The Practice Effect

by David Brin

  Pop anthropologists claim, oh, happy refrain,

  That man’s defined by tools.

  Tools help us abide

  ol’ entropy’s tide,

  But even they obey the rules!

  And Murphy critic, pessimistic,

  Cries, foreboding still,

  This entropy thing’s

  got a personal sting,

  And what can go wrong will.

  The music swelled, accompanied by the growing whine of the propeller. The dancing ape returned to the refrain.

  Why’s it so?

  Oh, why’s it so?

  It’s a bloody mess

  I will confess,

  But there’s a secret, don’t you know!

  The blur at the top of his head no longer needed a finger to keep it going. In fact, it wasn’t a toy propeller anymore at all! The beanie cap had become a space helmet and the whirling blades lifted him into the air, much to the dismay of the other guests.

  The camera panned close to the chimp’s face. Two rows of big, yellowed buck teeth grinned at the audience. The music soared to a crescendo.

  Oh, there’s a time and place for everything,

  Or so the sages say.

  If you don’t like the rules

  in one stupid place,

  Don’t gripe, just fly away!

  The chimp zoomed about the studio, his cap now a full ornithopter suit. He buzzed the furious philosophers, sending them diving behind their chairs in dismay. Then he swooped about in a sharp turn and streaked straight for the camera, laughing, howling, shrieking in mirth.

  Just fly a-waaaa-a-a-y-y!!

  “Uh!” Dennis flailed and grabbed the edge of the cot with both hands. He stared into the darkness for a long time, breathing hard. Finally he sank back against the bedding again with a sigh.

  So, there was no magical, negentropic chimpanzee after all. But the first part of the dream was true. He was in jail on a strange world. A bunch of cavemen who hadn’t the slightest idea they were cavemen had him prisoner. He was at least fifty miles from the shattered zievatron, on a world where the most basic physical laws he had been brought up to believe were queerly twisted.

  It was night. Snores echoed through the prisoners’ shed. Dennis lay unmoving in the dimness until he realized that someone sat on the next cot, watching him. He turned his head and met the look of a large, well-muscled man with dark, curly hair.

  “You had a bad dream,” the prisoner said quietly.

  “I was delirious,” Dennis corrected. He peered. “You look familiar. Were you one of the men I shouted at while I was raving? One of the … the clothes practicers?”

  The tall man nodded. “Yes. My name is Stivyung Sigel. I heard you say that you had met my son.”

  Dennis nodded. “Tomosh. A very good boy. You should be proud.”

  Sigel helped Dennis sit up. “Is Tomosh all right?” He asked. His voice was anxious.

  “You needn’t worry. He was just fine last I saw.”

  Sigel bowed his head in gratitude. “Did you meet my wife, Surah?”

  Dennis frowned. He found it hard to remember what he had been told. It all seemed so long ago and had been mentioned only in passing. He didn’t want to distress Sigel.

  On the other hand, the man deserved to be told whatever he knew. “Umm, Tomosh is staying with his Aunt Biss. She told me something about your wife going off to ask help … from somebody or something called Latoof? Likoff?”

  The other man’s face paled. “The L’Toff!” he whispered. “She should not have done so. The wilderness is dangerous, and things are not yet so desperate!”

  Sigel stood up and started pacing at the foot of Dennis’s bed. “I must get out of here. I must!”

  Dennis had already begun thinking along the same lines. Now that he knew there were no native scientists to help him, he had to be getting back to the zievatron to try putting a new return mechanism together by himself, with or without replacement power buses. Otherwise he would never get off of this crazy world.

  Maybe he could turn the Practice Effect to his advantage, though he suspected it would work quite differently for a sophisticated instrument than for an ax or a sled. The very idea was too fresh and disconcerting for the scientist in him to dwell on yet.

  All he really knew was that he was getting homesick. And he owed Bernald Brady a punch in the nose.

  When he tried to get up, Sigel hurried to his side and helped him. They went to one of the support pillars, where Dennis leaned and looked out at the stockade wall. Two small, bright moons illuminated the grounds.

  “I think,” he told the farmer in a low voice, “I might be able to help you get out of here, Stivyung.”

  Sigel regarded him. “One of the guards claims you are a wizard. Your actions earlier made us think it might be true. Can you truly arrange an escape from this place?”

  Dennis smiled. The score so far was Tatir many, Dennis Nuel nothing. It was his turn now. What, he wondered, might not be wrought from the Practice Effect by a Ph.D. in physics, when these people hadn’t even heard of the wheel?

  “It’ll be a piece of cake, Stivyung.”

  The farmer looked puzzled by the idiom but he smiled hopefully.

  A touch of motion caught Dennis’s eye. He turned and looked up at the layered castle to his right, its walls gleaming in the moonlight.

  Three levels up, behind a parapet lined with bars, a slender figure stood alone. The breeze blew a diaphanous garment and a cascade of long blond hair.

  She was too far away to discern clearly in the night, but Dennis was struck by the young woman’s loveliness. He also felt sure that somehow he had seen her somewhere before.

  At that moment she seemed to look toward them. She stood that way, with her face in shadows, perhaps watching them watch her, for a long time.

  “Princess Linnora,” Sigel identified her. “She is a prisoner as are we. In fact, she’s the reason I’m here. The Baron wanted to impress her with his property. I’m to help practice his personal things to perfection.” Sigel sounded bitter.

  “Is she as beautiful in the daytime as she is by moonlight?” Dennis couldn’t look away.

  Sigel shrugged. “She’s comely, I’ll warrant. But I can’t understand what th’ Baron’s thinking. She’s a daughter of the L’Toff. I know them better than most, and it’s hard even for me to imagine one of them ever marraiging to a normal human being.”

  5

  Transom Dental

  1

  “They patrol outside the wall to keep people away,” the small thief said. “After all, a lot of prisoners have family and friends on the outside, and a fair part of Zuslik’s population would help in a jailbreak. Even after thirty years, Kremer’s northmen ain’t too popular hereabouts.”

  Dennis nodded. “But do the guards inspect the wall on the outside as carefully as they do inside?”

  The escape committee numbered five. They were gathered around a rickety table eating the noon meal. The prisoners sat in flimsy, uncomfortable chairs. It would have been better just to stand, but practicing the chairs was another of their jobs.

  Gath Glinn, the youngest member of their group, squatted in the shadows beside the nearby castle wall, huddled over Dennis’s prototype escape device. The sandy-haired youth had been the first to catch on to the Earthman’s idea and had been assigned to try it out. He stopped working and covered the device whenever the others indicated the guards were near.

  Right now his hands moved rapidly back and forth, and the little tool he practiced made soft “zizzing” sounds.

  The short, dark man whom Dennis vaguely remembered yelling at on his first day in jail shook his head and answered Dennis’s question. “Naw, Denniz. Sometimes they take gangs of us out to throw rocks at the wall. But mostly they make us practice it from th’ inside.”

  Dennis was still routinely puzzled by things his fellow prisoners told him. His look must have showed it.

  Stivyung Sigel looked left and right t
o make sure no one had approached too close. “What Arth means, Dennis, is that another of our jobs is to practice the wall itself into being a better wall.”

  The farmer seemed to have caught on that Dennis came from someplace far away, where things were very different from here. It seemed to puzzle him that civilization could exist in a land where things didn’t get better with use, but he appeared willing to give Dennis the benefit of the doubt.

  “I see.” Dennis nodded. “That’s why those men are allowed to chop away at the wall like that, without being stopped by the guards.” He had seen groups of prisoners lackadaisically attacking the palisade, and the wall of the castle itself, with crude mallets. He had wondered why it was permitted.

  “Right, Dennis. The Baron wants the wall stronger, so he has prisoners scratch at it.” Stivyung shrugged at explaining something so basic. “Of course, the guards make sure they don’t use good tools while doing it. This way, in the course of time, the outermost wall will grow more and more like the one behind us, they’ll roof it over then, and the castle will grow that much larger.”

  Dennis looked up at the palace. He understood the wedding cake geometry now. When the Coylians built a structure it started out little better than a rude lean-to. When it was finally coverted, after years of practice, into a solid one-story building, another crude structure was built on top. While the second story improved, the first became better at supporting weight on its roof and grew outward as lateral additions were made.

  As long as someone lived in it thereafter, the building was practiced at holding together. Only if abandoned would it slowly revert, eventually to collapse into a tumble of sticks and mud and animal hides.

  Dennis didn’t imagine there would be much for archaeologists to find on this world, once a great city was abandoned.

  “They also check to make sure we practice all the wall,” Arth added. The diminutive thief claimed to be a leader among the burglars and thieves in the town of Zuslik. From the respect the other prisoners paid him, Dennis didn’t doubt it.

  “O’ course, we always try to leave patches of wall to revert to old logs … so’s we could really break through. They patrol looking for such practice gaps. It’s a game o’ wits.” He grinned, as if certain the game could be won sooner or later.

  The zizzing sound behind them suddenly ended in a sharp snap. Young Gath held up the severed end of the piece of wood, beaming at Dennis admiringly.

  “The flexible saw worked!” he whispered in excitement. He looked around to make sure no guards were near, then handed the tool to Dennis.

  The teeth were warm from friction. On Earth they would have shown signs of wear after cutting just that little piece of soft wood. But Gath had been thinking “Cut! Cut!” as he worked. And now, thanks to the gentle practice, the zipper was just a little sharper than before.

  Dennis shook his head. It was a helluva purpose to put a zipper to. Those sealing the pockets of his overalls were all of soft plastic. He had had to rip the metal zipper from his pants—his fly was now shut with three crude buttons that he hoped would get better with use. Certainly he wasn’t about to use this zipper in its old purpose again!

  “Good work, Gath. We’ll arrange for you to get on sick call so you can practice this saw to perfection. The night it’s finished—”

  Arth interrupted quickly with a comment on the weather. In a moment a pair of guards passed nearby. The prisoners developed an interest in their meal until they had gone.

  When the coast was clear, Dennis offered to pass the saw around. All but Stivyung Sigel politely refused. Apparently the average person here was a bit superstitious toward those who put “essence” into a tool—the original craftsmen who “made” tools in the first place, rather than practiced them to perfection. They probably saw magic in it because it used a principle they had never seen before.

  He handed the zipper back to Gath, who palmed it eagerly.

  Then lunch was over. The guards started calling them back to work.

  Dennis’s present job was to attack suits of armor with a blunt, hollow spear—while the soldier-owners wore them! It was exacting work. If he hit the soldier hard enough to hurt, he was struck with a whip. If he struck too softly, the guards shouted and threatened to beat him.

  “From now on we take turns watching over Gath to make sure he can practice undisturbed,” he said as he stood up. “And we keep him supplied with wood to cut. We’ll discuss the rest of the plan later.”

  The escape committee all nodded. As far as they were concerned, he was the wizard.

  The guards called again and Dennis hurried to work. One of the punishments for tardiness was to have one’s personal property taken away. Though he now wore homespun like the others, he was allowed to keep his overalls, to “practice” them on his own time. The last thing he wanted was to have them confiscated.

  Three hours after lunch, a bell was rung announcing the beginning of a religious service. A red-robed prison chaplain set up an altar near the castle postern, and the cry went out for the faithful to gather.

  Those who did not participate had to keep working, so most of the prisoners downed tools at once and sauntered over. In spite of a spate of irreverent chuckles, the majority participated.

  A few, such as the thief, Arth, remained at work in the garden, shaking their heads and muttering disapproval.

  Dennis wanted to watch the ceremony. But he saw no way to attend as just a spectator. The parishioners bowed and chanted before a row of wooden and gemstone idols.

  He finally decided to stay with Stivyung Sigel. For the last hour the two of them had been assigned to chopping wood, using caveman-type axes under a guard’s watchful eye.

  “It doesn’t look like most of our fellow prisoners take the state religion too seriously,” Dennis suggested to Stivyung sotto voce.

  Sigel flexed his powerful shoulders and brought his ax down in a great arc, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. He looked incongruous chopping in Baron Kremer’s brilliant clothes, but this was all part of Sigel’s job. The overlord of Zuslik didn’t like his clothes to bind. After this practice they would be supple.

  “Zuslikers used to be pretty easygoing about religion under the old Duke,” Sigel said. “But when Kremer’s dad and grandad marched in, they right off started grantin’ favors to the church and the guilds, which is funny, since the northern hillmen never were such great believers before that.”

  Dennis nodded. It was a familiar pattern. In Earth history, barbarians often had become the fiercest defenders of the established orthodoxy after they had conquered.

  He raised his ax and took a whack at his own log. The crude stone blade bounced back, hardly making a dent.

  “I take it you’re not a believer, either,” he asked Sigel.

  The other man shrugged. “All these gods and goddesses really don’t make a lot of sense. In the kingdom cities back east they’re losing their following. Some folk are even starting to pay attention to the Old Belief, like the L’Toff have followed all along.”

  Dennis was about to ask about the “Old Belief” but the guard growled at them. “ ’ere now! Pray or woork, you two. Coot th’ gab!”

  Dennis could barely follow the northman’s guttural accent, but he got the general drift. He swung his ax. This time he got a few chips to fly, though he didn’t fool himself that it was because the tool had improved perceptibly.

  Even with the Practice Effect, this was slow going. He hoped young Gath was having better luck with the zipper-saw than he was having with this triple-damned hunk of flint!

  2

  For the following three evenings, while Gath or Sigel practiced the little saw under the blankets, Dennis snuck out of the shed and went for walks in the jailyard. He was usually tired by that time, but not so exhausted he couldn’t duck past the lazy guards at the inner checkpoint.

  In addition to spending his days practicing axes and armor, he had been taking lessons in the Coylians’ written language. Stivy
ung Sigel, the best-educated of the prisoners, was his tutor.

  Dennis had been forced to modify his initial opinion a little. These people did have a culture above the “caveman” level. They had music and art, commerce and literature. They simply had no “technology” beyond the late Stone Age. They didn’t appear to need any.

  Anything nonliving could be practiced, so everything here was made of wood or stone or hide … with occasional scraps of beaten native copper or meteoritic iron, both highly prized. Still, it was a wonder what could be accomplished without metal.

  Their alphabet was a simple syllabary, easy to learn. Sigel was educated after a fashion, though he had been a soldier and a farmer, not a scholar. He was a patient teacher, but he could shed only a little light on the origin of humans on Tatir. That, he said, was the province of the churches … or of legends. Stivyung told Dennis what he knew, though he seemed embarrassed telling what were essentially fairy tales to an adult. Still, Dennis had insisted, and listened carefully, taking notes in his little book.

  Finally, Dennis reluctantly concluded the stories of origin were about as contradictory as they had once been on Earth. If there was some link between the two worlds, apparently it was lost in the past.

  Dennis did note that some of the oldest legends—particularly those dealing with the so-called Old Belief—did speak of a great fall, in which enemies of mankind caused him to lose his powers over the animals and over life itself.

  Stivyung knew about the tale because of his long association with the mysterious tribe, the L’Toff. It wasn’t much to go on. And perhaps it was just a fable, after all, like the stories Tomosh had told him about friendly dragons.

  So Dennis pondered the problem alone. He scratched narrow lines of tensor calculus in his notebook in the twilight after supper. He hadn’t even begun to come up with a theory to explain the Practice Effect. But the mathematics helped to settle his mind.