“If you say so,” Mont said, apparently failing to detect Shaa’s evasion. For a change, Shaa thought, friend Mont has managed to do something helpful. “Well,” Mont continued wistfully, “at least there’s a nice girl out there waiting for you, whatever shape you’re in.”
“The prophecy unfortunately neglected to mention details of personality. It also neglected to mention such particulars as sex. Or, for that matter, species.”
“Uh … do you mean …”
“Who can say?” Shaa said gloomily. “All I can hope is that the escape clause will not be too offensive.” He eyed Mont. “I do tend to think twice before introducing myself to people.”
Even in the gloom, Shaa could see Mont turn white. Mont gulped. “Can’t you fight it? Maybe the prophecy could be wrong.”
“The circumstances of its origin made things quite clear. Unfortunately. Now, if you’re quite satisfied for the moment …?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess I am.”
“Then we can get on with it,” Shaa said. “I have some skill with boats.”
“Boats? But we don’t have a boat.”
“Acquiring the boat is one of my skills.” Shaa rose to go.
8. SCIENTIFIC INTERLUDE
“Well, that’s all of it,” Max said, wrenching closed the top flap of his knapsack and snapping the fastener into place. “Now do I finally get to see these marvelous research results of Roni’s before I go out on your errand and get my head chewed off?”
Karlini rubbed the back of one hand absently across his eyes, making them even redder. “Max,” he said, “I’m exhausted. Let’s do it later.”
“I’m leaving later.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” Karlini fought back a yawn, then gave in and let it envelope his face. “Where’s Roni?”
“Probably in the lab, where else?”
“But it’s late, she must have gone to bed hours ago.”
“She did go to bed when it was late, but it’s not late any more, it’s early.” Max pulled back a curtain. “See, sun.”
Karlini yawned again. “All right, you torturer, all right. This way.” Max left his gear on the floor and followed him through the door, down the hall, and up a flight of circular stairs. Karlini removed a key on a large ring from a hook on the wall and unlocked a door at the top landing. “Roni?” he said. “Dear?”
The room was empty. “Must still be asleep,” Max said. “Why don’t I just poke around myself and let you go to bed. I’m sure I can figure things out.”
“I’m sure you can,” Karlini grunted. “Most of it was your idea in the first place. Lock up when you’re finished.” He retreated back through the door and clumped off down the stairs.
The room occupied almost the whole top of one of the lower towers, the walls admitting a blaze of early sunlight through windows placed all the way around. Roni and Karlini had set up a substantial array of equipment. Beakers, bottles, dishes, and flasks were stacked neatly against the walls, enclosed in a variety of field preservation spells. Two stacks of books sat next to the door. On top of the books were a set of three matching ledgers bound in hide and spotted with multi-colored stains and spills. A fourth ledger-book was on the table in the center of the room, open to a page in the middle. To the left of the ledger was a low wooden box with a latched cover and thin tendrils of steam issuing from its joints. In front of the box was the microscope.
Max seated himself on the stool next to the table and ran his hand fondly over the ancient instrument. He carefully rotated the compound lens mount, ran the viewing lens up and down, adjusted the reflecting light source mirror, then rested his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands.
Roni was keeping things up nicely. The microscope had been the finest thing he’d ever owned, and he’d come close to dying over it more than once, but a scope was made to be used and Max was on the road too often to give it the attention it deserved. It had made quite a wedding present.
And now, if Roni was correct, it had helped her make a remarkable discovery.
Max, as was his nature, spent much of his time thinking. One of the things he liked to think about was magic and the way it worked. After hearing from Roni about her research into animalcules and her resulting theory of cells as the building blocks for larger living creatures, a year or two earlier, something had connected. He had been looking through the microscope at a bulging whitish ball of sliding tendrils and protruding blobs easing through the thin film of water. “Where does magic come from?” Max had said suddenly.
“I don’t know,” Roni said. “Where does it come from?”
“There,” Max said, staring at the amoeba. “Somewhere in there.” The amoeba sidled over to a smaller spinning oval, surrounded it, and sucked it in. “That thing eats food and turns it into energy. We eat food and turn it into energy, except we can also turn it into magic.” Max looked up at Roni. “Somewhere in one of your cell things, something turns that food into magical energy. You want a new research topic? Find that interface. Figure out that step.”
Max lifted his head off of his hands and drew the ledger-book toward him. The book held Roni’s latest lab records. Before flipping back through the book, Max’s attention was drawn to the most recent entry by the heading “MAX:” printed in large letters above it. It was a short paragraph containing setup instructions and the activation words for the filter spell. Max read it again to make sure he had things straight, then unlatched the cover of the wooden box, eased it open, and removed a round glass dish with a flat top. With a fine-blown pipette he found in a vase of water, Max sucked up a small quantity of liquid from the dish, transferred it to the center of a slide, added a touch of dye from a vial capped with a dropper, and positioned the slide on the microscope’s lower stage. A thick stubby candle, half burned-out, sat next to the microscope in a holder with a curved, highly polished back. Max lit the candle. The light from the candle, focused and intensified by the reflective holder, shone onto the mirror of the scope and up through the slide. Max applied his eye to the viewing lens.
A few adjustments of the knurled knob on the body brought the image into focus: a few motes of dark debris floating through a clear orange landscape, flickering with the spits and puffs of the candle. Max switched to the highest power lens. Off at one corner he saw a flutter of motion, and steered the field toward it. An oval shape with a fuzzy border spun in view. Its interior held the pigmented forms of mysterious structures - a major round one, lines and squiggles and balls and tubes implying others, all swimming in and out of sight at the limit of visibility under the uncertain candlelight.
Now for the interesting part, Max thought. He glanced over at the book with his spare eye, found the sentence he wanted, and spoke its three activation words. A sizzling sound began. At the base of the scope a silvery nimbus formed, circulating around the stage holding the slide and the lower part of the compound lens mount. Max returned his gaze to the lens and adjusted the slide to return the animalcule fully to view. Sparks and crackles of miniature lightning jumped around the field, each flash of energy illuminating the scene more sharply, then letting it fade again into orange shadow. Inside the cytoplasm of the animalcule, though, something else was going on.
At one side of the larger round spot, in an area of overlapping squiggles so tiny that Max could barely pick it out, there was a sudden sparkle of green. Max focused in on it. Yes, it was there, it was definitely there - a twinkling of infinitesimal pinpoints, each the barest flash of green.
Max straightened up and scanned back through the ledger-book. Roni had also seen this phenomenon - a microscopic constellation, she had called it. After fine-tuning the filter spell to weed out any significant artifacts, she had concluded that the effect was real. Those green pinpoints were each marking a release of magical energy.