3

A small caravan passed slowly through the main gateway into town. There were pedestrians carrying burdens, lined up for inspection at what appeared to be a customs shed. A few men riding shaggy ponies passed through the gateway, not bothered by tire guards—apparently officials riding on errands.

Teams of hulking, rhinoceroslike quadrupeds chuffed patiently outside the gate. Their harnesses led to giant sledges, apparently of the kind Dennis had glimpsed that night on the highway.

Now we’ll see if it’s antigravity after all! Dennis hurried forward eagerly. The mystery was about to be solved!

A few of the waiting pedestrians complained desultorily as he edged forward to the cargo sleds, but no one stopped him. His excitement rose as he approached one of the gleaming, high-sided vehicles.

As he had suspected, there weren’t any wheels at all. The load was strapped to a tilted platform whose four corners ended in little skids. These fitted precisely into the two perfect grooves that ran down every road Dennis had found in Coylia.

The driver shouted at his beast and snapped the reins. The snuffling, buffalo-like creature strained against its harness, and the sled glided smoothly forward. Dennis followed, crouching for a better look.

Was it magnetic levitation? Did the tiny runners ride on a cushion of electrical force? There were devices like that on Earth, but nothing anywhere near this compact. The system seemed elegantly simple, yet incredibly sophisticated.

Dimly, he was aware that people behind him were making ribald remarks about his behavior. There was laughter, and a series of off-color suggestions in the strange local dialect. But Dennis didn’t care. His mind was filled with schematics and raw mathematics as he tested and discarded explanation after explanation for the wonderful sled-and-road combination.

It was the most fun he had had in weeks!

A detached part of him realized that he had tipped over into a strange state of mind. The tension of the past two weeks had burst, and the persona best able to cope—the eager scientist—had come to the fore, to the exclusion of almost everything else. For well or ill, it was his way of dealing with too much alienness all at once.

Dennis got down on all fours and squinted close to the tiny sled in its trough. As the sled moved slowly forward, he let out a small cry of surprise. A clear liquid oozed from beneath the little ski as it slid along. The fluid disappeared quickly, seeping almost instantly into the bottom of the trough.

He touched the bead of wetness that followed the skid, and rubbed the drop between finger and thumb. Almost at once it spread over them in a glossy sheen. He found he couldn’t press  the fingertips  together without their slipping aside. They barely even felt each other.

The fluid was the perfect lubricant! After a moment’s delighted stupefaction, Dennis clawed through one of his thigh pouches for a plastic sampling vial. He had to hold the tube in his left hand, while he vainly tried to wipe his right to get rid of the layer of slipperiness. He pulled the stopper with his teeth.

Crawling along behind the slowly moving sled, he pushed the vial up behind the ski, catching some of the slippery, elusive fluid. Soon he had twenty-five milliliters or so, almost enough to analyze. . . .

His head bumped into the sled as it stopped suddenly. A small rain of cherrylike fruits fell over him from the overloaded wagon.

There were new voices from up ahead. Someone spoke loudly, and the crowd began backing away.

In his exalted state of mind, Dennis refused to be distracted. Drunk on the delight of discovery, he stayed crouched over, hoping the sled would start moving again so he could collect just a bit more of the lubricant,

A hand dropped onto his shoulder. Dennis motioned it away. “Just a minute,” he urged. “I’ll be with you in a sec.”

The brawny hand gripped harder, turning him completely around. Dennis looked up, blinking.

A very large man stood over him, dressed unmistakably in some sort of uniform. On the fellow’s face was an expression that strangely combined puzzlement with incipient rage.

Three other soldiers stood nearby, grinning. One laughed, “Tha’s right, Gil’m. Let’m be! Cantcha see he’s busy?” Another guard, who had been drinking from a tall ale-stein, coughed and sputtered brew as he guffawed.

“Gil’m” glowered. He clutched the bunched fabric of Dennis’s bush jacket and lifted him to his feet. In his right hand the big guard held something like a two-meter quarterstaff with a shining halberd blade at one end. Dennis’s gaze was drawn to the gleaming edge. It looked sharp enough to slice paper or bone with equal facility.

Gil’m called to one of the jokesters without turning or taking his eyes from Dennis. “Fed’r,” he rumbled. “Come an’ hold my thenner. I don’ wanna mess up its practice by killin’ nothin’ too mushy. This one I’ll take care of by han’.”

A grinning guard came up and took the tall weapon from Gil’m. The giant flexed fingers like sausages and tightened his grip on Dennis’s jacket.

Uh-oh. Dennis at last shook himself partially free of the bemused trance. He began to recognize the harm he just might have done himself.

For one thing, he might have lost his opportunity to recite the speech he had carefully prepared for his first encounter with authorities. Hurriedly, he sought to correct the mistake.

“Your pardon, esteemed sir! I had no idea I was already at the gate of your lovely city! You see, I am a stranger from a faraway land. I’ve come to meet with your country’s philosophers, and hopefully discuss many things of great importance with them. This marvelous lubricant of yours, for instance. Did you know that. . . Ak!”

The soldier’s face had begun to purple strangely as Dennis spoke. No doubt that meant this was not the right approach after all. Dennis barely ducked beneath a meaty fist that passed through the spot where his nose had lately been.

The guard’s face was hardly a foot from his. The fellow’s breath was something to write home about.

“Aw, c’mon, Gil’m! Can’t you hit a little Zusliker?” Almost the entire complement of guards had come up to watch the fun, leaving their post at the gate a dozen yards away. They were laughing, and Dennis heard one man offer a bet on how far the Gremmie’s head would travel when Gil’m corrected his aim.

The civilians in the caravan backed away, looking on fearfully.

“Hold still, Gremmie,” Gil’m growled. He cocked his fist back, this time aiming carefully, savoring the moment. His face took on a patient, almost beatific expression of anticipation.

This just may be serious, Dennis thought.

He looked at the guard. . . at the burly hand clutching his jacket. There wasn’t time to grab his needler—as if it would help any, starting his visit by slaying members of the local constabulary.

But Dennis realized he was holding a small open sample bottle in his left hand.

Hardly thinking, he poured the contents over the meaty paw holding his jacket.

The giant paused and looked at him, amazed by the unprecedented offense. After a moment’s thought, Gil’m decided he didn’t like it much. He growled again and struck out. . . as Dennis slipped from his hand like a pat of butter The northman’s fist whistled overhead, mussing Dennis’s hair with its wake.

Gil’m stared at his now empty left hand, shimmering with a thin coating of bright fluid. “Hey!” he complained. He turned barely in time to see the gremmie vanish through the gateway into town.

4

Dennis would have decidedly preferred a more leisurely first tour of a Coylian city.

Back at the gate there was a mass of confusion. The initial hilarity of the people in the caravan dissolved into shouts and screams as the guards stepped in with truncheons.

Dennis didn’t hang around to watch the melee. He pounded across a beautiful, ornate bridge that arched over a canal. Pedestrians stared as he wove among gaily painted market stalls, dodging vendors and their customers. The guards’ hue and cry followed only a little behind him as he fled. Luckily, most of the citizens quickly turned away in order not to get involved.

Dennis leaped past a street-corner juggler and ducked the falling pins to dive into an alley behind a pastry stall.

He heard boots pounding on the bridge not far behind him. There were yells as the guards tripped over the hapless juggler and his pins. Dennis continued dodging through the twisting streets and alleys.

The buildings of Zuslik were ziggurat high-rises, some over a dozen stories tall. All had the same wedding cake type of design. The narrow lanes were as serpentine as interdepartmental politics back at Sahara Tech.

In a deserted alley he paused to wait out a stitch in his side. All this running wasn’t easy with a heavy pack on his back. At last he was about to go on when suddenly, just ahead, he heard a newly familiar voice cursing.

“... like to burn this whole damn town to the groun’! You mean none of you saw that gremmie? Or those thieves who snuck in our guardhouse while we weren’t lookin’? Nobody saw nothin’? Damn Zuslikersl You’re all a buncha thieves! It’s funny how a stripe or two can jog a memory!”

Dennis backed into the alley. One thing was certain, he’d have to ditch his pack. He found a dim corner, unbuckled the belt, and let it slide to the ground. He knelt and pulled out his emergency pouch, which he slung onto his Sam Browne belt. Then he looked around for a place to stash the pack.

There was rubbish in the alley, but unfortunately there were no real hiding places.

The first floor of the building next to him was little more than seven feet high. The next level was set back a meter or two, so the roof formed a parapet just overhead. Dennis stepped back and heaved the pack onto the ledge. Then he backed away again and leaped for a handhold.

Dennis swung his right leg to bring it up, but just then he felt his hold begin to slip. He had forgotten the coating of sled oil still on his right hand. His grip was too slick to hold, and he fell to the ground with a painful thump.

Much as he would have liked to have lain there groaning for a little while, there just wasn’t time. Shakily, he got up for another try.

Then he heard footsteps behind him.

He turned and saw Gil’m the Guard enter the alleymouth about ten meters away, grinning happily and holding his weapon high. The halberd blade gleamed menacingly.

Dennis noted that Gil’m wasn’t using his left hand at all and assumed it must still be coated with the sled oil. The stuff was insidious.

Dennis popped the flap of his holster and drew his needler. He pointed it at the guard. “All right,” he said, “hold it right there. I don’t want to have to hurt you, Gil’m.”

The soldier kept coming, grinning happily in anticipation, apparently, of slicing Dennis in twain.

Dennis frowned. Even if no one here had ever seen a hand weapon like the needler before, his own self-assurance at least should have given the fellow pause.

Perhaps Gil’m was unimaginative.

“I don’t think you know what you’re facing here,” he told the guard.

Gil’m came on, holding his weapon high with one hand. Dennis decided he had no choice but to play out his bluff. He felt a brief panic as his oiled thumb slipped over the safety lever twice. Then it clicked. He took aim with the needler and fired.

There was a staccato sound, and several things happened all at once.

The polished wood of the halberd’s handle split into fragments as a stream of high-velocity metal slivers tore into the elevated weapon. Gil’m ducked aside as the glistening blade fell. The guard stared dully at the severed stump of his weapon.

But Dennis couldn’t hold on as the recoil kicked the needler out of his slippery right hand. It bounced off his chest, then went rattling along the ground in front of him.

He and Gil’m stood in a momentary tableau, both of them suddenly disarmed. The guard’s face was blank and the whites of his eyes showed. He didn’t move.

Dennis started to edge forward, hoping the fellow’s daze would last long enough for him to retrieve his weapon. The needler had fetched up against the fallen halberd blade, midway between him and the giant.

Dennis was reaching for it when two more soldiers in high bearskin hats appeared in the alleymouth. They shouted in surprise.

Dennis grabbed the needler and raised it. But in that telescoped moment he found that he just couldn’t bring himself to kill. It was a flaw in his personality, he realized, but there was nothing he could do about it.

He turned to run but only got a dozen paces before the butt of a thrown knife struck him on the side of the head, knocking him forward into the dark shadows.

5

“’ere, now. Easy do it. Ye’ll have a bruise like a searchlight in a day or so! A real shiner it’ll be!”

The voice came from somewhere nearby. Bony fingers held his arm as Dennis sat up awkwardly, his head athrob.

“Yep, a real shiner. Practice it good an’ you’ll be able to use it to see in th’ dark with!” The voice cackled in generous self-appreciation.

Dennis could barely focus on the person. He tried to rub his eyes and almost fainted when he touched the bruise on the left side of his face.

Blearily, he saw an elderly man who grinned back at him with only half a mouth of teeth. Dennis nearly fell over sideways in a wave of dizziness, but the old fellow caught him.

“I said easy there, didn’ I? Give it a minute an the worl’ will look a lot better. Here, drink some o’ this.”

Dennis shook his head, then coughed and choked as his would-be nurse grabbed his hair and poured a slug of tepid liquid into his mouth. The stuff tasted vile, but Dennis grabbed the rough mug in both his own hands and gulped greedily until it was taken away.

“Tha’s enough for now. You just sit an’ get yer senses back. You don’t gotta start workin’ ‘til second day, not when they bring you in lumped like this.” The man arranged a rough pillow behind his head.

“My name is Dennis.” His voice came out a barely audible croak. “What is this place?”

“I’m Teth, an’ you’re in jail, punky. Don’ you recognize a jail when you see one?”

Dennis looked left and right, able at last to focus his eyes. His bed was part of a long row of rude cots, sheltered by an overhanging wooden canopy. A wattle and daub wall behind him supported the roof. Beyond the open front of the shed was a large courtyard, hemmed in by a tall wooden palisade.

On the right stood a far more impressive wall, one that gleamed seamlessly in the bright sunshine. It was the lowest and widest in a series of tiers that extended up a dozen stories or more. In the center of the shining wall was a small gatehouse. Two bored guards lounged on benches there.

Men in the courtyard, presumably his fellow prisoners, moved about at tasks Dennis couldn’t identify.

“What kind of work are you talking about?” Dennis asked. He felt a little giddy, with a trace of that queer detachment from reality that had come over him before. “Do you make personalized license plates here?”

He didn’t care when the old man looked at him funny.

“They work us hard, but we don’ make nothin’. We’re mostly lower-class riffraff in here—vagrants an’ such. Most of us wouldn’ know how to make anythin’.

“O’ course, there’s some in here for gettin’ in trouble with th guilds. An’ others who served the old Duke long afore Kremer’s father moved into these parts an’ took over. Some o’ them might know a little about makin’  things, I suppose. . . .”

Dennis shook his head. Teth and he didn’t seem to be talking on the same wavelength at all. Or perhaps he just wasn’t hearing the fellow right. His head hurt, and he was all confused.

“We grow some of our own food,” the old man went on. “I take care of new gremmies like you. But mostly we practice for the Baron. How else would we earn our keep?”

There was that word, again. . .practice. Dennis was getting sick of it. He got a gnawing sensation whenever he heard it, as if his subconscious were trying to tell him something it had already figured out. Something another part of him was just as frantically rejecting.

With some difficulty he sat up and swung his feet over the side of the cot.

“Here, now! You shouldn’ do that for a few hours yet. You lie back down!”

Dennis shook his head. “No! I’ve had it!” He turned to the old man, who looked back with plain concern. “I’m finished being patient with this crazy planet of yours, do you hear? I want to know what’s going on, now! Right now!”

“Easy,” Teth began. Then he squawked as Dennis grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him forward. Their faces were inches apart.

“Let’s get down to basics,” Dennis whispered through gritted teeth. “This shirt, for instance. Where did you get it?”

Teth blinked as if he were in the grip of a lunatic. “It’s bran’ new. They giv’ it to me to break in! Wearin’ it’s one of my jobs!”

Dennis clutched the shirt tighter. “This? New? It’s hardly more than a rag! The weave is so coarse it’s about to fall apart!”

The old man gulped and nodded. “So?”

Dennis snatched at a spot of color at the fellow’s waist. He pulled free a square of filmy, opalescent fabric. It bore delicate patterns and had the feel of fine silk.

“Hey! Tha’s mine!”

Dennis shook the beautful cloth under Tern’s nose. “They dress you in rags and let you keep something like this?”

“Yeah! They let us keep some of our personal stuff, so it won’t go bad wi’out us workin’ on ‘it! They may be mean, but they’re not that mean!”

“And this piece isn’t new, I suppose.” The kerchief looked fresh from some expensive shop.

“Palmi no!” Teth looked shocked. “It’s been in my family five generations!” he protested proudly. “An’ we been using it nonstop all that time! I look at it an’ blow my nose in it lots of times every day!”

It was such an unusual protestation that Dennis’s grip slackened. Teth slid to the floor, staring at him.

Shaking his head numbly, Dennis stood up and stumbled outside, blinking against the brightness. He walked unevenly past knots of laboring men—all dressed in prisoners’ garb— until he reached a point where the outer palisade came into contact with the glistening wall of the castle.

With his left hand he touched the rough treetrunks, crudely trimmed and mud-grouted, which comprised the palisade. With his right hand he stroked the castle wall, a slick, metal-hard surface that shone translucently like a massive, light-brown, semiprecious stone. . .or like the polished trunk of a mammoth petrified tree.

He heard someone approach from behind. He glanced back and saw it was Teth, now accompanied by two more prisoners, who looked over the newcomer curiously.

“When was the war?” Dennis asked softly without turning around.

They looked at each other. A tall, stout man answered, “Uh, what war you talkin’ about, Grem? There’s lots of ‘em, all the time. The one when th’ Baron’s dad kicked out the old Duke? Or this trouble Kremer’s havin’ with the King. . . ?”

Dennis turned and shouted, “The Big War, you idiots! The one that destroyed your ancestors! The one that threw you back to living off the dregs of your forefathers. . . their self-lubricating roads. . . their indestructible handkerchiefs!”

He brought a hand to his throbbing head as a dizzy spell struck. The others whispered to each other.

Finally a short, dark man with a very black beard shrugged and said, “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man. We’ve got it better’n our ancestors ever had it. An’ our grandchildren’ll have it better’n us. That’s called progress. Ain’t you heard of progress? You from someplace that has ancestor worship, or somethin’ backward like that?”

He looked genuinely interested. Dennis let out a faint moan of despair and stumbled on, followed by a growing entourage.

He passed prisoners working in a vegetable garden. The neat rows of green seedlings seemed normal enough. But the implements the gardeners used were of the flint and tree-branch variety he had seen at Tomosh Sigel’s house. He pointed to the rakes and hoes.

“Those tools are new, right?” he demanded of Teth.

The old man shrugged.

“Just as I thought! Anything new is crude and, barely better than sticks and stones, while the rich get to hoard all the best remnants of your ancestors’ ancient—“

“Uh,” the small, dark man interrupted, “these tools are for the rich, Gremmie.”

Dennis snatched a flintheaded hoe out of the hands of one of the nearby farmers and waved it under the short fellow’s nose. “These? For the rich? In an obviously hierarchical society like yours? These tools are crude, barbaric, inefficient, clumsy—“

The fat gardener he had taken the tool from protested, “Well, I’m doin’ my best! I just got started on it, fer heaven’s sake! It’ll get better! Won’t it, guys?” He snuffled. The others muttered in agreement, apparently coming to the conclusion that Dennis was somewhat of a bully.

Dennis blinked at the apparent non sequitur. He hadn’t said anything about the farmer at all. Why did he take it personally?

He looked about for another example—anything else to get through to these people. He turned and spotted a group of men at the far end of the courtyard. They were not dressed in crude homespun. Instead they wore finery of the most brilliant and eye-pleasing shades. Their clothing shimmered in the afternoon light.

These men were engaged in a series of mock fencing bouts using wooden dowels instead of swords. A few guards lounged about, watching them.

Dennis had no idea why these aristocrats and their guards were here in the prison yard, but he seized the opportunity. “There!” he said, pointing. “Those clothes those men are wearing are old, aren’t they?”

Although it was now less friendly, the crowd nodded in agreement.

“They were made by your ancestors, then, right?”

The small, dark man shrugged. “I suppose you could say so. So what? It doesn’t matter who makes somethin’. It’s whether you keep it up that counts!”

Were these people blind to history? Had the holocaust that destroyed the marvelous old science of this world so traumatized them that they shied away from the truth? He walked purposefully over to where the dandies fenced by the wall. A bored guard looked up lazily, then returned to his nap.

Dennis had quite lost his head by now. He shouted at the prisoners who had followed him. “You don’t deny that aristocrats get the best, and coincidentally the oldest, of everything?”

“Well, sure. . .”

“And these aristocrats are wearing only old things. Right?”

The crowd erupted in laughter. Even some of those in the bright clothes stopped their dour mock swordfights and smiled. Old Teth gave Dennis a gap-toothed grin. “They’s not rich people, Denniz. They’s poor prisoners like us. They’s just built like some of the Baron’s cronies. ‘If you can wear a rich man’s clothes, you will wear a rich man’s clothes, whether you want to or not!’” It sounded like an aphorism.

Dennis shook his head. His subconscious was spinning and seemed to be trying to tell him something.

“Imprisoned for being ‘built just like’ the Baron. . . that’s what Tomosh Sigel’s aunt said happened to the kid’s dad. . ..” Someone nearby gasped aloud, but Dennis continued talking to himself, faster and faster.

“The rich force the poor to wear their gaudy clothes for them, day in, day out. . . but that doesn’t fray the clothes, wearing them out. Instead . . .”

Someone was talking urgently nearby, but Dennis’s mind was completely full. He wandered aimlessly, paying no attention to where he was going. Prisoners made way for him, as men do for the sainted or the mad.

“No,” he mumbled, “the clothing doesn’t wear out—because the rich get someone built like them to wear their clothes all the time, to keep them in. ..”

“Excuse me, sir. Did you mention the name of. . .”

“. . . to keep them in practice!” Dennis’s head hurt. “Practice!” he said it again and pressed his hands to his head at the craziness the word made him feel.

“. . . did you mention the name of Tomosh Sigel?”

Dennis looked up and saw a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing the finery of a fabulously wealthy magnate—though Dennis now knew him for a prisoner like himself. Something about the man’s face looked familiar. But Dennis’s mind was too cluttered to give it more than an instant’s thought.

“Bernald Brady!” Dennis shouted and struck his palm. “He said there was a subtle difference in physical law here! Something about the robots seeming to get more efficient. . .”

Dennis patted his jacket and pants. He felt lumpy objects. The guards had taken his belt and pouch but left the contents of his pockets alone.

“Of course. They didn’t even notice them,” he whispered half frantically. “They’ve never seen zippered pockets before! And those zippers have had practice getting to be better and better zippers ever since I got here!”

The crowd suddenly grew hushed as he zipped one pocket open and drew out his journal. Dennis flipped the pages.

“Day One,” he read aloud. “Equipment terrible. Cheapest available. I swear I’ll get even with that S.O.B. Brady someday. . . .” He looked up, smiling grimly. “And I will, too.”

“Sir,” the tall man persisted, “you mentioned the name of...”

Dennis flipped ahead, tearing at the pages. “Day Ten. . . Equipment much better than I’d thought. . . .1 guess I must have been mistaken, at first.. . .”

But he hadn’t been mistaken! The stuff had simply improved!

Dennis snapped the notebook shut and looked up. For the first time since arriving on this world, he saw.

He saw a tower that had become, after many generations, a great castle—because it had been practiced at it for so long!

He saw gardening tools that would day by day get better with use, until they were like the marvels he had seen on the steps of Tomosh Sigel’s house.

He turned and looked at the men around him. And saw. . .

“Cavemen!” he moaned.

“I won’t find any scientists or machinists here, because there aren’t any! You don’t have any technology at all, do you?” he accused one prisoner. The fellow backed away, obviously having no idea what Dennis was talking about.

He whirled and pointed at another. “You! You don’t even know what the wheel is! Deny it!”

The prisoners all stared.

Dennis wavered. Consciousness flickered like a candle going out.

“I should. . . I should have stayed at the airlock and built my own damn zievatron. . . .Pixolet and the robot would’ve been more help than a bunch of savages who’ll prob’ly eat me for supper. . .and practice my bones into spoons and forks. . . my scapulae into fine china. . . .”

His legs buckled and he fell to his knees, then went face-first into the sand.

“It’s my fault,” someone above him said. “I never shoulda’ let him get up with a bump on his head like that.”

Dennis felt strong arms grab his legs and shoulders. The world swayed about him.

Cavemen. They were probably going to put him in a cot so he could practice it into a feather bed just by laying in it.

Dennis laughed dizzily. “Aw, Denze, be fair. . . they’re a little better’n cavemen. After all, they have learned that practice makes perfect. . . .”

Then he lost consciousness altogether.

6

It was a late-night talk show on the three-vee. The guests were four eminent philosophers.

Desmond Morris, Edwin Hubble, Willard Gibbs, and Seamus Murphy had just been interviewed. After the commercial break the show’s host turned to the holo-cameras, smiling devilishly. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve heard a lot from these four gentlemen about their famous Laws of Thermodynamics. Maybe now it would be a good time to get a word from the other side. It’s a great pleasure, therefore, to bring out tonight’s mystery guest. Please welcome Mr. Pers Peter Mobile!”

The four philosophers stood up as one, protesting.

“That charlatan?” “Faker!” “I won’t share the stage with a con artist!”

But while they fumed, the orchestra struck up a sprightly, irreverent tune. As the fanfare rose, a high-browed chimpanzee rolled out onto the stage, grinning a buck-toothed grin and bowing to the cheering audience.

On his head he wore a little beanie cap with a toy propeller.

The chimp caught a microphone tossed from the wings. He danced to the music, spinning the toy propeller with one finger. Then, with a scratchy but strangely compelling voice, he began to sing.

Why’s it so?

Oh, why’s it so?

It’s an easy ride,

I will confide.

If you know just what I know!

The refrain was catchy. Pers Peter Mobile grinned and sang a couple of verses.

Oh, old Ed Hubble blew a cosmic bubble,

He said it did explode!

He wont confess

to the resultant mess,

But it’s gettin awful cold!

And Willard Gibbs, His frightful Nibs,

Worked out matters’ economic.

Times arrow’s the thing,

you’ll hear him sing,

And the debit’s always chronic!

The chimp capered to the music, but never stopped spinning the little propeller. The blur at the top of his head became hypnotic, like the meshing and weaving of moire patterns.

Pop anthropologists claim, oh, happy refrain,

That man’s defined by tools.

Tools help us abide

ol entropy’s tide,

But even they obey the rules!

And Murphy critic, pessimistic,

Cries, foreboding still,

This entropy thing’s

got a personal sting,

And what can go wrong will.

The music swelled, accompanied by the growing whine of the propeller. The dancing ape returned to the refrain.

Why’s it so?

Oh, why’s it so?

It’s a bloody mess

I will confess,

But there’s a secret, dont you know!

The blur at the top of his head no longer needed a ringer to keep it going. In fact, it wasn’t a toy propeller anymore at all! The beanie cap had become a space helmet and the whirling blades lifted him into the air, much to the dismay of the other guests.

The camera panned close to the chimp’s face. Two rows of big, yellowed buck teeth grinned at the audience. The music soared to a crescendo.

Oh, there’s a time and place for everything,

Or so the sages say.

If you don’t like the rules

in one stupid place,

Don’t gripe, just fly away!

The chimp zoomed about the studio, his cap now a full ornithopter suit. He buzzed the furious philosophers, sending them diving behind their chairs in dismay. Then he swooped about in a sharp turn and streaked straight for the camera, laughing, howling, shrieking in mirth.

Just fly a-waaaa-a-a-y-y!!

“Uh!” Dennis flailed and grabbed the edge of the cot with both hands. He stared into the darkness for a long time, breathing hard. Finally he sank .back against the bedding again with a sigh.

So, there was no magical, negentropic chimpanzee after all. But the first part of the dream was true. He was in jail on a strange world. A bunch of cavemen who hadn’t the slightest idea they were cavemen had him prisoner. He was at least fifty miles from the shattered zievatron, on a world where the most basic physical laws he had been brought up to believe were queerly twisted.

It was night. Snores echoed through the prisoners’ shed. Dennis lay unmoving in the dimness until he realized that someone sat on the next cot, watching him. He turned his head arid met the look of a large, well-muscled man with dark, curly hair.

“You had a bad dream,” the prisoner said quietly.

“I was delirious,” Dennis corrected. He peered. “You look familiar. Were you one of the men I shouted at while I was raving? One of the . . . the clothes practicers?”

The tall man nodded. “Yes. My name is Stivyung Sigel. I heard you say that you had met my son.”

Dennis nodded. “Tomosh. A very good boy. You should be proud.”

Sigel  helped  Dennis sit  up.   “Is Tomosh all  right?”  He asked. His voice was anxious,

“You needn’t worry. He was just fine last I saw.”

Sigel bowed his head in gratitude. “Did you meet my wife, Surah?”

Dennis frowned. He found it hard to remember what he had been told. It all seemed so long ago and had been mentioned only in passing. He didn’t want to distress Sigel.

On the other hand, the man deserved to be told whatever he knew. “Umm, Tomosh is staying with his Aunt Biss. She told me something about your wife going off to ask help... from somebody or something called Latoof? Likoff?”

The other man’s face paled. “The L’Toff” he whispered. “She should not have done so. The wilderness is dangerous, and things are not yet so desperate!”

Sigel stood up and started pacing at the foot of Dennis’s bed. “I must get out of here. I must!”

Dennis had already begun thinking along the same lines. Now that he knew there were no native scientists to help him, he had to be getting back to the zievatron to try putting a new return mechanism together by himself, with or without replacement power buses. Otherwise he would never get off of this crazy world.

Maybe he could turn the Practice Effect to his advantage, though he suspected it would work quite differently for a sophisticated instrument than for an ax or a sled. The very idea was too fresh and disconcerting for the scientist in him to dwell on yet.

All he really knew was that he was getting homesick. And he owed Bernald Brady a punch in the nose.

When he tried to get up, Sigel hurried to his side and helped him. They went to one of the support pillars, where Dennis leaned and looked out at the stockade wall. Two small, bright moons illuminated the grounds.

“I think,” he told the farmer in a low voice, “I might be able to help you get out of here, Stivyung.”

Sigel regarded him. “One of the guards claims you are a wizard. Your actions earlier made us think it might be true. Can you truly arrange an escape from this place?”

Dennis smiled. The score so far was Tatir many, Dennis Nuel nothing. It was his turn now. What, he wondered, might not be wrought from the Practice Effect by a Ph.D. in physics, when these people hadn’t even heard of the wheel?

“It’ll be a piece of cake, Stivyung.”

The farmer looked puzzled by the idiom but he smiled hopefully.

A touch of motion caught Dennis’s eye. He turned and looked up at the layered castle to his right, its walls gleaming in the moonlight.

Three  levels  up,   behind a parapet  lined with  bars,  a slender figure stood alone. The breeze blew a diaphanous garment and a cascade of long blond hair.

She was too far away to discern clearly in the night, but Dennis was struck by the young woman’s loveliness. He also felt sure that somehow he had seen her somewhere before.

At that moment she seemed to look toward them. She stood that way, with her face in shadows, perhaps watching them watch her, for a long time.

“Princess Linnora,” Sigel identified her. “She is a prisoner as are we. In fact, she’s the reason I’m here. The Baron wanted to impress her with his property. I’m to help practice his personal things to perfection.” Sigel sounded bitter.

“Is she as beautiful in the daytime as she is by moonlight?” Dennis couldn’t look away.

Sigel shrugged. “She’s comely, I’ll warrant. But I can’t understand what th’ Baron’s thinking. She’s a daughter of the L’Toff. I know them better than most, and it’s hard even for me to imagine one of them ever marraiging to a normal human being.”

5

Transom Dental

1

“They patrol outside the wall to keep people away,” the small thief said. “After all, a lot of prisoners have family and friends on the outside, and a fair part of Zusiik’s population would help in a jailbreak. Even after thirty years, Kremer’s northmen ain’t too popular hereabouts.”

Dennis nodded. “But do the guards inspect the wall on the outside as carefully as they do inside?”

The escape committee numbered five. They were gathered around a rickety table eating the noon meal. The prisoners sat in flimsy, uncomfortable chairs. It would have been better just to stand, but practicing the chairs was another of their jobs.

Gath Glinn, the youngest member of their group, squatted in the shadows beside the nearby castle wall, huddled over Dennis’s prototype escape device. The sandy-haired youth had been the first to catch on to the Earthman’s idea and had been assigned to try it out. He stopped working and covered the device whenever the others indicated the guards were near.

Right now his hands moved rapidly back and forth, and the little tool he practiced made soft “zizzing” sounds.

The short, dark man whom Dennis vaguely remembered yelling at on his first day in jail shook his head and answered Dennis’s question. “Naw, Denniz. Sometimes they take gangs of us out to throw rocks at the wall. But mostly they make us practice it from th’ inside.”

Dennis was still routinely puzzled by things his fellow prisoners told him. His look must have showed it.

Stivyung Sigel looked left and right to make sure no one had approached too close. “What Arth means, Dennis, is that another of our jobs is to practice the wall itself into being a better wall.”

The farmer seemed to have caught on that Dennis came from someplace far away, where things were very different from here. It seemed to puzzle him that civilization could exist in a land where things didn’t get better with use, but he appeared willing to give Dennis the benefit of the doubt.

“I see.” Dennis nodded. “That’s why those men are allowed to chop away at the wall like that, without being stopped by the guards.” He had seen groups of prisoners lackadaisically attacking the palisade, and the wall of the castle itself, with crude mallets. He had wondered why it was permitted.

“Right, Dennis. The Baron wants the wall stronger, so he has prisoners scratch at it.” Stivyung shrugged at explaining something so basic. “Of course, the guards make sure they don’t use good tools while doing it. This way, in the course of time, the outermost wall will grow more and more like the one behind us, they’ll roof it over then, and the castle will grow that much larger.”

Dennis looked up at the palace. He understood the wedding cake geometry now. When the Coylians built a structure it started out little better than a rude lean-to. When it was finally coverted, after years of practice, into a solid one-story building, another crude structure was built on top. While the second story improved, the first became better at supporting weight on its roof and grew outward as lateral additions were made.

As long as someone lived in it thereafter, the building was practiced at holding together. Only if abandoned would it slowly revert, eventually to collapse into a tumble of sticks and mud and animal hides.

Dennis didn’t imagine there would be much for archaeologists to find on this world, once a great city was abandoned.

“They also check to make sure we practice all the wall,”

Arth added.  The diminutive thief claimed  to be a leader

among the burglars and thieves in the town of Zuslik. From the respect the other prisoners paid him, Dennis didn’t doubt it.

“O’ course, we always try to leave patches of wall to revert to old logs. . so’s we could really break through. They patrol looking for such practice gaps. It’s a game o’ wits.” He grinned, as if certain the game could be won sooner or later.

The zizzing sound behind them suddenly ended in a sharp snap. Young Oath held up the severed end of the piece of wood, beaming at Dennis admiringly.

“The flexible saw worked!” he whispered in excitement. He looked around to make sure no guards were near, then handed the tool to Dennis.

The teeth were warm from friction. On Earth they would have shown signs of wear after cutting just that little piece of soft wood. But Gath had been thinking “Cut! Cut!” as he worked. And now, thanks to the gentle practice, the zipper was just a little sharper than before.

Dennis shook his head. It was a helluva purpose to put a zipper to. Those sealing the pockets of his overalls were all of soft plastic. He had had to rip the metal zipper from his pants—his fly was now shut with three crude buttons that he hoped would get better with use: Certainly he wasn’t about to use this zipper in its old purpose again!

“Good work, Gath. We’ll arrange for you to get on sick call so you can practice this saw to perfection. The night it’s finished—“

Arth interrupted quickly with a comment on the weather. In a moment a pair of guards passed nearby. The prisoners developed an interest in their meal until they had gone.

When the coast was clear, Dennis offered to pass the saw around. All but Stivyung Sigel politely refused. Apparently the average person here was a bit superstitious toward those who put “essence” into a tool—the original craftsmen who “made” tools in the first place, rather than practiced them to perfection. They probably saw magic in it because it used a principle they had never seen before.

He handed the zipper back to Gath, who palmed it eagerly.

Then lunch was over. The guards started calling them back to work.

Dennis’s present job was to attack suits of armor with a blunt, hollow spear—while the soldier-owners wore them! It was exacting work. If he hit the soldier hard enough to hurt, he was struck with a whip. If he struck too softly, the guards shouted and threatened to beat him.

“From now on we take turns watching over Gath to make sure he can practice undisturbed,” he said as he stood up. “And we keep him supplied with wood to cut. We’ll discuss the rest of the plan later.”

The escape committee all nodded. As far as they were concerned, he was the wizard.

The guards called again and Dennis hurried to work. One of the punishments for tardiness was to have one’s personal property taken away. Though he now wore homespun like the others, he was allowed to keep his overalls, to “practice” them on his own time. The last thing he wanted was to have them confiscated.

Three hours after lunch, a bell was rung announcing the beginning of a religious service. A red-robed prison chaplain set up an altar near the castle postern, and the cry went out for the faithful to gather.

Those who did not participate had to keep working, so most of the prisoners downed tools at once and sauntered over. In spite of a spate of irreverent chuckles, the majority participated.

A few, such as the thief, Arth, remained at work in the garden, shaking their heads and muttering disapproval.

Dennis wanted to watch the ceremony. But he saw no way to attend as just a spectator. The parishioners bowed and chanted before a row of wooden and gemstone idols.

He finally decided to stay with Stivyung Sigel. For the last hour the two of them had been assigned to chopping wood, using caveman-type axes under a guard’s watchful eye.

“It doesn’t look like most of our fellow prisoners take the state religion too seriously,” Dennis suggested to Stivyung sotto voce.

Sigel flexed his powerful shoulders and brought his ax down in a great arc, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. He looked incongruous chopping in Baron Kremer’s brilliant clothes, but this was all part of Sigel’s job. The overlord of Zuslik didn’t like his clothes to bind. After this practice they would be supple.

“Zuslikers used to be pretty easygoing about religion under the old Duke,” Sigel said. “But when Kremer’s dad and grandad marched in, they right off started grantin’ favors to the church and the guilds, which is funny, since the northern hillmen never were such great believers before that.”

Dennis nodded. It was a familiar pattern. In Earth history, barbarians often had become the fiercest defenders of the established orthodoxy after they had conquered.

He raised his ax and took a whack at his own log. The crude stone blade bounced back, hardly making a dent.

“I take it you’re not a believer, either,” he asked Sigel.

The other man shrugged. “All these gods and goddesses really don’t make a lot of sense. In the kingdom cities back east they’re losing their following. Some folk are even starting to pay attention to the Old Belief, like the L’Toff have followed all along.”

Dennis was about to ask about the “Old Belief but the guard growled at them, ‘”ere now! Pray or woork, you two. Coot th’ gab!”

Dennis could barely follow the northman’s guttural accent, but he got the general drift. He swung his ax. This time he got a few chips to fly, though he didn’t fool himself that it was because the tool had improved perceptibly.

Even with the Practice Effect, this was slow going. He hoped young Gath was having better luck with the zipper-saw than he was having with this triple-damned hunk of flint!

2

For the following three evenings, while Gath or Sigel practiced the little saw under the blankets, Dennis snuck out of the shed and went for walks in the jailyard. He was usually tired by that time, but not so exhausted he couldn’t duck past the lazy guards at the inner checkpoint.

In addition to spending his days practicing axes and armor, he had been taking lessons in the Coylians’ written language. Stivyung Sigel, the best-educated of the prisoners, was his tutor.

Dennis had been forced to modify his  initial opinion a little. These people did have a culture above the “caveman” level. They had music and art, commerce and literature. They simply had no “technology” beyond the late Stone Age. They didn’t appear to need any.

Anything nonliving could be practiced, so everything here was made of wood or stone or hide. . . with occasional scraps of beaten native copper or meteoritic iron, both highly prized. Still, it was a wonder what could be accomplished without metal.

Their alphabet was a simple syllabary, easy to learn. Sigel was educated after a fashion, though he had been a soldier and a farmer, not a scholar. He was a patient teacher, but he could shed only a little light on the origin of humans on Tatir. That, he said, was the province of the churches. . . or of legends. Stivyung told Dennis what he knew, though he seemed embarrassed telling what were essentially fairy tales to an adult. Still, Dennis had insisted, and listened carefully, taking notes in his little book.

Finally, Dennis reluctantly concluded the stories of origin were about as contradictory as they had once been on Earth. If there was some link between the two worlds, apparently it was lost in the past.

Dennis did note that some of the oldest legends—particularly those dealing with the so-called Old Belief—did speak of a great fall, in which enemies of mankind caused him to lose his powers over the animals and over life itself.

Stivyung knew about the tale because of his long association with the mysterious tribe, the L’Toff. It wasn’t much to go on. And perhaps it was just a fable, after all, like the stories Tomosh had told him about friendly dragons.

So Dennis pondered the problem alone. He scratched narrow lines of tensor calculus in his notebook in the twilight after supper. He hadn’t even begun to come up with a theory to explain the Practice Effect. But the mathematics helped to settle his mind.

He needed the focus of his science. From time to time he felt brief recurrences at that strange, lightheaded disorientation he had experienced upon first arriving at Zuslik and then again on his first day in the jailyard.

No author had ever mentioned, in all the fantasy novels he had read, how difficult it really was for a normal human being to adjust to finding himself, with his life in jeopardy, in a truly strange place.

Now that he was beginning to understand some of the rules, and especially now that he had comrades, he was sure he would be all right. But he still felt occasional chills when he thought about the weird situation he was in.

On his fourth evening in the camp, after he snuck past the inner post to walk in the dim twilight past the green shoots in the garden, Dennis heard soft music as he strolled.

The music was lovely. The anomaly calculation he had been working on unraveled like shreds of fog blown by a fresh breeze.

The sound came from above the far end of the prison yard. It was a high, clear, feminine voice, accompanied by some kind of harp. The instrument seemed to weep into the night, gently and with an electric poignancy. Dennis followed the music, entranced.

He came to the point where the new wall met the old. Two parapets above, strumming a pale, lutelike instrument, was the girl he had seen so briefly that night on the road, whom Stivyung Sigel had called Linnora—Princess of the L’Toff.

Sharp spiked wooden bars kept her imprisoned on her balcony. The gleaming rods reflected the moonlight almost as brightly as did the honey yellow of her hair. Dennis listened, entranced, though he couldn’t make out the words.

The lutelike instrument must have had generations of practice to achieve such power. Her voice filled him with wonder, though he could barely follow the accented words. The music seemed to draw him forward.

The girl stopped singing abruptly and turned. A dark figure had emerged from the dim doorway at the right end of the balcony. She stood and faced the intruder.

A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out and bowed. If Dennis had not seen Stivyung Sigel only moments before, back at the prisoners’ shed, he would have sworn it was his friend up there, advancing on the slender Princess. The big man’s clothes were as fine as Linnora’s, though clearly made for rougher use. Dennis heard his deep voice but could make out no words.

The L’Toff Princess shook her head slowly. The man grew angry. He stepped toward her, shaking something in his hand. She retreated at first, but then stood her ground rather than suffer the indignity of backing against the wall.

Dennis’s heart beat faster. He had a wild thought to rush to her aid. . .as if she were anything to him but another of this world’s enigmas. Only the knowledge that it would be perfectly useless restrained him.

The. big man’s words grew imperious. He threatened the girl angrily. Then he threw something to the floor and swiveled about to leave the way he had come. The curtains blew in his wake.

Linnora looked after him for a time, then stooped to pick up what he had dropped. She walked through a small doorway at the left end of her balcony, leaving her instrument to shine alone in the moonlight.

Dennis stayed in the shadows by the wall, hoping she would return.

When she finally came back, though, he felt consternation, for she went to the bars of her parapet and looked down into the prison yard in his direction. She had a bundle in her hands, and cast about as if looking for something or someone in the darkness below.

Dennis couldn’t help himself. He stepped from the shadows into the pale moonlight. She looked directly at him and smiled faintly, as if she had expected him all along.

The Princess put her arm through the bars and threw the bundle. It sailed over the lower parapets, barely missing the bottom railing, and landed at his feet.

Dennis bent to pick up the torn remnant of one of his belt pouches, tied with a loop of string. Inside he found some of the things that had been taken from him. Several had been broken in clumsy efforts to find out how they worked. The crystal of his compass had been smashed, vials of medicine were spilled.

With the items was a note in flowing Coylian script. While the girl picked up her instrument and played softly, Dennis concentrated on what he had learned from Stivyung, and slowly read the message.

He is mystified.

I could not tell him what these

things are, even if I would.

He has lost patience, and next

will ask you himself.

Tomorrow you are to be tortured

to tell what you know.

Especially about the terrible weapon

that kills at a touch.

If you are, indeed, an emissary

from the realm of Lifemakers,

flee now.

And speak Linnora’s name aloud

in the open hills.

There was a sweeping, cursive signature at the end. Dennis looked back up at her, his mind full of questions he could not ask and of sympathy and thanks he could not tell her.

The sad song ended. Linnora stood up. Lifting her hand once in farewell, she turned to go inside.

Dennis watched the breeze toss the curtains for long moments after that.

“Get up!” He shook Arth. Nearby, Stivyung Sigel was quietly awakening Gath, Mishwa Qan, and Perth, the other members of the escape committee.

“Wha, wha?” The little thief came erect swiftly, a sharpened piece of stone in his hand.

Arth claimed to have come from a long line of men who had served as bodyguards for Zuslik’s old dukes—before Kremer’s father had taken over the region in an act of treachery. The small man had a wiry strength that belied his size. He blinked for a moment, then nodded and got up, swiftly and silently.

The conspirators gathered by the stockade wall,

“We haven’t time to prepare any further,” he told them. “The moons have just set, and tonight’s the night.”

“But you said the saw wasn’t good enough yet!” Gath protested “And we had other things to get ready!”

Dennis shook his head. “It’s tonight or never. I can’t explain, but you’ll have to believe me. Arth, you’d better go steal the tools.”

The little thief grinned and sped off to the shed where the gardening tools were kept, not far from the lighted window of the guard shack. It wouldn’t take Arth long to swipe quietly a few items to use as weapons, should that become necessary. Dennis fervently hoped it wouldn’t.

“Give me the saw.”

Gath carefully handed over the onetime zipper. Dennis held it up to look at it. The teeth shone even here, and felt very sharp.

From his coveralls he took a spool of dental floss that, along with his toothbrush, had been in his pocket and not in his pack when he was captured. He tied two premeasured lengths firmly to the ends of the saw.

“All right,” he whispered, “here goes.”

Dennis was glad these people at least understood ropes and lassos. Stivyung Sigel took the saw from Dennis and stepped back to swing it over his head, playing out more and more line as the loop grew.

The guards routinely searched prisoners for weapons, cutting tools, and any sort of twine that might be practiced into a climbing rope. But the floss had been missed completely. For two days he had tugged at it in his spare time, practicing it up for this attempt.

The strand wasn’t going to be used for climbing. Dennis doubted it could be done. Besides, he had a better idea.

Sigel swung one more time and let go. The loop sailed up over the sharpened end of one of the stockade logs. Dennis took the ends of line from him and tugged them straight.

He whispered, “To positions!” The thief Perth scuttled off to watch for patrols and to distract the guards, if necessary. Stivyung, Gath, and Mishwa took to the shadows, leaving Dennis to take the first shift with the saw.

He was sweating before he was even certain he had the teeth facing the right way. He wrapped rough cloth around his hands, then several loops of line, and began pulling gently back and forth—working it like a piece of floss rubbing slowly down the sides of a tooth. If he had oriented it right, the saw should be cutting away at the leather and mud bindings that held the log to its neighbors.

The cutting would begin at the weakest spot—the top, which had had the least “wall practice.” As it worked its way down, the saw should get better, and the weight of the log itself should put stress on the remaining ties.

At least he hoped that much physics still applied in this crazy place. Dennis crouched low to the ground and applied gradually greater pressure as the saw bit into the seams. As he fell into a rhythm he had time to think—to worry about guard patrols, and to wonder about the girl on the parapet.

How had she known he would be there, below in the darkness? What had Stivyung meant when he implied that the Princess of the L’Toff was not quite human?

There were no answers in the still muggy night. Dennis wondered if he would ever have the chance to ask the right questions.

He tried to concentrate on the job at hand, thinking hard about cutting. Although some scoffed at the idea, others claimed that a focused mind tended to make practice go faster.

He sawed until his arms ached and he knew fatigue was making him inefficient. By now he had confidence in the new tensile strength of the floss and was willing to trust someone else with the cutting. He signaled Sigel to take over. The big man hurried forth to help him unwrap his hands.

Dennis grimaced in pain as circulation returned. He envied Stivyung his rough farmer’s calluses. He stumbled over into the deep shadows by the wall, where Gath and Mishwa waited.

They sat together for a time in silence, watching the farmer patiently pull the line back and forth. Sigel looked like a lump in the darkness. It was amazing how well he blended in.

The minutes passed. Once they heard Arth give his warning call—an imitation of a night bird. Sigel flattened, and soon a guard patrol appeared around a corner, carrying a lantern. One cast of its beam would catch them if it were directed this way. Dennis held his breath along with the others.

But they moved on past, having counted the prisoners in the shed—including the lumpy bundles of homespun the gang had stuffed under their bedding.

Apparently routine had made the guards lazy, as Arth predicted.

When the little thief gave the all-clear, Sigel rose and went back to work, indefatigably. A faint zizzing sound could be heard where they waited, as the saw cut deeper with every stroke.

Young Gath moved a little closer to Dennis. “Is it true the Princess dropped a note to you?” the boy whispered.

Dennis nodded.

“Can I see it?”

A little reluctantly, he handed the slip of rough paper over. Gath pored over it, frowning and moving his lips. Literacy wasn’t common in this feudal society. Already Dennis read as well as the youth could.

Gath gave the note back and whispered, “Someday I’d like to visit the L’Toff. There used to be more contact with them, back in the days of the old Duke, I’m told.

“You know they adopt regular humans sometimes?” the boy went on. “The L’Toff would welcome me, I know it! I want to be a maker.”

Gath emparted the remark as if he were trusting Dennis with a tremendous secret.

Dennis shook his head, still confused by the ways the people of Tatir had developed to deal with the Practice Effect. “A maker,” he asked. “Is that someone who puts together a tool for the first time? Someone who makes starters?” A “starter” was what they called a new object or tool that had never been practiced. “I thought making was restricted to certain castes.”

Gath nodded. He accepted Dennis’s naivete as a wizard’s privilege. “Aye. There’s the stonechoppers’ caste, and the woodhewers’ caste, and the tanners and th’ builders and others.” He shook his head. “The castes are closed to newcomers, and they do everything the old ways. Only farmers like Stivyung can make their own starters the way they want and get away with it, ‘cause they’re out in the country where nobody could catch ‘em at it.”

“What does it matter?” Dennis asked softly. “A starter tool soon adapts to whomever practices it, getting better with use. You could turn a fig leaf into a silk purse if you worked at it long enough.”

The youth smiled. “The orig’nal essence that’s in a starter affects its final form. . .an ax can only be made from a starter ax, not from a starter broom or a starter sled. A thing doesn’t get practice becoming something unless it’s at least a little bit useful from the very start.”

Dennis nodded. Even here, where technology was nonexistent, people found patterns of cause and effect. “What are you in jail for, Gath?”

“For making sled starters without permission from the castes.” The boy shrugged. “It was stupid of me to get caught. Until you came, I figured when I got out I’d try for the L’Toff. But now I’d rather work for you!”

He beamed at Dennis. “You probably know more about making than the L’Toff and all the castes put together! Maybe you’ll need a ‘prentice when you head back to your homeland. I’d work hard! I already know how to chop flint! And I learned how to throw pots by sneaking into th’—“

The boy was getting a bit too excited. Dennis motioned for Gath to keep it down. He shut up obediently, but his eyes still shone.

Dennis thought about what Gath had said. He probably did know more about “making” than everyone else on this world combined. But he knew next to nothing about the Practice Effect. In the here and now, that ignorance could be deadly.

“We’ll see,” he said to the lad. “When we get out of here, I may be in a hurry to get home, and maybe I could use a hand.” He thought about the hills to the northwest. . .about the zievatron.

He was getting worried about all the time he had spent chasing after a mechanical civilization on this planet. Had Flaster sent anyone else through the machine? It would be just like the fellow to dither and delay and finally start searching about for another “volunteer.”

On the other hand, Flaster might have given up and cut the zievatron loose, setting the Sahara Tech team to work searching  once  more  among  the  anomaly  worlds. . . using Dennis Nuel’s search algorithm, of course. I might have to spend the rest of my life here, he realized.

Unbidden, an image of golden hair in the moonlight came to him.   It occurred to him  that this world did have its attractions.

Shivering, he reminded himself that he had also received a warning of imminent torture only a couple of hours before.      Tatir had its drawbacks, too.

Stivyung Sigel hadn’t called for relief yet. He worked with a fevered intensity that put Dennis a little in awe, Dennis looked up to see what kind of progress the farmer was making.

He stared in amazement. The saw had already cut almost half of the way down! How... ?

He looked back at Sigel and rubbed his eyes. It had to be the darkness, but somehow it seemed that the air around the farmer shimmered faintly. It was as if little eddies of air were churning all around him. Dennis turned to Gath to ask if he saw it too.

The young maker did indeed see it. He stared at Sigel, utterly awed, as did Mishwa, the other thief with them.

“What is it?” Dennis whispered urgently. “What’s happening?”

Without taking his eyes away, Gath answered. “It’s a true felthesh trance! They say a person’s lucky to witness one once in a lifetime!”

Dennis looked back at Sigel. The man worked with demoniacal intensity, his arms pumping back and forth a blur. As they watched, the faint luminescence that surrounded him seemed to climb up the narrow thread of floss, like sparkling ionization around a high-voltage line.

Whatever mysterious thing a “felthesh trance” was, he could see that Sigel and the saw were playing havoc with the stockade bindings. A faint rain of dust fell from the growing gaps on either side of the palisade log.

Dennis found it awesome, indeed. But more immediately, he was concerned that the guards would notice this phenomenon!

Dennis decided it was time to hurry things along a bit.

He motioned to the thief, Mishwa Qan. The prisoner was a giant—larger, even, than Gilm the guard. Mishwa grinned and rose to his feet gracefully. At Dennis’s beckoning he crouched at the base of the wall, braced his back against the log, and pushed. The bindings groaned slightly.

Sigel worked on without pause, without asking for relief.

By now the saw had almost descended to man height but was starting to slow down. The stockade had had more wall practice at this level and was tougher.

Mishwa grunted and pushed again. The log complained softly, then tilted outward a little as its own weight began to help.

Dennis motioned for Gath to help Mishwa. Soon both were puffing together as the log groaned again.

It tipped a little farther, and then Dennis suddenly saw something that made him start. Something was moving upon the jagged rim of the palisade!

A dark figure—a little larger than a big bullfrog—bent over the growing opening and looked down at the faintly glowing zipper-saw as it cut. The nimbus of Sigel’s “felthesh trance” seemed to wash over it, enveloping both the creature and the saw in a soft glow.

Green eyes glowed in the dark. Sharp little teeth flashed in amusement.

Dennis shook his head. “Pix, you blasted voyeur. Now you choose to show up! When’ll you ever do anybody any good, hmm?”

He turned and rejoined the others, straining against the massive log. Every time it shifted, it made a racket that Dennis imagined could be heard across the valley.

Arth hurried over from his watch position. “I think they heard something,” the thief whispered. “Should we shut down for a while?”

Dennis looked at the log. Stars shone through the gap. On Stivyung Sigel’s face was a fierce, luminous expression that made Dennis feel a chill. The farmer’s arms were a blur and the saw gave off an almost continuous quiet whir.

Dennis didn’t dare disturb Sigel. He shook his head. “We can’t. It’s all or nothing! If the guards come you’ve got to distract them!”

Arth nodded curtly and hurried away. Between heaves Dennis glanced up at the needle grin that told him the pixolet was still there, watching their struggle. Enjoy, he wished at the creature and joined in another push.

The log groaned, this time really loud. There came a yell from the compound behind them—a commotion of shadows back at the barracks. Then there were screams and shouts coming from almost everywhere.

“Hard!” he urged. They all knew they had very little time left.

Mishwa Qan bawled and battered against the barrier between himself and freedom. Gath and Dennis were thrown aside.

Flames flickered in the barracks shed. Arth’s distraction had begun. Shadows moved in front of the fire. Clubs were raised high as guards and frantic prisoners struggled. High above, in the castle, an alarm gong started clanging. Out of the shadows the thieves, Arth and Perth, appeared suddenly. The small man panted. “I bought us maybe two hunnerd heartbeats, Denniz. No more.”

The log moaned again, like some animal dying, as it tipped another ten degrees. “Make that one hunnerd beats,” Arth said dryly.

Sigel hunched over and the saw sang an even higher tune. The man seemed enveloped in turbulence, and flakes of light fell from the floss cable.

Mishwa Qan stepped back about twenty feet, scuffed his feet, and let out a fierce ululation as he charged the teetering log. It toppled with a crash, and suddenly there was an opening before them. The sound carried through the night. There was no mistaking the reaction of the guards. They turned from the fire and riot and shouted to each other, pointing toward Dennis and his comrades.

Sigel stared in exhaustion at his handiwork, his hands fallen limply to his sides. The man looked spent, but his eyes were exalted.

Three guards charged out of the flickering light from the sheds, truncheons high. Suddenly a shadow on the ground rose up slightly, just high enough to trip one of them. Arth snagged the left foot of another running guard, sending that one, too, sprawling.

The third came at Dennis, uttering a fierce battle yell.

“Aw, hell,” Dennis sighed. He caught the upraised club arm and punched the guard in the nose. The soldier’s feet flew out from under him and he landed flat on his back, knocking the wind from him.

More guards were coming. Dennis felt a whipping breeze as Arth sped past him.

“Let’s go!” Dennis shouted at Sigel and dragged the farmer toward the narrow portal to freedom.

A spear thunked into the wall near them. Stivyung shook himself, then grinned at Dennis and nodded. Together they scrambled through the opening and out into the night.

As they made their escape, Dennis caught a glimpse of something that glittered, like a necklace of diamonds in the starlight, half protruding from under the fallen log.

They did not tarry, though, and soon he and Sigel were dodging through the alleys of Zuslik, their pursuers behind them.

6

Ballon d’Essai

1

Lantern-semaphore signals flashed from the castle to all gates. Guard details were doubled, and every person trying to leave the city was thoroughly searched. High overhead, members of the overlord’s aerial patrol scoured the surrounding area until dark, when they had to land.

“The Baron never put up a fuss like this before when someone got away from him. Not that he ever took it gracefully, but why the big manhunt this time?”

The one-eyed thief, Perth, looked out from an upper-story window in one of Zuslik’s newer—and hence shabbier—high-rises. He was disturbed by the flashing lights and the passing troops of marching northmen in their high, bearskin helmets.

Arth, the small bandit leader, motioned his associate away from the window. “They’ll never find us here. Since when ‘ave Kremer’s northers ever picked out a single one of our hidey holes? Close the shutters an’ sit down, Perth.”

Perth complied, but he cast a sidelong look at the other fugitives, who sat talking at a table near the kitchen while Arth’s wife prepared dinner. “You and I know who they’re lookin’ for,” he told Arth. “The Baron don’t like losin’ one of his best practicers. An’ even worse, he don’t like losin’ a wizard.”

Arth couldn’t help but agree. “I’ll bet Baron Kremer regrets lettin’ Denniz sit in the jailyard for so long. He probably figured he had all the time in the world to get around to torturin’ him.”

Arth rubbed the plush arms of his recliner. Once a day, one of the free members of the band had sat in it to keep it in practice for him. Arth was pleased because it showed they had believed he would get out eventually. “Anyway,” he told Perth, “we owe those three our freedom, so let’s not begrudge ‘em the Baron’s wrath.”

Perth nodded but wasn’t mollified. Mishwa Qan and most of the other thieves were out now, scouring the city for the items Dennis Nuel had asked for. Perth didn’t like having a foreigner boss Zuslik thieves around—wizard or no.

Gath looked from Dennis’s drawings to the Earthman. The boy could barely restrain his excitement. “So the bag won’t have any flying essence until the hot air is put inside it? Will it really fly then? Like a bird, or a kite, or one of th’ dragons of legend?”

“We’ll find out as soon as the Lady Aren returns with the first bag, Gath. We’ll experiment with a model and see how much practice improves it overnight.”

Gath smiled at mention of the old seamstress. Clearly the youth did not think much of Lady Aren and her strange, delusion. The old ‘woman lived down the hall, making a paltry living as a seamstress. Yet she maintained high manners and insisted on being addressed as she had been as a young courtier in the days of the old Duke.

Right now their entire plan depended on the skill of one crazy old lady.

Stivyung Sigel sat beside Gath, puffing slowly on a pipe, content to listen and voice an occasional question. He seemed fully recovered from the effects of his felthesh trance. In fact, he had held off on his initial idea—trying to climb the city walls—only on Dennis’s assurance that there was a better way to get out of town and look for his wife.

Arth and Perth joined the three of them at the table. Dennis and Gath cleared the drawings away as Arth’s wife, Maggin, brought out a roast fowl and mugs of ale.

Arth ripped off a drumstick and proceeded to make his beard greasy with it, apparently feeding himself as an accidental side effect. The others took their turns stabbing the bird after the host, as courtesy demanded. Maggin brought a steaming bowl of boiled vegetables and joined them.

Arth spoke with his mouth full. “We had a messenger from th’ boys while you were so intent on makin’ those drawings, Dennis.”

Dennis looked up hopefully, “Did they find my backpack?”

Arth shook his head, mumbling around his food. “Ye weren’t too awfully specific, Dennzz. I mean, there’re a lotta buildings near th’ west gate, and some of ‘em use their parapets as balconies an’ gardens, in which case your pack’s been picked up by now.”

“No leads at all? No rumors?”

Arth took a drink, letting red, foamy ale run around the mug and into his beard. He obviously relished home cooking after his time in jail. He wiped his mouth on his cuff. Dennis noted that Arth’s shirts all seemed to have gradually developed built-in sponges on their left sleeves.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Dennzz,, there are some strange rumors going about. They say someone’s seen a Krenegee beast sneakin’ around town. Others say they’ve seen the ghost of the old Duke come to take revenge on Baron Kremer.

“There’s even a story about a strange critter what doesn’t eat at all, but spies on people from their windows and moves faster than lightning. . . somethin’ nobody’s ever seen before, with five eyes.” Arth spread his open hand on the top of his head, fingers up, and rotated it, making a whistling sound. Perth coughed in his ale and guffawed. Maggin and Gath laughed out loud.

“But my backpack. . . ?”

Arth spread his hands to indicate he had heard nothing.

Dennis nodded glumly. He had hoped the thieves would recover the pack intact. Or, barring that, they might hear about pieces of his “alien” property in the underworld grapevine. Perhaps one or two items might turn up on sale in the bazaar.

More likely, the pack was in Baron Kremer’s hands already. Dennis wondered if even now Kremer was shaking his camp-stove or his shaving kit under the pretty nose of the L’Toff Princess, Linnora, demanding to know what they were for.

For all their reputation for mystery, the L’Toff would be as perplexed by Dennis’s goods as anyone else on Tatir. Linnora wouldn’t be able to help Kremer. Dennis hoped he hadn’t somehow helped make her incarceration any worse than it already was by angering her captor.

There came a faint knock on the door. The men tensed until they heard it repeat five times, then two, in the proper sequence.

Perth went to unlatch the bolt, and an old woman in an elegant black gown entered. She set down a large sack as the men rose and bowed to her politely.

“My lords,” the old lady said and curtsied. “The global tapestry you asked for is finished. As you requested, I embroidered only the faintest outlines of clouds and birds on the sides. You may practice the scene to perfection on your own. If this small globe is to your satisfaction, I will commence on the larger version as soon as you bring me the materials.”

Arth picked up the sewn arrangement of frail velvet sheets and pretended to inspect it briefly. Then he handed it to Dennis, who took it eagerly. Arth bowed to Lady Aren.

“Your Ladyship is too gracious,” he said, his speech suddenly almost aristocratic. “We’ll not sully your hands with paper money or amber. But our gratitude will not be denied. May we contribute to the upkeep of your manse, as we have in th’ past?”

The old woman grimaced in feigned distaste. “One imagines it would not be too unseemly if it were handled thus.”

Tomorrow a basket of food would appear outside her door, as if by magic. The pretense would be maintained.

Dennis did not observe the transaction. He was marveling at the “global tapestry.”

Coylians did possess a few respectable technologies. There were certain things that had to be usable from the day they were “made” and could not be practiced without ruining them. Paper was an example. A piece of paper might have to sit and wait in a drawer for weeks or months until it was needed for a note or letter. Then it had to have all of its “paperness” instantly ready for use. Once written upon, then, it might be stored for years before being needed for reference. It should not degrade, as happened here to abandoned things whose qualities existed purely because of practice.

No  wonder  they  used  paper  money here  and  no  one complained. The stuff had intrinsic value almost as great as amber or metal.

With papermaking came felting. Dennis had asked the thieves to “acquire” a dozen square yards of the finest felt they could find. If the experiment worked, they would want to follow that up by stealing virtually the entire supply of this small metropolis.

Dennis was mildly surprised at how little guilt he felt over being an accessory to a major heist. It was all part of his general reaction to this world, he realized with just a touch of bitterness. Earthlings had had to struggle and experiment for thousands of years to reach a level of comfort these people achieved almost without thinking. He could easily rationalize taking what he needed from them.

Anyway, the chief paper merchant of Zuslik was a close crony of the Baron. His monopoly and his flaunted wealth made certain few in the lower town would feel sorry for him.

The “global tapestry” was a sewn sphere of paper-light cloth with one open end. Its sides were vaguely embroidered with clouds and birds. The stitching was really rather uneven, though Lady Aren obviously thought herself an artiste.

Eventually, if practiced long enough by appreciative eyes, the figures would seem to come alive. Besides science, Dennis realized, art, too, had been stunted by this beneficent Practice Effect.

Dennis and Sigel and Gath waited while Lady Aren gossiped with Arth and Maggin. Sigel gave Gath a sharp look when the boy started drumming his fingers on the table. The wait seemed interminable. And Arth appeared in no hurry to end it. The little thief actually seemed to be enjoying himself!

Dennis forced himself to relax. He’d probably enjoy a little gossip, too, if he’d just returned home after a long imprisonment. He found himself longing to know who had been doing what to whom back at old Sahara Tech.

Idly, he wondered if Bernald Brady had had any luck winning the heart of fair Gabriella. He raised his cup and drank a toast to Brady’s luck in the venture.

Finally the old lady departed.  “All right,” Dennis said, . “let’s finish it.”

He spread the limp globe out on the table. Gath and Sigel took several soft tallow candles and began rubbing them carefully against the felt paper, laying down a thin coating of wax. Meanwhile, Dennis carefully tied a small gondola of string and bark to the open end. By the time he had affixed a candle to the tiny basket the others announced they were finished. Arth and Perth and Maggin watched, puzzlement on their faces.

Dennis and Gath carried the contraption to a corner, where a rough wooden frame had been prepared.

“It’s called a balloon,” Dennis said as he laid the fabric over the frame.

“You told us that much,” Perth said a little snidely. “And you said it would fly. A made thing would fly. . .and indoors where there’s no wind. . .” He obviously didn’t believe it. In the here and now there was one way to fly—by building, and slowly practicing, a great tethered kite.

Long ago, some Coylian genius who hated getting wet had invented an umbrella—now a common item owned by nearly everybody. Later, after a freak windstorm had caused a large umbrella to rise up with the wind, carrying its owner on a brief, harrowing ride, someone had a second conceptual leap. It was the birth of kites on Tatir. Furious practice led thereafter to the development of tethered wings, carrying men high above the surface to look at the ground below.

Those kites had helped Baron Kremer’s father, a minor nobleman from the northern hill country, to defeat the old Duke and force the King of Coylia to grant him domain over the upper valley of the Fingal.

Only in the past few years had the step to true gliders been taken—this time by Kremer himself. Though other armed forces now had kites, at the moment he, and only he, possessed a true air force. It was a major tactical advantage in his current conflict with royal authority.

Dennis wondered why no one else had ever developed gliders. Perhaps it had something to do with the imagery that took place when a person practiced an object. One had to have an idea of what one wanted in mind. Perhaps no one could conceive of an untethered kite as anything but fatal to the rider, and so they always were until Kremer made his breakthrough.

Dennis arranged the candle directly below the opening in the bottom of the trial balloon. He smiled with assurance. “You’ll see, Perth. Just make sure those buckets of water are handy in case we have an accident.”

He acted confident, but he was less than entirely certain. In a science-fiction story he had read as a boy, another Earthling had, just like himself, been transported to another world where the physical laws were also different. In the story, magic had worked, but the hero’s gunpowder and matches had all failed!

Dennis suspected that the Tatir Practice Effect merely supplemented the physics he knew, rather than supplanted it. He certainly hoped so.

Clear smoke rose from the candle, entering the balloon through the hole at the bottom.

Arth offered Dennis and Stivyung his best loungers and pulled out a few string-and-stick chairs that “needed a lot of work anyway,” he insisted. He gave Dennis and Stivyung two very nice pipes and happily puffed away on a hollowed twig and corncob contraption—working it slowly toward perfection, or at least staving off a decline to uselessness.

Dennis shook his head. The Practice Effect took a lot of getting used to.

“Will someone explain to me just what Baron Kremer is trying to pull?” Dennis asked as they waited for the bag to fill. “I take it he’s defying the central authority. . . the King?”

Stivyung Sigel puffed moodily at his pipe before answering.

“I was in the Royal Scouts, Dennis, until I married and retired. The Baron has been hard on us royal settlers out on the western frontier. He doesn’t care to have me and my land around, whose loyalty he can’t count on.

“The Baron’s supported by the maker guilds. The guilds don’t like homesteaders setting up too far from the towns. We make our own starters—chip our own flint, tan our own hides and rope, weave our own cloth. Lately we’ve even found out how to start makin’ our own paper, if the truth be told.”

Arth and Perth looked up, their interest piqued. Gath blinked in surprise. “But the paper guild’s the most secret of the lot! How did you learn . . . ?” He snapped his fingers. “Of course! The L’Toff!”

Sigel merely puffed on his pipe. He said nothing until he noticed that all eyes were on him and he was clearly expected to go on.

“The Baron knows now,” he said, shrugging. “And so do the guilds. Common folk might as well find out, too. What’s happening out here is the sharp edge of something big that’s shaping up back in the estates an’ cities to the east, too. People are getting tired of the guilds, and churchmen, and petty barons pushing them around. The King’s popularity has gone way up ever since he cut the property requirement to vote for selectmen and since he’s been calling an Assembly every spring instead of one year in ten.”

Dennis nodded. “Let me guess. Kremer’s a leader in the cause for barons’ rights.” It was a story he had heard before.

Sigel nodded. “And it looks like they’ve got the muscle. The King’s scouts and guards are the best troops, of course, but the feudal levies outnumber them six or seven to one.

“And now Kremer’s got these free-flying kites to carry scouts wherever he wants. They scare the daylights out of the opposition, and the churches are spreading word that they’re the ancient dragons returned to Tatir again. . .proof that Kremer’s favored by the gods.

“I’ve got to give Kremer credit there, No one ever thought of gliders before. Not even the L’Toff.”

One more mention of the L’Toff brought Dennis’s thoughts back to Princess Linnora, Baron Kremer’s prisoner back at the castle. She had begun to show up in his dreams. He owed her his freedom, and he didn’t like to think of her still trapped in the tyrant’s power.

If only there was a way I could help her, too, he thought.

“Balloon is almost full.” Gath used the word as if it were a proper name.

The bag was starting to stretch from the pressure of hot air within. It didn’t form a very even sphere. But here it didn’t pay to lavish excess attention on most “made” goods, anyway, so long as they started out useful enough to be practiced.

The candle was less than half gone. The balloon bobbed within its frame, straining at the tiny gondola’s shrouds. The basket bounced on the floor, then lifted away entirely.

There was a hushed silence, then Maggin laughed out loud and Arth clapped Dennis on the back. Gath crouched beneath the balloon, as if to memorize it from every angle.

Stivyung Sigel sat still, but his pipe poured forth aromatic smoke, and his black eyes seemed to shine.

“But this thing won’t lift a man!” Perth complained.

Arth turned on his subordinate. “How do you know what it’ll eventually be able to do? It’s not even been practiced yet! Weren’t you the one sneering at ‘new-made’ things?”

Perth backed down nervously, licking his lips as he stared superstitiously at the slowly rising balloon.

“Actually,” Dennis said, “Perth’s right. After practice this one will probably lift better than any similar balloon on. . . in my homeland. But in order to lift several men we’ll still have to make a much bigger balloon in that empty warehouse you told me about, Arth. We’ll practice it there, then Gath and Stivyung and I will use it to escape at night, when the Baron’s flying corps is in its sheds.”

Arth had a mercenary gleam in his eye. “You an’ Gath an’ Stivyung won’t forget about the message to the L’Toff, will you?”

“Of course not.” All three of them had good reasons for heading straight for the mysterious tribe in the mountains once they got out of town. Dennis intended to tell them about their captive Princess and offer suggestions how she might be rescued.

Arth expected to rake off a nice reward from the L’Toff for his part in all this, as well as have the pleasure of giving the Baron tsuris in the process.

The balloon bobbed against the ceiling. “All right,” Dennis said, “you all were going to teach me how to concentrate to get the most out of practice. Why don’t we start?”

They took their seats. Stivyung Sigel was the acknowledged best practicer, so he explained.

“First off, Dennis, you don’t have to concentrate. Just using a tool will make it better. But if you keep your attention on the thing itself, and what you’re using it to accomplish, the practice goes faster. You give the tool tougher and tougher jobs to do, over weeks, months, and think about what it could be when it’s perfect.”

“What about that trance we saw you under in the prison yard? You practiced the saw to perfection in a matter of minutes!”

Stivyung considered.   “I  have  seen  the  felthesh  before, when I dwelled, for a time, among the L’Toff. Even among them, it is rare. It comes after years of training, or under even more rare circumstances. I never imagined I would ever enter that state.

“Perhaps it was some magic of the moment and the desperation of our need.”

Stivyung seemed pensive for a long moment. He shook himself at last and looked at Dennis. “In any event, we cannot count on the ax falling twice in exactly the same spot. We must rely on normal ways as we practice your ‘balloons.’ Why don’t you tell us again just what this example is doing now and how it could gradually come to, do it better. Don’t get too far ahead of what it is, or it won’t work. Just try to describe the next step.”

It sounded like a children’s game to Dennis. But he knew that here “wish and make it so” had a very serious side to it. He squinted as he looked at the balloon. . .trying to see an ideal. Then he started to describe what none of them had ever before imagined.

2

Two days later, the search for the escapees had finally died down. The guards at the city gates were still diligent, but street patrols went back to normal. Dennis at last got to take a tour of the town of Zuslik.

On his first attempt, when he had arrived almost two weeks ago, Dennis had been full of vague ideas about how to get along in a strange city.

(One made contact with the local association of one’s profession, he imagined, hoping a local colleague would insist you stay at his home—and maybe offer his charming daughter as a tour guide, as well. Wasn’t that the way he had envisioned it just a short while back?)

His plans had gone awry before he passed through the city gates. Still, he had probably acquired a more intimate acquaintance with the local power structures than he would have as a tourist. . .and without the typical banes of the gawking traveler—beggars, bunions, and muggers.

He and Arth took lunch in an open-air cafe overlooking a busy market street. Dennis washed down his last bite of rickel steak with a heady swallow of the dirt-brown local brew. After a long day and night practicing the balloon, he had built up a hearty appetite.

“More,” he belched, bringing the beer stein down with a thump.

His companion stared at him for a moment, then snapped his fingers to the waiter. Dennis was a bit larger than the average male Coylian, but his appetite was nevertheless causing a bit of a sensation.

“Take it easy,” Arth suggested. “After I’ve paid for all this I won’t be able to afford to take you to a physic for yer upset stomach!”

Dennis grinned and plucked a rough toothpick from a cup by the rail. He watched a heavy cargo sled slide past the restaurant, almost silent on one of the self-lubricating roadways, pulled by a patient, lumbering larbeast.

“Have your boys managed to collect any more slippery oil?” he asked the thief.

Arth shrugged. “Not too much. We use street urchins to do the collectin’, but the drivers have taken to throwin’ rocks at ‘em. And the kids waste a lot of the stuff play in ‘greased pig.’ We’ve only got a quarter of a jug or so by now.”

Only a quarter jug! That was almost a liter of the finest lubricant Dennis had ever encountered! Arth had certainly not acted this casually when Dennis first demonstrated the stuff to him. He had gone almost crazy with excitement.

It would make a useful commercial product, of course. It would also greatly facilitate burglary. . .until shop owners began practicing their doors to resist the stuff. Last night’s paper heist had depended completely on a surprise use of sled oil.

Dennis wondered why these people had never discovered the very substance that made their roads work. Were they that uncurious? Or did it come from operating under a totally different set of assumptions about the way the universe worked?

Of course, history showed that most of Earth’s cultures had been caste-structured, and slow to improve on the way things had been done for centuries. Here, where innovation was less necessary, people had not developed a tradition for it until very recently. The war between Baron Kremer and the King seemed to be part of that change.

This morning he and Arth had rented a warehouse. The growing fear of war had caused a decline in river commerce, and the landlord was desperate to find any tenant at all. Someone had to occupy the place and keep it fit until times improved. Already the walls were showing a creaky roughness, starting to resemble wooden logs again.

Arth was quite a bargainer. The landlord would actually pay a small sum for them to move in for a while!

Last night had come the great felt heist. Arth’s thieves had arrived at the warehouse furtively carrying bolts of the fine cloth. Lady Aren and several assistant seamstresses, all from families that had been brought down in class by Kremer’s father, were soon at work. And young Gath was at this moment constructing a gondola for the big balloon. The lad was ecstatic over the chance to make something new—something that would be of use almost before its first practice.

Arth paid the luncheon bill, muttering over the total. “Now what?” he asked.

Dennis motioned with his hands. “What else? Show me everything!”

Arth sighed resignedly.

Their first stop was the Bazaar of Merchants and Practicers. Unlike other open-air markets, with their collections of practice-on-your-own goods, this plaza featured high-quality merchandise. The ziggurat buildings were gleaming and tasteful. Their first floors, open to the street, were supported by arching, fluted pillars. Well-dressed men and women hawked wares at long tables before the openings.

Dennis examined keen-edged chisels and razors, ropes of marvelous strength and lightness, bows and arrows that had obviously been practiced against targets thousands of times and would have sold on Earth for handsome prices.

There was no sign whatever of screws or nails, and hardly any metal. Nowhere was there anything resembling a wheel. At one end were cheaper items—crude axes, body armor consisting of tanned strips of leather sewed together. Below each table was the sigil of the appropriate maker guild—a sign that the “starter” was sanctioned by law.

Dennis looked up at a banging sound. Two men walked lackadaisically around the third-story parapet, striking the walls with clubs.

Arth explained. “They’re gettin’ the clubs better at bashin’, and gettin’ the walls better at keepin’ out bashers.” He winked at Dennis. “Bashers like us.”

Burglary here usually involved breaking through the walls of a house while the tenant was away. Sometimes people forgot that living in a house practiced it well to stand sturdily and keep the rain out, but nothing more.

The owners of this building clearly had not forgotten.

The plaza was crowded with aristocrats from the upper town and from estates outside Zuslik’s walls. The gentry were accompanied by their servants.

Master and lackey generally dressed identically, and usually they were about the same size and build. They could be told apart only by the nobles’ imperious manner, their hair styles, and the bits of metal jewelry they wore.

On Earth the rich flaunted their status by acquiring large amounts of property that was rarely used. Here such property would quickly decay to its original, crude state. To maintain appearances, then, the affluent needed servants who not only performed housework, gardening, and other tasks, but who kept their employers’ property practiced for them, as well.

Dennis perceived some of the social implications.

When they were so busy always wearing their master’s clothes, the servants had no time to practice their own. They might look good all the time, but the fine threads on their backs weren’t theirs. If they left their employer they would have nothing at all of their own!

It would be a symbol of status among the rich, of course, never to be seen wearing or using anything that truly needed practicing.

Besides food and land, metal and paper, the chief commodity of value here was the human man-hour. Even when exhausted from a hard day’s labor in the fields, a serfs time was not his own. In relaxing he practiced his master’s chair; in eating, he practiced his mistress’s spare dinnerware. He couldn’t save to buy his freedom, because anything saved away had to be maintained, or face decay!

No wonder there was trouble brewing in the east! The combination of the guilds, the churches, and the aristocracy made sure that change would come hard, if at all.

Fixxel’s Practicorium, at the north end of the plaza, was a tall building that reminded Dennis of home.

For one thing, its walls were in large part brilliantly transparent, as if of the clearest glass, slightly tinted to moderate the afternoon sunlight.

Arth explained that the panes had started out as sewn paper sheets, practiced hard during dry seasons, until they were weatherproof and clear. After many years of this they were probably better than any windows on Earth.

Facing the boulevard were displays of men’s and women’s clothes, tools, pottery, and rugs. “Nothing New! All Old and Used!” a sign stated proudly.

The window displays were constantly changing. Workers removed items and replaced them as Dennis watched.

The furnishings on exhibition were stunning. Realistic mannequins were draped in what looked like exquisite silks and brocades. Some of the gowns would surely have gone for thousands at Neiman-Marcus.

“Come on,” Arth said, nudging Dennis. “Don’t give old Fixxel a free push.”

Dennis blinked. He had been entranced by the beautiful things. Then, all at once, he realized what Arth meant. He laughed out loud in admiration of the scam. By just looking at the merchandise, and appreciating its beauty, he had helped just a little to enhance that beauty! No wonder the mannequins looked so lifelike. They were practiced by generations of passersby!

What a racket!

Still, Dennis couldn’t help but wish his camera wasn’t lost with his backpack. The clothing designs alone would be worth a fortune back on Earth.

Under Dennis’s urging, they went around back to peek into the great practice arena at the rear of the building. It was a scene of furious activity.

Teams of men and women poured water into and out of long lines of pitchers, cups, and goblets. Others kept busy digging holes with shovels, and then refilling them, or slicing great logs into kindling, practicing shiny tools in the process.

There was a large open area in which men muffled in layers of clothes sat on half-finished chairs and threw weapons at targets. The crudest knives were being tossed against near-finished suits of glossy leather armor

No wonder technology never developed here! It didn’t pay to specialize. Wherever a person could practice three or four items at once, it paid. The niceties of concentration seemed less important than keeping as many things busy as possible all the time.

This was the equivalent of an Earthly factory, but something about it struck Dennis as terribly futile. All this hard work would be for nothing if the constant maintenance stopped for just a few weeks or months. Left alone long enough, each of these products would decay to its original state.

Still, Dennis thought, there were no mountains of garbage here, either—no great landfills heaped with worn-out, unwanted things. Almost anything these people created was ultimately recycled to nature.

On neither world, it seemed, was there any such thing as a free lunch.

Later, in another part of town, Dennis and Arth watched a religious procession pass through one of the main squares. A trio of yellow-robed priests and their followers carried a pillowed platform on which a gleaming sword was carried. At the four corners of the palanquin were set freshly severed human heads.

“Priests of Mlikkin,” Arth identified them. “Bloody panderers. They appeal to th’ more unsavory cit’zens of Zuslik with their murderin’ ways.” He spat.

Dennis made himself watch, though his gorge rose at the grisly sight. From what he had picked up during the past week, he could tell that the priests were engaged in a campaign to inure the people of the town to the idea of death and war.

Sure enough, when the procession stopped at a platform set up at one end of the square, the chief priest held up the sword—obviously a product of generations of daily practice by acolytes of Mlikkin—and harangued the rowdy crowd that had gathered. Dennis could not make out much, but clearly the fellow thought little of the “eastern rabble.” When he began speaking ill of King Hymiel, some parishioners looked at each other nervously, but nobody cried out in disagreement.

A number of Zuslikers, though, frowning in distaste, hurried off, leaving the square to the celebrants.

With one exception. Dennis noticed that an old woman knelt in a far corner of the plaza, before a niche in which was set a dusty statue. With age-wracked hands, she cleared away layers of debris and replaced flowers in the twisting, helical pedestal.

Something about the shape of the shrine made Dennis’s neck tingle. He started forward, with Arth trailing along nervously, complaining that this was not a healthy place for them to be.

“What is it?” Dennis asked his companion about the shrine.

“It’s a place of th’ Old Belief. Some say it was here b’fore even Zuslik was founded. The churches tried to have it pulled down, but it’s been practiced so long it’s impossible to scratch. So they dump offal on it an’ have gangs of toughs push around people who try to pray there.”

No wonder the old woman glanced up and around nervously as she went through her devotions. “But why should they care—‘

Dennis stopped, still twenty yards away. He recognized the figure at the top of the pedestal. It was a dragon. He had seen its likeness on the haft of the native knife he had found by the zievatron.

In the dragon’s grinning mouth was a malevolent, demoniacal figure—a “blecker,” as Arth identified it. Covered with layers of filth and graffiti, the dragon nevertheless gave a frozen wink to passersby. Its open eye shone with gemstone brilliance.

But it was the pedestal beneath the mythical beast that seized Dennis’s attention. The fluted column was a delicate double helical coil, held together by delicately knotted rails, like the rungs of a twisted ladder.

It was a chain of DNA, or Dennis was the pixolet’s blood uncle!

Dennis felt a return of that nervous feeling of unreality that had plagued him since his arrival on this world. He approached the shrine slowly, wondering how these people ever could have learned about genes lacking the tools or mental disciplines required.

“Hssst!” Arth nudged Dennis. “Soldiers!” He nodded toward the main street, where a troop was strolling in their direction.

Dennis glanced longingly back at the statue, but then nodded and hastily followed Arth into an alley. They watched from the shadows as a patrol passed by. The squad marched along haughtily, their “thenners” raised port high. The big sergeant, Gilm, paced alongside, heaping verbal abuse on civilians not quick enough to get out of the way.

From the way the townsfolk scattered, Dennis presumed Kremer’s northern clansmen still didn’t think of themselves as Zuslikans, though the town had been the Baron’s capital for a generation.

When Dennis next looked back at the little niche-shrine, the old woman had departed, no doubt scared away. Gone also was his best chance to find out more about the Old Belief.

The troop of soldiers was followed by nearly a score of young civilians, downcast and tethered to one another at the wrist.

“Press gang!” Arth whispered harshly. “Kremer’s buildin’ up th’ militia. War can’t be far off now!”

It reminded Dennis that he was still a hunted man. He looked up and saw, high in the sky, a set of broad black wings sailing in an updraft. A pair of small human figures sat in a light wicker framework beneath the glider, steering it lazily toward a thermal south of town. The underside was painted to resemble leathery wings, to take advantage of the traditional dragon reverence that filled most Coyhan fairy tales.

Fortunately, these people had never developed telescopes. Those scouts would not be likely to pick them out in Zuslik’s crowded streets. He and Arth only had to worry about foot patrols.

When they made their break in the balloon, however, it would be a different story. Those gliders might present a problem.

Discretion seemed well advised. He let Arth lead him away  from the busy square, resolving though to return to study the  statue in more detail later.

The Hall of the Guild of Chairmakers was overrun with children.

The chairmakers’ guild was the poorest of the maker castes. Unlike that of the stonechoppers, the hinge and door builders, and the papermakers, it had no secrets to protect. Anyone could make a chair or table “starter” with twine and sticks. Only the law kept the guild in its monopoly.

Youngsters ran all over the place. The floor was a litter of string and shredded bark. Arth explained that open guilds like the chairmakers’ hired mostly children and old people— unsuited for the high-volume practicing that took place at salons like Fixxel’s.

Under the supervision of a few master chairmakers, boys and girls assembled furniture starters to go into the homes of the needy. After a year or so of using these tables and chairs, the poor would sell the practiced models to somewhat better-off folk and buy another set of crude starters with part of the proceeds. The furniture would slowly work its way along the socioeconomic ladder as it grew older and better—upward mobility for things, if not people.

A red-robed priest moved among the children, accompanied by two master chairmakers, blessing the finished starters. Dennis couldn’t remember which deity the red gown represented, but something about the color seemed almost to remind him of something.

“Another patrol, Dennzz.” Arth pointed out a troop of guards passing by, one street over. “Maybe we better be gettin’ back.”

Dennis nodded reluctantly. “All right,” he told Arth, “let’s go.” It would be at least a week before the escape attempt, and there would be other chances to explore the town.

They ducked down a side alley and emerged on the Avenue of Sweetmeats. Arth bought pastries, and Dennis tried to make sense out of the chaotic but apparently efficient sled-rail traffic pattern as they walked.

Still, he couldn’t shake the image of the red-robed priest from his mind. Somehow it made him feel simultaneously angry and frustrated.

Arth grabbed Dennis’s arm as they were approaching the little thief s neighborhood. He looked up and down the street suspiciously. “Let’s take a shortcut,” he said, and led Dennis between a pair of stalls into another alley.

“What’s the matter?”

Arth shook his head. “Maybe I’m just nervous. But if you sniff a trap five times, and you’re wrong four of ‘em, you’re still ahead if you avoid th’ smell.”

Dennis decided to take Arth’s word as the expert. He saw a stack of crates against the wall of one of the wedding cake buildings. “Come on,” he said, “I’ve got a tool that’s super at detecting traps. We can use it up on the roof.”

They climbed to the first parapet, then up a garden trellis to another level. Dennis reached under the robe Arth had lent him and pulled the little camp-watch alarm out of one of his overall pockets.

Arth stared at the flashing lights, entranced. He appeared totally confident in the Earthman’s wizardry, sure that Dennis would be able to tell, from this magic, whether it was safe to go out onto the streets.

Dennis twiddled with the tiny dials. But the screen remained a chaos of unreadable garbage. The alarm, over a week out of practice, kept trying to go off regardless of what he did.

Dennis sighed and reached into another pocket. The slim, collapsible monocular had been in the packet Linnora had thrown him. Fortunately, it had only been scratched in Kermer’s futile attempts to open it.

Dennis used it to scan the streets below.

There were crowds up and down the main boulevard— farmers come to town to market their produce and purchase starters, aristocrats with their clonelike entourages, an occasional guard or churchman. Dennis looked for suspicious clumps of activity.

He focused on a group of men at the for end of the street. They idled about in front of a pub, apparently lounging.

But the spyglass told a different story. The men were armed, and they glanced intently at passersby. They had the high cheekbones of Kremer’s northmen.

Dennis adjusted the focus. A tall, armed man with the look of an aristocrat emerged from a building behind the toughs. He was followed by a short, stooped fellow with a patch over one eye. They were conversing in an agitated manner. The one-eyed man kept pointing in the direction of the waterfront. The aristocrat just as insistently seemed to indicate that they would wait right where they were.

“Uh, Arth”—Dennis’s mouth felt dry—“I think you’d better look at this.”

“At what, that little box? Are you lookin’ through it, or at somethin’ inside it?”

“Through it. It’s like a sort of magic tube that makes things far away look bigger. It may take you a minute to get used to it, but when you do, I want you to use it to look at that tavern at the end of the street.”

Arth squatted forward and took the monocular Dennis had to show him how to hold it. Arth grew excited.

“Hey! This is great! I can see like th’ proverbial eagle of Crydee!... I can count th’ steins on th’ table over at... Great Palmi! That’s Perth! An’ he’s talkin’ to Lord Hern himself!”

Dennis nodded. He felt a hollowness within his chest, as if fragile hope had suddenly turned into something heavy and hard.

“That scum!” Arth cursed. “He’s turnin’ us in! His dad even served with mine under th’ old Duke! Ill have his intestines an’ practice ‘em into hawsers! I’ll...”

Dennis slumped back against the wall behind them. He was fresh out of ideas. There didn’t seem to be any way to warn his friends back at Arth’s apartment, or in the waterfront warehouse, where construction of the escape balloon had just begun.

He felt so helpless that, once again, the strange detachment from reality seemed to fall over him. He couldn’t help it.

Arth made a grand art out of cursing. He had quite a vocabulary of invective. For a while it kept him busy while the Earthman simply felt miserable.

Then Dennis blinked. A brief, sharp reflection had caught his eye from one of the neighboring rooftops not too far away.

He sat up and looked. Something small was moving about among the vents and rooftop debris.

“They’ve got somebody!” Arth declared, still staring through the monocular at the scene at the cafe. “They’re draggin’ him down from my place. . . .” Arth whooped. “But they’ve only got one! The others must have got away! Perth don’t look happy at all! He’s tuggin’ at Lord Hern’s arm, pointin’ to th’ waterfront.

“Hah! By th’ time they get there all our people will be gone! Serves ‘em right!”

Dennis barely heard Arth. He got up slowly, staring at the shape on the rooftop several blocks away; it glistened and scuttled from hiding place to hiding place.

Arth exclaimed. “It’s Mishwa they’ve caught! And. . .and he’s broken free and managed to jump Perth! Go get him, Mishwa! They’re tryin’ to get him off before he—Hey! Dennis, give that back!”

Dennis had snatched away the monocular. Ignoring Arth’s protests, he tried not to shake as he focused it on the roof a hundred meters away. Something quick and blurry passed in front of his line of sight.

It took him a few moments to find the exact spot. Then for seconds all he could see was the roof vent the thing had ducked behind.

At last, something rose from behind it—an eye at the end of a slender stalk that swiveled left and right, scanning.

“Well, I’m the son of a blue-nosed gopher. . .”

“Dennzz! Give me back th’ box! I gotta know if Mish got that rat Perth!”

Arth tugged at his trouser leg, Dennis shook free, focusing the monocular

What finally moved out from behind the roof vent had changed subtly since the last time Dennis had seen it, on a highway late one dark night. It had turned a paler shade, blending well with the color of the buildings. Its sampling arms and cameras scanned the crowd below as it moved.

On its back it carried a passenger.

“Pix!” Dennis cursed. The little animal voyeur had found the perfect accomplice for its favorite activity, sidewalk superintending. It was riding Dennis’s Sahara Tech exploration ‘bot like its own personal mount!

The multiple coincidences and irony were overwhelming. All Dennis knew was that the robot was the key to everything. . .to rescuing his friends and the Princess, to getting out of Zuslik, to repairing the zeivatron. . .to everything!

What couldn’t a man who knew what he was doing accomplish, simply by using the Practice Effect on a sophisticated little machine like that? It could help him build more machines, even a new return mechanism!

He needed that ‘bot!

“Pix!” Dennis shouted. “Robot! Come to me and report! At once! Do you hear me? Right away!”

Arth grabbed furiously at his arm. In the street below people were looking up curiously.

The strange pair on the far roof seemed to pause briefly and turn his way.

“Prior orders are overridden!” he screamed again. “Come to me right now!”

He would have shouted more, but then Dennis was knocked down as Arth took him behind the knees in a powerful tackle. The little thief was wiry and strong. By the time Dennis managed to pull free to look again, the robot and pixolet had disappeared from sight.

Arth was cursing at him soundly. Dennis shook his head as he sat up, rubbing his temple. His attack of tunnel vision had evaporated, almost as suddenly as it had come on. But it might already be too late.

Oh, boy, he realized. What I just did.

“All right,” he told Arth. “Let me go! Let’s get out of here. We can go now.”

But moments later, when soldiers climbed onto the roof, Dennis realized that he was wrong again.

7

Pundit Nero

1

On the morning after the evening of his second imprisonment, Dennis awoke with a crick in his neck, straw in his ear, and the sound of voices in the corridor outside his cell.

He tried to sit up, and winced as movement prodded his bruises. He sank back into the straw and sighed.

“Argh,” he said concisely.

It was surprisingly easy to recognize his surroundings. Although he had never been in a dungeon before, he had visited countless examples in stories and movies. He looked this one over, impressed with the verisimilitude.

Apparently it had been well practiced as a dungeon. It was dank, cold, and apparently lice-infested. Dennis scratched.

It even sounded like a dungeon, from the slow, monotonous, drip-dripping of wall seepage, to the hollow clacking of passing boots in the corridor and the gravelly voices of the guards.

“. . .don’t know why they had to bring in a strange-looking foreigner to help us down here. Even if he does come wit’ hoity-toity references,” he heard one voice say.

“Yeah,” another agreed. “We was doin’ just fine. . .a little torture, a few convenient accidents, light practice. But this place sure has been lousy since Yngvi arrived. .. .”

The voices faded as the footsteps receded down the corridor.

Dennis sat up and shivered. He was stark naked—they weren’t about to make for a second time the mistake of leaving a wizard with his own property. He felt around for the one filthy blanket his captors had given him.

He found it wrapped around his cellmate. Dennis nudged the fellow with his foot. “Arth. Arth! You’ve got two blankets now! Give me back mine!”

The little thief s eyelids opened, and he stared at Dennis blankly for a moment before focusing. He smacked his lips.

“Why should I? It’s ‘cause of you I’m here. I shoulda said good-bye an’ let you go your own way right after we got out of th’ stockade.”

Dennis winced. Arth was right, of course. He had been in a confused state when he screamed at the pixolet and the robot. It wasn’t the sort of thing a storybook adventurer would do.

But Dennis was a man. He was susceptible to the psychological pressures of his unusual and highly dangerous situation. He might think he’d adjusted to being stranded in a strange world with strange rules, sought by enemies for reasons he barely understood—then a disaster shook his equilibrium, making him disoriented, estranged, lightheaded.

But he couldn’t explain this to Arth. Not while he was freezing. Anyway, if they were to have any chance, they would have to cooperate. That meant making Arth respect his rights.

“I’m sorry about this mess, Arth. You have my wizard’s vow that I’ll make it up to you someday. Now, give my blanket back, or I’ll turn you into a frog and take both of them for myself.”

He said it so evenly, so calmly that Arth’s eyes widened in reaction. No doubt his opinion of Dennis had plummeted since the episode on the rooftop. Still, he remembered tricks the foreigner had pulled in the past.

Arth snorted in disgust and tossed Dennis the blanket. “Wake me when breakfast comes, Dennzz. Then see if you can turn it into somethin’ edible!” He rolled over the other way under his blanket.

Dennis wrapped himself as well as he could and tried to practice the blanket while he waited for Baron Kremer to decide his fate.

Time passed slowly. The tedium was punctuated by the occasional pacings of the jailers up and down the halls. The guards muttered constantly under their breath. Eventually Dennis was able to make out that they were repeating over and over a dolorous evaluation of the condition of their clients.

“Sure is dank an’ gloomy in here,” Guard One commented as he passed.

“Yep. Dank. Gloomy,” the other responded.

“Sure wouldn’t want ta be a prisoner. It’s awful down here.”

“Sure is. Awful.”

“Will you stop repeatin’ what I say? Do I have to do all th’ work? It’s really irritatin’!”

“Uh-huh. Irritating. Sure is.. .”

Anyway, it solved one mystery. The way they kept the dungeon in practice was by having cycles of jailers constantly comment on how terrible it was down here. Presumably the prisoners were too distracted to put up much resistance. Perhaps Kremer even hired local masochists to come down and enjoy themselves.

It was an unsavory corner of the Practice Effect Dennis wished he’d never learned about.

They finally came for him a couple of days later, after the evening swill. Dennis stood up as the wooden bolt was raised and the door swung wide. Arth watched moodily from the corner.

An officer in a severely elegant uniform casually entered the cell. Behind him stood two tall soldiers, whose conical bearskin headgear brushed the hallway ceiling.

The tall aristocrat looked familiar. Dennis finally remembered seeing him on the street on the day they were captured, arguing with the betrayer, Perth.

“I am Lord Hern,” the officer announced. “Which one of you is the wizard?”

Neither of them replied.

Lord Hern glanced at Arth, then made a decision. With a bored motion he indicated for Dennis to follow him.

“Good luck, Arth,” Dennis said. “I’ll be seeing you.” The little thief merely rolled his eyes and sighed.

The sun was setting behind the western mountains as they emerged on one of the lower parapets. Dennis shaded his eyes, so long had he been in the dimness belowground.

Two more guards fell in behind. Dennis was led down service corridors, then upstairs to an elegant hallway. None of the servants turned to look at the shabby fellow clutching a blanket around him who passed by.

Another pair of guards flanked a door at the end of the hall. They opened it at a nod from Lord Hern.

Dennis followed his escort into a well-appointed room without windows. There was a king-sized bed, with a richly elegant brocade covering. A pretty young servant was laying out an elegant dark brown outfit with puffy sleeves. Through a door on the opposite side came steam and the sound of water being poured.

“You will dine with the Baron tonight,” Lord Hern announced. “You will behave well. The Baron has been known to lose track of inconsiderate guests.”

Dennis shrugged. “So I’ve heard. Thanks. Will you be there?”

Lord Hern looked down his nose. “I shall not have the pleasure. I shall be on a diplomatic errand. Perhaps another time.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” Dennis nodded pleasantly.

The aristocrat barely returned the nod. He left without another word.

Coylians, apparently, were an unenlightened and unsophisticated people. The guards merely looked curiously at the odd arm and finger exercise Dennis performed in the direction of the departing lord’s back.

He didn’t need to be told a bath was being drawn. Dennis drop-kicked the blanket over into a corner and made his way toward the sound of pouring water.

2

Cavemen, Dennis reminded himself again and again as he walked to the banquet room.

Remember, boy, they’re only cavemen.

It was hard to keep it in mind. The grand hallway was lined with brilliant mirrors alternating with ornate tapestries. His boots and those of his escort clacked on a mosaic floor that reflected glistening highlights from sparkling chandeliers.

Guards with sun-bright leather armor and gleaming halberds stood at even intervals, at rigid attention.

Dennis wondered. Was this an ostentatious display, keeping these men here when even their leisure time was more valuably spent practicing things?

Then it occurred to him that they were practicing something—this very hall. They were looking at the mirrors and hangings and each others’ uniforms, making them more beautiful by appreciating them. These guards, he realized, were undoubtedly selected less for their prowess than for their good taste!

His escort glanced at him as he whistled appreciatively.

As they approached two high, massive doors, Dennis tried to relax.

If the local honcho expects a wizard, my best chance is to act like a wizard. Maybe this Baron Kremer isn’t unreasonable. Perhaps I can strike a deal with the fellow—freedom for myself and my friends, and aid in fixing the zievatron, in exchange for teaching one of the maker guilds the principle of the wheel?

Dennis wondered if the nobleman would trade Princess Linnora for the “essence” of lighter-than-air flight.

The great doors opened soundlessly as Dennis was ushered into a broad dining room with a vaulted, open-beamed ceiling. The center of the chamber was dominated by an ornate table carved from some impossibly beautiful dark wood. Subdued light came from three rich candelabras. The crystal on the embroidered tablecloth sparkled in the candlelight.

Although four places were set, only servants were visible at the moment. One brought forth a tray with an assortment of beverages and offered Dennis his choice.

He needed something to calm his nerves. It was hard to keep in mind that a savage—a caveman—owned all this. Everything in the room was meant to make the guest know his place in a stratified society. In a room such as this on Earth, Dennis would be about to meet royalty.

He pointed to a bottle, and the servant poured the liquor into a crystal goblet the color of fire.

Dennis took the glass and wandered about the room. If he were a thief and had .a working zievatron within reach, he could retire on Earth on just what he could carry in his hands.

Providing, of course, the things retained their current state when they left the ambience of the Practice Effect. Dennis smiled, imagining irate customers whose wonderful purchases slowly decayed before their eyes into the crude products of a kindergarten workshop!

The lawsuits could go on for years.

The sense of alienation was back again. It felt inexorable. And this time he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t be a help. He had to appear confident this evening, or risk losing whatever chance remained of ever getting home again.

In a contemplative daze he passed through elegant French doors onto the balcony. He looked upon the starry night, with two small moons casting their light on the drifting cumulus clouds, and brought the goblet to his lips.

The pensive spell was broken instantly as he gagged. He coughed and spat the stuff out onto the brilliant parquet floor. He wiped his lips on his lacy sleeve and stared in disbelief at the cup in his hand.

Once again he had been trapped by his own assumptions, In this kind of lavish environment he had expected fine vintages, not elephant piss!

From the shadows to his right there came musical, feminine laughter. He turned quickly and saw that someone else stood on the balcony with him; her hand briefly tried to cover a grin of amusement.

Dennis felt blood rush to his cheeks.

“I know how you feel,” the young woman hurried to say in sympathy. “Isn’t it awful? You can’t practice wine, and you can’t cook it. So these cretins put what they have in fancy bottles and are happy, unable to tell the difference.”

From his brief glimpses and the stories he had heard about the L’Toff, Dennis had built in his mind an almost elfin image of Princess Linnora—as someone fragile and almost ethereal. Up close she was, indeed, beautiful, but much more human than his imagination had drawn her. She had dimples when she smiled, and her teeth, while white and brilliant, were slightly uneven. Though she was clearly a young woman, sorrow had already planted faint lines at the corners of her eyes.

Dennis felt his voice catch in his throat. He essayed a clumsy bow as he tried to think of something to say.

“In my country, Lady, we would save such vintages as this one for periods of penance.”

“Such penance.” She seemed impressed with the implied asceticism.

“Right now,” Dennis went on, “I’d trade this rare goblet and all the Baron’s wealth for a good Cabernet from my homeland—so I could raise it to your beauty, and the help you gave me once.”

She acknowledged with a curtsy and a smile. “A convoluted compliment, but I think I like it. I admit, Sir Wizard, that I expected never to see you again. Was my help so poor?”

Dennis joined her at the rail. “No, Lady. Your help made our escape from the jailyard below possible. Didn’t you hear the commotion you indirectly caused that night?”

Linnora’s lips pursed and she turned away slightly, obviously trying not to laugh undemurely out loud at the memory.

“The look on my lord host’s face that night repaid any debt you owed. I only wish his net had remained empty this time.”

Dennis had it in his mind to say something stylishly gallant such as, “I could not stay away but had to return to you, my Lady.” But the openness in her gray eyes made it seem verbose and inappropriate. He looked down.

“Well, uh,” he said instead. “I guess even a wizard can get a little clumsy once in a while.”

Her warm smile told him he had given the right answer. “Then we shall have to hope for another opportunity, shall we not?” she asked.

Dennis felt unaccountably warm. “We can hope,” he agreed.

They stood quietly for a while, looking at the reflections of the moonlight from the River Fingal.

“When Baron Kremer showed me your possessions for the first time,” she said at last, “I was convinced that someone strange had come into the world. They were obviously tools of great power, though I could feel almost no Pr’fett in them.”

Dennis shrugged. “In my land they were common implements, your Highness.”

She looked at him closely. Dennis was surprised to notice that she seemed nervous. Her voice was subdued, almost hushed. “Are you then from the place of miracles? The land of our ancestors?”

Dennis blinked. Land of our ancestors?

“Your tools had so little Pr’fett,” Linnora went on. “Yet their essences were strong, like nothing else in the world. Only once before have I encountered the like—in the wilderness shortly before I was captured.”

Dennis stared at her. Could so many threads come together all at once? He took a step closer to Linnora. But before he could speak, another voice cut in.

“I, too, would be interested in learning about the wizard’s homeland. That, and many other things, as well.”

They both turned. A large shadow blocked part of the light from the banquet hall. For a brief instant Dennis had a sudden joyful impression he was seeing Stivyung Sigel.

But the man stepped forward.

“I am Baron Kremer,” he said.

The warlord had a powerful cleft jaw to complement his broad shoulders. His silvery-blond hair was cut just below the ears. His eyes remained in shadows as he motioned toward the glittering table within.

“Shall we dine? Then perhaps we’ll have a chance to discuss such matters as different types of essence. . .and other worlds.”

3

Deacon Hoss’k spread his arms in an expansive gesture, barely missing a glittering candelabrum in the process.

“So you see, Wizard, nonliving things were compensated for the advantages the gods gave to the living. A tree may grow and prosper and spread its seeds, but it is also doomed to die, while a river is not. A man may think and act and move about, but he is fated to grow old and decrepit with time. The tools he uses, on the other hand—the nonliving slaves that serve him all his life—only get better with use.”

The deacon’s exposition was a strange mixture of theology, teleology, and fairy tale. Dennis tried not to look too amused.

The roast fowl on his plate was a definite improvement on his dungeon diet, and he wasn’t about to risk going back to prison fare by grinning at the ramblings of his host’s resident sage.

At the head of the table, Baron Kremer listened quietly to Hoss’k’s pedantic presentation, occasionally serving Dennis with a long, appraising gaze.

“Thusly, within all inanimate objects—including even that which once lived, such as hide or wood—the gods imbued the potential to become something greater than itself. . .something useful. This is the way the gods chose to make plenty inevitable for their people. . . .”

The portly, scholar was dressed in an elegant white evening coat. As he gestured, the sleeves fluttered, displaying a glimpse of a bright red garment underneath.

“When a maker later converts the potential of an object into essence” Hoss’k continued, “the thing may then be practiced. In this way the gods preordained not only our life-style but our blessed social order as well.”

Across from Dennis Princess Linnora picked at her meal. She looked bored, and perhaps a bit angry over what Hoss’k had to say.

“There are those,” she said, “who believe that living things have potential, too. They, also, may rise above what they are and become greater than they have been.”

Hoss’k favored Linnora with a patronizing smile. “A quaint notion left over from ancient superstitions taken seriously only by a few obscure tribes such as your own, my Lady, and by some of the rabble in the east. It manifests a primitive wish that people, families, and even species can be improved. But look around you! Do the rabbits, or rickels, or horses get better with each passing year? Does mankind?

“No, clearly man himself cannot be improved. It is only the inanimate that may, with man’s intervention, be practiced to perfection.” Hoss’k smiled and took a sip of wine.

Dennis couldn’t escape a vague feeling that had nagged him for an hour, that he had encountered the man before and that there was some cause for enmity between them.

“Okay,” he said, “you’ve explained why inanimate tools improve with use. . . because the gods decreed that it be so.

But how does a piece of flint, for instance, become an ax simply by being used?”

“Ah! A good question!” Hoss’k paused to belch good-naturedly. Across the table from Dennis, Linnora rolled her eyes, but Hoss’k did not notice.

“You see, Wizard, scholars have long known that eventual fate of this ax you mention is partly determined by the essence of making, imbued into it by an anointed master of the stonechoppers’ guild. The essence that is put into an object at its beginning is just as important as the Pr’fett, which the owner invests through practice.

“By this I mean that practice is important, but it is useless without the proper essence at the beginning. Try as he might, a peasant cannot practice a sled into a hoe, or a kite into a cup. An implement must start out at least a little bit useful in its designated task to be made better through practice. Only master makers have this skill.

“This is something not well enough appreciated by the masses, particularly lately, with all of this intemperate grumbling against the guilds. The rabble-rousers chant about ‘value added’ and the ‘importance of practice labor’ But it’s all ignorant foolishness!”

Dennis had already realized that Hoss’k was the type of intellectual who’d dismiss an urgent and unstoppable change in his society, blithely ignoring the forces that pulled all about him. His kind always fiddled while Rome burned, all the while explaining away the ashes with their own brand of logic.

Hoss’k sipped his wine and beamed at Dennis. “Of course, I don’t have to explain to a man such as yourself why it is so necessary to control the lower orders.”

“I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about,” Dennis answered coolly.

“Now, now, Wizard, you need not dissemble. From inspecting the items you have so kindly, er, lent us, I can tell so very much about you!” With an indulgent smile the man bit into a pulpy dessert fruit.

Dennis decided to say nothing., He had eaten slowly and spoken little this evening, aware that the Baron was watching his reactions closely. He had barely touched his wine.

Dennis and Linnora had shared glances as they dared.

Once, when the Baron was speaking to the butler and while the scholar addressed the ceiling expansively, the Princess puffed her cheeks and mouthed a nattering mimicry of Hoss’k. Dennis had had to struggle not to laugh out loud.

When Kreflner had looked at them curiously, Dennis tried to keep a straight face. Linnora assumed a mask of attentive innocence.

Dennis realized that he was well on his way toward falling in love.

“I am curious, Deacon,” Kremer said. “What can you divine about out guest’s homeland from only his tools and his demeanor?”

The Baron lounged back on his plush, thronelike chair. He seemed filled with a restless energy, carefully, calculatedly restrained. It showed from time to time as he crushed nuts in his bare hands.

Hoss’k wiped his mouth on his napkin-sleeve. He bowed his head. “As you wish, my Lord. First, would you tell me which of Dennis Nuel’s tools are of most interest to you?”

Kremer smiled indulgently. “The far-killing hand weapon, the far-seeing glass box, and the box that shows shining insects moving as dots.”

Hoss’k nodded. “And what do all of these things have in common?”

“You tell us.”

“Very well, my Lord. Clearly these implements contain essences wholly unknown here in Coylia. Our lady of the L’Toff”—Hoss’k inclined his head to Linnora—“has confirmed this fact for us.

“Although he has endeavored to hide the details of his origins, our wizard’s plain ignorance of some of the most basic facts about our way of life indicates that he comes from a distant land, easily beyond the Great Desert beyond the mountains—a land where the study of essence has developed along radically different lines than it has here.

“Perhaps essence itself is different there, such that the tools they practice are constrained to develop in totally divergent ways.” Hoss’k smiled, as if he knew he were making a daring speculation.

Dennis sat up in his chair. Perhaps this fellow is no dolt after all, he thought.

“The box of lights, in particular, tells me much,” Hoss’k went on, confidently. “The tiny trained insects it contains behind its clear cover are unknown in these parts. They are smaller than the tiniest firefly. What are they called, Wizard?”

Dennis sat back in his chair again, almost sighing aloud in disappointment. Cavemen, he reminded himself.

“They are called pixel array elements,” he answered. “They are made up of things called liquid crystals, which—“

“Living crystal elementals!” Hoss’k interrupted Dennis. “Imagine that! Well, I feared at first that the little creatures were dying under my care. After a time they grew dim, and I could find no airholes nor any way to supply them with food. Finally I learned—almost by accident, I will confess—that they recovered quite nicely when fed sunlight!”

Dennis couldn’t help reacting with a raised eyebrow. Hoss’k took note and grinned in triumph.

“Ah, yes, Wizard. We are not bumpkins or fools here. This discovery was particularly pleasing to my Lord Baron. Until that time his new weapon, the small “needle-caster” you so graciously provided, had stopped functioning. Now, of course, that tool is also fed its fill of sunlight every day as it is practiced.”

The portly scholar beamed as Baron Kremer acknowledged this coup with a faint smile and nod. Kremer obviously had plans for the needler. Dennis frowned but remained silent.

“Like the bugs in the wonder box,” Hoss’k continued. “Something inside the weapon must at intervals eat from the sun. Indeed, when the weapon is used one can hear the faint scamperings of captive animals inside it.

“I did find a little food door on that machine. And now we provide the creatures inside with the metal they apparently require besides sunlight.

“These demons of yours have expensive tastes, Wizard. My Lord has used up the price of several serfs just keeping the weapon in practice!”

Dennis kept his face impassive. The fellow was clever, but his deductions were diverging more and more from reality. Dennis tried not to think about how Kremer might be “practicing” his needler.

“And just what does all this tell you about my homeland?” he asked.

Hoss’k grinned. “Well, first off we have seen that part of your magic is in taking the essence of living things and imbuing them into tools before practice even begins. This suggests to me a society with less regard for the dignity of life than we have here in Coylia.”

Dennis couldn’t help smirking sardonically. Of all the fatuous conclusions to reach! He glanced at Linnora to share his feelings in a secret glance but was shaken by the look she gave him. She obviously didn’t think much of Hoss’k, but his latest deduction obviously disturbed her. She fingered her napkin nervously.

Couldn’t she tell that the scholar was only flailing around blindly?

Hoss’k went on. “Some time ago I took some of the items Dennis Nuel brought with him from his homeland—those that my Lord Baron did not require for other purposes—and put them in a dark closet, where they received neither light nor practice. I wished to observe them as they reverted to their original forms and find out what principles of essence were at the heart of each.

“To my shock I found that, after a few days, the tools stopped devolving altogether! Left in a dark room, his knife remains sharp as it was a week ago. Some of this may be due to the fact that it is made of a prince’s ransom in iron, but the fastenings on his clothing and backpack also remained frozen in intricate shapes that could have been made by no craftsman alive.”

Dennis glanced at Kremer. The Baron listened with hands clasped in front of him. Heavy brows cast his eyes into shadows.

Linnora’s gaze darted from Hoss’k to Dennis to Kremer with an expression of apparent anxiety. Dennis wondered what was going on. Was it something the fool had just said? He decided to stop this foolishness before it got any more ridiculous. “I don’t think you. . . .”

But the scholar wouldn’t be interrupted. “The wizard’s things are positively amazing. Only once before have I encountered their like,” he said. “In our recent expedition into the western mountains north of the lands of the L’Toff, I and my escorts found a tiny house in the wilderness, all made of metal. . . .”

Dennis stared at Hoss’k and felt his hands become fists. “You!” He knew, now, that he had seen the deacon one time before, on the tiny screen of the Shara Tech exploration ‘bot. It was this fool, dressed in his red formal robes, who had overseen the dismantling of the zievatron!

“Ah,” the scholar nodded. “I see from your reaction that that little house was yours, Wizard. And that does not surprise me. For I found a little box in the side of the house, which opened under prying. And there I found a storehouse of incredible little tools! I took home a few to examine at my leisure and, while I have not been able to make them do anything discernible, they, like the items in your backpack, have not changed a whit since I acquired them!”

Hoss’k reached into his voluminous robes and pulled out a handful of small objects.

“A few of these came from a pair of rather large, ferocious demons we found guarding the little house. But they were no match for the thenners of my Lord’s brave guardsmen.”

Bits and pieces of shiny electronics spilled from his hand onto the table. Dennis stared at a claw arm from a “ferocious” little Sahara Tech exploration robot, and a broken elevatronics circuit board whose components alone were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars!

“Of course, we could not stay long enough to pursue a full investigation, you’ll understand. For that was when we encountered the Princess. It took our men two whole days to—ahem—track her from the little metal house to the rock cleft where she had become lost. . . .”

“I wasn’t lost! I was hiding from your thrice-cursed northmen!” Linnora bit out.

“Hmm. Well. She claimed that she had come to the mountain glade because she sensed that something unusual had recently occurred in the area. I felt it wise to invite her to accompany our expedition back to Zuslik. . . for her own safety, of course.”

Dennis could barely contain himself. “So you’re the cretin who tore apart the return device,” he growled.

Hoss’k laughed. “Oh, Wizard, I completed the job of dissection, but our L’Toff Princess had already begun investigating the strange cabin when we arrived.”

He glanced at her to see if this was true, but Linnora only looked away, fanning herself. At that moment Dennis didn’t feel any favoritism. He gave Linnora some of the hot glare he had offered Hoss’k. Both of them had meddled where they had no business!

“Anyway, Wizard,” Hoss’k went on, “no harm was done, I’m sure. When my Lord Baron decides it is time for you to return to your homeland with your property, I’m sure we can return the metal I took and lend you all the help you’ll need in order to practice your little house back to perfection.”

Dennis swore softly in Arabic, the only way he could properly express his opinion of the idea.

Hoss’k seemed to sense some of the message, if not the meaning. His smile narrowed. “And if my Lord decides otherwise, why, then I will lead another expedition to the little house and reclaim all of that wonderful metal for my Lord’s treasury.”

Dennis sat back in stunned silence. If the airlock itself were ever actually moved, let alone dismantled, he would spend the rest of his life here!

Kremer had remained quiet during this exchange. Now he cut in.

“I believe we have strayed from the topic, my good Deacon. You were explaining to us what was so unusual about the tools once owned by our alien wizard. You said that they appear to remain unchanged, no matter how long they are left unpracticed.”

“Yes, my Lord.” Hoss’k bowed. “And there is only one way known to freeze a tool into its practiced form so it will remain in that condition forever, unable to revert to its starter state. In our land this technique is controlled only by the L’Toff.”

Linnora sat rigidly, not looking at Hoss’k or even at Dennis.

“The technique, as we all know, involves a member of the L’Toff race willingly investing a portion of his or her own life-force into the tool in question, spending a part of his or her life-span to make the Pr’fett permanent.”

Kremer spoke pensively. “A great gift, is it not, Wizard? The priests claim that the L’Toff were chosen by the gods. . .blessed with the talent to be able to make beautiful things beautiful forever.

“But all gifts have a price, do they not, scholar?”

Hoss’k nodded sagely. “Yes, my Lord. The talent has been a mixed blessing to the L’Toff. With their other gifts, it elevated them above other peoples. It also led to many unpleasant episodes of, well, what might be called attempted exploitation by others.”

Dennis blinked. This was all coming too fast, but even without reflection he could imagine how the L’Toff had suffered for their talent.

The Princess looked only at her own hands.

“Of course, the rest of the story is common knowledge,” Hoss’k said, chuckling. “Fleeing the greed of mankind, the L’Toff came to the western mountains, where an ancestor of our King Hymiel ceded them their present territory and made the old dukes of Zuslik their protectors.”

And Baron Kremer’s father deposed the last of the old dukes, Dennis realized.

“We were speaking of the wizard’s property,” Kremer reminded softly but severely.

Hoss’k bowed. “Of course. Now, what can we suppose when we find that the wizard’s property does not decay, does not devolve into crude starters? We are forced to conclude that Dennis Nuel is a member of the aristocracy of his homeland, a homeland in which both metal and life itself are cheap. Furthermore, it seems clear that the equivalent of the L’Toff in his country have been enslaved and put to use freezing Pr’fett within practiced objects so that they remain refined even when left unused for long periods. This exploitation has gone so far as to freezing even Nuel’s clothing. Here in Coylia no one has ever considered squandering the L’Toff talent on clothes—“

“Now just a darned minute,” Dennis cut in. “I think there are a few things that need to be—“

Hoss’k grinned and hurried on, cutting Dennis off. “—We must conclude, at last, that their expertise at different lands of essence—including the enslavement of little animals as integral parts of tools—plus this power over the L’Toff of their own land explains the wizardry of Dennis Nuel’s country.

“He may be an exile or an adventurer. I cannot say which. In either case our guest clearly comes from a most powerful and ruthless warrior race. This being so, he should be treated as a member of the highest caste while he remains here in Coylia.”

Dennis stared at the man, dumbfounded. He wanted to laugh, but it was too preposterous even for that!

He started to speak twice and stopped each time. It occurred to him to wonder if he should interfere at all. His initial impulse to protest might not be the right strategy at all. If Hoss’k’s sophistry led to the granting of high status and respect here, should he even interfere?

While he considered, Princess Linnora abruptly stood up, her face very pale. “My Lord Baron. Gentlemen.” She nodded left and right but did not look at Dennis. “I am fatigued. Will you excuse me?”

Her chair was withdrawn by a servant. She did not meet Dennis’s gaze, though he stood and tried to catch her eye. She bore stoically the Baron’s lips upon her hand, then turned and left, accompanied by two guards.

Dennis’s ears burned. He could well imagine what Linnora thought of him. But all considered, it was probably best that he had remained silent right now, until he had a chance to think about what was to be done. The time for explanations would come later,

He turned to see Kremer smiling at him. The Baron took his seat and sipped from a goblet whose lacquer had, over the years, developed into a magnificent, arsene blue.

“Please sit down, Wizard. Do you smoke? I have pipes that have been used every day for three hundred years. As we relax, I am certain we will find matters of mutual benefit to discuss.”

Dennis said nothing.

Kremer eyed him calculatingly. “And perhaps we can work out something that will benefit the lady as well.”

Dennis frowned. Were his feelings that obvious?

He shrugged and sat down. In his position, he had little choice but to deal.

4

“It’s a good thing the palace has lots of well-practiced indoor plumbing,” Arth said as he worked to join two ill-fitting pieces of tubing, binding them with wet mud and twine. “I’d hate to have to make our own pipes out of paper or clay and have to practice ‘em up ourselves.”

Dennis used a chisel to trim a tight wooden cover to fit over a large earthen vat. Nearby, several kegs of the Baron’s “best” wine awaited another test run. The maze of tubes overhead was a plumber’s nightmare. Even the sloppiest Appalachian moonshiner would have shuddered at the sight. But Dennis figured it would be good enough for a “starter” distillery.

All they had to do was get a few drops of brandy to come out the other end of the condenser. A little final product was all they needed for it to be useful and therefore practicable.

Arth whistled as he worked. He seemed to have forgiven Dennis since being released from the dungeon and assigned work as “wizard’s assistant.” Now wearing comfortably old work clothes and being fed well, the short thief was enthralled by this extended making task, unlike anything he had ever done before.

“Do you think Kremer’s goin’ to be satisfied with this still, Dennizz?”

Dennis shrugged. “In a couple of days we should be producing a concoction that’ll knock the Baron’s fancy, two-hundred-year-old socks off. It ought to make him happy.”

“Well, I still hate his guts, but I’ll admit he pays well.” Arth jingled a small leather purse a quarter filled with slivers of precious copper.

Arth seemed satisfied for now, but Dennis had his private doubts. Making a distillery for Kremer was a stopgap measure at best. He was sure the warlord would only want more from his new wizard. Soon he would lose interest in promises of new luxuries and trade goods and start demanding weapons for his upcoming campaign against the L’Toff and the King.

Dennis and Arth had been at this task almost a week. Here and now, few spent much more than a day making anything. Kremer was already showing signs of impatience.

What would he do when the distillery was operational? Show the Baron how to forge iron? Teach his artisans the principle of the wheel? Dennis had hoped to keep one or two of those “essences” in reserve, just in case Kremer decided to renege on his promise. The warlord had vowed eventually to heap wealth on Dennis and provide him with all the resources he’d need to repair his “metal house” and go home. But he might change his mind.

Dennis was still ambivalent. Kremer was clearly a ruthless S.O.B. But he was competent and not particularly venal. From Dennis’s readings of Earth’s history, a lot of men who were revered in legends weren’t exactly pleasant people in real life. Although Kremer certainly was a tyrant, Dennis wondered if he was particularly terrible as founders of dynasties went.

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to become the fellow’s Merlin. Dennis could probably make Kremer’s victories overwhelming—and therefore relatively bloodless—and in so doing become a power at his side.

Certainly that would win him a freer hand, perhaps even to repair the zievatron and return home again.

It did sound like the right plan.

Then why did it feel so unpalatable?

He could think of at least one person who wouldn’t agree with his decision. The few times he had seen Princess Linnora since the banquet they had been at least two parapets apart, she escorted by her guards and he by his. She had nodded to him coolly and swept away with a swirl of skirts even as he smiled and tried to catch her eye.

Dennis could see now how Hoss’k’s logic at the banquet would sound compelling to someone raised in this world. The misunderstanding irked him all the more because it was so unfair.

But there was nothing he could do. Kremer was keeping her in Dennis’s sight but out of earshot. And he couldn’t insult the Baron in her presence—spoiling all of his plans— just to regain favor in her eyes, could he? That would be shortsighted.

It was perplexing.

He and Arth built their still in a broad court not far from the enclosed jailyard they had escaped from only weeks before. Except for their small corner, the broad field was taken up by drilling grounds for the Baron’s troops. Near the outer wall of sharpened logs, sergeants marched militia from the town and neighboring hamlets—practicing both the ragged weapons and their equally motley bearers.

Nearer the castle, regulars in bright uniforms used then-battle-axes and halberds to slice at chunks of meat hanging from tall gibbets. The gleaming blades sheared through meat and bone alike. The chops were collected in tubs and carted off by drudges to the palace kitchens.

Even the pair of guards assigned to watch Dennis and Arth kept busy. They took turns striking each other lightly with dull blades, working on their armor.

Overhead, the Baron’s aerial patrol went through their maneuvers. Dennis watched them dive and swoop around each other, as facile as the sprightliest gliders of Earth, staying aloft for hours at a time in the day thermals near the castle. They practiced throwing clusters of small, deadly darts at ground targets in midflight.

No one else on Coylia had anything like these gliders. The innovation was said to have come one day when the observation kite the Baron himself had been riding was cut loose in an assassination attempt. Practiced to perfection as a kite, the untethered airfoil instantly went into a spinning fall.

But instead of plumeting to his death, Kremer had been caught in a powerful winter updraft. Showing unusual imagination, the Baron had recognized almost instantly that something new was involved. He concentrated desperately on practicing the unwieldly glider, rather than resigning himself to certain death, and the amazing happened. To the awe of all those watching, he and the kite had shimmered for a few moments in the sparkling nimbus of a felthesh trance. The fabric contraption changed before everyone’s eyes into something which flew!

In the end, Kremer merely broke his leg, but he had discovered a new principle in the process.

Seventeen killed and maimed “volunteers” later, he had his corps of one-, two-, and even four-man gliders. They were getting better day by day. And although Kremer never again was able to produce another felthesh, his reputation was made throughout Coylia.

Dennis watched the gliders thoughtfully. The hangar shed was guarded, and the launching tower as well. But their greatest protection was the fact that Castle Zuslik contained the planet’s only supply of trained pilots. Even if some other lord managed to steal a glider, he wouldn’t be able to practice it in time to prevent it from decaying back to a pile of sticks and string and hides.

But unbeknownst to Baron Kremer, there was one more potential pilot on Tatir.

No, Dennis shook his head. You’ve chosen a plan. Stick with it.

Arth approached, holding up a piece of condenser. “Say, Dennzz, where does this thing you called a... a gizmo.. . fit? Does it go into the thingumbob? Or the doohickey?” Arth pronounced each name as he had memorized it.

Dennis returned to the task of fostering an industrial revolution.

5

“Master, you must get dressed for the party now.”

Dennis looked up from a sheaf of notes covered with the arcane notations of anomaly mathematics.

“Oh, is it time already, Dvarah?”

The servant girl smiled and gestured over to the ancient bed by the wall. Dennis saw that she had laid out a formal dinner suit. It had fancy sleeves and a wide, puffy collar.

The girl curtsied. “Yes, my Lord. And tonight you will dress in a manner befitting your station. These garments are over two hundred years old. And the practicer we found for you has been wearing them nonstop for over a week. They have just been laundered and are ready for you now.”

Dennis looked at the suit and frowned. It wasn’t just that the clothes were frilly and decadent for his tastes. After all, he was the foreigner here and should adapt to local fashions.

But he didn’t like to think that some poor citizen of Zuslik had been shanghaied into durance style—just to practice these clothes for him.

Dvarah had been assigned to Dennis after the dinner meeting with the Baron. The pretty, petite brunette brought him his meals and tended his sumptuous new quarters.

She coughed demurely. “Master, you really mustn’t keep my Lord Baron waiting.”

Dennis cast a brief, wistful glance back at the papers on his desk. It had been fun, almost relaxing, to play with the symbols and numbers, trying to figure out how the Practice Effect came to be. While lost in the equations, Dennis could almost forget where he was, and pretend he was, once again, a comfortable terrestrial scientist with nothing at all to fear, Kremer had actually been quite generous, by his own lights. He had, for instance, given Dennis all the paper he wanted for his studies. But he had stopped at letting Dennis have any of his Earthly equipment.

There was no use complaining. Dennis had to win the warlord’s trust. Without the wrist comp, for instance, all these calculations were inevitably futile. Eventually, he was sure, Kremer would let him have his gear.

He got up to dress. Kremer was bringing together all the burghers and guildmasters tonight, to show off his new wizard. Dennis would have to put on a good show.

Dvarah came over and began unbuttoning his shirt.

The first few times it had happened, Dennis had stammered and pushed her away. But that only seemed to hurt the girl’s feelings—not to mention her professional pride. When in Rome he realized at last, and learned to relax while having things done for him.

Actually, it was rather pleasant once he got used to it. Dvarah smelled nice. And over the past few days she had apparently become quite devoted to him. It seemed her duties included considerably more than he had taken advantage of as yet. His politeness toward her, and his reluctance to assert those privileges without considerable further thought, seemed to surprise and please her.

Dvarah was straightening his cravat as a knock came on the door.

“Come in!” Dennis called.

Arth stuck his head in. “Ready, Dennizz? Come on! We gotta get the brandy set up for the party!”

“Okay, Arth. Just a sec.”

Dvarah stepped back and smiled approvingly at her master’s elegance. Dennis gave her a wink and followed Arth out into the hall.

Along with two of the ever-present guards, there waited four burly men with a heavy cask on two rails. As the guards turned to lead the way, the bearers heaved and lifted the cask on their shoulders, following behind.

Dennis had considered inventing something to make their task easier. Then, on thinking about it, he decided to hold off for a while. The wheel was too much of an ace to play just yet.

“I got a message from th’ missus. . .” Arth whispered to Dennis as they walked down the elegant hallway.

Dennis walked steadily ahead, without missing a step. He asked, softly, “Are the others all right?”

Arth nodded. “Mostly. Guards caught two o’ my men... and Maggin found out what happened to Perth.” He spat the name as if it were something vile.

“Did Mishwa. . .” Dennis let the question hang,

“Yeah. He took care of the rat, all, right! Just before they conked him. Perth never got a chance to give away th’ exact location o’ the warehouse, so Stivyung an’ Gath were able to—“

Arth shut up as the grand doors to the ballroom swung wide before them. But Dennis got the general idea.

He was relieved his friends were all right. Perhaps in weeks, or months, he would have enough influence over Kremer to intercede for other prisoners. For now, though, he would rather not test it. Gath and Stivyung deserved a chance to make their own escape.

Dennis could only describe the party as a sort of quasi pot latch, with a dash of Louis XIV’s Sun King court thrown in.

The local elite were out in force, in a sea of elegant finery, but there was less dancing and socializing than there would be at a party on Earth. Instead, there appeared to be a whole lot of ceremonious exchanging of gifts. The rituals bemused Dennis. Here, it seemed, there was a complicated way in which status was maintained by giving things away. The more practiced the donated items were, the better.

Dennis was reminded of similar rites he had read of in preatomic New Guinea and in the Pacific Northwest. The gift-giving had little generosity to it but rather an aggressive bragging overtone heavily dependent upon status.

He saw the recipient of a particularly frilly, silky, useless-looking garment briefly blanche and stare in horror at what she had been given, before hurriedly putting on a casual expression and thanking the giver through her teeth.

Yes, it was very much like an ancient Earthly potlatch. But Dennis soon saw that the Practice Effect had twisted the ritual in strange ways.

It cost many man-hours to maintain a tool or an object at its peak of perfection, for instance. So unlike similar social arrangements on Earth, the gifts could be stockpiled in advance only at great cost to the giver. Their number was limited by the overall ability of a magnate’s servants and bondsmen to use things. . .and just before one of these parties the serfs must be run ragged practicing their masters’ best gifts.

Dennis moved about the grand hall, casually watching the rich people bow and make convoluted compliments to each other. They traded their gifts with elegant gestures of surprise and feigned spontaneity.

Arth had explained it to him. The receiver of gifts was caught in a bind. Covetousness was counterbalanced against caution. A rich man might desire a beautiful, ancient thing but fear the investment of man-hours it would take to maintain it. A gift received had to be displayed later, and any deterioration would bring terrible shame.

It was like watching an elegant pavane. Several more times Dennis saw unmistakable chagrin on the face of a recipient who had made a false move, and received too much.

At the station being manned by Arth, the brandy cask had just been opened. Servants were circulating small goblets of amber-colored fluid. A chain of gasps and coughing exclamations rippled across the crowd, just behind the waiters.

Dennis looked for Linnora. Maybe here, at the party, he would have a chance to explain to her that he was not from a land of monsters. He had to convince her that by playing a waiting game he could become so necessary to Kremer that one L’Toff prisoner would be meaningless to him in comparison. Dennis was certain he could win Linnora’s release within a few months.

But there was no sign of the Princess in the crowd. Perhaps later, he hoped.

The minor nobles and guildmasters—most of them sons and grandsons of men who had helped Kremer’s father seize power—moved about with their wives, followed by personal servants who modeled the gifts their masters had been given. It was like watching a crowd filled with sets of almost identical twins, only the sibling apparently bearing more riches always walked behind the less heavily laden, and the one wearing all the flashy junk never partook of food or drink.

Dennis had managed to beg off being assigned a “tail,” as the accompanying servants were called. It was bad enough knowing that someone, somewhere, was spending hours practicing Dennis’s formal outfits for him. He didn’t want to have to force another fellow to take on such a disgusting role, no matter how well accepted it was here.

Anyway, it helped establish Dennis as an anomaly. By now everyone knew he was a foreign wizard. The more conventions he broke, Dennis figured, the better the precedent and the less likely they’d try to hold him to other tribal stupidities.

Not stupidities, he reminded himself—adaptations! The patterns of behavior all fit when one thought of combining feudalism with the Practice Effect. One might not like them, but the rituals did make a certain amount of brutal sense.

“Wizard!”

Dennis turned and saw that Kremer himself was motioning him over.

Nearby stood Deacon Hoss’k in his bright red robes, and a crowd of local dignitaries. Dennis approached as he was bid and gave Kremer a calculatedly respectful nod.

“So this is the magician who has shown us how to practice wine into. . . brandy.” A richly dressed magnate held up his goblet in admiration. “Tell me, Wizard, since you seem to have found a way to practice consumable items, will you now teach us to turn cornmeal into rickel steak?”

The fellow laughed loudly, accompanied by several of those around him. He had obviously already had a fair sampling of Dennis’s first product.

Baron Kremer smiled. “Wizard, let me introduce you to Kappun Thsee, magnate of the stonechoppers’ guild, and Zuslik’s selectman for the Assembly of our Lord, King Hymiel.”

Dennis bowed just a little. “Honored.”

Thsee nodded slightly. He tossed back the brandy in his glass and motioned to a servant for more.

“You did not answer my question, Wizard.”

Dennis didn’t know what to say. These people had a fixed way of looking at things, and any explanation he gave would involve new assumptions the Coylian aristocrats were ill prepared to hear.

Anyway, at that moment he saw Princess Linnora enter the room, accompanied by a servant.

The crowd near the entrance parted for her. When she nodded and spoke to someone, the response was almost always an exaggerated, nervous smile. In her wake people frankly stared. She stood out brilliantly in the sea of flushed, anxious faces, cool and reserved as her mountain people were reputed to be.

“I am afraid that is not the way of it, my dear Kappun Thsee.”

Dennis turned quickly and saw that it was the scholar Hoss’k who had spoken, filling the long pause in the conversation. Dennis had had a brief illusion that it had been Professor Marcel Flaster, somehow transported directly from Earth, beginning one of his infamous, ponderous lectures.

“You see,” Hoss’k expanded. “The wizard has not improved wine into brandy. He has used wine much as your stonechoppers use flint nodules. He makes brandy by infusing it with new essence.”

Kappun Thsee’s eyes shone with ill-concealed greed. “The guild that gains the license to this art—“

Baron Kremer laughed out loud. “And why should this wonderful new secret be given to any of the present guilds? What, my friend, does chopping stone have to do with creating liquor with the flavor of fire?”

Kappun Thsee flushed.

Dennis had been trying to keep track of Linnora’s progress through the crowd. He quickly turned back as Kremer put his arm over his shoulder.

“No, magnate Thsee,” Kremer said, grinning. “The new essences brought to us by our wizard might be divided up among the present guilds. Then again, perhaps each should have its own, new guild. And who better to be guildmaster than he who brought these secrets to us?”

One of the women gasped. The other aristocrats stared.

In the silent moment Dennis suddenly saw with perfect clarity what was going on.

Kremer was manipulating them beautifully! Holding out the possibility of access to a whole set of new “essences,” he was accompanying the carrot with an implied stick. He already had the monopolistic guilds on his side. Now they’d positively be baying to do his will.

At the same time, Dennis realized that Kremer had just offered him more wealth and power than he had ever imagined.

He saw that even the ebullient Hoss’k was subdued, as if he were seeing Dennis in a new light—less as his own personal discovery and more, perhaps, as a dangerous rival.

That suited Dennis fine. The man had been the direct cause of stranding him on this crazy world. He had already promised himself to teach Hoss’k a lesson.

Dennis noticed that Linnora had come closer but was avoiding approaching the area where the baron stood. He turned to Kremer. “Your Grace, some may think that my brandy is nothing but a more potent form of wine. May I perform a demonstration to prove that it is, indeed, something truly different?”

Kremer nodded, betraying a faint smile.

Dennis called for a brandy-filled goblet and a small table to lay it on. Then he reached into the folds of one of his fancy sleeves and pulled out a bundle of small sticks, each painted at one end with a blob of crusty paste.

It had taken him days to hunt down and purify the right materials to perform this demonstration. It would be just the sort of thing to solidify his reputation.

“Baron Kremer spoke of the flavor of fire. From the way some of our local notables are weaving about the hall, it certainly seems that the blood in their veins has grown more than a little warm.”

The crowd laughed. Indeed, several magnates had already become tipsy, falling prey to other players of the gift-giving game. Their servants were stumbling under quantities of fine, ancient things that would ruin their masters in expensive practice time.

Dennis noticed that Linnora watched from a nearby pillar. She had smiled at the reference to the foolish guildsmasters.

Encouraged, Dennis went on.

“In this evening of marvelous gift-giving, I, a poor wizard, have little to offer. But to Baron Kremer I now offer the essence of. . . fire!”

He struck two of the little sticks together. At once the two ends erupted into flame.

The crowd moaned and pulled back in awe. They were rather crude matches, smoking and stinking of sulfur and nitrates, but that only made the display more impressive.

Dennis had seen the firemakers they used here. They were efficient but used that ancient principle of a rotating friction stick. Nothing in Coylia could do what he had just done.

“And now,” he added dramatically, waving the matches for effect, “the flavor of fire!”

He brought one of the matches down to the goblet.

A flickering blue flame popped audibly into place to meet it. The onlookers sighed. There was a long, stunned silence.

“The essence of fire. . . captured in a drink?” Dennis turned and saw that Hoss’k was goggle-eyed.

“A marvelous feat,” Kremer agreed, quite calmly. “It is akin, perhaps, to the fashion in which the wizard’s people enslave those tiny creatures within his little boxes. They have found a way to trap fire as well, it would seem. Wonderful.”

“But. . .but. . .” Hoss’k spluttered. “Fire is one of the life essences! Even the followers of the Old Belief agree with that. It is reserved for the gods who make and practice men! We may release the essence of fire from that which once lived. . . but we cannot trap it!”

Dennis couldn’t help it. He laughed. Hoss’k was nervously licking his tips, and seeing the deacon squirm gave Dennis a moment’s satisfaction. Here, at last, was some repayment for what the fellow had done to him.

“Did I not say it?” Kremer’s laughter boomed. “Dennis Nuel knows how to trap anything within a tool! What wonders might we expect if he is but given our full support?”

The crowd applauded dutifully, but Dennis could tell they were cowed. Their faces were touched with superstition and uncertainty.

Dennis glanced to his left, still grinning over giving Hoss’k the shock of his life. Then he saw Linnora, her face a mask of concern and fear.

The Princess favored Dennis with a withering glance, then swept about in a flourish to leave the hall, followed by her maid.

Now he recalled what Hoss’k had said about “the Old Belief” Apparently his little demonstration had reawakened her fear of those who abused life essences. Dennis cursed softly. Was there anything he could do here that wouldn’t be misinterpreted by her?

It had been the Baron who declaimed on what Dennis had done, he realized, at last. Kremer had put his actions in a light that boxed him in a corner, insuring that Linnora would misunderstand.

He was outclassed by the man. He could not oppose that kind of manipulative skill. How could there be any choice but to go along?

He only hoped that someday Linnora, too, would, understand.

6

A bit foggyheaded from the party, Arth and Dennis were late reporting to the still the next morning. When they arrived, they found that the crew had had a celebration of their own and left the still a shambles in the process.

The prisoners groveled, terrified of the wizard’s wrath.

Dennis just sighed, “Aw hell,” and set the men to work fixing the damage. Keeping busy helped him not think about his overall situation.

He had made progress in his plan to win influence over the warlord, Kremer. He still thought it the most logical plan— best for himself, for his friends, for Linnora, and even for the people of this land.

Yet the episode last night left him with a sour feeling. He worked hard, and tried to drive the memory away.

A little after noon, a bugle cried out from the front gate. The call was answered by trumpets on the castle tower. Troops in the yard hurried to fell into formation along a corridor from gate to castle.

Dennis looked at Arth, who shrugged. The little thief-cum-moonshiner had no idea what was happening.

Down a ramp from the keep came Baron Kremer and his entourage, their bright, centuries-old robes almost painful to look at in the sunshine. The tall plumed helm of Kremer’s cousin, Lord Hern, stood out in the crowd of courtiers.

They halted at a dais overlooking the massed companies and watched as the outer gate swung back.

In rode a small procession on horseback.

“It’s th’ embassy from th’ L’Toff!” Arth breathed.

They had been told such a party was coming. The L’Toff were searching for their missing Princess and no doubt suspected she was being kept here.

The rumors must have spread far and wide since the jailbreak, and especially since Zuslik’s aristocracy were let in on it, Kremer was publicly feigning innocence until it suited his purposes to do otherwise. But apparently he was no longer worried about suspicions.

For all of his apparent good favor with the warlord, Dennis had not been invited to attend the meeting of the welcoming committee. It was another sign of Kremer’s masterful insight into people. He clearly knew the foreign wizard was not trustworthy on the subject of the L’Toff Princess.

Dennis looked up at the third-level parapet, where he had often seen Linnora walk. She wasn’t in sight, of course. Her guards would keep her well secluded during the brief visit by her kinfolk.

He walked over to the low fence enclosing his work area and put a foot up on one of the rough wooden rails. He and Arth watched the embassy pass the arrayed soldiers to approach Baron Kremer’s platform.

There were five riders, all wearing soft cloaks in muted colors. They looked normal enough to Dennis’s eyes, though all five wore beards, unfashionable among Coylians. They seemed a trifle more slender than the people of Zuslik, or Kremer’s northmen. The five rode looking straight ahead, ignoring the xenophobic stares of the troops, until they came within a dozen yards of the dais where Kremer waited.

Two L’Toff held reins for the others as they dismounted and saluted the Baron.

Dennis could see Kremer’s face better than he could the emissaries’. He couldn’t hear what was said, but Kremer’s answer was obvious. The warlord smiled with unctuous sympathy. He raised his hands and shook his head.

“Next he’ll say he’s had scouts out scourin’ the countryside far an’ wide for their Princess,” Arth said.

Sure enough, Kremer waved an arm at his troops and at a squad of mounted horsemen. Then he pointed to the gliders circling patiently in the updraft over the castle.

“The two L’Toff on the right aren’t buyin’ it,” Arth commented. “They’d like to take th’ castle apart, startin’ with th’ Baron hisself.”

The gray-bearded leader of the embassy tried to stifle one of his companions, a brown-haired youth in dark-brown body armor, who shrugged off restraint and shouted hotly at the Baron. Kremer’s guards muttered angrily and shifted weight, poised for a nodded command from their Lord.

The young L’Toff looked contemptuously at the tense guards and spat on the ground.

Arth chewed on a grass stem speculatively. “I’ve heard it used to be the L’Toff were pacifists. But they’ve had to become fighters the past two hunnerd years or so, in spite of the protection o’ th’ King and the old Duke. Some of ‘em are said to be about as good as th’ King’s own scouts.”

Arth pointed to the tall, angry young L’Toff. “That one may make it hard for the ambassador to get outta here without a

fight.”

Arth sounded like he was handicapping horses. From what Dennis had heard, one of the major spectator sports here in Coylia seemed to be watching men hack each other to bits and betting on the outcome.

The Baron did not rise to the young man’s challenge. Instead he grinned and whispered to one of his aides, who sped away.

Kremer waved forward trays of refreshment, which he diplomatically sampled first. He had seats brought for his guests as the troops stepped back to create a broad aisle from the dais to the courtyard wall.

The L’Toff looked suspicious, but they could hardly refuse. They sat nervously near their host. As they turned his way, Dennis thought he saw, in the face of the angry young man, a family resemblance to Linnora.

He wondered if her fey sensitivity had informed the Princess that relatives were only a few hundred meters away.

Dennis had finally become convinced Linnora really had such a gift. Over a month ago the power had led her to the zievatron, where she was captured. It had enabled her to know him in the dark prison yard weeks later.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep her from falling under the spell of Hoss’k’s fallacious logic, or to let her see through Kremer’s manipulative explanations.

In any event, her talent was apparently intermittent and quite rare even among the L’Toff. Kremer didn’t seem afraid of it

Arth clutched Dennis’s shoulder and gasped. Dennis followed his pointing finger.

A cluster of guards were dragging a prisoner from one of the castle’s lower gates. Dust rose from the struggle, for the captive was very big and very angry.

Dennis suddenly realized it was Mishwa Qan, the giant whose strength had been key to their breakout from jail. Mishwa bellowed and heaved against his bonds. When he saw they were leading him to a scarred, upright post, the battle became furious.

But the guards had been chosen carefully to be almost his equal in size. Dennis saw his old nemesis, Sergeant Gil’m, pulling a rope tied to Mishwa’s neck.

Kremer motioned the scholar Hoss’k forward from his entourage. Hoss’k bowed to the dignitaries and brought forth items to show them, one at a time. Dennis stirred when he saw that the first was his camp-watch alarm.

As the L’Toff stared at the lights on the screen, Dennis wondered what changes practice had wrought in the tiny machine since the last time he had seen it.

No doubt Hoss’k was pointing out how difficult it would now be for an enemy to approach the castle undetected.

Then he demonstrated Dennis’s monocular, showing the L’Toff how to use it, pointing out various objects. When the ambassador put the scope down he was visibly shaken.

Dennis felt a slow burning rise within him—a combination of shame and deep anger. In spite of the strategy he had chosen, for very good reasons, his natural sympathies were with the L’Toff.

Dennis didn’t like it one bit when Hoss’k turned and pointed directly at him. Kremer smiled and bowed slightly to his wizard. The Baron’s well-rehearsed personal guard shouted Dennis’s name in unison.

He scowled. If only there were some way of communicating with the L’Toff privately!

By now Mishwa Qan had been dragged to the post and tied into place. Dennis had already figured out that they planned to execute the man. He had witnessed many executions during the past week, and there was nothing at all he could do. Arth knew that as well and stood almost rock-still.

The guard, Gil’m, marched up to the overlord and bowed. Kremer drew something small from his robe and handed it to the trooper, who bowed again and turned to march back down the dais toward the prisoner.

Realization struck Dennis. “No!” he cried aloud.

Gil’m marched halfway to the target post. Mishwa Qan glared back at him, hands flexing uselessly under his bonds. The big thief shouted a challenge at Gil’m which everyone in the yard could hear, offering to take the trooper on blindfolded, with any choice of weapons.

Gil’m simply grinned. He lifted a small black shape.

Dennis felt a purple outrage. “No!” he screamed.

He vaulted the fence and ran toward the execution aisle, dodging one set of guards, then plowed through two more who ran to cut him off. He flattened one with a round house. Those on the dais turned to look at the commotion as one of Dennis’s own guards tackled him from behind. At that moment Gil’m aimed Dennis’s needler and pulled the trigger.

In the confusion only a few people were actually looking at the prisoner when the burst of tiny metal needles struck at hypersonic velocity. But everyone heard the explosion. Dennis heard Arth’s astonished gasp.

Fighting partway free of a pile of guardsmen, Dennis struggled up far enough to see a bloody stump where the target post had been sheared in half. Beyond that lay a gaping hole in the wooden wall.

The needler had, indeed, been getting practice. Gil’m grinned and held the weapon up to the sun.

A wave of revulsion and shame overwhelmed Dennis. He snarled and flailed at those around him, biting at one hand that grabbed near his face. Then a heavy object struck him from behind and turned off the lights.

7

Linnora stared at the little creatures that arranged themselves in such orderly rows on the face of the little box. At the far right they shifted and reformed with great rapidity, hopping into new positions almost faster than she could follow with her eyes. The group next to the left shifted their formations more slowly, and so on. At the far left, the tiny bugs were patient, and seemed to take about half a day to make their next move.

The little box wasn’t much more than four times the size of the first digit of her thumb. On each side it had two straps, one of which ended in little metal pieces whose purpose she had yet to divine.

Hesitantly, Linnora tried pressing a few of the many little nubs that protruded from the half of the box where no bugs danced. The bugs hopped into new patterns every time she touched one of the nubs.

A part of her wanted to laugh at the antics the little creatures went through—there was an urge to play and make them dance some more.

No. She put the little box down and withdrew her hand. She would not experiment with living things. Not without knowing what she was doing and having a clear idea of her purpose. That was one of the oldest credos of the Old Belief, handed down from parent to child from the earliest days of the L’Toff.

Only a deep conviction that they needed to be within the box to survive kept Linnora from breaking it to set the little slaves free.

That and a lingering uncertainty that they really were slaves.

The ordered patterns had a feeling to them. . .not joy exactly, but pride, perhaps. She sensed that very much had gone into the making of the little box and its tiny occupants.

There was more complexity here than she had ever encountered before one month ago.

If only I could know for certain, she sighed silently.

Deacon Hoss’k had made such a consistent and logical case! The wizard’s people must have used ruthless means to accomplish such wonders. . .especially to freeze the state of practice in each of these amazing tools. The lives of many of the equivalent of the L’Toff in Dennis Nuel’s homeland must have been sacrificed so these things would remain in unchanged perfection.

Or must they? Linnora shook her head, confused.

Could the whole logic of making and practicing be different somewhere else?

Once upon a time it had not been the same here on Tatir, according to the Old Belief. In ancient days, before the fall, it was life that had been perfectible, and tools had no powers at all.

That was what the stories said.

Resting her elbows on the dressing table, she let her face fall into her hands. Hope had been fragile since that day when Hoss’k’s men boiled out of the forest near the wizard’s mysterious little house. Now, with Kremer pressing his demands harder than ever, with the L’Toff searchers come and gone without contact, she felt more desperate than ever.

If only there were a way to believe in the wizard! If only he were the kind of man she had originally felt him to be, instead of serving Kremer and living high—in his plush new rooms with his pretty serving wench—proving himself a complacent syncophant to Kremer’s rising star like all the others!

She wiped her eyes, determined not to weep again. On the table before her the little bugs continued their mysterious dance, whirling on the right, shifting slowly on the left. Marking time.

8

Dennis woke up feeling as if his body had been used to practice baseball bats. The first few times he tried to move, he only managed to rock from side to side a bit. He hurt all over.

At last he succeeded in rolling to one side and got his eyes blearily open.

Well, he wasn’t in the luxurious quarters he had been assigned before. Still, he wasn’t in the dungeon either. The room had the rough-hewn, half-finished look of the newer, higher parts of the castle.

Guards stood by the door—two of Kremer’s northland clansmen. When they saw that he had awakened, one of them stepped out into the hall and spoke a few words.

Dennis sat up in the cot, groaning aloud just a little at the twinges. His throat was sore and dry, so he reached over to the rickety bedstand to pour himself a cup of water from an earthenware jar. His cut lip stung as he drank.

He put down the cup and settled back against the rough pillow, watching the clansmen watch him. He said nothing to the guards and expected no words from them.

His status had declined, apparently.

There were heavy bootsteps in the hallway. Then the door was flung back. Baron Kremer stepped over the threshold.

Dennis had to blink at the brilliance of the man’s clothing in the sunlight that streamed behind him. Kremer regarded Dennis silently, his dark eyes in shadow below heavy brows.

“Wizard,” he said at last, “what am I going to do with you?”

Dennis sipped again-from the cup. He licked his stinging lips gingerly.

“Uh, that’s a real toughie, your Lordship. Let’s see, though. I think I might have an idea.

“How about this? You’re going to help me and my friends, in utter sincerity and to the best of your ability, to return to our homes in good health, both mental and physical?”

Kremer’s slow smile was not particularly appreciative.

“That is a thought, Wizard. On the other hand, it occurs to me that the palace torturer has been complaining that his spare tools are getting out of practice. Only the main set has had any work the past month or so. Remedying that situation seems equally appealing.”

“You face a quandary,” Dennis sympathized.

“It is a difficult choice.” The Baron shook his head.

“I am certain you’ll work something out, though.”

“Are you, really? Ah! Such confidence from a wizard is inspiring. Still, the two options do seem mutually contradictory, I was wondering if you might be able to suggest a compromise solution. Just a hint, mind you.”

Dennis nodded. “A compromise. Hmm.” He scratched his stubble. “How about something midway in between, like me doing your bidding quickly and cheerfully, giving you whatever you desire, in return for which you will keep me in a moderate level of comfort, and string me along with minor rewards and vague promises of eventual freedom and power?”

Kremer smiled. “An amazing solution! No wonder they call you a wizard.”

Dennis shrugged modestly. “Oh, it was nothing, really.”

The Baron cracked his knuckles. “Then it is settled. You have two more days to complete the making of your beverage ‘distillery’ and to teach my servants to practice it. Then you shall begin work on something of more immediate practical value, such as more of the beautiful long-range killing weapons. If, as you claim, the animals needed to drive such devices are lacking in my realm, I shall require that you come up with something else of military value.

“Is our compromise clear, then?”

Dennis nodded. He was thinking, and he had had enough of bantered wisecracks for now. They hadn’t really helped all that much, anyway.

“One more thing, Wizard. Should you ever again embarrass me in front of outsiders, or attempt to thwart me in any way, you will find my torturers have planned something special for you. There will be no repeat of yesterday’s unfortunate demonstration. Am I understood?”

Dennis said nothing. He looked at the tall blond man in the resplendent costume, and nodded, barely.

The Baron acknowledged with a possessive smile. “You will be happy here, Dennis Nuel,” he promised. “Eventually— perhaps soon, if you behave well—we will improve your quarters again. Then you and I can talk as gentlemen once more. I would be interested in learning how your people persuade their recalcitrant L’Toff to become pliant. Perhaps Princess Linnora can be a test case.”

He grinned, then turned and left. The door closed, leaving Dennis alone with a single guard. For a long time there was silence; only the distant shouts of drilling troops carried up from far below.

The Earthman sat on his cot. He could almost imagine it perceptibly changing, minute by minute, into a better and better bed as he lay in it.

Logically, his options were still the same, only put off a little. In a year or two of feeding Kremer wonders he felt sure he could gain the man’s trust and gratitude, especially if he invented gunpowder for him, ensuring his conquest of all Coylia.

Dennis shook his head, making up his mind. He hadn’t thought about it much before, but there were few worse criminals on any world than the engineer who blithely and knowingly hands over to a tyrant the tools of oppression. Come plague or ruin, he wasn’t going to give Kremer gunpowder, or the wheel, or the secret of metal smelting, or anything else he could use to make war.

What options did that leave, then?

Only escape. Somehow he had to get out of here again.

9

Hot iron pincers closed upon his thumbs. A steaming stench rose where the flesh shriveled back, rolling away on black, curling ash.

Dennis moaned. He felt a wet splash against his face and he opened his eyes, breathing hard.

Arth looked down at him worriedly. “You were dreamin’, Dennizz. It must’ve been a bad one. Are you all right now?”

Dennis nodded. He had been taking a nap near their work area after supper. It was twilight already, out in the shadow of the castle.

“Yeah,” he muttered, “I’m okay.” He got up and dried his face on a towel. He still felt shaken from the dream.

“I just got back from the jailyard,” Arth told him. “I said I wanted to go and personally pick the guys to run the new still.”

Dennis nodded. “Did you find out anything?”

Arth shook his head. “Nobody’s seen Stivyung or Gath or Maggin or any more of my boys, so they don’t seem to’ve been caught.”

Dennis was glad. Perhaps Stivyung would eventually be reunited with his wife and son. The news helped lift his spirits a little.

“So what’s the plan now?” Arth asked, too low to be overheard by the guards. “Do we try to make another balloon? Or do you have somethin’ else in mind, like that saw that can break through walls?”

After the execution of his friend, Arth was no longer tempted by life within the castle walls. All he wanted was to get away from here, to see his wife again, and to hurt Baron Kremer as badly as possible. The thief looked to the Earth-man with complete confidence.

Dennis wished he could share the feeling.

As twilight fell, a squad of soldiers climbed a pedestal in the courtyard where Dennis’s needler was kept during the day. When not being practiced or stored for the night, it was exposed to sunlight, always surrounded by at least six guards.

Dennis had run through a few calculations. Clearly the needler was approaching the theoretical limit of capability for that type of weapon. No matter how efficient it became, it could only throw slivers of metal with the amount of energy it could absorb through a five-square-centimeter solar collector.

That gave Dennis one more reason to get out of here. Kremer had talked of using the needler to blast down the walls of cities. Dennis didn’t want to be around when the Baron found out the deadly little weapon could be practiced only so far.

He watched the guards cautiously remove the needler from its little solarium. No. The device was guarded much too closely. He clearly wasn’t going to be able to reclaim his property and blast his way to freedom. There would have to be another way.

He had considered building a wheeled cart and practicing it into an armored car. Theoretically, it should be possible. But it could take months or years, at the rate things normally improved here. It just wasn’t feasible under the circumstances.

As dusk settled, the watch kites were pulled in. The Baron’s glider corps had already swooped down from their training flights for the night.

Dennis thought again about those glider sheds. They were lightly guarded. It took long training to learn to fly one of the gossamer-winged things, and Baron Kremer apparently assumed he controlled the only corps of qualified pilots in the world.

He was right. Dennis had never flown even a fixed-wing glider, not to mention one of these kite things. But he had taken a few private flying lessons in single-engined prop planes. He had always intended to go back and get his license.

The two kinds of flying couldn’t be that different, could they?

Anyway, he had seen lots of movies and talked to hang-glider pilots about how it was done. And he had taken courses in the physics of aerodynamics. The principles seemed simple enough.

“Have you managed to pick a way in and out of your room yet?” he asked Arth.

“Of course.” The small thief sniffed. “They bolt th’ door, but you can’t keep a fellow like me in a room that hasn’t been practiced as a jail.”

“Especially with the help of a little slippery oil.”

Arth shrugged. They had been careful to collect the stuff when nobody was looking, so they only had a little. Still, just a little bit of the perfect lubricant could go a long way.

“I can get about the cruder parts of th’ castle pretty well after dark. The hard part’s the outer walls, where they’ve got dogs, an’ sniffer beasts, an’ lights and guards by the dozens. I could pilfer half the stuff in Kremer’s banquet room if I knew I could get off the castle-mount with it.”

“Do you think you could snatch one of those?” Dennis nodded toward the shed where they had watched the pilots carefully fold their machines earlier.

Arth looked at Dennis nervously. “Uh, I dunno. Those gliders are kinda bulky. .. .” He bit his lower lip. “Your question’s just .. . uh, hypothetical.” He carefully spoke the word Dennis had taught him. “Isn’ it? It doesn’ have nothin’ to do with your idea on how to escape from here, does it?”

“It does, Arth.”

Arth shuddered. “I was afraid you’d say that. Dennizz, do you know how many men Kremer lost before they learned to handle those things? They still lose nearly half their new pilots. Can you actually fly one?”

Dennis needed Arth’s help. To get it he would have to inspire faith. “What do you think?” he asked confidently.

Arth smiled slightly, tentatively. “Yeah, sure. I guess only an idiot would try to take off in one of those things, in th’ dark, without knowin’ what he’s doin’. I’m sorry, Dennizz.”

Dennis managed not to wince visibly at his friend’s way of putting it. He clasped Arth’s shoulder. “Right. Now, do you think you’ll be able to hide the glider until we need it? Kremer’s people don’t seem to understand inventory control, but they may miss it anyway.”

“No problem.” Arth grinned. “My room’s stuffed with heaps of cloth and lumber for our ‘experiments.’ The servants’ve got orders to give us any junk we want, whatever’s not sharp or made of metal. I can hide it in there easy.”

“Will you want me to help in the heist?”

Arth shivered. “Uh, no, Dennizz. Some things are best left to experts. You walk like a bull rickel tha’s lookin’ for a female under a house.  No offense, but I’ll do it m’self.  Don’t you worry about a thing.”

“All right, then.” Dennis looked at the settling twilight. “Maybe you’d better retire a bit early this evening, Arth. You look pretty tired.”

“Huh? But it’s only. . .oh.” Arth nodded. “You want me to do it tonight.” He shrugged. “Ah, well, why not? That means we make th’ break tomorrow night?”

“Or the night after.” Dennis was under a time limit. Kremer would not be stalled much longer.

“Okay.” Arth had picked up the expression from Dennis. The little thief yawned exaggeratedly for the benefit of the guards. He spoke out loud. “Well, I think I’ll work on improvin’ my cot for a while!” He nudged Dennis with his elbow and winked. “See you in the mornin’, boss!” Then he added under his breath, “I hope.”

“Good luck,” Dennis said softly as Arth walked away, followed by his guard. Dennis felt bad asking him to risk his neck like this. But the fellow knew his job and would do it cheerfully. Dennis counted himself lucky to have him as his friend.

Nearby, a small stream of pungent liquor had begun to drip from the end of the condenser. If that kept up, the crew’s main job would be simply to watch and practice the distillery as a unit. The hard part was teaching them to change the wine mix properly.

Dennis found his thoughts drifting several parapets higher. Now that he was committed to trying an escape soon, he would have to settle his feelings about Princess Linnora.

If he was really serious about doing something for her, somehow during the next twenty-four hours he would have to get in touch with her, somehow regain her trust, and find a way to get her away from her guards for a rendezvous with the glider at the castle peak.

It sounded next to impossible.

He only hoped that she would give him a chance to explain if the time ever came.

The distillery crew huddled around the condenser, watching the slow drip-dripping of brandy into a flask.

Dennis caught some brandy on his fingers and shuddered as he sniffed, wishing nostalgically for the bottle of thirty-year-old Johnny Walker Swing that presumably still sat in his closet back at Sahara Tech.

He popped a few drops into his mouth and then sucked air. The stuff did have a bite to it, he had to admit.

The evening shift of practicers arrived to relieve the day crew. It was time to change the pot anyway, so he ran the Coylian prisoners through the routine several times to make sure they had it down right.

By the time they had finished, the stars were coming out. He made sure all was in order, then picked up his cloak from the railing. “I want to stretch my legs,” he told his guards.

The northmen bowed slightly and followed behind. Although his privileges had been sharply reduced, he was still at least officially a quasiguest. . .and a wizard. He had freedom of the yard so long as he was accompanied.

He strolled the long way, past the glider sheds and then the main gate. As he neared the section of the castle where the L’Toff Princess had her rooms, his doubts returned. Every parapet was rimmed with sharp stakes, practiced every day by teams of soldiers armed with slabs of meat. To land a glider upon one and take off again would be as impossible as climbing those sheer walls appeared to be.

Should he take an already risky plan and reduce its chance to negligible by trying to free Linnora as well? Would that be fair to Arth?

Dennis rounded a corner and felt his pulse rise. In the light from the flickering wall cressets, he saw a slim girl dressed in white holding onto the bars three levels up. The L’Toff Princess stared into the starry night, the breeze tugging at her filmy gown. As Dennis approached, his guards keeping a steady five paces behind, he saw the girl turn. Someone else had come out onto her balcony.

Dennis bent in the shadows to tie the laces of his boots, and he looked up as casually as he could. He saw Baron Kremer come forth and confront Linnora. She looked terribly small before him.

The warlord spoke to her and she shook her head in reply. She tried to turn away, but he grabbed her arm and spoke again, more sharply. Dennis still couldn’t make out what was being said, but he could catch the tone.

Linnora struggled, but Kremer only laughed and pulled her close, holding her against his broad chest in spite of her resistance.

One of the guards behind Dennis made a rough joke. Obviously they thought their Lord was giving the haughty tirbeswoman only what she had coming.

Dennis felt under his waistband. Four carefully selected smooth stones made a lump there. He hadn’t had any opportunity to practice his crude weapon. It would only be as good as he had made it. All told, it was not much better a makeshift sling than the cummerbund he had used for the same purpose at that last Sahara Tech party.

Still, he could probably get one or two stones off before the guards brought him down. And Kremer was a big target.

If I were one of Shakespeare’s characters I’d consider it worthwhile to die for a lady’s virginity, he thought. Or at least her honor.

Dennis’s shoulders sagged. Most of Shakespeare’s characters had been poetic idiots. Even if he succeeded in striking down Kremer, it would only buy Linnora a respite. At the cost of his own life.

It wasn’t worth it. Not when he might be able to get her out of here tomorrow if he were patient. He was willing to risk his life for her, but he would not throw it away uselessly.

There was the sound of ripping cloth.

He turned away so he wouldn’t have to witness it. At least by forcing the guards to follow him, he could spare the girl an audience to her humiliation. He walked away quickly, shoulders hunched. The guards chuckled as they followed.

He got ten paces, then a hint of motion in the sky caught his eye.

Dennis stopped. He looked to the south.

Something in the southern sky was blocking a small patch of stars. It moved in the night, faster than a cloud and more regular in outline, growing larger as it came closer. He squinted, but with his night vision ruined by the tower torches, he couldn’t make it out.

Then a smile came unexpectedly. Could it be. . . ?

At the southern edge of the encampment there was a sudden outcry, then a clamor of anxious shouts. Men came running out of the barracks, struggling into armor as an alarm bell began to clang.

Out of the night gloom, into the light of the tower torches, a giant round shape suddenly loomed. It had two great eyes that shimmered and glared angrily. At the bottom of the huge, looming face was a great maw. A fire burned within.

“Ha-ha!” Dennis jumped and struck at the air with his fist. “Kremer didn’t catch the others! They practiced it, and it flies! It really flies!”

A giant globe of fabric and hot air hissed and cobbed over the outer wall, slowly gaining altitude. In a wickerwork gondola below the globe, the dim shapes of his friends were vague shadows against the flames.

Still, something seemed to be wrong with the balloon. It wasn’t rising as fast as Dennis would have hoped. And worse luck, it was headed right for Kremer’s castle! It looked like it would barely clear the palace peak!

“Come on, guys,” he muttered while his guards pointed fearfully, their eyes outlined white in fear. “Up! Rise up and get out of here!” Dennis stared hard at the balloon, practicing it at climbing.

And it did seem to rise faster now, gaining slowly. Tiny faces peered from the gondola down into the courtyard below. A few soldiers threw spears and stones but none quite reached the majestic, silent craft.

Dennis turned to see how Kremer was taking this. It would be great for something to stick in the tyrant’s imperturbable craw,

The Baron had let go of Linnora, who huddled against the wall, rubbing her bruised arms and weeping silently.

But unlike his men, Kremer did not appear frightened at all. Instead, a smile spread across his lips as he reached into his tunic.

“Oh,” Dennis said, realizing. “Oh, no you don’t, you son-of-a-bitch.”

He hurriedly unraveled his waistband as his guards cowered underneath the glowering shadow of the balloon. There was a thumping sound as two bags of sand exploded into spray nearby, sending men fleeing.

Dennis’s carefully selected stones popped into his hand. He ran toward the first parapet, stretching out his sash and praying he would be in time.

Kremer was savoring the moment, bless him, letting the crude aerostat approach as he fondled the Earthmade needler. Dennis measured out a length of waistband, dropped a stone into the fold, and began swinging the makeshift sling over his head.

Except for that evening at S.I.T., he hadn’t used a sling much since his Boy Scout days. If only he had been able to practice!

Kremer raised the needler and languidly aimed it at the great balloon just as Dennis cast loose.

The stone struck a parapet spike just in front of the Baron and ricocheted noisily into the night. Kremer jumped back in surprise. He looked about for a second, then saw Dennis in the lighted courtyard below, struggling to ready another stone.

Kremer grinned and aimed downward, at the Earthman. Dennis knew, in that telescoped moment, that there wasn’t time to get off another stone. He had barely begun his second swing when Kremer fired.

A hail of deadly slivers tore up the ground a few meters to Dennis’s right. Dennis blinked in surprise as he found himself alive. The reason was readily apparent. A small storm of blond hair and fingernails had struck the Baron, spoiling his aim a second time.

A little amazed but not yet counting his luck, Dennis swung the sling, looking for a clear shot. But now Linnora was in the way. The Princess was all over her captor, struggling to take the handgun from him.

Dennis’s arm was beginning to tire. If only she’d move aside now!

The balloon was directly overhead and moving fast. All the aeronauts needed was maybe another half minute to get away. . . .

Kremer got a grip on Linnora’s arm and flung her down. There were scratch marks on his face, and at last he looked perturbed. Kremer cast Dennis a look that seemed to say his turn would come, and he lifted the needler to bear on the balloon.

Dennis’s guards must have caught on at last. He finished swinging even as he heard them running toward him. He felt a rightness as he let go of the second stone just in time.

The stone struck Kremer’s left temple at the same moment as the balloon reached the zenith, and several hundred pounds of guard tackled Dennis from behind.

As the ground came up to meet him, Dennis thought, I’ve got to stop meeting people like this.

8

‘Eurekaarrgh”