The Brave New World 46 The Viking Imperative

Sven Holm sat on a big stone in front of the large hut that constituted his home in Svenborg, in the New World, and frowned at the patch of bare earth at his feet.

Something was seriously wrong with the crude map he'd drawn in the soil with the point of a stick. Yet he could swear he'd reproduced it fairly faithfully from the map he had examined at the Jokkmokk library, back on Earth.

It was very important that he got the map right. A reasonably accurate map was essential to his plan. It was a big plan, an ambitious plan, a plan that was central to Viking presence in the New World.

The plan envisaged quick expansion of his empire to the Baltic coast. What were Vikings without the sea, without the ships? A bunch of shepherds, that's what. Reaching the seacoast was an imperative.

Back on Earth, the distance between Jokkmokk and Lulea - an important town on the Baltic coast - was around 170 kilometers. The vast majority of those kilometers could be traveled down the Lula river. He had calculated the whole journey would take a week, maybe two. The Lula river had rapids and waterfalls along then way, and he wasn't sure how long it would take to carry the raft or the boat they would be using past these.

Back on Earth, the Lula river ran not far from Jokkmokk. He had dispatched scouts in the napporiate direction to find it along with a good location for a new settlement. It would be the Vikings' third settlement in the New World: a river port that would constitute the first step in the conquest of Scandinavia.

Sven Holm had quickly worked out the time differential between the two worlds. He was still a young man. He'd just turned twenty eight, and he could expect to live at least another forty years, as long as his life wasn't terminated by violent means. That translated to four hundred years in the New World.

When he thought about that, his head swam. Fuck! That was enough time to conquer far more than just Scandinavia. It was enough to conquer all of Europe, part of Asia, northern Africa, and indeed everything in and around the Mediterranean Sea. Of course, he'd also conquer traditional Viking territories: Iceland, Greenland, eastern Canada. Four hundred years! No, he would conquer ALL of Canada, and the United States. He would own Europe, and he would own North America. That would make his empire the biggest, strongest empire in the whole New World.

Founding a settlement on the Lula river was the first step in this ambitious enterprise. But the scouts he had sent out failed to find the river. They were out for a month, traveling a fortnight each way. They should have come across the river. But maybe things were different in the New World. Maybe the river ran a little farther away from Jokkmokk than it did back on Earth.

So Sven sent out two more scouting parties simultaneously, assigning them different routes. He gave them plenty of supplies, and all but forbade them to return without finding the Lula river. However, one of the parties had just returned the previous day. They had been away for over three months, long enough to reach the sea and get back if they really moved their asses. They hadn't found the Lula river.

They had found a number of creeks though, some big enough to be navigable by a small boat or raft. The next batch of scouts he sent out would have instructions to explore those creeks, and find out where they led. Most of them would end in the lakes scattered in the area, but there could be one that ran into the Lula river.

Where the hell was that river? Was it possible that it didn't exist at all, in the New World? Impossible! The country around his farm, around Jokkmokk, was faithfully reproduced. True, everything seemed to be more distant, but he'd put it down to the wild countryside. Tearing one's way through a thick forest or clambering over rocks slowed one down. It meant much slower progress than when walking down a paved road, or across a field. But -

Sven frowned. Fucking trees everywhere! It was impossible to obtain a clear view of anything at a larger distance. He looked around him, still frowning. Eva, milking a cow thirty paces away, smiled at him and tried to catch his eye. He looked away from her. He knew she wanted to get laid. Sending out all those scouts meant there was a serious shortage of males in Svenborg. Also, Saltborg - the mining settlement near the salt spring - had required a few extra men: a couple of miners, a smelter, a blacksmith. Apart from Sven, there was only Vidar in Svenborg, and Vidar was infatuated with Kirsten.

What a waste! After her infant daughter died, Kirsten had absolutely no interest in sex. In the meantime, there were six other chicks rubbing their legs - well, maybe five, since Lena also wasn't too keen. She was still nursing her baby boy, Olaf Berg's son, conceived right at the start of their adventure in the New World.

Sven stared gloomily at the lake beside which his settlement had been founded. Autumn had already arrived; pretty soon, it would be getting bitterly cold again. He was really sick of this climate. Back on Earth, he had cheerfully accepted the long winters as an excellent opportunity to stay totally wasted for several months.

But that wasn't possible in the New World. The winters were too cold, and there was no entertainment apart from sex. And the alcohol they'd managed to brew was far too weak to get drunk. They had been restricted to using the wild berries from the forest; the chicks had threatened a revolution if any of the wild honey they'd found was used to make mead. Hot milk with honey could be a lifesaver when the weather turned cold.

Sven got up and walked to the lake's shore, flailing his arms to warm up. Yes, it would be cold soon, very cold. At one point, he'd seriously considered uprooting everyone and traveling to a new location before replicating again in the New World. But the copper, the iron, the gold and silver they'd found made their present location too precious to abandon.

That was why he had formulated the plan to expand along the Lula river. Once they'd reached the Baltic and built ships, they would expand and found new settlements further south. As far south as Sicily! It had historically belonged to the Vikings - okay, maybe their Norman successors, but that was pretty much the same thing.

A couple of minutes later, Sven reached the shore of the lake and stared at it for a while. Then he turned, and began walking back to his hut. Suddenly he stopped, frowning.

He had chosen the site for Svenborg back in the Old World. The lake was three kilometers from his farm, and he had selected a spot around fifty meters from the shore. He had selected that spot because it was also close to a creek that fed the lake; the creek provided excellent drinking water.

He had measured the distances himself. There were eighty paces from the chosen spot to the lake's shore, and just thirty to the creek. But they were much bigger than that in the New World. Several hundred paces in each case. And that was after he had moved the settlement's site closer to the water.

He had put it down to natural differences between the two worlds, but now he had a new thought. A terrifying thought.

There already was one big difference in scale between the two worlds: time flowed ten times as fast in the New World, relative to Earth. Could there be a similar difference in sizes?

But the documentation clearly stated the New World was an exact copy of Earth! There were the new archipelagos, of course, but the rest was exactly the same! There would be differences - for example, the Lula river wouldn't feature any of the hydroelectric dams, and maybe its course would be slightly different. But it definitely wouldn't have been erased from the map, or moved further away!

"Fuck," said Sven to himself. He stopped and went back to the shore of the lake and started walking back to his hut, counting the steps.

Three hundred and twenty five. And he'd moved the site of the settlement at least that many paces closer to the shore; he knew he did. The location he'd chosen back on Earth was atop a low, wide cliff that stretched in a crescent nearly a quarter of a kilometer long.

That cliff was present in the New World, too. It was slightly higher and steeper, but its shape was unmistakable. And it was located around five hundred paces from the settlement. A total of over eight hundred paces between the cliff and the lake's shore, instead of eighty five! Almost exactly a tenfold difference!

"Ten times more," whispered Sven. "Ten times, just like with the time flow." But no! The distance was ten times bigger, while time flowed ten times faster.

Suddenly, he understood the riddle and felt sweat break out on his forehead, even though he wasn't feeling warm at all.

There was a rule in Nature: the smaller something was, the shorter its lifespan. And there were other telling differences too. The heart of a mouse beat nearly ten times faster than a human heart. He seemed to remember than a tiny shrew held the record at around 1500 heartbeats per minute.

The Vikings of the Old World, all nearly two meters tall, could be as much as ten times smaller in the New World. New World fauna and flora would be scaled down, too. And from what he'd seen, this applied to ground elevation. The hill next to his farm in Jokkmokk was almost exactly like the corresponding hill in the New World - the New World hill WAS noticeably higher, and covered an area that was larger, but not by much. Sven had put it down to natural aging and weathering processes, sped up by centuries of destructive human activity.

But the lake was much bigger than the lake back home. He could barely make out the shore across the water; back at home, it was no more than two hundred meters away. Once again, he'd attributed that to the general drying out of lakes and inland seas that climatologists on Earth had been complaining about for at least half a century. Wasn't the Aral Sea in Asia almost completely gone? All that remained was a muddy puddle. There were fishing ships abandoned all around it, as many as forty kilometers from its current shores; he remembered seeing the photographs, that kind of picture stayed in one's memory.

His head started to ache. He was feeling as if he was about to lose his mind. Tiny Sven, toy Sven among toy trees and toy hills and toy animals. And he had planned to conquer Europe and North America! He had intended to found a settlement on the Baltic shore within a couple of years at the outside!

Back on Earth, the distance between Jokkmokk and Lulea was 170 kilometers. It could be exactly the same in the New World, but that would translate into 1,700 kilometers for tiny Sven and his little band of tiny Vikings.

And that was why his scouts had failed to find the Lula river. It was there, all right. But ten times as far as he'd thought.

What now? What would he tell the others? He had to tell, them, sooner or later. No, first of all he had to sleep on all this. Calm down. Formulate a new plan that would take into account the new circumstances.

And most importantly, he would leave all that till the spring. If he told everyone now, they might start deserting him during the coming winter.

He was about to enter his hut and lie down when Eva approached him, and touched his arm.

"Hello, Sven," she said flirtatiously. He turned and looked at her. He could see that she had washed herself in the meantime. She had washed especially for him. He sighed.

"Let's go inside," he said, and turned to enter the hut.

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