by David Brin
“I’ve got to give Kremer credit there. No one ever thought of gliders before. Not even the L’Toff.”
One more mention of the L’Toff brought Dennis’s thoughts back to Princess Linnora, Baron Kremer’s prisoner back at the castle. She had begun to show up in his dreams. He owed her his freedom, and he didn’t like to think of her still trapped in the tyrant’s power.
If only there was a way I could help her, too, he thought.
“Balloon is almost full.” Gath used the word as if it were a proper name.
The bag was starting to stretch from the pressure of hot air within. It didn’t form a very even sphere. But here it didn’t pay to lavish excess attention on most “made” goods, anyway, so long as they started out useful enough to be practiced.
The candle was less than half gone. The balloon bobbed within its frame, straining at the tiny gondola’s shrouds. The basket bounced on the floor, then lifted away entirely.
There was a hushed silence, then Maggin laughed out loud and Arth clapped Dennis on the back. Gath crouched beneath the balloon, as if to memorize it from every angle. Stivyung Sigel sat still, but his pipe poured forth aromatic smoke, and his black eyes seemed to shine.
“But this thing won’t lift a man!” Perth complained.
Arth turned on his subordinate. “How do you know what it’ll eventually be able to do? It’s not even been practiced yet! Weren’t you the one sneering at ‘new-made’ things?”
Perth backed down nervously, licking his lips as he stared superstitiously at the slowly rising balloon.
“Actually,” Dennis said, “Perth’s right. After practice this one will probably lift better than any similar balloon on … in my homeland. But in order to lift several men we’ll still have to make a much bigger balloon in that empty warehouse you told me about, Arth. We’ll practice it there, then Gath and Stivyung and I will use it to escape at night, when the Baron’s flying corps is in its sheds.”
Arth had a mercenary gleam in his eye. “You an’ Gath an’ Stivyung won’t forget about the message to the L’Toff, will you?”
“Of course not.” All three of them had good reasons for heading straight for the mysterious tribe in the mountains once they got out of town. Dennis intended to tell them about their captive Princess and offer suggestions how she might be rescued.
Arth expected to rake off a nice reward from the L’Toff for his part in all this, as well as have the pleasure of giving the Baron tsuris in the process.
The balloon bobbed against the ceiling. “All right,” Dennis said, “you all were going to teach me how to concentrate to get the most out of practice. Why don’t we start?”
They took their seats. Stivyung Sigel was the acknowledged best practicer, so he explained.
“First off, Dennis, you don’t have to concentrate. Just using a tool will make it better. But if you keep your attention on the thing itself, and what you’re using it to accomplish, the practice goes faster. You give the tool tougher and tougher jobs to do, over weeks, months, and think about what it could be when it’s perfect.”
“What about that trance we saw you under in the prison yard? You practiced the saw to perfection in a matter of minutes!”
Stivyung considered. “I have seen the felthesh before, when I dwelled, for a time, among the L’Toff. Even among them, it is rare. It comes after years of training, or under even more rare circumstances. I never imagined I would ever enter that state.
“Perhaps it was some magic of the moment and the desperation of our need.”
Stivyung seemed pensive for a long moment. He shook himself at last and looked at Dennis. “In any event, we cannot count on the ax falling twice in exactly the same spot. We must rely on normal ways as we practice your ‘balloons.’ Why don’t you tell us again just what this example is doing now and how it could gradually come to do it better. Don’t get too far ahead of what it is, or it won’t work. Just try to describe the next step.”
It sounded like a children’s game to Dennis. But he knew that here “wish and make it so” had a very serious side to it. He squinted as he looked at the balloon … trying to see an ideal. Then he started to describe what none of them had ever before imagined.
2
Two days later, the search for the escapees had finally died down. The guards at the city gates were still diligent, but street patrols went back to normal. Dennis at last got to take a tour of the town of Zuslik.
On his first attempt, when he had arrived almost two weeks ago, Dennis had been full of vague ideas about how to get along in a strange city.
(One made contact with the local association of one’s profession, he imagined, hoping a local colleague would insist you stay at his home—and maybe offer his charming daughter as a tour guide, as well. Wasn’t that the way he had envisioned it just a short while back?)
His plans had gone awry before he passed through the city gates. Still, he had probably acquired a more intimate acquaintance with the local power structures than he would have as a tourist … and without the typical banes of the gawking traveler—beggars, bunions, and muggers.
He and Arth took lunch in an open-air cafe overlooking a busy market street. Dennis washed down his last bite of rickel steak with a heady swallow of the dirt-brown local brew. After a long day and night practicing the balloon, he had built up a hearty appetite.
“More,” he belched, bringing the beer stein down with a thump.
His companion stared at him for a moment, then snapped his fingers to the waiter. Dennis was a bit larger than the average male Coylian, but his appetite was nevertheless causing a bit of a sensation.
“Take it easy,” Arth suggested. “After I’ve paid for all this I won’t be able to afford to take you to a physic for yer upset stomach!”
Dennis grinned and plucked a rough toothpick from a cup by the rail. He watched a heavy cargo sled slide past the restaurant, almost silent on one of the self-lubricating roadways, pulled by a patient, lumbering larbeast.
“Have your boys managed to collect any more slippery oil?” he asked the thief.
Arth shrugged. “Not too much. We use street urchins to do the collectin’, but the drivers have taken to throwin’ rocks at ’em. And the kids waste a lot of the stuff playin’ ‘greased pig.’ We’ve only got a quarter of a jug or so by now.”
Only a quarter jug! That was almost a liter of the finest lubricant Dennis had ever encountered! Arth had certainly not acted this casually when Dennis first demonstrated the stuff to him. He had gone almost crazy with excitement.
It would make a useful commercial product, of course. It would also greatly facilitate burglary … until shop owners began practicing their doors to resist the stuff. Last night’s paper heist had depended completely on a surprise use of sled oil.
Dennis wondered why these people had never discovered the very substance that made their roads work. Were they that uncurious? Or did it come from operating under a totally different set of assumptions about the way the universe worked?
Of course, history showed that most of Earth’s cultures had been caste-structured, and slow to improve on the way things had been done for centuries. Here, where innovation was less necessary, people had not developed a tradition for it until very recently. The war between Baron Kremer and the King seemed to be part of that change.
This morning he and Arth had rented a warehouse. The growing fear of war had caused a decline in river commerce, and the landlord was desperate to find any tenant at all. Someone had to occupy the place and keep it fit until times improved. Already the walls were showing a creaky roughness, starting to resemble wooden logs again.
Arth was quite a bargainer. The landlord would actually pay a small sum for them to move in for a while!
Last night had come the great felt heist. Arth’s thieves had arrived at the warehouse furtively carrying bolts of the fine cloth. Lady Aren and several assistant seamstresses, all from families that had been brought down in class by Kremer’s father, w
ere soon at work. And young Gath was at this moment constructing a gondola for the big balloon. The lad was ecstatic over the chance to make something new—something that would be of use almost before its first practice.
Arth paid the luncheon bill, muttering over the total. “Now what?” he asked.
Dennis motioned with his hands. “What else? Show me everything!”
Arth sighed resignedly.
Their first stop was the Bazaar of Merchants and Practicers.
Unlike other open-air markets, with their collections of practice-on-your-own goods, this plaza featured high-quality merchandise. The ziggurat buildings were gleaming and tasteful. Their first floors, open to the street, were supported by arching, fluted pillars. Well-dressed men and women hawked wares at long tables before the openings.
Dennis examined keen-edged chisels and razors, ropes of marvelous strength and lightness, bows and arrows that had obviously been practiced against targets thousands of times and would have sold on Earth for handsome prices.
There was no sign whatever of screws or nails, and hardly any metal. Nowhere was there anything resembling a wheel.
At one end were cheaper items—crude axes, body armor consisting of tanned strips of leather sewed together. Below each table was the sigil of the appropriate maker guild—a sign that the “starter” was sanctioned by law.
Dennis looked up at a banging sound. Two men walked lackadaisically around the third-story parapet, striking the walls with clubs.
Arth explained. “They’re gettin’ the clubs better at bashin’, and gettin’ the walls better at keepin’ out bashers.” He winked at Dennis. “Bashers like us.”
Burglary here usually involved breaking through the walls of a house while the tenant was away. Sometimes people forgot that living in a house practiced it well to stand sturdily and keep the rain out, but nothing more.
The owners of this building clearly had not forgotten.
The plaza was crowded with aristocrats from the upper town and from estates outside Zuslik’s walls. The gentry were accompanied by their servants.
Master and lackey generally dressed identically, and usually they were about the same size and build. They could be told apart only by the nobles’ imperious manner, their hair styles, and the bits of metal jewelry they wore.
On Earth the rich flaunted their status by acquiring large amounts of property that was rarely used. Here such property would quickly decay to its original, crude state. To maintain appearances, then, the affluent needed servants who not only performed housework, gardening, and other tasks, but who kept their employers’ property practiced for them, as well.
Dennis perceived some of the social implications.
When they were so busy always wearing their master’s clothes, the servants had no time to practice their own. They might look good all the time, but the fine threads on their backs weren’t theirs. If they left their employer they would have nothing at all of their own!
It would be a symbol of status among the rich, of course, never to be seen wearing or using anything that truly needed practicing.
Besides food and land, metal and paper, the chief commodity of value here was the human man-hour. Even when exhausted from a hard day’s labor in the fields, a serf’s time was not his own. In relaxing he practiced his master’s chair; in eating, he practiced his mistress’s spare dinnerware. He couldn’t save to buy his freedom, because anything saved away had to be maintained, or face decay!
No wonder there was trouble brewing in the east! The combination of the guilds, the churches, and the aristocracy made sure that change would come hard, if at all.
Fixxel’s Practicorium, at the north end of the plaza, was a tall building that reminded Dennis of home.
For one thing, its walls were in large part brilliantly transparent, as if of the clearest glass, slightly tinted to moderate the afternoon sunlight.
Arth explained that the panes had started out as sewn paper sheets, practiced hard during dry seasons, until they were weatherproof and clear. After many years of this they were probably better than any windows on Earth.
Facing the boulevard were displays of men’s and women’s clothes, tools, pottery, and rugs. “Nothing New! All Old and Used!” a sign stated proudly.
The window displays were constantly changing. Workers removed items and replaced them as Dennis watched.
The furnishings on exhibition were stunning. Realistic mannequins were draped in what looked like exquisite silks and brocades. Some of the gowns would surely have gone for thousands at Neiman-Marcus.
“Come on,” Arth said, nudging Dennis. “Don’t give old Fixxel a free push.”
Dennis blinked. He had been entranced by the beautiful things. Then, all at once, he realized what Arth meant. He laughed out loud in admiration of the scam. By just looking at the merchandise, and appreciating its beauty, he had helped just a little to enhance that beauty! No wonder the mannequins looked so lifelike. They were practiced by generations of passersby!
What a racket!
Still, Dennis couldn’t help but wish his camera wasn’t lost with his backpack. The clothing designs alone would be worth a fortune back on Earth.
Under Dennis’s urging, they went around back to peek into the great practice arena at the rear of the building. It was a scene of furious activity.
Teams of men and women poured water into and out of long lines of pitchers, cups, and goblets. Others kept busy digging holes with shovels, and then refilling them, or slicing great logs into kindling, practicing shiny tools in the process.
There was a large open area in which men muffled in layers of clothes sat on half-finished chairs and threw weapons at targets. The crudest knives were being tossed against near-finished suits of glossy leather armor.
No wonder technology never developed here! It didn’t pay to specialize. Wherever a person could practice three or four items at once, it paid. The niceties of concentration seemed less important than keeping as many things busy as possible all the time.
This was the equivalent of an Earthly factory, but something about it struck Dennis as terribly futile. All this hard work would be for nothing if the constant maintenance stopped for just a few weeks or months. Left alone long enough, each of these products would decay to its original state.
Still, Dennis thought, there were no mountains of garbage here, either—no great landfills heaped with worn-out, unwanted things. Almost anything these people created was ultimately recycled to nature.
On neither world, it seemed, was there any such thing as a free lunch.
Later, in another part of town, Dennis and Arth watched a religious procession pass through one of the main squares. A trio of yellow-robed priests and their followers carried a pillowed platform on which a gleaming sword was carried. At the four corners of the palanquin were set freshly severed human heads.
“Priests of Mlikkin,” Arth identified them. “Bloody panderers. They appeal to th’ more unsavory cit’zens of Zuslik with their murderin’ ways.” He spat.
Dennis made himself watch, though his gorge rose at the grisly sight. From what he had picked up during the past week, he could tell that the priests were engaged in a campaign to inure the people of the town to the idea of death and war.
Sure enough, when the procession stopped at a platform set up at one end of the square, the chief priest held up the sword—obviously a product of generations of daily practice by acolytes of Mlikkin—and harangued the rowdy crowd that had gathered. Dennis could not make out much, but clearly the fellow thought little of the “eastern rabble.” When he began speaking ill of King Hymiel, some parishioners looked at each other nervously, but nobody cried out in disagreement.
A number of Zuslikers, though, frowning in distaste, hurried off, leaving the square to the celebrants.
With one exception. Dennis noticed that an old woman knelt in a far corner of the plaza, before a niche in which was set a dusty statue. With age-wracked hands, she cleared away layers of
debris and replaced flowers in the twisting, helical pedestal.
Something about the shape of the shrine made Dennis’s neck tingle. He started forward, with Arth trailing along nervously, complaining that this was not a healthy place for them to be.
“What is it?” Dennis asked his companion about the shrine.
“It’s a place of th’ Old Belief. Some say it was here b’fore even Zuslik was founded. The churches tried to have it pulled down, but it’s been practiced so long it’s impossible to scratch. So they dump offal on it an’ have gangs of toughs push around people who try to pray there.”
No wonder the old woman glanced up and around nervously as she went through her devotions. “But why should they care—”
Dennis stopped, still twenty yards away. He recognized the figure at the top of the pedestal. It was a dragon. He had seen its likeness on the haft of the native knife he had found by the zievatron.
In the dragon’s grinning mouth was a malevolent, demoniacal figure—a “blecker,” as Arth identified it. Covered with layers of filth and graffiti, the dragon nevertheless gave a frozen wink to passersby. Its open eye shone with gemstone brilliance.
But it was the pedestal beneath the mythical beast that seized Dennis’s attention. The fluted column was a delicate double helical coil, held together by delicately knotted rails, like the rungs of a twisted ladder.
It was a chain of DNA, or Dennis was the pixolet’s blood uncle!
Dennis felt a return of that nervous feeling of unreality that had plagued him since his arrival on this world. He approached the shrine slowly, wondering how these people ever could have learned about genes lacking the tools or mental disciplines required.
“Hssst!” Arth nudged Dennis. “Soldiers!” He nodded toward the main street, where a troop was strolling in their direction.
Dennis glanced longingly back at the statue, but then nodded and hastily followed Arth into an alley. They watched from the shadows as a patrol passed by. The squad marched along haughtily, their “thenners” raised port high. The big sergeant, Gilm, paced alongside, heaping verbal abuse on civilians not quick enough to get out of the way.
