Book 4: Chapter 27: Just Passing Through
Bob
July 2334
Utopia River
Bridget spent some time walking around, talking to the crew. I knew she was trying to get sociological data, so I left her to it. I was more interested in the changeover to the Utopia River. I asked Malin about it, and she just turned and glanced at Kar. Apparently he was either the official spokescritter for this group, or the only one who had the energy to talk.
“We’ve switched rivers a couple of times,” Kar said. “It’s a little rough in the middle part of the connector, which is why we like to hop on a boat. But you could go it on your own if you had to.”
“Do you know why?” I said this as innocently as I could, but I was really interested in Kar’s level of knowledge.
He shrugged in response. “It’s the way the world is. It’s how the Administrator made it. We don’t question or judge.”
How the administrator made it? That sounded an awful lot like a religious statement. Were Quinlans starting to think of the Administrator as a deity?
Bridget came back to our group and lay down. “We’re just entering the Gronk tributary now. That spit of land”—she pointed downstream—“is where it splits from the Arcadia. It does a half circle and dumps us out going downstream on the Utopia. Three Lagoons is on the far shore, so we’ll have to jump ship and start swimming right away.”