Strata

tourist attraction.
    Silver took a deep breath.
    ‘He also wants us to adjust the sun,’ she said. The man, seeing Kin’s face, began to speak slowly in Latin.
    ‘There has been spring in winter, he says. The sun has sometimes dimmed. On several nights the stars have flickered. And, uh, something happened to one of the planets.’
    Kin stared. Then she walked into the hall where Silver had deposited the dumbwaiter and dialled for a big cup of the sweet ale. She brought it back and put it in Eirick’s scarred hands.
    ‘Tell him that was our fault. Tell him that if only we can learn the secrets of the world, we will replace the planet and do what we can about the sun. Did he say that stars flickered ?’
    ‘Apparently this is expected. The aforesaid Christos was born almost a thousand years ago, and it is widely believed that he will come again around about now. Take a look at the sea, will you?’
    Kin turned. The waves were lashing at the beach, even here. She could hear the thunder of the storm out in the open sea. But the sky was blue, windless …
    ‘I said the disc wasn’t a reliable artefact,’ she said. ‘It sounds like its governing systems are going wrong. Eirick doesn’t seem all that worried, Silver.’
    ‘He says he’s seen and heard of a lot of gods. He can take gods or leave them alone. If we can repair the weather, he will give us much timber.’
    ‘Timber?’
    Silver turned to look at the village. ‘It seems to be a scarce commodity here,’ she said. ‘Notice the lack of trees.’
    This should be the Climatic Optimum, Kin told herself. On Earth it had been. The Northern expansion had taken place during a long warm spell, when even a strip of coastal Greenland was reasonably habitable …
    Here, on some nights, the stars flickered out.
    Marco and Kin spent the night in the hall, although Silver opted for the chill air of the boat. No one had attempted to bundle Kin off with the women. Goddesses were different.
    She lay looking at the glow of the fire. The boom of the surf was still loud. Tides, she thought. That half-pint moon couldn’t cause them. There must be some sort of regulated rise and fall of the sea, and it’s going haywire.
    She longed for a sleepset. They left your mouth tasting like an ape’s urinal, but they were quick. You didn’t suffer from insomnia with azizz, or get bothered by rocks sticking in your back. A short, deep, dreamless sleep.
    Finally she gave up, got up and walked through the darkened hall. The man at the door moved aside hastily to let her pass.
    The sky was ablaze with fake stars. Kin shivered, but couldn’t help but admire the ersatz universe that blazed over the dark, sea-noisy fjord.
    This wasn’t Earth. It was a disc about fifteen thousand miles across, massing around 5.67 x 10 21 tons. That meant it either had generated gravity or neutronium veneer as a bedrock. It spun very slowly, like a tossed coin in treacle, dragging with it a fake sun and a fake moon and a family of fake planets. She knew all that, but sitting here it was hard to believe.
    She shivered as the frost clawed at her. Frozen starlight.
    A clockwork world. A world without astronomy. Maybe there was astronomy, but it was a horrible joke on the astonomers. A world where the venturesome dropped into the abyss. Dragons. Trolls. A myth-mash.
    She found a planet, near what for want of a better word had to be called the disc’s horizon. No, it was moving too fast for a planet.
    And then it was suddenly a pennant of fire in the sky.
    It hit the disc somewhere to the east. Kin told herself she could feel the impact.
    She ran towards the line of beached ships to where a broad shape glittered with frost. ‘Silver?’
    Foolish, foolish. How many shandi on the disc?
    ‘Ah, Kin. No doubt you saw it.’
    ‘What was it?’
    ‘Most of the main part of our ship. It was only a matter of time. Marco should have exploded it rather than just leave it, and we can only hope it landed in the sea or a desert. I was hoping it would impact on the underside of the disc.’
    ‘It’s certainly a good way of saying “We’re here” to any disc lords. First we take out a planet, then we drop our ship on them,’ said Kin.
    ‘I noticed something before I saw the ship,’ said Silver. ‘See that planet, right down there? What would that be?’
    ‘If this was Earth, that’d be Venus in that posi— no, it—’
    ‘Quite so. It is moonless.’
    Kin felt a tingle of excitement. The disc builders