Other Earths (collection)

But the Inca towered over the European nobility. They wore woollen suits dyed scarlet and electric blue, colors brighter than the cathedral’s stained glass. And they all wore facemasks as defense against the “herd diseases” they insultingly claimed infested Europe. The effect was to make these imposing figures even more enigmatic, for the only expression you could see was in their black eyes.

Jenny, at Alphonse’s side and mixed in with some of the Inca party, was only a few rows back from Atahualpa and Darwin, and she could clearly hear every word they said.

“My own family has a long association with this old church,” the bishop said. “My ancestor Charles Darwin was a country parson who, dedicated to his theology, rose to become dean here. The Anglais built the first Christian church on this site in the year of Christus Ra 604. After the Conquest the emperors were most generous in endowing this magnificent building in our humble, remote city …”

As the interpreter translated this, Atahualpa murmured some reply in Quechua, and the two of them laughed softly.

One of the Inca party walking beside Jenny was a boy about her age. He wore an Inca costume like the rest but without a face mask. He whispered in passable Frankish, “The emissary’s being a bit rude about your church. He says it’s a sandstone heap he wouldn’t use to stable his llamas.”

“Charming,” Jenny whispered back.

“Well, you haven’t seen his llamas.”

Jenny had to cover her face to keep from giggling. She got a glare from Alphonse and recovered her composure.

“Sorry,” said the boy. He was dark skinned, with a mop of short-cut, tightly curled black hair. The spiral tattoo on his left cheek made him look a little severe, until he smiled, showing bright teeth. “My name’s—well, it’s complicated, and the Inca never get it right. You can call me Dreamer.”

“Hello, Dreamer,” she whispered. “I’m Jenny Cook.”

“Pretty name.”

Jenny raised her eyebrows. “Oh, is it really? You’re not Inca, are you?”

“No, I just travel with them. They like to move us around, their subject peoples. I’m from the South Land …”

But she didn’t know where that was, and the party had paused before the great altar where the emissary and the archbishop were talking again, and Jenny and Dreamer fell silent.

Atahualpa said to Darwin, “I am intrigued by the god of this church. Christus Ra? He is a god who is two gods.”

“In a sense.” Darwin spoke rapidly of the career of Christ. The Romans had conquered Egypt but had suffered a sort of reverse religious takeover; their pantheon had seemed flimsy before the power and sheer logic of the Egyptians’ faith in their sun god. The sun was the only point of stability in a sky populated by chaotic planets, mankind’s only defense against the infinite dark. Who could argue against its worship? Centuries after Christ’s execution His cult was adopted as the empire’s official religion, and the bishops and theologians had made a formal identification of Christ with Ra, a unity that had outlasted the empire itself.

Atahualpa expressed mild interest in this. He said the worship of the sun was a global phenomenon. The Incas’ own sun god was called Inti. Perhaps Inti and Christ-Ra were mere manifestations of the same primal figure.

The procession moved on.

“ ‘Cook’,” Dreamer whispered. He was more interested in Jenny than in theology. “That’s a funny sort of name. Not Frankish, is it?”

“I don’t know. I think it has an Anglais root. My family are Anglais, from the north of Grand Bretagne.”

“You must be rich. You’ve got to be either royal or rich to be in this procession, right?”

She smiled. “Rich enough. I’m at court as part of my education. My grandfathers have been in the coal trade since our ancestor founded the business two hundred years ago. He was called James Cook. My father’s called James too. It’s a mucky business but lucrative.”

“I’ll bet. Those Watt engines I see everywhere eat enough coal, don’t they?”

“So what do your family do?”

He said simply, “We serve the Inca.”

The procession reached a chapel dedicated to Isaac Newton, the renowned alchemist and theologian who had developed a conclusive proof of the age of the Earth. Here they prayed to their gods, the Inca prostrating themselves before Inti, and the Christians kneeling to Christ.

And the Inca servants came forward with their Orb of the Unblinking Eye. It was a sphere of some translucent white material, half as tall as a man; the servants carried it in a rope netting and set it down on a wooden cradle before the statue of Newton himself.