Now, if the old fossil-flicker was right about the rough latitude, and if they were on a near-northerly course on this trail as Claude thought they’d have to be, given the lay of the land, then the polestar should be about halfway between the horizon and the zenith somewhere in… there.
He had picked up a couple of stiff twigs from the litter back at the fort and now bound them together into a cross-sight with a hair from his mount’s mane. Each stalk was twice as long as his hand. He hoped the field wouldn’t be too limited.
Adjusting his position in the saddle to minimize the effect of the chaliko’s rocking gait, he memorized the constellations that had to be roughly circumpolar. Then he held the cross-sight at arm’s length and aligned the vertical axis with the straight track ahead (analog: two upright chaliko ears) and centered it on a likely star he had tentatively selected. He carefully noted the positions of five other bright stars within the quadrants of his sight and then relaxed. Three hours from now, when planetary rotation had made those six stars seem to change position slightly, he’d take another sighting His near-photographic memory would do an angular comparison within the field of the cross-sight, and with luck he would be able to discern the imaginary hub in the sky about which all those stars were turning. The hub would be the pole. It might or might not have a star on it or near it that could be dubbed Pliocene Polaris.
He would center the cross-sight anew on this point in the sky and try to verify the pole’s position before dawn with a two-hour shot. Failing that, he would check it tomorrow night with a good long time interval for maximum rotation.
Richard set his wrist chronometer’s alarm for 0330, glad that he hadn’t followed the impulse to throw the thing away back in Madame Guderian’s rose garden on that rainy morning when he had abandoned his universe… Less than twenty hours ago.
CHAPTER TEN
Even though he had been partially briefed by Creyn on what to expect, Bryan found the reality of the riverside city of Roniah nearly overwhelming. The party of riders came suddenly upon the place after wending their way through a dark canyon where the guards’ torches barely illuminated a narrow trail cut in buff sandstone. The caravan emerged onto a knoll overlooking the confluence of the Saône and the Rhône and saw the town below on the west bank, just south of the snout of forested crags where the two great rivers joined.
Roniah was built on a rise adjacent to the water. Twisting around the hill’s base was an earthern rampart crowned by a thick fortified wall. All along the top of this, glittering like lavish strings of orange beads, were closely spaced little fires. High, square watchtowers jutted out from the wall every hundred meters or so, and these, too, were outlined in pricks of fire all along their crenellated battlements, around the windows, and even up and down the corners and angles of the walls. A mauve city gate had almost every detail of its architecture picked out in small lamps. Leading to the gate was a colonnaded avenue half a kilometer long, every column of which was capped with a huge flaming torch. The midway was flanked with spangled geometrical patterns that might have been lamp-bordered lawns or flowerbeds planted in parterre designs.
From the caravan’s vantage point above the town, Bryan could see that Roniah was uncrowded, its mostly small houses laid out along wide curving streets. Since it was well past midnight, most of the dwellings showed no window lights, but along the edges of the roofs were little dots of fire; and the parapets that fronted the houses were also illuminated by thousands of the evenly spaced lamps. Closer to the riverside were a number of larger structures bearing slender towers of varying heights. The walls and major features of these buildings were outlined in light as elaborately as the city gate was, but instead of oil-lamp orange, the facades glowed with blue, bright green, aquamarine, and amber. Many of the towers had their windows ablaze.
“It’s like fairyland,” breathed Sukey. “All those little sparkling lights!”
“Each inhabitant is obligated to contribute to urban illumination by maintaining the lamps of his own house,” Creyn said. “The common fuel is olive oil, which is extremely plentiful. The taller Tanu dwellings are lit by more sophisticated lamps energized by accumulations of surplus metapsychic emanations.”
They rode down, following the track until it merged with a road paved in granite setts that widened to nearly eighty meters as it approached the avenue of fire-topped columns. Between the great pillars stood neat frameworks of bamboo arranged in aisles, separated by dark shrubbery and clusters of palm trees. Creyn explained that booths for a market were set up in this exterior garden every month, featuring the goods of local artisans as well as luxury products of all kinds brought in by caravans. Once a year there was also a Great Fair, which attracted people from all over western Europe.
“You have no daily market for foods, then?” Bryan asked.
“Meat is the great diet staple,” Creyn replied. “Professional hunters, all human, bring in large quantities of game to the plantations in the more northerly reaches of both the Saône and Rhône. It is sent downstream daily to the town provisioners on barges, together with grain, fruit, and other produce from the farms, such as olive oil and wine. Most of the food processing is done at the plantations by rama workers. In years gone by, our own people supervised the plantations. Now almost all of them are overseen by humans.”
“And you see no potential hazard in such an arrangement?” Bryan asked.
Creyn smiled, the flickering lights striking sparks from his deep-set eyes. “No hazard at all. The humans engaged in critical occupations all wear the torc. But try to understand that coercion is seldom necessary. For all but the most deeply disturbed of your people, the world of Exile is a happy one.”
“Even for the women?” Elizabeth inquired.
The unperturbed Tanu said, “Even the lowliest non-meta women of the commonalty are completely free from drudgery. They may engage in the occupations of their choice or live in indolence. They may even pleasure themselves as they will with human lovers. The only restriction is that their children must be by us. The more fortunate humans possessing genetic codons for metafunction enjoy a privileged position. They are welcomed into our society as probationary equals. In the fullness of time, those who have proved their loyalty to the Tanu may exchange their silver torcs for gold.”
“Both men and women?” Aiken asked, his lips twitching.
“Both men and women. I’m sure you can appreciate our reproductive strategy. We not only strengthen our line against the effects of the local radiation but also incorporate your genes for latent and operant metability. Ultimately, we may hope to evolve fully operant metapsychics”, he nodded at Elizabeth, “even as you will have done six million years from now. We will then be freed from the limitation of the golden torcs.”
Elizabeth said, “Quite a grand design. How do you reconcile it with the reality of this planet’s future… with no Tanu?”
Creyn smiled. “The Goddess wreaks as she wills. Six million years is a long time. I think we Tanu will be grateful to settle for a small portion of it to call our own.”
They approached closer to the great gate, which was twelve or thirteen meters wide and almost twice as high, fashioned of titanic balks of timber heavily reinforced with bronze plates.
“Not much action outside here at night, is there?” Aiken commented.