Scaevola's Triumph (Gaius Claudius Scaevola trilogy Book 3) (32 page)

They reached the entrance and were all rather dazzled by the light. When his eyes got accustomed, Gaius searched left and right. There were no signs of carnivores.

"Right," Gaius said. "See over there! That's the exit. I want you to march in line towards it. March, not run. However, if I yell 'Run!' you all run as fast as you possibly can. Do you all understand!"

The young Ulsians all nodded in agreement then began to get almost excited. A chance to outrun wild beasts! That the beast would almost certainly outrun them did not seem to figure in their enthusiasm. Out they marched, almost bubbling. Gaius held the elder Ulsian back, and then began to march towards the exit, the Ulsian in front. He looked around, but there were no signs of further carnivores, and in almost no time the party were through the exit. Two large Ulsians grabbed the elder Ulsian and took him away, meanwhile a small party of reporters had gathered, and wanted to hear Gaius' story.

There was little left to tell, since the younger Ulsians were bubbling forth, exaggerating and embellishing the story quite liberally.

* * *

"Magnificent result!"

"Don't tell me that was another test!" Gaius shook is head in disbelief.

"You didn't think it was, did you?" Kuldek said in concern.

"No, I didn't," Gaius admitted.

"Good," Kuldek nodded, "because it wasn't. It was real, those animals were real, the cave animal was real, and it's quite fierce when it wants to be. I certainly hope you didn't do all that because you thought it was a test and you were invincible."

"No, I didn't."

"Then it is a magnificent result. Your compassion for that cave animal was particularly impressive. Weren't you frightened?"

"To some extent," Gaius admitted, "but I felt there was intelligence there, it had helped me, so I felt I should try to help it, and . . ."

"No need to go on. That was very good, and if nothing else, will stop these Ulsians saying you're a barbarian. And yes, as a matter of fact, that cave animal has a certain level of intelligence. They even have a primitive language, made up of arm gestures. They seem to have acquired the concept from us, and have gradually evolved it, although some say they were originally in zoos, and were trained by Ulsians, and have then been resettled in the wild, and have kept some of what they learned, and evolved a little by using it. But that is not your problem.

"The most important part of this is, besides the additional information we have collected on how your brain works, you have demonstrated the leadership, the ability to read a situation, and the compassion to control the use of power to be permitted to command Ulsian forces. Yes, we were prepared to waive this, and take your word for certain things, but for our command to have been given a demonstration on Ulse is just magnificent."

"You thought this might happen when you sent me?"

"Nothing like this," Kuldek replied. "I thought you might be able to show kindness to young Ulsians, but when we sent you, we thought the young Ulsians had merely wandered off. It appears now they were abducted, and were going to be used as hostages, so your reading of the situation was really remarkable."

"You really didn't know?" Gaius asked.

"I assure you, no," Kuldek replied. "We would never send a single man into a hostage situation, let alone one who was unaware of what the situation was. Even if we were prepared to risk your life, which I assure you we were not, we would never risk young Ulsian life. No, this was a completely unexpected outcome, but it makes you once again a hero, so bask in it, and take advantage."

Chapter 25

"What you see here," Kuldek said, as he held a strange metallic object before them, "is a Krezell wand." He held it out for them to examine. It comprised a cylinder, as long as a foot, and of diameter such that Gaius could just get his index finger to reach his thumb when he held it between them. On one end was a small parabolic mirror-like object. There were strange markings on it, but nothing that was obviously functional and there was no obvious join, or any indication how access could be gained to the interior.

"The system you wish to use works like this," Kuldek continued. "A fine bio-mesh will be interspersed through your brain. Don't even think about asking how! Additionally some other objects are placed in your head and connected to the mesh, which is why your skull is to be enlarged slightly. The mesh 'reads' your thoughts and transmits this to the objects that send instructions as to what you wish to do in a machine-readable form. There has to be an Ulsian energy source nearby, and a generator of appropriate fields that provides the power and forces for whatever has to be done. The Krezell wand acts as an intermediary. It accesses the thoughts, and through your manipulation of the wand it indicates to what the action is directed, how much is done, and if the action is motion, to where. Identifying the target is easy, because, as you will see, you have light to indicate what you are going to do. Indicating direction is a little more difficult, but not too much so. Generating the appropriate fields, transmitting the appropriate energy, and controlling what you are doing is more difficult, and unfortunately it is almost impossible to describe how to do it to an alien, because you never know how an alien mind works. Your next task is to learn to control these effects."

"So you control it through your mind?" Gaius asked.

"You control the instructions through your mind," Kuldek said, "but it is usually easier to point it with your hand."

"We haven't got the mesh," Lucilla pointed out.

"No, but the objects on your heads will suffice," Kuldek said. "At least, they had better. You have to learn control, but we also have to learn exactly which parts of your brain participate in this."

"And what happens if none do?" Lucilla asked.

"Then your species will be incapable of using this technology," Kuldek said flatly, "in which case your efforts will have been in vain. However, let's not get too negative. There's no reason to believe you can't, so let's at least try."

"So what sort of things can you do?" Gaius asked, trying to be positive.

"More than you'd probably think," Kuldek smiled, "but a lot less than you'd like. The simplest, actually, is to fly a space ship, because the instructions go to the central computers of the ship, which are so powerful there is nothing you can think of that could possibly perturb them.

"But back to controllable actions. There are a number of restrictions, the major one being the availability of appropriate physics. However, let's not get too concerned about what you can't do right now. The first task is to learn how to do anything at all with it. There are ways of using language, but you must first learn analogue control.

"We shall start with something simple. For routine tasks, Ulsians colour code their instructions. This wand is set to the following: if you think of blue light and shine that light on an object it will heat the object. The stronger the blue, the more the heat."

"What happens if you think purple? Lucilla asked.

"If you've keyed in something for the colour red, you get that and heat," Kuldek replied.

"You wouldn't need to key in red as to cool," Lucilla noted with a touch of sarcasm.

"You wouldn't," Kuldek said, missing the point of Lucilla's comment. "You cannot cool. You can heat because physics permits radiation to be pumped into something from an external source, but you can't pump it out to that source. Also, you cannot magically make cold stuff appear and surround the object. You must understand that while you will be able to do some quite remarkable things, at least in terms of the culture you left, you can do nothing other than what physics and, far more restrictively, what the available power source allows."

"Perhaps we should try something," Gaius offered.

"Then you can each start," the Ulsian said. "Take your wand and point it at your block of ice at the end of the table. Think blue, and try to force something from inside you to push the blue out the wand. If it comes, point it at the ice. The objective is to light the ice with blue, and hence heat."

They each took a wand and sat down. Gaius held his, and thought blue. Nothing happened.

"Try to push a pencil of blue out of the wand," Kuldek said, "but don't try very hard. What I think is happening is that you are sending a whole lot of confusing thoughts."

Still nothing happened. Gaius gave a look of frustration.

"No, don't give up," the Ulsian said. "You must clear your mind. Just hold the wand, sit carefully on the chair, and try to remove every thought from your mind. Try just saying something like a number over and over again, and try not to think of anything else."

They sat, chanting.

"Now, try to think of the blue light."

Gaius sat and thought, but nothing happened. He was almost about to throw the wand away in disgust, when he heard the Ulsian voice say, "Good! Now, point the blue at the ice."

He looked over and saw Vipsania's wand had a pale blue light connecting it to the ice.

"Now, try to think harder, make the blue stronger."

To Gaius' surprise, the blue light did get stronger, and the rather large block of ice not only began to melt, but the water began to steam.

"Yes!" Vipsania cried out in triumph, and at the same time the blue light stopped. "Sorry," she said to the Ulsian. "I got excited."

"Justifiably so," Kuldek said. "You can try again if you wish, and learn how to turn it off, or weaken it."

Gaius and Lucilla stared as Vipsania started the blue light again, connected it, melted some water, then turned it off.

"Very good! Now, have a rest, and think carefully about what you did," Kuldek said, "and tell the others, because they're having trouble."

"I started off trying to think the wand was part of my hand," Vipsania said, "and eventually I felt a tingling. Then I thought of my hand being blue at the end, and then I sort of pushed it out by pushing up from my stomach."

"The idea of connecting the wand to you first is a good one," Kuldek nodded. "After a while you won't have to do this sort of thing consciously, but right now it's almost certainly a good idea."

Gaius nodded. He was now a little desperate. Life would deteriorate if Vipsania were able to use a wand while he couldn't. However, no matter what he did, nothing worked.

"Hey! Yes!" Vipsania cried out again. Gaius turned to see that Lucilla managed to start melting ice.

He should have congratulated her, he realized later, but his mood was darkening. If it were only women who could do it . . ?

"Gaius," the Ulsian said softly, "the reason you're not succeeding is that you're trying too hard. Relax. Empty your mind."

The problem was, he could not. The conscious effort to empty the mind only filled it!

He was not going to give up, but he began to realize that determination alone was not the answer. He tried everything, but nothing happened. It was just as he was beginning to think he would have to give up, and his mind really began to stop thinking about how important it was, he felt a tingling. He immediately began to think about success, and the tingling stopped.

"Perhaps you should try again tomorrow," Kuldek suggested.

"No," Gaius said. "I think I nearly had it." He sat back again, relaxed, and found the tingling there again. This time he tried to relax even further, and simply thought the wand was blue. It felt blue. He mentally pushed, and there was the light. He directed the light onto the ice, and calmly pushed the intensity up. There was a very intense blue light, the ice almost exploded in a cloud of steam, and Gaius stopped the light.

"There, you can all get an effect," Kuldek said. He was clearly pleased with himself. "The next important thing to aim for is control. Gaius has to learn to weaken his thoughts as well as strengthen them, you two must concentrate on strengthening your beams. That's for tomorrow. Tonight, spend at least half an hour in total silence, calmly thinking about what you did. Tomorrow, we shall try something else. When you hold the wand in your hand, by squeezing the wand you can thin the beam, so you can try to make a chisel-like beam, and if you succeed, you can try cutting something."

After a week they all found melting ice blocks rather easy, in fact Vipsania remarked that she found it difficult to see what the problem had been. They had learned to shape their beams, to produce broad heat to boil a pot of water, or narrow beams of high intensity to cut something. Next they learned how to move things. This could be done in a number of ways, the simplest involved aligning the momentum of many of the molecules, either in the air or medium around the object, or in the object itself. They found out how to move blocks across a table, to lift them to form a tower, then move levers. Then they learned how to move levers behind a wall, and how to sense the tumblers of a mechanical lock through the signals transmitted from the small motor unit, and to open it.

"Excellent!" Kuldek beamed when they had each opened locks. "What is important about that exercise is that you use the wand to sense the position of something before you move it, and to sense where to move it to. We shall do a number of these puzzles, to develop as far as possible the ability to get information back from the wand."

Chapter 26

It was then their days began to change. Each morning was spent developing skills with the wand. In the afternoon they were allocated separate rooms, and sat down in front of screens that wrapped completely around the room.

"Imagine this as the bridge of a space ship," Kuldek said, "and to help you, we shall fill in the image of a planet you have seen."

Immediately, the image of the gas giant filled the screen on the left side. Then, directly in front, a small image of a space ship appeared.

"We're going to pretend you're a pilot," Kuldek said. "The object is to fly over to that ship, and dock. How would you do that?"

"I thought the ship did that itself," Gaius said. "The captain tells the ship, and the ship does it."

"The first problem is how to tell your ship," Kuldek said, then held up his hand as Gaius began to answer. "A warship has a very large range of options available to it. Far more than a domestic ship. So you have to be specific. You start by taking your Krezell wand and instruct the ship to accept a white light as a pointer."