Asimov's SF, June 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “I'm no theologian, Speaker.”

  “Yes. Best we each stick to what we know—is that your philosophy? I imagine if we all did that the world would be a less turbulent place. My advisers tell me you're here on a mission given you by Elder Maryam in Wilson.”

  “And for my own purposes too, Speaker.”

  “Of course, of course.” He eyed her bag. “To which end, you bring me gifts, do you?”

  “Nothing so coarse, Speaker. Trade goods.” She opened the satchel. Within, she had samples of new kinds of hardened steel and brilliant glasses, a novel musket trigger mechanism, and a box-like device that exploited the strange properties of photomoss.

  The Speaker inspected all these carefully, and handed them on to his advisers. He was intrigued by the photomoss. After being exposed to Starlight for a while, it could be shut up inside its box, and a small metal wheel, attached to the outside of the box, would begin to turn.

  “This is just a toy, of course,” Tripp said. “But it's meant to illustrate a basic principle. Speaker, we think the photomoss is an engineered organism. Much of what it does is not, apparently, for its own benefit, but for the benefit of a user. In that, it's like a tractor beast, which happily digs out furrows and ditches and canals not for itself but for whoever commands it. There is another sort of moss that, we believe, is intended to strain the salt from seawater. The mirror-birds seem designed to scatter light into the dark—”

  “I've heard of this idea, of course,” the Speaker said. “These animals were changed, made into what they are, for some purpose or other, by people who have long gone.”

  “People—intelligent creatures like us, or not—yes. That's what we think. They went away, or died out. Since then the various creatures have evolved away from their original forms, but they still retain traces of that engineering, which we can exploit.”

  “Or,” said Elios, “the creatures were Designed that way, by those who made the world. It's just that we poor Avatars have yet to discern the purpose of that Design.”

  “Well, that's possible too.” Tripp saw the slightest smile crease the corners of the Speaker's eyes, and she knew that the theology didn't matter; they were talking business here. “With the photomoss, it clearly gathers energy from the Starlight—but, unlike our own grass and trees, and indeed unlike the Slime, it doesn't exploit much of that energy to fuel its own growth. Instead it dumps it out as light—which we find useful for lighting shady rooms.

  “But we can do more than that.” She opened up the wooden box and showed the Speaker a kind of mesh of electrodes around the moss clump, and a small, simple electric motor. “It's possible to use the flow of energy to power this engine. I'm sure you see the possibilities, if we can scale this up. You can have photomoss reliably and cheaply powering machines to do whatever you like—dig ditches, build your palaces, drive carts without horses—”

  The advisers gasped in wonder at these visions.

  “Or drive machines of war,” said Elios. He smiled. “But none of these miracles are available yet, I suppose.”

  Tripp shrugged. “I'm here to ask you to help fund the development of these advances, as well as to purchase the results in the long term.”

  Elios dismissed the photomoss box with a wave; an adviser took it. “And I suppose all of this is contingent on our resolving the current war. Shall we get to the point of your mission, Madam Tripp?”

  Tripp sat on her couch. “Yes, Elder Maryam asked me to speak to you. I think she hoped that a neutral voice, a relative outsider, might be able to broker a solution satisfactory to all parties. But I don't deny an ending to this conflict is in all our interests. The shutting-off of such a vital trading link is strangling global trade—”

  “Yes, yes. And I suppose you're authorized to offer me the return of my daughter—yes? And perhaps the handing over of that buffoon Brod, who caused all this trouble in the first place.”

  “Or at least a commitment to punish him.”

  “But I'm sure that Maryam explained to you, point by point in her own tedious way, how the lovestruck youngsters are only one reason for this conflict.”

  Tripp forced a smile. “Actually the word she used was ‘pretext.’ “

  “Ha! Well, she would. You are caught in the middle of a conflict with much wider purposes—political, economic—even strategic. Why do you think she summoned you as the ambassador of peace? Have you thought that through, Polar?”

  Tripp stiffened, feeling insulted. “Go on, Speaker.”

  Elios counted the points on his fingers. “You at the Pole are long-term rivals to the Navel, in terms of your divine position. Even you secularists must see that in terms of strategic advantage. You'll have to be dealt with some time, I imagine, but for now we want to keep you calm—neutral—on good terms, as long as possible. Also we need your steel and gunpowder, of course. This is the calculation Maryam has made—that we'll listen to you.” He sat back, his face hard under his shaven head, his plucked and dyed eyebrows fierce, and ticked off the next point. “And what is it we are being encouraged to hear from you? She instructed you to offer us a deal concerned with the specific reason we are supposed to have gone to war: Brod and Vala. And if you make such an offer, and it's just, and if our low-browed allies get to hear about it—and they will, Maryam will make sure of that—then I will not honorably be able to turn you down. For if I do there's a good chance my alliance will dissolve. You see? They think they are fighting for my family honor, and the sanctity of the religion; they think it is a war of heroes and warriors and so forth—and not about hegemony, about breaking the power of an upstart statelet. And if that pretense is taken away, they will either not understand the geopolitics, or will be repelled by it. Either way we must withdraw, and Maryam will win.”

  Tripp considered this flood of ideas. “You know, I really am just an engineer. I'm not used to thinking this way. You make me feel—”

  “Naive?”

  “Innocent, anyhow. But the fact is, Speaker, the offer to return Vala has been made. So what are you going to do about it?” She found she was anticipating Elios's response with some interest.

  But what that response might have been she was never to learn, for just at that moment a messenger burst in with the news that Elios's son, Khilli, sick of the drawn-out siege, had taken matters into his own hands.

  His face white with anger, Elios hurried out. It took Tripp some time to find somebody to escort her off the yacht safely, and back to shore.

  * * * *

  VII

  “Brod! Brod son of Maryam! I am Khilli son of Elios! Come out here and meet me! Brod, you are a coward and a kidnapper and a rapist, and I will avenge my sister. . . !”

  Once off the smack, Tripp was met by her patient New Denver officer, and escorted back through the besieging army's camp. But even from the harbor she could hear Khilli's bellows. Single-handed, armed only with a sword and spear, he was stalking beneath the walls of Port Wilson, and was yelling up his challenges and insults to Brod.

  Tripp shook her head. “I can hardly believe it. One champion challenging another to single-handed combat? Are we really reduced to this?”

  But Khilli's challenge had the whole camp churned up, and Tripp could hear the roars of support, and the clatter of spears and musket-butts on shields. The Denver officer said, “It's one way of getting it finished. Oh, Madam Tripp—there are a couple of traders who said they wanted to speak with you.”

  “Traders?”

  “From Holle City. They said you knew them.” He pointed to a small supply dump, where fresh horses waited, and two strangers dressed in heavy, concealing cloaks. The officer stuck out a hand. “Been interesting meeting you, madam. Travel carefully now.”

  She shook his hand, uncertain. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  Then, her samples pack and rucksack on her back, she walked warily toward the strangers. Even when she'd come close enough to touch them she still couldn't see their faces within their heavy hoods. “So,” s
he said. “Holle City?”

  “Of course not,” the taller of the two hissed. He pushed back his hood just enough to let Tripp glimpse his face.

  “Brod. And Vala, I suppose. What's going on?”

  “My mother was going to give Vala up to her father—and me. That's what's going on! As you knew very well, Tripp, as you went over to the Speaker's yacht to broker the deal.”

  “I was hoping to stop the bloodshed—”

  “You could have told me.”

  “Evidently your own spies work well enough. And what about Khilli?”

  “What about him?”

  “Aren't you going to respond to his challenge?”

  “Are you joking? I could take down that tractor-spawned brute, but his companions would rip me apart. No, ma'am, Khilli can wait.”

  “And I,” Vala said from the shadows of her own cloak, “am not going back to the Navel. To be a Sapphire would have been dull enough. To be a failed Sapphire, returned in shame—not for me!”

  “Then what? What do you want of me?”

  “We're coming with you,” Brod said simply. “There's nothing for us here. We'll make a new life at the Pole—together.”

  “As simple as that?”

  “You owe us, Tripp,” said Vala heavily.

  “I owe you nothing,” Tripp snapped back. “And besides, don't you think we'll be pursued? Your father no doubt has spies riddling Port Wilson—and that brother of yours doesn't strike me as the kind to give up easily.”

  “We'll deal with that as it comes,” said Brod.

  “Oh, will you? You've dealt with it all so well so far, haven't you? And what about the journey itself ? You're talking about a trek to the Pole! Have you any idea—”

  “Brod! Brod, son of Maryam! Come down here so I can strangle you with your own intestines. . . !”

  “He's not getting any more patient,” said Brod. He untethered three saddled horses, and jumped on the back of the strongest-looking. “Shall we make a start?”

  Vala grinned and leapt easily on the back of her mount.

  And Tripp, gloomily resigned to the fact that neither of these two children had any idea what they were letting themselves in for, even if they weren't being pursued by a demented super-warrior, clambered aboard her own beast, pulled its head to face the north, and set off.

  “Brod! Brod. . . !”

  * * * *

  VIII

  They were to travel only fifty kilometers on their first set of horses, Tripp said. Then they'd change to a solution better suited to the long haul—which spanned no less than twelve thousand kilometers, all the way to the Pole itself.

  In those first hours Brod was intensely excited, charging along the open road into unknown realms, with a beautiful girl at his side and an enraged enemy at his back. “We're making history!” he cried. “They'll tell our story for generations!”

  And Vala laughed prettily. But she stayed back with Tripp, who kept her own horse at a steady trot, and Brod soon had to rein in his own mount.

  Tripp praised him for being “sensible.” “Horses must have their own ancestral dreams of a lost world where their grandmothers were slender and fleet. They'll always run if you give them their head. But they are better suited to a gentle, steady trot. Their hearts won't take it, not if you push them too hard—and you're likely to break their spindly legs.”

  Brod felt restless to hear this sage advice. Sensible? Shepherding his horses for fear they might drop dead under him wasn't in his nature at all—and not what he had expected of this journey, which he had vaguely imagined as a kind of running skirmish with Khilli and his warriors.

  But Vala surprised him by adapting quickly to the ride. She even seemed interested in Tripp's yakking about the horses’ history. “How strange to think that horses, like people, might have been brought here from somewhere else. And, I suppose, sheep and cows and pigs and chickens as well.”

  “Yes. Along with grasses and wheat and fruit trees—everything you can eat must have been brought here in Helen Gray's ship, for we can't eat Slime or tractors.”

  “I can imagine carrying a box of grass seed. But how could you carry a horse? I've seen the trouble it takes to ferry a horse a few kilometers by sea. My father says this is proof that we live in a Sim, because you could never carry a horse in a spaceship.”

  Tripp shrugged. “There's much we don't know about our origins. We'd know more if not for the fact that your father and his predecessors have assiduously destroyed any relic they find of that long-ago space journey. Perhaps you could carry a living horse frozen, like meat. Or perhaps you could take it from its dam's womb as an infant, and carry it that way.” She slapped her own mare's neck. “But certainly, if this nag is an Avatar, why isn't she better suited to this world?”

  “I suppose you'd say humans should be better suited to living here too.”

  “Well, so we should. If we were meant for this world, there would be at least some parts of it where we could go naked.”

  Vala actually blushed.

  Brod's interest was snagged for the first time. “Naked?”

  “Sure. Presumably at the equator, the Substellar, at least. Why should we need thick layers of clothing to survive even there? Why should we not have been made fit to go unclothed, like animals?”

  Brod roared laughter. “There you are, Vala! If Elios and Khilli went around the Navel bare as babies, they wouldn't seem half so impressive!”

  “And nor would you,” she said pointedly, and trotted a few paces ahead of him. But he could tell she was teasing him, and his heart warmed.

  After the first fifty kilometers Tripp directed them off the main north road, which even this far from Port Wilson was reasonably metalled, and led them a couple of kilometers down a track to a travelers’ stop with a small inn and a much larger stable.

  “Wonderful!” Vala cried, leaping down from her horse. “A bath, a change of clothes, a good meal—”

  “But we can't stop,” Brod said, glancing back down the road. “Your brother won't be far behind.”

  “Brod is right,” said Tripp. She climbed down stiffly, and made for the small dwelling house. “We're going to change our transport here. But we must press on . . .”

  Vala pouted, and she looked as if she was going to protest for a moment. Brod had seen her deploy her temper before, and he knew it was a formidable weapon. But she quickly perked up when Tripp began to assemble their mode of transport from here on.

  On the way down, Tripp had left a compatriot here at the way station, another Polar, a man named Astiv Pellt. Older than Tripp, he was shorter, rounder in his layers of coats, and fierce looking—until he smiled, to reveal rows of discolored teeth. He said he was Tripp's cousin. “But then we're all cousins up there,” he said, grinning again. “Not a very big place, you see. We all have lots of husbands and wives, and cousins and second cousins . . .”

  Astiv brought over two carts, covered with wool-lined tarpaulin, with three teams of horses to drag them.

  “My backside wouldn't stand twelve thousand kilometers on horseback, even if yours would,” Tripp said. “And we design for redundancy. We can lose one whole horse team; we've a spare. We could lose a cart; we've a spare. Astiv has made sure we've got plenty of food—we at the Pole have perforce become experts at drying, salting, and other storage methods—and we can collect the water we need as we travel. We have plenty of coats, boots, hats, blankets. We'll travel for two watches and rest for the third; the horses need their sleep. But we'll sleep in shifts, with at least two of us awake—and driving the carts—at any moment.”

  Brod tried to look as if he knew what he was doing as he walked around the wagons, checking their iron-rimmed wheels and leather harnesses. He had more experience of ships than land transport, but he could tell when something was soundly made. He was impressed by the Polars’ preparations and evident competence.

  Vala, though, seemed faintly disappointed. “I half-thought we'd be bowling along in some magic chariot
driven by photomoss or something. Like the gadget you gave my father. How long do you think it will take us to get there?”

  Astiv shrugged. “Three hundred watches. Maybe a little more.”

  “Three hundred?” Vala's eyes were wide. “That's twenty small-years!”

  “It's a big world,” Tripp said, “and we have to cross a fair chunk of it.” The carts both had simple hourglasses fitted. Tripp turned one of these. “We'll wait one hour,” she said. “Go bathe, eat, eliminate—whatever. And then we leave, with or without you.”

  * * * *

  The landscape was monotonous, a rough plain littered with eroded hills and patches of grassland and forest, and wider lakes of Slime, black as the inside of Brod's eyelids. The towns were few and far between, and they never stayed over anyhow, pausing only to change their horses. You rarely even saw any evidence of farming or logging save close to the towns, though you did sometimes see untamed horses and cattle, and even a few wild tractors patiently plowing furrows in non-existent fields.

  Tripp said that this continent of Seba was the largest on the planet, a great shield of rock that covered a quarter of the world's surface and stretched all the way to the Pole and beyond, though it was broken by inland seas and lakes. And as watch after watch wore by, though the four of them became used to exchanging their roles as drivers and passengers and sleepers, the sheer immensity of the world began to bear down on Brod's limited imagination.

  It made it worse that he was never alone with Vala, and neither of them had the nerve to do more than a little gentle flirting in the presence of the stolid figures of the Polars.

  And, even deeper than that, he started to miss his old life—his companions, his ships, his adventures—even his enemies—even his mother. It had been a grand gesture to uproot himself from everything he had grown up with, and set off into the complete unknown. But somehow he had not thought ahead to how it would actually be to have his whole world stripped away like this, to be plunged into a situation where he wasn't even particularly competent, let alone in command. Sometimes he even wished Khilli might catch up with them, so he could remind Vala how good he was in a fight.