The Practice Effect (15 page)

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 kind 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 ropes, 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.

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 playin’ ‘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!