Rift in the Races (31 page)

“This,” said Admiral Jefferies as he circled a large portion at the back of his drawing, “is the ship’s power plant.” He stopped speaking long enough to draw several small circles in a cluster at the very end of his drawing. “Behind it are the ion thrusters and chemical rockets respectively. Right now our ships are trying to get back using these. The problem with these is that they don’t move the ships all that quickly. Relative to the main gravity drive, these are excruciatingly slow. Too slow.” He said this last, and a grim expression came upon his face.

He continued. “We can’t leave our people out there hoping to outrun any potential Hostile pursuit. We all know those things move too fast. Your own Sir Altin has confirmed they use some of your people’s magical abilities. Some of those ships may lose even the ability to travel as fast as they are.”

Aderbury raised a hand, being careful not to butt in, but wanting to defend his absent friend—Altin had not responded to the homing lizard that Aderbury sent to him, nor had he responded to any subsequent attempts to communicate telepathically.

“Excuse me,” he said when the admiral called on him. “But it’s not
our
magic they use. It’s just magic. It’s no different than swimming or throwing a rock. Any creature capable of it can do it. If you were to go swimming, it wouldn’t be counted as our swimming ability. And, as far as that goes, Altin has said the Hostiles use a very primitive variant as well. More likely animal in nature than crafted, as our magic is.”

“Right,” said Admiral Jefferies, understanding about half of that. “I did not mean to imply a connection between your people and the Hostiles.”

More than one set of eyes went around the room and, once more, took note of the conspicuous absence of Captain Asad.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” the new admiral went on. “Our entire understanding of magic comes from you. That is all I meant.”

“Of course, Admiral,” acknowledged the War Queen from her seat at the center of the long table that ran the width of the room opposite the enchanted mammoth hide. “Do carry on.”

Admiral Jefferies inclined his head and turned back to his drawing. He drew several long lines running lengthwise along the ship. Branching from those, he drew others. He filled in a few areas with dark squares and shaded circles and in a few places the mark of an X. To the Prosperions watching, the network of lines connecting the various figures and shapes became a most intricate latticework, completely alien and all but meaningless for the time.

“So,” the admiral went on when his diagram was done, “these are the critical systems on our ship. We have atmosphere, temperature control, drive systems, navigation, resource reclamation, central computing, weapons, shielding and a host of others too numerous to list, and each with a corresponding redundancy somewhere on the ship. All of this relies on a complex network of electricity—the lightning as you all understand it—that runs through everything. The computers—the thinking part of our machinery—require power to coordinate all the systems. Our fear is that if the teleportation your people use on our ships does any more damage than Sir Altin’s Combat Hop spell did, we may have to reboot the entire ship on the other end of the magic. Or worse.”

The quizzical expressions on the faces of the sorcerers around the table made him stop and clarify. One of the wizards seated at the end of the table asked where the boots came in. The admiral had to think about his response before he began again. He decided he might best use their confusion as the analogy.

“It’s a restart. A start over. Think of it as if you were out here working away on
Citadel
when all of a sudden, without explanation, you were back at home in bed. You hadn’t had breakfast, you hadn’t come to work and, in fact, you were still in your bedclothes. You’d have to begin the whole day over to get back to work. Including putting your boots back on. So, I suppose, in a way, that describes a reboot. If all our systems crash, we will have to restart everything and re-synchronize the systems to get them all to work together. Which would be time-consuming, several hours at least, leaving us vulnerable to attack. And, of course, there is also the possibility that the ships could be destroyed directly as a result.”

He knew when he was done that they only partially understood, but he could tell from their faces that they recognized the scale of the risk well enough. He pressed on, “So, what we seek today are your opinions on whether or not using magic is worth that risk. Is there a chance your people can send one of our ships across some vast distance of space without destroying it? What, in your opinion, could possibly go wrong with any of this?” He tapped on his drawing as he asked it.

In the end, the answer wasn’t much different than when they began. No one knew. The test would simply have to be done. Every magician in the room agreed that distance and mass mattered, but none could speak to how teleportation would affect any of their circuits, computers or even the enormous fusion plant at the core of the ship. There was no amount of questions from either side that would suffice.

After nearly two hours of questions and answers, Queen Karroll finally stood up. “My friends, we stand at the shores of the next great expedition. Like the brave explorers of the past, and I can assume those of both our worlds, this sort of enterprise does not come without great risk. When Captain Pelogis made his voyage in search of the legendary islands of String nearly three thousand years ago, he lost his life, his crew and the crews of all but one of those ill-fated ships. But one made it there and back, and a new era began. One that eventually led to the control of magic our people enjoy today. And now, in this time, we must face the risks that Pelogis faced. We must take the risk that our own Sir Altin Meade took and, if I make my guess, that he takes even as we speak. We must dare to try.

“We need not be reckless. We need not waste life uselessly, but we must take the chance. We can face the risks, together. The risk of our lives, if must be. The risk of fortunes, certainly. I will gamble as much of mine as it takes. And to that end, good admiral, my vaults are as good as yours. But we must do this. It is our destiny. If some must die, so be it.”

It was a stirring speech, but more than a few exchanged glances back and forth, wondering who was going to be one of the lucky ones she was so ready to sacrifice.

“Your Majesty, thank you,” said the admiral. “I think we’ll need less of your fortune than of your fortune tellers, however.”

This released them all enough to laugh. Even the diviners in the room were not offended by what would have been deemed pejorative if spoken from another pair of lips.

“We can begin cautiously,” said the admiral. “We’ll start with a shuttle, and if that works, a ship. We have only to determine who will go.”

“When the infernally absent Sir Altin returns,” said the Queen, “we shall assign him to the task immediately. And with a few others who can start learning the sense of place from him for the distance it has gone.”

“Place?” asked the admiral.

“So that in the future we don’t have to rely on Altin or some other single teleporter who has been somewhere,” provided Aderbury. “Teleporters have to
know
where they are going before they can go there, or before they can send someone else. They have to understand in a real way where that place is they intend to send something or someone. They have a way of marking it in memory so they can use it again. But they can’t do it from a description, a painting or even a readout on one of your ships’ image machines, no matter how well done. They have to experience it themselves. Sir Altin devised a very nice version of magical waypoints that he calls seeing stones. We can modify his enchantment spells to make them accessible to anyone in the Teleporters Guild who has been trained to know what they are looking for. This will prove extremely valuable for travel in the future, as we perfect the craft.”

“Indeed,” agreed the Queen. “Get to work on that right away,” she told the rather large woman seated a few places to her left, a Madame Kenouvier, guildmaster of the Teleporters Guild.

“We’ve got something already underway that I think Your Majesty will be quite happy with,” the adipose teleporter announced with obvious pride. “Sir Altin has been most generous in the sharing of his notes.”

“Good,” said the Queen, returning her attention to the admiral. “You see, Admiral, we’re already quite far along the way. When should you like to perform your test?”

“Soon, Your Majesty. I will find a pair of volunteers to pilot the shuttle and a ship willing to part with one … for a time. We can begin as soon as your people feel it can be done.”

The War Queen turned back to Madame Kenouvier with an obvious question in her eyes.

“We’ll have everything ready tomorrow,” the guildmaster announced confidently. “I already know who will go, and we’ve only got one conduit I would trust in mixed company. But someone will have to find where Sir Altin has gone. Our people haven’t even started training with the redoubts yet, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want them tossing the Earth ships around before they’ve at least had a go at a few structures of wood and stone.”

The admiral looked horrified.

“Indeed,” agreed the Queen. “There will be no tossing of anything.” The look she gave the rotund guildmaster suggested she wasn’t happy with the woman’s candor just then.

“We’ll send a homing lizard when we have found Sir Altin, Admiral,” promised Aderbury. “And I’ll get an advanced team working on redoubts as soon as I get back. I have a handful of them that have been hounding me for just such an opportunity.”

“Send a what?” The admiral asked. He was still working out the first part of what Aderbury had said.

Aderbury smiled and rose from his seat. “It’s a method of communication, the most popular one these days. No blocked minds, and no mythothalamus required.”

The admiral sent a quizzical look toward the tiny creature Aderbury pulled from a hard leather pouch on his belt. “It won’t bite.” He stopped and laughed. “Actually, he will. It’s more a nibble. Trust me, it’s fine.”

A moment later Admiral Jefferies was imprinted into the collective reptilian mind of the homing lizard species, the creature finding from its tiny perspective the “place” that was the admiral’s shoulder, enabling not only itself but others like it to find him and teleport to him by the simple speaking of his name.

“Speaking of communications,” said the Queen as everyone else was getting up to go, “before he disappeared, Sir Altin requested that Miss Pewter be assigned to
Citadel
. He tells me she’s taken the trouble to learn to speak our language on her own, without the use of translation spells. Sir Altin feels that this, combined with her expertise as a communications officer in your fleet, make her a prime and perhaps the singularly best candidate for the job.”

“She’s learned the language, has she?” said the admiral, smiling and recognizing a well-played strategy when he saw one. “How fortunate. She is a clever woman.”

“Indeed,” said the Queen. Her posture was expectant, hovering on the brink of turning away, clearly expecting the only answer she was interested in.

“Well, Your Majesty, you are in luck. It just so happens that her captain recently requested that she be transferred to another ship.”

“Indeed.” Her Majesty did an excellent job of hiding the fact that she was not the least bit surprised.

Chapter 19

A
ltin’s water clock had not been set in months, so he had no idea how long he’d been asleep. He supposed it hadn’t been too long judging from the minimal growth of stubble on his face. His headache was gone.

He took a quick inventory of himself. He felt pretty good, despite a good-sized lump on the back of his head, and he was confident that he didn’t need to use the fast-cast amulet to go home.

He refreshed himself quickly and went back up to the battlements, intent on figuring out what had happened to make a scrying spell go so totally wrong. When he looked outward to gain his bearings, however, rather than being greeted by the familiar expanse of open space, he discovered that the shield around his tower was almost completely engulfed in the soft surface of a Hostile, the normally rocky sphere having turned itself into a substance that might almost pass for flesh. It was flowing around his tower’s shield as if the Hostile were batter being poured onto a clear glass bowl.

Altin had seen these creatures do this before, these normally spherical space entities he’d dubbed as coconut beasts on his first encounter with them, and just like before, once the thing had settled itself fully against the shield, the first of the proboscis tips began probing at the magical barrier. Others followed. The proboscises flattened against the shield like great fingertips mashing against a window pane, and Altin, on the inside, snarled at them as more and more formed and began to do the same. The Hostile’s attempt to push through caused the shield to shimmer and sparkle some.

“Oh no you don’t,” Altin said, staring up at it. “Not this time.”

Though he’d taught his students at the university that they could prevent the penetration of the shield by modifying the spell’s tactile rhythms, he was a teleporter, and a powerful one, and he had no intention of augmenting his defense. Instead, he glanced around behind him, out into the space still visible between the wrapping fold of the Hostile’s plastic body. He began casting immediately, reciting the words so reflexively it was almost just a thought. In a moment the Hostile was floating against the backdrop of stars, hiding a patch of them as if a hole had burned through the starry parchment of the night.