After many turns of experimentation, Swift-Killer understood how the expander worked. Halfway between the mirror and the point where her eye flipped from right side up to upside down was the point where the flare would give off a straight beam. If it were in front or in back of that point, the light would be focused to a point, later to spread out again. For a while, Swift-Killer thought that she had a new weapon, a thing that would burn at a distance, but a little experimentation showed her that it was far easier and faster to poke a hole in a barbarian with a dragon tooth than to burn one with an expander (assuming that the barbarian would hold still long enough).
However, the more she thought about the long-reaching beam of light that she could make, and the old stories about the narrow beams of invisible light that the ancient prophet Pink-Eyes had seen, the more she thought that she ought to talk to some of the scientists back in Bright’s Heaven who were trying to make sense of the still pulsating beams.
It took some discussion with the Commander of the Eastern Front, but after seeing her experiment, he decided to relieve her temporarily of her command and let her make a journey back to Bright’s Heaven.
TIME: 07:54:50 GMT MONDAY 20 JUNE 2050
The road to Bright’s Heaven was long but fast. It stretched out in a straight line along the easy direction from the eastern outpost trooper camp. The way had been smoothed by generations of treads and baggage sleds. Swift-Killer moved along the road at her rapid trooper’s glide, her four button troop commander’s insignia automatically clearing the path ahead of her and giving her preferential treatment at the food stations along the way.
One of the food station keepers was well known for his interesting and nearly inexhaustible repertoire of love kneadings, and she had enjoyed a couple of dalliances in previous trips, but her mind was elsewhere when she passed through this time, so she didn’t wait for him to return from one of his periodic trips to restock his pod bins. She just took the pods that she needed and continued on her way, crushing the pod with the powerful muscles in her food intake pouch and sucking the tingly juices in through the thin skin at one end of the pouch.
Swift-Killer finally arrived at Bright’s Heaven, and after a short formal meeting with the Commander of the Central Defense Command, she took off to visit the Inner Eye Institute, part of the large Holy Temple complex.
“Troop Commander Swift-Killer!” the Institute astrologer greeted her. “We are honored by your visit. The fact that you are here gives us reassurance that the eastern border is safe.”
Swift-Killer’s eye-stubs twisted with embarrassment as the Institute astrologer continued. “That invention of the glancer has given you a reputation among the astrologers here at the Institute. Have you ever thought about leaving the Troopers and becoming one of us?”
Swift-Killer knew what she was best at. Her extraordinary size, strong muscles, and quick intelligence had led her to her natural position as a front line troop commander. They had also given her a new name, when as a youngster just barely out of the hatchling pens, she had killed a Swift unaided, with only a slicer for a weapon. She enjoyed her hobby of trying to figure out how things worked, but she had no intention of making it her life’s work, not as long as there were barbarians trying to destroy Bright’s Heaven. She brushed off the Institute astrologer’s question with one of her own.
“What is the latest news on the strange pulsating beams from Bright’s Inner Eye?” Swift-Killer asked.
The Institute astrologer hesitated. He and the others in the Inner Eye Institute had been undergoing a difficult conversion. Fortunately it had happened so slowly that they had had time to overcome the shock. However, they were not sure yet, so neither the populace nor the rest of the temple priests had been informed of their suspicions. The eyes of the Institute astrologer swayed back and forth rhythmically as he evaluated Swift-Killer. He equivocated.
“The beams from Bright’s Inner Eye continue to bring down a message from the mind of Bright,” he replied. “The beams are invisible except to certain ones who have what is known as Bright’s Blessing, although Bright’s Affliction would probably be a better term for it, as the unfortunate individuals rarely live to breeding age. Fortunately, the alchemists have found a liquid that is sensitive to the invisible beams, and turns color temporarily if a vial of it is exposed to the beam, so now we do not have to search the Empire for those unfortunate ones and drag them away from their clans to interpret Bright’s message to us.”
“The pulsations continue?” Swift-Killer asked.
“Yes,” the Institute astrologer replied. “And there seems to be some pattern to them. We are still trying to analyze what they mean. They come so slowly, one pulse every few turns.”
The fact that the pulsations seemed to have a pattern intrigued Swift-Killer’s inquisitive mind.
“May I see what you have collected?” she asked eagerly.
The Institute astrologer formed a manipulator, extracted a tally string from a storage pouch and gave it to Swift-Killer, who quickly ran a tendril down its length.
“It is a string of numbers!” she exclaimed. “Only it stops at ten and then repeats twice more.” She continued her examination of the tally string.
“This seems to be a number system that only goes to ten, then goes into two symbols to represent things larger than ten,” she said.
“Yes,” he replied, “and if you go on, you will find that after counting to ten times ten, new symbols appear, interspersed with the number symbols.”
Swift-Killer moved quickly over the repetitious section and found the new symbols. First a one, then a strange symbol, then another one, then a different strange symbol, then a two. The Institute astrologer kept his tread still, while his eye-stubs watched the tense body of Swift-Killer. Finally her eye-stubs resumed their normal wavelike motion and she started murmuring.
“One plus one equals two, one plus two equals three, two plus two equals four …” she said. She then turned her attention to the Institute astrologer and her eyes stared at him, twitching nervously. The Institute astrologer clenched his tread muscles and waited for Swift-Killer’s brain to realize what he and the others in the Institute had finally had to face.
“This is nothing but a primer in arithmetic, but in a number system that goes only to ten. Surely Bright would not waste time to send such a trivial message, and take so long to do it. This is more like an interpreter trying to learn one of the barbarian tongues.”
Swift-Killer hesitated, for what she was about to say next went against all her early religious training. “It is almost as if there were a strange clan of barbarians living on the Inner Eye, and trying to set up communication with us,” she said. “But that cannot be!”
The Institute astrologer kept his tread quiet and passed over another tally string. This one was a fringe string, with many strings knotted to a main string, and with each side string containing many knots. At first Swift-Killer could make no sense of it, for there were no symbol groups, only large and small knots. She felt through the fringes, puzzled by the large blank sections.
“It took us a long time to figure that one out,” the Institute astrologer admitted. “In fact it was a novice who literally stumbled onto it, when he happened to glide across the tally fringe as it lay on the crust. Here, let me arrange it.”
The Institute astrologer took the tally fringe and laid it out as a rectangle on the crust.
“Now glide onto it carefully and see what your tread tells you,” he said.
Following his instructions, Swift-Killer moved her body onto the large rectangle, and suddenly it all became clear. Whereas her eyes could only see the tally string at such a low angle that everything was distorted beyond recognition, her touch sensitive bottom tread could absorb the picture all at once.
“It is like a map,” said Swift-Killer, who utilized devices when planning large scale campaigns. “But it is not any place that I know …”
She hesitated, and then said, “Wait … In this large c
ircle, this tiny feature here must be the Holy Temple, and this must be Bright’s Heaven—but everything is so distorted. The circle must be Egg itself, and these seven small dots must be Bright’s Eyes.” She looked again at the Institute astrologer and said, “This is a picture of Egg and the Eyes of Bright. But why is everything on Egg so distorted? It looks like it has been stretched in the east-west direction.”
“We don’t know,” said the Institute astrologer. “We are still trying to figure that out. We have since received another picture map, and the present signals are in the process of beaming down a third one.”
“May I feel them?” Swift-Killer asked.
The Institute astrologer pulled out two more tally strings from carrying pouches and laid them out on the crust without comment. They were close enough together so that Swift-Killer could spread herself out to cover both of them at the same time.
“This shows the Eyes of Bright,” Swift-Killer said. “But the smaller Inner Eye is not just a featureless circle like the others. It has strange markings and circles on it and there is a cylinder sticking out of one side. And this other is an enlargement of the Inner Eye, and you can see forms inside the circle, as if you were peering though holes in the Inner Eye.”
Swift-Killer paused. “What does all this mean?” she asked.
“We are not positive,” said the Institute astrologer, “but we think that those things we can see inside the orifices are strange beings.”
“But they are so sticklike and angular, they would be broken in a moment,” she exclaimed.
“They are floating in the sky above the east pole, so they seem to be immune to the gravity pull of Egg, although why they want such long manipulator bones is unknown.” While the Institute astrologer had been talking, Swift-Killer had been reexamining the pictures.
“The Inner Eye looks like a giant machine,” she said. “This thing at the top of the cylinder looks like a glancer in a holder, and these other things look like my expander.”
“What is an expander?” asked the astrologer.
Swift-Killer finally remembered that she had not yet told him of her discovery. She had come to give him some new knowledge, but instead had been bedazzled with one new concept after another.
Swift-Killer formed a manipulator, reached into a carrying pouch and pulled out the expander and the shrinker. Then she explained their odd behavior to the Institute astrologer as he moved them back and forth in front of one of his eyes.
“This curved shape for a glancer means that it can send a beam of light a long way,” she told him. “And that is probably why they exist on the Inner Eye thing, to send the beams down to us on Egg.”
The Institute astrologer moved onto the tally pictures on the crust, and compared the shapes of the things protruding from the Inner Eye with the object that he held.
“The shapes are very similar,” he said. “You are probably right. But what is this about sending beams?”
“I came to give you a demonstration,” Swift-Killer said.
“Wait,” the Institute Astrologer suggested. “I will gather the rest of the members of the Institute.”
Soon Swift-Killer was the center of attention as she demonstrated her bright light source and the way the expander could bring the light into a hot spot, or send it off in a straight beam.
After several demonstrations, Swift-Killer let some of the more eager novices play with the new toy. As she flowed back to talk to the Institute astrologer, she could hear others starting to grind away at two plates to make their own expanders.
It was soon obvious to all in the Institute that Swift-Killer’s new invention provided a means to signal back to whatever it was in the Inner Eye that was beaming down messages to them. After several turns, they set up a bright light source and started sending off a coded message aimed at the Eyes of Bright. They kept it up for many turns, but nothing happened; the pulsed beam from the Inner Eye continued its methodical blinking, slowly finishing off the last picture. After many, many turns, Swift-Killer had a thought. Far to the east of Bright’s Heaven was a fracture ridge that stuck up just over the horizon. Its side was the quarry for the blocks that were used to build the housing and storage compounds for Bright’s Heaven. Swift-Killer decided to go out to the quarry, and make the arduous climb up the slope to the top; then she would look for the beam of light that the astrologers would send periodically in that direction.
After a dozen turns, a dejected Swift-Killer returned to the Institute.
“It is no wonder that Inner Eye is not responding to our signals,” she said. “I can just barely see them from the top of the quarry.”
“I was afraid of that,” the Institute Astrologer said. “The Eyes are so low on the horizon that our light beam has to travel a long way through the absorbing atmosphere. It is too bad that the Eyes of Bright are hovering over the east pole, if it were hovering above us, we could not only detect their beam easier, but they could see our pitifully weak attempt at a response.”
Swift-Killer shivered at the thought of something hanging over her in the sky, but agreed that Bright had certainly sent his seven Eyes to the poorest spot in the sky for seeing.
Then suddenly, Swift-Killer had an idea.
“If we went to the east pole, we could send our light beam straight up to the Inner Eye. The distance through the atmosphere would be a lot shorter, and the beam would be going in the easy direction and would not fade so much.”
“But nobody goes to the east pole,” the Institute astrologer protested. “The land is full of barbarians, every direction that you move is in the hard direction, the sky is hot and full of volcano smoke, the crust is too bristly to move on … No cheela could survive there.”
“I know it is not as nice as Bright’s Heaven,” Swift-Killer said. “But cheela can survive there. After all, as you said, the place is infested with barbarians.”
“Actually,” Swift-Killer went on, “the troopers on the eastern border have penetrated a good way toward the east pole in punitive raids on barbarian settlements. We have them cowed enough that they would not bother a good-sized expedition.”
A discussion of the pros and cons of Swift-Killer’s suggestion continued for many turns. The cost would be high, especially in terms of the number of troopers that would be needed to guard an expedition deep into barbarian territory. It was beyond the resources and authority of the Inner Eye Institute, and the idea might have been dropped if the last section of the third picture had not been so dramatic. The picture of the machine with the strange beings was remarkable enough (for there was no doubt that the sticklike things seen vaguely through the holes in the Inner Eye were beings). But up in one corner of the picture was a similar figure placed next to the familiar (although stretched) outlines of the Holy Temple. It seemed incredulous, but the markings left no doubt that the being was about one-twelfth as big as the Temple. When the new picture was completed, the Institute astrologer decided that he had better inform the rest of the ruling authorities of their discoveries.
Initially, the High Priest and the Chief Astrologer were perturbed about the Institute astrologer’s interpretation of the pictures, but finally accepted his version as no threat to their religion by assuming that Bright worked in a mysterious way, and that some time in the distant future, it would all become clear to them.
The Leader of the Combined Clans, although nominally a devout worshiper of the God Bright, was willing to compartmentalize her mind and look at the pictures without being bothered by the religious overtones.
“Weird looking creatures,” the Leader said. “And giants at that. Yet if they have learned to hover in the sky without falling down, we could learn much from them, and they seem to be willing to talk to us. It can’t hurt to learn more. Proceed with the expedition.”
There was no doubt in anyone’s mind who would be the leader of the expedition. As a combined astrologer-thinker and battle commander, Swift-Killer was the obvious choice. With the authority of the Leader of the Com
bined Clans behind her, Swift-Killer organized the expedition. They would be gone for many, many turns, and meanwhile the work of the Institute had to go on, so she only took a few of the younger astrologers and novices. A good supply of flares and concentrated pod juice were obtained under her direction, and during that time a few excellent large-diameter expanders had been manufactured by the careful grinding of newly trained artisans. One of the expanders was so large in diameter that only a few of the novices could get a carrying pouch around it; once it was pouched, they could carry little else.
For the trip out to the eastern border, no troopers were needed for protection, and the food stops sufficed for supplies. However, messengers were sent ahead to gather the supplies that the expedition would need in the turns ahead. Soon, Swift-Killer returned to take over command of her troop of needle troopers, for naturally she had requested that they supply the guard for the expedition. Soon the entire party was assembled. Rations were distributed, and civilians were taught the elementary thrusts of the short sword in case a barbarian ever penetrated to the center of the circle formation. Finally they left, gliding easily over the crust toward the east magnetic pole.
TIME: 07:56:29 GMT MONDAY 20 JUNE 2050
Dead-Troopers pulled her eye down from its crystallium-cored stub and pushed her way off in the hard direction, keeping her body as thin as sex until she was well over the horizon. She could not figure out why this circle of troopers were penetrating so far into her territory. The scouts had reported that they were on the move, and she had acted to defend the nearest village that would have been an obvious target for a punitive attack, but the circle of troopers had carefully worked its way around it. Such behavior of Empire troopers was new, and Dead-Troopers hated anything new. They were up to something, and she would stop it—but what?
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