Tatja Grimm's World

Stubby cylinders of glass and wood projected from either side of the box. On top was a little hole, like the keyhole in a clock. And the device clicked almost like a clock when it was mounted on Ancho’s back.

Tatja refused to reveal the purpose of the contraption. She said it was a last precaution, one whose usefulness would be impaired if Svir knew its purpose. He couldn’t imagine what sort of precaution would have such properties, but he accepted her explanation. Perhaps it was empty—a placebo to give him the false confidence necessary to trigger Ancho’s authority signal.

The drag kept Tatja busy—even busier than the general run of the crew. Outside of their practice sessions, Svir was with her only two or three hours in every wake period. He actually saw more of the translations editor, Coronadas Ascuasenya. It was surprising how often he found her eating at the same time and in the same meal hall as he. He came to enjoy those meals more and more. Ascuasenya was older than she looked. She’d been with Tarulle almost seven years. She’d actually worked with Rey Guille, and had met most of the authors who had shaped Svir’s world view. She was no competition for Tatja—how could anyone be?—but Cor was pretty and intelligent and very nice to be with.

Svir spent the rest of his free time in the barge library, where Tatja’s influence had opened some otherwise locked doors. Only fifteen or twenty people out of the thousand 011 board were allowed in the library, but once inside there was no restriction on use of materials. Here Tarulle kept copies of all available issues of magazines published by the company. That amounted to about twenty thousand volumes. Jespen Tarulle was in the publishing business to make money, but he had a sense of history and the barge library was the most luxurious part of the craft that Svir had yet seen. Here was none of the cramped stuffiness of the lower decks. Virtually none of the sea or ship noises were audible through the thick glass windows. Deep carpets covered the floor. During the night wake periods, well-tended algae pots supplemented Seraph’s light. The librarian was a strange old bat. He was helpful enough, showing Svir how to find just what he wanted in the stacks. But he treated the magazines with an awe that went beyond Svir’s. You’d think he was a priest in a temple. Wherever Svir went in the stacks, the gangling librarian was sure to follow, lurking in wait for some desecration.

Maybe the guy wasn’t nuts. To a confirmed Fantasie addict, the library was halfway to heaven. The Tarulle collection was nearly three quarters complete—more than four thousand issues.

That was better than any library on the Chainpearls. There were several copies of the first issue, printed just forty years after the invention of movable type. In those years the magazine was sold in yard-square sheets, folded into quarters. Only rarely was a story illustrated, and then with crude woodcuts. But that was part of the enchantment. On a single barge—the predecessor of the present compound vessel—they had printed such works as Delennor’s Doom and Search for the Last Kingdom, novels that after seven hundred years were still studied by poets and read with enjoyment by near illiterates. And here he could see the originals, genius seen direct across the centuries.

That first barge had been owned by an ambitious trading family distantly related to the present publisher. In the beginning, the barge carried general trade between the islands of the Osterlai group, at the same time providing regular and vital communication between those islands. As the publishing sideline became more profitable, the family gave up their other trading operations and visited islands further and further asea. The lands beyond the horizon provided ever more enchanting themes and original authors. Fantasie readers were the first, and for a long time the only, cosmopolitans on the planet.

The magazine’s success was not without repercussions. The effects of the first interplanetary fantasy were shattering both for the magazine and for the rulers of the Tsanart Archipelagate. Ti Liso’s Migration foreshadowed the rise of contrivance fiction. Liso’s hero discovered a species of flying fish, which during the winter season in the northern hemisphere migrated to the southern hemisphere of Seraph. The hero captured several of the vicious creatures and taught them to pull his sailing boat. After an eight- day flight the fish deposited him, half-starved, on the south polar continent of Seraph. The story went on to describe the civilization he found there. It was an unfortunate coincidence that Liso’s Seraphian government was an absurd dictatorship founded on Tu-worship—for the tyrannical government of the Tsanarts was just such a farce in reverse. In plain fact the story had not been intended as satire. It had been written as straight adventure. Liso, a native of the Osterlais, had honestly conceived the most ridiculous autarchy imaginable. The Seraphiles of the Tsanarts did not take it as a joke, and for the next fifty years, until the fall of their religion, Tsanart waters were forbidden to the barge. This was an especial hardship, since the technique for sailing to the windward was not fully developed at that time. Avoiding the Tsanarts cost many tens of days sailing time.

Each day brought Svir closer to the coast of the Continent, closer to Bayfast. Back in Krirsarque, the prospect of invading the Crownesse Keep had seemed a faraway adventure. But now he was coming to realize that it was a reality which he personally would have to face. More and more he spent his time in the library, in retreat from the nightmare that approached. He had always found refuge in Fantasie, and now he dived into the more recent stories with a vengeance. Sometimes he could avoid thinking of his own problems for hours at a time. Despite the literary past, he enjoyed the recent stories most. The straight fantasy themes had been handled in every conceivable way in the past seven hundred years. It was only in the last two hundred that the idea of physical progress had emerged; the idea that there could be mechanical means of achieving fantastic ends. In the last fifteen years nearly half of Fantasies output had been c-f.

Hedrigs read straight through Enar Gereu’s new serial. Gereu was a biologist from the Sutherseas. His science was usually strong and this novel was no exception. Like many authors, he assumed the discovery of large metallic deposits on the Continent. Such deposits made possible the construction of huge metal machines— machines powered by the same as-yet-unexplained mechanism that made the sun shine. As far as Svir could tell, this story contained a genuinely original idea—one that he wished he had thought of first. Instead of going directly to Seraph in his metal “ships of space,” Gereu set up way-stations, artificial satellites in orbit about Tu.

The ultimate landing on Seraph produced deadly peril. Gereu populated the other planet with a race of intelligent animalcules. Svir choked—this fellow was supposed to be a biologist? But on the next few pages the author justified the alien life form in a manner quite as logical and novel as his space-island idea. Svir found himself totally caught up in the story as the human race fought to protect itself from the menace brought home by the explorers. The struggle was one of the most suspenseful he had ever read. Things looked hopeless for humankind. … He turned the last page.

The dirty bastard! Svir’s feeling of warm anticipation was suddenly shattered. Gereu let the human race fall before the invaders! He suppressed a desire to rip the magazine up into small pieces. The shock was like finding a snake in schnafel pastry. Wasn’t there enough tragedy in the real world? He had seen far too many stories of this type lately. Feeling quite betrayed by Messrs. Ramsey and Gereu, the young astronomer stood up and stomped out of the library. He scarcely noticed the librarian rush forward to secure the abandoned magazine.

Svir stopped on the deck near his cabin. It was past midday. Far above him the wind whistled through the empty rigging and mastwork. Just two miles away the brown and gray cliffs of Somnai rose abruptly from the ocean, hiding Bayfast from view. Where the surf smashed into the base of Somnai, the coastal plankton formed a glistening green band. In this longitude Seraph hung almost thirty degrees above the horizon, its bluish crescent wraithlike in the daytime sky.

The scene had no appeal. Svir cupped chin in palm and morosely inspected the pitted guard railing he leaned against. Even in Fantasie there was no escape. Reality could not be ignored: For all practical purposes they had reached Bayfast. He’d heard Kederichi Maccioso was treating with the Port Commander for permission to land. There was some problem about getting pier space, but that would be cleared up, and come this afternoon they would be sailing right past the Regent’s Keep into the Hidden Harbor. And tonight he, Svir Hedrigs, would be risking his life to save some damned collection of old magazines.

Nine

Coronadas Ascuasenya had made a careful analysis of the astronomer from Krirsarque: Hedrigs was a wimp, a naive kid who was following his libido straight to destruction. So why was she hung up on him?

The kid was tall, too skinny to be really good-looking. But he was bright, with an imagination that sparkled