“Yes,” Nona said, picking up the thought. Sometimes Colene wished that Seqiro’s telepathic ability weren’t quite so comprehensive. Were all her jealous little snits being broadcast to the others?
No. Only the thoughts of normal interest to others, unless you wish it otherwise.
Well, that was a relief! She appreciated the horse’s discretion. “There are?” she said, quickly returning to Nona’s thought so that her side dialogue with Seqiro wouldn’t be noticed. “Little people?”
“There are people on all the worlds, I think. Our stories tell of them. But few travel between worlds, so there is little contact. The ones from Jupiter are the Megaplayers, who left their great instruments by our sea.”
“You mean there really are giants to go with those things?” Colene asked, still amazed by the revelation. She knew they were going to see just such giants, but somehow their literalness hadn’t registered.
“Oh, yes. Every planet has its folk. But it’s hard to know them.”
“Now, let me see if I have this straight. Oria is just a little planet out from Jupiter, and there are littler planets along the filament between the two. And the filament comes from one of the projections of Jupiter. So what about the filaments from Oria? Do they have little planets along them, and do those planets have people too?”
“Yes, surely they do,” Nona answered. “But those folk are so tiny we can’t see them.”
Colene shook her head. “I’ll just have to see it to believe it. But they would be so small—if this planet’s about eight miles in diameter, that’s a thousandth of Earth/Oria’s size. So to be in proportion, the people would have to stand, oh, under a tenth of an inch tall.”
I can improve your sight, so you can see them, Seqiro offered.
Colene remembered how the horse had rendered her into a deadly fast and strong knife-wielder, briefly, as a demonstration of his potential power over her body. In fact he had done it in another way just recently, enabling her to dance effectively. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
They left Darius and Nona resting, and Provos sitting there with her own future memories, and walked back to the shadow’s border. It was good to be alone with Seqiro again, however briefly.
Colene lay down on the ground, realizing that it was furry rather than hard. She had assumed that this was moss. But now she realized that it was something else.
She focused on a tiny clear patch between stands of moss. Her vision became amazingly sharp. It was as if she were using a magnifying glass or even a microscope, and turning up the power.
The edge of the moss resolved itself into a stand of trees. The bare patch became a pasture. To the other side of the pasture, a speck of sand became a perfectly formed little house. This was indeed a landscape!
She squinted, concentrating. The pasture clarified. There were cows in it. She traced the route of the road passing by the house, and discovered a horse running along it. On the horse was a man.
“Like Gulliver’s Travels,” she murmured. Then, to clarify the reference for Seqiro, she amplified her spot memory: a man named Jonathan Swift had written a satire of the politics and customs of his time, phrased as Gulliver’s voyages to the land of Lilliput with its six-inch-tall folk, and Brobdingnag with its giants. One of the voyages had been to a land of intelligent and refined horses. “I’ve been there too,” she said. “That’s where I found you, Seqiro.”
The horse (the tiny one) galloped to the house. The man dismounted almost before the horse came to a stop, and dashed into the house. In a moment the tiny door opened again, and the man came out—with a woman. The man pointed—at Colene’s face. The two stared up at her.
It was because of her the man had been hurrying home! To these folk, she was a monstrous giant peering down with unknown intent. They were terrified!
“Hey, I’m just curious,” she murmured, afraid that her breath might blow them away.
It talks!
That was the man’s thought—which Seqiro had relayed to her. She could communicate with them! Their minds must be wide open, or maybe the horse had become attuned to the mind-set of all the people of Julia.
Parts of both, Seqiro responded.
“I’m just a person, like you,” she said to the tiny ones, letting her vocalization shape her thought. “I’m just passing through. I hope I didn’t step on anyone.”
Leave us alone, anima!
Obviously they had been doing damage as they tramped heedlessly across this planet! The best thing they could do for these people was to get away and let them repair the damage. Suddenly Colene felt awesomely responsible.
Yet was it any different back home on Earth? All her life she had walked without much regard for the tiny plants and bugs that might be under her feet. Didn’t ants care whether they got squished? Now that it was people getting squished, she felt horribly guilty. This was evidently an animus planet, but that did not mean it was right to crush their people.
“I’m sorry,” she said. A tear fell and splashed into the pasture, spooking a cow.
She got up, quickly but carefully. Where could she put her great lethal feet, so she wouldn’t do more damage?
She decided to put them in her own footprints. That way she would squish only what had already been squished. But she couldn’t see her prints in the shadow.
I can tune in to what is there.
“Thanks, horsehead.”
Now the impressions of the folk of this world came to her. Surprise. Incredulity. Denial. Horror. Grief.
Every footprint was a disaster area. Trees had been flattened, houses destroyed, people killed.
“Oh, my God!” Colene whispered. “What have I been doing?” But she had the answer. She had been destroying. She had been like an act of nature, wiping out people randomly, not even aware. Gravity might not be any more, for her, but it seemed that she felt exactly like a giant to the folk underfoot.
“Seqiro, guide my feet!” she pleaded, blinded by tears and horror.
They walked back to the others, treading in their own prints. “We’ve got to get out of here!” Colene cried. Without waiting, she hit them with what she had learned.
“Oh, I never thought!” Nona cried, sitting up. “I knew there were people, but—”
“But you didn’t make the connection,” Darius finished. “None of us did. It was too far from our experience.”
That was true. He was the rational one, Colene remembered. But now they knew, and they could not ignore it.
“How many more of these little planets must we pass before we get to Jupiter?” Darius asked Nona.
“I don’t know. Several. Some will be larger than this, some smaller.”
“Can we take a longer hop?” Colene asked.
“We can try.” Nona walked to the sea, stood in it, and concentrated, tuning in on the filament ahead.
After a bit, she reported that there were two worlds she might reach near the main star. One was larger than this one; the other was smaller. Both were anima.
“Star?” Colene asked.
Nona’s thought clarified the concept. A star was not what Colene imagined; it was merely the point at which several filaments diverged. Those on major lines were big and bright; those on minor lines were lesser structures. Those with many rays were brighter than those with few rays. Oria’s sun was the nearest large star on an adjacent filament, with ninety-eight rays, closer to them than their own ninety-nine-ray star. But this particular little star had only three rays, so was hardly recognizable.
Darius cut directly to business. “If we take the smaller world, we will risk treading on many more little folk, unless our feet touch only the tops of mountains and they are safe in the valleys.”