Other Earths (collection)

But Alphonse interrupted the translation. He said in Frankish, “Yes, I was in your farspeaker room, Atahualpa. Yes, I understand Quechua better than you thought, don’t I? And I wasn’t tampering with the equipment. I was sending a message to my father. Even now, I imagine, his guards will be closing in on the Orb you planted in Saint Paul’s—and those elsewhere.”

Darwin stared at him. “Your royal highness, I’ve no idea what is happening here—why you would be so discourteous to our hosts.”

“Discourteous?” He glared at Atahualpa. “Ask him, then. Ask him what a sun bomb is.”

Atahualpa stared back stonily.

Dreamer came forward. “Tell him the truth, Inca. He knows most of it anyhow.” And one by one the other representatives of the Inca’s subject races, in their beads and feathers, stepped forward to stand with Dreamer.

And so Atahualpa yielded. A sun bomb was a weapon small enough to fit into one of the Incas’ Orbs of the Unblinking Eye yet powerful enough to flatten a city—a weapon that harnessed the power of the sun itself.

Jenny was shocked. “We welcomed you in Londres. Why would you plant such a thing in our city?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Alphonse answered. “Because these all-conquering Inca can’t cow Franks and Germans and Ottomans with a pretty silver ship as they did these others, or you Anglais.”

Atahualpa said, “A war of conquest would be long and bloody, though the outcome would be beyond doubt. We thought that if the sun bombs were planted, so that your cities were held hostage—if one of them was detonated for a demonstration, if a backward provincial city was sacrificed—”

“Like Londres,” said Jenny, appalled.

“And then,” Alphonse said, “you would use your farspeakers to speak to the emperors and state your demands. Well, it’s not going to happen, Inca. Looks like it will be bloody after all, doesn’t it?”

Darwin touched his shoulder. “You have done your empire a great service today, Prince Alphonse. But war is not yet inevitable between the people of the north and the south. Perhaps this will be a turning point in our relationship. Let us hope that wiser counsels prevail.”

“We’ll see,” Alphonse said, staring at Atahualpa.

“We’ll see.”

Servants bustled in, to clear dishes and set another course. The normality after the confrontation was bewildering.

Slowly tensions eased.

Jenny impulsively grabbed Dreamer’s arm. They walked away from the rest.

She stared up at the sea of suns. “If we are all lost in this gulf, we ought to learn to get along.”

Dreamer grunted. “You convince the emperors. I will speak to the Inca.”

She imagined Earth swimming in light. “Dreamer, will we ever sail back to the sea of suns, back to where we came from?”

“Well, you never know,” he said. “But the sea is farther away than you imagine, I think. I don’t think you and I will live to see it.”

Jenny said impulsively, “Our children might.” “Yes. Our children might. Come on. Let’s get this wretched dinner over with.”

The stateroom roof slid closed, hiding the sea of suns from their sight.

CSILLA’S STORY Theodora Goss

Porch steps. Wooden steps, with a dandelion growing through a hole in the wood. A dandelion covered with white tufts.

The breeze blew away a tuft, with its brown seed attached, and a frightened voice said, “She hasn’t talked since I met her at the airport.” A hand touched her arm. “What’s your name, child? Your real name? Mi a ne’ve?” The hand withdrew, and the frightened voice continued, “Did I pronounce that correctly?”

And the other woman, the one standing on the porch steps, with two dandelion tufts caught in the fabric of her dress, said, “How long has the child been traveling, Mrs. Martin?”

Mrs. Martin said, her frightened voice growing fainter, “A week, I think. The trip to Vienna should only have taken one day, but Helga was stopped at the border, and the guards kept telling her to wait another day and then another, although she’d given them all her money, until finally she gave them her wedding ring, and they let her through.” She added, her voice so faint that it seemed to float away on the breeze, “But in Vienna they had a passport ready and put her on the plane to New York …”

Another tuft detached itself from the dandelion. An inchworm stretched and hunched onto the bottom step.

“I tried to buy her something to eat on the train …”

“And the border guards never found her?” Now the woman on the porch steps had three dandelion tufts caught in her dress.

“Well, you see, the car had two bottoms, and she was lying between them.”

From the corner of her eye, a ghost. No, a handkerchief fluttering down to rest on the grass. It was wrinkled, and she remembered Miss Martin sitting in the train compartment, crumpling a handkerchief in her hands.