Pathspace: The Space of Paths

by Matthew Kennedy

  “No.” The Honcho's voice was flat. “Rado's first on the list. And I don't want anyone but our own troops knowing what we can do, until we do it. Zona can wait.”

  “What if squatters have moved into the abandoned buildings? “

  The Honcho met his gaze. “Then too bad for them. If they're not willing to move, don't let them keep you from doing your job. Flatten it...and don't leave any witnesses that could talk to Rado spies.”

  Chapter 77

  Xander: “I would meet you upon this honestly.”

  Panting, he stroked the new everflame down, extinguishing the glowing point of blue, and tossed the metal disk into the box beside him. With a ringing SNAP a hammer came down behind him, cutting out another disk from the unhardened iron plate, whose surface was holed like a slice of cheese. Resting his weight on the table for a moment, the old wizard reached out blindly and snatched up another of the iron disks. He had no idea if it was the one just cut or one of its predecessors. No matter. He slapped it on the table and took another breath, trying to fight off a wave of dizziness as he strove to weave the pattern he needed.

  Sweat ran down into his eyes, the salt stinging them. He blinked and drew a sleeve cuff across his face. He had stopped bothering to count the everflames he was making. There was no point. If there were any extras, they could help heat homes in the winter to come.

  Lester's face swam into focus. “You'd better take a break, old man, before you fall down.”

  Xander tried to laugh and coughed. “Think I can't keep up with you?”

  “What I think,” his apprentice said, “is that you will be no good to us if you pass out now.”

  Xander stood up, holding onto the edge of the table. “Unless you've learned how to make everflames, I'm the only one who can do this.”

  “Then take some time and show me how.”

  “You're not ready. You're getting good with pathspace, sure. But making an everflame requires you to manipulate tonespace, and we don't have time for you to stop what you're doing and spend time learning that now.” Xander let go of the table and straightened. “Once we stop the invasion, you can consider starting on spinspace. Tonespace comes after that.”

  He could see Lester wasn't happy with his advice. The colt wanted to be a stallion. Xander tried to remember what it was like being so young. Had he been that impatient? Well, not quite...but that was because, back then, he had no one to be impatient with. You should be glad you have me to help you learn this stuff. I had nobody. Takes a lot longer when you have to figure it out all on your own.

  Still, he had to give the kid credit. His pathspace manipulation was really coming along now. He's gone from weaving invisibility to sculpting a swizzle on his own, a lot quicker than I did. Am I jealous of his quickness?

  “Look, I know you/re learning fast,and you want to know it all. And I want you to. I want to teach you all I've learned.” He paused. “If we live through this, I mean. If we do, you're going to learn things I've never mastered, never even heard of. But to get to that point, you'll have to survive. And not just you. People are depending on us to make a difference.”

  Lester sighed. “Tell me something I don't know.”

  “Oh, I'll tell you lots of things you don't know. But first you have to help prepare.”

  “Well, I'm all out of pipe for swizzles. What now, O wizard?”

  “I've got another idea. How good is your invisibility weave?”

  “Pretty good. But I have to keep re-weaving it if I move around, or I step into view.”

  Xander led him to a corner of the smithy where the smith had stacks of metal plate as tall as a man. An apprentice smith was striking one with measured, patients hammer blows, curving the metal like a section of a cylinder, or a drinking glass, so that the plate could stand on its own.

  “What are those for?”

  Xander ran his fingertips along the edge of one. “Shields. Henry, these need handles.”

  The apprentice smith with the hammer stopped hammering. “Yes, you said that before,” he grunted. “I figured it would be more efficient to curve the metal first, then cut the eye slits and rivet the handles on 'em last.”

  “Wouldn't wooden shields be a lot lighter?” asked Lester. “You could make them thick enough to stop arrows and crossbow bolts without making something so heavy for the troops to carry around.”

  “These aren't just to stop arrows,” Xander told him. “These are for hiding.”

  “What's the point of hiding behind one of those,” Lester wanted to know, “when you can see them a mile away?”

  “Watch.” Xander seized the curved tower shield, grunting with the effort of lifting the metal, and turned it so that the inner part of the curve faced the wall. Then he concentrated, weaving pathspace. The shield faded away.

  “This is what I want you to do with the others,” he told his apprentice, leading Lester around so that he could see the shield was perfectly visible from the back, at close range. “The trick is to weave the pathspace so that light coming from behind it curves around the shield and makes it invisible from the front, because you see what's behind it instead.”

  “I still don't see the point of it,” Lester complained.

  “Stand over there, and watch,” he told the boy, pointing to the middle of the smithy.

  Then he ducked behind the shield. “Now you can't see me.”

  “So? I can do that without a lot of iron.”

  “This isn't for you. It's for ordinary troops who can't weave their own invisibility. You'll only have to weave each one once, and then the metal will anchor the pathspace pattern, better than wood can, so it will last and ordinary people can use it..” He gripped the side of the shield and lifted it, taking a few steps toward Lester. “And they can move forward without having to re-weave the pattern. Anchoring the pattern in the metal lets you carry it around without constantly having to make and unmake it.”

  He un-wove the spell, letting the shield reappear closer to Lester, who finally looked impressed. “How many of these do we need?”

  “As many as you can make. Do them while you're waiting for more pipe.”

  He turned at the sound of hoofbeats approaching the smithy. Who could that be?

  A few seconds later Aria appeared at the doorway. “I need to have a word with you, wizard.”

  He stepped out of the smithy and followed her as she led him around the back of the building. “What is it? Is Texas on the move already?”

  “No,” she said. “This is personal.”

  “Well, as I've told you many times, you can tell me everything.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, but you haven't told me everything, have you? Like why we have the same rare blood type.”

  Xander blew out his breath in a long whistling sigh. There was no point in denying anything now. Someone must have told her. The certainty on her face confirmed it.

  Aria looked left and right to make sure no one was within earshot of them. “I didn't want to believe it, even when Mother admitted it,” she said. “Did you love her?”

  Xander met her gaze. “I still do,” he murmured. “But I'm sure she explained to you why things had to stay the way they were. Rado and your legacy depend on it.”

  “On a lie,” she said. Her tone was bitter. “So you're ashamed to claim me.”

  “Hell, no. Anything but ashamed. If you were anyone else, you'd be my apprentice.” He took a breath. “You've no idea how hard it's been on me, being just the weird old man, the loyal advisor, instead of your father. But leadership needs continuity. Rado and Kristana needed you for an heir, and we decided – “

  “You decided. What about me? Don't I get a choice? It's my life! Not yours.”

  He sighed. “No, you don't get a choice, any more than I did. Deal with it. Fate chose me to be the wizard, and you to be the next Governor. There's no one to replace either of us.”

  “At least you have Lester.” She was silent for a moment. “And people used to choose the Governo
r. You know that. The Governor used to be elected by a vote.”

  Ah, to be young and idealistic again! “Yes, and someday they will again. That's the difference between your mother and the Honcho. She doesn't want to be an emperor. But that day has not come yet, and it never will...unless we are all strong enough to keep this continent from becoming an empire.”

  “Would that be much worse than what we have now?”

  “I think so. So does your mother. And so did the General. We believe in his Dream.”

  “Maybe you do,” she said. “But you have another Dream, don't you? Your school for wizards. Something we've never needed before. Can you honestly tell me you wouldn't be working for the Honcho, if he'd let you build your school there? If you were there, you wouldn't have to waste time worrying about invasions, would you?”

  He pursed his lips. “Don't be too sure. He has enemies too.”

  “So you're worried about his enemies more than you are about ours? Is that it?”

  “No,” he said. “I'm more worried about his friends.”

  Chapter 78

  Jeffrey: “The conscience of a blackened street”

  Even in the cooling air of early Winter, it was hot inside the tank. “How did they ever stand this?” Jeffrey asked one of the men with him, as he mopped sweat off his brow. It was a good thing they'd started out long before dawn.

  “I heard they used to have something to cool the air inside,” one of them said, raising his voice to carry over the sounds of the engine and treads coming down the open hatch. “They called it 'air conditioning'. There's a couple of buttons on the controls for it.”

  “Well, make it work then. What are you waiting for?”

  “Freon.”

  “What?”

  “Something called 'Freon' that the system needs to cool down the air,” the man explained. “But it must have dried up a long time ago. We're not even sure what it was, but the manuals tell where to pour it in, so it must have been a liquid. Anyway, we haven't got any, so the best we can do is leave the hatch open.”

  “This is crazy! How can we expect to fight in something like this? You'll drop of heatstroke before we even get to Rado.”

  “Well, sir,” the man responded, after a pause, “we ain't going to Rado today, are we? Just some little town out in the middle of nowhere for practice. They tell me by the time we do get to Rado we might be wanting to run the heater instead.”

  He did not know what to say about that.

  The 'tank' was one of the strangest things he had ever seen. Built of thick metal, it must weigh tons. He still had a little trouble believing that even the motors of the Ancients could move the thing. But they did. It had wheels, like a cart or coach, but instead of rolling on the ground, they were inside a kind of metal cloth that came down in front of the vehicle for them to roll on, as if it were laying its own road down as it went, and rolling it up in the back after passing over it.

  The whole thing had seemed ridiculously complicated to him, until he'd seen it go over rocks and wreckage strewn in the road. Instead of butting up against a boulder, as a wagon wheel would, the 'treads' let the tank tilt up and climb over it. The tanks (they had found eight of the monsters in the sealed armory in Abilene) were very hard to stop. Each carried a movable cannon on top; if a wall came in their way, they could blast through it and roll over the fragments.

  For today, they'd only had enough fuel to power up two of the weapons. His tank was following the one carrying Brutus.

  When they'd first climbed inside the thing and started it up, he'd been a little startled by all of the lights that came on. Tiny lit buttons, dials and indicators glowed to life like eyes, as if they had resurrected some ancient dragon. The engineer had explained it to him. Apparently a reservoir of energy called a battery was needed to make the fuel begin exploding inside the engine. For this, they had reassembled some batteries stored in the depot, following the old manuals. They'd opened cannisters of acid and poured it into the plastic casings, letting it react with metal plates to build up voltage, then loaded the batteries into the tanks.

  Jeffrey didn't like any of this. Are we going to be pouring acid all day? He had asked. No, he was reassured. Once the engines were started, they would generate electricity to keep the batteries recharged, changing the lead and zinc sulfate and water back into metal and acid. And also, apparently, generating power for the internal lights, the controls, and a motor that swiveled the big gun of the tank when they needed to aim it.

  Used to seeing cannons fired, Jeffrey had not seen the need to turn the gun. Couldn't they just point it straight ahead, and steer the tank to point the gun at fortifications when needed?

  “What if someone came up behind you, or on one side of you,” the engineers had pointed out. “The electricity is easy enough for the tank to generate and store, but the fuel is precious. One of the best things about these weapons is you don't need to hitch up a team of horses to turn them around if horses ride past you. You just swivel the gun and keep shooting. And you can keep turning the gun to follow them, like you would with a crossbow.”

  “I thought the great thing about them is that they move faster than horses,” Jeffrey had retorted. “You can just move the treads in opposite directions and turn the tank that way.”

  “Oh, they can outrun horses on straight paths, no problem,” the engineer had agreed. “But horses are lighter and more agile. And like I said, fuel is precious. You'll be using the gas to get there, but unless the Rado people are really troublesome, most of the time you'll be firing while stationary.”

  “Troublesome against these?” Jeffrey shook his head. “If they have any sense at all they'll surrender the first time we use these things. No arrows can get inside this. From what I read in the manual and old books, one or two of these things could wipe out a whole army of horsemen by itself.”

  “You're right about that,” the engineer said. “Now if we were fighting them in July, the crew would be baked inside this like riding in an oven, without the air conditioning. In that case it might be a different fight altogether. But it'll be December, and your only problem with a long battle would be running out of gas if you did too much moving. These things drink a lot of fuel.”

  “Are we going to have enough? I don't want to get stuck somewhere waiting for Rado men to come with sledgehammers and bash their way inside.”

  The engineer spat out the end of a cigar and lit another one. “Don't worry about that, sir,” he advised. We got a tanker truck that can follow you and refuel you on the spot, if need be. They've got the refinery tunning flat out now, cracking gas for us. You'll have all the gas you need, and then some.” He gazed northwards, as if he could see the mountains of Rado from Abilene, which of course he couldn't. “Those Rado people have their mountains and mines. They can dig out gold to hire troops and buy uniforms. But this is Texas. We are the motherload of oil. We'll still be pumping oil and making gas for tanks when your great-grandson is running the show.”

  Remembering the man's words, now, he tried to present more confidence than he felt. I'm sitting in a metal monster, he thought, that only keeps going because inside it something keeps exploding.

  Chapter 79

  Ludlow: “The burnt-out ends of smoky days.”

  It had not been easy to make the lamp. They allowed him no candles here, no oil, But the food they served was often greasy stuff, and he had saved the grease, in a clay bowl.

  Stealing that bowl had cost him dearly. Oh how angry they'd been, ransacking his little cell the next day! He had to smile at the thought that they'd worried he was going to break it and use the shards as weapons. While one guard was stripping the bed and shining his lantern in the dim, the other had been busy kicking him until he vomited.

  How he'd wanted to laugh through his split lips. The entire time they were searching for it, the bowl lay in plain sight on the top of the wooden crate that served him as a table. Well, not in plain sight. The invisibility he'd woven around it had kept it
safe from prying eyes, even his own.

  The wick had been tricky too. They'd left him no string, not even bootlaces. He considered tearing thin strips from his bed sheet, but they would have spotted that. Inspiration came one day when he cut his hand on a rusty edge of the cot. In short order, he had used the roughness of the flaking corroded iron to saw off several locks of his hair. These he did his best to braid together, making a wick for the grease bowl. And so his lamp was born.

  Of course he had no reading materials. But that didn't matter, because the lamp wasn't for reading. Its main purpose was to keep the rats off him while he was sleeping. It had a second function, too. Keeping the guards from seeing its light gave him a reason to keep practicing his weaving of pathspace. To keep sharpening his skill, as he waited for the opportunity to vanish one day when they got too careless.

  One thing they hadn't been careless about was the door. It was metal, and the thick bolt on the outside was secured with three padlocks.

  One nice thing about his cell was the quiet. It was dark, it was dank, and there were rats, but at least it was quiet. Until now.

  He was nearly asleep when the clock of the first padlock being opened awakened him. It would have been awkward if he'd been fast asleep, but by the time he heard the second click he had extinguished the lamp and shoved it away from the rat hole and behind a quick shield of invisibility. By the time he heard the third click he was back on his cot, his eyes closed.

  He stirred when the bolt was thrown back because they expected him too. Someone entered carrying something far brighter than his pitiful little lamp. The light of the torch dazzled him. Struggling to a sitting posture, he shielded his eyes with one hand while he let his eyes adjust. “Who's there?”

  “I think it's time we had a little chat, Ludlow.”

  “Now?” He let himself fall back on the cot. “I thought you said it all when you locked me in here.” He coughed. “Has something changed your mind?”