Conundrum

by Jeff Crook

  Charynsanth’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. She had fled here at the beginning of the Purge, after her mate was slain by the green dragon Beryl.

  “We can help each other, you and I,” Tanar continued, feeling more confident. “I’ve killed this thief, and I know of your war with the giants. I can tell you of a way to get into the giant’s city, O mighty Charynsanth.”

  “You were with those miserable little interlopers before,” she hissed. “I saw you go onboard their little ship after I roasted those two. They were small, barely more than a mouthful after I finished cooking them.”

  “There are enough left over to satisfy even your appetite,” Sir Tanar said.

  She purred, chuckling, the fires in her belly spouting from her nostrils. “And I after I kill them, what do you get?” Charynsanth asked.

  “Their ship,” he answered. “Nothing more. Just their ship, and a few members of the crew to operate it. The city, the giants, and their treasure I leave to you.”

  He did not mention that he needed the ship and her crew to find the entrance to the Abyss, nor that he planned to escape in the ship while Charynsanth was busy with the giants. Still, something in her eyes told him that she suspected as much.

  “How very wise of you,” the dragon said, but her tone was sarcastic, as if she divined his motives.

  “I’ll come tomorrow to tell you the way,” Sir Tanar said, his voice shaking, “and I’ll bring a morsel to whet your appetite.” With these words, he turned and strode away, swallowing the ball of steel wool that had formed in his throat.

  Charynsanth pulled herself up the slope to watch him go, her massive ivory claws digging into the stone. She paused over the outstretched form of the kender, sniffing at him hungrily. He was barely enough even to take the trouble to swallow, but at least he was warm and juicy, not burned to a crisp.

  As she hovered over him, Razmous’s eyes opened a slit. “Oh, hello,” he whispered. “My name izh Razhmouf Pingepogget. Are you going to defour me?”

  “I thought I might,” the dragon answered with begrudging admiration, almost pity for this miserable wretch who had been treacherously stabbed in the back by what was probably his companion, if not his friend. That wizard would be one to watch, she thought. He might try the same with me.

  “Oh, good,” Razmous sighed sleepily. “Do hurry, 'fore I fall azleeb. I doan wanna mizh thizh.”

  29

  Conundrum’s ascending kettle had been fully converted into what they had decided to call a diving bell. Inside the large copper kettle, they had built a shelf to sit on and a rack to hold bottles of compressed air, and they had placed a small porthole on one side to allow the occupant to see his surroundings. The whole thing was wrapped in a large cargo net and doubly secured at the top to make sure the bell wouldn’t tip over and let out all the air. It dangled by a rope that ran through a pulley, which was suspended by a boom attached to the stern of the Indestructible. From the pulley, the rope led down through a hatch into the engine room of the ship, where it wound round a wheel attached to the main drive spring-which, for this experiment, was connected both to the flowpellars and the wench, with power transferable between the two devices by way of an ingenious box of gears called a “dyno.” (Short for “how do I know?” As in, “What does that thing do?” “How do I know?”) Of course, the Indestructible had miles and miles of rope, because gnomes never went anywhere without miles and miles of rope, not if they could help it. One simply never knew when one might need to build, say, a suspension bridge, or for that matter, lower a diving bell to the other side of Krynn.

  Maritime Sciences Guild motto: Be overly prepared.

  The ship’s remaining red-jumpsuited ensigns were placed in charge of operating the wench, while Conundrum and the commodore stood by the boom. Conundrum found himself once more in charge of oilage, this time of the pulley. Doctor Bothy stood by with his medical trunk, hiccoughing softly. Captain Hawser and Chief Portlost were ready inside the crab in case of emergencies-like a sudden attack by giants. Normally, Sir Grumdish would have handled the security details, but he was strangely absent, as were Razmous and Sir Tanar. Commodore Brigg not-so-secretly hoped that Sir Tanar had gotten lost in the city. In his opinion, the wizard was up to no good in his secretive exploration of the ruins. “Maybe,” the commodore whispered in a prayer to Reorx, “he’s been eaten by giants.” He also crossed his fingers behind his back and tied a lucky knot in his beard, just for good measure.

  For this experiment, they needed every bit of luck they could get, for this exploratory dive into the seemingly bottomless chasm at the bottom of the flooded cavern was fraught with danger. A million things could go wrong, and even the gnomes were willing to admit that, with them, things that could go wrong usually did. The rope could break, the diving bell could settle on a ledge and tip over, it could catch on a stony projection and be hung there forever, the wench could jam or break, or the water at the depths to which he was diving might be steaming hot and cook him like a lobster in a pot.

  Yet Professor Hap believed that the scientific benefits of the dive would far outweigh its risks. It was possible, as Razmous had suggested, that the chasm led down to the Abyss, or as Captain Hawser suspected, to the other side of Krynn. But the professor had his own theory, one that he most hoped to prove and, in doing so, complete his Life Quest. He believed that the chasm led to the underside of the continent of Ansalon.

  When everything was ready, Professor Hap-Troggensbottle emerged from below. In one hand, he carried a blue glowwormglobe suspended, like the diving bell itself, in a net sling so that he could hang it from a hook inside the bell. He wore the last of his skin-tight black diving suits, including bladderpack, fishbowl, and duckfeet, just in case he ran out of air or the diving bell filled up with water. In his heavy shoes, he thumped slowly across the aft deck.

  Commodore Brigg ordered the bell lowered to the deck. The professor paused to allow Conundrum to tighten the neck seal around his fishbowl and secure the hose to the bladder pack. He then gave the commodore a folded scrap of paper and said, his voice muted by the glass, “This is a code that I have prepared so that we will be able to communicate a little more elaborately than the old one-pull-two-pull system usually employed in umbilical diving of this sort. The diving bell, as you can see, acts as a sort of resonating chamber.” He demonstrated by rapping it with his knuckle, producing a single metallic note. At the same time, the note was echoed by a small ringer attached to the pulley from which the diving bell depended.

  “The vibrations travel up the rope to the ringer, and by tapping on the boom with a hammer, you can send messages down to me as well,” the professor finished.

  Commodore Brigg studied the piece of paper for a moment before handing it to Conundrum. “Looks confusing to me. Conundrum is better at these sorts of puzzles. He will be communications officer for this expedition,” he said.

  While the professor and the commodore wished each other good luck, Conundrum examined the code. It was a simple system of dashes and dots representing the three hundred sixty-four characters in the Gnomish alphabets. They had seven alphabets, each used for different circumstances, like technical documents, politico-religious treatises, warning labels, and so on. The code seemed simple enough to him, so he tucked it away in a pocket of his vest.

  With a final wave, the professor climbed inside the diving bell, his bladderpack bumping awkwardly against the edge. Finally, his heavy duck feet vanished up into the overturned kettle. They saw the light of his glowworm-globe shining faintly through the bell’s tiny porthole. A few moments later, the diving bell rang in a rapid series of thirty-six taps. Commodore Brigg turned to Conundrum, who was counting them out on his fingers and whispering to himself. After a moment’s thought, he said, “The professor says to lower away.”

  The commodore turned and shouted down through the aft deck hatch, “Raise the bell.”

  With ropes creaking and pulleys squeaking, the diving bell rose from the deck o
f the Indestructible. Conundrum swung the boom out to a point where the bell hung directly over a dark chasm visible through the green water in the floor of the cavern.

  “Lower away!” the commodore shouted. “Slowly!”

  The diving bell began to drop. As it touched the water, the ringer in the pulley began to tap out a message. “Stop!” the commodore shouted. The wench ground to a halt. He turned to Conundrum.

  “He says, “See you on the other side,” " Conundrum translated with a snicker and a grin.

  The commodore laughed. “Go ahead. Lower him down,” he ordered.

  The wench shuddered to life again, and the diving bell slipped into the water. Conundrum stood at the stern and watched it sink slowly down through the gaping black chasm at the bottom of the flooded cavern. The rope, stiff as a pole, continued to slip down into the darkness, and the pulley creaked for want of lubrication. He grabbed a bottle of oil and climbed up onto the boom. It struck him as remarkable that, less than a year ago, he would have been terrified to climb out over the water on so narrow a beam. Now he scampered aloft like the nimblest of sailors without even a second thought.

  When he had the pulley turning as silent as a whisper, Conundrum slipped back down to the deck. Commodore Brigg stood at the stern, staring down into the water and absently stroking his beard. He nodded to Conundrum, then began pacing the deck with his hands clasped behind his back. After a couple dozen circuits, he paused at the aft deck hatch to watch the endless coils of rope unspool and go quivering up and over the pulley and quietly down into the water. While he watched, a member of the crew attached another coil with a square sailor’s hitch.

  “How many does that make, ensign?” he asked.

  “Number ten, sir,” the gnome sailor answered, saluting.

  “Ten!” the commodore exclaimed. “At a hundred foot apiece, that’s nearing a thousand feet.” He turned to Conundrum.

  “Heard anything from below?” he asked.

  “Nothing yet,” Conundrum answered. He leaned out, resting his hand on the boom to steady himself. “And the rope’s still going straight down.”

  “Better make contact,” the commodore ordered.

  Conundrum picked up a hammer and tapped out a quick message on the boom. An answer came back almost immediately.

  “I think he says, ‘Nothing unusual yet,’ ” Conundrum translated after a few moments.

  “What do you mean, you think he says?” the commodore asked.

  “The message was a bit strange,” Conundrum said. “Actually, it said, ‘Noth_ng unusususual yet_y.’ ”

  “Could it have been garbled in transmission?”

  “Not like that.”

  The commodore called for Doctor Bothy. The portly ship’s physician hurried (as best he could) to the aft deck, where Conundrum repeated the professor’s message with its strange spelling.

  “Ask him how he feels,” the doctor said, a worried frown on his face. Conundrum tapped out the query. The answer came back in disjointed segments…feel fyn2…

  “What did he say?” the commodore asked.

  “I think he says he feels fine,” Conundrum answered.

  Another tapped message arrived, startling them. W__base I__beautiful.

  “What does that mean?” Doctor Bothy asked.

  Conundrum shrugged, already concentrating on another message ringing out on the pulley. “Thousand liquid yellow glowing submersibles, faces like moons.”

  “Tell him this has gone too far!” the commodore shouted. “Tell him we are pulling him back up.”

  Conundrum nodded and dutifully tapped out the message.

  It came back, Not.

  “You tell him I am ordering the wench reversed,” the commodore said, then turned and shouted to the crew in the engine room. “Prepare to detach the wench and re-attach in reversed position! Stand by the dyno!”

  “What’s wrong?” Chief Portlost shouted from shore. He stood atop the crab, inside of which Captain Hawser sat, fingering the controls nervously.

  “He’s having hallucinatory distractions of the optical nerve,” Doctor Bothy answered. “The commodore is pulling him back.”

  To which the chief responded, “Well, hurry up. Captain Hawser says that the geysers are starting to vent and it’s getting foggy awfully quick, if you know what he means.”

  Conundrum said, “The professor just tapped, “Wait. Feel better.” "

  Commodore Brigg tore at his beard in frustration. He-knew that if he ended this mission, the professor would only insist on going again. Or worse, Razmous would want to go. And where was that dratted kender, anyway? What about Sir Grumdish? And Sir Tanar?

  The ringer on the pulley rattled out a short burst. The commodore broke off his musings to listen to Conundrum’s translation, but the gnome seemed reluctant to speak.

  “What is it? What does he say?” Brigg demanded.

  “He says, ‘Ahhh!’ ” Conundrum answered sheepishly.

  “Ahhh?”

  “Ay-aitch-aitch-aitch-exclamation point,” Conundrum confirmed. He pulled out the sheet of paper with the professor’s code and showed it to the commodore. “See here? Three dots and five dashes is an exclamation point.”

  “But what does it mean?” the commodore asked.

  “Perhaps it is a sigh of surprise and delight?” the doctor offered.

  Commodore Brigg shot him a black look, then turned to the open aft deck hatch. “Reverse the-” he began.

  The ringer was tapping again, insistently. Conundrum listened for a moment, then shouted, “Stop the wench! Stop! He’s found something.”

  Turning back to the boom, he cupped one hand to his ear and began to translate even before the tapping stopped. “He says, “Remarkable! A great roof of rock as far as the eye can see. The rock ap-appears to be porous and filled with air holes like a sponge. I think this is the underside of the continent. Below me, there is a vast darkness swimming with lights. There are millions of tiny glowing shrimp, all swimming up from below and bumping their heads against the underside of the continent. In sufficient numbers, such creatures could exert enough upward force to make the continent float, whether the stone is hot or not.”"

  “Yes, but is he still hallucinating, or has he truly found the underside of Ansalon?” the commodore asked with barely suppressed excitement, most of his doubts and fears erased.

  “His spelling isn’t muddled any longer,” Conundrum answered, one ear turned to the boom to listen to the continued tapping. “He says that he is taking readings and sampling the water. The water is very cold, he says, but it is normal salt water. And… and…” Conundrum’s face bent into a frown, the red curls of his beard bristling.

  Suddenly, Commodore Brigg grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him through the open aft deck hatch. Conundrum tumbled down the ladder and fell at the feet of the startled crew members. At the same moment, something large and heavy slammed into the boom, bending it almost double. The force broke the wench loose from its mooring bolts. It skittered across the floor, careened across Conundrum’s stomach (knocking the breath from his lungs), and began bumping up the ladder. It hung on the third rung, rope screaming as it stripped off. The metal rung began to bend.

  “Close the hatch!” Conundrum gasped.

  One crew member was already vaulting up the ladder. He grabbed the hatch and pulled it shut just as the wench bent the ladder rung double and broke free. The slamming hatch caught the wench as it was rattling through the opening, pinning it between the seal and the heavy Weight of the door. Even so, it was all the poor gnome could do to hold it. His three fellows scrambled up and quickly tied it down.

  Conundrum staggered to his feet and stared up at the jury-rigged affair. Even as he looked, he could hear the rope crackling under the strain. At that moment, another tremendous blow struck, this time smashing into the side of the ship, knocking everyone off their feet. He heard Commodore Brigg shouting above deck, and in the distance, a roaring like a tornado come down into the very bow
els of the earth.

  30

  Sir Grumdish flipped open the belly visor on his suit of mechanical armor and peered out at the massive heap of rubble piled up against the wall of the cavern. He glanced at Sir Tanar, who stood nearby, calmly waiting with his hands folded into the sleeves of his long gray robes. The wizard’s narrow, craggy face was unreadable, as if it had been carved from marble. Growling in frustration, Sir Grumdish focused his gaze on the pile of rubble once more.

  “You say that’s the way to the dragon?” he asked with obvious suspicion.

  “No doubt about it,” Sir Tanar answered. “Of course, if you are afraid…”

  “Balderdash!” Sir Grumdish snorted. “I was just wondering what the point was of bringing me here. The entrance is sealed.”

  “Yes, but your armor is more powerful than a human knight, correct?” the Thorn Knight prodded, his face still inscrutable.

  “As strong as three men,” the gnome bragged.

  “Well, there is a crevice between two of those boulders on the left there. I crawled through it yesterday. A couple of strong men might move those boulders enough for a knight in armor to pass. Anyway, that’s what I thought,” Sir Tanar said noncommittally.

  “And did you see this dragon in its lair?” Sir Grumdish shrewdly guessed, catching the Thorn Knight off guard. Sir Tanar was still in the habit of thinking gnomes silly tinkerers. For a moment, his careful mask cracked, and he stared at the gnome in undisguised loathing. Sir Grumdish laughed.

  “Well, so long as we really understand each other,” the gnome said. “You want me to slay this dragon so you can grab the choicest items of treasure. If I happen to be slain in the process, all the better for you.”

  Sir Tanar smiled and said in a conciliatory voice, “I see I cannot fool you.”

  “I do not begrudge you,” Sir Grumdish said as he snapped shut his visor. “It is no less than I expected of you. I just didn’t know that you were aware of my Life Quest. If I could only slay a dragon, the Knights of Solamnia could no longer refuse my application. Well, let’s take a look at this crevice anyway. Probably you are only wasting my time.”