46 The Viking Imperative (2/2)

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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