The Book of All Skies, page 16
“Why would you want to do that?” Imogen asked bluntly.
“I’m an astronomer. If you want to study Jierra’s sky, you need to keep moving.”
“Why not stay in one place, in another land?” Imogen persisted. “There are plenty of stars everywhere.”
Sejan laughed. “Jierra’s sky is special.”
“In what way?”
Sejan was silent for a while, as if he was wondering whether or not he should take the question seriously. “Once it’s dark enough, I’ll show you,” he said.
For now, the sky was only growing brighter. Del watched the red light suffusing through the air as they circled the hill; even when she’d been approaching Erema, she had never seen anything like this. Perhaps a raging fire, hidden from view behind a mountain, might produce the same effect. The heat in the air was apparent, too: still not as strong as that of the land, but steadily increasing. For a star to be so close that it reversed the usual thermal gradient was shocking. Even back in Thena, everyone had talked about this star and this land, but however plausible their arguments for its existence, a part of her had always treated it as a kind of children’s tale.
A dazzling speck of light appeared ahead of them, spilling over the rocks at the side of the hill. Del raised her forearm to protect her eyes.
“Too much, already?” Sejan asked, surprised. “I suppose I’m used to it.” He stopped the cart, then rummaged in a box and found two pairs of black-lensed spectacles, which he offered to Del and Imogen. “You shouldn’t need them for long,” he promised.
Del hesitated, but when she put them on she wasn’t blinded; she could still see her companions, the cart and the road.
“You look ridiculous,” Imogen scoffed, but she put on her own pair.
“You look mysterious,” Del replied. “When I can’t see your scowl, it’s as if you’re a completely different person.”
“What language is that?” Sejan asked.
“Peladan,” Imogen replied.
“Ah.” He didn’t ask where Peladan was spoken, and why he’d never heard of it. Del could see no reason not to tell him their whole story; however implausible he found it, she didn’t think he’d abandon them to the perils of sunlight just because he disapproved of their urge to confabulate. But it didn’t feel right to distract him with their wild claims while he was still in the process of navigating their escape from the dawn.
As they continued around the ring road, the gleaming bead unfurled into a luminous archway that stretched from the hill far into the distance. The aperture had never looked so palpable, the transition from land to land and sky to sky never so extreme.
“What if I change my mind and agree to go on to Sadema?” Imogen pleaded. “It’s only five more circuits. We might get a pleasant surprise, and find ourselves face to face with some intrepid competitors from Thena after all.”
“Too late,” Del replied.
As they drove through the archway into Jierra, Sejan offered a warning. “Don’t look back toward the west for a while; even with the spectacles you might find it painful.” Del felt her stomach tighten; the instructions would be easy to follow, but somehow she’d failed to realize that the light she’d seen so far, too intense to gaze upon directly, was coming from the opposite side of the sky to the rising sun.
“I won’t,” she promised.
She peered resolutely ahead. It was hard to make out all the details of the landscape through tinted glass, but she could see a field of tall flowers nearby, and trees in the distance.
Sejan turned off the ring road, onto a highway heading east. They hadn’t seen another cart for a while, and now they appeared to have the road to themselves.
“We thought there’d be more people traveling this route,” Del told Sejan.
“They probably came earlier, and then took it slowly,” he replied. “Waiting for the eastern Hoop to become accessible isn’t that bad if you’re sightseeing anyway.”
Del didn’t need to look back to picture the view of the neighboring land’s sky rapidly shrinking away against the glare of the Jierran dawn: all around her, the ground was growing brighter. And on either side of the road, she could now see flowers the size of her hands, on stalks as high as her waist, all lined up facing west.
“How do these plants survive the onslaught?” Imogen asked.
“Dawn’s not a problem for them!” Sejan replied. “They get their energy from sunlight, the way normal plants get it from heat in the ground. Later on, they’ll need to close up to avoid losing moisture, but right now they’re preparing for their favorite time of the year.”
“What about the animals?” Del wondered.
“Some migrate, some burrow down to avoid the heat.”
“Burrow down?”
“I know that sounds strange,” Sejan admitted. “But it really does end up cooler deep in the ground than up at the surface.”
Del noticed an odor wafting toward them. “That’s a fuel lake?”
“You can’t miss it, can you?” Sejan replied.
“I can’t miss the stink, but I can’t see it.”
Sejan gestured to the right. It took Del a moment to realize that he was pointing to a solid-looking patch of green that she’d mistaken for some kind of field.
“That’s water?”
“Water full of algae. Don’t try swimming in it.”
“And all the fuel comes from those lakes?” Imogen marveled.
Sejan didn’t reply. Del suspected he was too polite to mock the peculiar gaps in their knowledge, but also too honest to act as if these lacunae were normal.
“You might have noticed that we’re not from around here,” she said.
Sejan laughed. “Even I wouldn’t call myself a Jierran. It’s been a long time since anyone was born on this land.”
Del had been intending to segue into her and Imogen’s void-crossing misadventure, but this revelation was too intriguing to ignore. “But they have been, in the past?”
“Sure. Some people lived nomadically; some lived underground for half the year. If voles can do it, why not humans?”
“But then why did they stop?” Imogen asked.
“I suppose it was because life’s easier, elsewhere.”
“Then why did they start?”
Sejan paused to consider his reply. “Maybe for the same reason I did. Jierra’s special.”
“It’s not hard to come in and grab some fuel from the lakes, then go,” Imogen argued. “You can get all the benefits with none of the problems.”
“I’m not talking about accessing fuel.” Sejan glanced back them. “You really don’t know about the sky here? You’re not joking with me?”
“We really don’t know,” Del replied solemnly.
“Then I really will show you, the first chance we get.”
Sejan sped up, eager now to outpace the sun and make good on his promise. The road east was a little bumpy, but in surprisingly good repair for a structure subject to periodic blazing heat with no permanent workforce to attend to it. Del supposed that the drivers of the tankers that flocked in from all across the Overgap had learned to fix any problems they encountered, before the damage got out of hand.
Gradually the sky grew darker, and Del and Imogen removed their protective glasses. Sejan had switched off his headlights before they passed through the Hoop, but he kept them off and allowed their eyes to adjust to the deepening gloom.
“Well, there’s at least one other star besides the one that wants to kill us,” Imogen remarked, pointing to a faint dot emerging from the grayness.
“And you’re quite sure that’s a star?” Sejan asked her.
“Now you’re just being rude,” she replied. “We might not be Jierrans, but that doesn’t make us idiots.”
Sejan said, “If there was nothing but stars to be seen, would I be here?”
Del thought for a while. “It could be a small moon. High enough up to catch the sunlight.”
“It could be,” Sejan agreed. “Any other possibilities occur to you?”
Imogen said, “Another world. Orbiting the sun, the way Jierra does.”
“Yes.”
Del stared at the dot. “How could you tell? Oh ... I suppose it moves against the stars, but not the way a moon would.”
“Exactly.”
“But it’s so small,” Imogen complained. “I understand that it’s worth establishing its nature, and maybe working out its orbit. But once you’ve done that, what else is there to do? Why keep coming back for another look?”
Sejan said, “Be patient. Just a little longer.”
More lights emerged above them, until they were surrounded by constellations as bright and varied as Thena’s. Del didn’t ask, but she assumed that the vast majority were genuine stars. Beside the road, the flowers were closed, their heads drooping, but the sun would awaken them soon enough. “What a strange life,” she mused. “To be controlled by a star as it moves across the sky.”
They reached a cross-roads, and Sejan turned south.
“Where are we going?” Del asked.
“Trust me,” he replied.
“I knew we’d end up with a cannibal eventually,” Imogen muttered.
The track here was much rougher than the highway, sending the cart swaying and lurching. “Sorry about the ride,” Sejan said. “My colleagues are getting a bit slack.”
“Fellow astronomers?” Del asked.
“Yes.”
Imogen said, “Why isn’t the road your job?”
“This isn’t my territory; I’m just passing through. Believe me, I’ll do plenty of roadwork on the other side.”
Del could see a structure in the distance, silhouetted against the stars. It was a large building, a little like a grain silo, but in place of an ordinary roof it was topped with a dome. There was nothing else in sight but fields and scrubland; if this was an abandoned village once used by the mythical Jierrans, there wasn’t a lot left standing, at least above ground.
Sejan brought the cart to a halt beside the building, then jumped down. “Come on!” he called eagerly. “We’re well ahead of the dawn right now, but we don’t want it to get close enough to spoil the view.”
He dragged open a sliding door and took a few steps inside. “Ah, you two had better wait,” he decided. Del had no argument with that; he’d switched on no lamps, and there was no skylight, so all she could see was his heat blotch.
Del stood in the doorway while Sejan grabbed something and began hauling on it; from the movement of his limbs and the sound it made, she guessed it was a metal chain. As he dragged the chain, an even louder creaking sound issued from above, and a crack appeared in the darkness. Two pieces of the domed roof had been drawn aside; Sejan kept working until the crack was about a quarter as wide as the whole roof.
In the starlight, Del finally saw the building’s occupant: an enormous white barrel, mounted on a rectangular yoke.
Imogen said, “I was going to ask if you were carrying binoculars or a theodolite, but this wasn’t on my list of possibilities.”
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sejan turned toward the behemoth and spread his arms wide. “I wish I could claim some credit, but it was built before I was born.”
“Have you used it before?” Del asked nervously. However relaxed people were about property here, she didn’t want him damaging this exquisite instrument just to show off to his guests. “You did say this wasn’t your territory.”
“It’s not my territory now, but it has been in the past,” Sejan explained. “Where I work depends on where my objects of interest lie. I’m experienced with all the telescopes in Jierra; I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Del looked on as he set about turning wheels the size of her chest that connected to the mechanism that aimed the telescope. He then labored to turn the dome itself, bringing the opening around so that it was aligned with the instrument.
A more conventional looking spyglass was attached to the side of the great barrel, at its lower end. Sejan brought some steps up to it so he could peer through the eyepiece, in between visits to the wheels to make further adjustments.
When he was done, he fetched a much taller, two-legged ladder, maneuvered it over to the side of the barrel, and climbed up beside a second eyepiece that was aimed, bizarrely, inward toward the axis of the huge cylinder.
“What are you doing?” Imogen demanded.
“This is where the observations are made,” he called down to her. “You’re probably used to smaller telescopes, with lenses; this one has two mirrors instead.” He gestured toward the base of the cylinder. “A big curved one down there, which sends the light back up the tube. Then a small flat one up here, that catches it and diverts it.”
“That’s absurd,” Imogen protested.
“Not really. It’s hard to make a lens very large without it sagging under its own weight. With a mirror, you can support it on one side, to keep it from losing its shape.”
“Hmm.”
“Feel free to come up,” Sejan invited them. “One at a time.” He shifted onto the other leg of the ladder, making room beside the eyepiece.
Imogen turned to Del. “You first.”
Del ascended slowly; the ladder seemed stable, but the floor was hard cement, and if she sent the thing toppling she’d injure their guide as well as herself.
When she reached the top, Sejan grinned at her like a child welcoming her into his treehouse. “Take a look,” he urged her.
Del leaned over, then realized she needed to go down a rung to bring her eye into position. She placed it against the small tube, but all she could see were her own eyelashes.
“Close the other eye,” Sejan instructed her.
“Sorry.” She was used to binoculars; she’d never looked through a one-eyed spyglass before.
A pallid disk sat in the dark sky. At first, Del supposed it was just a star, badly focused, but the edges of the circle were too crisp for that. She could see some stars close to it, two quite bright ones on each side, almost in a line, as well as a smattering of fainter specks in the background.
“That’s another world?” she asked Sejan.
“Another world, and four of its moons.”
“Moons?”
“You can’t see them?”
Del said, “I thought they were stars.”
“It takes a while to tell the difference,” Sejan admitted. “Over time, you can see them orbiting.”
“The world itself looks ... odd.” Del didn’t know what to make of it. There were faint greyish stripes crossing the disk, parallel if not exactly regular. “What are the markings?”
“Cloud bands,” Sejan replied. “This world has no land, or none that we can see. All that’s visible are its clouds, and the striations and storms that arise from its rotation.”
Del struggled to absorb these claims. “This world rotates? Jierra doesn’t.”
“This world has no Hoops anchoring it.”
The rotation, like the motion of the moons, would take time to discern; nothing on such a scale happened quickly. “Is this our closest neighbor?” she asked.
“No. But it’s the largest world of the eight substantial ones, Jierra included.”
“It’s larger than Jierra?”
“More than a hundred times wider. Jierra is the smallest of the eight – if you only count Jierra itself, not the lands joined to it.”
Del had more questions, but she was growing anxious about the approaching sunlight, so she descended.
“Take a look,” she urged Imogen.
While Imogen climbed up, Del stood at the base of the ladder, holding it firm, unsettled by what she’d witnessed but not entirely sure why. That there were worlds she couldn’t simply walk to, or even build a short bridge through the Hoops to reach, should not have been a surprise. Even Thena’s moons more or less fulfilled that description. But this neighbor still seemed disturbingly at odds with the world she knew: it didn’t orbit any land she could walk upon, but nor did it remain aloof like the stars.
“That was worth seeing,” Imogen conceded as she rejoined Del. “I wouldn’t make it my life’s work, but everyone’s different.”
Sejan clambered down and began restoring everything to the way he’d found it. As they walked back to the cart, Del asked him, “So what will you be studying, from the other side of Jierra?”
“A closer neighbor – the first that’s further from the sun than us.”
“Bigger or smaller than the one you just showed us?”
“Much smaller. It’s called Marikh.”
“Does it have any moons?”
“Three,” Sejan replied. “Very tiny ones, with no discernible features. But the world itself is beautiful. You can see the land, the dust storms, the ice caps.”
They climbed up onto the cart. “And you’re happy to watch the storms come and go on another world?” Imogen asked.
Sejan turned back toward them, exasperated. “Tell me honestly, do you not know the stories? Were you raised in a place where they’re not mentioned at all?”
Del said, “Honestly, we never knew about these worlds before. Whatever stories every child you’ve ever met has been told, it’s all entirely new to us.”
Sejan scowled, struggling to accept this claim. But then he seemed to make a decision to take her at her word, or at least pretend to for the sake of politeness.
He said, “I watch the worlds I watch because I’m looking for any changes that would mean our ancestors still reside there.”
Imogen turned to Del. “‘Ancestors’?”
Del translated for her.
Imogen said, in Peladan, “And we’re the ones nobody believes.”
“You think our lineage began on a neighboring world, not this one?” Del asked Sejan.
“No,” he replied. “I think our lineage began on the world that was here, right where we’re standing, before the Hoops spread it across a thousand skies. But as it says in The Book of All Skies, many of those that had left Old Jierra returned to the remains of their home. I’m looking for those who chose not to return. Because I’m hoping they fared better than we did.”
