“Achievements through ignorance,” the AIs said. “How can they do anything like that?”
“It has happened, in human history,” Elyria pointed out. “We didn’t evolve knowing how to produce the first AIs, or hyperdrive, or planetoids...”
“Darius appears to have been settled long enough for them to rediscover spaceflight,” the AIs pointed out, tartly. “The two factors stopping them are magic and their cultural problems. We wonder if any of them did research into the origins of magic.”
“We could ask Joshua,” Elyria said, although she doubted that Master Faye had told him very much. “Or see what we find when we scan Master Faye’s library.”
“He refused to allow us to remove the books,” the AIs reminded her. “Dacron will have to glance at them all, page by page, and then relay it to the rest of the team.”
Elyria nodded. Ten minutes with the books, in the shuttle or the space station, would have provided them with all the information stored between their covers. The books she’d purchased from the bookseller were already being scanned, although they hadn’t done much more than confirm their speculations. And prove that human romance novels were universally bad.
“That should provide us with more information,” she said. “Have you managed to unlock the language he uses for magic spells?”
“Not as yet,” the AIs said. There was a hint of annoyance in their words. “As far as we can tell, it bears no resemblance to any language known prior to the First Expansion Era, but we cannot be entirely positive as we do not have complete records of that era. You humans managed to lose a great deal of your history during the Time of Unrest.”
Elyria nodded. “It was a brutal time,” she said, knowing that few colony worlds, even the ones that had fallen back into barbarism, hadn’t gone through their own Time of Unrest. If humanity hadn’t developed the warp drive, the story of the human race might have come to a sudden and unpleasant end. “But we learned from it.”
Jorlem picked up a datapad and glanced at it. “You cannot identify any words?”
“Not with sufficient precision to be sure of a match,” the AIs said. “Languages evolve over time, Colonel. The handful of similarities may be nothing more than coincidence.”
There was a pause. “Elyria,” they added, “we would like you to participate in an experiment. Would you agree to be frozen again, briefly?”
Elyria had anticipated that question, although she had expected it to be longer in coming. They needed data for analysis – and as the only person who had been exposed to magic, they could risk her more easily than anyone else. Not that there would be any question of forcing her, of course. The Confederation simply didn’t work that way. Besides, there was no need; the only way to gain status in the Confederation was through achievement and cracking the mystery of Darius would be one hell of an achievement. There was plenty of incentive to swallow and let him freeze her for the second time.
“Fine,” she said, unable to hide the tremor in her voice. What would they suggest next? “I’ll do it.”
She allowed Jorlem to precede her back into the medical examination room, where the AI drones were orbiting Joshua and scanning him constantly, monitoring his brainwaves. The researchers were already explaining what they wanted from him; Joshua, to his credit, looked reluctant to do anything to her at all. He finally looked at her and asked if it was really what she wanted, causing her to smile and nod. They did need the experimental data.
“Do it,” she said, before she could change her mind.
Joshua flexed his hand, muttering a single word... and she froze. Again, she tried to move and couldn’t, not even her eyes. The AI drones moved to her position and poked away at her, scanning her brainwave patterns even as they prodded her with a needle. There was a faint stab of dull pain when they drew blood, but it had an eerie dreamlike quality. The whole experience was still terrifyingly unpleasant.
“Your implants are still functional,” the AIs said. “Can you use them?”
Elyria tried – and discovered that she couldn’t. The spell, or whatever it was, seemed to prevent all voluntary actions, even ones that were purely mental. She couldn’t understand why she could still think, let alone anything else. And why didn’t it prevent her from breathing, if it was holding her in a state of total stasis?
“Curious,” the AIs said, finally. “Your brainwave patterns appear to be normal, but your body is simply unable to move. There is no apparent damage to account for it.”
“The spell holds its target in place,” Joshua said. There was an odd note in his voice. “Do you wish me to release it?”
Yes, Elyria thought.
“Yes,” the AIs said, after a moment. “Release her.”
Elyria staggered as she found herself able to move again. “That was unpleasant,” she said, feeling an odd mixture of anger and fear. “Was there nothing you could detect?”
“There was a flicker of quantum distortion when the spell was cast, and another when it was released, but nothing else,” the AIs said. There was a long pause as they studied the data, something that should have taken them bare nanoseconds. “One possibility is that the spell interacted with your place in the quantum foam, telling it that you couldn’t move. Any standard paralysis, either through nerve damage or through a stasis beam, should have been easily detectable.”
“I couldn’t do anything voluntarily,” Elyria said, through her implants. They had worked, this time, but she hadn’t been able to use them. The spell was clearly either very wide-ranging, like the spells intended to prevent people from spying on Master Faye, or something else had done the hard work for Joshua. He didn’t even know about their implants. “It was not pleasant.”
“So you said,” the AIs agreed. “Do you still wish to take Joshua to the space station?”
Elyria looked over at the young magician. “Do you want to fly into space?”
“Yes,” Joshua said, quickly. He’d adapted well to the idea that Darius was just one of millions of planets, even if its civilisation was unique. Elyria couldn’t wait to see what he’d make of the view from orbit, as well as seeing if his magic still worked away from the planet. “I want to see the world.”
“Bring down the second shuttle,” Elyria ordered. “And then we can fly back to space.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
“You can read all of these books,” Master Faye said, when he escorted Dacron into his private study. “You may not take any of them outside the room.”
“Thank you,” Dacron said, politely. Humans were still a mystery to him in many ways, yet Master Faye was definitely very strange, even by humans standards. On one hand, he was being very cooperative – and well he might, given what he stood to gain – and on the other he seemed reluctant to do anything remotely helpful. It had taken hours of waiting in his house, drinking something called Kava, before Master Faye had finally taken him to the study. “I am sure they will be most enlightening.”
He looked at the bookshelf and found it hard to suppress a human urge to rub his hands together with glee. There was genuinely original knowledge contained within those tomes, as primitive as they were, knowledge the AIs couldn’t obtain for themselves. Whatever interfered with technology on Darius prevented anything from working inside Master Faye’s house. Master Faye reached for the bookshelf, produced the first book and passed it to Dacron, who took it gingerly. It felt as if it were on the verge of falling to pieces.
“This could be duplicated,” he pointed out. Darius had the printing press, and ways of making better paper. “Why don’t you have it copied?”
“Because then the knowledge would spread wider afield,” Master Faye pointed out, sarcastically. “This sort of knowledge is only traded for equal or greater value in return.”
Dacron nodded, sat down at the small wooden table, and opened the tome with care. The first page was covered in spidery handwriting he found difficult to read, forcing him to puzzle out each word individually. Eventua
lly, he managed to decipher the text enough to read that a Master Hawthorne had written it, although he wasn’t sure exactly when. There was no date under the written words. Master Hawthorne bragged of his success in cataloguing the most important set of magic words and spells, noting that it should improve the use of magic immeasurably. A note written underneath in different handwriting stated that Master Hawthorne had been murdered by his apprentice the following year and his book had never entered general circulation.
Taking one final glance at the page – storing the memory for the AIs to access later – he carefully picked up the sheet of paper and turned the page. The paper seemed brittle and faded, but it was clear enough for him to realise that it had turned into a dictionary, of sorts. Certain words were linked to their meanings in Darius’s language, followed by instructions on how to pronounce them properly. Dacron memorised them absently as he tried to work out what some of the words had to do with magic. It struck him a moment later; the magic words that the magicians used came from a very different language. The book in front of him taught magicians how to shape their spells prior to casting them.
If there was some other agent doing the hard work – like an RI – it had to be told what to do, he decided. It probably wouldn’t respond to Darius’s standard tongue, or everyone would be using magic. Only those who learned the magical language would be able to cast spells... logically, if Dacron could master it, he would not only be able to cast spells, but improve on them as well. Or devise protections for Confederation technology that would allow it to work perfectly in the Dead Zones.
Carefully, he worked out a spell that should generate a ball of light and then said it, out loud. There was a faint tingle running down his skin, seconds before a ball of light manifested just above his fingertips. Dacron stared at it in honest disbelief. It cast a pearly-white radiance over the study, illuminating the room with an eerie shine. There was, he could feel, a very faint link between himself and the light. It was easy to issue mental commands to direct it into the air.
“You...” Master Faye stared in disbelief. “You did that on your first try!”
“Yes,” Dacron said. He hesitated, trying to understand how to terminate the spell. “How do you end the magic?”
Master Faye said a single word and the light vanished. “Do you have any idea,” Master Faye said, “just how long it takes an apprentice to master that spell? Months! And you did it instantly!”
Dacron shrugged. “It is merely a question of using the right word,” he said, seriously. “I imagine that apprentices have problems pronouncing them properly.”
“That’s one of their problems,” Master Faye said. “It can take them time to muster the energy needed to produce a spell too.”
That made no sense, Dacron decided. If there was something behind the magic, doing the actual hard work for the magicians, why would it cost them any energy at all? Speaking wasn’t really an energy-intensive action. And if they were doing something themselves, without an outside agent, the results should have been a great deal more chaotic. Maybe the real problem was interacting with the outside agent, he decided, and his clone body had simply interacted better than a standard human.
Or maybe it was his health. Or maybe it was his memories of being part of the Gestalt.
He opened the next page and skimmed down it, memorising the spells carefully before moving to the third page. Slowly, he was starting to see how the spells went together, something that the locals would probably be unable to match for years, if at all. In fact, it seemed to operate more as a primitive computer language than anything more human. The AIs would snigger at machines that ran such a system – they wouldn’t even be RIs – but they would work. They certainly wouldn’t get bored with serving humanity if they didn’t have the self-awareness to realise that they even existed.
But that raised a puzzling question. Darius’s magic worked by interacting with the quantum foam, something the AIs – vastly more intelligent than any human – couldn’t do. They couldn’t even devise a way to access the foam, let alone interact with it. Whoever had designed Darius was vastly more advanced than the Confederation, so why had they given the humans such a primitive user interface? Or maybe they wanted to see if the humans on Darius would overcome its limitations on their own. The whole planet was starting to look more and more like a very strange experiment.
Master Faye broke into his thoughts. “Do you really memorise things so quickly?”
“Yes,” Dacron said. His memory was perfect, at least when it came to his human existence. The memories of being part of the Gestalt were strangely incomprehensible. There had been vast and powerful thoughts and... he pushed them away, irritated. “I remember everything.”
“A good magician must learn to memorise magic words before they start composing their own spells,” Master Faye said, grudgingly. “Try another spell.”
Dacron hesitated, skimming through his memory. There were two hundred spells in his mind, some with clearly-defined results, others that didn’t seem to have an explanation written beside them. Master Hawthorne hadn’t been able to bring himself to share everything, he decided, as he picked one of the unknown spells. A moment later, he cast it into the air... and the entire room flared with blue light.
“The spell reveals the presence of other magic,” Master Faye said, into the silence. “You’ll notice, as your eyes adapt to the light, that some places are brighter than others. That’s where the really powerful defensive spells are placed.”
Dacron looked around, feeling an odd pressure on his eyes. They’d been modified to be better than perfect; he could see into the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum. But the strange light made them ache; he found himself blinking as he sighted knots of blue light around the doors, windows and drawers, before he managed to banish the spell.
“You’re very sensitive,” Master Faye said, carefully. “Does your society really not have magic?”
“No,” Dacron said. Could it be that the enhancements spliced into his body had also enhanced his magical abilities, abilities no one had known he had? But if it was that easy to manipulate the quantum foam, the AIs would have done it long ago. “This is a complete surprise to us.”
Master Faye frowned. “You should know to be careful when you cast spells,” he said, finally. “Too much magic in one day can cause damage beyond repair.”
Dacron nodded inwardly as he reached for the next book. It described how spells could actually be constructed from a series of instructions, although it warned that magicians experimenting with magic for the first time often produced mixed results. Dacron could understand it; primitive computers often had problems when inexperienced programmers had tried to produce new programs for them. On the other hand, once the AIs had downloaded the contents of his memory, he would have been surprised if they couldn’t produce more powerful and capable spells than the locals. They understood computers from the inside.
The third book talked about magical injuries healing. One spell was meant to cure almost anything, apart from damage inflicted by magic. They required more specialist spells; one to detect the presence of magic, one to undo it and one to prevent it recurring. Some spells were targeted on one specific person – identified by their name, or a mental image – and had to be rewritten rather than simply removed. Others could be banished with a single word. A number created mental compulsions that needed complex spells to identify and remove without causing more damage. One such spell included a warning that excessive use would turn someone into a giggling moron.
He looked over at Master Faye and frowned. “How often do you use such spells?”
“Very rarely,” Master Faye said. “I am not so insecure as to need people to keep telling me I’m wonderful. Besides, it wouldn’t be real.”
Dacron could understand that point. “Why can’t some of the spells be removed?”
“Because they’re bound to a specific person,” Master Faye said, patiently, “and cannot be removed without killing
their target. You need to refocus them on something else, if you want to cancel the effects. A love or obedience spell can have other effects when removed, even if it doesn’t kill someone.”
He looked down at the floor for a long moment. “It is the task of the Pillar to protect his Minors from other magicians,” he added. “I wasn’t always successful.”
“No one expects complete success,” Dacron said, more because he knew he had to say something than out of any real conviction. “You tried...”
“Your society is more forgiving than mine,” Master Faye said, slyly. “A Pillar who can’t protect his citizens is one who is weakening, an easy target for a Scion who wants to move up the ladder to become a Pillar. My failures led to challenges against my authority.”
He grinned at Dacron. “What will happen to the impossibly old girl for her failure?”
“She will be judged; if found to have been careless, she will be reprimanded,” Dacron informed him. Looking at the evidence, it was obvious that they simply hadn’t known enough about Darius to have slipped inside the society without being noticed. “How did you know that we were spying on you?”
“The spells detected your efforts,” Master Faye said. “They worked.”
That wasn’t in question, Dacron knew. The real question was why the spells had worked, because Master Faye had clearly suspected another magician rather than a spacefaring civilisation from several thousand light years away. Looking at the spellbooks, Dacron suspected that the spells had simply been designed to watch for intruding spies, without actually being targeted on magicians specifically. They’d picked up and blocked the snoops without ever realising what they actually were. It would have been galling, if there had been no other things to be galled about on Darius.
He returned the book to the bookshelf and picked up the next one. This one seemed younger than the others, produced by a printing press rather than hand-made by a master craftsman. It was an atlas, describing Darius’s cities and the Pillars responsible for ruling them, as well as providing a list of known Scions. Dacron narrowed his eyes as he realised that several Scions lived alarmingly close to the base. It was possible that they might be detected at any moment.
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