by David Drake
“Who’s there?” he said, trying not to let his voice quiver with the fright he felt.
No one answered.
After a moment, Abel decided he must have heard soldiers speaking outside. The storage house was next to the temple guard exercise yard, after all. Maybe a platoon had shown up for morning duty.
But the voices had sounded close. Very close.
Okay, it’s time to get out of here.
Abel turned to go.
But all this nishterlaub, he thought. I have to see it.
He looked to his right, to the strange box-shaped thing growing briars with the white plastic pipe emerging from it.
Not briars. Not anything that grew from the earth. Abel stooped down, looked closer. They were like vines, yet unlike. A sheath of colorful skin covered a core that glinted reddish-brown, like copper. No, it was copper, somehow.
Electrical wires, the high-pitched voice said. To carry a fluid that is more powerful than gunpowder, than water gathered into a ram. You could think of it as liquid sunlight. The liquid sun brought the machine alive, and it—
Show him, said the low, gruff voice.
Very well. Observe:
Suddenly, the nishterlaub was alive. It beeped like some kind of strange, wounded flitter or an insectoid in the trees at night. Flames like evening glowflies flickered across its surface.
Abel gasped, stumbled back.
This is a simulation. It’s a picture painted inside your mind, child. Observe:
And Abel did observe. He was in the room, but not in the room, and the machine, the nishterlaub, was different.
It was fixed. It worked.
The machine chimed, a door slid open in its side, and from it emerged…
Made things. Wonderful things. Like an oven that baked bread in all sorts of shapes, only this oven baked useful items. Tools. A procession of items emerged: hammers, rakes, shoes, scissors, pens …and then other things whose names began to flood Abel’s mind: simple navigation computer, powerpack for kitchen appliances, medical diagnostic meter, pellet gun, wristwatch.
This thing was the Oven of Zentrum. It baked …nishterlaub!
And then it stopped. The vision disappeared, and the ancient machine stood before him, as destroyed as it had been moments before.
One of many such three-dimensional printers, said the dry, high-pitched voice. Nothing special to those who came before the Collapse. Resolution moderate to low. Production value self-limiting. Cheap goods, made to become obsolete quickly. Unfortunately, no independent power source remains, and key metallic elements have been removed and destroyed or repurposed. Quite useless.
Abel started back. The voice again. He picked up his rock, which had fallen to his feet when he’d touched the…now he knew its name…the three-dimensional printer.
No one was here.
Who was speaking?
It has to be the nishterlaub talking, doesn’t it?
Was this why the priests kept it to themselves? But if the nishterlaub spoke, why did they abandon it here in the storage house? Obviously no one had been inside this building for a long, long time.
Three point five Duisberg years, said the high-pitched voice. It was opened for the delivery of a piano.
The meaning of what a piano was suddenly flooded Abel’s mind—along with quick images of its use. Abel tried to grasp what he was being shown, but shook his head stubbornly after a moment.
“Cut that out,” he said aloud. “Stop making me think things I don’t ask to think. Anyway, I get it. It’s a kind of musical instrument, right?”
Correct. The strings and other metal elements were stripped and recast. You can see the remains and the keys in a pile by the door over there.
Abel turned and looked. There was indeed a mass of broken wood and a neat stack of rectangular white stones. They looked like giant teeth.
Boggles the mind. Three years ago the piano—and nobody has been back since, said the low voice.
If I were a priest, I would spend all my time talking to nishterlaub, Abel thought. How could you not, once you knew it could answer, that it could tell you what it was, and, more importantly, what it did?
Abel looked away from the piano remains and turned to the holy item behind him. Its surface was a kaleidoscope of colors.
More plastic, Abel thought. Pretty.
It was larger than he was and looked like an enormous flitterdont. Well, it had what looked like wings, anyway. Flitterdonts hunted in flocks and could be dangerous. Abel had been warned by one crusty old Scout in the caravan that the flitters sometimes made a meal of human blood. Maybe the Scout had been having him on. Maybe not. The flitters allegedly lived in the Escarpment overhangs, and there were plenty of those around here.
But this thing, whatever it was, was not alive, and didn’t look likely to suck his blood. He gulped, then, after a moment of indecision, reached out and touched its smooth surface of swirling colors.
Abel tried to forget about flitters and to clear his mind and concentrate. Maybe the next flood of information wouldn’t make him feel so dizzy if he was prepared.
“Okay, tell me,” he said.
An impulse flyer, used for personal transport. This is a foot-mounted model peculiar to this sector, pre-Collapse, and this one obviously belonged to someone with extravagant design tastes, perhaps an adolescent. This flyer here is perched on its side, of course. Obviously the priests had no clue as to how to arrange it after depositing it. Imagine the item rotated horizontally. That is its correct position.
Abel ran his hand along the surface of the flyer, trying to do just that. His hand passed over a depression in the surface. Nearby was another, similar depression. Both were about two elbs across and a half-elb deep.
Footholds. They activated the stabilization field and allowed the passenger to ride standing up without fear of overbalancing.
I don’t get it, Abel thought. They stood on this and flew?
Show the boy, said the gruff voice.
I am not sure that such a young subject will be able to properly integrate a full virtual immersion. There is considerable risk to his neural networks.
He’ll either adapt or break. Either way, we’ll have our answer, the gruff voice replied. Show him.
“Yeah,” said Abel. “Show me!”
Very well. Observe:
And then Abel was flying.
* * *
He was standing on the flyer in the air. The ground was far, far beneath him. For a moment, he almost did break. This was impossible. He was outside. He was flying like a flitterdont through the air. The world spun like crazy as dizziness overcame Abel. He started to fall.
But couldn’t. Something held him in place.
Stabilization fields. Of course, this is merely a simulation, but it is an extremely precise approximation of what a flyer ride was like.
Abel shook his head, regained his balance. He looked down again. Far below were the roofs of Hestinga. It was perched on the edge of the oxbow lake that formed the great Treville oasis, one of the few places within the Land that was more than a day’s walk from the River. From this height, the waters of Lake Treville sparkled as a small breeze caused the surface to ripple.
“I’m flying! Am I really flying?”
Unfortunately, no, answered the high-pitched voice. This is a form of make-believe. A projection based on extrapolation. You are still physically within the storehouse. But given the historical records in my databanks and an accurate survey of the local geography prior to landfall, this simulation should be accurate to within one tenth of one percent of a hundred.
In other words, lad, this is what it feels like to fly, said the gruff voice. How do you like it?
Abel looked around. Far to the west, the River was a shining strip barely visible on the horizon. Between were the rolling hills of the Treville salient with its massive irrigation system, its ditches and canals, derived from the River and culminating in Lake Treville. Abel’s father had explained to him how i
t all worked, how the alluvial paddocks and washes along the way were watered by a system of ditches and aqueducts, and coaxed to yield wheat and barley, flax and rice.
Duisberg barley, said the high-pitched voice. The planet was renowned for beer and whiskey. Liquor was the principle export, pre-Collapse. Since settlement, Duisberg has remained mostly agricultural, which is probably why the Sector Command Control Unit AZ12-i11-e Mark XV remained set in his ways. Cultural accretion often creates waves of repetitive behavior to which even artificial intelligent units find themselves subject.
“Huh?”
Zentrum is stuck, lad.
We have come to unstick the unit. More importantly, we have come to reintegrate Duisberg into the reconstituted Galactic Republic.
“Zentrum?” replied Abel, confused. “But Zentrum’s just a special name for God.”
Zentrum is not a god, and he is not God. He is a computer.
It is the being your priests serve, boy, said the gruff voice.
Zentrum was the word for God that the priests used when they were talking about the Laws. The Edicts. The Stasis. All the stuff you learned in Thursday school.
Whatever. It was the most boring stuff in the world. He wanted to fly, to keep flying, forever. This was so much fun!
The wind was whipping past him and, in the process, making a terrible din, like a storm. He leaned to his left. The flyer tilted sharply with him, and Abel quickly straightened back up. Too much. “How do I steer this thing, anyway?” he shouted.
Quiet lad, said the gruff voice with a laugh. You’ll accidentally summon the guards. Remember, you are actually still in the storehouse. You needn’t speak. We can hear words if you think about saying them.
Can you hear this? Abel thought.
Yes, boy.
Abel didn’t know if he liked the fact that the nishterlaub voices could eavesdrop on his inner thoughts. But for the moment, all he really cared about was keeping this trip going, to fly like a flitterdont across the landscape.
I dreamed of this. The day before Mamma died.
The sickness had grown worse, and she was wrapped up and shivering on her pallet even though it was a hot day outside. And that night, he’d dreamed of flying with his mother beside him, her flowing robes trailing behind her as they both laughed and zoomed over Lindron, over the River, and into the beyond.
But that dream was nothing compared to this!
He shifted his balance slowly and carefully to the left again. The flyer reacted by swooping into a graceful arc.
I can do this! I can steer this thing like a reed boat.
He leaned to the right, almost overbalanced, but caught himself, pulled the flyer into a sweeping curve.
I want more, he thought/said to the voices. I want to go farther. Let’s go. Show me! Show me everything!
Done, said the high-pitched voice.
Abel leaned back and, yes, the flyer tilted up as he’d hoped it would, climbed higher. The River was now in view below him, as were both sides of the Valley. It wasn’t at all straight, but twisted like a legless dont whipping through the dust.
How high am I?
In local terms? Approximately half a league. Seven thousand feet. You are at the maximum recommended altitude for an uncovered flyer such as this. But this should be sufficient for the purpose.
What do you see below you, boy? the gruff voice asked.
The River. There’s Garangipore to the north, where the main canal and the River meet. I see the Valley. The Land. But not all of it.
You couldn’t see all of the Land, not unless you flew nearly to orbit, out of the air itself.
Air ends somewhere in the sky? That’s a lie. Has to be.
What I say to you will never be a lie, Abel.
Whatever.
He looked back down.
Like a map. Like one of my father’s maps. I love maps. I can almost read, you know. Mamma taught me a lot. And Father has taught me all about maps, too.
We are aware of your strong literacy skill set, replied the high-pitched voice. This is one among several latent abilities, some of which you do not yet realize you possess. As you see, the Valley here at the branch-point of the Treville salient is at its widest. To the southwest, it becomes narrower until it finally reaches the capital of Lindron and then Mims, the city just above the River Delta. At Mims, the River widens, drops its alluvium to form the Delta islands and the tidal estuaries, and then flows into the Braun Sea. The average width of the Valley is two days’ travel on foot.
The Valley is hardly twenty leagues across at its widest, said the gruff voice. But its length from the top of the cataracts to Fyrpahatet on the coast—now, that’s another story. In fact, that’s the whole story of the Land and why things are the way they are.
I don’t get it.
Wouldn’t expect you to, boy. You’ve never known anything else. The River drains the whole of the western continent on this planet, northeast to southwest.
Don’t know what he’s talking about and don’t care, Abel thought and tried to keep the thought to himself. He had a feeling the gruff voice could be just as impatient with what he viewed as foolishness as his father. Just let me keep flying!
He must have at least partially formed the words in his mind, however, because the gruff voice stopped short, let out a growl.
You either care or you’ll be made to care, lad, the voice grumbled. Center, impress upon our young charge what it means that we are inside his thoughts.
Are you certain that’s wise?
We have to push now. If the lad’s what we’re looking for, he’ll survive it.
Agreed, said the high-pitched voice, which must be “Center,” the possessor of the high-pitched voice that the gruff voice was speaking to. This may prove disorienting. I will physically alter certain neuronal firing sequences within your brain and impart to you sufficient strata of term denotations to enable you to understand otherwise undefined referents.
Didn’t sound good. Not good at all. Whoever or whatever this Center was, it or he or she was about to alter his thoughts. Could it alter his memories? Everything?
Cause him to forget.
Mamma.
No!
I’m afraid this will be necessary.
I’ll jump. I’ll fall and die.
You are, in actuality, already standing on the floor.
Don’t poke inside me, I mean it!
I will perform only necessary poking.
Please! No!
I’m…sorry, Abel.
“Wait!” Abel screamed, this time sure to do so aloud. Maybe he could summon the priests or a guard. The gruff voice had cautioned him against shouting. Maybe he could use this against them. “I’ll yell!”
No, said Center, you won’t.
Abel’s opened his mouth to prove Center wrong. Not a sound came out. He struggled to shout. Nothing, not even a voiceless puff of air.
Okay, Abel said. Okay, you win. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?
Yes, said Center.
And suddenly his head exploded in pain.
And understanding. Continent. Orbit. Energy. Northern hemisphere. He began to comprehend.
The world is round!
Yes.
And the Land is not all of the world. Not by a long shot.
The Land and its surrounding desert reaches, which stretch to the Schnee Mountains in the east and the Braun Sea to the west, are the only portion of Duisberg inhabited by humans.
You keep saying Duisberg. That’s the name of this…planet? asked Abel.
Correct.
And there are lots of other planets?
Lots, said Center. And other suns.
And he was made to understand.
That’s what the stars are.
Correct.
“Why should I believe you?” said Abel, speaking aloud. The thought was too hard to form completely without hearing it first. “You’re probably lying to get me to do something, like those beggar bo
ys in Lindron who said they’d show me a hardback riverdak out of its shell. What they really wanted was to steal the slingshot Father made me. I had to fight six at once when they chased me to the barracks row.”
And did you win, lad? asked the gruff voice.
“Nope,” Abel replied. “They got the slingshot. But it took all six of them to lick me.”
Abel leaned hard to the left, then hard to the right. The flyer yawed, and he could feel a buzz as the invisible stabilization fields, whatever they were, gripped him tight. He leaned to the left again, attempting to rock the flyer into capsizing.
If I’m not really flying, then I can turn this over…and fall! I won’t die, because I’m really in the storehouse. But maybe that’ll get them out of my head.
Another gruff laugh. Good try, lad.
General Whitehall, we have much to accomplish today, said Center. Foundations must be laid. It, he—Abel decided Center sounded more male than female—seemed irritated.
Almost. The flyer was almost tipped over on the right side. One more hard rocking motion and—
Enough!
The flyer froze in place. If he’d been on the edge of a cliff, Abel’s momentum would have made him fall. Instead, the stabilization fields seemed to absorb his motion like a down pillow.
We must decide if this child is the one, the gruff voice said. If so, then agreed, we will proceed. If not… The voice trailed off.
That doesn’t sound good. That’s the kind of voice father uses just before he takes out his sharpening strop.
Abel stopped rocking and ceased trying to end the flying simulation. Besides, he really didn’t want to, not yet. It was time, however, to change the subject. “So you, the squeaky one who sounds like a cross between a three-year-old and a priest, you’re Center?”
Correct.
“And the other, you with the mean voice, you’re General White-something?”
Call me Raj, lad, the gruff voice replied. It’s my first name. I have a feeling we’re going to get along fine. May even be friends.
You wish! But Abel did his best to keep his misgivings to himself and tried not to let them form into a full thought. He found it helped if he considered other things at the same time. Feeling like a flitterdont flapping around. The wind in his face. Clouds.
