The Practice Effect Part 12

Lantern-semaph.o.r.e 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 flas.h.i.+ng lights and the pa.s.sing troops of marching northmen in their high, bearskin helmets.

Arth, the small bandit leader, motioned his a.s.sociate 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 a.s.surance 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 s.h.i.+rts 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' n.o.body'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 Ladys.h.i.+p is too gracious," he said, his speech suddenly almost aristocratic. "We'll not sully your hands with paper money or amber. But our grat.i.tude 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 st.i.tching 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 n.o.bleman 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 a.s.surance. "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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sembly 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 G.o.ds.

"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 s.h.i.+ne.

"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 superst.i.tiously 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.