The Practice Effect

by David Brin

  At the very last minute the robot’s whirling treads took hold and brought them to a stop in a boiling cloud of dust, teetering at the edge of the precipice.

  Arth grabbed the narrow trunk of a shattered sapling that had partly broken the cart’s momentum. The little thief held on for dear life.

  Dennis wiped floating grit from his eyes and purposely avoided looking down. He tried to clear his throat of dust so he could politely ask the robot to redouble its efforts to back them away from the cliff edge. But the cart chose that moment to settle forward a few more inches. It dropped with a thump, leaving the robot’s treads hanging out over open space.

  “Okay,” Dennis sang, a little bit upset by this time. “Linnora? Arth? You folks all right? I’ve got an idea. Let’s all sidle backward, nice and easy.” He felt Linnora begin to loosen her strap. She obviously had the same notion. It was time to get the hell out of here.

  Something whizzed past Dennis’s head. At first he thought it was some huge insect, but as he turned he glimpsed a second arrow passing through the space his ear had just occupied a second before.

  “Hey!” Arth howled. An arrow quivered in the sapling’s trunk inches from his fingers.

  Up the talus slope Dennis saw at least a dozen of Baron Kremer’s gray-clad archers working their way cautiously downward, getting into position to administer the coup de grâce. Capture, apparently, was no longer an option at this point.

  They didn’t really have to bother, Dennis realized. Arth was visibly weakening and soon would have to let go of either the tree or the glider. He and Linnora could never slide back quickly enough to make a difference.

  Is this it? Dennis looked around for some way out—while arrows zinged past them or stuck, humming, to the sides of the cart.

  Linnora was fumbling for her knife. Dennis wondered what she was trying to do. Then it hit him.

  The glider! If we can only detach it from the cart in time, we might be able to escape on it!

  But first the wings would have to be let down. They were being held up—vertically, like sails on a boat—by a stout length of rope. Linnora was going for it with her knife.

  It took almost half a second for it to occur to him to remember the amount of tension that was in that cable. He cried out in dismay, “No! Linnora, don’t!”

  It was too late. She sliced the rope. The wings snapped down violently, knocking two deadly arrows out of the air.

  Perhaps it was a rational decision, but Arth was never able to explain why he let go of the tree and not the cart. But when the little wagon bucked suddenly, like a mad stallion, Arth tumbled into the back of the cart behind the great wings. Linnora and Dennis were whipped around to face forward as their strange vehicle teetered dangerously, rocking unstably on the edge.

  The pixolet had hopped onto Dennis’s lap from the floor. The little creature had the expression of one who by this time had had quite enough. This trip was no longer fun.

  About to abandon us again? Dennis thought at the thing, unable to do anything else.

  The Krenegee shrugged, as if it understood. It flexed its wing membranes in preparation to depart. Then, for the first time, it took a good look over the rim of the cart into the canyon below.

  “!!” it peeped out loud and shivered. Its little glider membranes were never meant for true flight. They wouldn’t keep it from being smashed to jelly after a fall like that! Dennis almost laughed as the smug little thing at last showed consternation.

  All of this took about one second of telescoped time as the cart rocked, and then slid over the edge. A flight of arrows missed them by inches as their trusty machine toppled over the precipice. The pixolet wailed. Arth cried out. Dennis held on as the canyon opened up below them.

  At that moment it was Linnora who saved them.

  She started to sing.

  The first, high note was of such startling clarity, that it seized their attention away from the hypnotizing view of the onrushing canyon floor. As a practice team, they had worked together for a long time. Her call served as a focus. Out of habit—quicker than volition—the felthesh trance snapped into being all around them.

  Dennis felt Linnora’s mind touch brush against his own. Then he felt Arth, and even the Krenegee beast—taking this all seriously for the first time since he had known the smug little thing. Space around them seemed to flash and burn with energy. The power was there, and the desperate will to change reality.

  Unfortunately, there was no focus. One had to be using something for the Practice Effect to operate!

  Dennis’s conscious mind was in no condition to provide an answer. It was a good thing, then, when his unconscious stepped in and took over.

  In that instant, with the ground rushing up at them, Dennis seemed to feel time contract all around him. In a haze of chaotic energy that felt strangely like the field around a zievatron, he blinked once, twice, then closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, he found himself sitting next to a dark-haired young man with a thick, waxed moustache. The fellow wore a white leather coat that flapped in the stiff breeze, and a pair of old-fashioned flight goggles over his eyes.

  They sat together in a strange contraption of white canvas and wooden struts, laced together by piano wire. Although air rushed past them, the hazy-edged reality that surrounded them seemed entirely gray and motionless.

  “You know, we had the most bully awful time getting the proper approach to warping the wings,” the fellow explained over the rush and roar. He had to shout to be heard. “Langley never really understood, you see. He rushed ahead without testing his designs in a proper artificial wind tunnel, as Wilbur and I did.…”

  Dennis blinked in surprise. And in the time it took to close his eyes and open them, his surroundings changed.

  “… so I had to test the X-10 personally, get it? The engine took up over half the damned thing’s length! Busted the first few props we tried to smithereens! They called it a flying bomb! Couldn’t ask anyone else to take it up, see?”

  The man with the handlebars and goggles was gone, replaced by a fellow with a thin moustache, a sardonic expression, and a floppy fedora hat. He shook his head and laughed.

  “Hard work is what it took. Sure, I had inherited money and got to stand on the shoulders of giants. I admit it! But I sweated blood straight into each of my designs.”

  The space around them was still that hazy, half real shimmering, like the boundaries of a dream. But the flimsy array of wood and canvas had been replaced by a thrumming cocoon of riveted metal and glass, vibrating with the power of a thousand horses.

  “And don’t think I don’t already feel the shoes of later inventors sometimes,” the pilot of the monoplane grinned, “right here.” He patted his own shoulder and laughed.

  The fellow looked familiar, though he couldn’t place him—like someone he had read about in a history book somewhere. Dennis blinked again, and when he reopened his eyes the dreamlike scene had shifted again. The dark-haired man and the cramped cockpit were gone.

  It was only a brief glimpse, this time. The engine roar had muted somewhat. There was the scent of chrysanthemums, and for the moment his eyes were open he saw a woman wearing a straw hat and a bright, pink scarf. She smiled at him from her controls, and winked. Through the cockpit window he saw water, all the way to the horizon. Then the transition happened again.

  Now he was seated at the copilot’s station in a huge twin-engined airplane—a bomber, from the looks of it. There was the smell of gasoline and rubber. In his hands a wheel vibrated with a powerful rhythm. A balding man in a khaki uniform smiled at him from the other set of controls.

  “Progress,” the gangly fellow grinned. “Boy, you sure are doing it the easy way, fella. It took us old-timers years and plenty of sweat to get this far, I’ll tell you!”

  For the first time in this crazy dream, Dennis thought he understood what someone was talking about. He recognized this man’s face. “Uh, I know. I guess you really could have used
the Practice Effect back in your day, Colonel.”

  The officer shook his head. “Naw. It was a whole lot more fun doing it for ourselves, even if it was slower. I only ask that the universe be fair, not that it grant me any special favors.”

  “I understand.”

  The Colonel nodded. “Well, each of us does what we have to do. Say, do you want to hang around here for a little while? We just took off from the Hornet, and we’re on our way to have a little fun.”

  “Uh, I think I’d better be getting back to my friends, sir. But thanks, anyway. It was a pleasure to meet you and the others.”

  “Think nothing of it. It’s only a shame you couldn’t stick around to meet some of the jet jockeys and astronauts. Talk about pilots!” The Colonel whistled. “Ah, well. Just remember, my boy. Nothing substitutes for hard work!”

  Dennis nodded. He closed his eyes once more as the wind roared and the dream unraveled around him like fog melting in the dawn.

  Seconds that had seemed telescoped into years evaporated, and as the crystalline shimmer at last parted, Dennis found himself flying!

  He wasn’t exactly sure how much time had passed, but a powerful lot of changes had been made in the cart-and-glider combination—as evidenced by the fact that they were still alive.

  Even as he looked around, a pale, shimmering light was leaving the struts and fabric of the wings—now anchored firmly to the wagon-fuselage, sweeping rakishly outward and back like those of a swift. The cart itself seemed to have lengthened and grown a nubby tail. Its narrow nose aimed proudly upward, into the rising thermal in which they slowly climbed.

  It must have been one of the most powerful felthesh trances in Tatir history. The pixolet slumped exhausted on his lap, breathing hard and staring about in disbelief. Dennis was still tentative enough in his control of the glider not to be willing to turn around, but he’d be willing to wager Arth and Linnora were in similar shape.

  His dream still lingered at the fringes of Dennis’s mind. He could almost smell, again, the gasoline and oil, and feel humming metal.

  If the dream had gone on, no doubt he would have met more of the heroes of aviation, called up by his unconscious to provide a focus for the intense practice trance. But it had lasted long enough, and it left him with a vague feeling of pride. Such men and women were the heritage of Earth. By pluck and ingenuity they had carved miracles out of reality—the hard way.

  Dennis leaned out over the side to look. The updraft was petering out. It wouldn’t take them back to the level of the mountain road they had fallen from. He would have to find another place to land within gliding range.

  There was a plateau nearby, a spur jutting eastward out from the mountains. Cautiously, Dennis leaned left and sent their craft into a gentle bank. He had seen a flat spot on the mesa. It would have to do. Beyond that was only a tumbled plain of boulders as far as the eye could see.

  Still, they couldn’t stay up here forever.

  Dennis wished there was some way to get the robot up in the cockpit with them. He didn’t want it damaged in the landing. But it would just have to take its chances. He called down for the machine to prepare as best it could.

  The precaution was probably unnecessary, he realized. The rugged little thing could well be the only one of them to survive their encounter with the ground.

  He used up some height gliding far out over the plain. It took a while to reach a position along what he hoped was a gently appropriate glide path, then bank around and begin his approach. It had to be just right, because they weren’t going to get another chance.

  While he got ready, he spared a moment to glance back at the others. Arth was soaked in sweat but gave the thumbs-up sign. Linnora simply looked exalted, as if she could ask no more than to have experienced what they had just gone through. She leaned forward slightly and pressed her cheek against his. Dennis smiled hopefully and turned back to make ready for the landing.

  “All right, everybody. We’re going in!”

  The “flat spot” that rushed up at them was actually a sandy bank with at least a ten-degree slope from left to right, only a dozen meters from the plateau’s northern rim. A crosswind came from twenty degrees left of the nose. Dennis steadied the balance so the wings compensated as well as possible. He felt Linnora’s hands grip tightly around his chest. At the last moment he brought up his knees and braced himself.

  The fabric wings luffed slightly as the glider swooped in like an albatross and touched down gently on the soft sand. One wingtip briefly touched ground, slewing them around slightly as they jounced along the embankment. Gravel flew up behind them as Arth put all his weight into the brakes and the robot’s treads spun furiously.

  Dust was everywhere! Blinded, Dennis steered entirely by instinct.

  At last they rolled to a stop. When the sand had settled and tears had washed some of the dry powder from his eyes, Dennis looked out to see that the glider had halted close to the edge of the mesa. Another jumbled drop of about fifty meters lay only six feet away.

  One by one—first Arth, then Linnora, and finally Dennis—they loosened their straps and stepped out. Barely able to keep to their feet, they stumbled to a thin patch of grass under the sparse trees.

  Then Arth and Linnora fell to the ground, dizzily, and laughed. This time Dennis collapsed with them and joined in.

  Several minutes later, the pixolet raised its head from the well of the craft. It still twitched and shook, from fright and from the power of the trance it had been forced to take part in. For a long while it simply stared at the crazy humans.

  Finally, as the sun settled behind the western peaks, it sniffed disgustedly and dropped back down beside the gently humming robot to fall instantly to sleep.

  3

  In spite of their leisurely pace, Bernald Brady was saddle-sore well before the stout character in the red robes called a halt for the night.

  It was the first time Brady had ever ridden a horse. If ever he got a chance to decline further invitations, he was certain it would also be his last. He dismounted clumsily. A guard came over and loosened his bound hands, motioning him to hobble over and sit beneath a tall tree by the campsite.

  Soon there was a fire, and the smell of trail cooking wafted through the air.

  One of the soldiers scooped a thick dollop of stew and came over to hand Brady a beautiful, feather-light ceramic bowl. The Earthman ate as he marveled at the bowl. He had never seen anything like it before. It helped him justify the theory he had come up with.

  Although his “captors” played a good game at this business of acting like primitives, they couldn’t hide their true nature. Things like this beautiful, high-tech bowl gave their game away.

  These people clearly came from an advanced culture. One look at the road, and the wonderful self-lubricating sleds, told him that. There was only one explanation for what was going on here.

  Obviously Nuel had spent the last three months living among the locals. And all that time he had been plotting, knowing that if he only waited long enough Flaster would surely send him, Brady, over to try one more time to fix the zievatron. In all that time Nuel had no doubt ingratiated himself with these people, perhaps promising them rich trading rights with Earth! In return, all they would have to do would be to help him pull one great big practical joke!

  It sounded like Nuel’s way of setting up priorities!

  No doubt members of an advanced civilization would have plenty of leisure time on their hands. Brady had witnessed “midaevalists” on Earth, who liked to ride horses and play with old-fashioned weapons. Nuel must have hired a troupe of history-nuts like those to help him pull a fast one on the next guy to come through the zievatron!

  These fellows played pretty rough. They had really put a scare into him for a while, especially when the fat boy kept questioning him about every piece of his gear.

  Brady sniffed. That had been carrying it too far! Imagine, people who could make swords out of gemstones being perplexed over his rifle
and his porta-microwave!

  Oh, these people knew Nuel, all right. Whenever he mentioned the fellow’s name the big “priest” got a funny look on his face. The “soldiers” clearly knew exactly who he meant, though they never admitted a word.

  Yeah, Brady nodded, by now convinced. They were all in it together. Nuel was having his revenge on him for switching those chips on the replacement circuit boards.

  Well enough was enough! It was going to stop here! The game had gotten altogether too rough. His hands were chafing and he had been battered and bruised … Brady decided it was time to stand up for his rights. With his jaw set he put down the now-empty bowl and started to get up.

  At that moment one of the “soldiers” screamed.

  Brady blinked as he saw one of the men stagger about the campsite with an arrow protruding through his throat. Suddenly, everyone else was diving for cover!

  This was carrying realism just a bit too far! Brady watched the stricken soldier gurgle and die, choking on his own blood. He swallowed and had the uneasy feeling that maybe his theory might need some amending.

  He heard someone shout, “Guerillas! Sneakin’ aroun’ behind our lines!”

  One of the “officers” barked an order. A detachment of men hurried off eastward into the trees beside the road. There was a long wait, followed by a series of loud noises—clangings and loud screams. Then, a little while later, a messenger came running back into camp.

  The courier hurried over to the fat man in red, who was taking no chances, huddled beside a tree nearby.

  Brady crawled to the edge of his own tree where he could listen.

  “… ambush coverin’ a turn in th’ road. I guess one of ’em musta got impatient, waitin’ for us, and sprang th’ trap early. That was a lucky break for us. But we’re still stuck here until we can get word to our army.”