Other Earths Read online

  Darwin flinched at that. “Well, it’s true there has been no serious Christian heresy since Martin Luther was burned by the Inquisition—”

  “If only you had not been so afraid of the sky! But then,” he said, smiling, “our sky always did contain one treasure yours did not.”

  Jenny was growing annoyed with the Inca’s patronizing treatment of Darwin, a decent man. She said now, “Commander, even before we sailed you dropped hints about some wonder in the sky we knew nothing about.”

  As his translator murmured in his ear, Atahualpa looked at her in surprise.

  Darwin murmured, “Mademoiselle Cook, please—”

  “If you’re so superior, maybe you should stop playing games and show us this wonder—if it exists at all!”

  Dreamer shook his head. “Oh, Jenny. Just wait and see.”

  The officers were glaring. But Atahualpa held up an indulgent hand. “I will not punish bravery, Mademoiselle Cook, and you are brave, if foolish with it. We like to keep our great surprise from our European passengers—call it an experiment—because your first reaction is always worth relishing. We were going to wait until the end of the meal, but—Pachacuti, will you see to the roof?”

  Wiping his lips on a cloth, one of the officers got up from the table and went to the wall, where a small panel of buttons had been fixed. With a whir of smooth motors, the roof slid back.

  Fresh salt air, a little cold, billowed over the diners. Jenny looked up. In an otherwise black sky, a slim crescent moon hung directly over her head. She had the sense that the moon was tilted on its side—a measure of how far she had traveled around the curve of the world in just a few days aboard this ship.

  Atahualpa smiled, curious, perhaps cruel. “Never mind the moon, Mademoiselle Cook. Look that way.” He pointed south.

  She stood. And there, clearly visible over the lip of the roof, something was suspended in the sky. Not the sun or moon, not a planet—something entirely different. It was a disc of light, a swirl, with a brilliant point at its center, and a ragged spiral glow all around it. It was the emblem she had observed on the navigational displays but far more delicate—a sculpture of light, hanging in the sky.

  “Oh,” she gasped, awed, terrified. “It’s beautiful.” Beside her, Archbishop Darwin muttered prayers and crossed himself.

  She felt Dreamer’s hand take hers. “I wanted to tell you,” he murmured. “They forbade me . . .”

  Atahualpa watched them. “What do you think you are seeing?”

  Darwin said, “It looks like a hole in the sky. Into which all light is draining.”

  “No. In fact it’s quite the opposite. It is the source of all light.”

  “And that is how you navigate,” Jenny said. “By the cloud—you could pick out the point of light at the center, and measure your position on a curving Earth from that. This is your treasure—a beacon in the sky.”

  “You’re an insightful young woman. It is only recently, in fact, that with our farseers—another technology you lack—we have been able to resolve those spiral streams to reveal their true nature.”

  “Which is?”

  “The cloud is a sea of suns, Mademoiselle. Billions upon billions of suns, so far away they look like droplets in mist.”

  The Inca sky-scientists believed that the cloud was in fact a kind of factory of suns; the sun and its planets couldn’t have formed in the black void across which they traveled.

  “As to how we ended up here—some believe that it was a chance encounter between our sun and another. If they come close, you see, suns attract each other. Our sun was flung out of the sea, northward, generally speaking, off into the void. The encounter damaged the system itself; the inner planets and Earth were left in their neat circles, but the outer planets were flung onto their looping orbits. All this is entirely explicable by the laws of motion developed by Yupanqui and others.” Atahualpa lifted his finely chiseled face to the milky light of the spiral. “This was billions of years back, when the world was young. Just as well; life was too primitive to have been extinguished by the tides and earthquakes. But what a sight it would have been then, the sea of suns huge in the sky, if there had been eyes to see it!”

  There was a commotion outside the stateroom. “Let me go!” somebody yelled in Frankish. “Let me go!”

  An officer went to the door. Alphonse was dragged in by two burly Inca holding his arms. His nose was bloodied, his face powder smeared, his powdered wig askew, but he was furious, defiant.

  Archbishop Darwin bustled to the side of his charge. “This is an outrage. He is a prince of the empire!”

  At a nod from the commander, Alphonse was released. He stood there massaging bruised arms. And he stared up at the spiral in the sky.

  “Sir, we found him in the farspeaker room,” said one of the guards. “He was tampering with the equipment.” For the guests, this was slowly translated from the Quechua.

  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.

  “You mean that for three days she lay between . . .” The woman on the porch steps moved, and the tufts caught in her dress floated away over the grass. “I’m surprised the child is alive.” Her voice was not frightened. There was another word for it, perhaps angry, or tired, or—the inchworm stretched and hunched up to the next step.

  “I’m so terribly sorry, Mrs. Mad’r.”

  But already she was climbing the porch steps, and Miss Martin was behind her, bending to pick up the handkerchief, and the hand on her shoulder belonged to the woman on the porch, who was wearing a turban on her head, like Imre when he hid in the Turkish camp, and whose voice was neither tired nor angry as she said, “Drink this.” And the pillow smelled like grass.

  In one corner of the room was a spider. Her grandmother had kept a spider in one corner of the apartment, because spiderwebs caught good fortune. A house with a spider would always have good fortune in it.

  “I’m glad you’re awake,” said Mrs. Mada’r. “Will you take some broth?”

  It tasted like her grandmother’s mushroom soup. The mushrooms were gathered by moonlight . . .

  “No, child. I want you to pay attention. Can you tell me your name?”

  The spider let itself down from its web and dangled in the corner. A crack ran across the ceiling, from the spiderweb to the window.

  “Do you remember the train ride? Being in the airplane? Leaving Budapest?”

  Outside the window she could see a tree. One of its branches tapped against the glass.

  “Listen, then. I’m going to tell you a story. This happened long ago, on the shores of the Volga, a great river. Along the shores of this river grew groves of oak and alder, birch and willow. And among those groves lived the Daughters of the Moon.”

  Hársfa’s Story

  “I wish we were dead,” said Ha’rsfa. She sat on a rock covered with moss and shaded by an oak tree. The river was green under the tree’s shadow, and it flowed so slowly that she could see its branches and leaves reflected. In a hundred years, those reflections would not have changed. The oak tree would still be there.

  “Hush,” said Ny’rfa, applying another wet leaf to H’rsfa’s forehead. “When you move, it begins bleeding again. And who would lead our sisters, if we were—” The words hovered in the air between them, like a dragonfly. Dead, like T̈lgy. Tölgy of the light foot, like foam floating on the water. T̈lgy of the wise words, as slow as the river and as filled with shining things: silver fish, stones with veins of crystal, laughter. Tölgy, the eldest and best. Lying at the center of the village with blood on her tunic, as though she were covered with leaves.

  Awkwardly, because Ny’rfa was still holding the leaf, Ha’rsfa wiped her cheeks with one hand. “Where would we lead them? We’ve never known anywhere but here.” Her fingers were pale green with blood and tears. “Why can’t things be the way they were before?”

  Ny’rfa sat down beside her. “Hold this now.”

  Ha’rsfa held the leaf to her temple. “Do you remember the milk?” Left by the villagers in hollow stones. When their mother was shining in the sky like a silver egg, all of the sisters would leave the forest to drink and dance in the pastures, among the silent sheep. Sometimes the villagers left wool, which the sisters spun on wooden spindles and wove into winter coats. In return they left walnuts and baskets woven from willow branches.

  Ny’rfa stared at the river. Was she also thinking of its permanence, its peace? “All I remember now is the village burning. The screams, Ha’rsfa. And the blood. And the swords of the Horsemen.” She sat so still that H’rsfa was afraid she had been injured and was bearing the pain in silence. But when H’rsfa touched her hand where it lay clenched on the moss, she said, “T̈lgy wasn’t the only one. I saw Boro’ka fallen, and Ibolya didn’t come back with us. There, I said if you moved, it would bleed again.”

  “I wish we had stayed in the forest! If we hadn’t been picking flax in the meadow and smelled the burning—”

  Ny’rfa put a hand on her shoulder. “I told you, you must stay still.”

  “T̈lgy was wrong to lead us into the battle. The villagers could have fought the Horsemen alone. They would have lost just the same. They’re not warriors, any more than we are.”

  “H’rsfa, you don’t mean that. How could we abandon them? Think of what they have given us, and some of them—are our children. Here, cry on my shoulder if you have to.”

  “Sometimes,” said Mrs. Mada’r, putting a damp cloth on her forehead, “when the Daughters of the Moon danced in the pastures, one found a shepherd sleeping among his sheep. If he was handsome in the way of the village people, with black lashes fluttering against his cheeks like wings, she would wake him and lead him into the forest, where she would lie with him on a bed of ferns and mosses. If a child was born with skin that was paler than the brown skin of the villagers, with hair as green as leaves and eyes like the pools of the forest, which reflect the leaves above, it was left at the edge of the village. The villagers would care for it, because it was considered fortunate to have a grandchild of the Moon. There, it would grow to become a poet or perhaps a prophet, which were much the same thing in those days. But it could never sew, or fish, or hunt, because the touch of needle or hook or knife would burn it like fire.” She felt a hand on her cheek. “Are you more comfortable now?”

  “Let me wash your face a little. Is that better? We have to go back to the cave. Our sisters need us to be strong for them, Ha’rsfa. As Tölgy would have been.”

  Ha’rsfa dried her face with the edge of her tunic, leaving streaks like grass stains on the fabric, and stood. “I think I’m ready.”

  Suddenly, Ny’rfa screamed. H’rsfa saw a flash, like a fish leaping from the water—no, a sword at her sister’s throat. Then H’rsfa felt her own throat burning like fire from the touch of a knife. They were surrounded by Horsemen.

  The Horsemen wore leather boots to the knees and leather tunics. Their coarse black hair was tied back with strips of leather. They smelled of sweat and horses. One, whose hair was braided with red wool, tied strips of leather around her wrists. He touched the wound on her head and then her hair, wi
th a look of wonder. Then he led her, stumbling after Ny’rfa, through the forest.

  The village also smelled of horses and blood. Women in tunics of red wool were taking what remained from the burned houses: sacks of grain, carved bowls, beds stuffed with straw. They stared at Ny’rfa and Ha’rsfa, and one made a sign over her forehead. A child playing with a wooden spoon began to cry and hid his head in her skirts.

  There was blood on the earth, churned by the hooves of the horses. Ha’rsfa felt her stomach turn. Would she be sick, right here before the Horsemen? The man with red wool braided into his hair touched her arm. He tapped himself on the chest and said, “Magyar.” How could Ny’rfa walk before her so calmly, like the river, so straight, like a fir in the Northern Mountains? Then she noticed that Ny’rfa’s hands were clenched so tightly that the nails must be leaving new moons on her palms. What had he said, that his name was Magyar? Afraid, she pulled away from him.

  At the center of the village, horses tied to what had once been doorposts stamped and snorted. Horsemen cleaned their swords, or ate bread and dried meat, or played with bones that were marked with red lines. They shook the bones in their hands, then let them fall to the earth. Each fall of the bones was followed by laughter and exchange: knives, horsehair bridles, a ring. By a burned wall sat the villagers, their wrists and ankles bound with leather strips. They looked at Ny’rfa and H’rsfa with frightened eyes. How many of them were left? she wondered. Here and there, she saw a face that was paler than the others, hair that was tinged with green. She and her sisters had never known the villagers well. Perhaps, she thought, we should have known them better.