Tangle in the Dark - Kassidor

language. He spread his fingers in a fan, then folded his handshorizontally, laid his head on them and closed his eyes. Fivedays, is what he was trying to say. She guessed he was tryingto tell her that they would be on the boat five days.The good news was, they only sailed about a half day at atime, from island to island. The bad news was, islands in thedistance went by twice as fast as those nearby. It was a totallydisconcerting feature of whatever this game was. If this was astandard simulation and not a game, that was a verydistressing artifact of the simulation. It seemed like things inthe distance went by several times. She tried to imagine whatkind of bug it would be in the rendering that would causethat. It would have to be in the geometry, probably somethinglike forgetting to convert degrees to radians in the distantscene composer. Looking at it bothered her stomach. She wasable to fight it, but she had to keep her eyes on the water, notthe land.By now she had come to the conclusion that she must bein a reproduction of the ancient Aegean, possibly in Romantimes. The bad news was, without magic she had thealimentary canal to deal with, and she had to deal with itwhile bobbing in this boat that seemed no bigger than a bottlecap in the wide expanses of sea they crossed. She ate only inthe afternoon and evening when they anchored at one smallisland or another. The troops always found them invited tosupper and bed at the wealthiest farm in the area. She wasfamiliar with the sea from her own home, but the boats she387