Now the group of them appeared. “Darius, Provos, Colene, from where?” Hobard asked.
They pretended to be slow to understand, which was reasonable enough, while they consulted mentally with each other. This was a straightforward question, but difficult to answer, assuming they wanted to give such information. How could they clarify that they were not only from three different places but from three different realities, and the horse from a fourth? That they had traveled through the Virtual Mode, which was a kind of temporary reality anchored at each of their homes, crossing other realities at ten-foot intervals, so that things could change abruptly with a single step forward? That the people, geography, and fundamental natural laws changed with each reality, so that in some animals were telepathic while in others there was super-science that allowed gravity cancellation or travel at many times the velocity of light? That Darius could perform a kind of magic in his reality, while Provos remembered the future and not the past? That each of them was associated with his/her anchor, which was both place and person, and that they could get off the Virtual Mode only through one of the five anchors that held it in place? That Nona and the place of the huge stone musical instruments had just become the fifth anchor?
No, even if there were no language barrier, they could not blab all that to these grim strangers. So what could they say? They didn’t really know what kind of a world this was, apart from the facts that it had magic and a strong upper-class/lower-class social structure. What would satisfy the despots without giving away too much?
We have come from afar by virtue of a spell, and wish only to return, Darius decided. That did seem to be the best answer.
So Darius used gestures and pointings to images to try to get that across. It turned out that the despots already knew that, they thought; they had a concept of interplanetary travel that was weird, and assumed that the party had somehow walked from one planet to another. They wanted to know the origin planet.
Colene and the others were baffled by this. How could anyone walk between planets? Even if the force of gravity did not prevent this, Earth’s moon was so far away that it would take thirty years to walk there, and the other planets were much farther away. Were there seven-league boots for this purpose?
The despots were skeptical of their confusion. It was almost as if the despots believed the visitors knew all about it, and were playing ignorant. “You are human,” Hobard said, making a number of pictures to get the concept across. Because Colene and the others were genuinely curious about the nature of this world, they drew on Seqiro’s telepathy to clarify it. The minds of the other despots remained opaque, but Hobard was trying to establish a liaison, and his mind was opening so that they could start to receive his more complicated thoughts. This was especially true when he focused on a specific thing. “You came from a human world.” World was not exactly the concept, but the exact one was not quite fathomable. Planet? Aspect? Subdivision?
“From a human world,” Darius agreed, by indicating the correct pictures. “Far away.”
Now a diagram appeared, with what might be the wires and resistors of a weird radio set. There was something naggingly familiar about it, but Colene couldn’t place it. “Which one?” Hobard demanded. One bug in the picture glowed, and then another.
Maybe we had better try to tell a bit of the truth, Colene thought to Darius. They’ll know if we claim a planet that is wrong; this is their territory.
Darius agreed. “Far in a different way,” he tried to clarify. “Not in distance, but in mode.”
But this was lost on the despots. Evidently they had no concept of the Virtual Mode or alternate realities. Indeed, their own reality seemed quite strange enough to hold their attention.
Hobard generated another picture. In its center was a shape like a hairy roach, or perhaps a hairy fat-bodied spider, for it was at the center of a weblike structure of lines. Upon the main lines extending out were smaller bugs, with finer lines radiating from them. Yet it was not a spiderweb; the lines were jagged, and took funny turns.
Then Colene placed the image. “The Mandelbrot set!” she exclaimed.
The others looked at her. Then Seqiro’s thought came, warningly: I have gotten farther into Hobard’s mind. Beware asserting yourself.
Colene was irritated at this interruption to her revelation. Why not assert myself? she demanded. I’m an assertive person.
Because they judge men and women differently, he explained. Here men are dominant. Elsewhere women are. The two cultures are enemies.
Oh. The last thing they needed was to be considered enemies before they knew their way around. Take it, Darius, she thought.
But what is this Man’s-brow set? he thought.
I’ll explain while you dominate. Tell me to shut up.
The mental exchange had been swift, but things were getting somewhat strained. Darius frowned at Colene. “Silence, girl,” he snapped.
Colene hung her head, her gesture confessing that she had spoken out of turn. Darius faced Hobard. “Where?” he asked.
The old man seemed to have lost some of his own concentration. It seemed that Colene’s outburst had held considerable significance for the despots. Since they couldn’t have understood the meaning of the words—Darius himself didn’t understand them, and he had a working knowledge of her language—it had to be because of the thing the remarkable horse was warning them about. Men and women were not equal here. A woman who asserted herself was in trouble.
Yet Nona the peasant girl had been assertive enough, and Stave had not taken offense. Did a different rule apply to the theows?
The magic image had faded. Now it reappeared. The small bug on a webline above the upper leg of the bug glowed.
Hobard pointed to the glowing bug, and tapped his foot on the floor. “Here,” he said, using his word, but the translation came through. This was where they were.
Meanwhile Colene’s mind was racing through what she remembered of the Mandelbrot set. It was named after the man who had done a special computation involving a complex equation, and plotted the result on a graph. A simple equation was something like X + Y = 10, and if X was 10, then Y had to be 0 because there was nothing left for it. If X was 9, then Y was 1, and so on until X was 0 and Y was 10. Those answers could be plotted on graph paper, with X representing up and Y the side: go up ten and across none and place a point. Then up nine and across one, and set another point. A line of points formed, and all the possible answers to that equation were on that line. Simple.
Colene had quickly gone beyond that, and used squares of X and Y to get curved lines. X2 + Y2 = Z? made a perfect circle with a radius of Z. Sine waves were trickier. But a complex equation was something else.
She had been fascinated by the new concept of fractals, which were like fractional dimensions. They enabled a person to take a simple figure and elaborate it infinitely, without taking up any more space. For example, one could start with an equilateral triangle, every angle and every side the same, then put a little triangle in the middle of each side, so that it became a six-pointed star:
_/\_ \/ \/ /____\ \/
Then smaller triangles could be added on the twelve sides of that outline, and yet smaller triangles on the new sides. The figure got more complicated, yet sat in the same space. There was no end to the additions that could be made; there was always room for yet smaller triangles.
Meanwhile the length of the outer line kept growing. If the initial triangle was three inches on a side, it was nine inches all the way around. The six-pointed star added an inch to each side, so was twelve inches around. The eighteen-pointed figure that resulted from the next round of additions was sixteen inches around. And so on; each step added more sides and points and length, yet the figure could fit on the same sheet of paper. It was an infinite process, with a finite boundary.