Now the ponies were ships and torpedoes, the letters were compressed data bursts, and the deserts were the hard vacuum of space and the emptiness of the gate hub at its center. The effect, though, was that news of the far worlds came unreliably. The events on Auberon and in Auberon system took on an exaggerated importance because she knew about them immediately. Anything going on in Bara Gaon or Laconia or Sol, Freehold or New Cyprus or Gethen, became foreign and exotic by being rare.
