“But why, sir?'
“Because Rado defeated the invasion. Xander and his new apprentice stopped it cold. The old Honcho died in the battle, and his son made peace with Rado. They're allies now.”
That explained the concern. Rado and Texas combined could be a real problem, if they turned East and invaded the Emirates. “How could they be allies, right after an invasion of one by the other?” Would he ever understand these people?
“I don't know,” Qusay said. “But this makes it even more important to get to Denver. We have to know what their intentions are, and to send word back to the Order.'
“You mean, back to the Emirs.”
Qusay glanced at him. “Yes, them too.”
Once again, he had the feeling that maybe the Emirs were not running the Emirates. Did the Order serve them...or the other way around?
Chapter 42
Esteban: fines iter, aliud intineris spatium
(“one journey ends, another journey begins”)
“It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools.”
– Ecclesiastes 7:5
He was not expecting to climb so many steps. Back at St. Bruno's he had, of course, descended and ascended a couple of flights to the Reconditorium Prohibitum, which for security reasons had been located in an expanded and re-purposed wine cellar. But that was only a couple of flights! These stairs seemed to go on forever.
He had not had much time to gauge the size of the edifice before Aria ushered him in at the ground level. There, as expected were guards, stables and a farrier in one corner to shoe new acquisitions and replace the occasional lost horseshoe.
She led him to a door and the interminable climb began. After only four flights of steps Esteban was panting. She took mercy on him thereafter and paused on every other landing. It was a good reminder of the virtue of humility – she was not even breathing hard yet.
He apologized for slowing her down. “I'm not used to so many steps,” he said, “but even so, I can't believe how easily I'm tiring.'
“It's the altitude,” she told him. “Denver is a mile above sea level, so the air is thinner. I'm used to it, but for you it's as if your lungs were suddenly smaller while the rest of your body wants just as much oxygen as they used to get. Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Your body will adjust by making more blood to carry more oxygen.”
“Why did the Governor choose such a tall building?” he asked. “She couldn't have enough staff to fill the whole thing.”
“No,” she said. “There's still some empty floors. But she didn't choose it, the General did. It was one of the last to be built before the Fall and so it's as well made as the Ancients could manage. We could never build anything like this nowadays.”
They reached another landing. “Why not?” he wheezed, trying to suck in enough air to stay alive.
“Steel,” she said. “Scrapers like this use a lot of it to reinforce the concrete. We can't make big enough pieces of steel for reinforcement anymore.” As he listened, grateful for the excuse to dally on this landing to get his breath back, she explained. Concrete was an old technology, widely used back in the time of the Romans. They even, she told him, had discovered how to mix in some volcanic ash to make concrete that could harden underwater!
“So why do you need steel?”
“I don't completely understand it,” she admitted, “but it has to do with compression and tension. Concrete is very strong under compression – trying to crush it is the same as squeezing a stone. But long pieces of it can be snapped like a twig, because it is not so strong under tension. So the Ancients discovered that by burying long steel reinforcement bars, called rebar, inside the concrete before it hardened made the finished material stronger, because steel is very strong under tension.”
“So why don't we still use rebar?”
“A good blacksmith can make small pieces of steel,” she said, “like swords. But no one can make as much steel as you need to make a building like this. The ancient steelyards needed a lot of power to melt and shape the iron. Electricity made that kind of scale of steel working practical. But we don't have it anymore. So no one has tried to build anything like this in two hundred years, ever since the Fall.”
She began climbing the steps again. He groaned mentally and followed her. By the time they reached the next landing he realized that she had not answered his original question. “So why did the General pick this building for his headquarters?”
“Well,” she said, “first because it's the best-built 'scraper in Denver, as I said, but also because he figured we'd eventually need all of the room, all these floors.”
“He was expecting his staff to grow that large?”
“No, she said. “because of his Dream.”
She explained. The General had always been determined to re-unify the continent after the fashion of the old United States. The old capitol was on the Eastern seaboard, but if his plan succeeded, the new nucleus around it would re-form would be Rado, so the representatives from the member States would need a place to meet, and he thought it made more sense to put the new capitol in the middle of the continent, harder for an invader to reach.
“So he needed either a bunch of buildings for all of them to meet and live in, or one big one.” She grinned. “The general was the kind of man who thought big, so he preferred to put them all in one building. He decided this one was big enough and so he moved in and never left.'
They stopped again for Esteban to regain his breath. “What floor are we on now?”
She pointed to a door. On it he saw the number 7 and groaned. “How far are we going up?”
“Almost to the top. My gardens are on the top five floors, and we've set aside the five floors below that for the school – floors fifty-one through fifty-five.”
“So we have forty-four floors to go? I'll never make it.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “Well, we can't have a new student dropping dead on his first day. I'll take you up to the thirtieth floor, where Xander lives, and send word for him to come down and meet you there. After dinner you can go the rest of the way up and find a place to sleep.”
He was more relieved than he could put into words to hear that he could live in the building. A few seconds earlier he had been trying to calculate how early in the morning he would have to arise in order to make his way to the building and climb all of these stairs. His legs were already aching. “Thank you,” he said. “I'll try to get used to the air and the stairs as soon as I can.”
But what if they didn't accept him?
“What's the matter?” she asked.
“I just realized that if Xander doesn't accept me as a student, I'll have to walk all the way down again...and find someplace to wait for the next coach going South.”
“Oh, don't worry about that. If he doesn't think you can learn the magic we can probably find a job for you, unless you want to leave.”
He concentrated on lifting one foot after another, climbing to the next landing. How could he tell her there was nothing for him here if he couldn't be a student? Surely His Holiness would have to be informed to send another candidate if he was not accepted.
She noted his lapse into silence. “Why so quiet?”
“I'm just thinking about how much I want to be a student,” he said. Guilt stabbed him at the partial truth. How much, in this case, was zero. He'd never asked for this. But having been set this task by the Pontiff, he now realized that success hinged on him being able to convince Xander that he did want it.
By the time they reached the thirtieth floor he was ready to collapse. By will alone he stayed on his feet when she opened the door and led him down a corridor.
She stooped by a door with a newly-painted cross on it and knocked. After a minute it opened and a man with gray in his hair looked at them. “Yes?”
“Father,” she said, “I need to go fetch Xander for a new student. Can you help him find something to eat while I go up?�
� She turned to Esteban. “This is Father Andrews. He's sort of our unofficial chaplain for the school.” Then she set off back to the stairwell, leaving him with the priest.
Chapter 43
Andrews: the lost sheep
“Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you.”
– Matthew 7:7
The newcomer looked about ready to collapse. “Come in,” he told the boy, “and sit down before you fall down. I know all those stairs are hard to get used to. And we're only halfway up, here.”
He led the boy into the room and went to his coldbox to fetch some leftover mutton and cider. “Have you come far, or from inside Rado?” he asked, setting the plate and mug on his little table and settling himself in the other chair.
“From Dallas, Father.”
“Really? So am I. I'm still getting used to the stairs myself, but in my case I was lucky – we landed on the roof so I didn't have to climb up here my first day.”
The boy was looking at the cabinet he had taken the food from. There was still a wisp of fog curling around the edge of the cabinet door. “You have a coldbox?”
“Yes, Xander made that for me so I wouldn't have to eat downstairs with the Governor's staff. I'm sure many of them are not quite comfortable around a TCC priest.”
“Xander made it for you?”
The boy – what was his name? - Esteban, seemed uneasy at the idea of a priest with a coldbox. If he was Catholic, that was only to be expected. Sometimes Andrews was surprised at how blasé he himself had become with all of the magic around him now. But then, he reminded himself, his use of the relics at St. Farker's had prepared him.
“Yes. One of the things you'll have to get used to around here is that they seem less afraid of what the Vatican's been calling 'demonic' technology. I'm sure they kept it away from you down in Dallas.”
Esteban looked down at his plate. “Not exactly.”
What was that about? “That reminds me, when you're done eating I should show you the bathroom. So how did you make your way up here from Dallas?”
The boy told of a long ride, first in a cart then in a coach. Andrews had to sigh when he heard of the coach driver's initial hostility on seeing Esteban's Texas coins. Decades of war had led to bad feelings on both sides, feelings that would be slow to die.
“So,” he said, trying to shift the conversation to a less painful subject, “did your family approve of your wanting to study up here at Xander's school?”
“I'm an orphan, Father. I was raised at St. Bruno's.”
“The Carthusian monastery? You have come a long way, son. After you get settled in we should get together and talk about all your new experiences. You must feel as if you've traveled to another planet.” Seeing that Esteban had finished the mutton, he reached for the plate. “Here, let me get that for you. You should see this.”
Taking the plate, he led Esteban to the sink and turned the hot water spigot. As the boy's eyes widened at the steaming water he was rinsing the dish with, he explained. “This building was made after the Tourists arrived, so it has swizzle plumbing and everflames to keep the water hot. They failed eventually, but Xander got them working again.'
“He can make those too?”
“Oh yes. He's a talented wizard.” He dried the plate with a towel and carried it back to the coldbox. “If I were a betting man, I'd wager you'll be making 'em too before you know it. That's the whole point of the school, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“The reason civilization Fell was because we didn't have people who could make the Gifts or keep them working. Xander figures if he can teach more people to do what he can do, civilization can climb back up a lot faster than without them.”
“Clem said something similar on the way up. Do you really think it's possible?”
“I do. When you've been here awhile, you will too.”
A knock at the door interrupted him. “That's probably him now.” He raised his voice a little. “Come on in! You know it's always open.”
The door opened and Xander stepped in. “You must be Esteban. I hope Aria didn't run you ragged on the stairs.”
Esteban shook his head. “Did she tell you I'm here to apply for your school?”
“She did.” The wizard closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded to himself. “Was it your idea to come, or did someone back home send you?”
“It wasn't my idea,” Esteban said. “But they said I was qualified.'
“Well, you'll be glad to know they weren't wrong, Esteban. You have the talent. You can become a wizard, if you want to.”
Andrew was as startled as the boy looked. “Just like that? Are you sure?”
“Trust me,” said Xander. “It takes one to know one, as they used to say. You're one, or, rather, you can become one. You haven't made the journey here in vain.”
“That reminds me,” said Esteban. “Clem said to tell you that he brought me. He didn't charge me for the trip.”
“We'll reimburse him. Come up with me, and we'll get you settled into a room before you pass out.”
The boy groaned. Father Andrews chuckled. “Take it slow on the stairs,” he told Xander. “Esteban isn't used to the thin air up here.”
The door closed behind them. He went to the coldbox and got himself another bottle of cider and sat down at the table again, opening his Bible. His eyes fell upon the verse “as a stranger in a strange land.” What am I still doing here? he wondered.
His status in Denver was not exactly official. Andrews remembered the flight up with Xander and Lester after the jailbreak. The wizard and his apprentice had to get out of Denver, that was clear. But his own case was different. He'd just gone with the flow, presuming that the soldiers who raided St. Farker's for artifacts would still be after him.
But a lot had changed in the last couple of months. The old Honcho was gone, and his son had replaced him. Andrews knew next to nothing about Jeffrey Martinez, other than the fact that he'd been sensible enough to agree to peace when his father's attempted invasion failed. The young Honcho seemed less intent on conquest than his father had been, which was lucky for Xander.
But more was changing than the political situation, it seemed. He'd heard Lester had brought a girl from his home town to be a student, and now they had another – from a monastery, no less! He wondered if the Pope knew about it. It was difficult to believe that the same Pontiff who'd tried to burn Lester at the stake for being a wizard's apprentice would accept the idea of one of his flock becoming one.
Chapter 44
Carolyn: continuing progress
“I am not free when any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
– Audre Lorde
This time she was a little quicker. The blackness wrapped around her in a little over a second. The pathspace weave was good and tight. It took no effort at all to maintain, once she established it.
“Not bad at all,” said Lester. “I think you've really got the hang of it now. What made the difference?”
She told him what Xander had suggested. “So you see, it was just a difference in the way I imagined it.” Something in his expression led her to add, “What's wrong?'
“Nothing,” he grunted. “Sorry, I should have thought of that myself. I'm no good at this...at teaching it, anyway.”
Maybe I shouldn't have gone to Xander. “Don't be so hard on yourself,” she said. “You've never had to teach anything before. It's like a whole other level of learning, learning how to pass on what you know to a beginner.”
“I guess.” But then a corner of his mouth turned up.
“What are you smiling like that for?'
“I just remembered,” he said. “You're going to have to do this soon, yourself. The price of being in the first class of students is we have to become teachers. The school needs instructors, and Xander can't do it all, not if we grow the way we hope to.”
“Well, I'm
not worried,” she said. “All I have to do is learn from your struggles and I'll be ahead of the game. Don't look like that. You're not a bad teacher, just inexperienced. Look on the bright side. All you have to do is learn how to teach pathspace. I have to learn how to do it and how to teach it.”
“What else did Xander tell you?”
“That when I'm good enough at weaving the invisibility you can have your next lesson in spinspace. I'm starving. Why don't we go see what they have for dinner?”
She let him open the door to the stairwell for her. “Now that more students will be coming,” she said, “what are we going to do with the ones Xander says aren't 'qualified'? It seems a shame to just send them back where they came from right after they get here.”
He grimaced. “Yes, it would be better if we sent out recruiters to hand pick them so that we know before they get here that they are ready to learn, like I did with you. The problem is there's only one of me and he needs me here teaching.
“Once the school is big enough that won't be a problem,” she predicted. “For now it looks like you're stuck with me.”
“I can live with that if you can,” he said, then shut his mouth as if he were biting his tongue. Was he blushing?
“Do you think,” she said, to change the subject, “that we should ask Kristana if we can set up our own dining room for the school so we don't have to walk all the way down to eat with her staff?”
“Good question. I'm of two minds about that. When the school gets big enough it will make sense...but I'll bet that if we mention it to Xander now he'll say no.”
“Why?”
“Well,” he said, “up to now it has suited his purposes to be the mysterious court wizard. But for us to fulfill the mission of the school, we'll need people to see us as people to be respected but not feared, like blacksmiths or doctors. For all we know they might think of things we haven't, and we don't want them avoiding us. We'll need all the help we can get to make the school a success. I haven't the slightest idea of how to set up a school for wizards.”
Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) Page 14
