Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

  Thirty-five throwers in there. Didn’t look that heavy.

  Keep getting caught on that.

  Dove’s good about not one-handing most people stuff that weighs a quarter tonne. Edgar never seems to mind, so I suppose sorcery’s just generally good for you.

  The spear throwers look like the usual Line model, handle, hook, spring in between, only the spring’s not some strip of springy plant, it looks metallic. Woven metal thumb ribbon, too. Presumably because getting some good cord would have taken longer.

  I’m looking dubious, we’re a strong-armed lot but maybe Dove’s getting caught a bit, and Dove says “Give it a try.”

  Easy enough to stick myself into the next rotation up on the throwing line.

  First javelin goes five metres high, still rising, before Dove does something and it drops flat. Second one vanishes at the foot of the target. Third one’s clean through the target, little left of centre. Backing boards and sandbags, too.

  Dove’s got this quiet smile as I come back behind the company.

  Not like Dove doesn’t know, know real well and better now than before, why you don’t lug around little bits of magic. Second thing anybody we’re fighting would do is try to reach for them, can’t ward anything perfectly, it’s a way in.

  Takes somebody clever, a bit lucky, but that’s the last guy you want getting in.

  “Or demons,” Dove says quietly, having apparently followed along.

  “Purely material,” Dove says, voice a little loud. “Not the way magnets work for pointing south, but that kind of idea; the spring gets force from being moved through the Power. With the focus up, you throw harder.”

  There’s a small kerfuffle as the two assigned files get it sorted out who is pulling and who is to make sure the buried javelin doesn’t get any distance when it emerges.

  Definite statements from the sergeant-major about which of those not throwing will be maintaining the grab for the overs.

  “Bit like a surprise,” Dove says, not enough breath behind it to carry.

  “What’s the range?” Just as quiet.

  “Couple kilometres. Wrong aerodynamics, but if it’s not a javelin,” and a shrug.

  Thrower won’t work, yeah.

  “More time for the focus.” Anything to slow the other fellow down at a distance.

  Dove nods, digs out something, hands it to me.

  Javelin point, the usual square pyramid punch shape for tough stuff, but the socket’s not tapered. And it’s got …

  “Threads?” Coarse square ones, up the inside of the socket.

  “So you can switch them. Threading the shaft’s no harder than putting a taper on.”

  So we don’t have to lug so many shafts, can switch javelins over to pointy sticks.

  Maybe, the Captain’s not convinced that’s a good general practice, there’s not much to a pointy stick but someone could still reach for it.

  “There’s a fix for the sticks,” Dove says. “Needs the new standards,” and a shrug.

  Yeah. Only time the Line’s ever been entirely on one generation of standards, not since you could use the plural, anyway.

  Only time standards have been made faster than about a year per, too.

  First four files have mostly hit their targets. Made a mess. Couple of snapped javelins.

  Dove makes a reaching gesture, I hand over the throwing stick I’m still holding.

  Dove’s got it by the thumb loop.

  “Use something that isn’t metal as the thumb loop, and it’s just a throwing stick, you don’t get the extra push from the ambient Power.” Quick little smile. “Don’t try to cut the metal loop, just thread a second one.”

  “This isn’t magic?”

  “Making it, not using it.” Dove’s smile’s restrained. “Décade or so, you’ll get a clerk and three or four Independents and a null coming by, wanting to see the throwing sticks work. Figure you can show them something other than proof I’ve made you throw erratic?”

  Thought it was new.

  “Expect so.”

  “Thanks.”

  Second group’s kinda giddy, doesn’t throw that well, they’re too happy to be embarrassed.

  Third group throws better, they’ve been paying attention to how the trajectory’s different.

  “Thought you wanted to have a go at that bug charm?”

  Which is in the new standards and beyond price.

  Dove makes a face. “If I concentrate real hard, I can about do it myself one time in three. Halt tells me this is good.”

  Can’t see how it isn’t, but Dove don’t agree. “No way to explain it to a wreaking collective, no good for a project.”

  Pretty sure that’s not technically true, but the five of them have expectations.

  “Got the team together, made a couple million of them, sent them up to the Hale-gesith with a note.”

  That showed on my face.

  “Not by the each,” Dove’s grinning, “can’t really enchant it, all the other steps, it’s a pattern like making a stamp, took three days. Little tiny charms, about a gram of aluminium. Can wear’em in your hair if you want.”

  Hale-gesith’s going to like that. That charm works on hornets, works on spiders, little red mites that crawl into your pants in swamps and want to crawl under your skin where it’s wet and there’s fat to eat, nobody’s found a bug it doesn’t work on, that’s a lot of pain passing out of the world.

  Fourth group’s first toss all goes high.

  I’m starting to think the style of the throw’s got to change.

  “We get a demo?”

  “After,” Dove says, and I nod.

  Even Dove’s got to be a little nervous about having an own-work project evaluated.

  Chapter 49

  Edgar

  I got Clerk Lester, or maybe Clerk Lester got me. The Independents are Crane and two Independents I haven’t met before, introduced as Whorl and Loft.

  Don’t recognize the null’s species, they’re very ruddy, hair lighter than skin, yellow eyes, definite prognathous jaw, and fangy teeth. They’re introduced as Gibbert, and they seem shy.

  There’s some initial attestation about who I am, who everybody else is, the inevitable fussing with the fancy chairs, we’re in the main floor of the Round House but not using the kitchen table, it’s Chloris’ best illusory table and chairs.

  You have to be quite good with illusions, or see the binding activated, to realize neither table nor chairs are carved bone. Halt had been approving when Chloris made them. Grue had pointed out that the knowledgeable, able to identify the bone to genera as human and cruncher, might be disturbed.

  If they’d seen Chloris smile when Grue said that, you could take away the ‘might’.

  Lester’s warned everyone about the ceiling, and everyone’s trying to be polite and not stare at anything else. The table’s north-south so they’re across the light and a bit in front of the line from door to kitchen. The kitchen got a lot of looks as people were being seated.

  So did the walls, the stair railings, people clearly don’t feel confident they know what the windows are. Table’s facing west so no one has to pretend to be calm if a swan lands on Long Pond, or the eastern view fills up with unicorns.

  One suffices “filling up,” when it comes to unicorns. Could get three.

  The project, well, everything’s all set so I turn the screening illusion off.

  It looks light and airy and delicate, a single leaping silver curve hung with nine head-sized spheres.

  The metal is tungsten scrunched well past solid, specific gravity’s over eighty. Not something you want to stub your toe on, seven tenths of a tonne of the most refractory and obdurate stuff I could get.

  “The Independent Wake’s culture of origin” — you can see the faces set, that’s not a happy subject — “imagines the world in terms of nine elements. We have found this metaphysically useful.” Not exactly the same as metaphorically.

  All the Independents ar
e staring.

  “What’s holding those up?” Loft sounds very doubtful.

  “Tension.”

  “Abstract, idealized tension?” That’s Crane, smiling quietly.

  I nod. “Certainly abstract. Perhaps not idealized.”

  Crane gets this look.

  I duck into the middle, that’s easy enough, stone’s hanging a metre off the floor and everything else is higher, don’t have to fit under stone. There’s an empty complete circle, then the occupied one, the spheres are twenty three centimetres in diameter, head sized for large noggins.

  “Having obtained the stable abstractions,” I say, sure I’ve already got everyone’s attention, but Halt’s been very clear that own-work presentations require a certain decorum.

  The, well, several of Cel’s musician friends are pretty absolute they’re hammers, anything you play a bell with is a hammer, even if you just used it on a gong and it was a striker when you did, it’s not consistent terminology, so the little clear rods, they’re internally complex, are hammers.

  I take one out of a pocket, tap the stone-abstraction bell, end on, the way you’d tap a barrel to see it was full, then each of the others in turn, going up and around the curve. Stone, earth, water, wood, ice, fire, air, light, darkness.

  My examining committee becomes agitated.

  You don’t hear sounds, nothing arrives via the Power, Gibbert’s looking may-flee-abruptly startled, Nulls are present to make sure the work presented is magical instead of mechanical or chemical, but the rung elements are perceptible as something other than sound to Null and Clerk and three Independents.

  “Is this good for something other than provoking theoretical speculation of the most furious character?” The Independent Loft.

  “And, presumably, demonstrating a number of novel materialization techniques,” Crane says. Crane is a namer, Crane’s going to be having an interesting time with the elements because they’re all quite sure what they are, and it’s not the same as the other Fires and Airs and Waters in various other elemental constituent schemes. The Power will give you as many fundamental building blocks as you should care to ask for, just as contradictory as you like.

  That’s not the interesting part.

  “Different persons perceive the sound analogs in different degrees. This is consistent for that person, and reproducible.” Dove can hear, I haven’t got a better word than hear, the fire bell five kilometres away, through the Round House’s wall-wards.

  So can Blossom. Blossom’s much more annoyed about it than Dove.

  Halt said about the darkness bell “Oh, anywhere, dear,” looking pleased.

  I feel the same way. It gets into one’s bones.

  I’m getting an amazed look from Lester, it doesn’t last, before the clerkly impassivity comes back down over Lester’s features like a door swung shut, but the amazed was there.

  “If I took a random sampling of volunteers, and played each note with a set range of forces, and recorded when the note passed from perception, I would have a consistent pattern correlated to their degree and kind of talent?” Lester’s got the amazed out of their voice.

  “I suspect that, but could not undertake the work to prove it.”

  Everybody nods. I’m not an Independent yet. I don’t get to attempt the ferocious paperwork involved in applying to experiment on people.

  “I was able to get sample values for my classmates, teachers, and our houseguest, all of whom were kind enough to volunteer.” The most fragile of whom is a unicorn. Pelōŕios reacts most to wood and air and water.

  “Based on that sample, which I note strongly is not of a statistically significant size” — that clause comes out supported by a quiet chorus from the examiners — “yes, you would have a consistent pattern correlated to their degree and kind of talent.” Also to whether or not they inhabit the food ecology.

  “Do the abstractions have to be that shape?” The Independent Whorl.

  “No. The elemental abstraction can take arbitrary shapes, but this seems to be the only musically useful shape, it’s the only one that gives a clear note.”

  When struck directly. There’s a set of piano hammers faced with abstracted air that do very well striking the plain material strings.

  “The abstractions are stable?” Clerk Lester, who has a check list for these things.

  “The abstractions show no indications of chronological decay, are indifferent to material force, and require very considerable metaphysic force to disrupt, at which point they dissipate abruptly but not violently.”

  “Very considerable?” Crane.

  “The Independent Blossom considers it an effort.”

  Lots of nods. That value of very considerable.

  “Are the abstractions materially dangerous?” Lester’s moved down the checklist.

  “Material harm has not been observed with anyone, including persons of minimal talent. Cognitive unease from other than brief contact has been observed. It is hypothesized that putting an active talent in contact with a large mass of an incompatible elemental abstraction could lead to psychological harm.”

  Chloris has a circlet made out of bent rods of ice and light, Dove has a formal coat made of fire, I got the chill and glittering trumpets into it, one voice of air. Halt made an approving noise and offered to supply buttons “Once it should not be unlucky.”

  Dove had looked astonished and said “Yes please,” and then thanked Halt still looking astonished.

  “Tentative theory and some chemical testing suggests abstracted elements are not material and do not interact materially other than by possessing volume and an analog of mass.”

  I have armour, full, proper, Line-pattern armour, made of resilience, obduracy, and darkness.

  Grue’s got a dress made out of water, Blossom’s got a very determined expression, confirmation from Halt that what I’m doing neither is, nor requires, entelechy, and a bet with me and Dove jointly that Blossom will successfully abstract at least light before I’m forty.

  Zora hugged me about the piano hammers, and turned down wood abstraction gardening tool handles. Abstracted earth raised bed walls, at least for the kitchen garden, if we get to establish dwellings somewhere.

  “Metaphysic interaction appears to take place at a low level with any living organism.” Lots of curious looks.

  “Indications that there are fewer bacteria on abstracted ice surfaces and more on abstracted earth surfaces. Only appears, nothing statistically robust.”

  “Agricultural significance?” Loft, sounding as though they hope not.

  “No indications.” Well, strong indications from Zora that experimenting on the Round House garden isn’t welcome. Mulch waxed wroth, or at least imprecative.

  “So,” Lester says, “don’t drop it on your foot, otherwise safe?”

  I nod, step out of the structure, make a little, five centimetre, abstraction of wood, walk forward and hand it to Crane.

  Crane has to think about taking it.

  There’s a very inward look for awhile, and Crane hands the ideal-of-wood ball to Gibbert, who is astonished when it doesn’t go away.

  It’s a good thing Gibbert’s going to be able to suppress the ringing, or I’d have a tough time getting the committee to agree this involves the Power at all. Despite having just watched me create that abstraction.

  “The Power permeates everything, physical and metaphysical. Illusions emulate the physical with the Power.” Nods, that’s not in any way controversial.

  “So far as I am able to determine, the abstractions are physical, but not material.”

  Eyebrows, doubt, troubled looks. Gibbert gets up, walks over by the window, looks at me. I nod, there isn’t anything there to worry about. Not everyone believes the windows are physical at all, but they are, completely so.

  Nulls aren’t a question of Power; any null can negate any amount of the Power. It’s a question of radius, there have been detectable nulls who couldn’t manage a metre from their perso
n, a usual null can manage between ten and fifteen metres, the strongest known null could manage half a kilometre. If they’re manifesting, no active Power can work; it’s a great way to get rid of a bound demon. If you’ve got a physical manifestation, you’re not going to drop dead or cease to exist, I’m not at risk from Gibbert, Pelōŕios wouldn’t be. Wake’s had the experience, says the only direct consequence is being unable to manifest their unearthly half, Chloris would be safe.

  I can feel the null, it stops around two metres, pretty sure that’s control, not Gibbert’s actual limit.

  The abstraction of wood doesn’t go away.

  My committee’s agitated again.

  Gibbert can walk over to the bells, they don’t go away, the tension doesn’t, I wasn’t sure about the tension, I don’t go away, always have to test these things before you really know, and the little crystal hammer doesn’t work, which at least convinces the committee that this really does involve the Power.

  “Is this good for anything?” Lester sounds honestly curious. I’m still sure it’s not phrased that way on the checklist.

  “Not presently.” Which is true, the existing applications aren’t generally useful, they’re possibly useful to specific people.

  “Aside from the prospect of providing a consistent assessment of talent, there’s the prospect of generalizing the abstraction process to more materially useful ideas, especially in musical instruments.”

  Clearly not what the entelech is supposed to be concerned about, I’m getting looks.

  “Abstractions of non-elemental qualities, such as impermeability and keenness, have possible economic value if it’s possible to fit abstracted impermeability with a valve or abstracted keenness with a handle.”

  Abstracted health, if there’s a way to get it into someone. Can’t imagine the paperwork for even starting to try to answer that one.

  “No immediate applications,” Lester says, and I nod.

  “Indisputable novelty,” Crane says, and the whole committee nods.

  “Colleagues?” Crane’s voice stays precise, entirely calm, but this is certainly amused.

  “Obvious scope for further work,” Loft says, also amused.