David Brin - Glory Season

“What’s wrong?” Leie asked. “Can’t you use Demeter to fine-tune—”

“It’s in the wrong part of the sky!” Maia cut in. “As of a few days ago, Demeter was in the Trident. That must mean—”

“Time,” the navigator agreed, looking at Maia. “We’re displaced in time.” His eyes widened, apparently sharing Maia’s thought. They almost knocked heads bending to look again at the sextant’s little display. “Sidereal? That’s a word used by astronomers, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Maia replied. “It has to do with measuring time by the stars. Then the number must be—”

“A coordinate,” he finished. “A date? But it’s a negative number.”

“The past, then. With a date set in decimals, instead of years and months. Let’s say it’s based on the same calendar. There’s only a small fraction after the decimal, which implies—”

“—that the date’s just after New Year, with the sun at the vernal equinox.”

“So we’re a quarter of an orbit and ninety degrees off! We should be looking for a springtime sky!”

This time the man took the controls, while Maia guided him. They were getting the hang of it, and things sped quickly. “Steady… steady… Port ten degrees… down five…” Stars and planets swept by, until Leie cried out in joy. The sun and Wengel Star were gone from sight, but their combined light was seen once more, reflecting off a blue-, brown-, white-, and green-hued globe that swelled rapidly into view, its continents and seas punctuated by polar caps and gauzy films of stratospheric clouds. A retinue of silvery moons swept past as the scene drove steadily toward the great azure ball.

This must be what Renna saw, when he approached in his starship, Maia realized. Envy had never flowed so strongly within her veins. I never imagined it so beautiful. My homeworld.

For the soul, it was a feast that satisfied hungers more yearning than the one in her belly. Despite the preachings of orthodox and heretic temples alike, the maternal deity, Stratos Mother, was but a lovely abstraction in comparison. How, Maia wondered, could anyone know or appreciate a world without looking on its face? One didn’t ask such absurdity of human lovers.

How could we ever have abandoned this? Maia marveled, recognizing features from globes and atlases, minus all the lines and labels that made human presence seem so urgent. In fact, the vast reaches of mountain and forest and desert seemed barely touched. The view was an instant cure for vain conceit.

The approach slowed as a subjective transition took place. Formerly, they had seemed to move horizontally, heading toward the planet. Now, with ocean and islands covering the entire scene, all sensation of motion abruptly turned vertical. They were falling .

The outline of Landing Continent enlarged, sweeping to the left. The Mediant Coast gleamed. Maia briefly caught sight of checkerboard farmlands and silver rivers arched by spidery bridges, before the landmass fled at an angle and southern seas filled the scene, scintillating with profuse sunlight reflections, brushed by phalanxes of heavy clouds. To the southeast loomed a chain of narrow, pinpoint peaks which, from a distance, were detectable more by how great currents split into a thousand ruffled streamers in their wake. The combed sea changed color downstream from those jutting spires.

Maia recognized the outline of this very archipelago—the Dragons’ Teeth—from the chart she and Brod had used to sail from Grimké Isle.

“How can you control the approach so fine?” Leie asked the navigator. In reply, he stepped back from the dais, raising his hands. “I felt another click, a few seconds ago. Since then, it’s not been me at all. Maybe we set off a homing program, or something.”

Maia sought Grimké, at the northern tip of the island chain. That monolith, where she and Naroin and others had been interned, fought, and escaped, showed no sign of a crater. No blasted, glazed hole in its center. Rather, she briefly glimpsed buildings, shimmering in a morning glow just before the isle fell off the upper border of the screen. In the center, meanwhile, a great cluster of connected stony towers loomed toward them.

Jellicoe.

And yet, not Jellicoe. Not the Jellicoe of today. What surged larger with each passing second was a thing of unmarred beauty. A hollow star-shaped glory of both nature and artifice. Every spire was adorned with edifices of polished stone or the metallic glitter of sleek, tethered airships. Within the lagoon, she counted three great cruisers, with sails not of dingy canvas but some black, filmy material that seemed to drink in sunlight, reflecting none.

All three watchers quailed as one of Jellicoe’s easternmost teeth plunged toward them. There was a breathtaking rash of rock and vegetation, and instantly the scene was enveloped in a blurry stream of dark stone, flowing past like rushing fluid. “Ack!” Leie commented. No one exhaled. This is some damn simulation, Maia thought numbly.

Someone shouted terse words that were tense and excited, from the back of the room. But she had only regard for the swarming motion, decelerating in front of them.

Light returned and motion ceased with an abruptness that caused them all to stagger. The youths found themselves staring, as if through a window, into a room that was a clone to this one. A younger, better-attired clone. Reddish-colored cushions graced the benches, and the walls were uncracked, polished to a glistening sheen and rimmed with cheery banners.

“Long ago,” Maia said. “It’s showing what this place was like, a long time ago.” She coughed behind her fist, and leaned over the sextant.

P(R☼ –1103.095 SIDEREAL.

“The fourth coordinate.” The navigator cleared his throat. “Time must be the next step.”

Leie spoke hastily. “If we could move forward to the present, would it be possible to see what’s going on outside, right now?”

“Might it show what happens in the future !” the man added, in a hushed tone.

Maia’s thoughts whirled. Leie’s question implied a machine that kept records, and was still monitoring events, as they spoke. To tap such real-time inputs would be a huge asset, in their present straits. Yet she doubted it was like that. What about all those galaxies and such? She couldn’t imagine a machine capable of monitoring the universe, constantly, over thousands of years.

The navigator’s idea was even wilder. Yet, in a weird way it made more sense. Maia still believed this was all a simulation, a vast, godlike cousin to the Game of Life. If so—if the facsimile took into account every variable—might it be able to project likely events, into the future? The implications were staggering, affecting everything from their present predicament to the temple’s teachings about free will.

“Let’s try to do something about that fourth coordinate,” Maia suggested, rubbing her scratchy eyes.

The young navigator coughed twice and bent over. “We’ve already been usin’ all the obvious movin’ parts.” Gently, delicately, he touched pieces of the sextant, until his hand stroked the eyepiece, where one normally looked to sight horizon and stars. The image ahead of them jiggered slightly, and the number in the little indicator screen shifted just a little. “Of course,” he said, with another cough. “It’s the depth-of-focus adjustment. Give me room, please.”

Maia stepped back. Her eyes itched and she sniffed a smoky smell. Abruptly, at the exact same moment, she and Leie sneezed. They looked at each other, and for the first time in several minutes surveyed the room. The air had changed noticeably. There was a sooty, hazy quality.