by Scott Meyer
Gwen turned again to look at her friends. She considered asking them what they wanted to do, but she was certain she didn’t want to know. Instead, she said, “We’re moving on. Now.”
None of the others were dumb or insensitive enough to argue, or even to look back as the cabin grew smaller in the distance behind them and eventually disappeared into the woods, and into Martin’s memories.
Later, with no warning or discussion, Gwen turned to Martin and said, “Don’t tell me you found them attractive.” It was more a command than a question.
Martin didn’t know what to say. She had told him what not to say, but excluding one possible reply didn’t narrow things down very much.
“Did you?” Gwen asked, pressing the issue.
Marvelous, Martin thought. She tells me what not to say, then gives me an opportunity not to say it. If I lie, she’ll know it, and telling someone what they want to hear does you no good if they know you’re lying.
Martin gaped and stammered for a moment. He became painfully aware that Brit and Roy were silent, listening to how this would play out.
Martin said, “Gwen, do you understand that there’s no right answer to that? You’ve asked me the Kobayashi Maru of questions. There’s no possible way to answer that won’t make you mad.”
Gwen said, “That’s not a no.”
Martin replied, “It’s not a yes either. Let’s be clear on that. Think about it. What can I possibly say? ‘No, I was not attracted to those four provocatively dressed women who looked exactly like you. They disgusted me to my very core.’ That’s no good.”
Gwen said nothing.
“Gwen, they looked like you, and they acted like female characters from an old James Bond movie. Of course that’s going to get my attention. But I’d rather have one of you than all four of them.”
Gwen half-smiled for half a second, then went back to frowning, just less intensely.
When it was clear that the storm had passed, Brit asked, “Did any of you happen to recognize the clothes the one on the end was washing?”
Gwen said, “Of course I did. I made them.” She saw the confused look on Martin’s face and continued. “Wizard robes. I recognized Phillip’s and Tyler’s. There was something black that might have been Gary’s, but the colors of the other two are pretty distinct.”
“What does that mean?” Martin asked. “Are they dead?”
“Not necessarily,” Gwen said. “Not yet. All it means is that they made it at least this far, and that they took off their robes.”
22.
Later, Phillip, Tyler, Gary, and Jimmy all agreed that breathing in the pee steam was unpleasant but that it had been an unnecessary embellishment. Gilding the lily, if you will. Every other aspect of the weapon-crafting process had been so acutely unpleasant that by the time they got to the quench, it seemed an anticlimax.
They say that blacksmithing is a lost art, but Phillip had begun to suspect that it wasn’t lost—it had been deliberately discarded.
First, the billet of Lagavulin steel needed to be heated until it glowed cherry red, which meant more pumping on the bellows. Then it needed to be flattened, which meant all four of them hammering it like mad on Inchgower’s new anvil. Of course, it would begin to cool as soon as it was pulled out of the fire, so it would need to be heated up again, which meant more pumping until it was hot enough to start hammering again.
After they had lathered, rinsed, and repeated enough times to lose count, the Lagavulin steel billet had transformed into a long, thin, flat blade, three inches wide and twelve feet long.
“Typical,” Tyler said. “After all this mystery about the ultimate weapon, it’s a sword. A really long sword. Todd has no imagination.”
Gary said, “Yeah, but still, it’s gonna be really cool when it’s done.”
Tyler was unconvinced. “Nobody’d be able to swing a blade that big.”
“No one person,” Gary said. “Maybe two people use it together.”
“How?” Tyler asked. “Would they each hold the handle with both hands and discuss where they want to swing the sword?”
Gary said, “No, I was thinking there’d be a handle at each end. Like an old-timey lumberjack saw. We could run on either side of our enemies and cut them in half.”
Inchgower donned thick protective gloves and lifted the blade over his head to look at it. He held the blade’s center high overhead, the ends sagging to nearly waist height.
“Yes,” the computer-generated blacksmith said. “It’s a good blade.”
“For a small helicopter, maybe,” Phillip muttered.
“You’ve all been a fine help,” Inchgower said, oblivious to Phillip’s comment. “But the time for brute force is over. Shaping and forming the blade into an object of might and power will require skill and finesse. This will take every bit of knowledge I have about the exquisite art of metalwork.”
Inchgower turned his back to the wizards. He held the center of the comically oversized blade over the fire. He let go of it, and it stayed, hovering in midair. Instantly, the entire length of the blade glowed orange from the heat. Inchgower moved his hands in a vaguely work-like manner and made sounds of extreme effort. The blade glowed even more brightly. It turned so that the thin edge of the blade was perpendicular to the floor. All of the sag went out of the blade now that its thicker dimension resisted the pull of gravity. The blade bent up into a U shape, then into a circle, seemingly of its own accord. The now-circular blade spun and twisted in the air, forming the shape of an orange glowing sphere. As it gyrated in space, its free ends contorted and fused together. The spinning slowed, then stopped, leaving a glowing orange circle hovering behind Inchgower, slowly burning its way into the wizards’ retinas.
Inchgower grasped the burning circle and turned to face the wizards. In a voice trembling with awe, Inchgower said, “Gentlemen, look upon what we have wrought!”
Inchgower froze, clipping the end of the word “wrought,” as if he had been startled. He placed the glowing hoop on the floor. His movements were more mechanical than usual.
Tyler groaned.
The blacksmith stood unnaturally straight, looked directly ahead with a blank expression, and said, “We’ve purified and toughened it, but we also need it to harden. Time for the quench.”
“He didn’t even bother to record fresh dialog,” Tyler said. “He just grabbed the same sentence from earlier and slapped it in there.”
The sound of Inchgower unzipping his fly in preparation for “the quench” was cartoonishly loud and out of place.
“But he went to the trouble to dig up the sound of a fly unzipping,” Tyler whined. “That’s just great. Never mind that there’s no way a Dark Ages blacksmith would even have a zipper.”
Inchgower attained a state of readiness to proceed with “the quench,” then froze, as he tended to when waiting for the wizards to make the next move. After a profoundly uncomfortable moment, Inchgower repeated, “Time for the quench.” Another long silence followed and ended with the phrase “Time for the quench.”
Phillip sighed heavily, then said, “We all know what he wants. We’re not going to move on until it happens. We might as well get it over with.”
The wizards reluctantly prepared themselves, then waited for a signal as to who should start the quench. When Inchgower failed to make the first move, they all took a deep breath and got on with it.
The sizzling noise and the noxious cloud of steam pouring off the circular blade was actually kind of satisfying. The quench might have almost qualified as fun if Inchgower hadn’t bellowed, “Take a good, deep breath, lads! You’ve earned it!”
The wizards all continued to hold their breath, shaking their heads and humming emphatic “nuh uhs.” Inevitably, they all ran out of steam and started to run out of air. Inchgower seemed to have an endless supply of both and repeated, “Take a good, de
ep breath, lads! You’ve earned it!”
After a long, silent moment, Inchgower said, “Take a good, deep breath, lads! You’ve earned it!”
More silence followed, until Inchgower again said, “Take a good, deep breath, lads! You’ve earned it!”
Gary was the first to give in and breathe. Because he had pushed himself to the edge of asphyxia, he took a deep, gulping breath and immediately started coughing and moaning simultaneously. Between coughs, he managed to say, “Ngaah! I . . . taste it!”
The others had been on the edge of giving in and breathing anyway. Now they were laughing and breathing, and tasting, and yelling, and then laughing again.
Todd’s window winked into existence. Todd looked haggard but quite pleased with himself. “We had to rush to work that in, but it was totally worth it. Thanks for the idea, guys.”
“You recorded new dialog about how we should take a breath. Why didn’t you record a new explanation for the quench while you were at it?” Tyler asked, indignant.
“This is an independent project that I’m bankrolling myself. Voice talent and studio time are both expensive. I ended up sending an intern with an iPhone mike to get the new lines, and he dropped the ball.”
“So you just rolled with it as is,” Tyler said. “Typical. It’s the lack of consistency and attention to detail that makes this all seem so rinky-dink.”
Todd said, “Shut up,” and disappeared along with his vid window.
Inchgower bent in half at the waist, stooping in a manner that physics would never allow. He grasped the now fully quenched dull metal ring. He lifted it high over his head.
Gary groaned, “Ew, it’s dripping.”
Inchgower resumed the triumphant posture he had held before the quench, and resumed his previous speech. Tyler silently noted that he could hear the very end of the t from the word “wrought,” where the speech had been edited.
“T! We have created a weapon of power, elegance, and beauty. A weapon of such unusual and inexplicable properties that most men cannot even comprehend it! Gentlemen, I give you the Möbius Blade!”
A point of bright light started at Inchgower’s gloved hand and raced around the outer edge of the dull metal ring, leaving a highly polished, razor-sharp edge in its wake. The light made a full lap of the ring’s outer edge, then completed a lap of the inner circumference. The blade gleamed in the light, a perfect circle except for a single kink near the blacksmith’s hand where the blade had been twisted one half turn, creating a weaponized version of the popular grade-school brainteaser, the Möbius strip.
“It is at once the simplest and most complex weapon imaginable,” Inchgower explained. “The blade has but one edge, but mysteriously, that edge is somehow twice the length of the blade itself.”
“Just the thing if you want to kill M. C. Escher,” Phillip said.
Inchgower continued. “The Möbius Blade is a weapon utterly refined. Anything that cannot be used to kill has been removed as deadweight.”
Gary raised his hand and said, “There’s no handle.”
Jimmy said, “That’s what he means.”
“It is so deadly,” Inchgower said, “that it presents a mortal danger to anyone who comes near it, even those who wield it.” As if to drive this point home, a trickle of blood ran down Inchgower’s arm, originating from his palm, where the blade had cut through his heavy gloves and then into his hand.
Phillip said, “Wow, that’s something.”
“I’m glad you find it interesting,” Jimmy said, “because we’re going to have to think of some way to carry that thing to whatever the next stop is, then, presumably, use it in battle.”
Inchgower lowered the Möbius Blade so that it hovered parallel to the floor, supported entirely by the blacksmith’s powerful forearm and wrist.
“Take it,” Inchgower commanded. “Take the Möbius Blade. Carry it to the Chasm of Certain Doom and meet your destiny.”
Gary muttered, “That just couldn’t sound less promising.”
“But go with care, for it lies beyond a mighty desert known as the Scapa. You must transport the blade through the Scapa without damaging it. The edge is as fragile as it is deadly. You may take with you as much water as you can carry, but it will only help you ward off the thirst. It will be no protection against the sand wolves, nor the dreaded elemental that lies in your path.”
“Elemental?” Jimmy asked. “What’s an elemental?”
Inchgower said, “The well, as you know, is out back. Now take the blade. Your destiny awaits.”
Inchgower froze, waiting for the next trigger, which suited the wizards just fine. They were in no hurry to get their hands anywhere near the Möbius Blade. They took the opportunity to examine it. From a distance, the blade looked like a polished metal ring, about four feet across with a single twist taking up about a quarter of its circumference. They were told that it was deadly, but from a distance it didn’t look all that menacing.
When they got closer, close enough to actually touch the blade, the danger seemed like an actual physical presence. The thin, cold Lagavulin steel (whatever that meant) was honed to an edge so sharp that just looking at it made you fear that you were cutting your eyes. Every childhood memory of mishaps with kitchen knives and paper cutters was called instantly to mind. Every parental warning about scissors and gardening implements rang in their ears. Every safety film about shop equipment, every surprisingly graphic warning sticker slapped on the side of a deli slicer, it all flooded to mind, beseeching them to not get anywhere near that awful thing.
“Well, we have to take the blade from him somehow,” Phillip said. “Things aren’t going to progress until we all accept it.”
Jimmy said, “I say we support the blade from underneath, with our palms up. Then we bow our fingers back so we don’t get them anywhere near the edges.”
“Edge,” Tyler corrected him. “A Möbius strip only has one edge. If you follow it with your finger, you’ll see that it follows the entire outside and inside of the ring without breaking.”
“Sure,” Jimmy said. “And I’ll probably cut my finger off too. Anyway, three of us support it with our palms; then whoever gets the part with the twist can put his hands above it and use his fingers to pinch the sides.”
“Side,” Tyler said. “A Möbius strip only has one side too. If you drove a Hot Wheels car along—”
“I don’t care,” Jimmy said. “I just want to take it off Bluto’s hands and put it down on the floor with minimal blood loss, okay?”
Tyler said, “Sorry. You’re right. It’s just that this is the first halfway cool idea Todd has had.”
Phillip said, “I’m sure the fact that you think so makes him very happy.”
“Ooh, yeah, okay. I’ll shut up,” Tyler blurted.
Phillip, Jimmy, and Gary placed their hands under the blade, making sure that the side of the blade rested on the meaty parts of their palms. This was the most convex part of their hands, but the blade was also perilously close to their wrists. Tyler pinched the blade from above. As soon as his fingers made contact with the blade, Inchgower let go.
“Good fortune on your journey, lads,” the blacksmith said, resting his soot-covered hands on his soot-covered hips. “I’ve enjoyed your company, but now our time together is at an end.”
He stood there, silently watching the nervous wizards holding the Möbius Blade.
Gary said, “I think he wants us to leave.”
“And we will,” Phillip said. “Just not yet.”
The blade was surprisingly light, especially when its weight was spread out across four people. It also felt utterly ridged, as if they couldn’t bend it at all even if they tried, which they absolutely, categorically were not going to do. They carefully lowered it to the ground. Tyler easily let go of his portion of the blade; then he ran around sticking rocks, chunks of wood, anything he c
ould find under the blade so that it would be supported up off the floor and the others could get their hands out from under it without losing any skin.
Inchgower repeated, “Good fortune on your journey, lads. I’ve enjoyed your company, but now our time together is at an end.”
“Great,” Phillip said. “Now we get to listen to that every minute or so. A nice little reminder that we’re no longer welcome here.”
“So we ignore him,” Jimmy said. “It’ll serve as a nice little reminder to Todd that we’ll move on when we’re damn good and ready.”
Gary scouted around the village looking unsuccessfully for something to help them carry the blade. Unfortunately, they had dismantled their sledge and used it to stoke the fire that, ironically, had helped make the very thing they now wanted to drag on the sledge.
The others experimented with various means of transporting the blade. They tried Inchgower’s tongs, but there was only one pair, regular human muscles couldn’t muster anywhere near enough leverage to lift the blade, and the metal tongs couldn’t get enough traction on the metal blade to effectively drag it. Besides, they’d been told they would need the blade to be in good condition when they got to the Chasm of Certain Doom.
They tried suspending the blade from loops of rope, which turned out to be a fairly effective means of cutting rope into small chunks.
They tried wrapping the blade in rags and discovered that rags were easier to cut than ropes.
In a moment of desperation, they discussed rolling the blade, propelling it with a stick like a kid in the background in an episode of Little House on the Prairie. That idea was scrapped because the twist in the blade would make it lurch unpredictably, and because the idea was insane to begin with.
They decided to get some sleep, hoping a better idea would occur to them by morning. They found a place to sleep that was far enough away that Inchgower’s continued reminders that their time together was at an end would not disturb them.