Macroscope

Ivo perceived holes in her story, but did not challenge it. Undoubtedly her past was more mundane than she cared to admit. “How far is Urartu from here?”

“Very far. But I don’t want to go there. The politics will have changed, and my family could not afford me now. I will go with you.”

Ivo shrugged, appreciating her help but having no idea where to journey. First, however, they had to get off the island that was Tyre, hardly a mile in circumference; then he could make longer-range plans.

They packed as much as could be concealed under heavy cloaks: breads, dried fish, small crocks of wine. The host-merchant had been too ca

At dusk Aia took him to the edge of the city, where the high wall balked their escape. Guards paced along the top of it, carrying dim lanterns. Ivo wondered how the open-dish lamps had been adapted for windy wet outdoor use, but they did not get close enough for him to observe. He would be satisfied just to know how they could get past the wall.

The girl knew what she was doing, however. “The factories go through,” she whispered. “And no one watches inside at night.”

Factories?

She led him into a dark building. He had to hold on to her hand to keep from getting lost, as he could not see at all inside. But that was not his major concern of the moment. His nose was.

The smell was appalling — a suffocating redolence of corruption unlike any he had encountered before. He tried to seal off his nostrils, but the thought of taking such putrefaction unfiltered into his lungs repelled him even more. “What — what?” he whispered.

She laughed. “They can’t hear us here. Speak up.”

“What died here? A flatulent whale?”

“Oh, you mean the murex. It is a little strong, but that’s the price of industry.”

So industry polluted the atmosphere in ancient days too! “What is it?”

“The murex. The shellfish. Don’t you know how they process it?”

“No.” He hoped they would soon be through the building and into clean air again.

“That’s right. I forgot it’s a trade secret. Well, they gather the murex, break the shells, extract the fish and dump it in big vats. They let it rot there for some time, until the yellow forms. For the darker shades they have to put it in the sun. Then they filter it down and market it. It’s a big industry here; no one outside of the Seven Cities knows the secret. Here, I’ll find a shell for you.”

She banged about in the dark, and in due course pressed an object into his hand. It was a shell resembling that of a spiny conch.

“Market what?” he demanded, perplexed about the point of all this.

“The dyes, of course. Yellow, rose, purple—”

“From decomposing shellfish?” But now he understood. The great mystery of the purple dye of the Phoenicians! He was thankful he hadn’t chosen to wear a purple outfit.

At length they emerged, and he took in refreshing lungfuls of partially oxygenated air. They were outside the wall, walking along a narrow starlit beach strewn with crushed shell, hunching in the fortification’s shadow in order to avoid the gaze of the patrolling guards.

They arrived circuitously at a docking area where the lesser ships were tied. This was a shallow harbor facing toward the mainland, evidently limited to local shuttling. There were also several coracles: doughnut-shaped little boats or rafts (depending on viewpoint) with calked boards across the inside where the hole might have been. Ivo remembered the macroscope station, and wondered whether the stations of the future — his future — would be as far beyond the torus as atomic liners were beyond the coracle.

The tiny boats did not look seaworthy, but Aia assured him that they were the best to be had for a crew of two on the sneak. She climbed into one about six feet in diameter, and he followed her and experimented with the paddles. There were V-notched sticks braced at either side, fulcrums for the long oars; he had to take up one while she managed the other.

He stood within the precarious structure and looked across the water at the mainland. Suddenly it seemed very far away, and the calm, shallow water intervening seemed ominously deep and rough. “Somebody should build a causeway,” he muttered.

“We must pull together,” she said, “or the craft will simply spin about. Not too hard — I am not as strong as you.” Privately, he wondered. She was careful to flatter him regularly, but she was a well-conditioned female. She was uncommonly knowledgeable about nonfeminine affairs, from temple politics to coracle paddling.

After some initial unsteadiness, much of it stemming from his early flinching as he tried to put too much weight on his left arm, they managed to stroke the clumsy craft out of the harbor. The water was gentle, yet even little swells rolled the party about alarmingly, and progress was hard work. It was the coracle’s natural ambition to rotate, and only continuous and well-synchronized paddling kept it on course.

In that period of silence and painful effort — why did sword-swinging superheroes never feel their wounds the following day? — Ivo reviewed his recent experience mentally. How had it all come about? It was obviously impossible for him to be where he seemed to be. Could he in some fashion have traversed three thousand or more light-years without benefit of galactic machinery, he still could not have landed in Earth’s past. The future, yes; the present, possibly; the past, never. The past was forever gone, and anything like time travel brought calamitous paradox. He could not physically participate in past events without altering history, which in turn meant that it was not the past; that was the fact that made it unapproachable.

Yet he certainly was somewhere. The adventures were too real, the pains too persistent, the series too cohesive, for any idle nightmare. It was becoming evident that he was not going to get out of this by himself. He knew too little, and had such slender resources that he had to depend on a mysterious woman.

Was it time to confess his own inadequacy and summon Schön? He had been shying away from this notion, but he knew that Schön would place the historical perspective instantly, and pinpoint not only the year but the exact degree by which this reality differed from Earth’s true history. Schön would know how to reverse whatever circumstances had brought him here, and thus how to bring back Afra and Groton and Beatryx and the Neptune base.

But Schön might very well have his personality destroyed by the ambushing destroyer in Ivo’s memory, before any of the rest of it came to pass. Then he would be gone, not merely buried, and with him that fragment, that waking dream that was Ivo.

Better not to chance it. The pawn was still pi

As though that decision were catalytic, another notion came to him. He realized what had bothered him about Aia, the first time they had spoken together. “Who are you?” he had demanded, and she had replied immediately, “I am Aia. I don’t worship Melqart or like human sacrifice.” Something like that.

How had she known that he was fleeing the temple, or why?

Certainly it could have been a guess — but she had not been asking him. She had known. She had said the one thing calculated to assuage his suspicions, and had followed it up with enough blandishment and personal motivation to keep them lulled. She had said that she wanted to escape, but it seemed that her real intention was to stick with him, wherever he might go.