Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) (18 page)

Chapter 43

Andrews
: the lost sheep

“Ask, and it will be given to you.  Seek, and you shall find.  Knock,
and the door will be opened for you.”

– Matthew 7:7

The newcomer looked about ready to collapse.  “Come in,” he told the boy, “and sit down before you fall down.  I know all those stairs are hard to get used to.  And we're only halfway up, here.”

He led the boy into the room and went to his coldbox to fetch some leftover mutton and cider.  “Have you come far, or from inside Rado?” he asked, setting the plate and mug on his little table and settling himself in the other chair.

“From Dallas, Father.” 

“Really?  So am I.  I'm still getting used to the stairs myself, but in my case I was lucky – we landed on the roof so I didn't have to climb up here my first day.”

The boy was looking at the cabinet he had taken the food from.  There was still a wisp of fog curling around the edge of the cabinet door.  “You have a coldbox?”

“Yes, Xander made that for me so I wouldn't have to eat downstairs with the Governor's staff.  I'm sure many of them are not quite comfortable around a TCC priest.”

“Xander made it for you?” 

The boy – what was his name? - Esteban, seemed uneasy at the idea of a priest with a coldbox.  If he was Catholic, that was only to be expected.  Sometimes Andrews was surprised at how blasé he himself had become with all of the magic around him now.  But then, he reminded himself, his use of the relics at St. Farker's had prepared him.

“Yes.  One of the things you'll have to get used to around here is that they seem less afraid of what the Vatican's been calling 'demonic' technology.  I'm sure they kept it away from you down in Dallas.” 

Esteban looked down at his plate.  “Not exactly.”

What was that about?  “That reminds me, when you're done eating I should show you the bathroom.  So how did you make your way up here from Dallas?”

The boy told of a long ride, first in a cart then in a coach.  Andrews had to sigh when he heard of the coach driver's initial hostility on seeing Esteban's Texas coins.  Decades of war had led to bad feelings on both sides, feelings that would be slow to die.

“So,” he said, trying to shift the conversation to a less painful subject, “did your family approve of your wanting to study up here at Xander's school?”

“I'm an orphan, Father.  I was raised at St. Bruno's.”

“The Carthusian monastery?  You
have
come a long way, son.  After you get settled in we should get together and talk about all your new experiences.  You must feel as if you've traveled to another planet.”  Seeing that Esteban had finished the mutton, he reached for the plate.  “Here, let me get that for you.  You should see this.”

Taking the plate, he led Esteban to the sink and turned the hot water spigot.  As the boy's eyes widened at the steaming water he was rinsing the dish with, he explained.  “This building was made after the Tourists arrived, so it has swizzle plumbing and everflames to keep the water hot.   They failed eventually, but Xander got them working again.'

“He can make those too?”

“Oh yes.  He's a talented wizard.”  He dried the plate with a towel and carried it back to the coldbox.  “If I were a betting man, I'd wager you'll be making 'em too before you know it.  That's the whole point of the school, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“The reason civilization Fell was because we didn't have people who could make the Gifts or keep them working.  Xander figures if he can teach more people to do what he can do, civilization can climb back up a lot faster than without them.”

“Clem said something similar on the way up.  Do you really think it's possible?”

“I do.  When you've been here awhile, you will too.”

A knock at the door interrupted him.  “That's probably him now.”  He raised his voice a little.  “Come on in!  You know it's always open.”

The door opened and Xander stepped in.  “You must be Esteban.  I hope Aria didn't run you ragged on the stairs.”

Esteban shook his head.  “Did she tell you I'm here to apply for your school?”

“She did.”  The wizard closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded to himself.  “Was it your idea to come, or did someone back home send you?”

“It wasn't my idea,” Esteban said.  “But they said I was qualified.'

“Well, you'll be glad to know they weren't wrong, Esteban.  You have the talent.  You can become a wizard, if you want to.”

Andrew was as startled as the boy looked.  “Just like that?  Are you sure?”

“Trust me,” said Xander.  “It takes one to know one, as they used to say.  You're one, or, rather, you can become one.  You haven't made the journey here in vain.”

“That reminds me,” said Esteban.  “Clem said to tell you that he brought me.  He didn't charge me for the trip.”

“We'll reimburse him.  Come up with me, and we'll get you settled into a room before you pass out.”

The boy groaned.  Father Andrews chuckled.  “Take it slow on the stairs,” he told Xander.  “Esteban isn't used to the thin air up here.”

The door closed behind them.  He went to the coldbox and got himself another bottle of cider and sat down at the table again, opening his Bible.  His eyes fell upon the verse “as a stranger in a strange land.”  What am I still doing here? he wondered. 

His status in Denver was not exactly official.  Andrews remembered the flight up with Xander and Lester after the jailbreak.  The wizard and his apprentice had to get out of Denver, that was clear.  But his own case was different.  He'd just gone with the flow, presuming that the soldiers who raided St. Farker's for artifacts would still be after him.

But a lot had changed in the last couple of months.  The old Honcho was gone, and his son had replaced him.  Andrews knew next to nothing about Jeffrey Martinez, other than the fact that he'd been sensible enough to agree to peace when his father's attempted invasion failed.  The young Honcho seemed less intent on conquest than his father had been, which was lucky for Xander.

But more was changing than the political situation, it seemed.  He'd heard Lester had brought a girl from his home town to be a student, and now they had another – from a monastery, no less!  He wondered if the Pope knew about it.  It was difficult to believe that the same Pontiff who'd tried to burn Lester at the stake for being a wizard's apprentice would accept the idea of one of his flock becoming one.

Chapter 44

Carolyn
: continuing progress

“I am not free when any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”

– Audre Lorde

This time she was a little quicker.  The blackness wrapped around her in a little over a second.  The pathspace weave was good and tight.  It took no effort at all to maintain, once she established it.

“Not bad at all,” said Lester.  “I think you've really got the hang of it now.  What made the difference?”

She told him what Xander had suggested.  “So you see, it was just a difference in the way I imagined it.”  Something in his expression led her to add, “What's wrong?'

“Nothing,” he grunted.  “Sorry, I should have thought of that myself.  I'm no good at this...at teaching it, anyway.”

Maybe I shouldn't have gone to Xander.  “Don't be so hard on yourself,” she said.  “You've never had to teach anything before.  It's like a whole other level of learning, learning how to pass on what you know to a beginner.”

“I guess.”  But then a corner of his mouth turned up.

“What are you smiling like that for?'

“I just remembered,” he said.  “You're going to have to do this soon, yourself.  The price of being in the first class of students is we have to become teachers.  The school needs instructors, and Xander can't do it all, not if we grow the way we hope to.”

“Well, I'm not worried,” she said.  “All I have to do is learn from your struggles and I'll be ahead of the game.  Don't look like that.  You're not a bad teacher, just inexperienced.  Look on the bright side.  All you have to do is learn how to teach pathspace.  I have to learn how to do it
and
how to teach it.”

“What else did Xander tell you?”

“That when I'm good enough at weaving the invisibility you can have your next lesson in spinspace.  I'm starving.  Why don't we go see what they have for dinner?”

She let him open the door to the stairwell for her.  “Now that more students will be coming,” she said, “what are we going to do with the ones Xander says aren't 'qualified'?  It seems a shame to just send them back where they came from right after they get here.”

He grimaced.  “Yes, it would be better if we sent out recruiters to hand pick them so that we know before they get here that they are ready to learn, like I did with you.  The problem is there's only one of me and he needs me here teaching.

“Once the school is big enough that won't be a problem,” she predicted.  “For now it looks like you're stuck with me.”

“I can live with that if you can,” he said, then shut his mouth as if he were biting his tongue.  Was he blushing? 

“Do you think,” she said, to change the subject, “that we should ask Kristana if we can set up our own dining room for the school so we don't have to walk all the way down to eat with her staff?”

“Good question.  I'm of two minds about that.  When the school gets big enough it will make sense...but I'll bet that if we mention it to Xander now he'll say no.”

“Why?”

“Well,” he said, “up to now it has suited his purposes to be the mysterious court wizard.  But for us to fulfill the mission of the school, we'll need people to see us as people to be respected but not feared, like blacksmiths or doctors.  For all we know they might think of things we haven't, and we don't want them avoiding us.  We'll need all the help we can get to make the school a success.  I haven't the slightest idea of how to set up a school for wizards.”

“Well Xander's been wanting to get it started for a long time, so I'm sure he must have a plan.  I'm surprised it didn't start years ago.”

“Well, he's been trying to get started for years.'

“What stopped him?”

“His apprentices kept getting killed,” said Lester.  “That's why the invisibility weave is the first pathspace 'spell' he teaches.  They never lasted long enough for him to be able to find more students for them to teach...until me.”

“He's lucky to have you.”

“I think you have that backwards.  We're lucky enough to be a part of something important.  I didn't always think so.  You should have heard how much I complained last year when he was kidnapping me to be his apprentice.”

“What made you stop complaining?”

“I managed to figure out some of it for myself, without Xander,” he said.  “While I was in prison.  That's where I finally made a swizzle.  I proved to myself that I could make one of the Gifts.  After that I realized that humanity dropped the ball two hundred years ago but we can pick it up again.”

“How?”

“A wizard is a professional like a blacksmith or a scribe or an engineer.  Just as we need blacksmiths to work with metal, and scribes to work with documents, and doctors to work with bodies, and musicians to shape music, so we need wizard to weave
metaspace
- to work magic.  Wizards will be part of the fabric of civilization just as farmers and blacksmiths are.”

Chapter 45

Kaleb
:
the equality of the poor

“Being and non-being create each other.

Difficult and easy support each other.”

– Tao Te Ching, the Book of the Way, by Lao Tse

He found he had mixed feelings about the People's Republic of Wyoming, when Trent's caravan passed through it and stopped to water horses and deliver a consignment, mainly of seeds for the Spring planting.

Usually, everywhere he had been in Californ, and even in Deseret, you could spot the relatively rich, those whose fortunes fared better than their countrymen, by the cut of their clothes, the quality of their horses, and the size of their dwellings.  The poor might laugh as loud, and drink as much, perhaps even more than the well-to-do, but they drank at separate tables, and when they spilled their ale it spilled on courser cloth.  The rich, though they might have more cause to celebrate, quaffed more carefully, and spilled less on their finer raiment. 

In Wyoming, however, he could not see any signs of such a division of classes, try though he might.  But this wasn't because the people were all equally rich.  Instead, they were all equally poor.  There were no special tables for gentry, for wealthy landowners, because there
were
no such people.

“They live a different way here,” Trent confided.  “Their farms and ranches are all owned and operated by collectives, from the largest farm to the smallest freehold.”  He swallowed a bit of apple and gulped down his ale.  “All run by committee, they are.”

Kaleb sipped his glass of water.  “I would think that makes for efficient administration of resources,” he said.  “And superior stewardship, without the selfishness that comes from the usual concentration of wealth into a few families.”

“Aye, you would think that,” Trent agreed.  “The old 'from each according to his abilities, and to each according to his needs', eh?  Always sounds good.”  He belched.  “Never works.”

“Why not?  Sounds like a very noble plan to me.”

Trent picked his teeth with the point of a dagger.  “Yes,” he spat.  “Very noble.  Except people are rarely as noble as their ideals.  Few want to work harder than others just because they can.  And fewer are willing to take less food than others just because they ain't starving.  So it all breaks down, soon enough.”  he took another bite out of his apple.

“But surely, those committees you mentioned...”

“The biggest, smartest committee in the world can't change human nature,” said Trent.  “They'd take even more than the regular workers, except they've got layers of committees above them.  And they all send representatives off to Cheyenne, to the Worker's Congress that oversees the whole sorry country.”

“I can see that happening  at first,” said Kaleb, “but what about  the next generation?  How do they keep them from changing the whole setup?”

“By lettin' 'em go,” said Trent.  “Oh they have the usual number of kids, but there's usually plenty of malcontents who don't fancy following the ass end of a plow horse the rest of their lives.  They go splitsky, some to the East, some South into Rado, and the elders let 'em go.  Keeps the population manageable so's they don't have to decrease everybody's shares of food and whatnot.”

“Is that why they're staring at me?”  Suddenly he was uncomfortably aware that his simple librarian's clothes from Angeles were a bit better than what everyone around them were wearing.

“Well...that and the fact that they don't see a lot of folks who look like you around here.”

He blinked.  He was a long way from Graumann's.

Chapter 46

Lester
: more briefing

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

– Albert Einstein

Two dinners later, Xander closed the door after Carolyn left and nodded to Lester.  “She's coming along.”

“And so you owe me another lesson in
spinspace
.”

“That is so.”  Xander went off into the Artifacts room and came back with a box of objects.  “You've already seen the spinometer,” he said, placing it on the table. “While I'm getting set up I want you to get it up to five rpms.”

Lester groaned.  “The visualization you gave me last time, of gathering spin, focusing it, well, that works as far as it goes.  The problem is then it feels like I've used up all the spin.  How do I get more out of it?”

“Every variation visualization has its own advantages and disadvantages.   Focusing gives precision.  Now you have to work on abundance.”

“Abundance?”

“What you have to work with is limited only by your imagination.  Instead of visualizing spin as being a rare collectible resource that you can gather in, try imagining it as omnipresent, and not normally noticed because it is mostly balanced.

“All matter is made up of spinning particles.  Spin isn't something you have to collect –  it's built in.  All you have to do is imagine some of it flipping the way you want to tip the balance and you can have as much spin as you want.  You've been telling the space you expect it to run out of spin so it does.  Tell it the opposite, that you expect it to have abundance in spin, tappable at your will.”

“How can I expect it to have an abundance of spin?”

“Because it's full of matter, and matter is made of spinning particles.  All matter is constantly in motion, and part of that motion is spin.”

When he changed his visualization the effectiveness increased by an order of magnitude.  Instead of straining to get 1 rpm, he could get 5rpm without much effort.

“That's very good.  I still sense that you are hitting some imaginary limits, but it is very good.”

“What's so good about achieving 5rpm?”

“On the small scale you could make a clock that never needs to be wound.  On the large scale, who knows?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“A handful of water has over 10
22
water molecules.  That's a lot of spin. Every water molecule in it has a nucleus with nucleon spins and an electron shell with electrons with their spins.  And the molecule itself has spin.”

“You're saying there is spin all around me.”

“All around you, all the time, yes.”

“Then why don't I see it?'

“Because it's usually present in equal and balanced amounts.  In empty space, the balance is almost perfect, but when there is matter present it is more complicated.”

He considered that. “What do you mean by complicated?'

“Well, if we think of tops spinning on a floor, there are only two directions for the spin axis –  up and down.  If you turn a top on its side it rolls away.  But the atoms in a chunk of iron are not laid out flat like the planks or tiles in a floor...so the spin axes can point in any direction.  This means that even when you have unpaired, unbalanced  spin present it might not add up to anything  detectable because the random orientations don't mesh with each other to combine forces.  But you can change that.”

Xander picked up a couple of short metal cylinders the size of his fingers.  “These are iron.  In its natural, unordered state, iron tends to have many tiny regions where the spins line up with each other called 'domains'.  Each area adds a little bit of strength to the spinspace but since the individual domains are not coordinated their grouped spins point in random directions.”

His words reminded Lester of the history of nations after the Tourists left – the way they had shattered into tiny city-states and little kingdoms all going their separate ways.

Xander put the little iron rods on the table and took out a sheet of paper and a small vial of what looked like black sand.  “These are iron filings, so light that spinspace forces can move them easily.  We can use them to measure its effects.”  he sprinkled some of the iron dust on a sheet of paper and held it over the two rods.  Nothing happened.

He put the paper to one side, holding it carefully so as not to spill the iron filings.  “Now I am going to use spinspace to order the iron in one of the rods.”  He picked up one of them and held it so that it pointed at floor and ceiling.  His fingers curled around the cylinder and his thumb pointed at the ceiling while he concentrated.

Then he placed it back down on the table.  The other rod rolled over against it with a click.  “Once you order the iron like this, it attracts other iron and we call this
magnetism
.”  He pulled the rods apart and then he picked up the paper and held it over the ordered cylinder and tapped the edge of the paper.  The iron filings bunched up into two separate masses.  “You can see that the particles of iron are most attracted to the ends of the ordered rod.  We call these ends
magnetic poles
.”  He set the paper down again.  “If you put this rod on a piece of wood and floated it in water, it would behave like a compass needle.  One end would point north, which we call the north-seeking pole or just the north magnetic pole.  Very handy for navigating.”

“But why does it point North?  How does it know where North is?  Is there a lot of iron north of us?”

“Good question.”  Xander picked up the other rod.  “Now I'm going to
magnetize
this one too.”  He held it like he had the first one for a few moments, then picked up the other one and handed both of them to Lester.

“Now hold them near each other and tell me what you notice.”

Lester brought the two rods together and felt their attraction trying to pull them into contact.  “They still attract each other, but a little stronger, I think.”

“Yes.  Now turn one around and try again.”

This time it was different.  When he rotated one of the rods and moved it near the other, it twisted in his hand, as if trying to turn back around to its previous orientation.

Xander showed him a little N engraved near one end of each rod.  “North-seeking poles don't attract each other.  They try to stay away from other north poles, but they are attracted to the other end, the South pole.”

Lester experimented and saw that the wizard was correct.  The N ends did not want to be close to each other; he could feel them trying to push his hands apart.  But when he reversed one of the rods, that repulsion vanished and the marked and unmarked ends tried to pull his hands together.

Suddenly he had an insight: compasses work because the Earth itself is a magnetized!  “The Earth is a magnet!” he blurted. 

Xander beamed.  “Exactly,” he said.  “The Earth has a lot of iron inside it, and there is enough coordination in the unpaired electron spins in the iron to make the Earth a giant magnet, with north and south magnetic poles.  A tiny needle, magnetized and floated on water or oil allows us to sense which direction is North  even during the blackest night when you can't navigate by the stars.”

Lester realized something that seemed wrong.  “But if the north-seeking pole of a magnet is attracted to the south pole of other magnets...then the Earth has to actually have a South magnetic pole to the North of us!”

Xander grinned.  “True,” he said.  “This is where the terminology of the Ancients breaks down, I'm afraid.  They learned compass needles point north before they learned about north and south magnetic poles, so they kept calling what the compasses pointed to the North magnetic pole of the Earth, even though they knew it was incorrect.”

He saw another problem.  “But how did they make compasses when they had no wizards to order the spinspace of the iron?'

“Another good question,” said Xander  he reached into the box and drew out a sewing needle.  “This is unmagnetized at the moment.”  He proved it by holding it near the piles of iron dust on the paper, which were not attracted to it.  “Now we're going to make it a little magnet.  There are four known ways to do this.'

“Four?”

“Yes.  “You saw me use my mind to order the spinspace.  That's the new way, that the Ancients didn't know.'

“What are the other three methods?”

“One way I can't show you today uses the electricity of the Ancients.  If you wrap a coil of wire around the needle and send an electric current through the wire, the coil will be like a magnet, with a north and a south pole, and it will influence the spins in the needle and magnetize it.”

“Is that how the Ancients made compasses?”

“No, not originally.  Magnets were discovered before electricity.  There are naturally-occurring magnetic ores, and some were discovered in Magnesia, which is where magnets and magnetism get their names.”

“Wait a minute.  “You said that in iron the spins are normally random.  How could the Ancients have just found natural magnets lying around?”

“Because you can use one magnet to magnetize another piece of iron.  As you realized a minute ago, the Earth is a magnet.  So the magnetism of the Earth can make this needle into a little magnet, if you lay it down pointing north and south.  That's the third way.  Of course, it will take some time.   But the Earth is patient.  Any chunk of iron left in the Earth's magnetic field long enough will acquire its own magnetism, because its electrons are not locked in place and it's easier for the unpaired spins to line up with the Earth's field than to work against it.”