by David Brin
He needed the focus of his science. From time to time he felt brief recurrences at that strange, lightheaded disorientation he had experienced upon first arriving at Zuslik and then again on his first day in the jailyard.
No author had ever mentioned, in all the fantasy novels he had read, how difficult it really was for a normal human being to adjust to finding himself, with his life in jeopardy, in a truly strange place.
Now that he was beginning to understand some of the rules, and especially now that he had comrades, he was sure he would be all right. But he still felt occasional chills when he thought about the weird situation he was in.
On his fourth evening in the camp, after he snuck past the inner post to walk in the dim twilight past the green shoots in the garden, Dennis heard soft music as he strolled.
The music was lovely. The anomaly calculation he had been working on unraveled like shreds of fog blown by a fresh breeze.
The sound came from above the far end of the prison yard. It was a high, clear, feminine voice, accompanied by some kind of harp. The instrument seemed to weep into the night, gently and with an electric poignancy. Dennis followed the music, entranced.
He came to the point where the new wall met the old. Two parapets above, strumming a pale, lutelike instrument, was the girl he had seen so briefly that night on the road, whom Stivyung Sigel had called Linnora—Princess of the L’Toff.
Sharp spiked wooden bars kept her imprisoned on her balcony. The gleaming rods reflected the moonlight almost as brightly as did the honey yellow of her hair. Dennis listened, entranced, though he couldn’t make out the words.
The lutelike instrument must have had generations of practice to achieve such power. Her voice filled him with wonder, though he could barely follow the accented words. The music seemed to draw him forward.
The girl stopped singing abruptly and turned. A dark figure had emerged from the dim doorway at the right end of the balcony. She stood and faced the intruder.
A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out and bowed. If Dennis had not seen Stivyung Sigel only moments before, back at the prisoners’ shed, he would have sworn it was his friend up there, advancing on the slender Princess. The big man’s clothes were as fine as Linnora’s, though clearly made for rougher use. Dennis heard his deep voice but could make out no words.
The L’Toff Princess shook her head slowly. The man grew angry. He stepped toward her, shaking something in his hand. She retreated at first, but then stood her ground rather than suffer the indignity of backing against the wall.
Dennis’s heart beat faster. He had a wild thought to rush to her aid … as if she were anything to him but another of this world’s enigmas. Only the knowledge that it would be perfectly useless restrained him.
The big man’s words grew imperious. He threatened the girl angrily. Then he threw something to the floor and swiveled about to leave the way he had come. The curtains blew in his wake.
Linnora looked after him for a time, then stooped to pick up what he had dropped. She walked through a small doorway at the left end of her balcony, leaving her instrument to shine alone in the moonlight.
Dennis stayed in the shadows by the wall, hoping she would return.
When she finally came back, though, he felt consternation, for she went to the bars of her parapet and looked down into the prison yard in his direction. She had a bundle in her hands, and cast about as if looking for something or someone in the darkness below.
Dennis couldn’t help himself. He stepped from the shadows into the pale moonlight. She looked directly at him and smiled faintly, as if she had expected him all along.
The Princess put her arm through the bars and threw the bundle. It sailed over the lower parapets, barely missing the bottom railing, and landed at his feet.
Dennis bent to pick up the torn remnant of one of his belt pouches, tied with a loop of string. Inside he found some of the things that had been taken from him. Several had been broken in clumsy efforts to find out how they worked. The crystal of his compass had been smashed, vials of medicine were spilled.
With the items was a note in flowing Coylian script. While the girl picked up her instrument and played softly, Dennis concentrated on what he had learned from Stivyung, and slowly read the message.
He is mystified.
I could not tell him what these
things are, even if I would.
He has lost patience, and next
will ask you himself.
Tomorrow you are to be tortured
to tell what you know.
Especially about the terrible weapon
that kills at a touch.
If you are, indeed, an emissary
from the realm of Lifemakers,
flee now.
And speak Linnora’s name aloud
in the open hills.
There was a sweeping, cursive signature at the end. Dennis looked back up at her, his mind full of questions he could not ask and of sympathy and thanks he could not tell her.
The sad song ended. Linnora stood up. Lifting her hand once in farewell, she turned to go inside.
Dennis watched the breeze toss the curtains for long moments after that.
“Get up!” He shook Arth. Nearby, Stivyung Sigel was quietly awakening Gath, Mishwa Qan, and Perth, the other members of the escape committee.
“Wha, wha?” The little thief came erect swiftly, a sharpened piece of stone in his hand.
Arth claimed to have come from a long line of men who had served as bodyguards for Zuslik’s old dukes—before Kremer’s father had taken over the region in an act of treachery. The small man had a wiry strength that belied his size. He blinked for a moment, then nodded and got up, swiftly and silently.
The conspirators gathered by the stockade wall.
“We haven’t time to prepare any further,” he told them. “The moons have just set, and tonight’s the night.”
“But you said the saw wasn’t good enough yet!” Gath protested “And we had other things to get ready!”
Dennis shook his head. “It’s tonight or never. I can’t explain, but you’ll have to believe me. Arth, you’d better go steal the tools.”
The little thief grinned and sped off to the shed where the gardening tools were kept, not far from the lighted window of the guard shack. It wouldn’t take Arth long to swipe quietly a few items to use as weapons, should that become necessary. Dennis fervently hoped it wouldn’t.
“Give me the saw.”
Gath carefully handed over the onetime zipper. Dennis held it up to look at it. The teeth shone even here, and felt very sharp.
From his coveralls he took a spool of dental floss that, along with his toothbrush, had been in his pocket and not in his pack when he was captured. He tied two premeasured lengths firmly to the ends of the saw.
“All right,” he whispered, “here goes.”
Dennis was glad these people at least understood ropes and lassos. Stivyung Sigel took the saw from Dennis and stepped back to swing it over his head, playing out more and more line as the loop grew.
The guards routinely searched prisoners for weapons, cutting tools, and any sort of twine that might be practiced into a climbing rope. But the floss had been missed completely. For two days he had tugged at it in his spare time, practicing it up for this attempt.
The strand wasn’t going to be used for climbing. Dennis doubted it could be done. Besides, he had a better idea.
Sigel swung one more time and let go. The loop sailed up over the sharpened end of one of the stockade logs. Dennis took the ends of line from him and tugged them straight.
He whispered, “To positions!” The thief Perth scuttled off to watch for patrols and to distract the guards, if necessary. Stivyung, Gath, and Mishwa took to the shadows, leaving Dennis to take the first shift with the saw.
He was sweating before he was even certain he had the teeth facing the right way. He wrapped rough cloth around his hands, then several loops of line, and beg
an pulling gently back and forth—working it like a piece of floss rubbing slowly down the sides of a tooth. If he had oriented it right, the saw should be cutting away at the leather and mud bindings that held the log to its neighbors.
The cutting would begin at the weakest spot—the top, which had had the least “wall practice.” As it worked its way down, the saw should get better, and the weight of the log itself should put stress on the remaining ties.
At least he hoped that much physics still applied in this crazy place. Dennis crouched low to the ground and applied gradually greater pressure as the saw bit into the seams. As he fell into a rhythm he had time to think—to worry about guard patrols, and to wonder about the girl on the parapet.
How had she known he would be there, below in the darkness? What had Stivyung meant when he implied that the Princess of the L’Toff was not quite human?
There were no answers in the still muggy night. Dennis wondered if he would ever have the chance to ask the right questions.
He tried to concentrate on the job at hand, thinking hard about cutting. Although some scoffed at the idea, others claimed that a focused mind tended to make practice go faster.
He sawed until his arms ached and he knew fatigue was making him inefficient. By now he had confidence in the new tensile strength of the floss and was willing to trust someone else with the cutting. He signaled Sigel to take over. The big man hurried forth to help him unwrap his hands.
Dennis grimaced in pain as circulation returned. He envied Stivyung his rough farmer’s calluses. He stumbled over into the deep shadows by the wall, where Gath and Mishwa waited.
They sat together for a time in silence, watching the farmer patiently pull the line back and forth. Sigel looked like a lump in the darkness. It was amazing how well he blended in.
The minutes passed. Once they heard Arth give his warning call—an imitation of a night bird. Sigel flattened, and soon a guard patrol appeared around a corner, carrying a lantern. One cast of its beam would catch them if it were directed this way. Dennis held his breath along with the others.
But they moved on past, having counted the prisoners in the shed—including the lumpy bundles of homespun the gang had stuffed under their bedding.
Apparently routine had made the guards lazy, as Arth predicted.
When the little thief gave the all-clear, Sigel rose and went back to work, indefatigably. A faint zizzing sound could be heard where they waited, as the saw cut deeper with every stroke.
Young Gath moved a little closer to Dennis. “Is it true the Princess dropped a note to you?” the boy whispered.
Dennis nodded.
“Can I see it?”
A little reluctantly, he handed the slip of rough paper over. Gath pored over it, frowning and moving his lips. Literacy wasn’t common in this feudal society. Already Dennis read as well as the youth could.
Gath gave the note back and whispered, “Someday I’d like to visit the L’Toff. There used to be more contact with them, back in the days of the old Duke, I’m told.
“You know they adopt regular humans sometimes?” the boy went on. “The L’Toff would welcome me, I know it! I want to be a maker.”
Gath emparted the remark as if he were trusting Dennis with a tremendous secret.
Dennis shook his head, still confused by the ways the people of Tatir had developed to deal with the Practice Effect. “A maker,” he asked. “Is that someone who puts together a tool for the first time? Someone who makes starters?” A “starter” was what they called a new object or tool that had never been practiced. “I thought making was restricted to certain castes.”
Gath nodded. He accepted Dennis’s naïveté as a wizard’s privilege. “Aye. There’s the stonechoppers’ caste, and the woodhewers’ caste, and the tanners and th’ builders and others.” He shook his head. “The castes are closed to newcomers, and they do everything the old ways. Only farmers like Stivyung can make their own starters the way they want and get away with it, ’cause they’re out in the country where nobody could catch ’em at it.”
“What does it matter?” Dennis asked softly. “A starter tool soon adapts to whomever practices it, getting better with use. You could turn a fig leaf into a silk purse if you worked at it long enough.”
The youth smiled. “The orig’nal essence that’s in a starter affects its final form … an ax can only be made from a starter ax, not from a starter broom or a starter sled. A thing doesn’t get practice becoming something unless it’s at least a little bit useful from the very start.”
Dennis nodded. Even here, where technology was nonexistent, people found patterns of cause and effect. “What are you in jail for, Gath?”
“For making sled starters without permission from the castes.” The boy shrugged. “It was stupid of me to get caught. Until you came, I figured when I got out I’d try for the L’Toff. But now I’d rather work for you!”
He beamed at Dennis. “You probably know more about making than the L’Toff and all the castes put together! Maybe you’ll need a ’prentice when you head back to your homeland. I’d work hard! I already know how to chop flint! And I learned how to throw pots by sneaking into th’—”
The boy was getting a bit too excited. Dennis motioned for Gath to keep it down. He shut up obediently, but his eyes still shone.
Dennis thought about what Gath had said. He probably did know more about “making” than everyone else on this world combined. But he knew next to nothing about the Practice Effect. In the here and now, that ignorance could be deadly.
“We’ll see,” he said to the lad. “When we get out of here, I may be in a hurry to get home, and maybe I could use a hand.” He thought about the hills to the northwest … about the zievatron.
He was getting worried about all the time he had spent chasing after a mechanical civilization on this planet. Had Flaster sent anyone else through the machine? It would be just like the fellow to dither and delay and finally start searching about for another “volunteer.”
On the other hand, Flaster might have given up and cut the zievatron loose, setting the Sahara Tech team to work searching once more among the anomaly worlds … using Dennis Nuel’s search algorithm, of course.
I might have to spend the rest of my life here, he realized.
Unbidden, an image of golden hair in the moonlight came to him. It occurred to him that this world did have its attractions.
Shivering, he reminded himself that he had also received a warning of imminent torture only a couple of hours before.
Tatir had its drawbacks, too.
Stivyung Sigel hadn’t called for relief yet. He worked with a fevered intensity that put Dennis a little in awe. Dennis looked up to see what kind of progress the farmer was making.
He stared in amazement. The saw had already cut almost half of the way down! How …?
He looked back at Sigel and rubbed his eyes. It had to be the darkness, but somehow it seemed that the air around the farmer shimmered faintly. It was as if little eddies of air were churning all around him. Dennis turned to Gath to ask if he saw it too.
The young maker did indeed see it. He stared at Sigel, utterly awed, as did Mishwa, the other thief with them.
“What is it?” Dennis whispered urgently. “What’s happening?”
Without taking his eyes away, Gath answered. “It’s a true felthesh trance! They say a person’s lucky to witness one once in a lifetime!”
Dennis looked back at Sigel. The man worked with demoniacal intensity, his arms pumping back and forth a blur. As they watched, the faint luminescence that surrounded him seemed to climb up the narrow thread of floss, like sparkling ionization around a high-voltage line.
Whatever mysterious thing a “felthesh trance” was, he could see that Sigel and the saw were playing havoc with the stockade bindings. A faint rain of dust fell from the growing gaps on either side of the palisade log.
Dennis found it awesome, indeed. But more immediately, he was concerned that the gu
ards would notice this phenomenon!
Dennis decided it was time to hurry things along a bit.
He motioned to the thief, Mishwa Qan. The prisoner was a giant—larger, even, than Gilm the guard. Mishwa grinned and rose to his feet gracefully. At Dennis’s beckoning he crouched at the base of the wall, braced his back against the log, and pushed. The bindings groaned slightly.
Sigel worked on without pause, without asking for relief. By now the saw had almost descended to man height but was starting to slow down. The stockade had had more wall practice at this level and was tougher.
Mishwa grunted and pushed again. The log complained softly, then tilted outward a little as its own weight began to help.
Dennis motioned for Gath to help Mishwa. Soon both were puffing together as the log groaned again.
It tipped a little farther, and then Dennis suddenly saw something that made him start. Something was moving upon the jagged rim of the palisade!
A dark figure—a little larger than a big bullfrog—bent over the growing opening and looked down at the faintly glowing zipper-saw as it cut. The nimbus of Sigel’s “felthesh trance” seemed to wash over it, enveloping both the creature and the saw in a soft glow.
Green eyes glowed in the dark. Sharp little teeth flashed in amusement.
Dennis shook his head. “Pix, you blasted voyeur. Now you choose to show up! When’ll you ever do anybody any good, hmm?”
He turned and rejoined the others, straining against the massive log. Every time it shifted, it made a racket that Dennis imagined could be heard across the valley.
Arth hurried over from his watch position. “I think they heard something,” the thief whispered. “Should we shut down for a while?”
Dennis looked at the log. Stars shone through the gap. On Stivyung Sigel’s face was a fierce, luminous expression that made Dennis feel a chill. The farmer’s arms were a blur and the saw gave off an almost continuous quiet whir.
Dennis didn’t dare disturb Sigel. He shook his head. “We can’t. It’s all or nothing! If the guards come you’ve got to distract them!”