At that moment, another gunshot pealed, echoing down the hallway to resonate within the chamber, setting Maia’s teeth rattling. Both girls waited in suspense, and sighed when no more shots followed. With the tip of a finger, Leie pointed to a pair of tiny metal rings, about a centimeter apart, set into the edge of the dais near the buttons. The rings surrounded thin, deep holes. Maia pressed her finger against one, and looked up, perplexed. “I don’t feel anything.”
“Have you got a piece of metal?” Leie asked. “Like a coinstick? A half-credit will do.”
Maia shook her head. Then she recalled. “Maybe I do have something.” Her right hand went to her left forearm and unstrapped the leather cover of her portable sextant. Gingerly, she drew the tiny instrument from its padded case.
“Where’d you get that?” Leie commented, watching the brass engraving of a zep’lin pop open. Maia shrugged. “It’s complicated. Let’s just say I found it useful, on occasion.”
She unfolded the sighting arms. One of them terminated in a pointed prong—normally used as an indicator for reading numbers against a measuring wheel—that could be rotated outward. It seemed narrow enough to use as a probe.
“Good,” Leie said. “Now, I don’t claim to be the only one who had the idea, inspecting for electricity. Others tried, and felt nothing. But I figured, maybe the current was too low to detect by hand. Remember how we used to check those pitiful, weak saline batteries Savant Mother Claire had us make, back in silly-ass chem class? Well, I did the same thing here. When no one was looking, I inserted a coinstick and touched the metal with my tongue.”
“Yes?” Maia asked, growing more interested as she slipped the narrow prong into one of the tiny holes.
“Yes indeed! I swear you can taste a faint tickle of…”
Leie’s voice trailed off as she stopped and stared. Maia, too, looked down in astonishment at the little sextant..
Across the center of its scratched, pitted face, a blank window had come alight, perhaps for the first time in centuries. Tiny, imperfect letters, missing corners and edges, flickered, then steadied into a constant glow.
… τ☼ fι∩∂ ωHατ ι≥ Hι)) ε∩ …
“Great Mother of life!”
The exclamation made both girls look up from the transfixing sight. Still blinking in surprise, Maia saw that Captain Poulandres and one of his officers stood in the doorway at the top of the aisle, staring with dumfounded expressions.
Maia’s initial thought was pragmatic.
“I…” Poulandres swallowed hard. “…came to tell you. The pirates say they want to talk. They say…” He shook his head, unable to concentrate on his urgent message. “By Lysos and the sea, how did you two manage to do that!”
It dawned on Maia that the captain
There, spread across the huge, formerly pale front wall of the hall, now lay an immense grid of faint, microscopic lines, upon which danced myriad, multihued particles, innumerable, smaller than specks. An orgiastic, colorful spectacle of surging, flowing patterns panoplied in whirling currents, eddies, teeming jungles of simulated structure and confusion… ersatz chaos and order… death and life.
Despite all trials and experience, some aspects of character might be too deep ever to change. Once more, it was Leie who recovered first to comment.
“Uh,” she said in a dry, hoarse voice, glancing sideways at Maia. “Eureka … I think…?”
The effect was even more spectacular when, a while later, the pirates tried to intimidate the escapees by cutting off the lights. Power no longer flowed to the string of electric bulbs. By then, however, those of the Manitou crew not on guard had already gathered in Renna’s former cell, under the storm of pigmented, convoluted shapes that slowly twisted across the “Life Wall,” as they called it. The men sat in huddled groups, or knelt below the dancing display, spreading open their treasured reference books, riffling pages by the soft, multispectral glow and arguing. Although they had confirmed that the eighteen simple patterns were components of this particular pseudo-world, not even the most expert player seemed able to make any more sense of the vista of swirling shapes.
“It’s magic,” the chief cook concluded, in awe.
“No, not magic,” the ship’s doctor replied. “It’s much more. It’s
“What’s the difference?” asked the young ensign Maia had met on the Manitou, speaking with an upper-clan accent, trying to be blase. “They’re both just symbol systems. Hypnotizing you with abstractions.”
The elderly physician shook his head. “No, boy, that’s wrong. Like art an’ politics, magic consists of persuadin’ others to see what you want ’em to see, by makin’ incantations and wavin’ your arms around. It’s always based on claims that the magician’s
The colors overhead laid lambent, churning reflections across the old man’s pate as he laughed aloud. “But nature doesn’t give a fart about anybody’s force of will! Nature’s too strong to coerce, an’ too fair to play favorites. She’s just as cruel an’ consistent to a clan mother as to the lowliest var. Her rules hold for ever’body.” He shook his head, sighing. “And She has a dear-heart love of math.”
They watched the awesome gyrating figures in silence. Finally, the young ensign complained angrily. “But men aren’t any good at math!”
“So we’re told,” the doctor answered in a heavy voice. “So we’re told.”
Overhearing the conversation, Maia realized the crewmen would be of little help. Like her, they were untrained in the high arts on which this wonder must be based. Their beloved game was a fine thing, as far as it went. But the simple Life simulations they played on ships and in modern sanctuaries were no more than an arcana of accumulated tricks and intuition. It was like a bowl of water next to the great sea now in front of them.
She had tried peering at individual dots, in order to decipher the position-by-position rules of play. At first, she had thought she could make out a total of nine colors, which responded four times as powerfully to nearest neighbors as to next-nearest, and so on. Then she looked more closely, and realized that
“Maia.” It was Leie’s voice, accompanied by a tap on her shoulder. She drew back and turned as her twin gestured toward the back of the hall, where a messenger could be seen hurriedly picking his way down the stair- aisle. It was a tricky task in the shifting, ever-changing illumination. The cabin boy arrived short of breath. He had only three words for Maia.
“They’re comin’, ma’am.”
It wasn’t easy to tear herself away from the dazzling wall display. She felt sure she’d be more useful here. But after several fits and starts, the reavers were apparently sending their delegation, at last. Poulandres insisted Maia join him to speak for the escapees.
“Why can’t you do it yourself?” she had asked earlier, to which he replied enigmatically. “No voyage lands without a captain. No cargo sells without an owner. It is necessity.”
Poulandres met her at the doorway. Slowly, allowing for her limp, they walked toward the strategic corner. The shifting colors followed and Maia kept glancing backward, as if drawn by a palpable force. It took effort to
