A World of Difference by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-79233-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Something moved, down in the bottom of Jötun Canyon. The motion was tiny, but anything visible at all from down there had to be good-sized. Shota Rustaveli swung up binoculars for a closer look. Having the depths of the canyon suddenly seem to jump seven times closer always unnerved him; it was as if he were flinging himself down into the abyss.

“What is it?” asked Yuri Voroshilov, who did not have field glasses with him.

“Yuri Ivanovich, I don’t know.” Rustaveli could feel his forehead crinkle in a puzzled frown. “I can’t figure it out. Maybe it was just the sun, flashing off water down there.”

“Bozhemoi,” Voroshilov said softly.

Rustaveli did not follow him for a moment. Then the biologist echoed that “My God” himself. Yesterday the bottom of the canyon had been dry. If it had water in it today, it would have more tomorrow, and as for the day after that … “Forty days and forty nights and then some,” he said.

“Da.” Voroshilov laughed softly. “Strange, is it not, how after three generations of a godless society, we still have the biblical images in the back of our minds, ready to call up when we need them?”

“Ask the devil’s mother why that’s so,” Rustaveli suggested. They both laughed then.

“Such impudence.” If Oleg Lopatin had said that, Rustaveli would have bridled. Voroshilov only sounded amused. Then, sighing, the chemist grew more serious. “The flood is upon us, Shota Mikheilovich, in more ways than one.”

“Eh? What’s that?” Rustaveli’s mind was elsewhere. He wanted to get down to the water. There might be—there likely were—plants and animals down in the canyon that stayed dormant until the yearly floods came and then burst into feverish activity. Plenty of Earthly creatures did things like that, but who could guess what variations on the theme Minerva might offer? No one could guess—that was why they were here, to find out.

But Voroshilov was thinking along very different lines. “We will have trouble, for one thing, if Lopatin does not leave Katerina alone. I know, because I will cause it.”

That got Rustaveli’s attention. His head snapped toward Voroshilov. The chemist was such a quiet fellow that he even announced insurrection as if it were no more important than a glass of tea. He meant what he said, though. The Georgian could see that.

“Slowly, my friend, slowly,” Rustaveli urged, wondering how—or whether—to head off Voroshilov. He had no use for Lopatin, but still … “The chekist is also a man, Yuri Ivanovich,” he said carefully. “I suppose he has the right to try his luck with her.”

“This I know,” Voroshilov said heavily. “To approach her is one thing. But he has hit her, Shota Mikheilovich; I have seen the marks. That is something else again. That I will not stand, even if he has made her too afraid to speak up for herself.”

Rustaveli scowled. Unfortunately, that sounded all too much like Lopatin. And Katerina had been down to Tsiolkovsky lately; she and Voroshilov had just come back to the environs of Hogram’s town.

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