As I approached I noticed Shoogar also was working with Grimm. He was holding a copy of — of Purple’s blue-drawings! He seemed to be directing something. When I came closer I realized that Shoogar either had figured them out or —
No, it soon became apparent. He was directing the transference of the pattern onto the cloth. Knowing that the bag would form a sphere when inflated, Shoogar wanted the proper spell markings on it. Accordingly, he was using ; the best flying spell available — Purple’s. After all, weren’t the blue-drawings the airship itself? Wouldn’t it be necessary to have blue-drawings on the balloon in order to make it lift? Shoogar had taken on two apprentices, and they were painting the lines in wide swatches.
I continued on down to the village, where I ran into a disgruntled group of villagers. They were setting up tents beneath their housetrees. “I am not going to live in a prickly plant,” Trimmel was saying. “I absolutely refuse.”
Others murmured their agreement. I tried to quiet them the best I could. “As your Speaker —” I began.
“Some Speaker — you were part of the dancing!”
“Uh, it is necessary for the Speaker to be on good terms with the magician,” I said. “He invited me to dance. I couldn’t very well refuse.”
“All right,” grumbled Snarg. “What are you going to do about it now.”
“I’m not going to do anything — Shoogar is. He has promised to reconsecrate all your housetrees as soon as he gets a chance.”
“As soon as he gets a chance? That could be days!”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “He has authorized me to give you blue spell tokens. You will be able to redeem them later.”
There was some grumbling at this, but no serious dissent. Spell tokens were accepted in both the villages now.
A voice called, “So where are the tokens?”
“My apprentices are making them,” I said. I hurried back to my work area and quickly stained some bone chips blue. I directed my assistants to stain as many blue ones in the future as purple ones. We would need both.
I returned to the villagers and began distributing the tokens. There was a little more grumbling about the houseblood-gathering teams. Some villagers felt that the magicians had no right to take their housetree blood, even if it was a prickly plant now. I paid them a purple token for Purple, and they were satisfied. They disappeared into their nests to sleep.
I wandered downward to the weaving pastures. The weavers were grumbling because Shoogar had not shown up today to offer the morning blessings. I gave them some blue spell tokens in lieu of the blessing. “These are spell tokens too. Shoogar spell tokens. They are just like the Purple ones, only Shoogar will redeem them.”
They eyed the blue chips warily. They hadn’t liked the purple ones that much, but they had been forced to accept them. Now they were having another chip introduced, and they liked it even less.
I prevailed upon them. “Shoogar will redeem these as soon as he has time. This is only the promise of a spell. As soon as he catches up with everything else, he’ll come by and consecrate the cloth. Go ahead and weave.”
Glumly they did so. Now they were getting paid in blue chips and purple chips.
I pocketed the balance of the tokens; I was carrying several of each, and wandered back up to the village. Here and there were a few people I had missed earlier in the day, still moaning about not wanting to live in prickly plants. I gave them some tokens, blue ones for the reconsecration spell, purple ones for the use of their housetree blood.
Having solved those problems, I felt that I had earned my pay as Speaker and went downslope to see Ang the Net Tender. “Ang, have you a fish for my dinner?”
He produced a fine flatfish, already plucked. “I will trade you for it,” he said.
“A bone utensil?”
“No,” he shook his head, “bone rots here.”
“H’m, how about some of the new cloth.”
I put my hand into my robe fold and found one last blue token. “How about a magic spell?”
“You’re not a magician.”
“No, but Shoogar is. I will give you this token, which is the promise of a spell.”
“H’m,” he eyed it warily, “I would rather have one from Purple.”
“I can do that.” Fortunately, I still had a few Purple tokens with me. I gave one to him for the fish. He handed me the fish and a bluetoken. “Here is the difference between the value of the fish and the value of the purple token. One Shoogar.”
“How did you get a blue token?” I asked. I had just distributed them a few hours earlier. I had not given one to Ang.
“I traded a fish for three blue tokens earlier. Also, I traded for some cloth, but they didn’t have enough for me, so they gave me some tokens in exchange, telling me I can trade them back later.”
“Oh.”
Something about that troubled me. While my wives prepared the flatfish for dinner, I realized what it was. People were trading those spell tokens as if they were the actual spells themselves. But they weren’t. They were only the promises of the spells.
But then again, a promise is a symbol of an act, and a symbol is the same as the act itself.
They were trading magic!
It suddenly occurred to me that it was possible for a magician to make enough “promises” to release an inordinate amount of magic into the village. There would have to be controls of some kind. Oh well, it was Shoogar’s problem now, not mine.
Three days later, Grimm finished the first of the giant airbags and began working on the second.
Shoogar and Purple, Wilville and Orbur had already claimed the first one and folded it carefully over the giant filling framework that Wilville and Orbur had built so many hands earlier. Three other filling frameworks waited empty nearby.
“Only four windbags?” I asked.
“No,” said Purple. “I hope to use more. But we will probably only need four frameworks. We can only fill one bag at a time, and it will take a while to lay each empty one on a framework. While we’re doing that, we can fill the others. We’ll do it in rotation.”
“Oh,” I said. “What is this trench that runs below?”
“That’s for the water — instead of using water pots, we are going to use a trench. See these funnel affairs on the side? That’s where we will attach the hydrogen-making wires — the airbag mouths will attach here. The oxygen-making wires we will put down at the other end of the trench. We won’t need them.”
“By using a trench,” said Orbur, “we will be able to generate much more electrissy —”
“No,” corrected Purple, “we will be able to make better use of it. It will fill the balloons faster.”
“We can fill four balloons at once,” said Wilville, “or one balloon four times as fast. It all depends where we put the wires and funnels.” He held up an odd-looking aircloth bag, a collection of sleeves. “We can attach this to several gasmaking funnels, and lead all their hydrogen into one balloon.”
“It looks as if you have been doing a lot of work,” I said. “All you need now is the electrissy.” Purple winced when I said the last word. He always did when I spoke of electrissy. I asked, “Have you and Trone succeeded in making a magic maker?”
Purple sighed. “Yes. Elcin’s wrath, but that gave me trouble! Trone did everything right, mind you, but I wound the wire wrong, and then it took me a while to figure out a commutator —”
“A what?”
“Alternating current, Father,” said Wilville. “We can’t use it.”
“We have to change it to direct current,” said Orbur.
“Never mind. Pretend I didn’t ask.”
“Okay,” said Purple. “Anyway, it’s working now. It doesn’t make as much electrissy as I’d like, but Trone is building the bigger machines and hopefully, they will be ready before the airbags are. Would you like to see them?”
He didn’t give me a chance to refuse, but led me up at the slope to where one of the ever-present apprentices was sitti
ng on a bicycle frame and pedaling wildly — but getting nowhere.
“What is he doing?” I asked.
“Look,” said Purple. “Isn’t it obvious? He is making electrissy.”
I looked. All I saw was a complicated arrangement of cranks and belts and pulleys making a spinning thing turn as fast as it could. Two wires led from the spinning thing to Purple’s battery.
“He is restoring its power?” I asked.
“Oh yes — he could never restore all of it,” said Purple, “but he can make enough electrissy so that it will not run out on the journey.”
We trudged farther up the slope. We found Trone and half a dozen other men, working with some giant frameworks of iron and copper. I had never seen so much metal in my life. “Where did you get so much?” I asked.
“We practically had to ransack every smith on the island,” he grunted. Apparently he wasn’t too happy about it, but then Trone was rarely happy about anything.
“When will the bicycle frames be ready?” he asked.
Purple groaned. “Oh, no — I knew I forgot something.” He looked at me. “Your sons have been building bicycles and bicycles — all without wheels. They have built them to power the airship, and to make electrissy for my battery — now they will have to build more, many more. As many as possible to power these spinning things.”
“How many will you need ?”
“At least ten or more for each spinning thing. If we have more, we can turn them faster.”
“And how many spinning things are you hoping to build?”
“At least four — but we won’t have to wait until they are all through before we can use them. As each one is finished we will put it to work storing power in the battery.”
I nodded. I was doing some figuring, “But, Purple, you are asking for forty bicycle frames — without wheels. That’s a lot of bicycles. It takes time to build that many machines.”
“I know, I know. We had better go back down and talk to the boys. We may have to start another put-it-together line. This time for bicycles.”
As we trudged downslope, I noticed that a different apprentice was on the bicycle now. The first was resting. “It is very tiring work,” explained Purple.
“Oh, come now,” I said, “I’ve ridden bicycles —”
“It’s not the bicycle,” said Purple. “It’s the generator. Try turning that crank on its other side.”
“All right I took the handle in both hands. I waited while the apprentice dismounted from the bicycle. He was panting heavily.
The crank did not look that hard to turn. I pushed on it.
The crank turned easily when I moved it slowly, but the faster I moved it, the more it fought me. An invisible spirit was pushing back. I felt my fur trying to stand on end.
I let go of the handle and backed away slowly. The crank whirred to a stop.
“There — now you see why we need a boy on a bicycle. Legs are stronger than arms. Even so, they still get tired. Can you imagine how hard it will be to make a big machine spin?”
I nodded my head. “I can see, I can see. You will need more than ten bicycles to a machine.”
“Right,” said Purple.
When we explained the problem to my sons, they nodded understandingly. “We may have to recruit every free man in the village to make a bicycle put-it-together line.”
“Do it,” said Purple. He turned to me, “You will have to make some more spell tokens, won’t you ?”
I nodded.
Wilville and Orbur did not seem as depressed as I had thought they would be when Purple told them of the number of bicycles they would have to build. Apparently they had been talking about their bicycle put-it-together line for some time. This would give them a chance to try it out sooner.
Purple began talking over the details with them, “Of course, we will want to fill all the airbags at one time — that means we won’t launch the flying boat until all four generators are working. But as each one is finished we’ll put it to work storing power. My battery will hold as much electrissy as any of these machines can turn out. The best part about it is that we can use it to supplement the power from the generators when we are ready to launch the boat and fill the airbags that much sooner.”
“Won’t you run the risk of making it dead again?” I asked.
“Not really. It has a power meter on it. That tells me how much power I have left. I have figured out how much we will need to be sure of making the trip north safely. As long as there is that much in the battery, we are okay. Anything over it we can use for the launching. I can regulate the outflow of the power, Lant, so as to fill the balloons as fast as I can on launch day.”
I nodded knowingly. I hadn’t understood a word he had said — but I felt he needed the reassurance.
The waters continued to rise. The surf crashed higher on the slope every day. The tides came in — and in and in and in, until most of the people of the Lower Village were forced to move up the slope. Only the tops of the housetrees marked where the major portion of the village had been. Occasionally a nest would break free, and be seen floating away.
The Upper Village was fairly crowded, but we were able to manage with a minimum of doubling up. Wilville and Orbur were able to recruit quite a few men for their bicycle put-it-together line. It gave many of the villagers something to do while waiting for the waters to recede, and there were those who were eager to earn extra spell chips.
By the time the first twelve bicycle frames were finished, Trone had finished the first of the big spinning things — generators he called them. The boys connected up the bicycles that same day.
Shoogar had recruited twelve good men for the first test. They stood nervously to one side and grumbled to themselves. They were unhappy about the prospect of making electrissy. Shoogar kept fumbling with his magic kit, and every time he did, the men twitched in response.
No matter. As long as we could perform the test.
Purple checked over the wires that led across the hill to the water-filled trench. When he was ready he signaled Shoogar with a wave of his hand. Shoogar bade the men mount the bicycles.
At another command they began pedaling. The generator began spinning, slowly at first, then faster and faster — it was making electrissy. Sure enough, down by the trench there was activity — other men were clustering around the wires.
I left the generator crew and approached the water trench. From one end, oxygen bubbled steadily upward. At the other, Purple was just fitting a clay spout over a water-immersed wire. To this he attached a small airbag. Within a few minutes it was full.
He tied it at the neck and released it. It drifted gently upward. This time though, there was no panic — only a cheer. We were becoming more and more used to this spell. indeed, it was almost commonplace by now.
Purple was delighted. He signaled Shoogar to stop the pedaling. He then trudged halfway up the hill and connected his battery to the leads from the generator.
“All right, Shoogar,” he called, “start them up again.”
Shoogar growled an order and the twelve men began pumping again. It looked strange to see them pedaling as hard as they could and getting nowhere — but it was only a foretaste of things to come. Purple wanted a whole army of men up on the hill, pedaling wildly.
The smaller generator — the one powered by one apprentice on a bicycle — was dismantled then, and its parts cannibalized for the larger generators. It was one less bike frame to build and that much more wire that could be used.
Wilville and Orbur were pleased at the success. That the twelve bicycle frames had been built so quickly testified to the efficiency of their put-it-together line. “I figure we could have at least fifty bicycles before another hand of days is up, said Orbur.
We started trudging up the slope to where the airboat waited. Wilville replied, “I think only part of it is the put-it-together line, Orbur — remember, we have an awful lot of people working for us too.”
“Yes, but we
had to teach them.”
When we got to the Crag the boys pointed out what still needed to be done on the airboat. Some of the rigging structures to hold the ropes for the balloons had not been secured yet, and Wilville wanted to add at least one more coat of hardener to the sides of the airboat. It felt hard enough to me, but then it was my sons who would be flying in it, and it they felt they wanted it hard, it was their boat.
Orbur explained that he had adjusted the airpushers as well as he could, but he wanted to experiment some more with “higher” gears. He wanted to try putting smaller wheels on the spinning sections and larger wheels on the bicycle frames. The connecting pulleys should then make the airpushers spin even faster. But he needed new pulley cloths first. He hoped to have them before this hand of days was over.
Wilville sighed as he began heating his hardening solution. “I’m glad that most of the other building is over — we could have had this boatframe finished months ago had it not been for all the bicycle frames and filling frameworks and cranking machines we have had to work on.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But the boatframe couldn’t have gone anywhere until all the other work was done first. You needed the aircloth and the generators and the cranking thing for making loomteeth and —”
“It’s just as Purple said. You have to make the tools with which to make the tools to make the tools,” Orbur called from above. “That’s just what we have been doing. You can’t just build an airboat — you have to build the put-it-together line which can make the pieces which will make the airboat.”
“Imagine the size of the put-it-together line for Purple’s black egg,” replied Wilville.
I tried to, but I couldn’t.
I noticed a figure trudging up the hill then — it was Shoogar. He had come to inspect the flying machine.
“Oh, not again,” groaned Orbur. “He’s up here almost every day now, asking questions and annoying us —”
“He’s only trying to understand the spell,” I said. , “He will never understand the spell,” said Wilville. “He is a —”
“Watch it,” I cautioned, “whatever else he may be, he has phenomenal hearing.”
The Flying Sorcerers Page 24