by Garon Whited
Palays, on the other hand, really didn’t want to talk to me a lot. He was brusque and cold. I wasn’t sure what he was upset about. Maybe he was upset about multiple failed invasions. Maybe he didn’t like Sparky’s religion. Maybe he didn’t appreciate my part in destabilizing the Church of Light and Rethven. Maybe he just didn’t like nightlords. Pick any of the above or invent your own.
Unfortunately, while I might be able to recover Drannis’ daughters, that wouldn’t help Rogis. And if Byrne pressed south, Rogis’ military problem would rapidly become Drannis’ problem, hostages or no hostages.
Byrne was a problem for them, and therefore, a problem for me. Of course, Byrne was the logical culprit for the bungled assassination attempts, too. It gave us a common enemy. That’s always a help when trying to make friends.
What did Prince Parrin have against me? If I asked nicely, would he tell me? Sure, it was unlikely that I could just fix it, whatever it was, but it would be nice to know. I’d much rather undercut his desire to fight than take an army into the field and watch men get slaughtered. I’m just a wuss, I know.
I consulted with Tort, my Grand High Everything. Her spies didn’t have a good answer, but she promised to look into it.
At her mention of looking into it, I thought of crystal balls and Anni. The magical arts of the seers of the gata are different than the scrying arts of magicians, even different from the Ribbon of wizards. It was more like one of those odd talents that people developed, like smiths singing to metal or the dancers of the People of the Plains. I don’t understand how they do what they do, but it couldn’t hurt to ask her to look into it. Anni agreed, but also cautioned me.
“It’s not an easy thing, you know, to look into the hearts of men. I’ll see what there is to see, but I don’t know him. If I see anything at all, it will still be murky and dark. You may have to see for yourself.”
“Young lady,” I said, which made her smile, “you know very well that I’m not nearly so artful as you.”
“No, but you’re the one toward whom his hatred flows. I stand on the side of the stream and watch it go by; you can wade in its depths and take the measure of the current.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t know how.”
“If I cannot find what you want,” she said, softly, “I will show you how.” Her voice dropped lower. “I am the eldest of my gata; it is mine to decide. But, if I must, I want something from you.”
“What would you have?”
“No, let us not speak of it. It may not come to that. Run along, old man; I’ll tend to your wants.”
“As you say, young lady.”
I finally ran out of excuses after lunch. Torvil made it a point to bring me lunch in the conference room, where I was working on the sand table. He also brought Kammen and Seldar with him.
“Sire.”
“Torvil. What’s on your mind?”
“You say you have a warrior spirit in a crystal. We would like to be the first to be taught by it.”
“’We’? Or you, and they are coming along?”
Torvil turned pinkish, but didn’t answer. Kammen did.
“Sire. He says it’s dangerous, or that you think it might be. He’s willing to give it a go, and I’ll be dead a week before I let him do something dangerous without me.”
“I agree with Kammen,” Seldar said, “although, perhaps not about being dead for a week.”
“I see,” I said. Well, someone had to try it, and I’d be right there with them…
“Come with me.”
I found T’yl and brought him along. After I explained the general outline of what I’d done, I explained what would happen.
“We’re going to go into the crystal, much like a wizard visiting a mental study. Time will seem to run much faster there; how much faster, I have no idea. The crystal is really a sophisticated quantum computer core and may have a processing speed greater than…” I trailed off at their blank looks. “It’s a very powerful magical crystal and may cause time to go much faster in there than in a typical mental study.” They got that.
“Inside, there’s a warrior spirit that I’ve created, forging it out of all the knowledge and experience I’ve gained from hundreds of thousands of souls. We’ll work with it in there, learning from it. Then, in between lessons with this teacher-spirit, we’ll practice what we’ve learned. Questions?” Torvil held up a hand.
“Sire, why is this dangerous? In what way?”
“There are several ways I can think of where it could go horribly wrong. It could dump too much information into your head and burn out your mind. It could affect your motor skills—that is, your coordination, and so cause you to die in twitching convulsions. It could copy itself into your heads and destroy who you are, making your body the host for a copy of the warrior spirit. Should I go on?”
“No, thank you.”
“Anyone want to not do this?” I asked. Kammen and Seldar raised their hands. I sighed and rephrased my question. “Is anyone not going to do this?” They lowered their hands again.
“Right,” I said. “Everyone pick a table. Lie down on it, head toward the crystal.” While we did that, T’yl walked around the whole thing, looking it over.
“My lord? What do you wish me to do?”
“Observe us closely. If we start to… well, if we start to react badly, tell Firebrand. It will tell me.”
Is that why I’m here, Boss?
No. You’re here because I don’t want to let you out of arms’ reach. You were gone for too long.
I missed you, too, Boss.
I am going to let T’yl hold you, though; you’re no good for this job if you come inside with us. I do want you to listen in on everyone while we’re inside and see if you can detect anything that might be considered damaging. Work with T’yl on this, would you?
Makes sense. I don’t like it, but at least T’yl isn’t going to go thinking he can actually use me for hacking at anything—nothing annoys me more than being wielded by an incompetent.
So, you’ll do it?
Sure, Boss.
“Here.” I unbuckled Firebrand and passed it over. T’yl greeted it and they exchanged a few pleasantries.
“Everybody ready?”
“Yes,” said Torvil.
“Yes,” said Kammen.
“No, but go ahead,” Seldar said.
I activated the enchantments on the tables and we went into the crystal dojo. It was a very nice place; it ought to be. I spent enough time designing it. My composite warrior-spirit greeted us with great courtesy, quizzed us for a couple of hours on what we hoped to achieve and why, and then invited us to join him on the mat.
It is possible I made my virtual training simulator a trifle too real. On the other hand, if it doesn’t hurt, you don’t react as you should. I guess I did it right. Painfully right.
We didn’t eat; we didn’t sleep; we didn’t feel the need. We did nothing at all that wasn’t fighting or related to fighting. There was a startling amount of philosophy involved, most of which seemed a mixture of Zen awareness and Arthurian chivalry. They actually went together surprisingly well.
After some unmeasured time—a week? Two weeks? It was a long time to spend in a high-pressure learning environment, anyway—I felt that psychic tickle that meant someone was trying to reach me. Knowing that could only mean one thing, I bowed to the teacher, as did the other students, and we were dismissed. We exited by the same door we entered.
I sat up with a headache. Torvil, Kammen, and Seldar stayed where they were and groaned. Well, my brain has more practice at directly absorbing knowledge. It goes with my vampiric digestion.
Boss?
Yeah. I have a headache.
I figured. T’yl says the other guys were starting to struggle, so I tried to let you know.
Good work.
Aloud, I asked T’yl how we did.
“You were in communication with the crystal for several moments,” he said. “The effects were immediately noticeabl
e, but not too serious. After a very short time, however, the mortals began to suffer a low-level degradation in their urushti… ah, that is, one of the aspects of their living being.” He shrugged. “I have a spell that will let me look at a soul, but it does me no good if I don’t know what I am looking for. Magicians look for several qualities in potential magicians, and the urushti is one of them. Theirs was becoming overtaxed.”
Urushti. Yes, I recognized the word. It might be best described as the temperature tolerance of a computer core. You can overclock the core to make it run much faster, but that makes it hotter, too; that maximum tolerable temperature would be the urushti. The urushti of a person was the spiritual equivalent. A person’s spirit could be forced to do more, do it faster, and do it more strongly than it normally should, but its ability to be pushed beyond its normal limits would be measured as the strength of the urushti.
Of course magicians would look for candidates that had a strong urushti.
“So, how long were we in there?” I asked.
“Moments. A hundred heartbeats, perhaps.”
Torvil groaned again. I glanced over at him.
“Problem?”
“No, Sire. I just… now we have to practice all that again.”
“You’re the one who wanted to try out the prototype.”
“Yes, Sire.”
I got up and stretched. Could I put a timer on it so lessons ended in, say, one-third as long? Make it one-quarter. Thirty seconds, maybe? That might work. We would see how my three coped, first. If there were no side effects, then we could see about regular virtual lessons for all the knights and maybe the squires. It might even be part of the basic training package for the army, when I got around to having one. Possibly even for the senior city guards and the militia.
On the other hand, I still had a headache. I saw how the three were leaning on each other and reached a decision.
“Day off,” I told them. “You got a lot done just now.”
They didn’t argue about it. They didn’t even try. That’s how I know they were beat.
As long as I was doing things with a massive time differential, I decided on a trip through the gate again. There were a number of things I could deal with in a very brief time, that way.
Covering Bronze in a magic-concentrating field was one of the things I wanted to test. I doubted I could cast such a thing on the other side—at least, I doubted I could cast one that large, or that effective—but if I put it on her here, it might help her feel better over there.
T’yl helped me with it. He seemed quite impressed that I added a subroutine to tell the spell to follow the surface of an object. I let him be impressed. It’s actually more efficient to make it a sphere, maximizing the volume inside so that it can store more magic. On the other hand, increasing the surface area of the Ascension… well, Field, I suppose… should mean that it intercepts more magic, even if the interior space isn’t as large. One is appropriate for a high-magic environment, the other is better for a low-magic environment. Maybe. They both have their good points and bad points.
With Bronze prepared, we opened the gate and I was back in the library. I also fell flat on my face and writhed on the floor. Stabbing pains wracked me and it felt as though I’d just been hit by a one-two combination of concrete floor and steel ceiling.
It passed after what must have been forever—three seconds, maybe.
I became aware of Bronze nuzzling me and Firebrand asking, Boss? Boss? Can you hear me? Are you okay?
“That,” I said, slowly sitting up, “is a stupid question.” I patted Bronze’s nose and climbed to my feet.
Yeah… I guess it is, Firebrand admitted. Are you okay now?
“I think so. Yes. Dead, but fine. I’ve just… I think I stepped from a sunlit time zone to a nighttime time zone. I’ve never gone through a full transformation in three seconds before.”
Sounds awful. Looked awful.
Bronze nodded, still worried.
“Felt awful, too,” I agreed, “but I’m all right, now. Let’s see about getting out of this library and finding another one. We’ve got magical tests to run on Bronze and some computer crystals to find.”
What’s a computer?
“Remember that crystal with the warrior spirit?”
Sure.
“That crystal was the heart of a computer.”
Then we’ll kill the computers and take their hearts!
I’ve missed Firebrand.
Bronze munched on carnivorous vines while I tried to figure out what time it was. The sky was overcast, which wasn’t good; dawn might be ten hours away, or one. I brought a leather body bag, just in case, but I wanted a better idea of what to expect.
While Bronze grazed, I got out the chalk. My spells might not have a lot of punch behind them, here, but they could still be useful. I started with a cleaning spell—the slow version that basically used my own movement to scrub me clean. Call me what you will, I don’t like being covered in my own filth.
Since I still had time, I then worked on a visor spell; this one would simply put a field over the open eyes of my helmet. That area would shift the higher frequencies of electromagnetic radiation down into the visible range. I put more than one layer on so I could get different slices of the spectrum—radio, microwave, ultraviolet, and x-ray. I figured that would give me a good sample of stellar radiations and I could, hopefully, identify things like the North Star and some of the other constellations even through the clouds.
When I looked up at the sky, I had a much better view of the stars. Overcast or no, I could see. The stars were there, blazing away in glorious colors! No feeble, twinkling points of white, these, but brilliant lights in the sky.
I had a hard time recognizing them. Their magnitudes altered markedly with the addition of false spectrum colors. It took a little while to puzzle out the shapes I knew. North was that way, so… that was Polaris. If that was the North Star, then there was Orion, and the Dippers. And there was the Moon, pale and shadowy as it reflected a feeble glow, but studded with bright points like diamond dust.
Fast-moving stars flew across the sky, glowing bright as small suns.
I stood there in the dark, gazing upward at the lights of the heavens, and wondered.
Satellites, yes, solar-powered and beaming out radio signals for all to see. No problem. But what was on the Moon? Communications relays? Human colonies? Aliens?
It’s only a quarter of a million miles. All I need is a space program. Maybe I’ll cobble together a radio and a parabolic antenna and see if anyone answers. Someday.
Meanwhile, I guessed I had about half the night left. Bronze felt pretty good, so I rode to other buildings. She stayed outside to graze while I carefully cracked open doors.
Why are we being careful? Are computers dangerous?
“No. Well, yes, they can be, but I doubt these are in any condition to bother us. They’re old.”
So, why are we being careful?
“There’s no telling. I might want to come back here for something I haven’t even thought of. If I just bash holes in the walls, wind and rain and animals will get in for free. They might ruin things.”
Thinking ahead, huh? Smart, Boss.
“Immortality problems,” I replied. “I have to think ahead; there’s a lot of it.”
After searching several buildings, I realized the university’s computer model had changed over the years. Instead of hundreds of computers connected through a network, each building had a central computer with dozens of terminals. All the work in the building was done on that central machine. Each building’s machine communicated, presumably, with the others, although I didn’t find out how—landline, radio, microwave, superpowers, or what. I couldn’t even tell if there was a peer-to-peer network between the buildings or if they all linked to a central machine.
Still, I managed to vandalize—excuse me, “salvage”—a dozen computer cores. If I could build a combat simulator, I could certainly build a scholar.
People could teach it things they learned, which would preserve that knowledge for anyone who needed it later. Mathematics, literacy, magic… or simply sheep-shearing, thread-spinning, and weaving.
There were other reasons I came through the gate, though.
Bronze took me back to the police station, where I did a more thorough job of ransacking. The weaponry was at least as modern as the armor. At one time most of it was, presumably, electronic and nonlethal. Naturally, it no longer worked. They did have some ballistic weapons, once I forced my way into an arms locker. They appeared to be based on electromagnetic propulsion, though, rather than on combustion gases.
This was not helpful.
We searched downtown for a bit; I found an antiques dealer. There were some antique firearms in his shop, but they did not meet with my approval. Sure, the nickel-plated revolver was nice, but someone had filled the barrel with a clear substance. Everything that looked capable of firing was treated that way. The older pieces—or the worse-preserved ones—were not, but I wouldn’t risk my hand by trying to use them.
Where else might I get weapons? National Guard armory? Military post? Would they have anything useful left?
We went to find out.
Later that Day
I originally thought that we would head toward Horsham Township and the joint base there, at least until we started to head through Harrisburg. Well, what was left of it.
Whatever else happened while I was gone, they definitely nuked the place. My spectrum-shifting visor spell was still going. As we got closer, I could see some places glowing with faint radioactivity.
If I fed Bronze some plutonium, would that fuel her? Or would it just make her dangerous to sit on?
Nevermind.
Harrisburg was a wasteland. Nothing grew there. How long had it been? Long enough for the buildings that survived the blast to give way to rain and wind. Crumbled ruins and mud, that’s all.