Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

  Can see the three tossing unicorn horns, the broad pale glimmer round Chloris, the sudden wide light round Blossom on Stomp as they clop to a stop, steaming.

  People step back, hard not to, unicorns, happy rested unicorns, smell like panicked tigers, I’m told that’s what the smell is, I’ve never met a tiger. The standard description, for something impossible to miss and rarely experienced. Tigers are a big cat, quite willing to eat people, apparently they always have been, it’s not a sorcerous modification. When unicorns have been six hours running up and down mountains, wanting to be polite and not frighten people stops working, Pelōŕios has been good about it, but now the smell gets into your brain and says flee, good and loud.

  Three of the people don’t step back. One of them is Crane, hard to recognize anyone in the horn-light tangling through mist, foam-white and mauve and soft gold, Chloris’ palely green penumbra, Blossom’s hell-white light pointed down and bouncing off wet stone and water, harder for lack of practice looking down at people from the air.

  It all washes red and hissing as we land in a sweep of wings.

  Not even a thump, and Dove and I are standing together in the mist.

  Kynefrid, that’s Kynefrid standing next to Crane, starts to smile, tries to say hello, and just cannot stop laughing.

  Chapter 15

  Zora

  It takes us an hour to get illusory flashboards on the dam.

  That’s enough, well, that and some pork-and-parsnip soup and Dove being firm with them, to get the engineers and the lock-clerks and everyone who have been awake for two whole days after a décade of insufficient rest to go and sleep. Nobody makes good decisions exhausted and terrified.

  The flashboards give the dam another three metres in height, about a day and a half at the current rate of rise. In one sense that’s not very much, but in another it’s doubling the time that was left, enough to let the sluice be closed and stop eroding the gorge wall. The dam will overtop sooner, but maybe the gorge wall doesn’t collapse.

  Crane and Kynefrid and Crane’s other student Angren all said nice things about the soup. I try to murmur something appropriate back, even if I never know how to take food compliments from sorcerers. So many of them aren’t quite Ed, Ed can derive nutrition from mafic rocks, Grue showed me the process description but I can’t claim I understand it. There isn’t any food energy there, no chemical energy storage to exploit any more than there is in a glass window, but I suppose the point is that there doesn’t have to be, it’s a manifestation of metaphorical devouring. Hardly anyone works completely like that, hardly anyone can chew rocks, but sorcerers all seem to have metabolic oddnesses. So food compliments are doubtful. I’m much more pleased that the exhausted engineers all finished theirs.

  Kynefrid sort of looks at me; there isn’t much undertone left with Kynefrid is what it feels like, though I think it’s much closer to there’s only as much as there was before Kynefrid left for traditional instruction. Kynefrid really isn’t us anymore, I try not to think about that, and it’s getting easier. Clearly a better outcome for Kynefrid.

  “It’s good soup,” Kynefrid says, with most of a smile. “An opinion formed when I wasn’t cold.”

  Pelōŕios is curled up and asleep and faintly whistly with distress if I move too far away, where “too far” is out of what looks like incidental physical contact. One more run down to Blue Creek didn’t make today easy for a convalescent unicorn. Chloris is doing perception for the big map the rest of us are making at one to two thousand scale. There isn’t a lot of information about the Folded Hills, there aren’t even complete topographic maps, one concern about the dam is we don’t know if the gorge rose or the reservoir sank, all we’ve got is the superficial geography. So they’re trying to do better, especially since the dam went in with expectations about rainfall that aren’t proving correct.

  Grue and Blossom have gone outside, to look at the dam and to let Blossom drop the social face while thinking about what to do. Grue isn’t worried, even though Grue has been trying to cheer Blossom up. Most people wouldn’t do that by shapeshifting into a big pink parrot and flying back across the gorge to sit on Blossom’s shoulder, but it looks like it works. It’s hard to scowl at a big pink parrot.

  Grue put all the binding-anchors down for the flashboards, walking across the whole top of the dam, because even if the whole dam had completely collapsed right then, Grue wouldn’t have been hurt.

  Crane’s drinking coffee and looking contemplative.

  Angren’s trying to understand how we made the field mugs the soup got handed around in, and doesn’t show much sign of having a good time with it. Yet more titanium, with a double wall and what the literature calls hard smoke, a lighter-than-air silicon structure. It’s an exceptional insulator and Wake had declared a vacuum too easy for our present level of skill.

  This bunch of mugs are a set, so I don’t want to alter any, and there isn’t any titanium handy, but hard-smoke insulation works fine with glass, too. There’s half a tonne of mortar hardened in a lump behind the building and the local sandstone has some feldspar, so I can rummage around and get enough plausible glass for four mugs without having to do anything noticeable.

  Angren followed all the steps. Crane was quietly following along to make sure Angren could follow all the steps, Crane’s attention feels different from our teachers’.

  So Kynefrid’s holding a mug, Crane’s holding a mug, and Angren’s holding a mug. The fourth mug’s on the table in front of me and I get up and go help do the vegetation and soil and biosphere parts of the map. Following the presence of life’s an effective way to find sinkholes and tell how permeable the rock is.

  When I come back, Angren’s still staring at the mugs; they’re in a neat square of four on the table. The edge of my leg comes back into contact with Pelōŕios’ spine and there’s a faint contented whistle.

  “I thought Kynefrid was implausible.” Angren looks up, sort of sideways at me, and sighs. “It’s not just the external use of the Power.”

  I suppose Kynefrid couldn’t start over using the Power internally, it’s a quiet thought, and Kynefrid smiles anyway. “Guess who has a four-hundred-year publication history advocating for external Power manipulation in a context of traditional charm working?”

  “You’re still part of the experiment?” It’s impossible to make myself sound surprised.

  “Apparently.” Kynefrid doesn’t sound displeased.

  I should try to answer Angren’s question. “The mugs are just chemistry, the hard smoke is a little tricky because it needs that initial scaffolding, but it’s really just chemistry and moving heat and having opinions about what shape the materials should have.”

  It’s not difficult chemistry, it’s not hard to insist it be consistent. It’s a practical tautology.

  “I stopped doing material things that way because I couldn’t believe it wasn’t going to go horribly wrong,” Kynefrid says, to Angren, not to me. “A belief that grew stronger, and worse, the longer I did it.”

  “You’re a wreaker?” Angren says to me, at least half uncertain that the question can be polite.

  I nod. “Life-tweaker, stuff-wreaker, it’s not clear which is the primary talent though I prefer the life-tweaker sorts of work.”

  “That sounds like a tagmat,” Angren says, a little puzzled. “But even if you can just make complex things,” there’s a restrained gesture at the mugs, “I don’t understand how the others can.”

  The rest of us are coming over, the map’s done. One to two thousand, twenty-five kilometres north-of-northwest-to-south-of-south-east shrunk down to twelve and a half vertically exaggerated metres. Four metres wide’s excessive for this stretch of valley, the lake’s a kilometre wide, but it doesn’t hurt anything to have more detail. It’s got the whole far wall, but this place was built in the expectation of barge traffic that hasn’t happened yet, and won’t, until the population of the Folded Hills at least doubles.

  “You can get any or
der you like with entropy,” Chloris says. “Even if you do start out thinking of it as the death of alternative possibilities.”

  “Praise then Fire and the impulse of making,” Dove says, smiling and floating camp mugs full of water over for everybody. Crane demurs. Pelōŕios drank a whole twenty-litre bucket of restorative when we got here, Grue had insisted, and I think even enjoyed it, no matter what shade of green it was. I haven’t got any words for the sense of flavour that came off the stuff, but I’m pretty sure there’s no need to be waking Pelōŕios up for water now.

  “Before there was anything else, there was darkness.” Edgar sounds quite cheerful. “When nothing else remains, yet there shall be darkness.” Angren’s nodding very slowly. “So everything in between lies in the province and dominion of darkness, to be altered as a creation unfinished.”

  “No one told us it wasn’t possible,” Constant says, accepting the mug Crane demurred.

  “An emergent property of Dove and Edgar’s consonance,” Constant says, an entirely amiable answer to Angren’s startlement. Crane’s trying to figure out if the water’s in the Otherworld or if Constant’s materially emerged.

  The water’s in the Otherworld. It’s really, really hard to tell, Blossom has to look twice.

  As yet, Crane says, and then Thank you.

  “I don’t know if this is personal or not,” Angren says, “but I’m still baffled.”

  “Baffled by?” Dove sounds as perfectly amiable as Constant did. We are going to have to work with other Independents, if and if, so it helps if they think we’re explicable only if they’re correct in their beliefs.

  “Talent’s an expression of how you structure Power. Only apparently not.”

  “Power does whatever you believe it does,” Blossom says, coming in looking entirely social, not lost-in-enchantments Blossom. “Literally and exactly, which is why systems of carefully structured constraints around that belief have a long history.”

  Especially if you think you can’t really get anything good out of the Power. It would seem much too easy, otherwise.

  Angren’s still looking baffled, and Kynefrid doesn’t know what to say. Kynefrid knows they don’t believe what we’re doing can work.

  “Grow up or die.” I don’t think I sound bitter.

  Angren looks at me, startled.

  “That’s the whole thing. You know you have to be responsible or the Shape of Peace will kill you when you return to be evaluated, no matter what, even if you somehow last that long. Then you have to figure out what responsible means and it doesn’t take very long to realize that you never stop doing that, just like you never stop turning into an Independent. People might stop turning into sorcerers even in the Commonweal, but you can’t stop as an Independent or there’s going to be a gap where you need there to be self when it’s your turn to solve a new problem.”

  Crane’s nodding.

  “Halt hypothesizes that a lack of social connection convinces people that the work involved isn’t worth doing.” Blossom’s very best dispassionate academic voice, which is a lot better than Blossom’s full attention and wondering if there are sparks in your hair, too.

  Hardly ever, Grue says, smiling out of the parrot shape into usual-Grue, standing next to Blossom.

  “Dove’s team may have taken that somewhat to extremes,” Blossom says, smiling at us, I think Angren and Kynefrid get just the edges of it and blink, hard. The world floods with light. It’s not warm, it’s not one of Dove’s sunrise smiles, but the world does fill.

  “It still looks like the hypothesis might be correct.” Blossom’s quite certain it is, and equally certain that certainty isn’t relevant, that it’s going to take five centuries and at least fifty Independents to begin to tell. I suspect the benches and the tables and the flagstone floor would know this if such things could possess knowledge; Kynefrid and Angren cannot escape understanding Blossom’s certainty.

  “Nothing at all wrong with student sorcerers falling in love,” Crane says.

  Have to wonder if Crane did. There are reports that describe Crane and Block as “formidable tri-centenarians,” using the same term, but I don’t think they’re associated at all.

  Solely collegially Crane says.

  Blossom’s attention indicates the map. “How far downstream did you go?”

  “Only what you see,” Dove says.

  “You could reach further,” Angren says, voice travelling between surprise and embarrassment in four words. Kynefrid is smiling.

  Kynefrid’s going to seem less strange after this.

  “If Chloris’ attention passes over people, they think they’re going to die. It’s ‘going to die’ in a ‘someday’ sort of way, an awareness of mortality, so not too bad. Dove’s attention or Constant’s is unsettling.” Which is more tactful than accurate, people sometimes panic.

  “Mine can be a little worse than unsettling,” Edgar says. Which is useful, because I never know quite what to say. Ed’s full attention saved someone from a nest of hornets when we were weeding two springs back. It also convinced them they were already in some chill hell after running from the hornets had convinced them they were dead. We were all most apologetic about it but they still changed geans and moved to Slow Creek.

  “We don’t need anyone more unsettled,” Dove says, the “unsettled” coming out with real conviction. Angren looks a bit skittish; Kynefrid squeezes their shoulder.

  There are tens of thousands of people moving everything they can up into the hills, downstream of here. More than two-thirds of the agriculture in this valley, and just about a hundred thousand people depend on it.

  “Is it bad enough I should try to help?” Kynefrid says, after the inevitable pause as we all had the same thought about the people who might get displaced yet again, after five years of uncertainty about food.

  Dove and Blossom say “No,” together.

  “It’s never bad enough to expend someone for no gain,” Dove says. “You’d help the multiplier, but not until the end.”

  Kynefrid almost laughs, and nods, a little rueful showing.

  “Multiplier?” Angren’s doing their best to keep “expended” out of their voice. It’s an honest try that doesn’t work very well.

  “The more people in the working link, the stronger it is.” Chloris sounds like Chloris and not Death. “Blossom looks like there’s going to be some heavy lifting tomorrow.”

  Blossom grins at us. “Maybe the day after, too.”

  “It’s not safe?” Angren’s making a strange face. I wonder what Kynefrid’s said about the working link. About their reasons for leaving.

  “It’s one whole thing together,” we all say, and nothing incidental about it, we joke that this is what Constant’s material voice ought to sound like, come that day. Grue gives us a look. Grue also hands Angren a big goblet of red wine.

  “You’ll get shocky,” Grue says to Angren, and Angren nods, says thank you, and gets through half the goblet at a go.

  “Elegant Blue,” Kynefrid says, and I make sure the rest of us have the reference, Elegant Blues need ethanol the way most species of people need something that will digest into glucose. Lots of them get tangled up trying not to look like drunkards in mixed company. There are Elegant Blues and Golds and Crimsons, they lack common descent but there was, we’re pretty sure, common intellectual descent among whoever created their species. So instead of the Regular cluster, where it’s speciation branching and numbering in order of divergence, with Elegants it’s arbitrary colours.

  Well, arbitrary vivid colours. Elegants are reliably pretty. It would feel odd labeling an Elegant species puce.

  Doesn’t want to embarrass Kynefrid in front of us Edgar says. Don’t ask me how you can combine a chill vastness and fondness into a single emotional tone, I don’t know how that works any more than it’s a good idea to have Ed alter plants.

  Angren sets the goblet down. “I don’t know why I’d understand, I never understand Kynefrid’s explanation, but aren
’t you separate people?”

  Chloris floats some math into visibility. Angren doesn’t recognize half the operators, and says so. Crane’s expression gets intent.

  “The tough part,” Dove says, creating an image of a different sort of math, “is that it’s all equivalent.”

  I don’t think it’s half as funny as Grue does that my version, the one I find most readily comprehensible, is the algebra flavour called fields. No one flinches from Ed’s, it’s got a formal name but everyone calls it Halt notation. Studying it does different things to your mind than you’d expect from complex math.

  “Sets, tensors, a field interlace, Halt notation, or convolved compositors.” Blossom’s voice has gone very gentle. “Same answer, the working link is a unitary thing, composed of unitary participants.”

  “We’re us, they are all themselves.”

  Crane smiles at us saying that all together.

  “But why?” Angren says. “It can’t be the smallest thing, as a way to get social contact.”

  “Capability,” Dove says. “All of the link is available to all of us.”

  Angren nods, Kynefrid looks wistful, and you can see the identical analogy to beer going by on the surface of Crane and Blossom’s thoughts.

  “I would get cold in winter,” Kynefrid says. “The Round House response is to maintain a circulation of the Power sufficient to be just warming enough. Traditionally, there’s a charm.” Tattooed inside Kynefrid’s left forearm. Really inside. I wonder how they do that, it’s material ink, not a magical alteration.

  Formic acid, Crane says. In combination with long practice.

  “We do charms,” Edgar says.

  Crane’s head makes a tiny shake no. “You sometimes make workings small enough, and simple enough, that the result can be called a charm without offence to terminology.”