Potential enemies, Qusay thought. “There's more.” He stroked around the circumference of the pipe, making it blow hot and then cool air at them. He left it in cooling mode long enough for frost to form on the end of the pipe, to underscore the point.
Five pairs of eyes locked on that frosty pipe. He had their attention now. “They call it a thermodyne,” he said. “Among other things, you can use to to keep a room warm in Winter and cool in Summer.”
The elder was silent for a moment. “This is new,” he said.
Qusay nodded. “Indeed it is. I've never heard of anything like it before.”
“Where did it come from?”
He allowed himself a grin. “A couple of Xander's students made it, using a combination of pathspace and tonespace weaves.”
Blank looks. “The magic technology of the Tourists comes in many forms,” he told them. “What we do, the Axle Method, Xander calls spinspace. The energy-related techniques of the New Israelite Tzaddikim that they use to make everflames, he calls tonespace. The kind used to make a swizzle he calls pathspace.”
The elder's face seemed a bit worried now. “Are you saying he knows all three?”
“Yes,” said Qusay. “and you are right to consider it something to worry about. In a three-way fight, I believe Xander could defeat both a Tzaddik and a Sihr easily, while remaining immune to the tonespace attacks of the Tzaddik and the spinspace attacks of the Sihr.”
Now there was muttering at the table. “Yes,” he said. “It also means he or his students could infiltrate this very chamber, surviving the sentry's challenge.”
One of the men caught the Elder's eye. “We should send out more Testers,” he said. “Clearly we are going to need more Sihr if Rado has thoughts of expanding eastward.”
“That brings me to my third, and most important bit of news,” Qusay put in, before the elder had time to respond to that.
The face swung back toward him. “What is it? Speak up!' demanded the eldest.
“It concerns the recruiting of new Sihr,” he said. “And it concerns secrets some of us have been keeping.”
“What? Who?”
“Those of us with children,” he said. “To be blunt, I'm sure you've noticed that sons of Sihr are more likely than not to be found capable of becoming Sihr themselves.”
The elder shrugged. “Sons are like their fathers. So?”
“That's not it. All along we have been assuming that it is a matter of innate talent, that a few are born with it, and their children, if they have any, can inherit the gift.”
He turned off the thermodyne (triggering its warming mode for a few seconds to remove the frost at one end first) and laid it on the table next to the trade agreement pages. “But we've been wrong all along. It has nothing, or very little, to do with breeding, or inherited traits.”
“What are you saying?”
“Xander has discovered that prolonged exposure to the Gifts, the alien artifacts, is what makes a person able to learn the magic. The reason the son of a Sihr is more likely to become one of us is because he is more likely to be exposed. For example, on hot summer days many people like to cool off with one of the fans our artisans turn out, with wooden blades turned by springs of reclaimed metal. But in the home of a Sihr,” he continued, “such fans need not be wound up. They can be kept turning by using our spinspace, our Axle Method. And that, gentlemen, means any children in the home will be exposed to an everwheel spell as they grow up.”
“Are you saying we should all marry?” said one of the men in black robes.
“No, not necessarily,” said Qusay. “What I am saying is we need more artifacts among our people, in their homes, so that more of us can be trained. We can use this knowledge to increase our numbers as much as we like, in time.”
“I don't like it,” one of the men complained. “Our power rests in part on our rarity. Too many of us would dilute that. The Emirs would value our counsel less if we were easier to find.”
“Perhaps,” Qusay admitted. “But I am not the only one who knows this. By now, my counterpart from New Israel has returned to tell them of Xander's discovery.” He eyed them. “I'm sure that they will have the same objection. But whoever acts first will have more wizards than the other. Can we afford to let them get that advantage?” Muttering rose again. “There's more.”
The elder lifted a hand and the other quieted. “Yes?”
“Kareef was not one of the students who made this thermodyne. He has discovered on his own how to make an everwheel, which the others are catching up on, but he is slow to make swizzles and everflames.”
“So?” said the elder. “What difference does it make if it takes him a little longer?”
“My point is that while exposure helps develop the talent, the kind of exposure seems to play a part as well. If we get everflames or thermodynes into our households, artifacts that use the energy magic, the tonespace, then our next generation of Sihr candidates will be as quick to learn it, as they are the Axle Method.”
He paused to take a breath. “They will be immune to the weaves of the Tzaddikim! Think of the possibilities!”
“Won't this advantage be neutralized?” asked the elder. “Won't their children be learning spinspace to be immune to our attacks?”
“I worried about that,” he admitted. “But if you examine the terms of the agreement, Rado will trade us swizzles for textiles and crops. The Emirates will trade crops and some of the swizzles to New Israel in return for ore, and for the thermodynes they will make by adding the tonespace weave to the swizzles.”
He let them mull that over. “The thing is,” he told them, “under the terms of this agreement everyone, Rado, New Israel, and the Emirates, we all end up with thermodynes. However, we have no obligation to sell the New Israelites any everwheels! The thermodyne combines pathspace and tonespace, but no spinspace.”
The elder looked like he finally liked the sound of this. “You mean, we'll be immune to them but not vice versa...giving us a clear advantage. Remarkable! How did you slip that by them?”
“I do what I can,” said Qusay.
Chapter 68
Lester: The Next Student
“Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”
– Albert Einstein
He stared down at the metal sphere. Its blue glint definitely glowed a little brighter than the others. “Is this the only one?”
“The only one in the storeroom. Kristana's people are still out there looking for more artifacts. For all we know they might find a whole crate of blanks someday, but for now, this is the only one available.” Xander dipped a brush in orange paint and drew something on it that looked like the letter O with a diagonal slash through it.
“What's that?”
“A symbol the Ancients used to write 'zero', to avoid confusing it with a letter. Also used to represent null, the absence of information, or a set with no members in it.” Xander blew on the paint to help it dry before carefully setting the sphere back on a bit of folded cloth on the table. “I thought it a fitting way to mark a memsphere with nothing recorded on it yet.”
“Now if we only had a fresh student. It would be best if we recorded the experiences of someone starting from scratch.”
Xander leaned back in his chair, but his gaze clung to the blue sphere. “Are you sure about that?”
Lester rose from his own chair and began to pace. “These things will be handy for training at all levels. But for now, yes, I think we should record someone starting at the beginning. That way we can let new students sleep on it and the stored memories won't need any prior skills to build on.”
“There are two problems with that plan,” the older wizard pointed out. “We don't have any new students at the moment, and we have no idea how to start the recording.”
Lester grimaced. “True. Maybe we should let some of Kristana's people sleep in your storeroom, now that we know enhanced exposure to a lot of artifacts can nurture the talent even
in adults.”
“We could do that,” Xander acknowledged. “But how do we pick them? Ask for volunteers? There's not much room in the storeroom.”
“We could find a bigger room. The bigger problem is knowing how to get the memsphere to start recording.”
“Actually, now that I think about it, that might be the easier of the two problems.” Xander peered at the ball. “I don't see any irregularities in the weave on it, anything that might hint of a control interface. It might be we just have to let someone start carrying it around while they learn.”
Lester leaned forward and tried to reach out to the sphere with his mind. Xander might have missed something...
As his did so, he felt that echo effect again. Multiple echoes. Handy for when you were trying to find a single talented candidate, but kind of annoying when bunches of them impinged on his senses. That was going to be a problem if the School got bigger, he thought.
Automatically he sorted out the echoes, part of a mental process he'd learned to thrust the echoes to one side of his mind so he could concentrate. He could feel five of them, four of them a few floors up from Xander's room in the School proper. Xander, Carolyn, Kareef, Nathan, and Esteban. He was beginning to feel them differently, and felt pretty sure that soon he'd be able to tell them apart.
Just as he finished managing to ignore them, he felt two more echoes, a couple floors down but coming closer. He looked up at Xander. “Unless the ambassadors are back, it feels like a couple of candidates are on the way."
“Yes, I felt them too,” said Xander. “One of them is Aria.”
“I thought I'd felt her developing before. Must be all those glowtubes in her gardens. But the other one?”
Xander stood up. “Be ready,” he warned. “For all we know it could be our old friend Ludlow sneaking up behind her, invisible.”
“That reminds me. Why aren't we teaching her, if she has the talent for it?”
“Don't you think she has enough on her plate? It was hard enough to get the military to accept the idea of a woman Governor when the General died. Aria's going to have enough trouble replacing her mother. If we gave her wizard training, you'd never convince some of the soldiers that I'm not using her to grab power.” Xander grimaced. “I think we have to keep the School separate from the government.”
How separate can we be, when your School is in the Governor's building? Lester wondered. But he didn't say it, because the stairwell door opened and Aria led a familiar figure in.
Xander found his voice first. “Well, well! Welcome back, Excellency.”
“Oh, please, unless things change drastically, I think it's just Jeffrey, for now.”
“As you wish.” Xander scooped up the blue sphere. “Here,” he said, tossing it to Jeffrey.
Jeffrey caught it and examined it. “What is it?”
“One of the lesser-known Gifts. I'd like you to keep it on your person at all times.”
“Why? Will it protect me from assassins?” He exchanged a smile with Aria that made Lester grit his teeth.
“Neither. But it might help someone else learn, eventually.” Xander filled him in about the memspheres.
“I see. Worth a try.” Jeffrey slipped it into a pocket. “So are you going to teach me? I never thought I'd be asking you that, but given the circumstances...”
“Let's give the sphere a little time to get used to you first, shall we? I'm sure you'll want a hot bath and a change of clothes after your trip.”
“And then we start?”
“No,” said Xander. “After that you'll tell us everything you can remember about where you've been, then we'll grab something to eat.” At Jeffrey's expression, he added, “then you'll get some sleep, and we'll start your training in the morning.”
“Fair enough,” said Jeffrey. “I'm too tired to argue.”
Xander turned to Lester. “Will you take him up to the School and get him settled in? The room next to Esteban's still empty.”
“Whatever,” Lester grunted. At least it'll keep him away from Aria. He turned toward the stairwell.
“I'll go tell Mother and fetch some clean bedding,” said Aria. She looked at Xander. “Want to come with me?”
“No, I've got something of my own I have to attend to. I've put it off way too long already. I'll see her at dinner.”
“Suit yourself.”
Lester stepped aside to let her into the stairwell first, then held the door open for Jeffrey as she descended out of sight.
“Where are we going?” Jeffrey wanted to know.
“The School occupies a couple of floors near the top of the 'scraper,” he informed him as they began the slow climb upward.
Chapter 69
Xander: A Task Delayed
“Don't argue about the difficulties. The difficulties will argue for themselves.”
– Winston Churchill
The trip down the stairs to the infirmary gave Xander time to think about it all. Teaching Jeffrey was something he never thought he would be doing, but it made sense, given the current situation, and their common enemy: the junta in Dallas preparing to invade Rado. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
But his father is dead because of me. Well, dead because he insisted on trying to conquer us...and because I insisted on not letting that happen. But does Jeffrey see it that way?
The boy's arrival was a chance to try recording the early phases of metaspace training. But after that, what? They couldn't let him go try to recapture Dallas all by himself, but they couldn't afford to weaken their defenses by sending him with part of the army, either. What, then? Should they send word to Texas and try to raise him an army of loyalists?
One thing at a time. He pulled open the door of the infirmary. “It's time,” he said.
Daniels looked up from an ancient medical text. “Time? For what, my vacation? Just kidding.”
“What are you reading?”
“A book on cancer treatments. Did you know it used to be one of the last stubborn causes of death, medically speaking, before the Tourists arrived?”
“No. What did they do about it?”
“They tried all sort of things. The book mentions chemotherapy, radiation, and something called interferon, whatever that was.”
Chemotherapy was fairly easy to work out. Something done with chemicals. But radiation? “Why would they use radiation? It causes cancer. I'm pretty sure it caused mine.”
Daniels frowned. “I wondered about that too. Apparently they had machines that emitted x-rays, and they found a way to use radioactive materials, too, to try to selectively kill a tumor without killing the rest of the patient.”
He considered that. “Wouldn't that be dangerous to the doctor as well as his patient?”
“Not necessarily. Radiation comes in two kinds, high energy particles that shoot out of decaying atoms, and gamma, which is like light and x-rays but with much higher energy.”
“From what I remember from my own reading,” Xander told him, “they both come out randomly in all directions. Whether from a piece of radioactive matter, or the focus of an everflame turned up way to too high, like the ones I used on the Honcho's tank crew.”
Daniels nodded. “But both the particles and the rays tend to travel in straight lines. If we took a block of lead and put the source of radiation in a hollowed-out cavity inside of it, and drilled a single hole down to it...”
“...then the only way for the radiation to escape would be out that hole, like a sunbeam through a leaky roof. I see what you mean. You could make a plug or a cap for the hole to stop and start the emission from the block.”
“Yes. But I have to be honest with you. We'd be like monkeys playing with fire. We have no way to calculate or calibrate the amount of exposure yet. At best, you'd get radiation burns where the beam enters and leaves your body.”
“I'll think about it.”
“Have you told Kristana?”
Xander shook his head. “Haven't had a good opportunity to bring it up yet
.”
“Can't wait forever, you know.”
“Don't need to tell me that.” The coughing fits were getting worse, and coming more frequently now.
Daniels closed the book. “So what brings you here?”
“It's time to take care of Brutus's tank. I need to borrow your thruscope. The big one, that is.”
Daniels frowned. “I thought we already talked about that. If you use your pathspace to let light in and out of the tank to see where those everflames are to shut them down, you'll be letting the radiation inside the tank come out by the same path.”
Xander was already dragging the empty oval frame of the thruscope over toward the window. “I know,” he grunted. “But I have a solution for that. The key is what you said about straight lines.”
Daniels helped him manhandle the frame over to about ten feet from the window, aligned so that you could look straight through it and out the window. “What are you going to do?”
“Cheat,” said Xander.
“Look, if you're not sure, there's no need to rush this.”
“I'm sure,” that Xander. “I've thought this through. It's my mess, so I'll clean it up. If anything goes wrong, I'm the one to do it, because I already have cancer.”
“Maybe we should think about this some more.”
“I told you, I already have,” said Xander, sighting through the frame. “One more thing. I'll need a mirror.”
Daniels found him a small mirror on a stand. “Will this do? It's all I have at the moment.”
“Perfect,” said Xander. He stepped to the window and set the base of the mirror on the windowsill and then turned the base forty five degrees.
“What are you doing?”
“Cheating,” said Xander. “I'd back up a little.”
Daniels scooted back from the window. “I don't understand. This window doesn't even face the right way. You can't see the tank from here.”
Tonespace: The Space of Energy (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 3) Page 27
