Firefight Y2K

by Dean Ing

  Dirrach heard footsteps diminish outside, grinned to himself. He had no way of knowing why this peasant girl’s self-confidence had grown so, and did not care. One of the rafters creaked as the shaman swung down.

  Thyssa whirled to find Dirrach standing between her and the door. “Where is the cub? No, don’t scream,” the shaman ordered, the dagger his authority.

  “Cleaning a huge pile of fish with a friend,” she said. “Perhaps Panon should thank you for them, Dirrach. And don’t worry, I won’t scream. It may be that you and I have some things in common.”

  At that moment, Oroles burst into the cottage. Dirrach grasped the lad, enraged both by the surprise and the girl’s treatment of him as an equal. Oroles squalled once before Dirrach’s hand covered his mouth. Sheathing his dagger quickly, Dirrach wrenched the lad’s waistpouch away and cuffed Oroles unconscious. Then Thyssa did cry out.

  The shaman was not certain he could silence her quickly and made a snap decision. “The cub is hostage to your silence,” he snarled, slinging the boy over one shoulder.

  Thyssa’s hands came up, churning a silent litany in the air. “I don’t think so,” she said, and Dirrach found himself rising helplessly into the eaves again. He dropped the boy, who fell on bedding, then locked one arm over a rafter as Thyssa reached into a corner. She brought out a wickedly tined fish spear.

  Thyssa, advancing, clearly reluctant with the spear: “Even a rabbit will protect her young.”

  Dirrach saw that the tines of bone were bound to the spearshaft with sinew, invoked his simplest spell with one hand, and barked a laugh as the sharp tines fell from their binding. But something else happened, too; something that startled Thyssa more than the loss of her weapon. She stepped back, hugged the boy to her, gazed up at Dirrach in fresh awe.

  Dirrach felt distinctly odd, as if the rafter had swollen in his embrace. “Get me down,” he hissed in hollow braggadocio, “or I turn you both to stone!”

  Thyssa reversed the levitation spell, naive in her fear of his power-though that fear was fast being replaced by suspicion. The shaman released the rafter as he felt the return of his weight-or some of it, at least. He sprawled on the packed earth, then leaped to his feet and stared up at the girl.

  Up? He glanced at himself. His clothing, his dagger, all were to the proper scale for Dirrach; but he and his equipment were all a third their former size. Thyssa’s trapspell, dormant until now, had energized in response to his evil intent with magic.

  The shaman’s fall had been a long one for such a small fellow and, in his fury, Dirrach summoned a thunderbolt. The flash and the sonic roll were dependable.

  And so was the trapspell. Thyssa covered her ears for a moment, blinking down at a twice-diminished Dirrach. His dagger was now no larger than a grass blade and fear stayed his steps. Obviously the girl had done this; what if she stepped on him while he was only a hand’s length tall?

  Little Oroles stirred, and Thyssa kissed the boy’s brow. She was shaken but: “I was wrong, shaman,” she said evenly. “We have nothing in common.”

  Her eyes held no more fear, but Dirrach thought he saw pity there. This was too much to bear; and anyway, he already had the boy’s manastone. Dirrach snarled his frustration, squeezed through a crack in the heavy wall thatch, hurled himself out into the night.

  Had the trapspell depended on windblown particles of opalescent grit, Dirrach might have grown tall within the hour. But Thyssa’s spell had drawn on the mana of Bardel’s amulet, and the shaman had a long skulk to the castle.

  His mind, and other things, raced with him before the keening of a fitful wind. He listened for telltale human sounds, found that he could easily hide now, kept his small bronze fang in his fist. Dirrach recalled the vines that climbed past the royal chamber and knew that stealth was a simple matter for one of his size. Now and then he paused to listen. It seemed that even the leaves teased him as they scurried by.

  At last he reached the castle wall, planning headlong. Once he had cut his way through the upper-story thatch, he could hide in the king’s own bedchamber and wait for the king to sleep. And Bardel slept like the dead. A predator of Dirrach’s size and cunning could easily sever the amulet cord, steal the protecting manastone, then slice through a king’s royal gullet. After that, he promised himself; after that, old Boerab. It was a shame that Averae had already fled, but a grisly vengeance could be brewed later for that one; for the girl; for all of them.

  He sheathed his tiny dagger, tested a rope of ivy, and began to climb. Then he froze, heart thumping as he perceived the eyes that watched him with clinical interest; eyes that, he realized with shock, had been on him for some time . . .

  Three days after the storm, a healing sun had gently baked away the last vestige of moisture in the dust of Tihan. Citizens tested their old oaths again and found that it was once more possible to enjoy an arm-waving argument without absurd risks.

  After a week, Bardel called off the search for his elusive shaman, half-convinced that Thyssa had imagined Dirrach’s shrinkage and half-amused at the idea of danger from such an attenuated knave. But he did allow Boerab to post dogs around the castle, just in case.

  Boerab’s ardor to collar the shaman went beyond duty, for Gethae of Shandor had been spicy tonic for a veteran campaigner, and blame for her leave-taking could be laid squarely upon Dirrach. The garrison joke was that Boerab had exchanged one lust for another.

  Thyssa refused to leave her cottage. “I’m comfortable there, sire,” she explained, “and Oroles would soon be spoiled by palace life. Besides, my, ah, friends might be too shy to visit me here.” She turned toward Boerab. “Intercede for me, old friend!”

  Boerab slapped an oak-hard thigh and laughed. “Fend for yourself, girl! Just threaten to levitate your king. Or turn him to stone; you’re capable of it by now, aren’t you?”

  “No,” Thyssa admitted sheepishly; “And I don’t seem to be inspired unless I’m in my king’s presence. But I’ll spend some time practicing here daily, if that is your wish.”

  Bardel kicked at a flagstone. “Why not, uh, spend some time with me just for amusement? I have eyes, Thyssa. Your friends aren’t all bashful; only Dasio. And all your other friends are new ones. What does that tell you?”

  “Just as you are, Bardel,” Thyssa replied, “and what does that tell me?”

  “Damnation! What does my runner have that I don’t?”

  After a moment: “Long familiarity-and shyness,” she said softly. She exchanged a glance with Boerab and did not add, and wit.

  Bardel pulled at his chin, sighed. “I’ve offered you everything I can, Thyssa. My larder and my staff are at your orders. What more can we do to seal your allegiance?”

  She smiled. “But Lyris has always had that. One day I’ll move to the castle, after Oroles has grown and-” she paused. “Oh, yes; there is something you can do. You might have those dogs taken away.”

  Boerab: “They won’t harm you.”

  “It’s not for my sake. Oroles has a friend who lives around the castle. The dogs disturb it greatly.”

  Bardel’s smile was inquisitive: “Around the castle?”

  “A ferret, sire,” she said, blushing. “Oroles no longer claims to talk with animals, except for one. Don’t ask me how, but he’s convinced me that he really can do it. You have no idea how much he learns that way.”

  The men exchanged chuckles. “Let’s wait for news of Dirrach,” Boerab said, “and then I’ll remove-”

  “Oh, that’s another thing,” said Thyssa. “Oroles tells me the ferret spied a tiny manlet the other night, and it described Dirrach perfectly. It watched our shaman do the strangest things.

  “Oroles told the ferret that it was lucky Dirrach hadn’t seen it; that the shaman was a bad man.”

  “Quite right,” said Boerab. “I’ll double the dogs.”

  “I’m not finished,” Thyssa went on. “The ferret replied that, on the contrary, it found Dirrach a lot of fun. In its own words: delicious.�
�

  A very, very long silence. Boerab, hoarsely: “I’ll remove the dogs.”

  Bardel: “I wonder if you could make ferrets become very large, Thyssa. You know: guard duty, in Lyris’s defense.”

  Thyssa: “I wonder if you would want them thus. They are not tame.”

  “Um; good point,” said the king. “Seems a shame, though. If you can talk with them, looks like you could tame them.”

  “Only that one,” Thyssa shrugged, and bade them farewell in time to meet Dasio for a stroll.

  The secret of the hydrophanes was intact. Not even the ferret knew that one of Dirrach’s opals remained, permanently damp, in a corner of the animal’s belly.

  Tihan’s folk were to learn caution again during rainy weather, though with each hapless employment the mana was further leached from the glittering motes in Tihan’s soil and roof thatches. Meanwhile, Lyrians began to gain repute for a certain politeness, and greater distance from their king. It occurred to no one that politeness, like other inventions, is a child of necessity.

  As a consequence of the manaspill, even the doughty Boerab agreed that mana was a hazardous reality which few cared to explore. If a king’s presence was fecund with mana, then perhaps royalty bore divine rights. Europe’s long experiment had begun.

  MILLENNIAL

  POSTSCRIPT

  It’s fanciful to think of the boy, Oroles, talking with animals like some Bronze-Age Dr. Doolittle. Still, we’re learning more every year about the communications of other species. Richard Feynman found that ants would follow an invisible trail that he blazed by skidding an ant’s body along a firm surface. Other ants just moseyed along the unseen trail of pheromones.

  Currently the “horse whisperer” is in vogue, and while there is real and fruitful communication going on here, it seems to have little to do with whispering per se. Experts in equine behavior are discovering that this big herd animal usually just wants to feel secure, and is downright anxious to get on good terms with this strange, demanding biped. Facial expressions, a shift in stance, a gesture-all these are the stuff of human/horse conversation. According to the experts, we don’t teach the horse this primitive language so much as it teaches us. And if you’re quick to frustration and anger, horse whispering probably isn’t going to work for you.

  About the gimmick in that story, the hydrophane opal: it’s real, though it doesn’t look much like a gemstone unless it’s damp. But the day I read Crichton’s Jurassic Park I got visions of sugarplums. I knew that, when the movie was released, amber would briefly become as popular as today’s Viagra. Trouble was, neither I nor my broker could find a practical way to invest in amber stock! To see what’s coming is only half the battle; profiting from it is the hard part.

  MALF

  Infante nudged his Magnum’s front axle against the big tree with that little extra whump that said, “grandstander.” Old Tom Kelley and I knew that, but Howard Scortia was duly impressed. The lumberman had come to see a hundred and fifty feet of Oregon fir harvested in sixty seconds and Kelley knew, between Infante and me, who was more fun to watch.

  “Clear?” George Infante’s voice rang from his polycarbonate bubble amplified and more resonant than his usual soft delivery.

  “Clear,” I sang back, louder than necessary for Infante, whose audio pickups could strain a voice out of the screech of machinery. I was grandstanding a little, too, for Kelley’s sake.

  Everyone jumped when Infante triggered the spike driver. Ten thousand pounds of air pressure will slap your ears when it’s shooting a ribbed spike ten inches into a living fir trunk.

  All I did was position a quartz fiber strap around the tree just above the paint mark; but it was a crucial operation if the hinge was to sit tight. I dodged out between the tree and one of the eight-foot Magnum tires. Then I ran.

  When I replied to Infante’s “Clear?” again, I was still sprinting. I knew he wouldn’t wait for me to get entirely clear before querying, and he knew I wouldn’t make him wait. Machismo, maybe; stupidity for sure. Though Infante had been with us only six months, since November ’85, he and I could judge each other pretty well.

  Infante’s reflexes were honed like microscalpels, or else he started the stripping a nanosec before I cleared him. I scuffed forest humus on Mr. Scortia’s boots as I slowed to a stop. He didn’t notice; with everybody else, he was watching those gangsaws strip the fir.

  Imagine a gang of curve-bar chainsaws arranged in a circle, mounted pincer-fashion on an extendable beam. They’re staggered so they won’t chew each other up as they pivot toward the center, and God help what’s in the center. The saws are run by airmotors, making whoopee noises but with low fire danger.

  Infante’s eye was good. Correction: it was perfect. He ran his gang of banshees whooping up that fir trunk like a squirrel up a sapling, and branches rained all over the Magnum Seven. Infante had his steel cage flipped over the bubble and stared straight up through the falling junk, hands in his console waldoes, judging how close to strip the larger limbs.

  Then he pulled what heavy equipment operators call a Mr. Fumducker, a piece of mechanically amplified horseplay that looks cute if it works, and kills somebody if it doesn’t work. He topped the tree.

  The Magnum could bring the tree down top and all, gentle as praying. But George Infante, without a line or any other control, topped her so fast she didn’t know which way to fall-and that’s what makes it horseplay. With six saws chewing at once, any one may bite through first and it’s possible the thing will flip. Or it could drop vertically, a great fletched pile-driver on the operator below. And that would ruin Mr. George Infante’s whole day, cage or no cage. For an instant, Kelley lost his smile. He muttered, “Barmy little bastard,” not loud, but not joking.

  Infante hauled the beam back so fast the pneumatics barked, made an elbow of the beam, and sideswiped the top as it fell. My eyes are good, too; I knew Infante could hear admiring feedback from Mr. Scortia’s men because he was grinning. I liked the Magnum system; it did a heavy dude’s job with precision. Infante-well, I think Infante liked what he could do with it. The distinction didn’t seem large until you had to repair an overtaxed Magnum.

  Mr. Scortia rumbled, “Thirty seconds,” and I saw him holding a big antique timepiece; railroadman’s watch, if I was any judge. I craved it instantly. He stood watching the gangsaws, now stilled, form a ring near the fresh stump a hundred feet up the fir.

  But Infante could do that without looking; he was that good. Meanwhile he had his other waldo working the big left front extensor with its single huge chainsaw. Infante flicked the extensor back toward him, the saw snarling as it engaged. He was cutting the tree in one long swipe like a man sawing his own leg off from in front.

  He stopped the cut at precisely the right instant. Mr. Scortia obviously expected the tree, all fifty tons of it, to come thundering down on poor little hapless George Infante. Kelley and I knew that poor little hapless George was nearly home free.

  As Infante lowered the tree, our simple brawny hinge kept it from kicking off its stump. The entire trunk came down lamb-quiet and Infante placed its upper end in a yoke amid the rearmost of the Magnum’s three axles. Time: fifty-seven seconds. I knew we had sold our first Magnum.

  I also knew Infante had goddamn-near dented his. In haste to make a record stripping he had left a stub branch long enough that, as he lowered the tree, the stub slammed his cage with shivering impact. Well, I thought: if I can’t teach you caution, maybe that will. I’d hate to see you graunched.

  If Kelley noticed he wasn’t letting on. Infante magicked the hingepin out with his little extensor. With feet and his other hand, he maneuvered the Magnum several ways at once.

  The Magnum’s third axle is remoted by a telescoping spiral stainless tube. The idea is to provide mass, leverage, and steerability with the remoting axle and yoke. When Infante had the remote axle tucked closer, he quickly swung the Magnum’s legs down. Then, carrying a hundred thousand pounds of cellulose on the
hoof, Infante’s Magnum stood up and walked the hell out of there. No cheering this time; just unhinged jaws.

  The ambulatory feature of the Magnum is mechanically simple, with pneumatics. But feedback circuitry is fiendishly tricky, and nobody made it really work until Kelley learned to calibrate it for a given operator. It’s a mite humbling the first time you see it work on heavy equipment. Infante didn’t need to walk her out, but a demo is a demo; with one eye on his rear video, he chuffed over a rise and out of sight.

  Kelley listened to the turbine doppler down in the distance. “Instant toothpick,” he said, chuckling. “Oh: Keith?”

  I glanced around. “Sir?”

  “Run down with the Six and help George pull a postops check”-he eyed me significantly-“and then grab a beer at the shack.”

  I grinned to myself at the word. Howard Scortia’s geodesic dome was hardly a shack: more a statement of life-style according to the Prophet Fuller. If Mr. Scortia liked making statements of that sort, he was probably an ideal customer for Kelley. With ecology an enshrined word, the big lumber interests were helpless when government annexed “their” private rights to forest, range and watershed. The Department of the Interior might single out a lone prime tree for harvest, and threaten your license if you clipped a twig from the tree next to it. The hallowed jargon was shifting. It was harvesting, not logging-and very selectively. Snaking was only for pulp cellulose, since it damaged prime logs to drag them with a chain. You didn’t snake, you toted. And the Kelley Magnum was just the rig to do it all.

  I headed for my rig, the Magnum Six, which I herded around when I could get her to walk straight. The Seven had more flexible programs and better stability in walk mode. The Six had developed an intermittent malf-malfunction-we couldn’t fathom. Kelley wanted it checked out before the Six put a foot wrong and leaned on somebody a little. Eight tons of alloy with the blind staggers isn’t much of a selling point. I started the turbine, which was down near the pressure pumps. It was the pumps that did everything; tried-and-true airmotors powered the wheels, gangsaws, and most other subsystems. Like Lear and Curran, Kelley knew when to bluesky and when to opt for standard hardware. That’s why he had a working Magnum while AMF was still doping out system interfaces.