“That's another thing. While Xander's playing with the memspheres and Lobsang's ring, we should have someone thinking about how to use what we know to make better weapons.”
Lester stared at him as if he had never seen him before. A mug of water floated from the worktable behind them to his hand and he drank, never taking his eyes off Nathan. “Now you're starting to scare me. I thought you hated war.”
Nathan tried to copy his trick, but his temper got the better of him and the mug accelerated suddenly to fly past the two of them and smash against the wall. He growled a word his father had never taught him. “I do. War's a waste of time and lives. Worst of all, it interferes with learning. But we can't all be philosophers when there's an army over the horizon.”
“Your pathspace is is getting stronger,” said Lester, “but if you don't work on getting better control of it you'll be as much of a danger to us as the Empire is.”
“I know,” he grumbled, as he stood up to pick up the pieces. “But we can't let the School turn into nothing more than a research lab and a factory. We need more students!”
Lester brought him a trash basket. “I'm not arguing with you. But we can't just go out and drag people off the street. We have to find a way to get more people to want to come to us.”
Nathan pulled the end of his gray sleeve over his hand to protect his fingers before he began picking up the ceramic fragments. “We may be able to make things move and fashion artifacts, but we can't control minds.” After he got all of the pieces he could find, he blotted up the water from the carpet. “And if we could...then we'd be no better than the Queen.”
“Yes. So what was in that memsphere you slept on, before Xander collected them back again? Anything that could help us?”
He shook his head. “I doubt it. I remembered being something called an 'attorney'. I was meeting with others to talk about the legal ramifications of the Gifts.”
“The what?”
“The memory's fading. I think I should have gone back to sleep with it again."
“But we have your notes.”
“Yes, but they would have been better if I had repeated it, or had a longer exposure, I'm sure of it.”
Lester took the basket from him and carried it over hear the stairwell door. “What did you mean by 'legal ramifications'?”
Nathan sat down between his boxes again and reached down to retrieve another untreated pipe. “Some corporations were trying to 'patent' the Gifts, to seize control of them and profit from them. Competing firms were trying to beat them to it, or to split it with them. It was a mess, really. There were no legal precedents covering how to administer the ownership of alien artifacts.”
Now Lester really seemed confused. “Legal precedents?”
“Examples from law history. From the same root word as 'precede', 'to go before'. A lot of their law consisted in arguing cases based on the history of prior legal decisions.”
“And how did that kind of memory find its way into a memsphere?”
“They wanted a tamper-proof record of the meeting. And so I, er, I mean he, was wearing one at the meeting with the other attorneys. Everyone wanted their own copy...and there was no known method for copying the contents of a memsphere.” He concentrated on the pipe for a minute, then dropped the new icetorch into the box to his right.
Lester sat down in his own chair again. “Do you remember how they got the memspheres to start recording? That would be good to know.”
Nathan shrugged. “As far as I remember, you just start carrying around a blank one.”
Lester picked up an icetorch. “Yes, but how do we know if any of them are blank? For all we know, all the ones he has are blank except the ones he gave us to try.”
Nathan frowned. “I think...I think when they gave the memsphere to me, I mean, to the attorney, it was glowing a brighter blue than the ones Xander gave us.”
Lester stopped what he was doing. “Are you saying they get dimmer as they record?”
“Yes.” Nathan stared at nothing, remembering. “It's like the weave kind of gets used up as it does whatever it's doing to store the memories. Eventually there's only a little of the blue glint on the metal to let you know the weave was ever there at all.”
“Are you sure? That doesn't make any sense! If someone used them up two centuries ago, how are we able to get any memories out of them?"
“How should I know? You know as much about them as I do. We're like the Ancients seeing a swizzle for the first time. It might take us a long time before we understand whatever makes these spheres work.”
“Do you still remember what it looked like when they handed it to you...I mean, the attorney?”
“Like I told you, it was glowing a brighter blue.” He paused. “And...I think it was wrapped in some kind of smoky gray transparent paper. I've never seen anything like it.”
Lester sprang to his feet. “We have to find Xander. And the Governor. Right away.”
Nathan pushed back his own chair. “Why? And why the rush?”
“Come on!” Lester dashed over to the stairwell door.
Mystified, Nathan tightened the belt of his robe and followed him.
Chapter 57
Kristana: And Rumors of War
“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
Some things come whether you want them or not. Winter. Nightfall. Old age. And it looked as if another invasion was coming. But this time she had no idea what form it would take.
She stared down at the map of the Ancients. Xander and the General had called it “smart paper” but the old words told her nothing. First of all, it wasn't paper. Paper would be rougher, it would at least be fibrous enough to let you write on it. But the map of the Ancients had a smooth surface. Water rolled off it. Ink, charcoal and wax crayon wouldn't stick to it. Whatever it was, it wasn't paper.
An secondly, it wasn't smart. Sure, it could do some remarkable things. She touched it on either side of the rectangle marked 'Colorado' and dragged her hands apart, and the rectangle grew until it nearly filled the map from side to side. Very handy, the zoom and pan functions. The map was big enough to cover a desk, but according to Xander its internal information covered the entire world. So what if the countries and boundaries on it were a couple of centuries out of date? The mountains and roads hadn't moved.
Strange, yes. Useful? Certainly. But not smart. If the damned thing was smart like some of her advisers it would anticipate her needs and offer suggestions. But all it did was display information and respond to orders.
How was it still functioning after two centuries? She knew the answer to that one, even if no one had a clue to how it worked. It was still working because it didn't rely on the Gifts of the Tourists.
“Madame Governor?”
She looked up. “Not here, Major.”
“What?”
“It won't be here. The next time they invade, they won't try a surgical strike with tanks.”
Her advisers exchanged a glance. “How can you be so sure of that?” Major Chavez asked.
“A couple of reasons. One, it didn't work last time. The former Honcho was in too much of a hurry. He must have thought if he could take the capitol and supplant me with one of his lieutenants, then he could divert our gold to financing his army and move on to take other countries. But whoever is in charge this time will learn from that mistake.”
She glanced down at the map, then up again. “The second reason is that we have their tanks and our wizards here. So they'll hit us somewhere also, a softer target. They'll bite off a little bit first and establish a base there to gradually take the rest.”
Chavez stared down at the map. “With respect, ma'am, I think they'll try the same strategy again, but maybe without tanks this time. Why? Because the junta, or whoever ends up in control, will want to show they can succeed where Peter
Martinez failed. They'll want to legitimize the new choice of Honcho with a quick victory, not a protracted campaign.”
He looked up and met her eyes. “That's what I think. But if I'm wrong and you're right, where will they hit us instead?”
She frowned. “I don't know. Maybe Xander could...hold on, where is Xander?”
No one seemed to know.
Chapter 58
Xander: The Bigger Picture
“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”
– Winston Churchill
He wondered if patients back in the days of the Ancients had thought this way when they let doctors see inside their bodies. Was his feeling of exposure, of invasion, as he stood behind the doctor's thruscope, the same kind of thing they had felt when letting x-rays pass through their bodies? “What do you see?”
Daniels looked grim. “Your tumor's definitely growing.”
Sander stepped out from behind the oval frame and turned to look out the window. “How long?”
“A few months at the most. Even if it doesn't spread, it'll begin to affect your ability to breathe. You have to tell her, Xander. To prepare her for what's coming.”
“Can't you operate...cut it out?”
“I could, if I had a real hospital. If I had all the things we used to have, the heart-lung machines, the antiseptic, antibiotics. But I don't. At your age, even if I managed to get all of it, they shock to your system could kill you. Even if you survived the operation, the post-op infection would finish you off. You have to tell her, as soon as possible. You owe her the truth.”
“On top of everything else she's facing?”
“The tumor won't wait for a better time for you to tell her. It has to be now, while you still have the strength to console her.”
“She doesn't have time for this. Rado is facing an invasion, and she has to stay focused on that.”
“Why?” Daniels came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe we should just surrender. They don't want to kill us. They just want our resources. You could let go of it all and make the most of the time you have left.”
Xander shook off the hand and turned to face him. “Is that what you would do, in my place?”
“Absolutely.”
Xander nodded. “Yes, you'd do that, try to minimize the loss of life. I can understand that.” He took a breath. “But I'm not fighting for our lives. The real battle is more important than one life, or even the lives of soldiers on both sides. I'm fighting for the future of all of us. To reclaim what we used to have, so we can move forward again.”
Daniels pursed his lips. “I thought you just wanted to replace the old technology with your magic.”
“With what we know now, psionic engineering can't do everything. If we had a tissue regenerator that still worked, maybe I could learn enough from it to heal myself and others. But we don't. So I want to get back the civilization that'll give you your modern hospital.”
Daniels shook his head. “The science is gone.”
“Not all of it. The books haven't forgotten. And there are other records.” He told the doctor about the memspheres. “Maybe we can't find exact descriptions of all of it, but we can find enough clues to start rediscovering the rest. You'll have a modern hospital, and your own medical school.” He seized his staff from where it leaned against the infirmary wall. “But first we have to stop the Empire from conquering us.”
“Why? Isn't an empire better suited to gathering all the surviving records and rebuilding civilization?”
“No, they're not.”
“Why not? They've got the manpower, the resources.”
“Because empires want two things: to expand, and to keep things the same. Without the Gifts to bootstrap a higher standard of living, they'll be ruling over powerless peasants scratching an existence out of basic farming.” Xander began to pace. “The Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, even the British Empire saw improvements in many things. But technology only really started to take off when we didn't need a majority of the population to spend their time farming. When there's plenty of food, and you can support the growth of a middle class of artisans who have time to tinker and invent things, that's when civilization really takes off, in terms of technology.”
“We have our blacksmiths, our engineers,” Daniels objected.
“Yes, but do you know about Sumeria?”
Daniels was taken aback by the apparent change of subject. “Vaguely. What about them?”
“They build a whole civilization starting with mud and sticks,” said Xander. “But they were only able to do that after their first big advance: waterworks and irrigation. Once they could grow plenty of crops, and not just right next to a river, the scene was set for a population explosion and the development of more art and technology. It all started with food, from irrigation.”
“I think you're oversimplifying.”
“Maybe. But the fact is, we can't grow enough food anymore. I'm pretty sure the Earth's population is a small fraction of what it used to be.” He stopped pacing and gazed out the window again. “Swizzle-powered wells and irrigation will get us growing enough food to get civilization growing again.”
He turned and locked gazes with Daniels. “But we need psionic engineers - wizards - to make and maintain the swizzles, and other things. And we need a school to train the wizards.” He paused. “Do you really think the Lone Star Empire will let me go on training the kind of wizards that stopped them last time?”
Before Daniels could answer him the infirmary door opened. “We need to talk about the memspheres,” said Lester.
“But I'm in the middle of a rant here.”
Lester ignored him. “Did you read Nathan's dream report?”
“No, not yet. Why?”
“I don't remember if I mentioned it in the report,” Nathan said.
Lester ignored him too. “I was talking to him, and he remembered something about the spheres. They glow a brighter blue when they're still blank.” His eyes bored into Xander's. You have to look over the ones you have in the storeroom and see if any of them are still empty.”
Xander lifted an eyebrow. “Why? They won't have anything useful on them.”
“Don't you see? We can use one to store the experiences of a student becoming a wizard. Then we can use it to train new wizards, train them faster than we ever could before.” Lester paused to take a breath. “We won't always be around, but with this, we can still be teaching new wizards long after we're gone.”
Daniels looked at Xander. “He's right, you know. You won't always be around.”
Xander exhaled heavily. “All right. Let's go have a look at my collection.”
Chapter 59
Rainsong: The Ability
“Knowledge is like a garden: if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.”
– Guinean Proverb
After she assimilated a few more memspheres, her Mentor began training her for Nav Section.
“Where are we going?”
He waved his left grasper and a section of the wall slid aside, revealing a door she'd never seen before. “A special place where you can learn the Ability.”
She followed him through the door and down a dim hallway. “What ability?”
“When the Meddlers came, they gave us great things that changed our way of life,” he said. “For a time, life was much better than before. But then it changed.”
She missed the trees. “What changed it?”
“We relied on their gifts, instead of our own science. When their gifts began to fail, we no longer knew how to live as we had before the Meddlers came. Many of the People died. We nearly fell all the way back to being mere animals again.”
They emerged into an open area. On her right, against the wall, she saw a sleep-learn pod. “I don't understand. If you wanted me to sleep on another memsphere, why did we have to come here for tha
t?”
“When some of the People began to manifest the Ability, they used the last of the blank memspheres to store what they learned, so that many other could learn too.” He helped her into the pod. “Up to now, you've learned language, and some of the tech knowledge we accumulated after we came back from the brink of extinction. But the memsphere in this pod is different. It doesn't teach science. It teaches you how to use the Ability.”
“Why couldn't I learn this back when I was learning the other things?”
“Many lifetimes ago, we decided to limit the number of us who learned the Ability,” he told her. “Back on Homeworld, everyone learns. But not here.”
“Why not?"
“Because we're on a mission,” he said. “And this isn't Homeworld. The Ship is a little bubble of air and dirt and water traveling through space. If it were damaged, we could all die. If someone interfered with navigation, we could lose our way.”
“But no one would try to do that.”
“Some one did,” he informed her. “A group of the crew rebelled and tried to take over the ship, to take control away from Captain.”
She couldn't imagine that. “Why?”
“They wanted to go home,” he said. “But they were defeated.”
“What did you do with them? Did you get rid of them?”
“We couldn't,” he said. “Everything on the Ship is carefully balanced to enable us to continue on our journey. The trees need what we exhale, our breath, as we need theirs. We cannot increase or decrease our population. Even one less crewman would make a difference over time. We must all continue to cycle, even those who mutinied.”
“So what did you do instead?”
“We decided to wall off the front of the Ship, now called Nav Section, and to only teach the Ability to those of us up here, who are responsible for guiding the Ship. Everyone else lives their lives as before, but without any skill that would allow them to break into Nav Section or harm the Ship or change course.”
Tonespace: The Space of Energy (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 3) Page 23
