such a spur?”

“I think everyone does. Don’t you?”

“No. Not at all.”

“But you join these ferals,” he said.

“That’s just to do it. To see the land and the sun. I check out things I made, or do a little crack mining. I don’t need to find reasons to stay busy.”

This was exactly backward, she realized, and shut her mouth.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “Most people do.”

“Do you think?”

“Yes.” He gestured at the sunwalkers, whom they were rapidly leaving behind. “What happens if you run into an obstruction that keeps you from continuing westward?”