Psychicians

by Laurence Dahners

  He lifted his hand and stared at his fingers. “I must’ve gotten some dye on them. I work as a chemist.” He shook his head, “Though, I can’t do much anymore. Can’t read the…” His eyes involuntarily twitched toward Eva, “recipes, or the labels on the bottles. It just isn’t safe if you can’t do that. My daughter and granddaughter have had to take over the business. I was just helping one of the young ones when I spilled this.”

  “What kind of… What’s the name of the dye you were making?” Eva asked, hearing her own voice tremble.

  “Gentian violet,” he said. Then, somehow picking up on Eva’s disappointment, he said, “It’s also known as crystal violet.”

  “Oh!” Eva said, feeling like she’d just experienced an impossible coincidence—her own quest for crystal violet cut short by his serendipitous appearance in her clinic. She turned and picked up her drawing of the chemical structure for crystal violet. Handing it to Geller, she said, “Do you know the chemical structures of your dyes? Um, well enough to know if your crystal violet has this structure?”

  Her heart sank when he shrugged. She realized he probably knew nothing of chemical structures, simply followed recipes to create the various dyes. But then he said, “I don’t know, I can’t see your drawing. Maybe if you drew it bigger?”

  Eva got an ink pot and—wondering whether it was a waste—also got out a costly sheet of paper. She redrew the structure with heavy lines, big enough so it filled the sheet.

  Geller pulled out his lens and looked at it for a moment, glanced up at her, then looked some more. He raised his cloudy eyes to Eva’s and said suspiciously, “How do you know so much about chemical structures?”

  She wanted to scream, “Is that the structure of your crystal violet or not?!” Instead, she kept her voice calm, “I have…” she paused wondering whether she should express such a confidence. “It’s a secret. If I tell you, can you keep my secret?”

  “You have one of the ancients’ books!” he breathed as if in awe. More importantly, it didn’t sound like he considered the books to be a sacrilege.

  Eva nodded slowly, making the motion large so that Geller might detect it with his poor eyesight. She realized she should say the word as well. “Yes. I assume your family has some ancient books on chemistry?”

  Geller pressed his lips together as if trying to hold in a secret, then seemed to make a decision, “You’ll keep my secret, if I keep yours?”

  Eva nodded again.

  Geller grinned and leaned forward. He whispered, “We have quite a few books.”

  Eva leaned closer herself, “So do we.”

  After talking for a while, it became evident Geller’s family had preserved a surprising amount of chemical knowledge over the centuries. A number of books had been kept by the family, though they were seldom read in their original form. They’d been meticulously copied and those were the “recipes” the family referred to when needed. They made a living producing and selling dyes, acids, bases, acetylsalicylic acid—also known as aspirin—and a large number of other chemicals, depending on demand.

  And, yes, Geller would be delighted to sell her some crystal violet.

  “But, what about my eyes?” he asked.

  “A few months ago I would have said there was nothing we could do,” Eva said.

  “But we’ve recently obtained some… new books. Give us some time to do some reading and maybe we’ll come up with something.”

  “If you come across any books on chemistry…” Geller asked softly, “would you let us copy them?”

  ***

  Having gotten permission, Tarc and Nylin left the tavern as soon as the lunch rush started to slow. Well, not counting a few minutes for Nylin to change her blouse and comb her hair.

  As they walked toward the gate, Tarc kept glancing at her from the corner of his eye. Out in the light of day, there was just something irresistible about her almond-colored skin and long silky dark hair. She turned to him and caught his eyes on her. Her eyes dropped shyly, but she spoke anyway. “Do you think we’ll be safe outside the gate?”

  Tarc said, “I think we’ll be fine. You remember the guards at the Norton caravan?”

  She nodded.

  “Usually several of them stayed around the caravan booths, watching for thieves and making sure none of the fairgoers got out of hand. Besides, I think Clancy Vail sends a few members of the guardia down to the caravan grounds.”

  Reaching the caravan grounds, they started wandering around, looking at the displayed wares. By the number of merchants, Tarc surmised that this caravan was smaller than Norton’s. When they stopped to look at jewelry, Nylin turned quietly to Tarc, “The stones on these necklaces are pretty, but they’re lumpy. Not nearly as nice as Daussie’s spheres and teardrops.”

  Tarc looked at them with more interest. They had smooth surfaces but they were, as Nylin’d said, lumpy. And, though the surfaces shone, they didn’t have the flawless perfection of the stones Daussie cut. However, the color of the stones was more intense than anything Daussie’d ever worked with. He turned to the woman tending the display. She tirelessly turned a metal drum that made a grinding noise as it rotated. Curious about it, Tarc asked, “What’re you doing?”

  “Polishing stones,” she said.

  “Really? How’s it work?” Tarc asked, fascinated.

  Though he’d thought she might refuse to explain, she opened a door on the drum to let him look inside. The drum was partially filled with stones of various sizes and shapes rolling in a slurry of water and sand. “After they roll over one another in this coarse sand for several days, we wash them and put them back in with finer and finer sand. Eventually, we use a polishing powder.” She resumed turning the drum with one hand while using the other to point at the stones on display. “Eventually, all the corners get rounded off and the surfaces get polished smooth until you have pretty stones like these.”

  “Do you ever sell the original stones they’re made from?”

  The woman laughed, “Are you wanting to get into my business? Become my competition?”

  Tarc shrugged, “I could hardly compete with you. You’ll be gone in a few days.”

  She smiled again though not humorously, “But when the caravan comes back this way, no one’ll want to buy my stones because you’ll be selling something like them in your own little store.”

  Tarc studied her for a moment, then said, “What if I told you that I’d like to buy some of your unpolished stones for more than you paid for them? And that I’d try to sell them back to you tomorrow, polished better than you can do with your drum?”

  She laughed again, “I’d think you were crazy.”

  He grinned, “Well, why not let me buy a few large pieces of the red and the blue stone?”

  She shook her head disbelievingly, “And you think you’re going to sell stones back to me tomorrow?!”

  Tarc nodded, “At a price higher than you sell your polished stones for,” he arched an eyebrow, “but less than you’ll be able to sell mine for. You’ll win on both ends of this deal.”

  Smiling again, she said, “Well, they say a fool and his money are soon parted.” She bent down and came up with a couple of fist-sized rocks, one red and one blue. “I’ll sell you these for four silvers.”

  Tarc dickered until the price came down to a silver each. When he left, he could tell she still thought she’d gotten the better of him by far.

  As they left the booth, Nylin turned to him and said, “Are you crazy? There’s no way you can polish stones out of those in a day!”

  Tarc gave her a wide-eyed look of alarm. “Oh my God! You’re right.” Then he winked, “But Daussie can.”

  “Are you saying that Daussie makes those little spheres and teardrops herself?”

  Tarc nodded.

  “How?!”

  He laughed, “Now that’s a Hyllis family secret.”

  “And she can do it by tomorrow?”

  Tarc nodded. “I’m hungry. Shall we see what they have
in the food booths?”

  They’d left the tavern after serving lunch, but without having any of their own, so Nylin was hungry too.

  The food didn’t look very appetizing. The sandwiches consisted of two slices of bread with a thin slice of undercooked meat. No tomato sauce, lettuce, cheese or other ingredients to add flavor or crunch. Bowls of rice or beans. They settled for bowls of beans but on the first spoonful realized there weren’t any spices, not even salt. Food for fuel, not enjoyment.

  Nylin looked sideways at Tarc, “I’m spoiled. I’ve gotten too used to eating Eva’s cooking…” She paused thoughtfully, “I guess it’s no wonder the tavern’s doing so well.”

  “Don’t forget you’ve learned how to cook that way.” He gave her a measuring look, “If you wanted to be independent you could invest your money in opening your own food stand.”

  Nylin looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook her head. “Farlin’d take it over.”

  “We could… make sure that didn’t happen, if you wanted.”

  “I’d rather invest the money. And do it without Farlin knowing about it, at least for a while.” She looked wistful, “Maybe forever.”

  ***

  Thomas Vail, Baron Clancy Vail, turned angrily. “What do you mean, ‘I don’t have enough money’!”

  His financier, Ronald James, shrank back. “You’ve been spending a lot on the addition to the palace.” James paused for a moment, then continued, “And on new weapons for the guardia. And on your wives…” He swallowed, “You’ve just been spending more than’s been coming in from the rents.” He shrugged, “Even after you stopped the repairs on the aqueduct. So, with a lot of money being spent, more than we have coming in, we’ve gradually spent all the money in the treasury.”

  “So, raise the rents.”

  With a fearful but determined look, James doggedly shook his head, “You’ll remember that when your father raised the rents in a similar situation, several important merchants moved to Murchison. That meant a complete loss of those rents and we only achieved a tiny increase in the total amount the Barony was actually taking in. A number of other merchants talked about leaving back then. If you raise rents again…”

  James had stopped speaking when Vail leaned closer, reached out with his power, and stopped the motion of air through James’ windpipe. James’ eyes widened and his hands scrabbled at his throat, tugging open his collar. In a menacing tone, Vail said, “Do I need a new financier? You’ll recall, I want someone with solutions, not someone who’s constantly telling me what I can’t do.”

  Vail released the air in the man’s throat and leaned back. James gasped for breath. After a moment, he ventured, “It might be that if you actually lowered rents, more merchants would move to Clancy Vail. They might rent some of the empty buildings and even build new ones on some of the empty lots.”

  Vail leaned closer again, causing James to shrink back. Vail said, “That doesn’t sound like a solution to my problem right now. It sounds like it might bring in more money next year. Or the year after.”

  Voice trembling, James said, “Let me check around. Perhaps there’re a few merchants who’re doing particularly well. Maybe we could just raise their rents.”

  “That’s more like it,” Vail said. With a flip of the hand, he waved James away, “Go. Figure it out.”

  ~~~

  Robert Simpson, the new leader of Vail’s guardia, tried to pretend that watching James choking hadn’t bothered him. How far away can the son of a bitch do that to people? he wondered. Because everyone seems to get on the man’s shit list eventually so it’s probably going to happen to me someday.

  Maybe if I get up and run away from him, he won’t be able to keep choking me?

  Chapter Two

  Fava looked up as someone approached her booth. It was the handsome teenager who’d bought the unpolished red jasper and lapis lazuli the day before. She lifted an eyebrow and gave him a knowing smile, “Polishing stones isn’t as easy as you’d hoped, eh?”

  He gave her a mournful look and began unfolding a cloth, “I know what you mean. It took my… associate… over an hour to do these.”

  Fava stared in astonishment at handfuls of little spherical beads, flattened disks and ovals, teardrops, and cylinders. All perfectly symmetrical, free of the lumpiness of her own stones, and with a lustrous polish to their surfaces that practically glowed. She sifted through them with her fingers turning them over. She could tell that somehow they’d been made from the best parts of the stone, taken from areas between the imperfections and flaws. Her heart sank. Looking up into his impossibly blue eyes, she haltingly asked, “H-how’d you do this?!”

  “Ah, that’d be our secret,” he said with a proud little smile. “But this,” he waved a hand over the stones, “can be your profit.”

  She grabbed his hand, “Please! Teach me how you did it!”

  Shaking his head, he said, “Sorry, I can’t.”

  “Please!

  “Um,” he said, now looking uncomfortable, “it’d be impossible. My… associate, has unusual skills and is… the only one who can do it.”

  “But,” Fava said plaintively, trembling as she stared into his eyes, “if others start making them your way… however the hell you’re doing it, I’ll be out of business! This’ll destroy me!” She wanted to be strong, but she could feel the tears starting to come.

  He’d gone from prideful to apologetic. With a look suddenly full of sympathy, he said, “I’ll tell you what. If we can reach an agreement for you to buy these from me, I’ll sell exclusively to you. Whenever your caravan comes through Clancy Vail we’ll make more for you.”

  Fava stared at him, feeling like her heart had started beating again. He didn’t look like he’d thought through the ramifications of what… these stones would do to her business until he’d seen how upset she was. She immediately began imagining all the ways he could cheat her on such an agreement. But, after all, he could obliterate her just as easily without such an arrangement. If he honored it, even for a while, it’d give her a chance to find another line of business. “Okay,” she rasped around the lump in her throat. “What’s in it for you… besides a good price?”

  “We have a tavern, the Hyllis Tavern. We’ll sell a few stones here in Clancy Vail, but only at one of the jewelers. You’ll be our only distributor to other cities. That’ll give you good business, yet keep them rare enough that Daus… my associate can make us a good profit without having to spend the time to produce them in huge quantities.”

  Tears running down her cheeks, she put out her hand, saying, “Thank you. My name is Fava.”

  “Tarc,” he said taking her hand.

  “Before we negotiate prices, do you think your associate could make these out of harder stones?”

  He nodded…

  ***

  Daussie studied the diagram of a lens in the ophthalmology book Eva had given her, going back and forth between the diagram and the description. It seemed weird that the lens with convexities on both sides would cause the light beam to converge and the one with concavities on both sides would cause the beam to diverge. But, she could make sense of the effect it had in focusing light.

  Especially, the diagrams showing how the lens in the eye itself caused a light beam to converge at a point on the retina. She felt she could understand how—if the beam didn’t properly focus at the retina—it would result in an image that was blurry.

  That made it much easier to understand Mr. Roper’s glasses. Presumably, his eyes were of the sort that didn’t properly focus the image on the retina and his glasses corrected the focus to let him see better. I wonder whether I could see better if I had glasses?

  She looked up at her mother. “Okay, I kind of get how these lenses could work and I kind of think I could teleport such lenses out of this piece of glass you bought. But, it doesn’t say what the curvature is supposed to be or how thick the lens is supposed to be in the middle.” She carefully turned the page, worried that she jus
t hadn’t gotten to the page that described those details, but the book had gone on to another topic. She shrugged at her mother, “How am I supposed to make one of these lenses without any better description than this?”

  Eva shrugged in return. “I thought you could just do some experimentation. Try cutting out some small lenses with different thicknesses in the middle. Then we can look through them to see what we see.”

  “What do you mean by small? I’d think if they were too thin they’d be really fragile and easy to break.”

  “I just meant not very big around.”

  “But then every time you turned your eyes one direction or another, you’d be looking off the side of the lens,” Daussie said.

  “Making big ones will be hard and take longer, right? I’m just talking about making little ones because they’ll be easy for you. They’re just to see if you can actually make ones that work. Once we’re sure you can do it, then you can make bigger ones.”

  “Okay,” Daussie said doubtfully. She looked at the diagram again, then leaned her head down close to the broken pane of glass Eva had brought her. A moment later a perfect one-centimeter diameter convex lens was rocking on top of the pane. She pulled her head back to look at it, thinking, Wow, it’s pretty!

  Eva held it up and looked through it. “I can’t see much,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Everything’s blurry.”

  Daussie said, “That one’s convex on both sides. According to the book, you give those to people who’re farsighted to help them read fine print.”

  Eva thought back to the lens Mr. Geller’d been using. It was thicker in the middle, or convex, and he said he’d been using it to help him read before the cataracts started making everything so difficult. She leaned down and peered through Daussie’s new lens at the page of the book. “Oh! It magnifies. A lot. Much more than the one Mr. Geller was using.” She held it up about a foot from her eye and looked through it again. She frowned, “What I’m seeing through it at a distance isn’t just blurry, it’s upside down!”