The Practice Effect

by David Brin

  Kremer caught up short, staring at the wreckage of the distillery Dennis Nuel had built. Steam rose from twisted, blackened tubing. The deacon stood in the midst, coughing and waving smoke away. The scholar’s resplendent red robes were singed and soot-coated.

  “What is the meaning of this!” Kremer demanded. At once the soldiers who had been gawking at the wreckage turned and snapped to attention. The slaves who had been in charge of the distillery dropped to their bellies in abasement.

  Except for three who took no notice of him. One of the latter was clearly dead. The other two cringed not from him, but from their own badly seared hands and arms. Pantrywomen were working to bandage the wounded.

  Hoss’k bowed low. “My Lord, I have made a discovery!”

  From his appearance, Hoss’k must have been here when the disaster occurred. Knowing Hoss’k, that implied the man had caused all this somehow, by meddling with Dennis Nuel’s beverage manufacturing device.

  “You have made a catastrophe!” Kremer shouted as he looked about at the ruins. “The one thing I was able to squeeze out of that wizard—before he betrayed my hospitality and made off with a valuable hostage—was this distillery! I had counted on its products to bring me great wealth in trade! And now you, you and your meddling—”

  Hoss’k held up his hand placatingly. “My Lord … you did instruct me to study the essence of the alien wizard’s devices. And as I was stymied by most of his other possessions, I decided to see if I could discover how this one works.”

  Kremer regarded him, his expression ominous. Onlookers glanced at each other, making silent wagers over the scholar’s expected life-span.

  “You’d better have discovered the essence behind the still,” Kremer threatened, “before you destroyed it. Much depends on your ability to rebuild it. You might find it hard to practice your fancy clothes without a head on your shoulders.”

  Hoss’k protested, “I am a member of the clergy!”

  At one look from Kremer, Hoss’k ducked down and nodded vigorously. “Oh, be not concerned, my Lord. It will be easy to rebuild the device, my Lord. Indeed, the principle was devilishly clever and simple. You see, this pot here—er, what is left of the pot—contained wine that was made to boil slowly, but the vapors from the boiling were restrained—”

  “Spare me the details.” Kremer waved the man to be silent. His headache was getting worse. “Consult with the crew. I want to know how long it will take to get it running again!”

  Hoss’k bowed and hurriedly turned to talk to the surviving members of the distillery gang.

  The Baron stepped over an injured soldier. The palace midwife who had been tending the moaning man’s wounds scuttled to get out of his way.

  Even as he walked through the ruins, Kremer’s mind was turning back to his main preoccupation—how to distribute his forces to recapture the wizard and Princess Linnora, and how simultaneously to begin his campaign against the L’Toff.

  The alliance was shaping up well. A squadron of his gliders had gone on tour, impressing the gentry for a hundred miles to the east, north, and south, and cowing the restive peasantry by playing up to the traditional superstition regarding dragons.

  All the great lords would be here shortly for a meeting. Kremer planned an impressive demonstration for them.

  Still, the barons would not be enough. He would need mercenaries, too, and it would take more than demonstrations to acquire those!

  Money, that was the key! And not this paper trash that kept its value by an artificially maintained scarcity, but real, metal money! With enough money Kremer could buy the services of free companies and bribe every great noble in the realm! No demonstrations or rumors of magical weapons could match the effect of cool, hard cash!

  And now this idiot deacon had destroyed the number one money-maker Kremer had been counting on!

  “Uh, my Lord?”

  Kremer turned. “Yes, scholar?”

  Hoss’k bowed once more as he caught up with the Baron. Hoss’k’s black hair was coated with soot.

  “My Lord, I did not intend, in experimenting with the still, to destroy it.… I—”

  “How long will it take?” Kremer growled.

  “Only a few days to begin getting small quantities—”

  “I don’t care about the making! How long will it take until the new still is practiced to the level of performance the old one had reached this morning?”

  Hoss’k looked very pale under his sooty coating. “Ten—twenty—” His voice squeaked.

  “Days?” Kremer winced as the twinge returned. He clutched his head, unable to speak. But he glared at Hoss’k, and it seemed that only his unspeakable headache was extending the deacon’s life.

  Just then a runner hurried through the palace gateway. The boy spotted the Baron, ran over, and saluted snappily.

  “My Lord, the Lord Hern sends his compliments and says to tell you that the sniffers have found the fugitives’ scent!”

  Kremer’s hands clasped each other. “Where are they?”

  “In the southwest pass, my Lord. Runners have been sent to all the camps in the foothills with the alert!”

  “Excellent! We shall send cavalry, too. Go and order the commander of First Spears to gather his troopers. I will be there shortly.”

  The boy saluted again and sped off.

  Kremer turned back to Hoss’k, who was clearly making his peace with his gods.

  “Scholar?” he said quietly.

  “Y-y-yes, my Lord?”

  “I need money, scholar.”

  Hoss’k gulped and nodded. “Yes, my Lord.”

  Kremer smiled narrowly. “Can you suggest a place where I can get a lot of money in a very short time?”

  Hoss’k blinked, then nodded again. “The metal house in the forest?”

  Kremer grinned in spite of the ache in his head. “Correct.”

  Hoss’k had suggested, earlier, that the metal house might have some intrinsic value far beyond its huge content in metal. The foreign wizard had been very clear in insisting that it be left alone if he was to do any work for Kremer.

  But Dennis Nuel had betrayed him, and Hoss’k no longer had much to say around here.

  “You leave with a fast troop of cavalry at once,” he told the portly churchman. “I want all that metal back here in five days.”

  One more time, Hoss’k merely swallowed and nodded.

  6

  A day and a half after setting off from the Sigels’ farm, Dennis had almost begun to hope they might make it through the cordon undetected.

  All through that first night on the road, the small party of fugitives had passed the flickering light of encampments in the hills—detachments of Baron Kremer’s gathering western army. Arth and Dennis helped the little donkey pull, while Linnora did her part by concentrating, practicing the cart to be silent.

  Once they stole nervously past a roadblock. The militiamen on duty were snoring, but in Dennis’s imagination the cart was barely quieter than a banshee until they passed beyond the next fringe of forest.

  Come morning they were high in the pass. They had left behind the main units of the army poised to invade the lands of the L’Toff. There were probably only a few squads of pickets between them and the open country.

  But to proceed during daylight would be madness. Dennis pulled his little group off into the thickets beside the mountain highway, and they rested through the day, alternately sleeping, talking quietly, and sampling from the picnic basket Mrs. Sigel had prepared for them.

  Dennis amused Linnora by showing her some tricks on his wrist-comp. He explained that there were no living creatures inside, and demonstrated some of the wonders of numbers. Linnora caught on very quickly.

  They must have been more tired than Dennis thought, for when he finally awakened, it was dark again. Two of Tatir’s small moons were already high, making the forestscape eerily and dangerously bright.

  He roused Arth and Linnora, who sat up quickly and stared in surprise
at the darkness. They arose and loaded the little wagon once again. Dennis insisted that Linnora continue to ride in the cart. Although her feet were better, the Princess clearly wasn’t ready yet to walk very far.

  The shadowy hillsides hulked around them as they set out. They pushed on silently.

  Dennis recalled the last time he had been through this pass, three months ago. Back then he hadn’t any idea what lay ahead. He had imagined the river valley filled with amazing alien creatures and still more amazing technology.

  The truth had turned out to be even more bizarre than anything he had imagined. Even now, from time to time he felt a faint recurrence of that sense of unreality, as if it were hard really to believe that this amazing world could exist.

  He thought about the probability calculations he had set up back in Zuslik. With his wrist-comp he just might be able to work out the odds of such a strange place as Tatir—and its even stranger Practice Effect—coming into being.

  But then, Dennis thought as they trudged under a dark canopy of trees, wasn’t Earth a strange place when you came right down to it? Cause and effect seemed so straightforward there, yet entropy always seemed to be conspiring to get you!

  Dennis hardly knew three or four engineers back home who didn’t secretly, in their hearts, devoutly believe in gremlins, in glitches, and in Murphy’s law.

  Dennis couldn’t decide which world was the more perverse. Perhaps both Earth and Tatir were improbable in the grand picture. It hardly mattered. What was important right now was survival. He intended to use the Practice Effect to the hilt, if that’s what it would take.

  He helped push the little cart. Already it seemed much easier. The wheels didn’t seem to squeak much anymore. Linnora was no longer jostled and tossed like a sack of potatoes as they rolled along.

  The Princess looked up at him in the moonlight. Dennis returned her smile. Everything would be all right, if only he could get Linnora safely to her people in the hills. No matter how great Kremer’s strength, the L’Toff could surely hold out long enough for Dennis to whip up some Earth magic to save the day.

  If only they could make it in time.

  Dawn came earlier than he expected.

  Ahead, in the growing light, was the crest of the pass. Dennis switched the donkey to hurry it along. He felt sure there would be an outpost up here.

  But when the road peaked without any sign of trouble, he began to hope. The pass flattened out in a mist of early-morning haze. Dennis was about to call a rest when there came a sudden shout from their left.

  Arth cursed and pointed. Up on the hill to that side was a small red campfire they had missed, in spite of their watchfulness. In the dawning light they could see bustling movement and the brown uniforms of Kremer’s territorial militia. A detachment was already beating their way toward them through the underbrush.

  The road ran slightly downhill ahead, around the flank of the mountain. Dennis slapped the tired donkey’s flank.

  “Get going, Arth! I’ll hold them off!”

  Arth stumbled after the cart, mostly carried along by inertia. “All by yerself? Dennizz, are you crazy?”

  “Get Linnora out of here! I can handle them!”

  Linnora looked back at Dennis anxiously. But she was silent as the muttering Arth led the donkey at a trot around the bend in the road.

  Dennis found a good spot and planted himself in the center of the highway. Fortunately, the territorials weren’t the best troops Kremer had—mostly drafted farmers led by a smattering of professionals. Most of them would undoubtedly rather be at home.

  Nevertheless, this would have to be a pretty good bluff.

  When the patrol tumbled out of the brush onto the road, Dennis saw only swords, spears, and thenners. Fortunately, there were no archers. A good bowman was rare in these parts. A practiced bow required a lot of attention, and few had that kind of time or energy to spend on weapons.

  His plan just might work.

  He waited in the center of the road, fingering a handful of smooth stones and a strip of silky cloth.

  The gathering soldiers seemed nonplussed by his behavior. Instead of charging, they came forward at a walk, urged by a growling sergeant. Apparently they had heard who the chief fugitive was, and they weren’t exactly boiling over with excitement at the idea of attacking an alien wizard.

  When they were within a hundred feet, Dennis dropped a stone into his sling. He whirled it three times and flung.

  “Abracadabra! Oooga booga!” he shouted.

  In the dense packing of militiamen, he couldn’t miss. Someone howled and dropped a clattering weapon to the ground.

  “Oh, demons of the air!” he invoked the sky. “Teach these fools who dare to try to thwart a wizard!” He whirled and flung another stone.

  Another soldier clutched at his stomach and sat down, groaning.

  A few of the militiamen began melting away from the rear, suddenly developing an intense interest in the breakfast they had left behind.

  The others stopped uncertainly, their eyes wide with superstitious dread.

  A sergeant in a gray cloak began shouting at the men, and commenced kicking a few rumps. After a moment, the line began to approach again raggedly.

  Dennis couldn’t let this continue. Sure, he could make them pause again with another stone. But if they became habituated to his attack they would soon see that only a few men were getting hurt—and only getting the wind knocked out of them, at that. They would see that in a massed charge they could easily overwhelm him.

  Dennis put down his sling and pulled from his belt a long leather thong. At one end was tied a hollow piece of hardwood he had whittled back at the Sigels’.

  “Flee!” he called out in his best deep movie voice. “Do not make me call forth my demons!” He advanced slowly and began whirling the thong over his head.

  The hollow tube bit into the air, and began to let out a rumbling, groaning sound. He hadn’t had much time to practice the bull roarer. It would have to do as he had made it. In a moment he had it moaning loudly, though, an eerie, hackles-raising noise.

  It was a chancy business, certainly. Dennis wasn’t even sure Coylians were unfamiliar with the device. Just because he had never witnessed one in use and Arth had never heard of it didn’t mean none of these men had.

  But the soldiers began to swallow nervously and back away as he advanced. Several more dropped out from the rear of the troop and hurried away.

  The sergeant cursed and shouted again. His voice had the accent of Kremer’s northmen. But the rising growl of the bull roarer seemed to fill the forest with reverberations. It sounded as though there were animals out there, in the half light beneath the branches. The echoes were like strange creatures’ voices, answering the summons of their master.

  Dennis concentrated on making the noisemaker better, though he knew he lacked the talent to cause things to change so quickly. Only a talented L’Toff could occasionally purposely manage a rare felthesh trance—or a fortunate man who won the help of a fickle Krenegee beast. Still, the groaning noise rose until the hairs on the back of his own neck stood on end.

  The militiamen were backing up now, staring about themselves fearfully in spite of the northman’s curses. Finally the sergeant seized a spear from one of his frightened soldiers. With a yell he cast it toward Dennis.

  Dennis watched the spear sail toward him. But he kept a smile on his face and advanced evenly. To turn and run, or even step aside, would put heart into these men. He had to seem not to care, and to trust that the sergeant was too nervous himself to be much of a marksman!

  The spear slammed into the ground inches from Dennis’s left foot. It vibrated musically as he walked past it.

  His legs felt like water. He laughed—though, to be honest, it felt more hysterical than humorous to him.

  At the sound of his laughter, the soldiers moaned in terror almost as one. They threw down their weapons and fled.

  The sergeant offered a brief grimace of defiance
. But when Dennis shouted “Boo!” he spun about and followed his men, rushing pell-mell down the road to Zuslik.

  Dennis found himself standing there in the misty morning light, whirling his little noisemaker, amid a scattered pile of shiny, abandoned weapons.

  Finally he was able to make himself bring his arm down and stop the infernal racket.

  When he hurried down the road, calling out their names, Arth and Linnora pulled out of a dark hole in the trees. Arth looked Dennis up and down, then smiled sheepishly, as if ashamed ever to have doubted him. Linnora’s eyes shone, as if to say that she at least had never worried.

  She plucked at her klasmodion as they resumed their march. Only by accident did Dennis, a short time later, glimpse her nudge Arth and hold out her hand. Arth shrugged and handed over a small wad of ragged paper bills.

  7

  Soon they were passing the flint quarries Dennis had observed during his first week here. Now he understood why he had seen nobody back then. The preparations for war had already cleared the mountains. And here on Tatir, when people evacuated an area they took all their practiceable possessions and left nothing behind.

  They made good time. The cart was clearly improving with use. As the morning passed, however, Dennis still worried. Surely the fleeing militiamen would have reported in by now. Kremer would have better troops sent after them.

  They arrived at a fork in the road. Ahead of them the highway continued along the flank of the mountains, westward toward the big flint mines of the Graymounts.

  Linnora got up and hobbled over to the less-used fork, the one heading south. “This is the trade route. It is the way I first came when I felt the presence of the little metal house come into the world.”

  She frowned and scuffed the side trail, as if unhappy over its level of practice. Trade had been particularly poor during the past few years. If the neglect lasted much longer the beautiful surface would start to fade away to a dirt track.