by Lyndon Hardy
Farther to the right, at the end of what might be a safety rope, looped through a series of metal eyes, was a large indentation in the rock. When Jemidon craned his neck, he could see steps leading down into an interior and the hint of torchlight casting dull shadows on the roughly hewn granite. Except for these features, all else was bare rock, a gently curving expanse with sharp ridges hammered and polished away, the texture of the sea frozen in sculpture's stone.
The old one gestured dramatically at the horizon. Jemidon turned his head and saw a new line of hills where there had been none before. And as he watched, the crest-line grew taller and extended farther to both sides. The undulations of the peaks were ripples on a more gentle curve that bowed up into the sky. For a moment Jemidon was puzzled by what he was seeing, but in a few seconds more, the rising ground began to fill his view. In a flash he understood where he was. They were riding a boulder, a large one to be sure, over a thousand feet in diameter from what he could see, but no more than a mere hunk of rock, slowly rotating and hurtling toward the ground.
Jemidon realized dimly that he should have some reaction to the impending collision, at least a sudden flash of anxiety from the primitive fear of falling, but he felt instead only the huge weight of his increasing despair. Almost dispassionately, he saw the growing details of ragged peaks and scarred valleys as they closed. Here and there were small craters, and in other places long slashes gouged the surface. He looked back at the men. Calmly they went about their tasks, seemingly oblivious to the danger of a collision. Two sighted the approaching body through a telescope and sextant, while another moved small markers around the edge of the tablestone in response to what they called out. A fourth reached from his pit and placed two pale blue stones onto the tabletop, each the size of a fist. Through his good eye, the old one squinted up at the approaching sphere. He glanced at the markers the others adjusted around the periphery of the stone and nodded. Reaching into his loincloth, he removed a small pyramid, each side covered with variously colored triangles much like Melizar's cube.
The old one twisted the faces of the solid, and Jemidon suddenly felt his stomach contract, almost anticipating what he would feel. The sense of letting go and drifting built in an instant, overwhelming even his sense of defeat. In his mind's eye, the rush of motion increased in intensity and began to whip him along at a hurricane's pace. Fanciful convolutions of shape and color streaked by in a blinding blur. But despite the speed, surprisingly, his disorientation was not great. He felt less need than before to fight the flow, to lash out and grab for any anchor as it sped past. He watched instead the swirl of meaningless flotsam about him and concentrated on the box he visualized in the distance, the box he had imagined before, the box slowly opening its lid and tipping to spill out its secrets.
The old one wiped the pus from his eye. He squinted at the approaching ground. While a manipulant began to push the blue stones apart, he leaned forward, extending his arms to surround them with his flesh. Suddenly there was a groundwrench ing lurch, a groan in the granite that vibrated the entire mass on which they rode. Jemidon felt a deceleration, a resistance in the direction in which they sped. The inner sense of a mad rush was just as suddenly gone, leaving unmasked only the dull weight of his failure to escape from Melizar.
The old one twisted his pyramid a second time, and another of the attendants performed complex motions on the tabletop, this time with sparkling crystals of pale violet. Again Jemdion felt the inner rush and the shudder of the boulder as it responded. Craning his neck backward, he saw their rotation slow and the uprushing ground now directly overhead.
The whispering chatter became more intense. The old one worked with his pyramid almost continuously, Jemidon felt a series of short rushes and re-anchorings. Like gambling in a complex game of chance, the manipulants alternately placed small colored stones on the table, maneuvered them briefly under the old one's hands, and then shoved them away.
Suddenly the one with the sextant waved his arms and all activity stopped. The old one slumped down beside the tablestone, apparently exhausted. Two of the others cautiously rose out of their pits and headed for the scaffolding, Jemidon looked upward to see the ground rushing closer, not quite as fast as it had before, More importantly, it also began moving to the side.
As he watched, the rate of closing became less and less. The lateral motion increased until the features on the ground streaked by in a rush. Finally they seemed to stop falling altogether and flew over the surface at a blistering pace, skimming along over the ground faster than any bird could fly.
For a long moment, nothing happened; then the sextant holder shouted, pointing to the left and far ahead. Jemidon saw the old one direct one more manipulation, and they resumed their descent to the surface. Smaller features resolved as they grew closer, the wrinkles of mountain slopes, the canopy of individual trees. Jemidon held his breath as they skimmed over a small ridge and then above a marshy plain. He recognized the grazing animals that had appeared in Drandor's initial animation and, stalking them behind the cover of tall grass, the strong-jawed dogs.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a net billow from the scaffolding to catch the wind. Working two-handled cranks, the manipulant at the scaffolding let out enough line so that each end of the net skimmed along the ground. With a hoot of panic, the grazing beasts saw it coming and began to stampede out of its path. The race of the boulder was too swift, however; in an instant, two or three were caught and scooped from their feet. Jemidon heard a soft, tinkling laughter and saw the manipulant next to him beat his thigh with his palm in apparent delight. The crank handles spun, slowly drawing the trapped beasts from the surface up onto the rock.
Jemidon noticed that the distance between the boulder and the surface began to widen. They had passed the point of closest approach. Gradually the lateral motion turned into one of recession. As quickly as they had come, they were now speeding away back into the reddish sky.
The tension seemed to dissolve from among the manipulants. They all gestured at one another with a curious contortion of the fingers of the right hand. While two hauled in the catch, three others helped the old one out of the pit and into the opening that led inside the rock. Another manipulated the mirror linkage, and coded bursts of light radiated out in all directions. Finally one returned to where Delia and Jemidon lay still, huddled in their pit. He brandished a short sword of copper and motioned them to follow the others inside. Jemidon looked into the manipufant's face and slowly released his grip. The sword he did not mind. What disturbed him most was the smacking of the thick, pulpy lips. Perhaps it would have been best if their encounter had not been a near miss after all.
Jemidon stared at the pile of coins in his lap. Slowly he put them back into the battered changer, one by one. Playing with Benedict's problem was probably what had kept him sane. Besides Delia, it was his only contact with the realm from which they had been cast.
Marooned in Melizar's universe they were; there was no doubt about it. And time was running out. There was no easy way to measure it here, but it was slipping away nonetheless. Over twoscore times they had slept while nothing else seemed to have changed.
Despite what he had suspected after the encounter with the larger sphere, he and Delia had not felt the sharpness of the copper blade. Instead, they were shown to small caverns carved from the rock. And once cautious tastes of meat from herd animals proved to produce no ill effects, their basic needs were provided for as well. The manipulants were even friendly in an offhanded sort of way. Teaching each other their languages had begun almost immediately. He had learned much after a few sessions of struggling with the basic concepts.
They were not prisoners; they could come and go as they chose. But as Jemidon had soon learned, their freedom meant very little indeed. Melizar had been right. Isolating him on a hunk of granite was a perfect prison. There were no exotic powders with which to summon the stronger demons, He and Delia were trapped, hopelessly trapped, far more removed from fr
eedom than in any pit a few feet beneath the ground. How could they possibly escape before Melizar summoned them back to enjoy his meal?
Jemidon looked at the sky. And even if they could escape, escape to what? One speck of rock apparently was no better than any other. The djinn would find them, no matter which they were on. And even if they were able to make the transition back on their own, would even that be in time, before whatever they returned to was totally lost?
Jemidon pulled the leather vest tighter, but it did not help. He massaged one cold hand with the other. At least their worst fears had yet to be realized. The old one and the others seemed to have enough marrow from the grazing animals to keep them satisfied. There was no need for either hibernation or feasting. Other than a few appraising leers and teasing grasps, he and Delia had been left fairly well alone.
Not that anyone could ever be very far removed from the others. Jemidon was able to visualize almost every feature of the rock in his mind's eye. Honeycombed with caverns, a thousand feet across and almost perfectly round, it would have been an impressive monolith on an Arcadian plain. But here it was a mere speck, smaller than most of the others that floated in the sky.
Jemidon felt a slight twinge in his stomach and absently rubbed his side. He was aware of the drifting all the time now, although they all seemed mild and quite far away. Since the initial demonstration upon their arrival, the old one had made no more displays of his craft.
Jemidon looked down at his changer. He had mused over the facts so many times that even the critical nature of the situation could no longer stifle the undercurrent of boredom that mingled with the threat of ultimate doom. It was indeed fortunate that he still had the collection of coins to divert his attention when the level of frustration was particularly high. Not that Benedict's problem was proving any easier to unravel. With his latest sequence for loading the changer, the five coppers came out of a single column and the silver did, too. But the brandels were interleaved with the rest. The initial condition still was not set right. And any small change in the order with which he inserted the coins made the confusion worse. Perhaps there was no solution-a bad omen for the other, more important problem he somehow had to solve.
A shadow crossed the doorway. Jemidon looked up to see one of the rock's inhabitants enter and settle cross-legged on the other side of the floor. His face was old and, save for the operator of the pyramid, more leathery than any other in his small band. In large patches, the translucence of his skin had dimmed to milky opaqueness. Deep wrinkles surrounded his eyes, like waves gently lapping on a shore. His black hair was streaked with white on a head that peaked in a slight ridge running from the brow to the base of the skull. He held his token of leadership, a small shovel with a long and deep blade, in stiff fingers that did not completely curl about the shaft.
"The other, the one you name a female," the visitor said softly, "she is tired. Tired of teaching to me your speech."
"Anything tires with repetition, Ponzar," Jemidon said as he puzzled through the accent. Ponzar had shown an amazing aptitude for vocabulary and syntax, but his diction was distorted and hard to understand. "Delia has spent many of our hours with you over twoscore of our days. She probably is no more bored than I."
"Repetition?"
"To do something over and over, again and again," Jemidon explained.
"Ah, then life is repetition," Ponzar said. "Forever we drift in the sky. Swoop to the larger lithons. Trade for water. Fly away from the air that is foul. Harvest the lodestones that have the power. The Skyskirr have done this since-since the great expansion. Until the right hand wills a change, we will do so forever after."
"And yet you show an interest in our tongue," Jemidon said. "Perhaps the time between encounters does not pass so swiftly for you either."
Ponzar twirled the shovel in what Jemidon had learned was the equivalent of a shrug. "It is the talent of a captain. To be such, one must speak with all who soar. And I am counted with the quickest. My memory is almost perfect. I can learn in a few sleeps what takes a common mason hundreds. And there is more. You have traded thoughts with the outcast, Melizar. Many lithosoars fear that he will return. It is worth the effort to talk so that I might learn."
Ponzar closed his eyes in thought. "I no longer trust the others," he said. "I do not believe the silvered words they flash by mirror. The more I can speak of your lithon, the more Valdroz will pay me honor when we meet to trade. Also, it is to your worth to tell me all. You will last longer if others think you have value more than common marrow."
"I seek knowledge as well," Jemidon said. "Tell me of Melizar. What are his powers? What has he done?"
"You are only the bounty of the skies," Ponzar replied softly. "You do not have the honor to question those who harvest what has been provided by the great right hand." He twirled the shovel through several full circles. "And I do not know if your words are true. If you are not another of Melizar's manipulants. Sent back to help his return. A manipulant of one people who resonates with the pilot of another."
"But I may be of help," Jemidon said. "I have deduced two metalaws. Melizar hinted that there is a third. If I know them all, I might be able to thwart his plans."
Ponzar threw back his head, and the small cavern echoed with his tinkly laugh. "You against Melizar. You, who have not been excluded. Against the one who piloted a course with nine changes in the laws. Even old Utothaz, may the right hand make his bones tasty, could not keep the coupling tight. Keep it tight if Melixar chose to break it. Speak, by your own telling, you have faced his power. How well did you fare?"
Jemidon frowned and waved his arm in irritation. "If Melizar is so powerful, how did he become an outcast?"
"He is the greatest of the pilots," Ponzar said. "The first among the first. No one in the 'hedron says it is not so. But he reached too far. He studied his craft above all else. Studied it instead of the greater needs of the Skyskirr, of our people."
Ponzar looked toward the sky. "Each lithon must have its turn. It is the way of the great right hand. Every sphere, no matter how small, has the right to unlock the laws. The right to change which of the minerals have the force of attraction and repulsion. The right to choose which are without power like common rock. Each must be allowed to avoid collision. Each to harvest from the larger, to explore where no other has gone.
"But Melizar had eyes only for the others. Eyes for the strange laws which have nothing to do with the walls of the 'hedron or the stones of power. He would decouple the binding when there was no need, demanding many strange rituals until he discovered what would move the laws to other vertices of the lattice.
"Each uncoupling made him stronger. More able to force a translation, if other pilots wished it or not. And every new vertex, each pebble of knowledge, increased his hunger for more. His thoughts became less and less about the soaring of the Skyskirr. For his own lithon, he planned fewer and fewer courses. To his own captain he would not answer. Except for his manipulants, he cared for none at all.
"Finally, his perturbations conflicted with another's. A conflict, even though there was no real need. Azaber's lithosoar was in trouble. They wished to close with a watery orb and break a long drought. But the lodestone, yellow orphiment, was with power at the time. And both the wet sphere and their own lithon carried the negative type. With strong force, they were being repulsed. Azaber's manipulants saw boulders of rusty cairngorm on the orb. The positive kind, opposite to their own. If their pilot could shift to give the brown stone its power while turning off that of the yellow, then they could converge in time.
"And so the manipulants signaled by mirrors to all the lithons. All others agreed not to work the craft until Azaber's pilot was done. A common enough request. When one is far away from other lithons and moving swiftly, it does not matter which of the laws are in effect."
The Skyskirr twirled his shovel and pounded it on the ground. "All agreed, that is, except Melizar. His sphere was one of the largest, a huge lithofloat, far gr
ander than the one that soon we will see. And he had thoughts only for his own searchings. He held the lock tight against Azaber's pilot. The bond did not break. Slowly the lithon was pushed away with no chance to choose speed or direction. It drifted into a region of poisonous vapors. A region with no lodestone strong enough to alter its path for a return. Only the gentle force between the plates carried it along."
Ponzar shook his head. "Even in sleep, the ones who soared with it were without the means of guidance for too long. In the end, they all gave their marrow to one another. The last reflections said they were drifting out of mirror range toward the realgar wall.
"Azaber's pilot took a great risk when he ran their course so close to a void, it is true. It is one of the risks for the lithons that soar rather than float. But if Melizar had loosened his grip, as was his duty, then the lithon would have spun around its target. Spun around and returned to better air."
"After all the Skyskirr learned of what had happened, the rest of the lithons sailed as one. United, they manipulated the laws to converge on Melizar's orb. Never since the great expansion have so many been in one small portion of the 'hedron. Ten times a hundred swords of precious copper were drawn. A thousand were ready to ride the smaller lodestones down upon the floater. To seek the vile one out, to break his bones and scatter his marrow to the twenty planes."
Ponzar drew his wheezing breath. "But Melizar and his manipuiants escaped. Through the laws of what you call wizardry, he conjured a lodestone that was not made of rock. A strange being that whisked him and his manipuiants away, out of the boundaries of our 'hedron entirely, to some other 'hedron whose nature we can only guess.
"All of the other pilots labored to move the laws away from the vertex that made your strange rules work in the Skyskirr 'hedron. Even Utothaz added his failing powers to the rest. But Melizar had translated the laws far into a strange portion of the lattice. The adjacent vertices were known to none. We could not manipulate what would make a smaller contradiction. The portal stays open. And as long as it does, he may return. That you are here from somewhere else is proof enough."
