Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “There are copies of that one in the bookseller’s cart,” Master Faye said. “You may wish to buy them, now that your gold has been verified.”

  Dacron nodded. Master Faye had taken the gold and replaced it with some from his own bank, all marked to avoid further charges of counterfeiting. Several gold coins had been sent back to the base, where they would be moved to the space station for heavy analysis; the remainder had been stored at the building Master Faye had allowed them to use. Dacron intended, in fact, to buy a copy of everything the bookseller had, as well as attempt to determine where they could buy more books. There had to be some centre of learning where the library books were produced before they were shipped out to the cities.

  He put the book down and reached for the last one, before Master Faye stopped him. “That one is very old,” he said. “It may even be unique. You can see that after you give me the rejuvenation treatments.”

  “You still need to provide us with some of your blood,” Dacron said, dryly. “A treatment that isn’t tailored specifically to you is unlikely to work.”

  “I will need you to be careful with it,” Master Faye warned. “It is dangerous for a magician to allow strangers to handle his blood.”

  “We cannot produce the treatment without it,” Dacron informed him. “At best, it would have no effect on you. At worst, it would kill you instantly.”

  He waited to see what Master Faye would say to that. “I need to consider carefully,” Master Faye said, finally. “It is not something I wish to do.”

  “Your attitude makes no sense,” Dacron said, bluntly. “You agreed to the bargain. We told you that we would need a blood sample from you to make it work. And now you are reluctant to give us the sample, let alone samples from other people you wish to rejuvenate.”

  Master Faye gave him an icy look. “I am the Pillar of Warlock’s Bane,” he said, sharply. “If I make myself vulnerable, I am not the only one who will suffer.”

  Dacron hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. The Confederation had no shortage of ways to deal with Warlock’s Bane, or the entire planet, if it came down to a fight. And he was certain that there were already contingency plans to destroy the entire planet as a final resort. A handful of rocks from orbit would vaporise the city, no matter what happened to more advanced technology like hypermissiles, nanostorms or quantum disintegrators. They didn’t need Master Faye’s blood to attack him.

  But that wasn’t true for other magicians on Darius.

  “We will take good care of it,” he assured Master Faye. “And we can proceed whenever you are ready to begin.”

  Master Faye nodded. “I’ll make my decision soon,” he said. “Until then, we can proceed with your magical studies at a later date.”

  It was a dismissal and Dacron recognised it as such. Wondering absently what, if anything, he’d done to offend, he headed downstairs and out of the building, walking through the strangely ramshackle streets. According to the snoops, they were fairly solid, but many of them looked as if the designers had no way to go, but up. Earth had done that, once upon a time, before gaining access to the boundless universe beyond the planet’s atmosphere. It was hard to resist the feeling that they were going to tumble down at any moment.

  A number of people glanced at him oddly as he walked through the streets. The snoops had reported that rumours were already spreading, although none of them seemed to be close to the truth. They were apparently friends of Master Faye, if not magicians themselves, and as such had to be treated gingerly. Adam had reported that most of the merchants had pulled back, leaving him unable to haggle properly for their trade goods. Dacron wasn’t too bothered about that, but he could understand why it was a problem. The more waves they made in the local pond, the greater the effect they’d have upon the locals after they were gone.

  A hand shot out of nowhere and pulled him into an alleyway. Dacron was surprised to discover that he recognised the bookseller, the same one who had frozen and kidnapped Elyria. He reached for his sword before hesitating, suspecting that it wasn’t an attack.

  “I need to speak with you later, in my cart,” the bookseller said. “Can you visit me after dark?”

  Dacron hesitated. There was no reason why he couldn’t, apart from simple paranoia. And the bookseller would have to be insane to take risks with Master Faye’s guests. Everything they knew about Darius confirmed that the Pillars were in charge and challenging them could lead to an unfortunate and humiliating end.

  “Very well,” he said, finally. “I will be happy to attend. Can I bring friends?”

  “You don’t want to be noticed,” the bookseller said. There was an intensity in his voice that surprised Dacron. They didn’t want to be noticed by whom? “Come alone if you can; if not, bring one person.”

  He walked off down the alleyway before Dacron could respond. Dacron considered as he opened a channel back to orbit. He’d report on the odd request first and then detail what he’d learned of magic. And then they could see if they could work out just what was going on.

  It was funny, but every time they solved one mystery another appeared right in front of them.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  “And you call what we do magic,” Joshua said.

  The flying machine – the shuttle, they’d called it – was hovering in the air, just over the clearing. There was a very faint humming sound, but little else, not even a whiff of magic. A flying carpet crawled with magic; the boxy shuttle seemed to be held up by nothing more than stubby wings and good intentions. He shook his head in disbelief as it dropped down to the ground and rested on the soil.

  “Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Elyria said, thoughtfully. She gave him a mischievous look. “What do you think of it?”

  Joshua smiled. “It’s fantastic,” he said, as a hatch opened in the shuttle’s hull. There was a very faint whiff of something in the atmosphere as he stepped closer. “What keeps it in the air.”

  “Right now? Very basic antigravity systems,” Elyria said. She hesitated. “The offer of a sedative still stands.”

  “I want to see everything,” Joshua said. He’d run through a dozen mental exercises designed to keep his magic under control, because he was not going to pass up the chance to watch as the shuttle rose through the planet’s atmosphere and out into space, beyond the range of any observation spell. “I’ll keep myself calm.”

  “If you don’t, there’s a good chance we will simply fall out of the sky,” Elyria pointed out, dryly. She led the way into the shuttle and nodded to one of the chairs. “Take a seat and don’t touch anything.”

  Joshua followed her into the craft. It was more cramped than he had expected, although it was larger than a carriage that hadn’t been modified to be bigger on the inside than on the outside. There were a handful of chairs, a set of blinking lights and a large porthole, allowing him to see out into the clearing. Elyria tapped one of the lights and the hatch closed soundlessly. A moment later, he felt a faint tremor as the shuttle started to drift up into the air. Despite himself, he couldn’t help feeling a frisson of excitement running through his body. Master Faye had never done anything like this.

  The shuttle rose higher into the sky. Joshua leant forward, watching avidly as Warlock’s Bane came into view and then dropped away into the distance. His world was rapidly shrinking below him, becoming a sphere; he couldn’t help feeling small as the shuttle passed through the upper edges of the atmosphere and into darkness. Below him, Darius was a blue-green sphere of light, glowing against the eternal blackness of space. He was tiny on such a scale... all around him, the stars were coming out. They didn’t even twinkle in the darkness, but glowed with a steady light that was somehow both welcoming and very cold.

  “There’s no atmosphere to produce the twinkle,” Elyria said, when he tried to put his feelings into words. “And they’re still a very long way away.”

  She gave him an odd look. “Humanity was born to b
e a spacefaring race,” she added. “That was stolen from you, long ago.”

  Joshua looked away from the planet and out into the darkness, searching for the starship he’d been told was up there. He couldn’t see anything; a moment later, he realised that he might not see the ship, even if it was very close to them. If the planet itself looked tiny, a starship would be far smaller, even invisible. And the Confederation had been trying to remain hidden...

  “Look,” Elyria said. She pointed one long finger towards the viewport. “That’s our station.”

  It looked rather like a sphere, growing larger and larger against the planet. The station was composed of something silvery, something that reflected light towards them, leaving it glowing in the darkness of space. Up close, it was massive, easily larger than any of the sailing ships he’d dreamed of, back before Master Faye had taken him as his apprentice. And it was built completely of metal... Darius could never have produced a ship made of metal, let alone put it into space. There were limits to how high a flying carpet could rise.

  He looked over at Elyria. “What happened to the ship?”

  “It’s remaining further away from the planet for now,” Elyria explained. “We don’t want to risk it being damaged by the anti-technology field on your world.”

  Joshua wondered if that meant that he wouldn’t be allowed to visit the starship for a while, if at all, but he put his brief moment of resentment aside as the station grew so large that it dominated the viewport. A hatch opened in the side of the silvery structure and a faint beam of light emerged, reaching for them. The shuttle quivered slightly as it was guided into the hatch, which closed behind them. Inside, they found themselves in a massive compartment, illuminated by brilliant white light.

  “Once we know what we’re doing,” Elyria said, as she stood up, “we will take you outside, with nothing between you and space apart from a force field. You’ll love it.”

  The hatch opened, revealing a metallic deck and a handful of the floating spheres that had assisted in the experiments Joshua had undergone on the planet’s surface. He sniffed the air, tasting a vaguely metallic tang, as he stepped onto the deck, wondering if it would shift under him. Instead, it seemed reassuringly stable.

  “And you built all this in less than a day,” he said, in disbelief. “We couldn’t have done that.”

  “We couldn’t have done what you do,” the sphere said, in a cultured voice that reminded him of Master Faye. “At least, not for the moment.”

  Elyria smiled. “Try to perform some magic,” she said. “Something relatively simple.”

  Joshua gave her a sharp look – there was nothing simple about magic – but did as he was told, running through a very basic spell. Nothing happened... in fact, when he concentrated, his awareness of magic seemed to have faded. His first thought was that he’d managed to get the spell wrong and so he ran through it again, and then cast a different spell. Nothing happened... in fact, he could barely sense the magic field. It seemed weak, almost non-existent.

  “I can’t,” he admitted. All of a sudden, he felt himself to be vulnerable – and powerless. “My magic isn’t working.”

  “That suggests that your powers are restricted to the planet’s surface,” the sphere said. It bobbled in the air as it led the way through a hatch and into a small room, with a single chair set in the exact centre. “That is particularly interesting as we have noted technology glitching at a greater distance from the planet.”

  Elyria gave him a concerned look. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Joshua said. He felt miserable – and at the same time, as if he were free of a burden. “I just don’t know.”

  “Take a seat,” the sphere instructed. “If nothing else, we can start scanning your body using more intrusive techniques. We may even get some answers.”

  Its voice managed to convey an impression of rubbing its hands together with glee as Joshua sat down. There was a long pause, during which he felt nothing, and then one of the other spheres bobbled around him in a circle, before drifting off. Joshua shook his head, wondering when they were actually going to begin, and tried to relax. Maybe he was just too tense for them to do anything.

  “Now that is interesting,” the sphere said. It produced an illusion – a hologram, they’d called it – in front of Joshua. “There are some very odd changes in your body.”

  Elyria smiled at him, reassuringly, as the sphere continued. “Why aren’t you supposed to have children?”

  Joshua flushed, embarrassed. He’d been told, time and time again, that he was never to get a girl pregnant, that he was always to use contraceptive spells and that he was never to form a permanent relationship with anyone. Master Faye had explained why in great detail, but suddenly he found it hard to talk about it to anyone else. It was just too embarrassing.

  He looked at the sphere, forcing himself to ignore Elyria. “Children born to magicians have powerful magic,” he said, finally. “We’re meant to discourage it.”

  The sphere wobbled from side to side, as if it were confused. “Why? Wouldn’t more powerful magicians be an advantage?”

  “The average magician develops his powers as he grows up,” Joshua explained. “Children born to magic, however, develop their powers from infancy. They very rapidly become uncontrollable. Master Faye told me about a child who made herself the absolute ruler of a bailiwick when she was seven years old. Others were far less... stable. They... they treated people worse than even the worst of the Scions.”

  “They grew up with more power than anyone else,” Elyria mused. “And... what happens to them?”

  “I never saw one,” Joshua said. “Master Faye told me that any magical child found by the local Pillar would be killed at once, before he developed the control to protect himself. A handful of others had to be tricked and then killed by other magicians... there was no other choice. Their power had warped them to the point where they were dangerously unfeeling monsters, far more powerful than anyone else.”

  “I can imagine,” Elyria said. She gave the sphere a sharp look. “Is there a point to this question?”

  “We have completed a quantum resonance scan of your body,” the sphere said to Joshua. “There are two additional oddities that were not picked up on the planet’s surface. The first one is that there are tiny changes in your reproductive system. Any child you sire will have a slightly different genetic code from the rest of the human race. We are still analysing it to determine what it actually does.”

  “I don’t understand,” Joshua said. “What is my genetic code?”

  Elyria frowned before answering. “The simplest explanation would be that the genetic code is the building blocks of your body,” she said, finally. “Your code is a mixture of the coding from your mother and father when they conceived you, scrambled together to produce something new. The shape of your nose, for example, comes from your father; your blue eyes come from your mother.”

  Joshua smiled. “And my siblings look a little like me because they share the same basic code?” he guessed. “But why does my youngest sister have ginger hair? No one else in the family has it.”

  “Some elements of the genetic code are recessive,” the sphere said. “It is possible that the precise coding for ginger hair skipped a generation, only to reappear in your sister. We would have to run a complete scan of your family to be sure.”

  There was a pause. “Have you ever attempted to use magic to improve your sexual potency?”

  Joshua flushed at the question. “Master Faye told me never to even try anything like that,” he said, embarrassed. “He said it always ended badly.”

  The sphere tilted again. “Did he ever do anything to you that might have improved your body?”

  “Only a handful of healing spells,” Joshua said, tightly. “What is wrong with me?”

  “Your reproductive system is going like a rocket,” the sphere said. “That is not natural, even for the teenage human male. And there are a handful of very
subtle changes where your power is hardly subtle.”

  There was a pause. “There is a second oddity,” it added. “Have you ever attempted to use your powers to break down your body into a quantum waveform and materialise elsewhere?”

  It required several explanations before Joshua grasped that they meant teleporting. “No,” he said, finally. “There are magicians who can teleport, but I never even started to learn the skill. I’m not even sure if Master Faye can teleport.”

  He looked at the sphere. “Why?”

  The sphere gave the odd impression of trying to decide what, if anything, to say. “Most of the damage inflicted on your body by your powers is easy to repair,” the sphere said, finally. “We are willing to do the repair work now, if you agree. However, deep-focus scans reveal faint damage at the quantum level. This damage is alarmingly comparable to teleporting accidents where the pattern was stored in the buffer for longer than a handful of microseconds.”

  Elyria winced. “I thought that could be lethal,” she said, finally. “What exactly is happening to him?”

  “There is a very faint degradation in his body at the quantum level,” the sphere said. Joshua didn’t understand what it meant, but it sounded ominous. “We believe that there is a very real possibility that his powers are slowly killing him, or driving him insane. In some ways, the effect is comparable to the damage caused by electronic simulation of the pleasure centres. The addict feels fine, right up until the moment he collapses.”

  “I’m not insane,” Joshua insisted.

  “Worse, the damage is beyond our ability to fix,” the sphere added, remorselessly. “Reassembling a human body on the quantum level is difficult; repairing one is almost impossible.”