The Ship Who Saved the Worlds

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Is this what the new world order will be like? If we allow the workers more freedom of thought, there will be no safe place for me to go," Plenna said to Keff in an undertone with a catch in her voice. He put an arm around her.

  "We'd better get out of here," Keff said under his breath to Chaumel.

  "It would have been better if you'd pretended nothing had happened," Chaumel said over Keff's shoulder. "We are supposed to be above such petty attacks. But never mind. Follow me." Though he was obviously shaken, too, the magiman negotiated a calm and impressive departure. The three of them flew hastily away from the village.

  "I don't understand it," Chaumel said, when they were a hundred meters over the plain. "In every other village, they've been delighted with the idea of learning and being free. Could they enjoy being stupid? No, no," he chided himself.

  Keff sighed. "I'm beginning to think I put my hand into a hornet's nest, Cari," he said under his breath. "Have I done wrong trying to set things straight here?"

  "Not at all, Sir Galahad," Carialle reassured him. "Think of the frogs and the power blackouts. Not everyone will be delighted with global change, but never lose sight of the facts. The imbalances of power here, both social and physical, could prove fatal to Ozran. You're doing the right thing, whether or not anyone else thinks so."

  * * *

  When they returned to Chaumel's residence, another visitor awaited them. Ferngal, with a mighty entourage of lesser eastern Mages, did not even trouble to wait inside. The underlings covered the landing pad with wardings and minor spells of protection like a presidential security force. Chaumel picked his way carefully toward his own landing strip, passing a hand before him to make sure it wasn't booby-trapped. He set down lightly and approached the black chariot on foot.

  "High Mage Ferngal! How nice to see you so soon," Chaumel said, arms wide with welcome. "Come in. Allow me to offer you my hospitality."

  Ferngal was in no mood for chitchat. He cut off Chaumel's compliments with an angry sweep of his hand.

  "How dare you go spreading sedition among my workers? You dare to preach your nonsense in my farmsteads? You have overreached yourself."

  "High Mage, I have not been speaking to your farmers. That is for you to do, or not, as you choose," Chaumel said, puzzled. "I would not presume upon your territories."

  "Oh, no. It could only be you. You will cease this nonsense about the Core of Ozran at once, or it will be at your peril."

  "It is not nonsense, High Mage," Chaumel said mildly but with steel apparent in his tone. "I tell you these things for your sake, not mine."

  Ferngal leveled an angry finger at Chaumel's nose.

  "If this is a petty attempt to gain power, you will pay heavily for your deceit," he said. "I hold domain over the East, and your stronghold falls within those boundaries. I order you to cease spreading your lies."

  "I am not lying," Chaumel said. "And I cannot cease."

  "Then so be it," the black-clad mage snarled.

  He and his people lifted off from the balcony, and vanished. Chaumel shook his head, and turned toward Keff and Plenna with a "what can you do?" expression.

  "Heads up, Keff!" Carialle said. "Power surge building in your general area—a heavy one. Focusing . . . building . . . Watch out!"

  "Carialle says someone is sending a huge burst of power toward us!" Keff shouted.

  "An attack," shrieked Plenna. The three of them converged in the center of the balcony. The magiwoman and Chaumel threw their hands up over their heads. A rose-colored shell formed around them like a gigantic soap bubble only a split second before the storm broke.

  It was no ordinary storm. Their shield was assailed by forked staves of multicolored lightning and sheets of flaming rain. Hand-sized explosions rocked them, setting off clouds of smoke and shooting jagged debris against the shell. Torrents of clear acid and flame-red lava flowed down the edges and sank into the floor, the ruin separated from their feet only by a fingertip's width.

  The deafening noises stopped abruptly. When the smoke cleared, Chaumel waited a moment before dissolving the bubble. He let it pop silently on the air and took a step forward. Part of the floor rocked under his feet. Keff grabbed him. Two paces beyond the place they were standing, the end of the balcony was gone, ripped away by the magical storm as if a giant had taken a bite out of it. The pieces were still crashing with dull echoes into the ravine far below. Plenna mounted her chair to go look. She returned, shaking her head.

  "It is . . ." Chaumel began, and had to stop to clear his throat. "It is considered ill-mannered to notice when someone else is building a spell, especially if that person is of higher rank than oneself. I believe it has now become a matter of life and death for us to behave in an ill-mannered fashion."

  "Ferngal," Carialle said. "Using two power objects at once. I have both their frequencies logged." Keff passed along the information.

  "Sedition, he said." Chaumel was confused. He appealed to Keff. "What sedition was Ferngal talking about? I have talked to no one in his area. I would not."

  "Then someone else is talking to them," Keff said. "Nokias mentioned something similar. We'd better investigate."

  * * *

  A quick aerial reconnaissance of the two farmsteads from which Nokias and Ferngal's complaints came revealed that they were very close together, suggesting that whatever set off the riots was somewhere in the area, and on foot, not aloft. Chaumel asked help from a few of the mages who had tentatively given their promise to cooperate. They sent out spy-eyes to all the surrounding villages, looking for anything that seemed threatening.

  Nothing appeared during the next day or so. On the third day, a light green spy-eye found Chaumel as he was leaving Carialle's ship.

  "Here's your trouble," Kiyottal's mental voice announced.

  Plennafrey, sensing the arrival of an eye-sphere from inside the ship, interrupted their attempts at conversation with the Frog Prince to run outside. Keff followed her.

  "We've located the troublemaker," Chaumel said, after communing silently with the sphere. "It's your four-finger. He's making speeches."

  "Brannel?" Keff said. He glanced out at the farm fields. Wielding heavy forks, the workers were turning over empty rows of earth and bedding them down with straw. He searched their ranks and turned back to Chaumel.

  "You're right. I forgot all about him. He's gone."

  "Follow me," Kiyottal's voice said. "I have also alerted Ferngal. Nokias is coming, too. It's in his territory."

  * * *

  In the center of the clearing in a southern farm village, Brannel raised his arms for silence. The workers, who had long, pack beast-like faces, were gently worried about this skinny, dirty stranger who had arrived at their farmstead with an exhausted dray beast at his heels.

  "I tell you the mages are weakening!" Brannel cried "They are not all-powerful. If we have an uprising, every worker together, they will come out to punish us, but they will all fall to the ground helpless!"

  "You are mad," a female farmer said, curling back her broad lips in a sneer.

  "Why would we want to overthrow the mages?" one of the males asked him. "We have enough to eat."

  "But you cannot think for yourselves," Brannel said. He was tired. He had given the same speech at another farmstead only days before, and once a few days before that, with the same stupid faces and the same stupid questions. If not for the flame of revenge that burned within him, the thought of journeying all over Ozran would have daunted him into returning to Alteis. "You do the same things every day of your lives, every year of your lives!"

  "Yes? So? What else should we do?" Most of the listeners were more inclined to heckle, but Brannel thought he saw the gleam of comprehension on the faces of a few.

  "Change is coming, but it won't be for our sakes—only the mages'. If you want things to change for you, don't eat the mage food. Don't eat it tonight, not tomorrow, not any day. Keep roots from your harvest, and eat them. You will remember," Brannel insisted,
pointing to his temples with both hands. "Tomorrow you will see. It will be like nothing you have ever experienced in your life. You will remember. You need to trust me only for one night! Then you will see for yourselves. You grow the food! You have a right to it! We can get rid of the magefolk. On the first day of the next planting when the sun is highest, throw down your tools and refuse to work."

  The whirring sound in the air distracted most of the workers, who looked up, then threw themselves flat on the ground. Brannel and his few converts remained standing, staring up at the four chariots descending upon them.

  The black and gold chairs touched down first.

  "Kill him," Ferngal said heatedly, pointing at the sheep-faced male, "or I will do so myself. His people have been without an overlord too long. They are getting above themselves."

  "No," Keff said. He leaped off Plenna's chair, putting himself between the high mage and the peasant. "Don't touch him. Brannel, what are you doing?"

  At first Brannel remained mulishly silent, then words burst out of him in a torrent of wounded feelings.

  "You promised me, and I risked myself, and Chaumel knocked me out, and you threw me out again with nothing. Nothing!" Brannel spat. "I am as I was before, only worse. The others made fun of me. Why didn't you keep your promise?"

  Keff held up his hands. "I promised I'd do what I could for you. Amulets aren't easy to find, you know, and the power is going to end soon anyway. Do you want to fill your head with useless knowledge?"

  "Yes! To know is to understand one's life."

  Ferngal spat. "If you're going to waste my time by talking nonsense with a servant, I'm away. Just make certain he does not come back to my domain. Never!" The black chair disappeared toward the clouds. Nokias, shaking his head, went off in the opposite direction. The workers, freed from their thrall by the departure of the high mages, went on to eat their supper, which had just appeared in the square of stones. Brannel started away from Keff to divert the villagers. The brawn grabbed him by the arm.

  "Don't interfere, Brannel. I won't be able to stop Ferngal next time. Look, man, I guaranteed only that Plenna would teach you."

  Brannel was unsatisfied. "Even that did not happen. You sent me away, and I heard nothing for days. When I saw you at last, you were in too much of a hurry to speak to me."

  "That was most discourteous of me," Keff agreed. "I'm sorry. But you know what we're doing. There's a lot to be done, and mages to convince."

  "But we had a bargain," Brannel said stubbornly. "She could give me one of her items of power, and I can learn to use it by myself. Then I will have magic as long as anyone."

  "Brannel, I want to offer you a different kind of power, the kind that will last. Will you listen to me?"

  Reluctantly, but swayed by the sincerity of his first friend ever, the embittered Noble Primitive agreed at last to listen. Keff beckoned him to a broad rock at the end of the field, at a far remove from both the magifolk and the dray-faced farmers.

  "If you still want to help," Keff said, "and you're up to continuing your journey, I want you to go on with it. Talk to the workers. Explain what's going to happen."

  "But High Mage Ferngal said . . . ?"

  "Ferngal doesn't want you to make things more difficult. Help us, don't hinder. Tell them what they stand to gain—in cooperation." Keff saw light dawning in the male's eyes. "Yes, you do see. In return, we'll supply you with food. We might even be able to manage transporting you from region to region by chair. Arriving in a chariot will give you immediate high status with the others. You like to fly, don't you?"

  "I love to fly," Brannel said, easily enough converted with such a shining prospect. "I will change my message to cooperation."

  "Good! Tell them the truth. The workers will get better treatment and more input into their own government when the power is diminished. The mages will need you more than ever."

  "That I will be happy to tell my fellow workers," Brannel said gravely.

  "I have a secret to tell you, but you, and only you," Keff said, leaning toward the worker. "Do you promise? Good. Now listen: the mages are not the true owners of the Core of Ozran. Remember it."

  Brannel was goggle-eyed. "I never forget, Mage Keff."

  * * *

  Seven days later, Chaumel returned to his great room dusting his hands together. A quintet of chariots lifted off the balcony and disappeared over the mountaintops. He stood for a moment as if listening, and turned with a smile to Plenna and Keff.

  "That is the last of them," he said with satisfaction. "Everyone who has said they will cooperate has also promised to press the ones who haven't agreed. In the meantime, all have said that they will keep voluntarily to the barest minimum of use. On the day you designated two days hence, at sunrise in the eastern province, the great mutual truce will commence."

  "Not without grumbling, I'm sure," Keff said, with a grin. "I'm sure there'll be a lot of attempts before that to renegotiate the accord to everyone else's benefit. Once the power levels lessen, it'll give me the last direction I need to find the Core of Ozran."

  "Leave the last-minute doubters to me," Chaumel said. "At the appointed moment, you must be ready. Such a treaty was not easily arranged, and may never again be achieved. Do not fail."

  Chapter Thirteen

  The high mountains looked daunting in their deep, predawn shadow as Plenna and Chaumel flew toward them. Keff, on Plenna's chair, had the ancient manuals spread out on his lap. As he smoothed the plastic pages down, they crackled in the cold.

  "The sun's about to rise over Ferngal's turf," Carialle informed him. "You should see a drop in power beginning in thirty seconds."

  "Terrific, Cari. Chaumel, any of this looking familiar?"

  Chaumel, in charge of three globe-frogs he was restraining from falling off his chair with the use of a mini-containment field generated by his wand, nodded.

  "I see the way I came last time," he shouted. His voice was caught by the great mountains and bounced back and forth like a toy. "See, above us, the two sharp peaks together like the tines of a fork? I kept those immediately to my left all the way into the heart. They overlook a narrow passage."

  "Now," Carialle said.

  Chaumel's and Plenna's chariots shot forward slightly and the "seat belts" around the globe-frogs brightened to a blue glow.

  "That's kickback," Keff said. "Every other mage in the world has turned off the lights and the power available to you two is near one hundred percent."

  "A heady feeling, to be sure," Chaumel said, jovially. "If it were not that each item of power is not capable of conducting all that there is in the Core. I must tell you how difficult it was to convince all the mages and magesses that they should not each send spy-eyes with us on this journey. Ah, the passageway! Follow me."

  He steered to the right and nipped into a fold of stone that seemed to be a dead end. As the two chairs closed the distance, Keff could see that the ledge was composed of gigantic, rough blocks, separated by a good four meters.

  The thin air between them was no barrier to communication between Keff and the Frog Prince. Lit weirdly by the chariot light, the amphibioid resembled a grotesque clay gnome. Keff waved to get his attention.

  "Do you know where we are going?" he signed.

  "Too long for any living to remember," Tall Eyebrow signaled back. "The high fingers—" he pointed up, "mentioned in history."

  "What's next?"

  "Lip, hole, long cavern."

  "Did you get that, Carialle?" Keff asked. Flying into the narrow chasm robbed them of any ambient light to see by. Chaumel increased the silver luminance of his chariot to help him avoid obstructions.

  "I did," the crisp voice replied. "My planetary maps show that you're approaching a slightly wider plateau that ends in a high saddle cliff, probably the lip. As for the hole, the low range beyond is full of chimneys."

  "That's what the old manuals can tell me," Keff said, reading by the gentle yellow light of Plennafrey's chair. "According to
this, the cavern where the power generator is situated is at ninety-three degrees, six minutes, two seconds east; forty-seven degrees, fifteen minutes, seven seconds north." He held up a navigational compass. "Still farther north."

  "The lee lines lead straight ahead," Chaumel informed him. "Without interference from the rest of Ozran, I can follow the lines to their heart. You are to be congratulated, Keff. This was not possible without a truce."

  "We can't miss it," Keff said, crowing in triumph. "We have too much information."

  The sun touched the snow-covered summits high above them with orange light as the pass opened out into the great central cirque. Though scoured by glaciers in ages past, the mountains were clearly of volcanic origin. Shards of black obsidian glass stuck up unexpectedly from the cloudy whiteness of snowbanks under icefalls. The two chairs ran along the moraine until it dropped abruptly out from underneath. Keff had a momentary surge of vertigo as he glanced back at the cliff.

  "How high is that thing, Cari?" he asked.

  "Eight hundred meters. You wonder how the original humans got here, let alone the globe-frogs who built it."

  At his signal, Plenna dropped into the dark, cold valley. Keff shivered in the blackness and hugged himself for warmth. He glanced up at Plenna, who was staring straight ahead in wonder.

  "What do you see?" he asked.

  "I see a great skein of lines coming together," she said. "I will try to show you." She waved her hands, and the faintest limning of blue fire a fingertip wide started above their heads and ran down before them like a burning fuse. A moment later, a network of similar lines appeared coming over the mountain ridges all around them, converging on a point still ahead. Her glowing gaze met Keff's eyes. "It is the most amazing thing I have seen in my life."

  "Your point of convergence is roughly in the center of your five high mages' regions," Carialle pointed out. "Everyone shares equal access to the Core."