by Roger Moore
“Come in, come in, come in, come in, come in!” Teldin shouted, too tired to throw something at the door.
“Ah, then I’m glad I’m not bothering you,” said Dyffed cheerily, letting himself in. Sporting a thick bandage on top of his bald head, tied down with a strip of white cloth, the little gnome also wore a new set of gold-rimmed spectacles, probably having lost his previous pair in the ship crash. He was dressed in maroon pants, a white shirt with a round, stiff front made of white paper, and a gaudy green-and-gold jacket with at least eight pockets visible on the front. His short beard was neatly trimmed, and Teldin could tell that the gnome had probably had a bath, his first in a while.
“You’re looking splendid, if a bit pale,” said the gnome, beaming up at Teldin from the side of the bed. “They’ve gone and put you in the humans’ ward, too, so the doorknobs are all at your height and the water closets don’t bump your ankles and you can sleep without feeling you’ve been stuck in a bookshelf. Simply splendid. I must tell you, your joke about One Six Nine is quite the rage around the yacht club, and even First Commodore Smedlookinblakburdincan was quite beside himself, laughed until he nearly vomited and had to be taken outside and given water. Marvelous sense of humor, but that’s not why I’m here. Just sign these.” The gnome pulled a stained sheaf of papers from an inside pocket of his jacket and spread them out on Teldin’s chest. He then produced a short, black stick with a coppery point on one end. “You can use my portable hydraulic transcription device if you like,” he added, “but mind the ink. Refilling it takes four hours.”
Teldin made no move to take the black stick. He valiantly resisted the urge to punch the gnome in the nose. “What are you talking about? What are these?”
“Ah,” said the gnome, pointing a stubby finger at various sections of the papers as he spoke. “This is a legal statement giving me permission to accompany your expedition to the Spelljammer – not just any spelljammer, of course, but the one-and-only Spelljammer – purely for scientific purposes. This is a release form that absolves you from any responsibility for all accidents, illnesses, or injuries, to include death and/or dismemberment, that I might suffer while in your company. This is a release form that absolves me from any responsibility for all accidents, illnesses, or injuries, to include death and/or dismemberment, that you might suffer as a result of anything that I do for research purposes. This is a waver that grants —” Teldin snatched the papers out of Dyffed’s hands and almost wadded them into a ball. Instead, with the greatest single effort of willpower he ever recalled using, he carefully handed them back to the gnome. “I am not signing anything,” Teldin said with finality, “and it doesn’t matter if you want to go or not. We have no ship. We’re stuck here.”
“Oh, but we do have a ship,” Dyffed corrected him. “The Board of Admirals has given us an excellent ship from the naval ya – um, um, yacht docks, silly of me – an excellent ship from the yacht docks, ready for its trial run. Within a few days, we shall be off to see One Six Nine.”
The charade about the “yacht club,” on top of everything else, managed to push Teldin’s temper to its limits. “Why do you persist in calling this a yacht dub?” he demanded. He half sat up in bed again, feeling his face flush with anger. “This is a naval base for spelljammers, isn’t it? Gnome spelljammers?”
“Shhh!” Panicked, Dyffed waved his hands in front of Teldin’s face. “Careless vocalizations produce maritime disasters!” he hissed, glancing fearfully at the open window.
“Damn it, everyone knows this is a naval base!” Teldin protested. “I knew that when Gomja brought me ashore on his boat! All the gnomes wear uniforms, you have huge catapult and ballista towers surrounding this valley, you have a military dry dock, and even your security commander told me it was a naval base!” As he uttered those last words, Teldin instantly wished he could take them back. He had undoubtedly just sunk Gomja’s whole career.
“First Colonel-Commander Herphan Gomja has a security clearance that allows him to say it’s a naval base, but you don’t!” Dyffed retorted, unfazed. “As Colonel-Commander Gomja says, the void holds many foes, even if that’s not logically correct because a void should be empty and hold nothing. Regardless, we ask that you please not refer to this base, the lake, or the airspace above it, out to a fifty-mile altitude, as anything other than a yacht club. If our enemies knew that we were working on a coherent-beam, synergized thaumamplifer here, they’d —” The gnome froze, his face filled with horror at his words. “No! I meant, if they only knew we were working on a secret birthday party for the admirals here, they’d be all over us. It’s the nature of space monsters, always crashing birthday parties.” Dyffed drew a shuddering sigh, his face pale. “I’ve been working on this weapons project for so long, I almost forgot the code words.”
Teldin thought about this latest revelation. Whatever this secret weapon was, he didn’t want to be around when it was set off. “Forgive my asking,” he said, “but were you working on this, uh, birthday party at the Rock of Bral?”
“What? Oh, yes, I was. Their library was of considerable help, too, though I don’t think they understood a scrap of what I was doing there. Elves!” The gnome rolled his eyes. “Wonderful people, of course, but absolutely no concept of real science. The admiral and I got along quite famously, though, thanks to his interest in the Spelljammer – that’s the one-and-only Spelljammer, of course, not just any spelljammer. We used to talk about that for days. He must have asked me a thousand questions about it. That’s the sort of thing that happens when you get a proper schooling, none of this ‘Everything I Needed to Know I Learned on Dungeon Level One’ nonsense. That was why he had me go with you, so I could perform a scientific analysis of the Spelljammer when you found it, then answer all of his own questions about it later.”
The gnome paused for breath, and Teldin broke in. His worst suspicions were dangerously close to being confirmed. “What kind of questions was Admiral Cirathorn asking about the Spelljammer?”
Dyffed hesitated, lost in thought. “Oh, the usual things, of course, that a scholar of history might ask. How big was it, what kind of weapons would it carry, how could you control it, where would you find it, what sorts of military things might you do with it if you had it, would your cloak have any effect on it, that sort of thing. Natural curiosity.”
Natural curiosity, hell, Teldin thought. I should have known. Why in the name of the Abyss do I keep trusting everyone I meet and hoping they won’t stab me in the back with the first chance they get? I never thought the elves would do it, but I’ve not been seeing this in perspective. The Spelljammer is more valuable than gold; it’s real, raw power, and no one can turn away from it, not the neogi, not the mind flayers, not the pirates, evidently not the orcs who attacked us, and apparently not even the elves. Possibly not even the gnomes.
“At any rate,” Dyffed went on cheerfully, “my research assistants and I shall accompany you when you leave to find the Spelljammer. We’re going to find out what makes the Spelljammer squeal, as they say, but first we’ll be off to see dear old One Six Nine. I’ve communicated with him only by parcel for the last sixty years. He was quite a help to me on the, uh, um, birthday party. We’ll be bringing it with us, by the way. It should be a marvelous trip.”
*****
Night fell across the face of Ironpiece. Watches changed at the naval base, and spelljammers began landing in the evening, the last of those returning from the battle that had been joined after the Probe’s escape. Teldin heard from various nurses and technicians that the humanoid and elven ships had fought each other mercilessly, but both sides had been driven away from Ironpiece by the gnomes’ dreadnoughts, deathglories, spellfighters, and other craft. Confusion had reigned at first as to whether the elves were allies or enemies, but the matter was resolved on a practical level when an elven man-o-war opened fire on a deathglory. From that point on, it was every side for itself. As usual, the gnomes took the greatest casualties from their own experimental weapon
s. Once the humanoids had retreated and the elves had simply vanished (minus one of their man-o-wars), the gnomes had mopped up and gone home. Teldin went to sleep with a certain amount of satisfaction at the news.
The infirmary’s inhabitants slept. In the dark corridors, a handful of gnome attendants snored on their stools or wrote medical notes by candlelight. One of them was in the middle of listing a series of proposed experiments to determine the best design for a new lighting system for the infirmary – one that would not burn the place to the ground, as the previous natural-gas system had done sixty years earlier. She finished with another page, admiring the simplicity of her design – to have giant, refillable wicks installed in the walls – and set it on the ever-growing pile beside her.
“Somnoluncia, parafar, nombilbulum” came a whispered voice from the darkness down the hall to her left.
Startled, the gnome looked up – and immediately started to yawn. She leaned back, a quill pen and a stack of unblemished paper sliding from her lap as she fell off her stool. A soft thump sounded as she hit the floor, accompanied by the sound of an upended ink bottle rolling away across the floor to empty its contents in a widening puddle.
Out of the darkness came a darker thing, floating soundlessly up to the snoring gnome. The figure observed the slow rise and fall of her chest, then moved on to the door on her right. There the figure took a last look around – then it simply moved through the entry as if the door did not exist.
Beyond the door the darkness was broken by faint light from a window. After an appropriate wait to assure that the rhythmic breathing from the bed in the room was genuine, the figure silently drifted closer. A lone being slept there, curled up like a baby. The sheets were bunched up at the foot of the bed. Peace was written across the sleeper’s face.
The dark figure raised a finger of white jointed bone and pointed it at the sleeper’s head.
“Obedia ooamei, ptejarki noh,” it said quietly. The rhythmic breathing from the victim immediately became heavier and deeper. The sleeper’s eyes opened and stared at the wall, seeing nothing. The dark thing felt relief. The controlling spell had worked on the first attempt.
“Much from me this spell has cost, but much need I have of you, live meat,” the dark thing whispered. “Much for me in the weeks to arrive you will do. The cloakmaster to approach I dare not. Dangerous he is, and because of him my not-servants exist not. But you in my service will be, hidden slave with hidden master, you by all trusted, yes. My words now attend you will, much to learn, and my dreams to fulfil. Power everlasting mine will be, the cosmos to hold.”
The dark figure spread its arms wide, covering the window and the light, and began the next enchantment.
*****
The following morning, before Teldin forced his own release from the infirmary, Gomja visited him and announced he, too, would be going with Teldin to find the Spelljammer.
“I don’t understand,” Teldin said. He stopped rubbing his knees to ease the aching in them. “Why would you leave your work here? You’ve got everything you’ve ever wanted.”
Gomja sighed, sitting on a heavy crate and looking at a spot on the floor. “I know, sir, but the gnomes decided that they need a marine commander aboard the ship they’re taking to the Spelljammer, and they felt that I was the best choice. The commanders that I replaced wanted their old jobs back, too. It’s all for the best.” He looked uncomfortable and dropped his voice as he looked up. “Besides, sir, not a lot has been going on here, and I’ve been hoping for a little more action. I’m also worried that you might need a strong arm at your side, given your current goals.”
Teldin grinned and shook his head. “I can’t deny that, Colonel-Commander. It seems as if I’m going to have company with me, whether I want it or not.” His smile faded. “To be frank, after the fight just before we crashed here, I’d almost decided to go on to the Spelljammer alone. Anyone who goes with me is in danger. I don’t even think I can trust the elves on this one. They’re as eager to get their little hands on this cloak as everyone else.”
Gomja said nothing, but still stared at the floor. Teldin leaned forward and slapped the giff on the shoulder. “It will be good having you with me again,” he said with feeling. “I need someone I can trust. I don’t have many these days, and you, Aelfred, and Sylvie are about it.”
The giff looked up into Teldin’s face for a moment with an unreadable expression. “Thank you, sir,” he finally said. The floorboards groaned as he eased himself to his broad, round feet. “I’ll get my things then.”
“Do that,” Teldin said. “I’m getting the hell out of here right now myself.” He waved as the giff left, then went back to collecting the few things that his rescuers had managed to bring to him from the wreck. The worst loss was the sheaf of papers about the Spelljammer that Cirathorn had given him. The scroll tube must have come loose during the crash, meaning that it was undoubtedly resting on the bottom of Lake Crashsplash this very moment. He gritted his teeth at the thought, but there was no help for it. Maybe this slug, One Six Nine or whatever it was, would know more.
Teldin slung his small bag of personal belongings over his shoulder, then looked the room over before he left. Seeing that it was fairly clean, he closed the door behind him and set off down the hall in search of real food.
At least, he reflected as he started down the stairs, he would be traveling with people he knew he could trust.
Chapter Nine
“It should be right in this next berth … no, wrong one, just ignore the mess. There! Here it is! This one right here, this beautiful ship, this is the Perilous Halibut, my labor of love for many years. Glorious, isn’t she?” Dressed in a brown tweed suit with a lime-green shirt and a yellow tie that could blind onlookers within ten feet of it, Dyffed stood before the long black ship he had named and beamed up at its bow. His face was wreathed in beatific happiness. “I feel ninety years old all over again,” he sighed.
There was a long silence as Teldin, Aelfred, and Sylvie stared at the ship with thoughtful expressions.
“It’s very” – Teldin struggled for a word, glancing at Aelfred for help but finding none – “interesting,” he finished. It looks like a black banana with fins, he thought.
“I absolutely agree,” said Dyffed, reaching up to pat the bottom of the ship’s metal-plated hull. “The Perilous Halibut was called such because, first, it is sort of like a fish, and the Office of Yachting Names, Designations, Codes, and Other Completely Nonmilitary Appellations had run out of all the other fish-type names, and all the paperwork with our previous suggestions had already been filed and lost. Secondly, it is perilous because it’s a dangerous ship – I mean, dangerous to our enemies, of course. We built it, so it can’t be dangerous to us. We were originally going to paint it blue to go with Vice Rear Admiral Blekinmangrars’s new uniform, but we had already ran out of that particular shade and Midnight Ebony was all the supply office had left, which was a very fortunate error for all concerned, because now the ship is perfectly camouflaged against the blackness of space, though we might someday have to paint stars on it here and there to make the camouflage more authen – ouch!”
The gnome hastily stuck a finger in his mouth. “Dratted riveting,” he muttered, popping his finger out for a second to speak, then putting it back in.
Teldin stepped around to the side to gauge the ship’s size. The Perilous Halibut rested on a massive and complex framework of wooden supports inside the gigantic hangar on Port Walkaway. The ship appeared to be about the same length as the Probe, two hundred feet or so, and was about twenty-five feet thick and prism-shaped, octagonal in cross section. A rectangular black tower stuck out from the upper deck of the ship, almost like a shark’s fin, and smaller fins stuck out from several places along its sides. The ship’s tail retained the fishlike imagery, with the lower end of the tail falling well below the bottom of the ship itself. The ship would lose its tail if it landed on solid ground, but Teldin guessed it had been meant to la
nd on water.
Teldin’s eyes scanned the upper deck of the Perilous Halibut, noting a simple gold railing running around the edge. The railing was, of course, at the height of a typical gnome’s waist – in other words, just about the height of a human’s knees. It wouldn’t do to get close to it and trip over the side of the ship.
“I can’t believe we’re lucky enough to have this whole ship to ourselves,” Aelfred said. Teldin and Sylvie turned to stare at him in amazement. Aelfred glanced aside at them, putting a finger momentarily to his lips.
“Ah, nothing lucky about it at all,” said Dyffed, pleased. He dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “Nothing at all. Experimental ships are sent out all the time from here, and most have come back. Or some of them have, at least. I last heard the return figure was closer to twelve point eight percent, including all ships bearing the expected casualties but not counting fragmental returns if they couldn’t tell which
‘iip the fragments belonged to. But that’s neither here nor shi there, of course, for though this is its first flight test, the Perilous Halibut is of a proven theoretical model, the first of its kind to be built, and we have nothing whatsoever to fear, nothing at all, unless the tail falls off.” Dyffed chuckled, glancing at the tall threesome behind him. “An old gnomish joke, you understand.”
No one else so much as smiled.
Dyffed coughed and went back to admiring the Perilous Halibut. “Yes, this lovely ship will be ready to fly at any time, right after a few last adjustments are made. Then she’ll be fit for space.”
“Ah, adjustments,” said Aelfred with interest, “by which you mean …” He waited and looked at the gnome.
“Oh, the usual things, of course,” said the gnome. “Check a few fittings, tighten a few bolts, install the lavatories, order the weapons, unpack the helm and install that, then run the usual experiments to find out if it can float. It should float, or at least it does on paper. By that, I mean that the ship doesn’t float on paper, but rather it floats on water, as the expression —”