“Groffel,” she said, “it’s time we found out. Found out if there really are lands over the horizon. If there really are two-headed Goompahs. But we need support. We need you to help.”
There were shouts. “The Krolley mission,” someone said. And: “They’re lunatics.” And: “My honored friend should open his mind.”
A voice on the far side, near the walclass="underline" “I assume, Macao, we’re talking about contributions.”
She waited until her audience had subsided. “We are talking about an investment,” she said. “We are talking about our future, about whether we will still be wondering about these issues a hundred or six hundred years from now.” She seemed to grow taller. “I don’t say who’s right and who’s wrong. But I do say we should settle the matter. We should find out.
“Three ships will make the voyage. Like Moro, they will travel east, into the sunrise. They will record whatever islands they encounter, and eventually they will return over there.” She pointed toward the back of the auditorium. West. A murmur ran through the audience.
“But why now? When the signs are bad?”
Kellie stirred. “Signs?” she asked. “Does he mean the cloud?”
Another voice: “How long will it take?”
“We estimate three years,” she said.
“And on what is the estimate based?”
“The size of the world.”
“You know the size of the world?”
Another smile. “Oh, yes.”
“And how big is it?”
“It is a sphere, 90,652 gruden around the outside.”
“Really?” This was Orky again. “Not 653?”
“Round it off a bit, if you like.”
Someone in back stood up. “You’ve measured it?”
“In a manner of speaking. I have seen it measured.” She waited for the laughter, got it, let it die away, and added: “I am quite serious.”
“And was it done with a measuring rod?”
“Yes,” she said. “Actually it was done with two measuring rods.” She was completely in control. “Scholars placed rods of identical lengths at Brackel and at T’Mingletep. Who knows how far T’Mingletep is from here?”
“A long walk,” said someone in back. But he didn’t get the laughter he expected, and he sat down.
“That’s right. Although it’s on the western sea, it’s almost directly south of Brackel. And the distance has been measured. North to south, it is precisely 346 gruden.” Digger had seen the term gruden before, but until that moment he had no idea whether it was the length of someone’s arm or a half dozen klicks.
“The shadows cast by the rods were measured through the course of the day. The shadows are longer in T’Mingletep. And the difference in lengths between T’Mingletep and here makes it possible to calculate the size of the world.”
“It’s too much for me,” said Orky.
Whether 90,000 gruden seemed outrageously big or too small to the audience, Digger couldn’t tell. But he knew the experiment, of course. It was similar to the one performed by Eratosthenes, who got very close to the size of the Earth in 240 B.C.
They were silent for a time, and she recognized a big Goompah in the front row. “Klabit,” he said. “Macao, I don’t know whether it’s round or not. But if it really is round, wouldn’t the water run off? Wouldn’t the ships themselves fall off when they got far enough around the curve?”
Macao let them see the question had stopped her. “I don’t know the answer to that, Klabit. But the ground between here and T’Mingletep is curved. That’s established beyond doubt.” She looked out over her audience. “So the truth is, nobody really knows why the water doesn’t run off. Obviously, it doesn’t happen, or there’d be no tide tonight.” (Laughter.) “I admit I don’t understand how the world can be round, but it seems that it is. I say, let’s find out. Once and for all. Let’s send the ships east over the ocean and watch to see from which direction they return.”
Her audience had become restive. Macao left the stage and went out among them. “The mission will cost a great deal of money. The funds from this evening, after I’ve taken my expenses—”
“—of course—” said a voice on the far side.
“—of course. After that, I will contribute the proceeds to the effort. This is your opportunity to become part of the most significant (something) expedition ever attempted by our two cities.
“But they need something more than money. They need volunteers. Sailors.” She paused and looked down at Telio. “It will be a dangerous voyage. Not something for the faint of heart. Not something for the unskilled.”
“I fish for a living,” said Telio.
“Just what they need. I’ll send your name over.”
The audience laughed. Someone commented that Telio was lucky to have gotten such an opportunity.
Macao was back on her stage. She held up her hands. “Velascus talks about the defect each of us has, implanted by Taris, to prevent our being perfect. For you—” she looked at one of the Goompahs off to her left—“it is perhaps too great an affection for money. And for Telio over there, it may be a (something) toward jealousy. For me, perhaps, it is that I have no sense of humor.” (Laughter.) “But for each of us it is there. The individual defect. But there is another flaw that we all share, that we share as a community.
“You remember Haster?”
Yes. They all did.
“What’s Haster?” asked Kellie.
“No idea.”
“The colony failed within three years. As did the several attempts that preceded it. Why do you suppose that is? Why have so many efforts to move abroad been abandoned?”
There were several older children seated in the rear. One of them stood to be recognized. “It is wild country beyond the known lands,” she said. “Who would want to live there?”
“Who indeed?” echoed Macao. “And I put it to you that herein lies our fatal defect. Our common flaw. The characteristic that deters us. We love our homeland too much.”
WHEN THE LAST of the lights had gone out, and the cafés had emptied, Kellie and Digger wandered the lonely walkways that bordered the sea at the southern edge of the city. They were wet, and the Flickinger field produced by the e-suits was notoriously slippery underfoot, especially in such conditions. It didn’t seem to matter what sort of shoes he wore. He turned it off, and gasped in the sudden rush of cold salt air.
Kellie heard his reaction and guessed what he had done. She followed his lead. “It’s lovely out here,” she said.
The sea was rough. It roared against the rocks and threw spray into the air. A sailing ship, squat and heavy, lay at anchor. Lights poured out of the after cabin, and Digger could see a figure moving about inside.
“Do the Goompahs have the compass?” asked Digger.
“Don’t know.”
“Does Lookout have a magnetic north?”
“Yes, Dig. About twelve degrees off the pole. Why? Does it matter?”
“If they don’t have a compass, how will they navigate on that round-the-world jaunt they’re talking about?”
“Sun by day, stars by night. Shouldn’t be all that difficult. Except I don’t know how they’ll get past the eastern continent. They’ll have the same problem Columbus did.”
It was too dark to be able to make out where the horizon met the sky. Digger tried to visualize the sea east of Athens. He remembered a couple of big islands out there, and a few smaller chunks of land beyond. Then it was open ocean for several thousand kilometers.
He understood why the Goompahs had never crossed their oceans. How long had it taken before Leif Eriksson and the longboats made the run across the Atlantic? But it seemed odd that there’d been no serious effort to explore the continent on which they lived. It was true there were natural barriers, but they had sail, and they had easy access by water. They weren’t in the classic Greek situation of being penned in an inland sea.
They wandered out onto a wooden pier, and Kellie’s hand lay gently on his hip. It was a floating pier, and some of the planks were loose or missing. They kept going until they reached the far end, where they stood listening to the ocean. A few gulls were in the air. The universal creature. Any world that produced oceans and living things eventually produced gulls. Swamps gave you crocodiles. Forests always had wolves. Living worlds were exceedingly rare, but their creatures were remarkably alike. Which after all made sense. How many different ways are there to make a fish? The variations were almost always limited to details.
A lantern moved across the deck of the ship.
He liked this place. It felt a bit like an island lost in time. “You know, Kellie,” he said, “I wish there were a way we could talk with her.”
“With whom?”
“With Macao.”
“Forget it,” she said. “You’d scare the devil out of her.”
LIBRARY ENTRY
The oddest thing about the entire evening was the image on the map. Except that his skin color was a bit light, the guy on the winged rhino looked like my uncle Frank.
— Jenkins Log
Captain’s entry
chapter 26
Lookout.
On the ground at Saniusar.
Saturday, September 6.
MORE SURVEILLANCE DEVICES had arrived, and Kellie and Jack had spread them throughout the isthmus this time, instead of confining them to Brackel. Saniusar, the northernmost Goompah outpost, was the last of the cities to receive its allotment.
It occupied the shores of a bay and was surrounded by a ring of picturesque hills, which grew progressively higher until they ascended finally into towering mountains.
Beyond the mountains lay dense jungle, and beyond the jungle lay a broad desert, extending for thousands of kilometers, well north of the equator. Digger was beginning to understand why the Goompah world ended on the north at Saniusar.
“But they have ships,” protested Kellie. “I can understand why they haven’t crossed the seas. But running up and down the coast shouldn’t have been a problem.”
“Don’t be so sure. How far did the Greeks go?”