“I call it psionic engineering because the Ancient word 'engineering' meant the application of knowledge to solve problems. It comes from the old Latin noun ingenium which means 'cleverness' and the related verb ingeniare which means to contrive or devise. Things the Ancient engineers built were called 'contrivances', 'devices', or simply engines.”
“What about the word psionic?”
“It refers to effects produced by the actions of the psyche, the mind or soul that runs your brain. Put them together and the term psionic engineering means building or affecting things with your mind, not your hands, in order to solve problems.”
“Sounds like magic to me.”
“There was a man once called Arther C. Clarke who used to write stories about the future,' said Xander. “Most people have never heard of him nowadays, but he had a lot of important ideas that he developed in his books. One of those ideas, the geosynchronous satellite, spawned an entire communications industry that let the Ancients talk to anyone anywhere in the world.
“But to me, his most important contribution was something called Clarke's Third law: 'Any sufficiently developed technology is indistinguishable from magic.' An ignorant person might think a swizzle or an everflame is something magical, when in actuality, it's a device made by a psionic engineer.”
The newest student raised a hand. Xander turned to him. “Yes, Kareef?”
“This is all good to know, sir. But I don't see how it will help us figure out how to make a swizzle.”
Xander nodded. “You're right. It would be wonderful if you all worked it out with no help at all, of course. But even Lester had help. I won't try to do the work for you. That would be like expecting you to grow muscles by watching me lift weights.”
“What kind of help did he have, sitting in prison?” Carolyn wanted to know.
“Help with his imagination,” the old wizard answered. “Since this sort of thing is done with your mind, you have to be able to imagine the pathspace pattern in order to impose it on the space around the pipe. That's a lot of wordiness so we just call it 'weaving' or sculpting the pathspace. The first weave you learn is the one for concealment, the invisibility weave. You accomplished it by imagining an alteration in the paths that light takes.”
He paused to puff on his pipe again and let that sink in. “Making a swizzle is just another weave, a different one. In order to do it, you have to imagine a particular pattern in pathspace. If you do it in empty air, the effect will be brief. If you do it to the space around a piece of matter, especially metal, it will last for a long time, because the metal helps to anchor the pattern.”
He looked around at all of them to see if they were paying attention. Kareef had his hand up again. “Yes?”
“Sir, people imagine things all the time. Why is it that when an ordinary person imagines something, nothing actually happens, whereas when a wizard or psionic engineer imagines it, something does happen?”
“That's a good question. What I believe is that the degree to which a mind is coupled with the space around it, especially the space outside your head, is what makes the difference. It's like the difference between trying to push something with a feather and pushing it with a stick. Your minds are more strongly coupled to the space outside your body, so they push harder, like the stick. Ordinary people push with feathers, so almost nothing happens.”
Carolyn imitated Kareef and raised her hand until Xander nodded at her. “So we have to push the air inside the pipe to make it a swizzle?”
“No,” he said. “The Ancients thought maybe people could learn to do that. They called it telekinesis, 'distance-moving', or psychokinesis, 'mind-moving', but they never had much luck with it. Why? Because they were going about it the wrong way. You can't move things with your mind. If you could, you wouldn't need muscles to make your bones move.
“But by focusing in a region of space and imagining the right weave, the right pattern, you can make things happen. Not by trying to push the matter, the air in the pipe. You do it by pushing the space itself, the part of it you are trying to impose a different pattern on.” He paused. “Since we are trying to make a pattern of motion, the part of space you will be affecting is the pathspace – the part that tells any matter in that space what paths to follow. Once you do that, and the metal anchors the pattern, the change in pathspace will affect any matter in it. That's why a swizzle can move air, water, sand, whatever gets into its range of effect.”
“So all we need is the right pattern?” she said.
“Yes,” said the wizard. “Well, almost. Knowing the right pattern wouldn't help an ordinary person, what the old magic stories might have called a mundane. To a wizard, however, yes, knowing the right pattern should enable you to do the weave. Once you know the pattern, the weave, for a swizzle, you'll always be able to make one.”
Kaleb lifted his hand. “How did Lester learn the right pattern, cut off from contact with you in his prison cell?”
Xander smiled. “It was a happy accident. He saw something that gave him the clue. So to be fair, I'm going to show you all the same thing, as soon as Esteban joins us.”
As if on cue, the stairwell door opened and Esteban entered and sat on the carpet next to Kaleb. Xander tried to catch him up while the other students tried not to fidget.
Kaleb, for his part, was almost oblivious to Xander's summing up. He was caught up in the realization that everything the Queen did to control people and inspire fear came from her having picked up the right patterns to imagine. Her little trick with the unrolling carpet was not so hard to understand now. The carpet wasn't obeying her. It was just obeying the weave her mind set up in the pathspace when she imagined it happening.
If he could learn the right weaves, he could be as powerful as she was, with a little practice. No wonder she never set up a School of her own to teach these things! If he could match her power, he'd never have to live in fear again.
“Here comes the hint,” said Xander. “Watch closely, because I'm only going to show you once, because that's all the help Lester got.”
He took a draw on his pipe, held it, then made an 'O' of his mouth and blew a perfect smoke ring.
Chapter 59
Rochelle: contemplating the enemy
“...both their Gods & their men are fools”
– The Book of The Law I:11
She wanted to smash something. The mental connection reached nothing. He hadn't put the ring back on. But he couldn't be foolish enough to defy her, even if he was a thousand miles away now. She still had his family. She glanced at the ring of blue metal on her finger. Even such a useful thing as this had its limitations. Too bad there were so few of them left that worked. Anyone who knew about them could use one...but no one knew how to make them. Someday I have to figure out how to do that.
Could the silence mean that Xander had discovered her Judas? It was inconceivable. The man was a hopeless idealist, a typical product of the People's Republic of Wyoming. She laughed in her mind, thinking of that sad country. Everyone there was equal – and no one there was rich. The farming communes that sent their speakers to the Worker's Congress actually thought that their renunciation of wealth made them superior and protected them from invasion. Oh, it protected them all right – no one wanted to take that country because they had little of value. Only ideals.
Xander had wandered away from his commune, but he still carried the loser mindset with him. He had accumulated some lore, some power...and what did he do with it? The fool ignored the possibilities that power implied. He had squandered his youth serving the General and his widow that silly bitch Kristana. And now he was committing the greatest folly of all: giving away his secrets in exchange for nothing!
Personally, she doubted his School would ever amount to much, but she couldn't leave it to chance. If he ever managed to train someone as capable and less foolish than himself... Well, that wasn't going to happen. She would see to that. If Dog failed her, she would find another way. She always did. It wa
s a pity that Xander was such a fool. Sometimes she caught herself wondering how much more she might have accomplished with another wizard at her side, especially a man. Men were weak. Their bodies ruled their minds, making them easy to entice, to seduce, and to control.
With a male wizard as her sexual slave, she wouldn't have to do everything personally. He could be the one to refresh the irrigation swizzles when they weakened. He could be sent to intimidate the grumblers. He could deal with the wealthy who complained of her taxes, the farmers who wanted to own their own farms, and the agents of her supposed allies, the Earl of Francisco, a fool who thought trade made him secure, and the Duke of the northern Forests, an aging lecher who was obsessed with finding the Shrine to cure the consequences of his many vices.
All men were fools. Without his precious Bay, the Earl of Francisco would have nothing. Oh, he had one or two magicians, but they were hardly wizards. From what she'd heard, they used showmanship and stage illusions to prop up their reputations. Whenever she wanted to, she could wipe them out and the Earl with them, and add Francisco to her domain. But it was hardly worth doing, really. There was plenty down here to amuse her.
As for the Duke, he would die soon enough from his own excesses. Traveling all the way up there to finish him off was unnecessary. When he finally breathed his last, and his government crumbled (as it surely would; there couldn't be anyone capable and ruthless enough to replace him, or it would have happened already), only then would she consider making an effort to acquire his territory.
By the time she needed the Shrine for herself, her agents would have no competition up there at all.
Chapter 60
Aria: damps and newcomers
“A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.”
– Maya Angelou
The man from the Department of Mines droned on, as if rocks were the most fascinating subject in the world and everyone knew it. She had heard enough about strikes, ores, veins, fines, and leaching processes to last her the rest of her life.
“But the biggest help we've received in decades,' he continued, “were those loads of swizzles you shipped us.”
“You can thank our court wizards, Xander and Lester for that,” the Governor told him. “They turned out a huge number of them before the invasion a few months ago. It was Xander's suggestion that I funnel them to you. But what do you use them for? Surely not for digging.”
“No, Excellency. We haven't found a way to use them for that. But I can tell you that we wouldn't be getting anywhere near the production numbers we are seeing now without them. We've been limited for as long as I can remember by the water and the damps.”
The Governor glanced at Aria, clearly puzzled. “Damps?”
She had no idea what to tell her mother. None of her private classes and training to be the next governor had prepared her for this subject. She groaned mentally at the thought that the deficiency would no doubt be rectified. Even more to learn.
Kristana turned back to the official. “Sorry, I'm not following. You had problems with water getting your equipment damp?”
He smiled. “No, Excellency. Groundwater is a problem, of course, because miners can't breathe underwater. We've been making do with hand pumps, but the swizzles are better and free up more workers for other tasks. But I can see why the word 'damps' would confuse you. It has nothing to do with wetness. It comes from dampf – a German word meaning 'vapors'. It refers to dangerous gases found down in mines.”
Don't ask! Aria prayed. But of course her mother had to ask about the mine gases.
“Well there are quite a lot of them,” he said, warming to the subject. “Firedamp is what we get in the coal mines; it's just another word for methane, and it can burn and explode, hence the name.”
“I see,” said the Governor, covering a half-yawn with one hand.
But he didn't take the hint. “And then there's stinkdamp, another word for hydrogen sulfide. Not that dangerous but unpleasant, because it smells like rotten eggs. Not to mention whitedamp and blackdamp.”
But alas, he did mention them, obsessed with providing complete information. “Whitedamp is carbon monoxide. Extremely poisonous stuff; we get that in coal mines too. It's why we carry the birdcages. They breathe faster than us, so when the poor little buggers keel over it gives us a warning to get the hell out. But some say blackdamp is the worst.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it's another word for carbon dioxide. We run into that in all the mines, especially the deeper ones, because it's heavier than air so it just sinks down in as soon as you open a hole. It's called blackdamp because with enough of it in the air your lamps won't burn. They go out and leave you in the dark. Even if the birds haven't died yet you have to come up fast when that happens, because when there's too much of that in the air it crowds out the oxygen and the men will suffocate.”
“I see,” the Governor said.
“Because of these, the deeper you go the more important ventilation is to keep your workers alive. Thanks to you and your wizard, we can swizzle out the damps and water, and swizzle fresh air down there to replace 'em. Makes a world of difference to our productivity.”
“Well, we've started a school to train more wizards,” the Governor said. “With any luck at all, we'll be able to give you all the swizzles you need to expand operations.”
The man beamed. “That's terrific! Most of the older mines have been worked for centuries. For them, we're always going deeper, and the damps just get worse.” The door behind him opened and Lester came in. leading two strangers, a man and a boy in his mid-teens.
“Well thank you for your report, Mr. Shmidt. We look forward to even more progress from you in the future.”
After the man left, Lester spoke up. “Madame Governor, I have the honor of presenting Isaac Silverman, ambassador from New Israel, and his son Nathan.”
Kristana's eyes widened. “New Israel? Lord, but you've come a long way. We are honored by your visit...although I must say I'm a little surprised that we had no idea you were coming.”
Yes, thought Aria. You're surprised that the road sentries didn't get you a report about them in time. She had no doubt that someone on the roof was receiving a mirror-shutter message about them as they spoke.
Isaac smiled. “I must say, Excellency, that we were concerned on the way here when we heard about the invasion from the Lone Star Empire. I was relieved to hear you defeated them.”
“It was a very near thing. Their tanks rolled right into town and were literally across the street, before they tangled with my wizards. Xander neutralized the Honcho's tank, and Lester there beside you, he finished off the Honcho's second-in-command. After that the others were willing to listen to reason.”
Sort of. After I offered them the face-saving concession of marrying Jeffrey, the new Honcho. But no one mentioned that.
“This is my daughter Aria, my heir, by the way.”
Isaac bowed to her. “An honor to meet you, Lady Aria.”
Aria had to shake her head at that. “Just 'Aria',” she said. “The Governor of Rado used to be an elected position, in the old days, and someday soon it will be again. We try not to think of ourselves as royalty – just hereditary caretakers, until the union can be restored.”
“A noble ambition,” he said. “And yet, a difficult proposition, restoring the Union. Even if someday you succeed, it will not be the same as it was.”
She sighed. “I know that, Ambassador. I'm sure we'll never have fifty-two stars on the new flag, like the ones in the museums have. But at least there be an end to warfare, if and when we complete the Restoration.”
At this point her mother moved to take over the conversation again. “It's one of many matters we can discuss. But you must be tired from such a long journey. I'm sure Lester can find you an empty floor to settle into, unless of course you already have plans to stay elsewhere.”
Isaac shook his head. “Thank you, Excellency
, that will be most convenient.”
“Incidentally,” the Governor said, “you should know that an ambassador from the Dixie Emirates also arrived recently. I do hope that won't be a problem. I understand New Israel and the Emirates have had...shall we say, unfortunate disagreements in the past.”
Isaac shrugged. “Oh, all of that happened a long time ago, Excellency. Indeed, I look forward to meeting him.”
I notice you automatically assume their ambassador is a man, thought Aria. But she said nothing. Because he was.
Chapter 61
Enrique: a nontrivial change
“One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.”
– Niccolo Machiavelli
The spiritual leader of millions drummed his fingers on the armrest of his wooden throne, waiting for the cardinals. Though he owed his election to them, His Holiness, Pope Enrique II sometimes wished they were less interested in participating in decisions on Church policy.
Eventually they began wafting into the audience chamber and settling into their chairs like red snowdrifts. He tried to stifle his impatience and reminded himself that he used to wear the red himself.
Most seats would remain empty. Even during the papal enclave that had elevated him to Supreme Pontiff (no longer called the Bishop of Rome since the fall of civilization and loss of the weather satellites had made crossing the Atlantic too dangerous), many of the cardinals had not been in attendance. Many in Mexico and most in the more Southern countries had 'elected' to decline the hardships and hazards of a long journey to the New Vatican in Dallas.
After the Camerlengo called them to order, Enrique swept them with his gaze. “We have called you here today to discuss a possible change in Church policy regarding the so-called 'Gifts of the Tourists'. As you know, Our predecessors have called them 'tools of the Devil', 'demonic snares', and the like. A Papal Ban declared them anathema and ordered Christians to avoid them and to hand over any remaining artifacts. We are considering a softening of that position.”
Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) Page 20
