by Lyndon Hardy
Kestrel pressed his hand against his stomach. Enough time had passed that he could be reasonably sure of no ill-effects from the fruit. Climbing the tree and tossing what he had picked across the oasis had been easy enough, although Nimbia ate little and seemed to doze in a deep lethargy when she was done.
Kestrel grimaced. The fruit had been sweet and tangy, but helped his mood little, if at all. He looked at Phoebe and frowned. Despite his most careful words, she refused to be consoled. In an almost mindless obsession, she had assembled specimens of every different type of material she could find in her proximity, blades of grass, a handful of sand, tree bark and fronds, even the skins of the fruit they had eaten. But using one of the water lenses from Astron's pack to focus the diffuse light, she had succeeded no better than with her first attempt. There was no hint of flame, not even the tiniest wisp of smoke.
And now, rather than lifting Phoebe's spirits, he felt the crushing reality of her words growing with each passing moment. The featureless plane that expanded to the horizon in all directions made the feeling of entrapment all the more intense. Perhaps there were great cities and enchanting delights just out of eyesight, but Kestrel thought it unlikely. The glimpse he had of this realm while still with the fey looked very much the same as what he saw now. Except for the presence of the fighting warriors, he recalled seeing only the same bleached straight-line paths radiating from a central point into the vast desert that was totally lacking in detail.
Kestrel kicked at the shiny metal protruding from the sand at his feet. He had not noticed at first, but at least three of the trees had some artifacts that appeared to have been hastily buried near their roots. The one where he sat was a filigree of wrought iron that terminated in a menacingly sharp point. No amount of simple tugging would free the ornate shaft from the ground. In front of where Nimbia dozed was what looked like the edge of a brass disk of substantial diameter, at least twice the height of a man. From the vacant node to Kestrel's left protruded a thin curved strip of steel that slowly oscillated in the gentle breeze.
But such things were properly only of interest to the demon, Kestrel thought. There were more important things about which to be concerned. He counted the fruit remaining in the branches of the trees and then the clear water of the pool. How long before they had eaten all that was here? he wondered. And if not great cities, would there be other oases like this one just beyond the horizon?
Kestrel stood to get a better view of a fruit cluster partially hidden by a branch. Suddenly he felt his left foot drag to the side and his entire body twist to follow. Phoebe gasped. He saw her reach suddenly to fling her arms around her tree, her legs sailing out nearly horizontal. In a flurry of sand and snapping capes, both Nimbia and Astron were tossed into heaps. Like tumbleweeds, they began to bounce out into the desert along one of the whitened paths.
"I surmise it is another symmetry," Astron shouted backward as he tried to regain his balance. "Something acting on everyone and pulling us away."
Kestrel tried to turn and snatch the tree now at his back, but he was too late. The unseen force intensified. He was slammed earthward as if struck by a giant. He scrambled to his knees, but immediately was cast back into the ground a few feet farther from the pond. Kestrel spit out sand and clawed with his fingers, but he could tell that his efforts would be to no avail. He felt his body begin to drag across the coarse surface. The sand grated against his bare skin and then started to sting as his speed increased.
Faster and faster he flailed over the ground until even the wind whistled with his passage. A cloud of dust boiled up about him, forcing him to shut his eyes to keep out the bouncing grains of sand. The stinging on his forearms intensified from a mild irritation to a blistering pain. Kestrel raised his hands and arched his back to reduce his contact with the abrasive that surely would grind through his skin. With a gut-straining gasp, he managed to pull one leg forward under his chest and then savagely kick downward. He bounded from the desert floor and, in response to the reduction in friction, felt a rapid acceleration.
Kestrel fell back down earthward in a flat trajectory and then, like a stone hurled across a pond, skipped back into the air. This time his path straightened out parallel to the surface and he skimmed along in a straight line. As if he were a bead on an invisible wire, he hurled across the vast nothingness.
Kestrel cautiously opened one eye. When he saw that the cloud of dust had fallen away, he looked about. Phoebe and the others were also airborne on courses parallel to his own, all streaking across the plane above one of the white paths that had radiated from their oasis. He called out to Phoebe, but the whistle of the wind carried away his voice. He waved once and felt relieved when she shook her hand in reply.
Kestrel strained to look over his shoulder and saw that the oasis was already a mere speck in the distance. As he watched, it disappeared into a haze. He turned back to squint in the direction they were travelling and detected a similar blur of detail on the horizon up ahead.
Kestrel watched the features sharpen as he approached. He recognized the tall trees and the white lines of other paths converging from different directions. He scanned their lengths as far as he could see, expecting the same emptiness on them all. But on the one that ran out across the plane to the right he noticed a hint of motion. Others were also coming to this oasis-warriors like the ones he had seen fighting within the ring of djinns.
As the two groups merged, Kestrel saw the shine of armor. He heard the clink of hard metal, even over the whistling wind. He fingered the pommel of the copper dagger from the realm of the fey, but took little comfort from it. The odds would be greater than five to one, even if Astron and the two women brandished arms as well.
Far more rapidly than Kestrel could think of what to do, he arrived at the new oasis. As abruptly as the forces had torn him from the other, they died away. He tumbled in a heap and offered only token resistance to the waning push that rolled him into the trunk of the nearest tree.
The warriors came to an abrupt halt at approximately the same time. With the precision of dismounting horse riders, they steadied themselves and remained erect. Kestrel grabbed his dagger, fearing the worst; but the warriors, after a brief inspection, paid him and the others little attention. With a few bellowed grunts that Kestrel thought he could almost understand, they quickly dispersed to each of the six trees that ringed the small pond in their center.
In an instant Kestrel was surrounded by a half-dozen tall and lean men with chalky complexions, only a few shades different from the paths that seemed to run from oasis to oasis. The first two began immediately to set up a small table from spars and hinged planks they carried on their backs, while a third uncoiled thick parchments crisscrossed with brilliant red and blue inks.
One of the men spoke and Astron immediately answered. Again Kestrel could make out most of what was being said.
"Since all of this is Prydwin's creation it is no wonder that we can converse," Astron explained. "It is merely a small change from the normal speech in the realm of the fey." The demon shrugged. "It is perhaps a detail on which Prydwin did not spend much effort."
"Your presence contributes to our freedom of movement," one of the warriors repeated, "and for that you have value. Though your appearance is different from either rotator or reflective, I do not suspect you of being chronoids, since your hands are empty of the foul artifacts they transport into our realm against the protocols."
"Share in our celebration of victory," another said. "The reflectives never suspected the richness of our symmetry until it was thrust upon them-no less than fourteen, and now they have been expulsed from every one. They did not have a chance for an exchange of bodies, not a one."
"From which did you come?" a third asked. "One of the lesser triangles of the central pentagram, or perhaps an octagonal node from the hypersphere of the great triad?"
Kestrel opened his mouth to speak but Astron was quicker. "What is the map?" the demon asked. "The lines in red and the
nodes in blue with the crossed-out annotations-what do they mean?"
"It is the rendering of the great polytope, all that there is," answered the first. "See, already we make the changes that mark the victory." The warrior stopped and jabbed rapidly at the parchment. "It is all in accordance with the second protocol-all moves are simultaneous. We have occupied nodes here and here and then those over on the other side. They form the vertices of a figure with more than thirty edges. The reflectives were too concerned about this minor symmetry of three adjacent nodes here to notice what we had done.
"Look at the pattern closely, see how all thirty-seven form a beautiful pattern that is invariant if it is rotated through the small angle drawn over there." The warrior's face widened in a satisfied grin. "As the first protocol states-the greater the symmetry the greater the power. In perfect synchronization, those of us occupying the first node of the set began the journey to the second; those at the second unto the third. The reflectives who occupied part of the pattern were totally unprepared and the pressure to preserve symmetry was too much to resist. They were dragged from their fortifications into other nodes where yet more of us waited. We have won possession of more than a dozen."
Kestrel looked at the map where two of the warriors were busy erasing some sort of symbol by some of the nodes and replacing it with another. He glanced at Astron in confusion, but then relaxed when he saw that the demon had not wrinkled his nose.
"This map then is a reproduction of all that we see." Astron waved his arm outward toward the desert. "These oases are the nodes and the lattice lines the paths between them."
"It is a record of all the realm," added one of the warriors.
"And the symbol you are erasing-the nodes that are marked with it are under the control of the ones you call the reflectives." Astron stopped and studied the parchment for a moment. "You hold your territory most unlike the fashion of the realm of men," he said. "Look at how interspersed you are. How can you possibly say who has the greater advantage?"
"It is not a matter of adjacency, but of symmetry. Look at the beauty of the nodes that we possess. Of very high order are the subgroups that describe our lands."
"And that symmetry gives us power, power to strike at a dozen vertices as one, power to use the innate forces of the realm to aid us rather than fight against it in furthering of our aims."
"But why fight at all?" Astron asked. "What motivates you against these you call the reflectives?"
"Their symmetries are most foul," the first of the warriors spat. "They are invariant under reflection whereas ours remain the same when subjected to rotations instead. And as the fifth protocol states-victory is total, only one of two will be left. It is the duty of every rotator to resist reflectives wherever we can, to strive to eliminate them until none are left to poison the beauty of the true symmetries that we will build when they are gone."
"I don't understand any of this," Kestrel said. "It must be some sort of threadbare dream-scattered oases in a vast desert linked by geometrical designs, warriors engaged in mathematically obtuse campaigns. What of women and the crops that supplement these few fruits? Who weaves the clothes you wear on your backs and from where do the woolens come?"
"Most of your words make no sense whatsoever," the first warrior said. "Our lives are to fight the reflectives until either we receive mortal wounds or have totally won. The fruit of the trees provide us subsistence; our armor protects us from blows. Of these other things we have no need."
"But replacements," Kestrel persisted. "What happens when some of your number are indeed struck down?"
"Replacement?" the warrior echoed. "I do not comprehend. We fight the reflectives until one of us is victor. If some of my comrades fall, we recompute the symmetries for the numbers remaining, so that we have freedom of movement about the subnodes, as you see we have done here. There are no replacements. There never have been since the beginning of time."
Kestrel looked quickly about the oasis and noted that the warriors were deployed in what appeared to be a random fashion onJy at first glance. Closer examination revealed that the subgroups by each tree were different in many distinct ways from all the rest. Each had a different number, and the heights and weights were well distributed as well. The camp tasks they had undertaken were all unique and the identical weapons were stacked only where other differences outnumbered the similarities.
Kestrel glanced at Phoebe's almost vacant stare and Nimbia's listless shell hunched next to her. He looked back out onto the featureless desert. All that he could see was no more than the creation of one of the fey, he realized. It all had come into existence only by the force of thought-just like a scribe transcribing flights of fancy for the sagas, leaving out all nonessential detail. One could not really expect any more.
And they were marooned! The words boomed through his mind. Marooned in a universe in which all life apparently had to offer were the few simple rules of a game.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Artifacts of the Chronoids
KESTREL looked across the new oasis at Phoebe and forced his face into a smile. He had lost track of the number of nodes to which they had been transported, but it would do her spirits no good to show how low his own had sunk. Far better it would be as well if they could share the same subnode, but the rotators, with their rigorously balanced deployments, insisted that they be kept apart.
Nimbia on occasion seemed a little more alert, but most of the time she still dozed in her stupor at the base of the tree to the right of Phoebe's. Although Astron was at Kestrel's side, the demon again was occupied with learning about some obscure detail of the realm. Kestrel was alone with his thoughts.
More than he feared, the life of a rotator was one of almost complete ritual. In a rigid sequence they would plan, eat, sleep, and then, simultaneously with everyone else in the realm, rush over the sands to a new node that looked almost exactly the same as the one they had left behind. Then, if the new node were unoccupied and there were no battle, the cycle would begin again. Plan, eat, sleep, move-they were merely playing pieces on a complex board, jockeying for position without ceasing.
Kestrel looked at the six fruit-bearing trees that ringed the small pond of water and then out over the featureless desert, trying to channel his thought in a more productive direction. He kicked at the sand at his feet, barely missing another shaft of ornately carved metal.
"Abel, what are these things?" he called out to the commander of the warriors. "Half of the oases we have visited seem to have them protruding from the ground."
One of the warriors looked up from where he had been conversing quietly with two others over the small portable table covered with the maps of the nodes. His complexion was slate gray like the rest, but streaks of black ran through his hair. His eyes were steady and unblinking in a face not creased by either smile or frown.
"They are the devices of the chronoids," Abel said with disgust in his voice, "the machines of beings of another realm-another realm just the same as yours. In our haste, we do not bury them as we might. They are a violation of the protocols."
"Another realm." Astron looked up from the scroll he had been studying intently. "We are not the only visitors you have seen?"
"Indeed not," Abel said. "Ever since the reflectives seized the origin, the visits have been most frequent. The chronoids look much as we do and they engage in some great struggle not so very different from our own. But their weapons are not similar in the least and they are difficult for us to understand."
"What kind of weapons?" Kestrel said, suddenly interested. "Something that would give you an advantage if you had them instead? Do they by chance involve the use of fire?"
"We would not use the devices of the chronoids." Abel pursed his lips. "The reflectives do so only at great peril, since they work so imperfectly in a realm different from which they were intended." The commander stopped and looked at Kestrel intently. "More importantly, they are not part of the tradition that stretches back to the memori
es of our creation. Only the reflectives would think of trying something so base to gain advantage."
"But where are-"
"Perhaps it is worth the effort to show you one of the foul things," Abel said. "Then you might better understand." He gestured to one of the other gray warriors. The second began to protest but Abel's stare cut short the words. The warrior spat at the ground at his feet and then began digging into the sand. Shortly he retrieved an oblong box of metal and brought it forward for the others to see.
"Why, it looks like a clock," Astron exclaimed as the object drew closer. "A device for measuring the passage of time. See the three ornate bands of metal pivoted at the center of the circular face with symbols about the rim."
"These devices do much more than merely count the swings of a pendulum," Abel said. "Just as our realm is governed by the symmetries of space, so is that of the chronoids ruled by the symmetries of time. With these clocks, as you call them, they manipulate the order of events in strange ways.
"Here, in the realm of the reticulates, the devices behave in manners even more bizarre. The manipulations of time are somehow transformed to ones of space instead. In battles where the reflectives possess them, I have seen entire moves undone against our wills, even though we held the advantage-whole squads of men exchanged with those of our enemy so that we were outnumbered, rather than the other way around."
"How did this clock come to be here?" Kestrel asked,
"Somehow the reflectives have found a way to communicate between the realms, exchanging men with the chronoids for weapons that aid their own cause. Recently the reflectives seem to have increased the frequency of their contacts. The artifacts are more and more abundant. Ten thousand moves ago, we would find them only at one node in a score; now we see them at virtually half."
"And the rotators choose not to use those clocks?" Astron asked.
