Bearing an Hourglass

by Piers Anthony

  "Ain't this fun?" Dursten demanded exuberantly. "I ain't flown like this since I threaded the head of a comet on a dare!" He sobered momentarily. "'Course, I did lose my ship on that one..."

  That was indeed the problem on this sort of thing! But Dursten certainly was an able pilot. He swished the carpet past half a dozen columns, taking out most of the pieharps. In the dark, the bird-men were unable to maneuver as effectively as the Sning-guided carpet.

  Abruptly they were at the next stage of the trip—the deep caves. These were much smaller than the prior ones, with no stalactites or stalagmites, and had many rounded tunnels that wound through the rock. It was necessary to traverse these to reach the second chamber.

  The Alicorn came to land on the ledge. He had taken an easier route through the caves—the space between the points of the stalactites and stalagmites. But had Dursten done that, the pieharps would have pursued them unscathed. Norton had to admit that the spaceman had known what he was doing; he was indeed a hotshot pilot.

  There was a new problem, however. The caves were large enough for all of them to walk, including the Alicorn, but not to fly. There were no impassable crevices or heated stones. But these caves were occupied. As soon as the group entered them, Excelsia's candle showed the antennae of giant insects.

  They were monstrous termites, predators of the castle interstices. The ones in front were warriors, with grotesque armor and huge pincers. They scuffled along the tunnels, familiar with the labyrinth, for it was the termites that had carved out these warrens. In time they would hollow out so much of the castle that it would collapse. But that was in the future, while the problem of passage was now. How was it possible to get by?

  Squeeze.

  "Sning says there is a way," Norton reported. "Does that there thing know my blaster's dead?"

  Squeeze. "Sning knows. Can we fight through?"

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "Sneak through?" Dursten put in.

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "Bluff through?" Excelsia asked.

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "You shore that thing's got all its batteries?"

  "If Sning says there's a way, there's a way."

  "Well, he better tell us real soon, 'cause them termites are mighty hungry!"

  Indeed, the termite warriors were nudging forward in the process of deciding that the intruders were edible. The Bemme was holding them back temporarily by forming pincers even larger than theirs, but Norton knew this would not fool them very long. Once the termites reached a firm conclusion, this would be no safe place!

  "Is there something we can do to make it safe?" Norton asked, trying to cudgel his mind for the right questions.

  Squeeze.

  Aha! "As a group?"

  Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

  Damn! "One of us?"

  Squeeze.

  "To make it safe for all of us?"

  Squeeze.

  A warrior termite marched up more aggressively. The Bemme was balking the ones on the left, but this one was on the right. The Alicorn moved to intercept it, but it was obvious that, when the overt hostilities commenced, the termites would overwhelm them by sheer numbers. "Get a wiggle on, Nort!" Dursten murmured.

  "Which one of us?" Norton asked Sning. "Me?"

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "Dursten?"

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "Excelsia?"

  Squeeze.

  The Damsel's head turned quickly. "Oh, I can not fight such monsters, sirrah!" she protested, her candle wavering. "I am but a helpless feminine creature!"

  Exactly. What was Sning thinking of? "Some magic she can do? Maybe a conjuration?"

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  This was baffling. "The way she looks?"

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  A third termite warrior was advancing between the ones blocked by the Bemme and the Alicorn, coming disconcertingly close. Dursten stood before it, pointing his blaster. This did make the insect pause—but for how long?

  "Something about her?" Norton asked.

  Squeeze.

  "Something specific?"

  Squeeze.

  "Uh, can you show me? Hot-cold?"

  Squeeze.

  Norton walked quickly to Excelsia, who stood with her delicate knuckles in her mouth, nervously watching the closest termite. He pointed his finger at her pert nose. Sning did not comment. He pointed to her heaving bosom. No reaction. Then he tried her purse—and that was it.

  In a moment they were sorting through the items in her purse. She had the usual assortment of inconsequentials. The object turned out to be a little bottle of perfume.

  "Perfume?" Norton asked blankly.

  Squeeze, Sning replied patiently.

  "You mean it destroys monsters, like holy water?"

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "Repels termites?"

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "Well, then, what good is it?"

  Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

  Excelsia's lips quirked. "It be good for wearing, belike." She opened the bottle and dabbed some behind her ears.

  The nearest termite paused. It seemed confused.

  Dursten snorted. "That there thing's sniffing the bottle!"

  "The smell!" Norton cried. "It pacifies termites?"

  Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

  "Well, it does something to them! Should we all put it on?"

  Squeeze.

  So they all dabbed perfume on themselves and on the Alicorn, and the termites did not attack. They walked on through the warrens, and the termites ignored them.

  "I get it!" Dursten said. "The smell o' the hive! We've got the dang smell o' the hive!"

  It seemed that Excelsia's perfume was precisely that flavor, or had it as a component. The termites were odor oriented, and now regarded the intruders as other termites.

  They arrived at the second chamber. This one was easy to enter; it had glass facing and resembled an executive office, the kind that allowed the boss to keep an eye on every employee without stirring from his desk.

  Of course, the employees could also see in. Excelsia's candle showed the interior clearly. There were four alcoves—but all were empty.

  "An empty room?" Norton asked, dismayed.

  "The jokers musta skedaddled when they heard us coming," Dursten said disgustedly.

  "But the only way out is through the termite warren," Norton said. "We should have seen them."

  "Unless this is another magic levitator," Excelsia suggested.

  Levitator? Oh—elevator. "If so, maybe we can use it to follow them."

  They all entered and looked around. There seemed to be no control buttons, and the floor of the glassed-in chamber was that of termite-hewn rock. It did not seem to be an elevator.

  Dursten poked around the first alcove. "Shore coulda been somebody standing here once," he said. "See, his footprints are right here." He stepped into the alcove, planting his space boots where indicated.

  Abruptly, he stiffened. His breathing stopped, and his face was frozen in an expression of mild surprise. He had become a statue.

  "It's a trap!" Norton exclaimed, horrified.

  Squeeze, squeeze.

  "Not a trap? But look at him! He's petrified!"

  Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

  "Sning says there's something about this," Norton said to Excelsia, who was, of course, biting her knuckles in mute helplessness.

  He went to stand before the petrified spaceman. "Can you hear me, Dursten?"

  Dursten came alive again. "I ain't exactly him any more," he said. "You want my advice, sport?"

  Norton hesitated. Had the spaceman become the exhibit? If so, care was essential. "I'm not sure. How competent is your advice?"

  "Well, I reckon that's for you to find out, Nort."

  What Norton really wanted to ascertain was whether he was, in fact, in a dream world that he could simply awaken from. If he was not, his "awakening" might be disastrous. A person who decided, when about to step
off the brink of a cliff, that it was all a dream and didn't matter would be in trouble if wrong. But if right, he could step off the cliff and force the dream to end. Norton had to be sure. What conceivable question could he ask of a dream-figure that would settle that?

  That internal question brought its answer: he needed to find someone who knew more than he did on some subject. Only that way could he be sure the answers were not coming from his own mind. For that purpose, it didn't matter whether Bat Dursten was himself or an alcove figure; if he could not show knowledge beyond Norton's own, he was not enough. Presumably if all four alcove figures manifested, and none could prove individuality, then Norton could reasonably assume he was locked in a dream of his own. How he would manage to awaken from it he didn't know; somehow, committing suicide here didn't appeal. But first he had to be sure what he was dealing with.

  Squeeze.

  So Sning agreed! But, of course, if this were a dream, Sning himself was probably part of it, a dream-snake whose advice was suspect. Likewise the Hourglass; now he remembered how the original, adult Bem had snatched it from him. In real life that was not possible; the Hourglass had passed right through Agleh's hand. But that did not guarantee this was a dream-world; Satan could simply have arranged the illusion that the Hourglass had been snatched. Norton knew he could trust nothing until it proved to be independent of his imagination.

  Merely talking with the alcove-spaceman would not do the job. Asking Dursten's name and sentiments would produce only answers that were obvious or not subject to verification. So he would have to get technical, posing the riddles that had always baffled him; the point was to get beyond his own knowledge in such a way that he remained assured the information was valid. Only through scientific logic could he do that.

  Norton pondered, then addressed the spaceman. "Let me ask you a sample question before I decide."

  "Why, shore, pardner. Ask away!"

  "There is a story about Galileo, back on my home planet. He was supposed to have climbed to the top of the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped several objects to the ground. I forget what they were, but that doesn't matter. Let's assume they were a penny, a ping pong ball, and a cannonball. He discovered that they all fell at the same rate, contrary to popular opinion, the small and the large. Popular wisdom had had it that larger and heavier objects would fall faster than small ones. From this experiment he deduced the theory of gravity—that all objects in the universe attracted one another with a force directly proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to their separation from one another. Can you accept that story?"

  "Well, I ain't never been to the Tower of Pizza—"

  "Any tower will do," Norton said patiently. "The point is, what about the objects falling?"

  "Why, shore," the spaceman said. "That's gravity, shore 'nuff. You find it around planets and things."

  Norton controlled his irritation. "What about air resistance?"

  "Oh, yeah, there's that. I don't mess with atmosphere so much; planets are a bother. That there ping-pong ball would fall slower in air. And so would the penny, 'cause it's flat, catches the air."

  "Very well. Let's repeat the experiment on an airless planet. Absolutely no atmosphere. Now do they fall at the same rate?"

  "Shore," the spaceman agreed amicably. "Weight 'n density don't matter none in a perfect vacuum. A dang feather would fall as fast as a lead shot."

  "But the theory says that objects attract one another in direct proportion to their masses. Since the cannonball is more massive than the ping-pong ball, shouldn't it fall faster?"

  Dursten scratched his head. "You know, I never thought o' that! I'll go try it sometime."

  "Does this suggest to you that Galileo could not have performed the experiment attributed to him—or that if he did, and got the results claimed, he would not have derived that particular theory from it?"

  "Yeah, shore does, now you put it that there way."

  Norton sighed inwardly. The spaceman had not been able to take it any further than Norton himself had. He had questioned the Leaning Tower story at the outset, as a child, and been sure that Galileo's experiment must have been misrepresented in some way. For example, magic could have distorted the results. None of the other children had thought so, however, and they had ridiculed him for questioning it. Norton himself had never been quite certain whether he had a valid argument or was merely finding fault with what he did not properly understand. Had Dursten been able to offer a better explanation, he could have been accepted as an independent entity. But the spaceman knew, if anything, less than Norton himself did—and that was no proof he was not a figment of a dream.

  "Thank you. Bat. I'm afraid I must decline to accept your advice. This does not imply any criticism of—"

  "That's okay, Nort. Can I step down now?"

  "By all means."

  The spaceman stepped out of the alcove. "Say, that shore was funny!" he said. "For a while there I felt like I was somebody else!"

  "Let me try that," Excelsia said. She stepped into the second alcove, placing her dainty feet where indicated.

  She froze. "Say, she's pretty as a pitcher!" Dursten remarked appreciatively.

  She was indeed, Norton reflected. Pretty as a fine porcelain pitcher with a classic picture painted on it. He went to stand directly before her. "Hello, Excelsia."

  "Oh, hello, Sir Norton," she replied, reanimating sweetly. "But I'm not exactly the Damsel at the moment."

  "She shore looks like a Damsel to me!" Dursten remarked.

  "I understand," Norton said.

  "Will you accept my advice, O noble querent?"

  "First may I try a sample?"

  Her fair brow furrowed. "A sample of what, sirrah?"

  "Of your advice, of course."

  "Oh." Her brow cleared. "Certainly, Sir Norton."

  "If the universe and everything in it doubled in size in an instant, would anybody notice anything different?" This was another question that had frustrated him, because his answer had differed from that of everyone else. Such differings had set him apart from his peer group, perhaps putting him on a path to self-isolation in the wilderness, where philosophy and reality were one. He believed this was another good question for the occasion.

  Excelsia pondered prettily. "I don't think so," she said. "I mean, sirrah, if everything were twice as big, including the yardsticks and people, there really wouldn't be any change, would there?"

  That was the standard answer. "But what about the square-cube ratio?"

  "The what?" she asked, perplexed.

  "The surface area of objects increases by the square, while volume increases by the cube," he explained. "If you doubled the diameter of the planet and the height of the man standing on it, his mass would multiply by a factor of eight and the mass of the planet by a similar factor, so his actual weight would be something like sixty-four times as much as before, while the cross section of his legs would be only four times as much. The burden on each square inch of his feet would be about sixteen times the prior burden—without strengthening his flesh. He would collapse and die in short order; it would be like standing on Jupiter—"

  "Oh," she said blankly. "I've never been to Jupiter. Are you sure?"

  "It's why ants aren't the size of elephants. The square-cube ratio prevents them from achieving such great size without changing form radically."

  "But the big termites—"

  Excellent point! Scientifically, those monsters were impossible! But he had the answer. "Magic changes things, of course. Without magic, those huge termites could not exist."

  "Then—with magic, the universe could double!"

  Another nice point; she was certainly smarter than Dursten. But her point was flawed. "Magic is limited to planetary range. Sections of the universe are not magic; these would perish. The laws of science, in contrast, are universal, so science is what applies here. Thus, where magic overrides science, as here, huge termites are possible, but the doubling of the universe re
mains impossible."

  "That's for shore!" Dursten agreed. "I never had no truck with none o' that there magic."

  Norton had eliminated Excelsia as an independent thinker; she, like Dursten, knew less than he did. The dream-world hypothesis, so far, was two for two. "You may step down, Damsel."

  She stepped out of the alcove, seeming perfectly normal now that her interview was over. She brought out a little mirror and checked her makeup.

  "Must be your turn," Norton said to the Alicorn. "Want to try an alcove?"

  "An Alicove!" Dursten said, chuckling. The Alicorn shrugged and stepped into the third. This one turned out to be larger than it looked; there was room. He put his forehooves on the footprints and froze. "Hello, Alicorn," Norton said. "Can you speak?"

  The Alicorn animated. Telepathically, he projected. But I am not exactly the animal at the moment.

  "I understand."

  "I shore don't," Dursten said. "What in space is going on?"

  "The Alicorn is telepathic," Excelsia said. "Everyone knows that."

  The spaceman was silent, embarrassed. Obviously he hadn't known—and neither had Norton. It seemed the Alicorn generally didn't bother to communicate that way to people with whom he was not tame.

  Will you accept my advice?

  "First I must question you."

  Proceed.

  "This is a scientific question. You are a magical creature. Can you handle it?"

  In this guise I can.

  "It is said, scientifically, that the mass of an object increases as that object is accelerated toward the velocity of light. Thus nothing can actually reach the speed of light, because its mass would become infinite."

  True.

  "But what, then, of light itself? Doesn't its mass become infinite—thus preventing it from achieving its set velocity?"

  Light is massless, so is not affected.

  "But it bends around stars. It is affected by gravity, and gravity is the force that acts on mass. Light must have mass."

  The Alicorn sent no thought; he was unable to answer.

  Norton dismissed him and moved to the final alcove. The Bemme entered it, settling her base on the footprints. She froze.

  He went through the ritual, animating her in the new office. He asked her his most difficult question: "Are you conversant with the scientific theory of relativity?"