Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) (21 page)

Chapter 51

Nathan
: boredom breeds pessimism

דרך חוכמת בית בנו
י,
ועל ידי הבנה שהוא הקים

“Through wisdom a house is built, And by understanding it is established;”

– Proverbs 24:3

He was ready for this journey to be over.  Though the prayers of his father Isaac kept the wagon warm, they could do nothing about the effects of sitting on a hard seat for mile after mile.  He tried to emulate his father's patience as they rode and read, but eventually he asked: “Will we ever get there?”

Isaac laughed.  “Soon,” he promised.  “We are already in Kansouri.  Only a few hundred more miles to go.”

A few hundred!  He slapped his book shut and wished the wagon had enough room to throw it properly.  “What if we get there and negotiations break down?  Will we just turn around and do this all over again?”  He could envision it all too easily: another grueling weeks-long trip all the way home.

His father raised an eyebrow.  “I seriously doubt that anything like that will happen.  The reports I've seen agree that Governor Kristana is an eminently reasonable person.”

“Whatever.”  He frowned out the window as more featureless flat fields crawled by.  What might have been an exciting adventure had been ground by time and routine into a mind-numbing ordeal.

His father opened another book.  Nathan tried to imagine how life in Denver could be anything but dreary. There would be unfamiliar sights to see, and new people to meet. But would any of them be like him? “Does Rado have other ambassadors, from other lands?  Are their families with them?”

His father looked up from his book.  “I have no way of knowing that.  Obviously, from this new alliance, this new Union of theirs with Texas, there should be envoys from the Lone Star Empire, at least.  But I doubt that they'd bring their families to a country they were just recently at war with.”

“What am I supposed to do there all day, while you're conferring with the Governor or her advisers?”

At this, his father began to say something, then thought better of it and closed his mouth.  He turned to look out his own window, as if troubled by thoughts he could not share.

Nathan frowned.  What had his father been about to say?  Were there further secrets to this mission? 

When his father turned back from the window, his face was composed, but with a deliberate calm.  “You'll find things to do,” he said.  “I'm sure in the end, you'll be glad you came.”

He's hiding something, Nathan decided.  It's something about me...and something he doesn't want to have to argue about all the rest of the way to Rado.  So obviously it's something he expects me to disagree with.  But what?  Is he going to just send me back when we get there?  Did he only bring me along for company?

The wagon stopped, interrupting his thoughts.  “Why are we stopping?” he grumbled.

“I don't know,” said his father Isaac.  “We're nowhere near a town.”  He opened the door on his side.  “Wait here,” he said, and was out the door before Nathan could object.

Chapter 52

Lester
:  tricks with seeing

“There are two ways to live.  You can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

– Albert Einstein

Balefully he surveyed the semi-conscious faces. “That is correct. The first application of
pathspace
we teach is invisibility, and the reason we teach it first is that hiding is often better than fighting, especially against impossible odds.”

“Are we going to fight?” Kaleb seemed alarmed. “I thought the war was over.”

“It is, but you never know when you might have to defend yourself.  So we teach defense first.”

From the looks he saw, they were tired of practicing the invisibility weave.  “What do we learn after that?” Esteban asked.

“After
everyone here can go invisible when they need to,” he said, “you will learn how to make a swizzle.”

“That's not fair,” Carolyn objected.  “What are the more advanced students supposed to do while we wait for the new students to catch up?”

“You have a choice,” he told her.  “You can either work with the newer people when I'm busy, or you can try to figure out how to make a swizzle on your own.'

To her credit, she did both.  For the next couple of days he saw her working with Kaleb and Esteban, and after that she began spending more time up on the roof.  After a couple of days he decided to see how she was doing.

He opened the roof door quietly.  Carolyn was sitting near a corner of the roof opposite from where the sentry's post.  She didn't appear to have heard the door open, so he closed it quietly behind him.

After a while she made a sound of irritation and looked up from the length of pipe she was holding and saw him watching.  “You need something?”

“Just wondering how you were doing.”

“Well, I'm getting nowhere, and it's annoying.  It's like I know what I'm doing and I don't at the same time.”

“I know the feeling,” he said, remembering how long it had taken him to make his first swizzle.

“Do you?  Then why am I wasting my time like this?”

“Because you might learn something else along the way.  Maybe even something Xander and I don't know yet.”

“Like what?”

Feeling a little guilty about making her figure out the swizzle weave by herself, he picked up the pipe and wove pathspace around it to make it a telescope.  “Like this,” he said.  “Try looking at that building over there through it now.”

She nearly dropped the pipe.  “How did you do that?  It looks like I can reach out and touch it!”

He explained, showing her how pathspace could be used to gather and focus the light instead of shunting it around an object.  “You don't even have to have a pipe,” he said.  “But it's easier this way.”

“Why?”

“Well, because the metal helps anchor the weave.”  He made another pathspace-telescope in the open air and showed her how she had to step into just the right position top see through it.”  A temporary weave needs not metal,” he said, “ but if you want  to swing it to look at something else you have to undo it and redo the weave every time you move.  With a pipe you just leave the weave on it and move the pipe.”

“What else did you learn?”

“We'll save that for the next time you're bored. Just kidding.  I'll show you more when you have the telescope weave.”

“It doesn't seem so hard,” she said.  “I'll bet I have it by tomorrow.  Light is easy compared to making air move.”

“According to Xander, that's because photons always move at the speed of light. You don't have to speed them up or slow them down, just change the direction of the pathspace they are following. Air is different.  It has 'inertia' – whatever that is.”

He left her to it and pulled open the stairwell door.  Was he doing the right thing?  If Esteban or Kaleb found out he had shown her the telescope weave he'd have to show them too or it would look like favoritism.  But if they all worked on telescope weaves wouldn't that distract them from the swizzle assignment?  Maybe he ought to just tell them how to sculpt the pathspace to make a swizzle and move on.

The only thing that kept him from that was his own experience.  Being in a prison in Dallas had been lonely, but he had worked out the swizzle problem by himself, and he still remembered the thrill of accomplishment, the knowledge that he had solved it without any hints from Xander.

Of course he did have the hint from the guard's smoke ring.  Should he finagle a way to have them see smoke rings too?  He wanted them to have that feeling of accomplishment too.  Sooner or later they'd have to figure out weaves on their own.  For all he knew they might come up with weaves he or Xander had never thought of...but none of that might happen if he just spoon fed it to them.

It was a tricky problem.  They needed to learn quickly so the school would have more teachers.  But the school needed more than mere teachers.  It needed explorers.  Some of the graduates would have to become researchers to expand the lore.

He was so absorbed in these thoughts that by the time he realized he had lost his balance it was too late.  The stairs and walls seemed to spin around him as he fell.  There was a metallic clink and then his head hit something hard and everything went away for a while.

Chapter 53

Xander
: safety considerations

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”

– Winston Churchill

He watched Daniels as the doctor changed the bandage.  “Has there been any change?”

Daniels washed his hands in a basin.  “Relax. It's only been an hour since we found him.  Lucky for him Carolyn had to come down for lunch.”

Lester's breathing was slow and even.  “He's been up and down those stairs so many times now.  Why would he fall now?”

Daniels dried his hands.  “I'm surprised it hasn't happened before now.  Fifty nine flights of stairs.  Well, double that if you count the landings between floors, and yet no banisters and no handrails.  I'm surprised there are more bloodstains on those concrete walls.  How did the Ancients survive here?”

“Most of them took the elevators, probably,” said Xander.     “I wish we could make them work again.”

“Can you?”

“Not the way they used to.  Not without electricity.  But we'll think of something eventually.”

Daniels regarded him.  “You might want to think about carpeting for the stairs and padding for the walls,” he said.  “Unless you want more accidents.  He's lucky he didn't break his neck.  As it is, it looks like a concussion and a sprained wrist.  I wouldn't worry unless he doesn't wake up soon.  My guess is he'll be back to teaching in a day or two."

Xander struggled to his feet.  He ought to look in on the students before dinner.  “Speaking of teaching, I've never asked how you became a doctor.  Did you go to a school somewhere?”

Daniels hung up the towel.  “Nope.  My father taught me.  Kind of a family tradition.  Some of the lore he passed on was useless, names of medicines we don't have anymore, like penicillin.”  He paused.  “Of course, most of the docs back in the times of the Ancients probably didn't know as much about herbs as I do, because they had all those medicines.”

“Sounds to me like someone needs to start another school.”

“Well it would be nice to have another doctor here to fill in for me when I need to rest.”

“That's not what I meant.  If we succeed in what we're trying to do with my school, things will get better.  Then there'll be more people to take care of, and we'll need more doctors.'

“I heard in the old days there used to be lots of medical schools,” said Daniels.  “But that was before the Tourists arrived.”

“You mean, before the tissue regenerators.”

Daniels looked as if he was going to spit.  “Yes. The damned regens made doctors seem unnecessary.  My father used to rail about them.  According to him, they put the doctors, the hospitals, the medical schools, and the medicine makers all out of business.  And by the time the regens started to fail, everything else was failing too.  So it was too late to rebuild the medical infrastructure...especially without electricity.”

“Well, it's time to think about rebuilding.  I'll have a talk with the Governor about finding you an assistant and a couple of medical apprentices.  We'll have to --”

A groan from the other room interrupted him.  Daniels spun and hurried back into the room, with Xander close behind him.

“Oh gods, my head is killing me!”

“Good,” the doctor told him.  “Maybe that'll teach you to go slower on those steps.  You could have broken your neck running down them.”

“I wasn't running.  I was distracted.  Ow!”

“Looks like you sprained that wrist trying to stop your tumble.  Going to have to eat with your other hand for a few days, I'd imagine.  Don't fuss with that bandage.  It's only a superficial cut, but you'll bleed all over my clean floor if you don't leave it alone.  Do you remember what happened?”

“I was just walking down the steps.  No hurry, no running, just walking.  But I got to thinking about the students and before I knew it I tripped and it was too late to stop falling.”

“What about the students?” Xander asked him.

Lester explained.  “I was wondering whether I should just tell them how to do the swizzle so we could all move on.”

Xander scratched his beard, considering.  “I was going to tell you how to do it, before you got captured.  But you have a good point about it being a confidence-builder, accomplishing it on your own.  Maybe it's better to let them work it out.”

“I did have one hint they haven't gotten,” said Lester.  “One of my guards was a smoker.  He blew a smoke ring at me one day and seeing it got me thinking about closed paths – about lines in pathspace being not just bent, but stretched circles.  It made all the difference.  Maybe it's unfair to expect them to figure it out without that help I had.”

“Good point.  Maybe we can give them some hints without being obvious.  Worth thinking about.  Visual aids.'

Daniels shoved Lester back down on the bed. “Hey!  What are you doing?  I didn't say you could sit up.”

“I have to get back to our students, doc.”

“You're done for the day.  Let Xander deal with them while you rest up.”  The door behind him opened.  “What now?”

Kurt's face intruded into the infirmary.  “Um, we have a new arrival downstairs.  A new student, I mean.”

Xander sighed.  “Good news at a bad time.”  He forced himself up on his feet.  All right, let's go see if whoever it is can learn what we teach.”