He sensed that such a huge difference in size somehow led to a difference in kind, but there was more to it than that. All the cities, towns and villages on Overland had been planned, and therefore their chief characteristics sprang from the will of their architects and builders, but from high in the air Ro-Atabri resembled a natural growth, a living organism.
It was all there, just as in the sketches his maternal grandmother—Gesalla Maraquine—used to make for him when he was a child. There was the Borann River winding into Arle Bay, which in turn opened out upon the Gulf of Tronom, and to the east was the snow-capped Mount Opelmer. Cupped in and shaped by those natural features, the city and its suburbs sprawled across the land, a vast lichen of masonry, concrete, brakka wood and clay which represented centuries of Endeavour by multitudes of human beings. The great fires which had raged on the day the Migration had begun had left a still-visible discoloration in some areas, but the durable stonework had survived intact and would serve humanity again in some future era. Flecks of orange-red and orange- brown showed where the ill-fated New Men had begun capping the shells of buildings with new tiled roofs.
“What do you think of it, young Maraquine?” Commissioner Kettoran said, appearing at Toller’s side. Now that gravity was back to normal he was feeling much better and was taking a lively interest in all aspects of the ship’s affairs.
“It’s big,” Toller said simply. “I can’t take it in. It makes history… real.”
Kettoran laughed. “Did you think we’d made it up?”
“You could have done, as far as most of the present generation are concerned, but this … It hurts my brain, if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean—think how I feel.” Kettoran leaned further across the rail and his long face became animated. “Do you see that square patch of green just to the west of the city? That’s the old Skyship Quarter—the exact spot we took off from fifty years ago! Will we be able to land there?”
“It seems as good a place as any,” Toller said. “The lateral dispersions on this flight have been remarkably slight, and those that did occur have cancelled each other out. The decision rests with the Sky-commodore, of course, but I’d say that’s where we’ll put down.”
“That would make it perfect. The perfect full circle.”
“Indeed yes,” Toller agreed, no longer really listening, his attention captured by the realization that the ten-day flight between the worlds was all but over, and that very soon he would have unlimited opportunities to court Vantara. He had not even glimpsed her since the incident with the blue-horn, and the lack of contact had fuelled his obsession to the point where the prospect of seeing another world for the first time seemed no more of an adventure than being able to speak to the countess face to face and perhaps win her over.
“I envy you, young Maraquine,” Kettoran said, gazing wistfully downwards at the natural stage upon which the half-remembered scenes of his youth had been enacted. “Everything lies before you.”
“Perhaps.” Toller smiled, savoring his own interpretation of the commissioner’s words. “Perhaps you’re right.”
The village of Styvee contained no more than a hundred or so buildings, and even in its heyday would have housed only a few hundred people. Toller was tempted to cross it off his list and proceed on his way without even landing, but it would then have become necessary to falsify an inspection report and he could not allow himself to sink to petty dishonesty. He studied the layout of the village for a moment, noting that its central square was very small, even for such an out-of-the-way place.
“What do you think, corporal?” he said, testing the younger man’s judgment. “Is it worth trying to put the ship down on those few yards of turf?”
Steenameert leaned over the rail to assess the prospects. “I wouldn’t take the risk, sir—there’s very little leeway and there’s no telling what the eddy currents are like around that group of tall warehouses.”
“That’s what I was thinking—we’ll make a pilot of you yet,” Toller said jovially. “Head for those pastures to the east, beside the river, and drop us there.”
Steenameert nodded, his naturally pink face growing even more roseate with gratification. Toller had taken a liking to Steenameert on the occasion of their first meeting, when he had parachuted down from the interplanetary void, and had put in a special request to have him in his crew for the flight to Land. Now he was personally grooming Steenameert for a field promotion, somewhat to the annoyance of Lieutenant Correvalte, who had spent the customary year in a training squadron.
Toller turned to Correvalte, who officially should have been conducting the landing maneuver and was showing his discomfiture by lounging in a seat in a posture of exaggerated boredom. “Lieutenant, detail one man to guard the ship and get the others ready to inspect the village—the walk will do them good.”
Correvalte saluted, very correctly, and left the bridge. Toller maintained a carefully neutral expression as he watched the lieutenant go down the short stair to the gondola’s main deck. He had already decided to recompense Correvalte by recommending him for a full captaincy earlier than usual, but had decided not to let him know until the current mission had been completed.
It was the middle of foreday, and already in the equatorial region of Land the sun’s heat was baking the ground. Most of the gondola was in the shadow of the ship’s gasbag, a fact which made the environment beyond seem preternaturally bright and vivid. As the vessel performed a slow half-circle to face the slight breeze, sinking all the while, Toller saw that the fields surrounding the village had almost returned to their natural uniform shade of green.
With no seasons to orchestrate the cycle of maturation, individual plants in the wild state tended to follow their own timetables, with a proportion in the earliest stages of growth while others were at their peak or in the process of withering and returning their constituents to the soil. From time immemorial, Kolcorronian farmers had sorted the seeds of useful vegetables into synchronous batches—typically creating six harvests a year—and as a result areas of cultivated land presented patterns of stripes of varying colors.
Here, after decades of neglect, those patterns had all but disappeared as the edible grasses and other crop vegetables had slowly returned to botanic anarchy. The advanced stage of the reversal led Toller to suspect that the village of Styvee was not one of those which the New Men had reclaimed after the ptertha plague had wiped out the normal human population. If that were the case, the inspection of the village promised to be yet another in a series of unpleasant and highly depressing experiences.
The final stages of racial extinction—half a century ago—had come so swiftly that there had been no time for the dying to bury the dead…
The thought cast a pall over Toller’s mood, reminding him of how wrong he had been in his supposition that the fleet’s arrival on Land would give him endless opportunity to keep company with the Countess Vantara. At the heart of his mistake had been a single historical fact.
The migration from Land to Overland had been a carefully planned affair, one which should have been carried out in orderly stages, but in the event it had been essayed in circumstances of panic and chaos. With the city of Ro-Atabri burning, with mobs on the rampage and the army’s discipline gone, the evacuation had been forced through with only minutes of notice for the refugees*—and in that extreme not one book had been taken on the journey between the worlds. Jeweler and useless bundles of currency notes had been carried in plenty, but not one painting, not one written poem, not one sheet of music.
While men and women of culture were later to complain that the race had left its soul behind, King Chakkell and his heirs were to fret about a more irksome oversight. In all the turmoil and confusion nobody had thought of bringing any maps of Kolcorron, of the empire, or of Land itself. From the time of the Migration until the present day—although the Kolcorronian royal family still claimed sovereignty over the Old World—the lack of charts had proved an annoyance more than anything else, but the situation had changed entirely.