by Lyndon Hardy
Jemidon noticed that the distance between the boulder and the surface began to widen. They had passed the point of closest approach. Gradually the lateral motion turned into one of recession. As quickly as they had come, they were now speeding away back into the reddish sky.
The tension seemed to dissolve from among the manipulants. They all gestured at one another with a curious contortion of the fingers of the right hand. While two hauled in the catch, three others helped the old one out of the pit and into the opening that led inside the rock. Another manipulated the mirror linkage, and coded bursts of light radiated out in all directions. Finally one returned to where Delia and Jemidon lay still, huddled in their pit. He brandished a short sword of copper and motioned them to follow the others inside. Jemidon looked into the manipulant’s face and slowly released his grip. The sword he did not mind. What disturbed him most was the smacking of the thick, pulpy lips. Perhaps it would have been best if their encounter had not been a near miss after all.
Jemidon stared at the pile of coins in his lap. Slowly he put them back into the battered changer, one by one. Playing with Benedict’s problem was probably what had kept him sane. Besides Delia, it was his only contact with the realm from which they had been cast.
Marooned in Melizar’s universe they were; there was no doubt about it. And time was running out. There was no easy way to measure it here, but it was slipping away nonetheless. Over twoscore times they had slept while nothing else seemed to have changed.
Despite what he had suspected after the encounter with the larger sphere, he and Delia had not felt the sharpness of the copper blade. Instead, they were shown to small caverns carved from the rock. And once cautious tastes of meat from herd animals proved to produce no ill effects, their basic needs were provided for as well. The manipulants were even friendly in an offhanded sort of way. Teaching each other their languages had begun almost immediately. He had learned much after a few sessions of struggling with the basic concepts.
They were not prisoners; they could come and go as they chose. But as Jemidon had soon learned, their freedom meant very little indeed. Melizar had been right. Isolating him on a hunk of granite was a perfect prison. There were no exotic powders with which to summon the stronger demons. He and Delia were trapped, hopelessly trapped, far more removed from freedom than in any pit a few feet beneath the ground. How could they possibly escape before Melizar summoned them back to enjoy his meal?
Jemidon looked at the sky. And even if they could escape, escape to what? One speck of rock apparently was no better than any other. The djinn would find them, no matter which they were on. And even if they were able to make the transition back on their own, would even that be in time, before whatever they returned to was totally lost?
Jemidon pulled the leather vest tighter, but it did not help. He massaged one cold hand with the other. At least their worst fears had yet to be realized. The old one and the others seemed to have enough marrow from the grazing animals to keep them satisfied. There was no need for either hibernation or feasting. Other than a few appraising leers and teasing grasps, he and Delia had been left fairly well alone.
Not that anyone could ever be very far removed from the others. Jemidon was able to visualize almost every feature of the rock in his mind’s eye. Honeycombed with caverns, a thousand feet across and almost perfectly round, it would have been an impressive monolith on an Arcadian plain. But here it was a mere speck, smaller than most of the others that floated in the sky.
Jemidon felt a slight twinge in his stomach and absently rubbed his side. He was aware of the drifting all the time now, although they all seemed mild and quite far away. Since the initial demonstration upon their arrival, the old one had made no more displays of his craft.
Jemidon looked down at his changer. He had mused over the facts so many times that even the critical nature of the situation could no longer stifle the undercurrent of boredom that mingled with the threat of ultimate doom. It was indeed fortunate that he still had the collection of coins to divert his attention when the level of frustration was particularly high. Not that Benedict’s problem was proving any easier to unravel. With his latest sequence for loading the changer, the five coppers came out of a single column and the silver did, too. But the brandels were interleaved with the rest. The initial condition still was not set right. And any small change in the order with which he inserted the coins made the confusion worse. Perhaps there was no solution—a bad omen for the other, more important problem he somehow had to solve.
A shadow crossed the doorway. Jemidon looked up to see one of the rock’s inhabitants enter and settle cross-legged on the other side of the floor. His face was old and, save for the operator of the pyramid, more leathery than any other in his small band. In large patches, the translucence of his skin had dimmed to milky opaqueness. Deep wrinkles surrounded his eyes, like waves gently lapping on a shore. His black hair was streaked with white on a head that peaked in a slight ridge running from the brow to the base of the skull. He held his token of leadership, a small shovel with a long and deep blade, in stiff fingers that did not completely curl about the shaft.
“The other, the one you name a female,” the visitor said softly, “she is tired. Tired of teaching to me your speech.”
“Anything tires with repetition, Ponzar,” Jemidon said as he puzzled through the accent. Ponzar had shown an amazing aptitude for vocabulary and syntax, but his diction was distorted and hard to understand. “Delia has spent many of our hours with you over twoscore of our days. She probably is no more bored than I.”
“Repetition?”
“To do something over and over, again and again,” Jemidon explained.
“Ah, then life is repetition,” Ponzar said. “Forever we drift in the sky. Swoop to the larger lithons. Trade for water. Fly away from the air that is foul. Harvest the lodestones that have the power. The Skyskirr have done this since—since the great expansion. Until the right hand wills a change, we will do so forever after.”
“And yet you show an interest in our tongue,” Jemidon said. “Perhaps the time between encounters does not pass so swiftly for you either.”
Ponzar twirled the shovel in what Jemidon had learned was the equivalent of a shrug. “It is the talent of a captain. To be such, one must speak with all who soar. And I am counted with the quickest. My memory is almost perfect. I can learn in a few sleeps what takes a common mason hundreds. And there is more. You have traded thoughts with the outcast, Melizar. Many lithosoars fear that he will return. It is worth the effort to talk so that I might learn.”
Ponzar closed his eyes in thought. “I no longer trust the others,” he said. “I do not believe the silvered words they flash by mirror. The more I can speak of your lithon, the more Valdroz will pay me honor when we meet to trade. Also, it is to your worth to tell me all. You will last longer if others think you have value more than common marrow.”
“I seek knowledge as well,” Jemidon said. “Tell me of Melizar. What are his powers? What has he done?”
“You are only the bounty of the skies,” Ponzar replied softly. “You do not have the honor to question those who harvest what has been provided by the great right hand.” He twirled the shovel through several full circles. “And I do not know if your words are true. If you are not another of Melizar’s manipulants. Sent back to help his return. A manipulant of one people who resonates with the pilot of another.”
“But I may be of help,” Jemidon said. “I have deduced two metalaws. Melizar hinted that there is a third. If I know them all, I might be able to thwart his plans.”
Ponzar threw back his head, and the small cavern echoed with his tinkly laugh. “You against Melizar. You, who have not been excluded. Against the one who piloted a course with nine changes in the laws. Even old Utothaz, may the right hand make his bones tasty, could not keep the coupling tight. Keep it tight if Melizar chose to break it. Speak, by your own telling, you have faced his power. How well did you fare?”
“He is the greatest of the pilots,” Ponzar said. “The first among the first. No one in the ’hedron says it is not so. But he reached too far. He studied his craft above all else. Studied it instead of the greater needs of the Skyskirr, of our people.”
Ponzar looked toward the sky. “Each lithon must have its turn. It is the way of the great right hand. Every sphere, no matter how small, has the right to unlock the laws. The right to change which of the minerals have the force of attraction and repulsion. The right to choose which are without power like common rock. Each must be allowed to avoid collision. Each to harvest from the larger, to explore where no other has gone.
“But Melizar had eyes only for the others. Eyes for the strange laws which have nothing to do with the walls of the ’hedron or the stones of power. He would decouple the binding when there was no need, demanding many strange rituals until he discovered what would move the laws to other vertices of the lattice.
“Each uncoupling made him stronger. More able to force a translation, if other pilots wished it or not. And every new vertex, each pebble of knowledge, increased his hunger for more. His thoughts became less and less about the soaring of the Skyskirr. For his own lithon, he planned fewer and fewer courses. To his own captain he would not answer. Except for his manipulants, he cared for none at all.
“Finally, his perturbations conflicted with another’s. A conflict, even though there was no real need. Azaber’s lithosoar was in trouble. They wished to close with a watery orb and break a long drought. But the lodestone, yellow orphiment, was with power at the time. And both the wet sphere and their own lithon carried the negative type. With strong force, they were being repulsed. Azaber’s manipulants saw boulders of rusty cairngorm on the orb. The positive kind, opposite to their own. If their pilot could shift to give the brown stone its power while turning off that of the yellow, then they could converge in time.
“And so the manipulants signaled by mirrors to all the lithons. All others agreed not to work the craft until Azaber’s pilot was done. A common enough request. When one is far away from other lithons and moving swiftly, it does not matter which of the laws are in effect.”
The Skyskirr twirled his shovel and pounded it on the ground. “All agreed, that is, except Melizar. His sphere was one of the largest, a huge lithofloat, far grander than the one that soon we will see. And he had thoughts only for his own searchings. He held the lock tight against Azaber’s pilot. The bond did not break. Slowly the lithon was pushed away with no chance to choose speed or direction. It drifted into a region of poisonous vapors. A region with no lodestone strong enough to alter its path for a return. Only the gentle force between the plates carried it along.”
Ponzar shook his head. “Even in sleep, the ones who soared with it were without the means of guidance for too long. In the end, they all gave their marrow to one another. The last reflections said they were drifting out of mirror range toward the realgar wall.
“Azaber’s pilot took a great risk when he ran their course so close to a void, it is true. It is one of the risks for the lithons that soar rather than float. But if Melizar had loosened his grip, as was his duty, then the lithon would have spun around its target. Spun around and returned to better air.”
“After all the Skyskirr learned of what had happened, the rest of the lithons sailed as one. United, they manipulated the laws to converge on Melizar’s orb. Never since the great expansion have so many been in one small portion of the ’hedron. Ten times a hundred swords of precious copper were drawn. A thousand were ready to ride the smaller lodestones down upon the floater. To seek the vile one out, to break his bones and scatter his marrow to the twenty planes.”
Ponzar drew his wheezing breath. “But Melizar and his manipulants escaped. Through the laws of what you call wizardry, he conjured a lodestone that was not made of rock. A strange being that whisked him and his manipulants away, out of the boundaries of our ’hedron entirely, to some other ’hedron whose nature we can only guess.
“All of the other pilots labored to move the laws away from the vertex that made your strange rules work in the Skyskirr ’hedron. Even Utothaz added his failing powers to the rest. But Melizar had translated the laws far into a strange portion of the lattice. The adjacent vertices were known to none. We could not manipulate what would make a smaller contradiction. The portal stays open. And as long as it does, he may return. That you are here from somewhere else is proof enough.”
“The laws that are strange to you,” Jemidon said, “I know them well. They are the Law of Dichotomy, ‘dominance or submission,’ and the Law of Ubiquity, ‘flame permeates all.’”
“So well that after thirty-seven sleeps, you are still here.” Ponzar laughed softly. “If you can do this wizardry, why not return? Return by commanding the strange being which brought you here.”
“I—I was never able to conjure up the simplest imp.” Jemidon hesitated for a moment and then rushed on. “Besides, a true djinn will not come in simple flame. He needs the burning of special powders, and you have none of it here on this rock.”
Ponzar did not immediately reply. He shut his eyes again and slumped forward in thought. “Most interesting,” he said after a moment. “I will add that to what I will tell.”
“You speak with some apprehension about this rendezvous,” Jemidon said. “Why bother if it gives you any concern?”
“Utothaz calculated the course long ago.” Ponzar looked back at Jemidon. “And once we spun past the sphere with the grazing beasts, the path was set. Only when we near the lithofloat will there be another chance to alter our track.” Ponzar twirled his shovel and tapped the ground. “Our caverns are overflowing with harvest. The floaters are too big to move as swiftly through the sky as we. They gather instead what they can capture as it floats by. If there is trust, there will be good to both sides from the trade.”
“And if there is not?”
“Valdroz is a greedy captain. He is not at peace that his lithon is so big and slow. Were it not for the way of the great right hand, I fear he would plunder all that I have. Plunder all and give nothing in exchange. I also think of the strength of the lodestones. Valdroz’s lithon has huge boulders of positive cairngorm. Our own are not small. As long as its law remains inert, it acts no differently from baser rock. But if we shift to a vertex where it has power, we could be hurled to only the great right hand knows where.
“But my heaviest thoughts are about the portion of the sky in which we meet. Behind the floater is a great sea of base stone lithons. Some are larger than the greatest floater, great enough for hot rock to flow and clouds of poisonous vapor to hurl in the air.”
“Why should that be your greatest concern?” Jemidon asked. “If lava flows on the surface, you need not swoop close. And the fumes should dissipate on the currents of the air. It sounds not so very different from what I would call a volcano.”
“There are few enough winds in the ’hedron except for those made by our flight,” Ponzar said. “Only in time is the foul mixed with the pure. The poisons move out slowly from where they were born. And the vapors of which I speak fill a very large volume. Even though a lithosoar can fly for many sleeps on a drifting course if its supply of marrow is high, no Skyskirr can hold shut his lips for as long as it takes to pass through such a cloud.”
Ponzar waved his small shovel in front of Jemidon’s face. “The great right hand guides. It is the duty for all the Skyskirr to follow. Whatever happens is by his design. And I have a duty, as shown by my token of office. The pilot uses his key for the unlocking. The manipulants chip precious lodestones from baser rocks with their picks. The others, the scribes, the smiths, the skinners, all have their duties and tokens as well. And the captain of a lithosoar must scoop the treasures from the skies and provide for his people so that marrow is for feasting and not survival in the voids.”
For a moment Ponzar sank into silence, oblivious to the fact that Jemidon was even there. Then he rose abruptly, apparently satisfied with the conversation. In the doorway, he shifted his shovel to his left hand. He extended his right index finger pointing at Jemidon, thumb upward and middle finger bent to the side. Jemidon returned the signal as he had been taught.
When the captain had gone, Jemidon turned his attention back to the coin changer and sighed. There was nothing else for him to do but wait. “If I start with three silvers before the galleons,” he muttered, “then the first brandel will fall into the third column. That means that a dranbot must be next to deposit into the fifth.”
Jemidon felt the slight tremble as their small boulder began to slow in its passage, rather than continuing to hurl past the larger sphere. Compared with the agonizing slowness during over a dozen sleeping periods with which their target had come into view, first as an indistinct speck and then gradually growing into a discernible disk, the motion now seemed rapid indeed. He knew that soon they would reach a perilith, then loop back in a long ellipse. Ponzar had said that the trade delegation would come when they were almost skimming the surface.
Already the other lithon blotted out a good portion of the sky, fissures and crags becoming more distinct with each passing moment. Details were more regular, indicating the effort of intelligent minds. Larger squares of greens and blues checkered a relatively flat plane. Up-thrusts of rock were sculptured with spiraling steps. Hundreds of lights blinked in small clusters that covered the orb like a great pox.
Jemidon and Delia stood with the Skyskirr, awaiting the arrival, crammed among sacks of bones, twisted branches of trees, wagonloads of sparkling rock, and other objects that Ponzar’s group had scavenged in their trek across the sky.