The Ship Who Saved the Worlds

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Food-tasters! There's more in heaven and on earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio," Keff said.

  "Hmph!" Carialle said. "That's an understatement. I wish you could see what I do. Those languorous poses are just that: poses. I'm recording everything for your benefit, and it's taking approximately eighteen percent of my total memory capacity to absorb it. I'm not merely monitoring three language forms. There is a lot more going on sub rosa. Every one of our magifolk is tensed up so much I don't know how they can swallow. The air is full of power transmissions, odd miniature gravity wells, low-frequency signals, microwaves, you name it."

  "Can you trace any of it back? What is it all for?"

  "The low-frequency stuff is easy to read. It's chatter. They're sending private messages to one another, forming conspiracies and so on against, as nearly as I can tell, everyone else in the room. The power signals correspond to dirty tricks like the poison in your wine. As for the microwaves, I can't tell what they're for. The transmission is slightly askew to anything I've dealt with before, and I can't intercept it anyway because I'm not on the receiving end."

  "Tight point-to-point beam?"

  "I wish I could transmit something with as little spillover," Carialle admitted. "Somebody is very good at what they're doing."

  IT continued to translate, but most of what it reported was small talk, mostly on the taste of the wine and the current berry harvests. With their chairs bobbing up and down to add emphasis to their discourse, two magiwomen were conversing about architecture. A couple of the magifolk here and there leaned their heads toward one another as if sharing a confidence, but their lips weren't moving. Keff suspected the same kind of transference that the magifolk used to control their eye spheres. He looked up, wondering where all the spy-eyes had gone. That afternoon on the field the air had been thick with them.

  Keff contrasted the soup that appeared in huge silver tureens with the swill that Brannel's people had to eat. And he and Cari were still not free to leave the planet. Still, in spite of the shortcomings, he had a feeling of satisfaction.

  "This is the race everyone in Exploration has always dreamed of finding," he said, surveying the magifolk. "Our technical equals, Cari. And against all odds, a humanoid race that evolved parallel to our own. They're incredible."

  "Incredible when they amputate fingers from babies?" asked Carialle. "And keep a whole segment of the race under their long thumbs with drugged food and drink? If they're our equals, thank you, I'll stay unequal. Besides, they don't appear to be makers, they're users. Chaumel's mighty proud of those techno-toys left to him by the Old Ones and the Ancient Ones, but he doesn't know how to fix 'em. And neither does anyone else. Over there, in the corner."

  Keff glanced over as Carialle directed. On the floor lay Chaumel's jelly jar. He gasped.

  "Does he know he lost it?"

  "He didn't lose it. I saw him drop it there. It doesn't work anymore, so he discarded it. Everybody else has looked at it with burning greed in their eyes and, as soon as they realized it doesn't work anymore, ignored it. They're operators, not engineers."

  "They're still tool-using beings with an advanced civilization who have technical advantages, if you must call it that, superior in many ways to ours. If we can bring them into the Central Worlds, I'm sure they'll be able to teach us plenty."

  "We already know all about corruption, thank you," Carialle said.

  A servant stepped forward, bowed, and presented the tureen to him. Keff sniffed. The soup smelled wonderful. He gave them a tight smile. Another popped into being beside him bearing a large spoon, and ladled some into the bowl on his tray. The rich golden broth was thick with chunks of red and green vegetables and tiny, doughnut-shaped pasta. Keff poked through it with his silver spoon.

  "Cari, I'm starved. Is any of this safe to eat? They didn't assign me a food-taster, even if I'd trust one."

  "Hold up a bite, and I'll tell you if anyone's spiked it." Keff obliged, pretending he was cooling the soup with his breath. "Nope. Go ahead."

  "Ahhhh." Keff raised it all the way to his lips.

  His chair jerked sideways in midair. The stream of soup went flying off into the air past his cheek and vanished before it splashed onto his shoulder. He found himself facing Omri.

  "Tell me, strange one," said the peacock-clad mage, lounging back on his floating couch, one hand idly spooning up soup and letting it dribble back into his bowl. "Where do you come from?"

  "Watch it," Carialle barked.

  "From far away, honored sir," Keff said. "A world that circles a sun a long way from here."

  "That's impossible."

  Keff found himself spun halfway around until he was nose to nose with a woman in brown with night-black eyes.

  "There are no other suns. Only ours."

  Keff opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get the words out, his chair whirled again.

  "Pay no attention to Lacia. She's a revisionist," said Ferngal. His voice was friendly, but his eyes were two dead circles of dark blue slate. Tell me more about this star. What is its name?"

  "Calonia," Keff said.

  "That leaves them none the wiser," Carialle said.

  "That leaves us none the wiser," Chaumel echoed, turning Keff's seat in a flat counterclockwise spin three-quarters around. "How far is it from here, and how long did it take you to get here?" Keff opened his mouth to address Chaumel, but the silver magiman became a blur.

  "What power do your people have?" Asedow asked. Whoosh!

  "How many are they?" demanded Zolaika. Hard jerk, reverse spin.

  "Why did you come here?" asked a plump man in bright yellow. Blur.

  "What do you want on Ozran?" Nokias asked. Keff tried to force out an answer.

  "Not—" Short jerk sideways.

  "How did you obtain possession of the silver tower?" Potria asked.

  "It's my sh—" Two half-arcs in violently different directions, until he ended up facing an image of Ferngal that swayed and bobbed.

  "Will more of your folk be coming here?" Keff heard. His stomach was beginning to head for his esophagus.

  "I . . ." he began, but his chair shifted again, this time to twin images of Ilnir, who gabbled something at him in a hoarse voice that was indistinguishable from the roar in his ears.

  "Hey!" Keff protested weakly.

  "The Siege Perilous, Galahad," Carialle quipped. "Be strong, be resolute, be brave."

  "I'm starting to get motion sick," Keff said. "Even flyer training wasn't like this! I feel like a nardling lazy Susan." The chair twisted until it was facing away from Ilnir. A blurred figure of primrose yellow and teal at the corner of his eye sat up slightly.

  Beside Keff's hand, a small glass appeared. It was filled with a sparkling liquid of very pale green. Keff's vision abruptly cleared. Was he being offered another shot of poison? The silver blob that was Chaumel shot a suspicious look at the tall girl, then nodded to Keff. The brawn started to take the ornate cup, when two more tasters abruptly keeled over and let their glasses crash to the ground. Two more servants appeared, always four-fingered fur-faces. Keff regarded the cup suspiciously.

  "What about it, Cari? Is it safe to drink?"

  "It's a motion sickness drug," Carialle said, after a quick spectroanalysis. Hastily, before he was moved again, Keff gulped down the green liquid. It tasted pleasantly of mint and gently heated his stomach. In no time, Keff felt much better, able to endure this ordeal. He winked at the pretty girl the next time he was whirled past her. She returned him a tentative grin.

  The Siege Perilous halted for a moment and Keff realized his soup plate had vanished. In its place was a crescent-shaped basket of fruit and a plate of salad. His fellow diners were also being favored with the next course. Some of them, with bored expressions, waved it away and were instantly served tall, narrow crockery bowls with salt-encrusted rims. Before he spun away again, he watched Zolaika pull something from it and yank apart a nasty-looking crustacean.

 
"Ugh," Keff said. "No fish course for me."

  Thanks to the young woman's potion he felt well enough to eat. While trying to field questions from the magifolk, he picked up one small piece of fruit after another. Carialle tested them for suspicious additives.

  "No," Carialle said. "No, no, no, yes—oops, not anymore. No, no, yes!"

  Before it could be tainted by long-distance assassins, Keff popped the chunk of fruit in his mouth without looking at it. It burst in a delightful gush of soft flesh and slightly tart juice. His next half-answer was garbled, impeded by berry pulp, but it didn't matter, since he was never allowed to finish a sentence anyway before the next mage greedily snatched him away from his current inquisitor. He swallowed and sought for another wholesome bite.

  The basket disappeared out from under his hand and was replaced by the nauseating crock. His fingers splashed into the watery gray sauce. It sent up an overwhelming odor of rotting oil. Keff's stomach, tantalized by the morsel of fruit, almost whimpered. He held his breath until his invisible waiter got the hint and took the crock away. In its place was a succulent-smelling vol au vent covered with a cream gravy.

  "No!" said Carialle as he reached for his fork.

  "Oh, Cari." His chair revolved, pinning him to the back, and the meat pastry evaporated in a cloud of steam. "Oh, damn."

  "Why have you come to Ozran?" Ilnir asked. "You have not answered me."

  "I haven't been allowed," Keff said, bracing himself, expecting any moment to be turned to face another magiman. When the chair didn't move, he sat up straighter. "We come to explore. This planet looked interesting, so we landed."

  "We?" Ilnir asked. "Are there more of you in your silver tower?"

  "Oops," Carialle said.

  "Me and my ship," Keff explained hastily. "When you travel alone as I do, you start talking out loud."

  "And do you hear answers?" Asedow asked to the general laughter of his fellows. Keff smiled.

  "Wouldn't that be something?" Keff answered sweetly. Asedow smirked.

  "That man's been zinged and he doesn't even know it," Carialle said.

  "Look, I'm no danger to you," Keff said earnestly. "I'd appreciate it if you would release my ship and let me go on my way."

  "Oh, not yet," Chaumel said, with a slight smile Keff didn't like at all. "You have only just arrived. Please allow us to show you our hospitality."

  "You are too kind," Keff said firmly. "But I must continue on my way."

  The spin took him by surprise.

  "Why are you in such a hurry to leave?" Zolaika asked, narrowing her eyes at him. The face with the monitor, hovering beside her, looked him up and down and said something in the secondary, more formal dialect. Keff batted the IT unit slung around his chest, which burped out a halting query.

  "What tellest thou from us?"

  "What will I say about you?" Keff repeated, and thought fast. "Well, that you are an advanced and erudite people with a strong culture that would be interesting to study."

  He was slammed sideways by the force of the reverse spin.

  "You would send others here?" Ferngal asked.

  "Not if you didn't want me to," Keff said. "If you prefer to remain undisturbed, I assure you, you will be." He suffered a fast spin toward Omri.

  "We'll remain more undisturbed if you don't go back to make a report at all," the peacock magiman said. A half-whirl this time, and he ended up before Potria.

  "Oh, come, friends," she said, with a winning smile. "Why assume ill where none exists? Stranger, you shall enjoy your time here with us, I promise you. To our new friendship." She flicked her fingers. A cup of opal glass materialized in front of her and skimmed across the air to Keff's tray. Keff, surprised and gratified, picked it up and tilted it to her in salute.

  "What's in it, Cari?" he subvocalized.

  "Yum. It's a nice mugful of mind-wipe," she said. "Stabilized sodium pentothal and a few other goodies guaranteed to make her the apple of your eye." Keff gave the enchantress a smile full of charm and a polite nod, raised the goblet to her once again, and put it down untasted. "Sorry, ma'am. I don't drink."

  The bronze woman swept her hand angrily to one side, and the goblet vanished.

  "Nice try, peachie," Cari said, triumphantly.

  Keff seized a miniature dumpling from the next plate that landed on his tray.

  "Yes," Carialle whispered. Keff popped it into his mouth and swallowed. His greed amused the magifolk of the south, whose chairs bobbed up and down in time to their laughter. He smiled kindly at them and decided to turn the tables.

  "I am very interested in your society. How are you governed? Who is in charge of decision-making that affects you all?"

  That simple question started a philosophical discussion that fast deteriorated into a shouted argument, resulting in the death or discomfort of six more fur-skinned foodtasters. Keff smiled and nodded and tried to follow it all while he swallowed a few bites.

  Following Carialle's instructions, he waved away the next two dishes, took a morsel from the third, ignored the next three when Carialle found native trace elements that would upset his digestive tract, and ate several delightful mouthfuls from the last, crisp, hot pastries stuffed with fresh vegetables. Each dish was more succulent and appealing than the one before it.

  "I can't get over the variety of magic going on in here," Keff whispered, toying with a souffle that all but defied gravity.

  "If it was really magic, they could magic up what you wanted to eat and not just what they want you to have. As for the rest, you know what I think."

  "Well, the food is perfect," Keff said stubbornly. "No burnt spots, no failed sauces, no gristle. That sounds like magic."

  "Oh, maybe it's food-synths instead," Carialle countered. "If I was working for Chaumel, I'd be terrified of making mistakes and ruining the food. Wouldn't you?"

  Keff sighed. "At least I still have my aliens."

  "Enough of this tittle-tattle," Chaumel called out, rising. He clapped his hands. The assemblage craned their necks to look at him. "A little entertainment, my friends?" He brought his hands together again.

  Between Nokias and Ferngal, a fur-skinned tumbler appeared halfway through a back flip and bounded into the center of the room. Keff's chair automatically backed up until it was between two others, leaving the middle of the circle open. A narrow cable suspended from the ceiling came into being. On it, a male and a female hung ankle to ankle ten meters above the ground. Starting slowly, they revolved faster until they were spinning flat out, parallel to the floor. There was a patter of insincere applause. The rope and acrobats vanished, and the tumbler leaped into the air, turned a double somersault, and landed on one hand. A small animal with an ornamented collar appeared standing on his upturned feet. It did flips on its perch, as the male boosted it into the air with thrusts of his powerful legs. Omri yawned. The male and his pet disappeared to make room for a whole troupe of juvenile tumblers.

  Keff heard a gush of wind from the open windows. The night air blew a cloud of dust over the luminescent parapet, but it never reached the open door. Chaumel flashed his wand across in a warding gesture. The dust beat itself against a bellying, invisible barrier and fell to the floor.

  "Was that part of the entertainment?" Keff said subvocally.

  "Another one of those power drains," Carialle said "Somehow, what they do sucks all the energy, all the cohesive force out of the surrounding ecology. The air outside of Chaumel's little mountain nest is dead, clear to where I am."

  "Magic doesn't have to come from somewhere," Keff said.

  "Keff, physics! Power is leaching toward your location. Therefore logic suggests it is being drawn in that direction by need."

  "Magic doesn't depend on physics. But I concede your point."

  "It's true whether or not you believe in it. The concentrated force-fields are weakening everywhere but there."

  "Any chance it weakened enough to let you go?"

  There was a slight pause. "No."

&nb
sp; A prestidigitator and his slender, golden-furred assistant suddenly appeared in midair, floating down toward the floor while performing difficult sleight-of-hand involving fire and silk cloths. They held up hoops, and acrobats bounded out of the walls to fly through them. More acrobats materialized to catch the flyers, then disappeared as soon as they were safely down. Keff watched in fascination, admiring the dramatic timing. Apparently, the spectacle failed to maintain the interest of the other guests. His chair jerked roughly forward toward Lacia, nearly ramming him through the back. The acrobats had to leap swiftly to one side to avoid being run over.

  "You are a spy for a faction on the other side of Ozran, aren't you?" she demanded.

  "There aren't any other factions on Ozran, madam," Keff said. "I scanned from space. All habitations are limited to this continent in the northern hemisphere and the archipelago to the southwest."

  "You must have come from one of them, then," she said. "Whose spy are you?"

  Just like that, the interrogation began all over again. Instead of letting him have time to answer their demands, they seemed to be vying with one another to escalate their accusations of what they suspected him of doing on Ozran. Potria, still angry, didn't bother to speak to him, but occasionally snatched him away from another magifolk just for the pleasure of seeing his gasping discomfort. Asedow joined in the game, tugging Keff away from his rival. Chaumel, too, decided to assert his authority as curator of the curiosity, pulling him away from other magifolk to prevent him answering their questions. In the turmoil, Keff spun around faster and faster, growing more irked by the moment at the magi using him as a pawn. He kept his hands clamped to his chair arms, his teeth gritted tightly as he strove to keep from being sick. Their voices chattered and shrilled like a flock of birds.