Glory Season

"How can you control the approach so fine?" Leie asked the navigator. In reply, he stepped back from the dais, raising his hands. "I felt another click, a few seconds ago. Since then, it's not been me at all. Maybe we set off a homing program, or something."

Maia sought Grimke, at the northern tip of the island chain. That monolith, where she and Naroin and others had been interned, fought, and escaped, showed no sign of a crater. No blasted, glazed hole in its center. Rather, she briefly glimpsed buildings, shimmering in a morning glow just before the isle fell off the upper border of the screen. In the center, meanwhile, a great cluster of connected stony towers loomed toward them.

Jellicoe.

And yet, not Jellicoe. Not the Jellicoe of today. What surged larger with each passing second was a thing of unmarred beauty. A hollow star-shaped glory of both nature and artifice. Every spire was adorned with edifices of polished stone or the metallic glitter of sleek, tethered airships. Within the lagoon, she counted three great cruisers, with sails not of dingy canvas but some black, filmy material that seemed to drink in sunlight, reflecting none.

All three watchers quailed as one of Jellicoe's easternmost teeth plunged toward them. There was a breathtaking rash of rock and vegetation, and instantly the scene was enveloped in a blurry stream of dark stone, flowing past like rushing fluid. "Ack!" Leie commented. No one exhaled. This is some damn simulation, Maia thought numbly.

Someone shouted terse words that were tense and excited, from the back of the room. But she had only regard for the swarming motion, decelerating in front of them.

Light returned and motion ceased with an abruptness that caused them all to stagger. The youths found themselves staring, as if through a window, into a room that was a clone to this one. A younger, better-attired clone. Reddish-colored cushions graced the benches, and the walls were uncracked, polished to a glistening sheen and rimmed with cheery banners.

"Long ago," Maia said. "It's showing what this place was like, a long time ago." She coughed behind her fist, and leaned over the sextant.

PCZR0 –1103.095 SIDEREAL.

"The fourth coordinate." The navigator cleared his throat. "Time must be the next step."

Leie spoke hastily. "If we could move forward to the present, would it be possible to see what's going on outside, right now?"

"Might it show what happens in the future!" the man added, in a hushed tone.

Maia's thoughts whirled. Leie's question implied a machine that kept records, and was still monitoring events, as they spoke. To tap such real-time inputs would be a huge asset, in their present straits. Yet she doubted it was like that. What about all those galaxies and such? She couldn't imagine a machine capable of monitoring the universe, constantly, over thousands of years.

The navigator's idea was even wilder. Yet, in a weird way it made more sense. Maia still believed this was all a simulation, a vast, godlike cousin to the Game of Life. If so — if the facsimile took into account every variable — might it be able to project likely events, into the future? The implications were staggering, affecting everything from their present predicament to the temple's teachings about free will.

"Let's try to do something about that fourth coordinate," Maia suggested, rubbing her scratchy eyes.

The young navigator coughed twice and bent over. "We've already been usin' all the obvious movin' parts." Gently, delicately, he touched pieces of the sextant, until his hand stroked the eyepiece, where one normally looked to sight horizon and stars. The image ahead of them jiggered slightly, and the number in the little indicator screen shifted just a little. "Of course," he said, with another cough. "It's the depth-of-focus adjustment. Give me room, please."

Maia stepped back. Her eyes itched and she sniffed a smoky smell. Abruptly, at the exact same moment, she and Leie sneezed. They looked at each other, and for the first time in several minutes surveyed the room. The air had changed noticeably. There was a sooty, hazy quality.

Shouts came from the back. Maia turned to see the cabin boy hurry downstairs, calling and waving. Around his nose, he wore a torn strip of cloth.

"Ensign an' doctor want t'know . . . you havin' any luck?"

"That depends," Maia replied. "We're getting some exciting philosophical insights, but not many practical applications."

The boy looked puzzled by her reply, and anxious. "We're gettin' smoke, ma'am. Doc says it'll take a while, since we're below the pirates, but the good air's gonna get sucked out, in time. They may attack before that, when it gets hard to see."

Maia had figured as much, from the evidence stinging her nose and lungs. This time she spoke earnestly. "Please tell the doctor and the ensign …" She turned to point at the forward wall — and instantly forgot what she had been about to say.