Goblinopolis, The Tol Chronicles, Book 1 (35 page)

“I certainly believe you. However, I’m
not
your peer.”

“Well, it’s good that you recognize that, at least.”

“I don’t think you understand. Check your math. I’ll wait.”

After a chat with the Oria Magineer—who turned out not to be Boogla’s peer after all—that was in the end productive and congenial, the Magineer Liaison departed Lumbos for Tillimil. Kryptoq now knew precisely what the King expected of him and his office, and he accepted those assignments without reservation. Boogla had established herself as an intellectual and diplomatic force to be reckoned with, and the other Magineers knew it within minutes of her departure.

The road to Tillimil was somewhat arduous in the best of conditions; in the aftermath of the magical tempests its traversal became downright challenging. The carriage tracks were washed out on the southeastern end of the Ullglava valley, a wide, fertile plain between the Bungash and Espwe mountain ranges that served as the breadbasket for Tragacanth. It was almost entirely occupied by sprawling back-to-back grain farmsteads. The rivers and streams were lined with extensive vegetable plots. The land approaching the foothills of both ranges was occupied, in turn, by ranches raising the meat and dairy livestock upon which the Tragacanthan livelihood largely depended.

The Royal Transportation Officer assigned to Boogla arranged during the carriage trip down from Lumbos for a heavy off-road military dray to meet them at the last serviceable carriage roundabout, in the little town of Strix about forty kilometers beyond the Southern end of the Bungash range. The voyage from Strix to Tillimil was not exactly smooth sailing, but the large dray was quite accustomed to slogging through mud and debris and carried Boogla and her companions without complaining, albeit with numerous jolts and bumps.

Tillimil, and in fact virtually all of Ferroc Sutha, was in disarray as a result of the magical storms that had wreaked so much havoc during the past few days. Nevertheless there was a formal reception waiting for Boogla—she and her party were taken to the Duber in the Magineer’s own conveyance, with two honor guards as escorts. This was much more in keeping with diplomatic protocol, and Boogla took mental note of the way things were supposed to work. The encounter with Kryptoq had apparently propagated to the other Dubers.

El-Asral was a cultured goblin of multitudinous accomplishment and impeccable breeding. He was courteous and engaging, and Boogla found herself both impressed by and strangely drawn to him. He was everything she had expected a Magineer to be. Despite the fact that he had a lot on his plate trying to analyze and counter the maelstroms and their aftermath, he met with her on her own schedule, patiently listened to her concerns and the instructions she conveyed from the Royal Seat, and responded appropriately and eloquently.

Boogla left the Sutha Duber in good spirits and ahead of schedule, so she took a little time out to sightsee. Tillimil had suffered some damage from the storms, true, but much of the charm of the old port city remained intact. The trees here were nowhere near as tall and magnificent as those in Lumbos, but they had a spreading stately majesty of their own. Encased in a silvery bark of wonderful carved intricacy, they threw their limbs out in all directions, creating an umbrella-like canopy that played host to myriad species of brightly-plumaged avian life. Long twisted tendrils of greenery cascaded from the higher limbs almost to the ground, like verdant streamers announcing some joyful forest celebration.

The trees swayed lazily in the wind, now that the gales had died down to the gentle salt-air breezes more characteristic of the area. The very essence of Tillimil was laid-back; even with damage from the recent storms in plain evidence it was still easy to imagine life as a mellow, rich experience, like a double dip of your favorite frozen confection on a summer’s day. Boogla closed her eyes and drank it all in. She decided then and there to return to Tillimil someday and spend a lot more time getting to know the city and its people.

For now it was time to start the very long journey to Ferroc Osta and Cladimil on the far western coast. She had never been to that district, or seen the Noorprid Sea; Boogla was both looking forward to and dreading it just a little. She’d heard some disturbing rumors about the folk of the western shores, although they were merely hearsay, she kept reminding herself. The broad expanse of plains and shoreline beyond the imposing Masron Mountains remained something of a mystery to the rest of Tragacanth, as contact was traditionally rather sporadic before the introduction of modern communications and conveyances only a couple hundred years prior. The western peoples were mechanically, not magically, inclined, and kept to themselves. Gnomes were more numerous here than in the other districts. Boogla knew comparatively little about them or their culture; what snippets she had heard were disconcerting, but she was determined to give them a clean slate nonetheless and see the truth for herself.

There were no major cities at all on the rail line from Tillimil to Cladimil. It wound through hundreds of kilometers of farmland, skirting the northern edge of the Espwes, making a long straight run traversing the wastelands of Asga Teslu before crossing the headwaters of the mighty Zongat River, whose meandering channel formed the major portion of the border between Tragacanth and Galanga to the south, and then bent northwesterly. Beyond the Zongat, between the Masrons and the sea, lay the western plains, rich with volcanic soils that supported most of the herbs, root vegetables, and tuber crops grown in Tragacanth. A great majority of the producing fruit trees in the kingdom were also located within a band fifty kilometers inland from the coastline.

Asga Teslu was a vast desert area of rugged hills, gorges, and exotically colorful geological formations, but almost totally devoid of significant vegetation. The Masrons trapped most all of the moisture that streamed in from the Noorprid Sea and precipitated it on the windward side, leaving nothing but hot, dry winds to sweep over the wastelands. While the desert had a certain stark beauty about it, Boogla had to admit she was relieved when the wind-carved sandstone chiaroscuros gave way to the verdant grasslands of the Western plains.

Cladimil boasted the highest per capita income in Tragacanth. Manufacturing firms wanted their corporate headquarters located here to be close to the vast gnomic talent pool and to take advantage of the abundant sunshine and temperate climate, as well as the expansive port facilities. The broad boulevards were lined with tropical trees and raised beds overflowing with brilliantly colored flowers. The buildings were all possessed of the same basic architectural facade by city ordinance, a tiled roof palacio-type construction that added to the overall exotic, well-to-do metropolitan ambience.

There was poverty and misery here as well, of course, but it was carefully hidden away from tourists and business executives in very strictly enforced ghettoes behind massive stone walls topped with gay foliage. The inhabitants were virtually prisoners in their own shabby neighborhoods; their comings and goings regulated by edict enforcement officers to minimize the negative impact they had on income-producing visitors, especially those from other continents who wanted to establish lucrative trade agreements with Tragacanthan firms headquartered on the ‘Platinum Coast,’ as it was self-billed.

The Ferroc Osta Duber was built in the same style as every other public building in Cladimil, only on a grander scale and with more attention to small architectural details. It was raised on a cliff overlooking a truly world-class panorama of the Noorprid, with the requisite complement of rolling waves, wheeling sea avians, and cavorting marine mammals seemingly on continuous duty. Dendrash, the Osta Magineer, had made it one of his agenda items to better accommodate visitors to the Duber. There were regular tours conducted from an elegant visitor center with a nice restaurant and easy access to the carriage station.

Boogla would have thoroughly enjoyed doing the tourist thing, but she had duties to discharge. Because of Cladimil’s importance as a manufacturing center and major port for trade with the far western nation of Solemadrina, Ferroc Osta was of critical strategic importance to Tragacanth. His Majesty had a fairly extensive laundry list of topics he wanted Boogla to cover with Dendrash, and their meeting took most of the day. Dendrash was businesslike but not without a sense of humor. He and Boogla got along better than she had anticipated.

Just before dusk Boogla finally had the opportunity to stroll the kilometer-long boardwalk paralleling the beach behind the Duber complex. The salt air and warmth were very relaxing, and made it easy to see why so many people wanted to retire here. She had an excellent evening repast of seafood stew and tender bumpershoots wilted in karsi oil, accompanied by a vintage silverplum wine. It was only with great reluctance that Boogla boarded her private carriage for Ferroc Norda at midnight. She would definitely have to visit Cladimil again when she had more time to appreciate its delights.

The rail line to Dresmak threaded its way somewhat precariously through fifty kilometers of narrow opening between mountains known as Krubber Pass. The railway alternated between steep canyon walls and vertigo-inducing bridges with nothing but air on both sides down to the rock-strewn cirque far below. Boogla decided that since she was going to be keeping her eyes shut for the next couple of hours anyway, she might as well take a long nap. She did briefly bring herself to look down as they passed over the source of the mighty Mernal River. Here it was just a spring-fed trickle, augmented by melting snow and ice in the spring. Hard to believe this was the beginning of the kilometer-wide monster that eventually emptied into Myndrythyl Bay, carrying hundreds of thousands of tonnes of alluvium and fifty meter-wide cargo barges with it.

Dresmak was not an unattractive place, but compared with the sun-splashed splendor of Cladimil it was positively uninspiring from Boogla’s perspective. The predominant building substrate here was granite—the nearby Masrons provided a wealth of easily-quarried raw material—and this lent the architecture an austere, classical feeling.

The city was laid out in very logical fashion, predictable and precise. The Duber and city government buildings were set in a circular complex at the geographic center; the various municipal districts then expanded in exactly-placed concentric circles from this nexus like ripples on a pond, somewhat in the Lumbos model but with none of the freeform style. The Dresmak Mayoral pram that brought Boogla from the carriage station to the Duber took her past stately mansions, row after row of brick and stone townhouses, and a plethora of meticulously maintained parks and other public spaces.

Imber-ol, the Norda Magineer, was equally august, at least on the surface. Once he and Boogla were sequestered in the Magineer’s Sanctum, however, he loosened up a bit, even joking now and then as they went over the King’s agenda. Once they’d covered Aspet’s topics, Imber-ol offered Boogla a drink of some excellent, difficult to acquire brandy that she couldn’t refuse. He led her down into his quite impressive libations cellar and locked the door behind him. This put her on guard, but he quickly reassured her that his intentions were not evil. “There is a project underway here,” he said to her as they wound their way down the stone stairs carved from the living rock itself, “known only to a select few. Indeed, I am not aware if, or to what extent, even His Majesty has been briefed, in truth.”

“What manner of ‘project’ are you referring to?”

“To answer that, I’ll have to give you some arcanophysical theory background. If you already know this I apologize in advance; please be patient and consider it a refresher in that event.”

Boogla nodded.

“We’ve known since the time of the Archmage Ezcariel that a careful synergy of reflection spells could non-invasively extract a complete psychic clone of a person, which could then be stored in a properly prepared arcane crystal for a number of years before it began to degenerate due to entropic mutation. Within the last decade we’ve also been able to generate a complete genetic clone of that person. Both of these advances are generally known throughout the magineering community. What is not known, however, is that the process for magically overlaying the psychic template onto the cloned organism has been perfected.”

Boogla gasped. “You mean you’ve figured out how to create an exact clone of a person, memories and all?”

“Yes and no. Yes, in that we could do this if we had a completely ‘empty’ adult shell into which to inject the psychic template. No, in that so far we haven’t been able to raise an organism to the adult state without any learned behaviors or memories creeping in. If the template is overlain onto any existing information, the resulting discrepancies have unpredictable and often catastrophic results for the subject. In effect, since the template is an entire psychic blueprint, there is no ‘room’ for additional, contradictory, data. Either the incoming or the existing data is destroyed during the overlay procedure, according to the laws of localized non-deterministic entropic information theory—with which you are no doubt familiar. It is not possible to predict which will survive, or what the resulting effect will be on the subject’s mental state. Another complication is that the template steadily loses integrity over time.”

“Is there no way to simply wipe the subject clean, as it were, prior to the procedure?”

“Not as such, no. However, we have discovered another direction from which this problem may be approached. Unlike on the physical plane, artifacts transported to The Slice are not subject to degradation, since time as we understand it does not exist there. A psychic image stored in The Slice will not degrade—or if it does, the timeframe will be eons from our point of view—so a ‘master copy’ sequestered there should allow a person to be cloned again and again and restored to the same mental state each time. A form of immortality, if you will, and a way to correct progressive mental degeneration by resetting the person’s brain to a known good state.”