"Oh." After a pause: "Bet New York was much bigger, wasn't it?"
"Cities were bigger in the old days. Too big. It drove people mad to live in them. That's why the cities were destroyed. Your Dukes make sure the same thing doesn't happen again by building walls around the cities. Galveston won't ever get any bigger than it is."
"Is that the way things are in Antarctica, too?"
"You'll find out about Antarctica when you get there. Go to sleep—or at least let me sleep."
Van Alen sounded irritated. The Antarctican was a queer duck, Kesley thought, as he lay awake in the silence. Van Alen was a slick operator, calm and self-assured, but there were strange chinks in his armor. He blew up, occasionally, lost his temper—not often, but sometimes. And there were many questions he would not answer, and others that seemed to disturb him more than they should.
He conducted himself strangely, too—doing things almost without motivation, it seemed, though Kesley felt that deep calculations lay behind the seemingly gratuitous acts. Such things as picking the first hotel they saw, or tipping the proprietor a needless half dollar. They stood out sharply against the fabric of reality. They were unnecessary actions—or were they?
Kesley didn't know. And Kesley resolved, in that moment, not to try to find out. He would abrogate all responsibility, let happen what might. It was the only way to ward off the terrors of unanswerable questions. Away from his home, away from the farm, he simply was not equipped to act independently—yet. He decided to sit tight, ask no questions, and look for no answers.
They left Galveston early the next morning, via the Snowden, a creaky old second-class freight-steamer, carrying eight other passengers and a small herd of cattle on their way to Cuba. Van Alen had made all the traveling arrangements; Kesley, having no idea how such things were managed, had done nothing.
The ship docked at Havana, discharged its load of kine, and moved unsteadily southward. From Havana to Merida, in Yucatan; from Merida to Panama. The charred wreckage of the old canal was gauntly visible as they steamed past the Isthmus.