The Practice Effect Part 10

1.

"They patrol outside the wall to keep people away," the small thief said. "After all, a lot of prisoners have family and friends on the outside, and a fair part of Zusiik's population would help in a jailbreak. Even after thirty years, Kremer's northmen ain't too popular hereabouts."

Dennis nodded. "But do the guards inspect the wall on the outside as carefully as they do inside?"

The escape committee numbered five. They were gathered around a rickety table eating the noon meal. The prisoners sat in flimsy, uncomfortable chairs. It would have been better just to stand, but practicing the chairs was another of their jobs.

Gath Glinn, the youngest member of their group, squatted in the shadows beside the nearby castle wall, huddled over Dennis's prototype escape device. The sandy-haired youth had been the first to catch on to the Earthman's idea and had been a.s.signed to try it out.

He stopped working and covered the device whenever the others indicated the guards were near.

Right now his hands moved rapidly back and forth, and the little tool he practiced made soft "zizzing" sounds.

The short, dark man whom Dennis vaguely remembered yelling at on his first day in jail shook his head and answered Dennis's question.

"Naw, Denniz. Sometimes they take gangs of us out to throw rocks at the wall. But mostly they make us practice it from th' inside."

Dennis was still routinely puzzled by things his fellow prisoners told him. His look must have showed it.

Stivyung Sigel looked left and right to make sure no one had approached too close. "What Arth means, Dennis, is that another of our jobs is to practice the wall itself into being a better wall."

The farmer seemed to have caught on that Dennis came from someplace far away, where things were very different from here. It seemed to puzzle him that civilization could exist in a land where things didn't get better with use, but he appeared willing to give Dennis the benefit of the doubt.

"I see." Dennis nodded. "That's why those men are allowed to chop away at the wall like that, without being stopped by the guards." He had seen groups of prisoners lackadaisically attacking the palisade, and the wall of the castle itself, with crude mallets. He had wondered why it was permitted.

"Right, Dennis. The Baron wants the wall stronger, so he has prisoners scratch at it." Stivyung shrugged at explaining something so basic. "Of course, the guards make sure they don't use good tools while doing it. This way, in the course of time, the outermost wall will grow more and more like the one behind us, they'll roof it over then, and the castle will grow that much larger."

Dennis looked up at the palace. He understood the wedding cake geometry now. When the Coylians built a structure it started out little better than a rude lean-to. When it was finally coverted, after years of practice, into a solid one-story building, another crude structure was built on top. While the second story improved, the first became better at supporting weight on its roof and grew outward as lateral additions were made.

As long as someone lived in it thereafter, the building was practiced at holding together. Only if abandoned would it slowly revert, eventually to collapse into a tumble of sticks and mud and animal hides.

Dennis didn't imagine there would be much for archaeologists to find on this world, once a great city was abandoned.

"They also check to make sure we practice all the wall,"

Arth added. The diminutive thief claimed to be a leader among the burglars and thieves in the town of Zuslik. From the respect the other prisoners paid him, Dennis didn't doubt it.

"O' course, we always try to leave patches of wall to revert to old logs. . so's we could really break through. They patrol looking for such practice gaps. It's a game o' wits." He grinned, as if certain the game could be won sooner or later.

The zizzing sound behind them suddenly ended in a sharp snap.

Young Oath held up the severed end of the piece of wood, beaming at Dennis admiringly.

"The flexible saw worked!" he whispered in excitement. He looked around to make sure no guards were near, then handed the tool to Dennis.

The teeth were warm from friction. On Earth they would have shown signs of wear after cutting just that little piece of soft wood.

But Gath had been thinking "Cut! Cut!" as he worked. And now, thanks to the gentle practice, the zipper was just a little sharper than before.

Dennis shook his head. It was a h.e.l.luva purpose to put a zipper to.

Those sealing the pockets of his overalls were all of soft plastic. He had had to rip the metal zipper from his pants-his fly was now shut with three crude b.u.t.tons that he hoped would get better with use: Certainly he wasn't about to use this zipper in its old purpose again!

"Good work, Gath. We'll arrange for you to get on sick call so you can practice this saw to perfection. The night it's finished-"

Arth interrupted quickly with a comment on the weather. In a moment a pair of guards pa.s.sed nearby. The prisoners developed an interest in their meal until they had gone.

When the coast was clear, Dennis offered to pa.s.s the saw around.

All but Stivyung Sigel politely refused. Apparently the average person here was a bit superst.i.tious toward those who put "essence" into a tool-the original craftsmen who "made" tools in the first place, rather than practiced them to perfection. They probably saw magic in it because it used a principle they had never seen before.

He handed the zipper back to Gath, who palmed it eagerly.

Then lunch was over. The guards started calling them back to work.

Dennis's present job was to attack suits of armor with a blunt, hollow spear-while the soldier-owners wore them! It was exacting work. If he hit the soldier hard enough to hurt, he was struck with a whip. If he struck too softly, the guards shouted and threatened to beat him.

"From now on we take turns watching over Gath to make sure he can practice undisturbed," he said as he stood up. "And we keep him supplied with wood to cut. We'll discuss the rest of the plan later."

The escape committee all nodded. As far as they were concerned, he was the wizard.

The guards called again and Dennis hurried to work. One of the punishments for tardiness was to have one's personal property taken away. Though he now wore homespun like the others, he was allowed to keep his overalls, to "practice" them on his own time. The last thing he wanted was to have them confiscated.

Three hours after lunch, a bell was rung announcing the beginning of a religious service. A red-robed prison chaplain set up an altar near the castle postern, and the cry went out for the faithful to gather.

Those who did not partic.i.p.ate had to keep working, so most of the prisoners downed tools at once and sauntered over. In spite of a spate of irreverent chuckles, the majority partic.i.p.ated.

A few, such as the thief, Arth, remained at work in the garden, shaking their heads and muttering disapproval.

Dennis wanted to watch the ceremony. But he saw no way to attend as just a spectator. The paris.h.i.+oners bowed and chanted before a row of wooden and gemstone idols.

He finally decided to stay with Stivyung Sigel. For the last hour the two of them had been a.s.signed to chopping wood, using caveman-type axes under a guard's watchful eye.

"It doesn't look like most of our fellow prisoners take the state religion too seriously," Dennis suggested to Stivyung sotto voce.

Sigel flexed his powerful shoulders and brought his ax down in a great arc, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. He looked incongruous chopping in Baron Kremer's brilliant clothes, but this was all part of Sigel's job. The overlord of Zuslik didn't like his clothes to bind. After this practice they would be supple.

"Zuslikers used to be pretty easygoing about religion under the old Duke," Sigel said. "But when Kremer's dad and grandad marched in, they right off started grantin' favors to the church and the guilds, which is funny, since the northern hillmen never were such great believers before that."

Dennis nodded. It was a familiar pattern. In Earth history, barbarians often had become the fiercest defenders of the established orthodoxy after they had conquered.

He raised his ax and took a whack at his own log. The crude stone blade bounced back, hardly making a dent.

"I take it you're not a believer, either," he asked Sigel.

The other man shrugged. "All these G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses really don't make a lot of sense. In the kingdom cities back east they're losing their following. Some folk are even starting to pay attention to the Old Belief, like the L'Toff have followed all along."

Dennis was about to ask about the "Old Belief but the guard growled at them, '"ere now! Pray or woork, you two. Coot th' gab!"

Dennis could barely follow the northman's guttural accent, but he got the general drift. He swung his ax. This time he got a few chips to fly, though he didn't fool himself that it was because the tool had improved perceptibly.

Even with the Practice Effect, this was slow going. He hoped young Gath was having better luck with the zipper-saw than he was having with this triple-d.a.m.ned hunk of flint!

2 For the following three evenings, while Gath or Sigel practiced the little saw under the blankets, Dennis snuck out of the shed and went for walks in the jailyard. He was usually tired by that time, but not so exhausted he couldn't duck past the lazy guards at the inner checkpoint.

In addition to spending his days practicing axes and armor, he had been taking lessons in the Coylians' written language. Stivyung Sigel, the best-educated of the prisoners, was his tutor.

Dennis had been forced to modify his initial opinion a little. These people did have a culture above the "caveman" level. They had music and art, commerce and literature. They simply had no "technology"

beyond the late Stone Age. They didn't appear to need any.

Anything nonliving could be practiced, so everything here was made of wood or stone or hide. . . with occasional sc.r.a.ps of beaten native copper or meteoritic iron, both highly prized. Still, it was a wonder what could be accomplished without metal.

Their alphabet was a simple syllabary, easy to learn. Sigel was educated after a fas.h.i.+on, though he had been a soldier and a farmer, not a scholar. He was a patient teacher, but he could shed only a little light on the origin of humans on Tatir. That, he said, was the province of the churches. . . or of legends. Stivyung told Dennis what he knew, though he seemed embarra.s.sed telling what were essentially fairy tales to an adult. Still, Dennis had insisted, and listened carefully, taking notes in his little book.

Finally, Dennis reluctantly concluded the stories of origin were about as contradictory as they had once been on Earth. If there was some link between the two worlds, apparently it was lost in the past.

Dennis did note that some of the oldest legends-particularly those dealing with the so-called Old Belief-did speak of a great fall, in which enemies of mankind caused him to lose his powers over the animals and over life itself.

Stivyung knew about the tale because of his long a.s.sociation with the mysterious tribe, the L'Toff. It wasn't much to go on. And perhaps it was just a fable, after all, like the stories Tomosh had told him about friendly dragons.

So Dennis pondered the problem alone. He scratched narrow lines of tensor calculus in his notebook in the twilight after supper. He hadn't even begun to come up with a theory to explain the Practice Effect. But the mathematics helped to settle his mind.

He needed the focus of his science. From time to time he felt brief recurrences at that strange, lightheaded disorientation he had experienced upon first arriving at Zuslik and then again on his first day in the jailyard.

No author had ever mentioned, in all the fantasy novels he had read, how difficult it really was for a normal human being to adjust to finding himself, with his life in jeopardy, in a truly strange place.

Now that he was beginning to understand some of the rules, and especially now that he had comrades, he was sure he would be all right. But he still felt occasional chills when he thought about the weird situation he was in.

On his fourth evening in the camp, after he snuck past the inner post to walk in the dim twilight past the green shoots in the garden, Dennis heard soft music as he strolled.

The music was lovely. The anomaly calculation he had been working on unraveled like shreds of fog blown by a fresh breeze.

The sound came from above the far end of the prison yard. It was a high, clear, feminine voice, accompanied by some kind of harp. The instrument seemed to weep into the night, gently and with an electric poignancy. Dennis followed the music, entranced.

He came to the point where the new wall met the old. Two parapets above, strumming a pale, lutelike instrument, was the girl he had seen so briefly that night on the road, whom Stivyung Sigel had called Linnora-Princess of the L'Toff.

Sharp spiked wooden bars kept her imprisoned on her balcony. The gleaming rods reflected the moonlight almost as brightly as did the honey yellow of her hair. Dennis listened, entranced, though he couldn't make out the words.

The lutelike instrument must have had generations of practice to achieve such power. Her voice filled him with wonder, though he could barely follow the accented words. The music seemed to draw him forward.

The girl stopped singing abruptly and turned. A dark figure had emerged from the dim doorway at the right end of the balcony. She stood and faced the intruder.

A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out and bowed. If Dennis had not seen Stivyung Sigel only moments before, back at the prisoners'

shed, he would have sworn it was his friend up there, advancing on the slender Princess. The big man's clothes were as fine as Linnora's, though clearly made for rougher use. Dennis heard his deep voice but could make out no words.

The L'Toff Princess shook her head slowly. The man grew angry. He stepped toward her, shaking something in his hand. She retreated at first, but then stood her ground rather than suffer the indignity of backing against the wall.

Dennis's heart beat faster. He had a wild thought to rush to her aid.

. .as if she were anything to him but another of this world's enigmas.

Only the knowledge that it would be perfectly useless restrained him.

The. big man's words grew imperious. He threatened the girl angrily. Then he threw something to the floor and swiveled about to leave the way he had come. The curtains blew in his wake.

Linnora looked after him for a time, then stooped to pick up what he had dropped. She walked through a small doorway at the left end of her balcony, leaving her instrument to s.h.i.+ne alone in the moonlight.

Dennis stayed in the shadows by the wall, hoping she would return.

When she finally came back, though, he felt consternation, for she went to the bars of her parapet and looked down into the prison yard in his direction. She had a bundle in her hands, and cast about as if looking for something or someone in the darkness below.

Dennis couldn't help himself. He stepped from the shadows into the pale moonlight. She looked directly at him and smiled faintly, as if she had expected him all along.

The Princess put her arm through the bars and threw the bundle. It sailed over the lower parapets, barely missing the bottom railing, and landed at his feet.

Dennis bent to pick up the torn remnant of one of his belt pouches, tied with a loop of string. Inside he found some of the things that had been taken from him. Several had been broken in clumsy efforts to find out how they worked. The crystal of his compa.s.s had been smashed, vials of medicine were spilled.

With the items was a note in flowing Coylian script. While the girl picked up her instrument and played softly, Dennis concentrated on what he had learned from Stivyung, and slowly read the message.

He is mystified.

I could not tell him what these things are, even if I would.

He has lost patience, and next will ask you himself.

Tomorrow you are to be tortured to tell what you know.

Especially about the terrible weapon that kills at a touch.

If you are, indeed, an emissary from the realm of Lifemakers, flee now.

And speak Linnora's name aloud in the open hills.

There was a sweeping, cursive signature at the end. Dennis looked back up at her, his mind full of questions he could not ask and of sympathy and thanks he could not tell her.

The sad song ended. Linnora stood up. Lifting her hand once in farewell, she turned to go inside.

Dennis watched the breeze toss the curtains for long moments after that.

"Get up!" He shook Arth. Nearby, Stivyung Sigel was quietly awakening Gath, Mishwa Qan, and Perth, the other members of the escape committee.

"Wha, wha?" The little thief came erect swiftly, a sharpened piece of stone in his hand.

Arth claimed to have come from a long line of men who had served as bodyguards for Zuslik's old dukes-before Kremer's father had taken over the region in an act of treachery. The small man had a wiry strength that belied his size. He blinked for a moment, then nodded and got up, swiftly and silently.