The Flying Sorcerers

by David Gerrold

  By the end of the day, many of them, including my own wife, were spinning thread fine enough to be used for aircloth.

  Already, Purple was organizing. We had almost six hundred unwed women in our two villages. There was little work for them to do except for their own foodgathering and grooming.

  But now we could make good use of all that wasted labor: we would put them to work spinning. And if that were still not enough women to produce thread for Purple, we would let our wives work as well.

  The experiment was definitely a success.

  Purple was not one to waste time. Quickly, he appointed the apprentice and novice weavers to a variety of new tasks.

  The boys were eager and willing when they found out what their tasks were to be. Purple was creating a new trade — womenherders. These boys would be supervising the work of the women. They were delighted when they realized that finally they would be giving orders instead of taking them.

  The herd of unwed women would be split into three groups; one group to spin, one to gather the raw fiberplants and wisptrees, and the third to comb the fibers smooth for spinning. There were approximately two hundred women in each group, but these were split into smaller herds of thirty to fifty each.

  Even old Lesta was impressed. “I have never seen such a work force as this. I would not have believed it possible.”

  And then realizing that he had just complimented Purple, he added, “I’ll never work, of course.”

  But it did. Purple appointed another team of men, this time weavers, to go out into the hills each day and gather housetree blood. They had giant urns which Bellis the Potter had made for us. Once the urns were sealed, the housetree blood would stay fresh until we were ready to use it.

  It was no secret that we were going to need it in vast quantities. We would need everything in vast quantities. We had already dispatched runners to the other villages with samples of aircloth and invitations to their weavers and their women. If Lesta had thought Purple’s army of labor was impressive with only six hundred women, he had not seen anything yet.

  As the thread was spun, a team of novices would dip it into a vat of seething housetree blood, then slowly, slowly roll it up on a high suspended spool so it would have a chance to dry in the air.

  It soon developed that Purple was unhappy with this method. If the thread should happen to touch anything while it was still wet, it would pick up flecks of dirt just barely large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Purple would rave and swear — the gas, he insisted, would leak around the particles of dirt and his flying machine would fall into the sea.

  Further, the boys were complaining about the heat from the vats of boiling sap. The season made it all the more stifling.

  The solution was to move the spinning wheels and the vats up onto Idiot’s Crag. The boys enjoyed the change, for it was cool and quiet up there in the wind; and the women did not seem to mind the extra half hour’s walk up the slope.

  More important, the dipping and drying process was improved. As each thread was soaked, a great loop of it was stretched far down the crag, around a pulley, and back up again to be wound on spools. The wind held it aloft, and the boys pulled it from the housetree blood as fast as they could wind it through the wringers. The thread was clean and dry — and even shinier than before.

  I stood up on the ledge with Purple one day. The work was progressing smoothly — with a minimum number of obstacles. Along the cliff edge were nearly two hundred women and spinning devices. There were fifty boys tending the vats of housetree blood. Loops of newly spun thread stretched out before them. Another twenty boys were winding it up on spools.

  Wilville and Orbur had built several great spool winding devices. Each consisted of a rack of spools, a set of pulleys and two cranks. Each was powered by four boys, two on each crank, and wound up the thread faster than ten boys could do working alone.

  Below, in the villages, there were almost ten looms now, each producing three patches of aircloth every five days. It was still not enough — but we were getting there.

  Already, weavers from other villages were arriving, eager to learn this new secret. Many were shocked when they saw we had women spinning or that we had bone teeth on our looms — but most stayed to learn and to work. New looms were going up every day.

  Purple and I stood on the edge and surveyed the scene below us. The waters of the sea were already lapping at the Lower Village, and several of the housetrees had already been abandoned.

  “How high will the water rise?” I asked. “Will it menace the looms?”

  “I hope not. Look below. You see the tree line? That’s where Gortik says the waters rose to last year. Apparently that’s as far as the sea carried the new soil. You are lucky to have a fresh water ocean here, Lant. Where I come from, the seas are salty.”

  “That sounds unpleasant,” I said. I looked out over the greasy blue water, remembering how it had been aching desert only a short time ago. “I wonder where all the water comes from.”

  Purple said absent-mindedly, “When you pass between the suns, the ice caps melt.”

  I looked at him oddly. After all this time, he still spoke gibberish. Probably he would never lose the habit. Abruptly, I realized just how accustomed to Purple’s presence I had become. I no longer thought of his strange ways as being strange — just different. I had stopped thinking of him as something queer and alien — it was only when he said something undecipherable like this that I was reminded that he was not of our people.

  Indeed, I had even become used to the sight of his naked and hairless face.

  Until, suddenly, I looked again.

  “Purple,” I exclaimed. “Did you miscast a spell?”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Your chin, Purple — you are starting to grow hair all over your chin and on the sides of your face!”

  His hand went to his face. He rubbed — then he started laughing, a deep booming laugh.

  I didn’t think it was funny at all. There were many, like Pilg, for instance, who were still bald from head to toe because of a miscast spell.

  Still grinning, Purple took a fist-sized thing from his belt and said, “Do you see this, Lant?”

  “Of course.”

  “It is a — magic razor, moved by a particular kind of magic called electrissy.” I think that was how he said it. “I will need the power in my razor to help make the lighter-than-air gas. So I have stopped removing the hair from my face.”

  I peered at him curiously. “You mean you can grow hair?”

  He nodded.

  “But you have been removing it willfully?”

  He nodded again.

  Strange. Very strange. I peered again. “But, Purple,” I asked, “if you are going to stop removing the hair from your face, why do you not stop completely?”

  “Huh?” he said. Then realizing that I was refering to the rest of his naked face, he started laughing again.

  I still did not see what was so funny.

  The next day, Purple attempted to separate water into gases. Men of both villages came to watch.

  The magician had obtained two lengths of copper wire from the coppersmith. These he attached to the rim of a large pot of water, using wooden clips, so that the end of each length of wire trailed in the water.

  We watched as he disconnected a spell device from his belt. It was a flat bulging object like the one in the light tube he had given Shoogar many months ago — only bigger. He called it a battery.

  He explained that it stored the magic called electrissy. When it was connected to his impact suit spell-belt, it powered several of the other devices attached there. He indicated, but did not explain. The only devices he had that did not depend on his battery were a lightmaker which had a tiny battery of its own, and a radiation counter, which Purple said needed no battery at all.

  The battery was a heavy object — heavier than one would expect for its size. There were two shiny metal nodes at one end of it. Purple twisted the
free end of each copper wire around these nodes, one to each one.

  “Now,” he said, “all I have to do is turn the battery on. This dial tells me how much power I have. This knob controls the rate with which I release it. When I switch the battery on here, I will activate the spell and the gases will separate.”

  With a knowing look, he did so. We waited.

  I heard a — sizzling — and looked into the pot.

  Tiny bubbles were forming on the ends of the wires, breaking free and streaming toward the surface.

  “Ah,” said Purple. He turned the knob. The water began bubbling more vigorously. He smiled proudly. “Hydrogen and oxygen,” he explained. “From this wire comes oxygen. From the other comes hydrogen, which is lighter than air. We will want to trap the hydrogen. It will lift the airbags.”

  “Oh,” I said. I nodded as if I understood. I didn’t, but I felt that I should at least pretend. Besides, I had expected something more impressive.

  I stayed long enough to appear polite, then returned to my bone carving. I had seven apprentices now — and al-though they were quite capable of doing the work without me, I still felt it my responsibility to check on them as often as I could.

  We were using sheepbone now. We had great amounts of it drying in the sun. It would not be the petrified bone that was so hard, of course, but it would still be usable. Such was the difference between wet bone and dry bone.

  The apprentices themselves were working busily. Purple had suggested that they work in a new manner. One lad cut the bone into flat segments, another sanded the pieces down to fit into the loom slots, a third cut grooves into the bases so they would lock into the frame, a fourth and fifth cut the slits into the edges, while the sixth polished the finished pieces. The seventh serviced the tools of the first six and kept them sharp. Thus they were able to produce more loomteeth than they could have working alone.

  Purple called it a “division of labor’ — every job could be reduced to a few simple tasks. If all a person had to do was learn one task only, it would simplify and speed up all methods of production. Nobody had to know everything.

  Except Purple, of course, but then — he was the magician.

  He had set up his put-it-together lines all over the village. There were put-it-together lines to spin the thread, to weave the cloth, to build the looms, to make the spinning machines. Everywhere there were great numbers of things to be made. Purple taught the people his put-it-together magic.

  In fact he once explained to me that the whole region had become a put-it-together line for a flying machine. We could build others in the future, he said, if we so wished. All we had to do was keep the put-it-together lines going, and we could build as many as we wanted.

  It was a staggering thought!

  When he heard it, Shoogar’s ears perked up. It was no secret what he wanted. An evil gleam came into his eyes, and he headed off to the mountains, to await the fall of darkness and a chance to glimpse the moons.

  Fortunately, the nights stayed cloudy.

  Purple had odd ways of speaking — even odder ways of doing things — but if we gave him the chance, his ways worked.

  He proved it time and time again.

  For instance, he had figured out a way to keep Gortik from crashing his bicycle into trees. He had suggested that Wilville and Orbur add a pair of smaller wheels to it, one on each side of the rear wheel. It kept the machine from falling over.

  Gortik was so grateful at finally being able to ride his bicycle that he allowed Wilville and Orbur to trade their other machines in the Lower Village — but only if they did not have “Gortik wheels” on them. He wanted to be the only one with a “crashproof” bicycle.

  Wilville and Orbur were pleased at this turn of events. They had figured out a put-it-together line of their own — with only four apprentices they might be able to build as many as two bicycles per hand of days. They were eager to try it out as soon as they finished the flying machine.

  At the moment, however, they had more than they could handle building spell devices for Purple.

  For instance, he wanted bagholders — great frameworks to hold the aircloth bags over the bubbling pots of water. Thus he would trap the gas as it rose from his hydrogen wires.

  Bellis the Potter had been asked to make great funneled pots for these frameworks, and had already finished the first one. In addition to the opening at the top through which the water would be added, it had two long spouts reaching up from either side. One was narrow and delicate; the gas-making wires were set so that the hydrogen gas would rise up through this spout. The other gas would bubble away harmlessly through the other spout which was wide and stubby.

  An airbag — completely empty — would be hung on the framework over the pot and its mouth would be attached to the proper spout. When the wire was attached to the battery, Purple hoped the bag would fill with hydrogen.

  But none of the airbags had yet been sewn together, only two of the frameworks for holding them had been built, and only one of the water pots had been finished. Bellis the Potter was being recalcitrant.

  Originally he had been delighted at Purple’s request for great amounts of pottery — but he was not delighted at Purple’s suggestion that he use women to help make the pots. Not for gathering clay, he said, not for turning his wheel; not for polishing the finished pots, and not for cleaning his tools — not for nothing! No women, he insisted. Women were for breeding — and that was all they were for.

  Purple said that it had already been proven that women could do such simple labors as spinning and gathering.

  Bellis shook his head. “Spinning does not require much thought. Pottery does.”

  “H’m, that’s what Lesta said. Only he said it was pottery that did not require much thought.”

  “Lesta is an old fuzzwort. There will be no women working on my pots —”

  “Is that your final word, Bellis?”

  “It is.”

  “Oh, dear. I had hoped you wouldn’t say that. Ah, it’s just as well. I have already sent for some potters from the other villages. They have said that they are willing to work with women. I guess I will have to deal with them. I will be seeing you —”

  “Wait!” said Bellis. “Maybe it is possible. We will have to try it and see.”

  In other words, everybody wanted to work with Purple now — even if it meant changing one’s way of working.

  And something else: just as we were learning from Purple, it had become obvious, just from listening to him bargain, that he had learned something from us as well.

  By now Shoogar had completed the cultivation and consecration of every housetree in the region except for three wild ones he had left for Purple to use for his aircloth.

  For a day and a half, then, Shoogar wandered around the village looking for things to do, amusing himself with minor spells here and there to patch up minor problems.

  Finally he complained to me. “Everyone has something to do with the flying machine, but me! There are no spells that I have to cast to make it work properly — all of them are Purple’s spells.”

  “Nonsense, Shoogar. There are many spells you can cast.”

  “Name six!”

  “Well, ah — surely you can use your skill on the preparations for the flying machine. The aircloth for instance.”

  “What is there to do with the aircloth? They weave it, they dip it — it holds air.”

  “But surely, there should be a blessing over it, Shoogar, shouldn’t there? I mean it is like trapping Musk-Watz the Wind God. There should be some kind of amelioration spell.”

  Shoogar thought about it, “I believe you are right, Lant. I will have to investigate this — certainly the Gods should be involved m this flying machine.”

  I followed him down to the weavers’ work area, a great pasture just under the crag. There were more than forty of the giant looms thrusting back and forth now. The noise was tremendous — each loom creaked and shuddered protested mightily. The raucous
cries of the team leaders tumbled one upon the other until I wondered how the various weavers could tell who was commanding what.

  We held our hands over our ears as we strode through the row upon row of machines — each with a tiny patch of air-cloth growing in its heavy frame.

  I noticed with some dismay that the field here had been ruined by so much traffic — the blackgrass had given way to dirt, and dust hung heavy in the air. That was not good for the cloth. Even though each piece was carefully washed before it was dipped, it still was not a good idea for it to be exposed to so much dirt.

  Doubtless we would have to move the looms farther apart.

  We found old Lesta down near the end, supervizing the construction of three additional looms. Shoogar pulled him away from the work, and away from the noise. “I must talk to you,” he said.

  “What about? As you can see, I’m very busy!” Even as he spoke, he fidgeted with his robe and growled at the scurrying apprentices.

  Well,” said Shoogar. *I have been doing some calculations —”

  “Oh, no — not more calculations!”

  “It is about the aircloth — we cannot weave it without offending Musk-Watz — that is, we can weave it, but we must offer a spell of appeasement for every piece and over every loom —”

  “I cannot afford it,” groaned Lesta. “I have enough magic already to make my hair fall out —”

  “You would risk being hit with a tornado —”

  “It would be a blessing,” snapped the weaver. “I would at least have a bit of peace.” He waved his arm, “Look, you see all these looms? Each one is commanded by a different weaver — and each weaver pays homage to a different God. There is Tukker the god of names, Caff the god of dragons, Yake the god of what-if — more Gods than I have ever heard of! And each of those weavers is demanding that his cloth be woven in a pattern sacred to his God!”