Author: Joan D. Vinge
Category: Science
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There were several members of the Sibyl College here today, including blind Fate Ravenglass, who was its head and still the only other Winter among the sibyls. Jerusha PalaThion and her husband Miroe Ngenet were here too, along with a few Winters who had managed to absorb some technical knowledge from their contact with the offworlders. They were struggling to become the researchers, the engineers of Tiamat’s future; asking the questions and working with the sibyls to turn the net’s data into measurable progress.
Elders of the various Winter and Summer clans or their representatives filled most of the other seats, and filled the air with give-and-take. They had become the first members of the Council the Queen had established at the same time she had established the Sibyl College. They were already the leaders of their extended-family groups; the Council gave them a forum where they could speak for and vote to protect their clans’ interests and holdings.
There had been a Council during the Snow Queen’s reign, imitating the offworlders’ judiciate government, but it had been strictly for Winters, and dominated by the self-proclaimed nobility who were Arienrhod’s favorites. There had never been a Council with Summers on it too, and usually the Summers and Winters mixed like oil and water. He was relieved to see that Capella Goodventure was not here today; he did not recognize the woman whom she had sent as her replacement. It surprised him that she was not here herself. She rarely missed the opportunity to object to any new project the Sibyl College or the Queen proposed.
Making use of the sibyl network and its vast resources of knowledge, the Queen had begun planting the seeds of progress everywhere—and already they were sprouting, like spring grass pushing up through the snow. New resources, new methods of production, new tools and new comforts had already rewarded the hard work of Tiamat’s people. It was only the beginning, but already the promise of what the next century could hold was a more tangible incentive to most people than the Queen’s constant insistence that they would—must—make themselves technologically independent, so that when the offworlders returned Tiamat could meet them as an equal.
The Winters embraced most of her proposals with an enthusiasm that made up for the Summers’ reluctance. Often they were eager to a fault, vying for the opportunity to exploit the mineral rights of their plantations, or have new laboratories and prototype manufactories constructed there. Today they were pressing the Queen for a decision on building a dam and power station north of the city.
“… that it would allow us to progress much faster if we have adequate power for the new factories—” Gaddon Overhill was saying, speaking with staccato urgency, as usual. “And it won’t foul the air or pollute the seas—”
“But a dam will flood lands—mostly Summer lands—that are used for farming and herding,” Dal Windward objected.
Overhill waved a hand dismissively. “Those lands are scarcely fit to support either crops or grazing. Small loss.”
“To you, maybe, Winter!” the Goodventure representative said. “Someone has to provide food for all you fools while you neglect your own plantations, to play with your new inventions.”
“Stick to the sea, then, that you Summers love so much,” Sewa Stormprince answered. “‘The Sea will provide,’ as you always like to say. And this won’t pollute it.”
“The Sibyl College has consulted the net on the matter.” The Queen raised her voice to silence them, as she frequently had to do. The Summers resisted rules of order, and the Winters would not let the Summers outshout them. “Danaquil Lu Wayaways will give you its findings.”
“Rubbish and lunacy,” Borah Clearwater muttered, to the room at large.
Danaquil Lu took a deep breath, and a last look at his prepared notes, before he lifted his eyes to the expectant faces of the Council. “The data received in Transfer from the sibyl net indicate that such a project is unfeasible, for a number of reasons—” He pressed on, through suddenly rising protests. “The primary reason we have for recommending against the dam project is that it would, as the Summers claim, render a substantial amount of land unavailable. On top of that, our ability to construct such a dam with complete safety, even with blueprints and material specifications provided by the net, is uncertain at this point in our development. It has to function not only through the relatively mild weather of High Summer, when free-flowing water is plentiful, but also the intense and extended cold of High Winter, when everything is frozen. We don’t have a great margin for error, unlike a lot of worlds—”
“Lady and all the gods,” Overhill interrupted. “How are we ever going to get past ‘this point’ if we don’t take some chances!”
“The sibyl mind is guiding us.” The Queen cut him off almost sharply; something she would not have had the confidence to do two or three years ago. She had become surer in her leadership as she had grown used to being Queen; and as it became clear to everyone that the sibyl net, which she relied on as faithfully as if it really were the Sea Mother’s voice, was as omniscient as any goddess when it came to what was wisdom or folly for her people. “It has shown us that our world is barely habitable, by the standards of most worlds human beings live on. We must make technological progress if we are ever to have an easier, safer life here. But we still have nearly a century before the Hegemony returns, and the sibyl mind is showing us the straightest, swiftest course to our future. Without its guidance, we would not have achieved a tenth of what we have done so far. We have to trust it, or we’ll end up destroying our world, instead. Therefore, in this matter I support the Summers.”
“Then where will we get a new source of energy for our manufactories?” Overhill demanded.
“If you will let Danaquil Lu Wayaways finish his report,” the Queen said, with faint impatience, “then you will see that there are alternative solutions.” Overhill settled back into his seat, into silence, as she glanced at Danaquil Lu.
“An alternative method of generating power has been offered to us,” Danaquil Lu went on, at her nod. “It involves using wind-driven turbines, which can be put up in the fields and on hillsides without spoiling them for grazing or farming. The wind will provide all the energy we’ll need for the next decade or so, and by then we may be able to construct tide-driven turbines, and take our power directly from the sea. Carbuncle gets its power that way, and its system has worked perfectly for centuries.…”
“You’re talking about windmills?” Abbo Win Graymount said. “I’ve seen one power a pump once or twice, but they could never produce the kind of energy we need to run factories—not if you had half a million of them!”
“You’ve never seen one with this design,” Miroe Ngenet broke in. “I’ve used them on my plantation for years. They’re far more efficient than anything you’ve ever seen.”
Graymount shrugged, dubious.
“We will begin developing detailed plans for the wind-power project, and discuss location sites and materials at our next meeting. We may be able to make use of supplies left behind by the offworlders in some of the city warehouses,” the Queen said, looking relieved as the hubbub of discussion faded to murmured speculation among the Winters, grudging silence among the Summers.
Borah Clearwater muttered under his breath as Danaquil Lu settled into a more comfortable position, relieved to be done with his command performance. He was content to let the Queen’s other advisors handle all further topics of discussion and debate. He sat, half-listening, half preoccupied by his own pain, through a seemingly endless litany of old versus new.
Kirard Set, who had sat waiting with serene anticipation all the while Borah Clearwater simmered, spoke up at last, inquiring with subtle confidence whether the Queen had considered the matter of his bid for the latest refining operation, and the right-of-way across the Clearwater lands.
The Queen nodded. “Yes, Elder Wayaways,” she said, shuffling through her sheaf of handwritten notes. “Your site seems ideal for the foundry, especially since its location is so close to the source of iron ore. Your offer to fund the initial con
struction work is very generous. I don’t see any significant obstacles to granting your request. Does the Clearwater elder have any objection to granting the needed right of way…?” She glanced around the table. Danaquil Lu was not certain that whoever represented the Clearwater clan was even present.
“I have an objection, damn it!” Borah Clearwater loomed up suddenly beside him, glaring at Kirard Set. “It’s my plantation, and by all the gods, I won’t have any Wayaways touching so much as a speck of dust on it!” He turned toward the Queen as he spoke, bellowing as if she were halfway across the planet, and not almost next to him. Danaquil Lu covered his ears.
The Queen looked up at him with a mixture of alarm and disbelief. “But all that he requested was an easement—”
“Today! And tomorrow he’ll bribe you into— Get your hands off me!” The last was directed toward the two city constables who had come in, at Jerusha PalaThion’s summons, from their post outside the door. They took his arms and led him forcibly out of the room, still protesting loudly.
Danaquil Lu let his hands fall into his lap. He shook his head, meeting the Queen’s astonished stare as the room around them rippled with relieved laughter. She looked away from him again, toward Kirard Set. “Your request is granted, Elder Wayaways,” she said, with apparent calm and something like satisfaction.
Kirard Set smiled, nodding his head in what appeared to be grateful acknowledgment. But Danaquil Lu caught the gleam of knowing amusement in his eyes as he looked at the Queen, a secret assumption of complicity that the Queen’s expression did not return, or even seem to register. Danaquil Lu looked away, glancing toward the empty doorway. It seemed to him that he still heard Borah Clearwater’s voice echoing through the halls of the Sibyl College.
He pushed to his feet, slowly and awkwardly. Murmuring his apologies to the Queen, he left the Council chamber by the same exit.
TIAMAT: Carbuncle
“Motherless blasphemer!” The shout came at her from some shadowed doorway. A fishhead came with it, thudding against her shoulder.
Moon Dawntreader stopped walking and turned back, her eyes burning. “Come out!” Her voice echoed along the almost-deserted street. “If you have a criticism, say it to my face!” But whoever had hurled the insult and the fishhead stayed hidden.
“Lady—?” Jerusha PalaThion asked the question with her motion as she unslung the rifle from her shoulder. She glanced toward the silent buildings gazing back at them with empty eyes.
Moon shook her head, putting her hand on the gun.
“What is it, Moon?” Fate Ravenglass turned toward their voices, her own empty eyes moving restlessly, blindly.
“Nothing, Fate,” Moon murmured.
“Just some stinking Summer with fish for brains, losing their mind,” Tor Starhiker, the fourth woman in their party, said sourly. She took the blind woman’s arm, guiding her steps as they started on again.
Moon raised her hand, pulling down the smile that unexpectedly tried to turn up the corners of her mouth. “The Summers have every right to criticize me, Tor.” She felt the smile disappear. “They are my people. Don’t insult them for it … at least not in my hearing.” She looked down, fingered the trefoil pendant that hung like a star against the dappled greens of her robes. “Even when they deserve it.”
The stench of rotten fish filled her nose, as inescapable as doubt, or truth. She glanced at the women who surrounded her. There was not a Summer among them. She was not the Queen her people had expected when she was chosen at the Change. And she was not the Lady they wanted—a symbolic avatar of the Sea Mother, who would preside over their sacred rituals and safeguard their cherished traditions. They had not asked for a Queen who needed and wielded real power, one who believed that the ways of offworlders were superior to the ways which had served them for centuries … a Lady who did not even believe in the Goddess.
They went on in silence until they reached the mouth of Olivine Alley, one of the countless labyrinthine ways that branched off the rising spiral of the Street, honeycombing the ancient shellform city of Carbuncle. Moon looked down at her feet, shod in soft leather, moving over the smooth surface of the pavement. The pavement was made from some material that never seemed to decay, no matter how many footsteps, wheels, treads, or burdens passed over its uniform surface.
She looked back down the alley, as they turned into the Street, taking a final look at the Sibyl College, where they studied and labored day after day to unlock the secrets of technology. She could still see the alley’s end, where the transparent storm walls let in the sunset, the last light of another day. The meeting with the Council had made this day run even longer than most.
One more day was gone in which she had not accomplished all she had hoped to; but still they were one day further along the path to real knowledge, the way to her world’s future. She began to walk again, feeling her weariness grow as they made their way on up the Street.
“This is where we get off, folks.”
Tor Starhiker’s voice startled her out of her reverie, and she nodded. “Rest well, Fate,” she murmured. “We have a long way to go tomorrow. Good night, Tor.” Their answers were equally subdued, as if her mood had spread to them all. She went on with Jerusha at her side, her head still echoing with the arguments of Winters and Summers, and with doubt.
* * *
Tor stood beside Fate with a hand resting on her arm, and watched the Summer Queen go on her way toward the palace at Street’s End. “Must have been a rough one,” she said, as much to herself as to the woman beside her.
“About as usual,” Fate answered, with a sigh. “Council days are always a trial. The ex-nobility’s eagerness to build a new world is matched only by their eagerness to be the first and richest in it.… They argue endlessly with the Summers, as if everything were some court pettiness over who was the Snow Queen’s favorite this week. They don’t seem to realize that Moon is not the old Queen—”
“Well, she looks just like her,” Tor said bluntly.
Fate sighed again, as they started on down the alleyway toward her empty shop. “Yes, I remember.…” Tor looked at her. While the Snow Queen ruled, Fate had possessed vision of a sort, using imported sensors; she had been an artist, a professional maskmaker, the one chosen to make the Summer Queen’s mask for the final Festival … the one who had placed it on Moon Dawntreader’s head. But her vision had gone with the offworlders, like so much else that had made both their lives bearable. Now at least Fate had found a new life in the Sibyl College.
And Tor, who had been her acquaintance for many years, had made a new life of a sort as her assistant. But the vacant trances of sibyls, the endless questions that were all but meaningless to her, the stupid wrangling among stupid aristos, still left her feeling cast-adrift. She was glad enough to go on sharing in the lives of the powerful and important people whose destiny she had been sucked into during the Change; what they believed and what they were trying to do awed her, and at least they weren’t dull.
But her own life was dull. The present was still too much like what she had expected it to be, inconvenient, narrow, stinking of fish. She had spent her entire life before the Change doing the offworlders’ work; she missed the past, with all its excesses and terrors. She had almost escaped this future; nearly married an offworlder and gone offplanet with him. But destiny had stepped into their path—other people’s destiny—sending her lover Oyarzabal to prison with his employers and stranding her like an empty boat when the Hegemony’s tide went out.
“Why doesn’t Moon get rid of those damned aristos?” she said, feeling irritable as memory pinched her. “There are plenty of other Winters who’d be glad to take their places, and they don’t have all the bad habits Arienrhod taught her favorites.”
Fate smiled, sweeping the street ahead with her cane, a gesture that let her feel some kind of control over her progress, and maybe her life. “Yes, but they don’t own most of the land.” The Winter nobility may have been called “noble”
by default, but most of them had held their positions at Arienrhod’s court because they headed the clans which controlled the most resources. “And they’re not all jaded fools: some of them are smart and creative and highly motivated. Those are the ones who will end up as the real leaders … I only hope I live long enough to see it.” Her mouth twisted with weary irony.
“Right,” Tor said. She shook her head, thinking privately that they had more chance of living to see the offworlders’ return than they did of seeing all Moon Dawntreader’s dreams come true. Looking toward the alley’s end, she could see the Summer Star now, the sign that had marked the Change for her people and the offworlders too. As their farewell gesture before leaving, the offworlders had sent down a beam of high frequency energy that fried the fragile components in every single piece of equipment they had left behind, including Fate’s vision sensors. Since they had blocked the development of any local technological base, nothing could be repaired.
Then they had gone, secure in the knowledge that the technophobic Summers would move north into the Winters’ territory, as they had done since the beginning of their days on this world. The Summer Queen would lead Tiamat’s people back—willingly or not—into the traditional ways that had meant their survival for centuries before the offworlders ever set foot here; keeping things stagnant and secure, until the Hegemony could return.
Moon Dawntreader meant to change all that. Tor’s admiration for the Queen’s goals was matched only by her scepticism about their achievability.
Tor steered Fate sideways, to avoid a Summer striding obliviously down the street with a load of kleeskins on his back. The batch of foul-smelling hides struck her as he passed, and knocked her staggering into Fate. She regained her balance, and caught Fate, barely in time to keep them both from sprawling in the gutter. “Watch where you’re going, you crackbrain! You want to knock down a blind woman?”