Kukulkan Zachary transports Axor, Targovi and Diana to the island of Zacharia in a first class passenger cruiser with a transparent observation lounge so that they seem to stand in the sky. Because it is night on Daedalus, the planet without a horizon, the sun-ring lies around the Phosphoric Ocean. Sea gleams at the sun-ring, then shades through turquoise to jet sparked with the swirling green of minute organisms. Stars glimmer in a sky deep violet-blue above but berylline near the water. To the east, towering clouds conceal a moon which frosts their peaks and ridges. Lower steeps and canyons of cloud are amethyst while the sun-ring makes rain gleam bronze and silver. Zacharia has argent rivers, lakes and mists, roseate snowpeaks, static lights of dwellings, resembling diamond dust, moving lights of sea and air vehicles and surrounding cays. Kukulkan offers to be Diana's "'...dragoman...'" (p. 372)
The narrative moves at a brisk pace. Only recently, the characters arrived in the quaint Cynthian town of Lulach. Now they are whisked through light and splendor to the mysterious Zacharia.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
The island of Zacharia has to be larger than the maps of Daedalus we see in THE GAME OF EMPIRE leads us to think if it has rivers and lakes. My recollection is that the island looked rather small on those maps.
Ad astra! Sean
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