Free Other Earths by Jay Lake, edited by Nick Gevers Page B

court as part of my education. My grandfathers have been in the coal trade since our ancestor founded the business two hundred years ago. He was called James Cook. My father’s called James too. It’s a mucky business but lucrative.”
    “I’ll bet. Those Watt engines I see everywhere eat enough coal, don’t they?”
    “So what do your family do?”
    He said simply, “We serve the Inca.”
    The procession reached a chapel dedicated to Isaac Newton, the renowned alchemist and theologian who had developed a conclusive proof of the age of the Earth. Here they prayed to their gods, the Inca prostrating themselves before Inti, and the Christians kneeling to Christ.
    And the Inca servants came forward with their Orb of the Unblinking Eye. It was a sphere of some translucent white material, half as tall as a man; the servants carried it in a rope netting and set it down on a wooden cradle before the statue of Newton himself.
    Atahualpa turned and faced the procession. He may have smiled; his facemask creased. He said through his interpreter: “Once it was our practice to plant our temples in the chapels of those we sought to vanquish. Now I place this gift from my emperor, this symbol of our greatest god, in the finest church in this province.” And, Jenny knew, other Inca parties were handing over similar orbs in all the great capitals of Europe. “Once we would move peoples about, whole populations, to cut them away from their roots and so control them. Now we welcome the children of your princes and merchants, while leaving our own children in your cities, so that we may each learn the culture and the ways of the other.” He gestured to Alphonse.
    The prince bowed, but he muttered through his teeth, “ And get hold of a nice set of hostages.”
    “Hush,” Jenny murmured.
    Atahualpa said, “Let this globe shine for all eternity as a symbol of our friendship, united under the Unblinking Eye of the One Sun.” He clapped his hands.
    And the orb lit up, casting a steady pearl-like glow over the grimy statuary of the chapel. The Europeans applauded helplessly.
    Jenny stared, amazed. She could see no power supply, no tank of gas; and the light didn’t flicker like the flame of a candle or a lamp but burned as steady as the sun itself.
    With the ceremony over, the procession began to break up. Jenny turned to the boy, Dreamer. “Are you sailing on the Viracocha ?”
    “Oh, yes. You’ll be seeing a lot more of me. The emissary has one more appointment, a ride on a Watt-engine train to some place called Bataille—”
    “That’s where the Frankish army defeated the Anglais back in 1066.”
    “Yes. And then we sail.”
    “And then we sail,” Jenny said, fearful, excited, gazing into the dark, playful eyes of this boy from the other side of the world, a boy whose land didn’t even exist in her imagination.
    Alphonse glared at them, brooding.
    The dignitaries were still talking, with stiff politeness. Atahualpa seemed intrigued by Newton’s determination of the Earth’s age. “And how did this Newton achieve his result? A study of the rocks, of living things, of the sky? I did not know such sciences were so advanced here.”
    But when Archbishop Darwin explained that Newton’s calculations had been based on records of births and deaths in a holy book, and that his conclusion was that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, Atahualpa’s laughter was gusty, echoing from the walls of the cramped chapel.
     
    Alphonse’s party, with Jenny and other companions and with Archbishop Darwin attached as a moral guardian, boarded the Inca ship.
    The Viracocha , Jenny learned, was named after a creator god and cultural hero of the Inca. It was as extraordinary inside as out, a floating palace of wide corridors and vast staterooms that glowed with a steady pearl light. Jenny was quite surprised when crew members went barreling up and down the corridors on wheeled carts. The Inca embraced the wheel’s obvious