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maybe it isn’t.” Eleanor turned first one way, then another. Fists clenched, she said, “It’s all too weird!”
    She stalked away, almost blundering into the path of the runner. Now blotched with sweat, Jenny was beginning to open up. Trevedi, her shadow, was only a pace behind.
    â€œHey, uh, Emile? Can we check my PDD now?”
    Wind got under the boy’s black jacket, and it billowed around his thin frame.
    â€œAre you afraid I’ll be weird?”
    Julie laughed. “Nah, I’ll kick you in the balls if you mess with me!”
    Emile watched her go. He wasn’t sure if she’d made a threat or a promise.
    In the dining room, the wall screens were banded with black lines. The forward screen, tuned to the BBC, had its sound go in and out. The screen at the rear of the room had better sound, but the picture kept breaking up into stray pixel patterns. Passengers complained over their breakfast until the stewards went to fetch an officer. The purser returned, dressed in a navy blue blazer and baseball cap.
    â€œI’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. We seem to be experiencing communications difficulties,” he said. Someone asked if the ship’s systems were being affected, too. Brow furrowed, the purser admitted they were.
    â€œWhat could it be? The weather’s fine,” said the old woman in the lifter chair.
    â€œSolar flare, perhaps, or a magnetic storm in the upper atmosphere,” suggested the man in the tweed cap.
    â€œThere’s no danger to ship’s operations,” the purser said. “It’s just an inconvenience.”
    One of the Irish ballplayers said, “At this rate, we’ll have to break out the shuffleboard gear!”
    Some of the passengers laughed. Others did not. And as the day went on, more and more PDDs failed. By nightfall, there was no Your/World access at all.

Chapter 4
    Dinner was subdued. Without the constant background chatter of the lounge TVs and people’s personal data devices, the dining room was remarkably quiet. To France Martin it was like the quiet that fills a room after someone had died.
    Hans Bachmann, for one, did not mind it at all. He was one of only four passengers who took the offered tour of the
Carleton
’s engine spaces. He admired the turbines, the diesel auxiliary motors, pumps, injectors, and Gorgonian mass of pipes, large and small. The chief engineer, a Panamanian named Pascal, knew his engines and plainly loved them.
    â€œAfter this trip, it’s no more,” he said, speaking loudly over the deep hum of the turbines. “No more steam.”
    â€œAnd no more pollution,” said one of the tourists, a Canadian woman in her forties.
    Pascal shrugged. “With our modern stack scrubbers, my engines’ emissions meet current UN levels,” he said. “We’re not carbon-free like
Sunflyer,
but we impact but little the air.”
    â€œThen why are they shutting you down?” Hans asked.
    A bitter smile creased the old engineer’s face. “Don’t you know? The company, they sold the ship to the
Sunflyer
people, to take us out when the sunship sailed.”
    â€œYou mean, this whole last voyage business was arranged?” asked the Chinese man. His name was Chen. He and his brothers were from a shipping company in Shanghai. Hans wondered if they were on board because they were interested in buying the old
Carleton
.
    â€œPor supuesto!”
    The Canadian woman said there was nothing wrong with that. Why shouldn’t the
Sunflyer
’s owners hail their success by arranging the retirement of the last polluting vessel at sea?
    Engineer Pascal’s face darkened. “Polluting?”
    â€œBurning is death,” she said.
    Hans interrupted a budding fight. “Are the boilers gas-fired or oil burning?”
    Pascal said something in his native tongue. It did not sound nice. Turning to Hans, he said, “As built, they burned fuel oil,