Triplet

by Timothy Zahn

Ravagin had already seated himself cross-legged near the sky-plane’s center. “Any time you’re ready,” he said, cocking an eyebrow up at her.

  Swallowing, she stepped gingerly onto the carpet and sat down behind him. It yielded to her weight just like ordinary cloth would have, and she had to force herself to remember that visitors to Shamsheer had been using these things safely for over a century. To say nothing of the world’s inhabitants themselves, of course, who’d been using them a lot longer.

  “Sky-plane: to Kelaine City,” Ravagin said … and without so much as a lurch, the carpet stiffened around her and lifted smoothly into the sky.

  Carefully, Danae let out the breath she’d been holding and concentrated on Ravagin’s back. Never before in her life had she suffered even a twinge of acrophobia … but never before had she been five hundred meters up on something that had no business flying in the first place. Licking her lips, she tried another calming breath and kept her eyes away from the blue sky surrounding them on all sides.

  “How’re you doing?” Ravagin called over his shoulder.

  “Fine,” she said, too quickly.

  His head twisted around for a look. “Yeah, you look fine,” he growled, “Your profile said you didn’t have any fear of heights.”

  “They never tested me on an open-air rug,” she returned tightly.

  He sighed. “You didn’t believe the info packet either, huh? Amazing how many don’t. All right: stick your hand over the edge of the sky-plane.”

  “What?” she said.

  “You heard me. Reach out over the edge.”

  She opened her mouth to say no … and then clamped it shut. If she could fight her father, she could fight this, too. “All right.” She reached gingerly out … and right where the fringe began ran into a solid wall.

  An invisible wall, but no less real for that. She poked at it again and again, trying different spots along the side and rear edges of the sky-plane, eventually building up enough courage to put some real muscle into her jabs. Nothing.

  “You can try kicking it, if you want to, or even poking my knife at it,” Ravagin offered when she finally gave up. “Wouldn’t bother the field at all—whoever designed these things had a healthy respect for safety. I’d have thought the lack of wind up here would’ve clued you in.”

  She frowned, realizing for the first time that the air around them was indeed perfectly still. “I … yes, I guess I should have noticed that. I’m sorry.”

  He waved a hand in dismissal. “Like I said, it happens a lot. Most visitors seem to have trouble believing in something they can’t see. Which can be a real problem when they get to Karyx.”

  “It’s not just that,” Danae told him, feeling an obscure need to explain her reaction. “I did remember that sky-planes were supposed to have an edge barrier, but all the force-fields I’ve ever seen have been milky white or totally opaque. I guess I just made the assumption that this one was out of order.”

  “Sky-planes don’t fly when something’s out of order,” he shook his head. “They go to one of the Dark Towers for repair, either under their own power or another sky-plane’s.”

  Danae grimaced. She was already feeling like a fool over the irrational fear that was only slowly ebbing, and Ravagin’s condescending attitude toward her was doing nothing to help. “I’m sorry I’m not perfect,” she snapped with more vehemence than she’d intended. “If you people would put together better information packets—or if you bothered to include some real photos—”

  His eyebrows went up, and she clamped down her jaw in utter disgust at herself. “Damn. What am I saying?”

  Ravagin sighed. “Hey, look, just try to relax, okay? You’re right—the Hidden Worlds are a big shock and the packets don’t really prepare newcomers for them. So just settle back and learn. And don’t be afraid to ask questions.”

  She turned her head away from him, forcing her eyes to shift downward over the sky-plane’s edge. Passing a ways off to the right was a hexagonal wall surrounded by several large clumps of houses. “Is that Castle Numanteal down there?” she asked grudgingly.

  “Right,” he nodded. “Would you like a closer look?” Without waiting for an answer he turned back toward the front edge of the sky-plane. “Sky-plane: stop.”

  Obediently, the carpet glided to a halt and sat hovering in midair. “Sky-plane: to Castle Numanteal,” Ravagin said, and they turned and headed downward.

  “We’re going to land in the castle?” Danae asked uneasily, the descriptions of Shamsheer’s guardian trolls flashing through her mind.

  “No, I’ll cancel the course again before we get there,” he assured her. “This is the best way to see the place, though.”

  She pursed her lips, acrophobia evaporating as she studied the stronghold they were approaching. “Are all those houses clustered around the wall inside the troll perimeter?” she asked.

  “The inner perimeter, yes. You can see that they form a rough hexagon, too, like the castle wall and the outer protectorate boundary.”

  Danae nodded again. “The info packet seemed to talk a lot about hexagons when describing the Shamsheer landscape.”

  “Oh, the obsession is definitely there. The Dark Towers are also six-sided, as are the forest and desert areas surrounding them. No one knows why.”

  “Sounds like a giant game board,” Danae said, only half jokingly.

  “Don’t laugh—there are people who take that theory seriously,” Ravagin said, an oddly grim note to his voice. “Someone built the Tunnels, after all—why couldn’t they have built both of the Hidden Worlds, too? And made Shamsheer into a giant game?”

  Danae shivered. “I don’t like that idea at all. Two complete worlds, just for a game?”

  “I don’t buy it myself,” Ravagin shrugged. “Where’s the gamemaster, for instance, if that’s what’s happening? And if Shamsheer’s a game, what’s Karyx supposed to be? There are other theories that make more sense.” He leaned over toward the sky-plane’s side. “We’re coming up on the castle.”

  Danae followed his gaze. They were no more than half a kilometer from the outer wall now and perhaps two hundred meters above it. A half-dozen buildings were visible inside the wall, and she tried to match them up with the sketches she’d seen. The manor house itself was easy—looking vaguely like a huge inverted mushroom with four rocket fin-shaped entrance halls anchoring it to the ground, it dominated the space near the center of the enclosure. In one corner of the hexagon was a smaller hex-shaped building that was probably the local House of Healing; in another corner was the Giantsword power generator/broadcaster. Near the manor house, in the exact center of the enclosure, was a small geodesic dome. “The Shrine of Knowledge?” she asked, pointing to it.

  “Right,” Ravagin nodded. “It’ll be where the castle-lord’s crystal eye is kept.”

  “I’d think he’d put it inside the house where he could get at it more easily.”

  He shrugged. ‘The villagers can petition the castle-lord to use the eye for information on what’s happening elsewhere on Shamsheer, and this way he doesn’t have to let them into the manor house itself. And you have to remember that none of these people understand these gadgets, not even the ones they use every day. Once tradition has the crystal eye in a shrine of knowledge, who’s going to risk moving it into the manor house?”

  Danae grimaced. “No one, I suppose.” They were starting to come around in a wide circle now, and she could see another building and a flat area set against the closer parts of the castle wall: the horse/vehicle stable and the sky-plane landing area, respectively.

  And they were aiming directly toward the latter. “Shouldn’t we be getting out of here?” she asked, starting to feel a bit nervous. Trying to explain an unauthorized landing inside a castle enclosure wasn’t the way she really wanted to start her trip.

  “In a minute,” Ravagin said calmly. “Castle-Lord Simrahi’s used to people buzzing his castle—half the visitors through the Tunnel come by here and want to t
ake a look.”

  “I’m sure he loves the attention,” Danae retorted. “Don’t you think it’s possible he might get tired of it one of these days?”

  “And do what? As long as we’re not actually bothering anyone he’s not going to have his soldiers or trolls try and shoot us down.” He pointed ahead and upward. “Besides, it doesn’t look like he’s even home at the moment.”

  Danae followed his finger. Moving against a mottling of high cirrus clouds she could see a tiny golden ball. “A bubble?” she hazarded, though there wasn’t much else it could be.

  Ravagin nodded anyway. “Sure is. Take a good look—you probably won’t see one of these things again. Most of the visitors I’ve brought in here never even get this close.”

  Danae reached a hand up to shade her eyes. A crystal throne surrounded by a translucent, golden-hued force-field sphere was the way the Triplet information packet had described the thing. It had further added that, seen close up, bubbles were possibly the most dramatic piece of technology on Shamsheer. “How do you know it’s Simrahi’s bubble, though?” she asked. “I mean, it could be any castle-lord up there, couldn’t it?”

  “Sure; but after all we are right in the center of the Numant Protectorate. For all the pomp and relative plushness bubbles allow them, castle-lords really don’t travel all that much outside their own territories.”

  The bubble disappeared behind the clouds, and Danae returned her attention to the castle enclosure, her eyes flicking to the tower rising from the wide circular roof of the lower manor house. At the tower’s top a crystalline dome glittered in the sunlight … “How does the bubble get out of the sky room?” she asked. “Does the dome split or what?”

  “No idea,” Ravagin said. “I’ve never been invited aboard one for a ride. Ah, look—there’s someone wearing the livery of the castle-lord’s guard: red, silver, and black.”

  And the man in question was looking directly up at them. Danae’s mouth went dry; in her interest over the bubble she’d almost forgotten they were still headed straight for a castle landing. “Hadn’t we better be changing course?” she asked, as calmly as possible. “Even if the castle-lord’s gone, there are still a lot of people down there who might take exception to our flying over them.”

  “Why?” he asked. “You have to remember, Danae, that Shamsheer’s only partly a feudalistic society, and that that part isn’t really like the Earth types you’re probably thinking about. There’s no interprotectorate warfare here, for starters, and correspondingly no regal paranoia.”

  “I understand all that,” Danae gritted. The castle was close enough now for her to make out the individual bushes lining the roadway from gate to manor house … and to see that the faces of the troll guards were also lifted in their direction. “I would still like to get out of here.”

  “If you insist. Sky-plane: stop. Sky-plane: to Kelaine City.”

  The carpet’s descent reversed, and as it rose back into the sky and headed eastward again Danae took a deep breath. Her hands were beginning to tremble with reaction to what she still considered to have been a close call. She turned to glare at Ravagin … and found he was already watching her. Watching her entirely too closely. …

  “You did that on purpose,” she accused him coldly. “Didn’t you? You wanted to see how easily I got rattled.”

  His expression remained calm. “I like to know what sort of person I’m going to be traveling with. The Hidden Worlds can be dangerous at times.”

  “Isn’t that your job?—to protect me?” she retorted. “I noticed I wasn’t offered any weapons back at the Tunnel.”

  “Women of your station in life don’t carry weapons.”

  Something cold tickled her back. “What do you mean, my station in life?”

  He gestured at her clothing. “You’re dressed as a minor noblelady. Nobleladies don’t carry weapons—they have men like me to fight for them if and when necessary.”

  Danae grimaced, a sour taste rising into her mouth. “I’m perfectly capable of fighting on my own if I have to,” she told him stiffly. “I’ve had training in both armed and unarmed combat styles—”

  “Wonderful,” Ravagin interrupted. “If you have to fight for your life and I’m not around, you have my permission to rip his ears off. Otherwise yell for help and let someone else take care of him. Fighting is out of character for women here, and we don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to ourselves. Understood?”

  “I suppose so.” She gestured to the black glove with its tightly coiled spiral hanging beside the dagger on his belt. “Though if we’re going to talk about attracting attention, isn’t that scorpion glove a little out of place in this part of Shamsheer?”

  “It’s somewhat rare, but perfectly acceptable,” he shrugged. “They’re underused mainly because it takes less training to learn how to hack at someone with a sword and people here have no more patience than any other human beings you’re likely to meet. Translation: don’t grab for the glove if something happens to me and you need to defend yourself. You’re more likely to gift-wrap yourself than to damage your opponent.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said icily.

  Ravagin nodded and turned back toward the front of the sky-plane, apparently missing the sarcasm completely. Danae scowled at his back, feeling her already ebbing excitement toward this trip sink a point or two further. Here she’d finally escaped from her father and Hart, only to find another man who wanted to run her life for her—worse, one who was apparently determined to treat her like a child in the process.

  Damn him. Damn them all.

  Still …

  Shaking her head, she put the irritation firmly out of her mind. She was here to do some work, and to do some study, and Ravagin was an unavoidable part of that project. She would ignore his patronizing attitude as much as she could, recognizing that she would be having the last laugh in the end. And she would remember that there was always one final resort available to her here, one that would put her beyond reach of them all, forever.

  Taking a calming breath, she directed her gaze at the landscape passing beneath them, studying the world that would be her home for two months. Or perhaps longer.

  Chapter 6

  THEY PASSED OVER THE edge of the Numant Protectorate about half an hour later and entered the hundred-fifty-kilometer-wide strip of territory between Numant and the Ordarl Protectorate to the east. The edge of the Numant Protectorate was more sharply defined than Danae had expected it to be, with villages and even sections of farmland breaking off abruptly at the border.

  “Seems rather extreme,” she commented to Ravagin. “Are the Tweens really that dangerous?”

  “Some of them are, certainly,” he shrugged. “You have to remember that a castle-lord’s trolls can’t go even a meter outside their protectorate and most of the robber gangs take full advantage of that. But a village like the one back there on the border probably doesn’t see a troll more than twice a year unless there’s trouble. Mostly I suspect that it’s psychological, that if you choose to live under a castle-lord’s rule and laws you do so whole-heartedly, without any fence straddling.”

  “And there aren’t any corresponding villages just outside the border because it’s not safe to live in anything that small in the Tweens?”

  “Partly that; partly that if you’re going to live in this part of the Tweens anyway, you might as well be closer to the Giantsword in Kelaine City.”

  Danae digested that. “I thought the power broadcast from the Giantsword network reached everywhere on Shamsheer. What does living near one do for you?”

  “You’re thinking about it like someone from a technological culture,” Ravagin said. “Why don’t you try pretending all this stuff is pure magic instead and see if you can come up with anything.”

  Danae gritted her teeth. Just when she’d started feeling more relaxed in Ravagin’s presence, here he was being condescending again. “I presume it has something to do with the fact that Giantswords
are associated with the castle-lords and are therefore a symbol of authority?”

  “Basically,” he nodded. “That’s presumably why the major Tween cities got started around them, anyway. That and the belief that Giantswords were where a castle’s troll protectors lived.”

  Danae frowned. “I thought there aren’t any trolls outside the protectorates.”

  “There aren’t. But that doesn’t stop people from believing that they’re safer in the shadow of a Giantsword—any Giantsword—than they would be elsewhere. Pure sympathetic magic.”

  Danae shook her head, caught somewhere between disbelief and contempt. To live in a world fairly dripping with technology and yet have no concept of how or why any of it worked—it seemed incomprehensible.

  And yet. …

  Her eyes fell on the scorpion glove at Ravagin’s belt … traced the tightly coiled four-meter whip attached to its back … drifted to the wide wrist strap and the incredibly sophisticated neural sensors it somehow contained … and an old, old saying quoted in the Triplet information packet came to mind: A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  Perhaps, she decided, the people of Shamsheer could be forgiven for their ignorance, after all.

  Castle Numanteal and the surrounding villages had been solidly locked into the hexagonal pattern that dominated every protectorate Ravagin had ever seen. Kelaine City, situated dead center in the Tween strip between Numant and Ordarl, had no such built-in constraints. The city was a sprawling mass of houses, shops, small industries, stables, and even scatterings of cultivated land, all of it clustered around the only hexagon in the place, the plot of land around the Giantsword’s base.

  “Is that Kelaine City?” Danae asked from behind him. “It’s bigger than I was expecting.”

  “That’s it,” he nodded. “It’s actually only about the twentieth largest city on Shamsheer, but it’s got a lot of cottage industries and that spreads it out more than some of the others that have a larger population.” They were over the city’s westward edge now, and Ravagin leaned as close to the sky-plane’s edge barrier as he could to peer at the ground below. An oversized gap between buildings caught his eye, and he thought he could see the tiny rectangles of other sky-planes there. “Sky-plane: stop,” he ordered. “Sky-plane: descend.”