Amid its wispy cloud of glittering ether, the Hutana Van sighed again into the open blanket of stars. The stellar panorama was interrupted only by the more brilliant white of the sun's orband an arc of loose rocks wheeling into infinity in two directions. The Van's enveloping shiftsails whirled loosely into wafting wings suspended from the rigging as the vessel fell back into real flight.
Captain Avda Heller-Guidres released her held breath and turned to the woman at the bow-ward end of the bridge ensconced in the wood and gilt armature that was what amounted to a ship's wheel on the Van, "Helmswoman Zafri: any concerns on the scope?"
"No ma'am, the near field is free of debris and only the bodies of stone and sun showing in real space at any significance."
The captain nodded and ordered, "Yeowoman Rewan: Secure the sails--and no
experiments
," before turning to the last, slight figure on the bridge, "Arbitress, Ma'am: any additional directives or information requests?"
The Arbitress Sophine pulled flat her hair where she had been worrying it and spoke clearly, if softly, "No, Captain, as you were."
Avda nodded and the swell of her breast visibly filled out her crisply maintained Ezwenari blue and white uniform as she assumed the authority of action. "Helmswoman Zafri: Field Report."
Beneath the heavy wooden mask that sprawled from her face into a gold and wooden umbilical reaching up to the ceiling Fathema Zafri's lips tightened with concentration. She stiffened into the grasping arms of the helm's armature. She spoke quickly and precisely with a halting rhythm that jumped from point to point according to an intuitive priority she assigned to each piece of information, "Two worlds in the sun's domain. Both reading as stone-worlds. Both sunward of the stellar archipelago. Three storm-globes voidward. This stellar archipelago too forms a ring about the sun. There is—" she stopped short and shifted her head and hands to manipulate the scope, the armature rattling conforming to her motions. She shook her head slightly and fell back to simply stating her observations without interpretation, "There is a violet reading—quite small or perhaps quite distant—within the stellar archipelago."
The Captain interjected, "Not interference from the sun, Helmswoman?"
Fathema shook her head as decisively and rapidly as the mask and umbilical permitted, "Certainly not. Now that we are in local field scopes, the sun is reading as white. Matching its real hue. Another discrepancy."
"Only a discrepancy in our understanding, not the facts of reality." The Arbitress Sophine stepped in to nudge her toward a more productive mindset "We're out here to learn how the Hutana Van operates as much as to explore these suns and worlds, Fathema."
" 'Helmswoman Fathema,' Ma'am," Captain Avda corrected Sophine in turn without rebuke, "while acting in official capacity."
"Of course, Captain," she said with a wince at slipping in naval protocol again and continued, emphasizing the title, "
Helmswoman
Fathema, how might we correct our understanding now that we have two discrepancies."
"Yes. Now we have six and twenty suns that read the same in hue on the far- and local-scope as well as in real light--blue, light blue, white, yellow, red and ruddy brown respectively. We have two suns that read as one color on the far scope, but differently in the local scope and real light--green and now violet. The green did not show in significance in the near or local scopes, but the violet does show here."
"Those are the facts, Helmswoman Fathema, how might we use those facts to correct our understanding?" Sophine nudged.
Fathema was silent for a moment, her lips kinked a bit disconsolately, "This is not my area of training, I would defer to the Captain. Is there further information I can provide for your understanding?"
Avda's lips changed from a thoughtful purse to a maternally disappointed smile, "Helmswoman, I have my own understanding, but the Arbitress asks for yours. She knows that if I gave my understanding it would change yours and surely it is you, Helmswoman, that are best equipped to intuit the workings of the ship's instruments."
Fathema thought for a moment and instead of answering asked, "I am encumbered by the helm, would you turn the glass for me, Arbitress?"
Sophine brightened, "Wonderful idea, Helmswoman." She took a palm-sized glass from her arbitress's kit and turned it so the sand--precisely measured for just such a task--trickled to the lower bell.
The Captain and Arbitress maintained their silence for the Helmswoman to think. Avda spent the latter moments fighting her natural impulse to fidget when forced into idleness. She thought neither for the first time nor the last how very long the full count of meditation--five precious minutes of the precious day--could feel. The day back home on Hutana, at least; her mind wandered. Out here around this sun? On one of those sad lifeless rocks? How long were their days? How many were their minutes? No, the count of meditation was not a division of Hutana's day. It was then just the turn of the Arbitress's glass? No, it was a thing in their minds. An ideal thing the mind demanded to gather itself. But not hers. Not any of the active minds of the Heller-Guidres, it seemed. There was intuition, of course: the workings of the inner mind that—
"And your understanding, Helmswoman?" Sophine asked, jarring Avda out of her accidental introspection, "As best you can put it now, we'll change it many times yet, I'm sure."
"Yes, Ma'am. With what we have seen, it may be the scopes are not like glasses to magnify more or less what we see. Certainly not in fact. The geometry and bodies seen are not just more clear, they are different--different colors, presence or absence of great bodies like the storm-globes. Instead, the facts make more sense if we imagine that each serves its own distinct purpose:
"The near field for maneuvering the ship like we would on the sea, therefore its clear physical and projected detail coupled with local field highlights. The local field distinctly intended for navigation within a sun's domain, therefore its distances are warped: condensing the most distant bodies and spaces only to expand as the Hutana Van nears them. Eventually if we come close enough it presents the near field scope to display at the same time to ensure near bodies do not impact us. By extension, then, the far field scope is intended for navigation from sun to sun."
She stopped and turned to the Captain and Arbitress, she turned the eyeless mask of bulky, brown stonewood and delicate golden flourishes from one to the other.
"Alright, Helmswoman Fathema, but this sounds like more facts about the ship's instruments." Sophine said, "Does this interpretation dissolve the discrepancies in the far field scope?"
"Right." Fathema nodded, "I kept thinking about how interesting the green and violet suns--or the green and violet domains, if I am on the mark--were. First, they are rare, at least in those domains near Hutana's sun. That is why we chose the green domain and after that this violet one. So, what if we imagine that the far field scope is even more abstracted than the local field. Perhaps the most interesting thing--the most relevant thing to navigation--for most domains is the hue of the sun? Landmarks, then: useless of their own account, but they establish your position to guide you to more important suns." She ended.
"It makes sense. I mean it is internally consistent," said Sophine with her smooth, dusky brow tight with consideration, "but it leans on one large assumption that seems to be fitted around the very discrepancy we meant to dissolve. I know you didn't come to this conclusion as a meaningless guess, Fathema. Why do you think these violet and green domains were more 'interesting' to the Forebears?"
Fathema loosed her arms from the grasp of the helm and pulled the mask from her face, letting her wild mane of shock white hair cascade down her face and shoulders. She pulled a sweat-damped lock from her eyes and looked to the captain to say, "That would be a guess. As you say, I too ought not muddy your minds with conjecture when we have ready information before us."
"Then you have your reasons now." Sophine retrieved a slip of paper, ink and quill from her arbitress's kit and approached the Helmswoman. When Fathema had taken the offered implements, Sophine continued, "Let us Preserve them and your confidence that we won't lose them in the face of new information."
"You seek to test me, Arbitress?" Fathema asked.
"You are accountable to me, Helmswoman," Avda said, "The Arbitress seeks to understand you."
Fathema began to write, and Avda asked Sophine, "In this case, we have a clear lead on this violet anomaly, Ma'am, if there is no subtle risk I miss?"
