The Tatja Grimm's World Read Free Page B

Science would be the high point of this landfall.
    Guille rolled the telescope cart into an open area at the rear of the editorial deck. Here the breeze was blocked by Old Jespen’s penthouse, yet there was still a reasonable view. He clamped the cart’s wheels and leveled its platform. Back in the Chainpearls—just after he bought the scope — this operation would have attracted a small crowd and begun an impromptu star- or Seraph-party. Now, passersby said hello, but few stopped for long. Rey had his toy all to himself.
    He flipped the tube down and took a scan across the northern horizon. They were about fifteen miles off the coast. To the naked eye, the continent was a dark line at the bottom of the sky. The telescope brought detail: Guille could see individual rocks on the dun cliffs. Trees growing in the lee of the hills were clearly visible. Here and there were rounded lumps he recognized as wild termite towers. The village was hidden beyond a small cape.
    Not a very impressive coast for the greatest landmass in the world. Beyond those cliffs, the land stretched more than ten thousand miles — over the north pole and partway down the other side of the planet. There was a hundred times more land there than in all the island chains put together. It was an ocean of land, and beyond its coastal fringe, mostly unknown. No wonder it had been the source of so many stories. Rey sighed. He didn’t begrudge those stories. In past centuries, speculation about the
Interior was a decent story base. The island civilizations weren’t more than a couple of thousand years old. The human race must have originated on the Continent. It was reasonable that older, wiser civilizations lay in the Interior. Whole races of monsters and godlings might flourish in those reaches.
    But during the last thirty years, there had been serious exploration. Betrog Hedrigs had reached Continent’s Center. In the last ten years, three separate expeditions had trekked across the Interior. The unknown remained, but it was cut into small hunks. The myths were dead and the new reality was a dismal thing: An “ocean” of land is necessarily a very dry place. Beyond the coastal fringe the explorers found desert. In that, there was variety. There were deserts of sand and heat, deserts of rock, and—in the north—deserts of ice and cold. There was no hidden paradise. The nearest things to the “Great Lakes” of legend were saline ponds near Continent’s Center. The explorers found that the Interior was inhabited, but not by an Elder Race. There were isolated tribes in the mid-latitude deserts. These folk lived naked, almost like animals. Their only tools were spears and hand axes. They seemed peaceful, too poor even for warfare. The lowest barbarians of the Fringe were high civilization compared to them. And all these years, the story writers had assumed that the Hurdic tribes were degenerate relatives of Interior races!
    Yet Interior fantasies were still written. Guille saw hundreds of them a year, and worse, had to buy dozens. Ah, well. It was a living, and it gave him a chance to show people more important things. Rey stepped back from the telescope, and turned its tube almost straight up. It was Seraph he really wanted to look at.
    “Hel-lo?”
    Rey looked up, startled. He had an audience. It was the Fair Haven waif. She stood almost behind him and about ten feet away. He had the feeling she’d watched for several minutes. “Hello indeed. And how are you today, Mistress Grimm?”
    “Well.” She smiled shyly and took a step forward. She certainly looked better than when he first saw her. Her face was scrubbed clean. In place of rancid leather, she wore tripulation fatigues. If she had been five feet tall instead of six, she would have seemed a pretty pre-teener.
    “Shouldn’t you be rehearsing with Cor?”
    “I, uh, that is la-ter.”
    “I see. You’re off duty.”
    She bobbed her head, seeming to understand the term. Somehow, Rey had