Glory Season

"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.

…. T© fin3 wHat is Hiioen …

"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. How are they able to see the sextant from all that way up there?

"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 couldn't see the tiny letters glowing on the sextant's face. He must be looking at something else. Something above and behind her back. Together, as if pulled by the same string, she and Leie turned around, and gasped in unison.

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 mathematics."

"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 force of will is stronger than nature."

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.