Glory Season

Alas, her list of deficits exceeded assets. In frustration, she pounded the table, jiggering the little tool. "Hey!" Leie shouted, and went on to complain that it wasn't easy piloting gently enough to keep it all from becoming a vast blur, the sextant's wheels and arms were old, loose, in need of ample mechanical repair. Someone had let the poor machine go straight to pot, Leie insinuated over her shoulder. It's a wonder it still works at all, Maia thought. At first, she had been awed by the coincidence, that her old, secondhand navigation tool could be used in this way. But then, many older instruments she had seen on shipboard featured diminutive blank windows. In former times, it must have been customary to hook up to the Old Network frequently . . . although Maia doubted spectacular wonder-walls were ever common, even before the Great Defense. Or the Founding, for that matter.

She leaned forward. Something had changed. Till now, the new shapes swarming in from the periphery had always appeared roughly similar to the smaller patterns vanishing into the center. But now, fingers of blackness crowded from the wings. The curling shapes seemed to roll up ever tighter, taking the form of giant balls that streamed inward as discrete units, not cloudlike swirls. Spheroids flew in from top and bottom, left and right, growing more compact, more numerous, bouncing and scattering off one another while the front wall grew blacker overall.

The last and largest swarm of balls coalesced into a new entity — a thick slab of phosphorescence. The slice of shimmering color seemed to strum like a bowstring as it crossed into sight from the lower right. As their point of view continued its apparent climb, the slab shrank in dimension. More such membranes entered the scene, linking to form a thrumming, vibrating, many-sided cell, like that of a quivering honeycomb. More cells thronged into view, becoming a multitude, then a foam, of iridescent color.

Leie was perspiring, tugging gently at the tiny sighting arm while Maia leaned forward to see the foam scintillate, fade, and in an instant, vanish!

The wall was a terrible, empty blankness. "Uh!" Maia's twin grunted in dismay, her features glistening by the faint light of the electric bulbs behind them. "Did I break it?"

"No." Maia assured. "The wall was pale before. The machine's still on. Keep going."

"You're sure? I can go back the other way."

"Keep going," Maia repeated, this time firmly.

"Well, I'll pull a little faster, then," Leie said. Before Maia could respond, she yanked harder at the little arm. The blackness lasted another fraction of a second, just long enough for an eyeblink swarm of pinpoint sparkles to flash. Then, all at once, the colors were back! Again, the simulated point of view fell backward, climbing imperiously as waves of convoluted rainbow brightness crowded in from the borders. All of this happened in the moment it took Maia to shout, "No! Stop!"

Motion ceased, save the slow, coiling dance of patterns and their constituent particles, merging and separating like entities of smoke. "What?" Leie inquired, turning to stare at her sister. "It's working again . . ."

"It never stopped working. Go back," Maia insisted, suppressing the impatient urge to push her sister aside and do it herself. Leie's marginally better coordination might make all the difference. "Go back to the black part."

Sighing, Leie turned around and delicately pushed the tiny lever. Once more, there was the sense of plunging forward, downward … of getting smaller while everything around them grew and loomed outward.

The blackness resumed in a blur, and was gone again, even faster than the first time. They were already across it and amid the foamy, lambent honeycombs before Leie could arrest the motion of her hand. "It's not easy, dammit!" Maia's sister complained. "The levers move jerkily. I wouldn't ever let a machine get in such disrepair."

Maia almost retorted that Leie never had to carry a tiny device on horseback, trains, ships, while drowning, crashing, climbing cliffs, and fighting for her life. . . . But she let it go while Leie bent over the tool, trying to pull the balky arm in microscopic units. As before, the cell structures became foam and then vanished into blackness.

Blackness that was unrelieved, save for an occasional, sudden blur that crossed the scene too quickly to follow.

"Do you . . . mind tellin' me . . ." Leie grunted. ". . . what it is we're looking for?"

"Just keep going," Maia urged. All around her, she sensed the confusion of the men. Put off by the disappearance of the transfixing patterns, but awed by her intensity, they crowded forward, staring at the blank wall as if peering through dense fog for some miracle light of harbor. Their company was welcome, especially when one of them cried out "Stop!" before she could form words.