Another librarian spoke gruffly. “It’s questionable whether we still can activate the transmitter. We told you earlier that the power we receive from the tower has slowly lessened. It may no longer be enough.”
Mari ran one hand very gently across the surface of the transmitter. “Maybe someday I can get another generator here. I saw that your stream is fed by a waterfall, so a simple water turbine might be all you need.” She bent to look at the transmitter’s label again. “ ‘Feyn-man. Feynman Transmitter.’ What does Feynman mean?” The librarians shook their heads in reply. “I didn’t see an antenna.”
“The tower contains the antenna—is the antenna, if what we have remembered is true.”
Once more Mari touched the device reverently. “We’ll speak to the stars. Someday we’ll speak to the stars.”
Coleen spoke with sadness this time. “We can offer you no aid in your task, Lady Mari. We must remain hidden while the Mechanics Guild retains power, and we have no weapons to offer you.”
Mari gazed back at the librarian. “My friends and I can make weapons, with the help of those texts. I don’t want to have to use them, but we may have no choice. If the Great Guilds remain in control of this world, everywhere will end up like Tiae and eventually Marandur—because the founders of the Mechanics Guild wanted the wealth and power of Dematr for themselves.”
Alain nodded. “And because the Mage Guild will not care what is happening to everyone else as long as its elders stay in control. They do not wish change, because they do not believe the suffering of others is real. They would not believe this is real, even as they die at the hands of mobs of commons.”
“You said most of the crew of the great ship disobeyed the orders they had been given long ago,” Mari said to Coleen. “Do you know what those orders were?”
Coleen looked at the other librarians, who made various gestures of ignorance. “All that we know,” she told Mari, “is that what they did—take control of all technology and power for themselves—was in violation of those orders.”
“Then whatever they were told to do involved sharing their knowledge with everyone,” Mari said. “And sharing power with everyone. Those people who built the great ship, who knew so much more than we did, intended that this world be free of the control of anything like the Great Guilds. They intended that the commons have more control over their own lives.”
“That is safe to say,” Coleen agreed.
“Then I know what my job entails,” Mari said. “In order to fix things, I need to correct the errors made long ago. I need to break the power of the Great Guilds, and I need to give the common folk the right to rule themselves.”
“Do you truly believe that you can do that?” Coleen asked.
“I don’t know,” Mari said, looking toward Alain. “But we’re either going to succeed, or die trying.”
The librarians had given them a comfortable room to stay in while the librarians worked through the days and nights copying everything Mari had brought. Night had fallen, and from their bed Mari and Alain could look through a window at the stars shining above the valley where the tower sat.
“Can you believe it, Alain?” Mari asked him. “It’s so astounding. What must that voyage have been like? What is Urth like? Think how it must have felt when those people got here and first set foot on this world.”
“And then decided to enslave all the others who would live here,” Alain could not help adding.
She turned and gave him a narrow-eyed look. “I’m trying to focus on the romance here. What are you thinking? All of this Mechanic stuff in the tower and all, and finding out the Mages began appearing after people got here. How does that all feel for you?”
Alain did not answer for a little while, trying to put his thoughts together. “I thought at first that you were very unhappy, distressed when you saw all of those Mechanic devices. I wondered if you were jealous of those who had created such things. But then I saw that it was joy that moved you. And I felt some of that, through you. There is much to learn. We share that, you and I. In many ways our thoughts are different, but both of us want to learn new things. In that we are alike.”
Perhaps Mari sensed that he had more to say, because she waited until he spoke again.
Alain gestured at the stars. “You know that I was taught that all we see is false, an illusion. Those stars, this world. And so I can change the illusion, for a little while. But people make the illusions, and this has been puzzling me more and more. Mage teaching says that people are but shadows moving across the world illusion. Even I would be but a shadow in someone else’s mind. But I do not believe that any more, not of you and increasingly not of others. If we create the illusions by what we believe, then how can we be illusions as well?”
Mari made a baffled gesture. “I’m not quite following you, but I would think that to create something you’d have to be real.”
“Yes,” Alain said in a low but intense voice. “The people are real. That surely is the explanation for why the Mage arts cannot directly alter a person as they can anything else.”
“You told me about that. It is kind of odd. I mean, people are made of the same elements as other things in the world.”
“People are not those things. They are different somehow. But they are not illusions. No Mage can alter that which is real, and I now believe that each person is a reality, and a truth.”
Mari reached over and grasped his hand. “I’d sure like to believe that’s true.”
“I think it is. Why has not my connection to other people harmed my ability to change the world illusion? Because it is a totally different thing. I can love you and it harms my art not at all. Indeed, I believe my love is somehow leading me to a new level of art. I have told you this, that I have found new strength. I do not understand it all, yet, but I feel things I did not feel before, and I sense possibilities beyond anything my elders promised.”
“Because you love me?” Mari sounded uncomfortable. “I’m not that special.”
“You are a truth, Mari. Everyone is. More importantly, you are my truth.”
“You’re really embarrassing me.”
“I am sorry,” Alain said.
She laughed and held him close. “Wait’ll I get you someplace safe and private again.”
“Must we wait?”
“You’ll have to. The librarians said there is some sort of ancient recording device in each of these rooms and they never know when one will kick on for a little while. They may be willing to live with that possibility, but I’m not.” Mari lay back, then spoke tentatively. “Alain? That reminds me. Is there something about being married that Mages know that nobody else does?”
Alain frowned up at the dark, puzzled by the question. “Not that I know of.”
“But somebody told me that everybody knows Mages know something nobody else knows. I didn’t know that, but everybody else knows it.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Um.” Alain tried to work his way through her last statement. “How could it be something only Mages know if everybody knows it?”
“No,” Mari said, exasperated. “You’re trying to confuse me.”
“I am trying to confuse you?”
“It’s something that Mages know that everybody knows Mages know but nobody else knows,” Mari said.
“Mari, I really have no idea—”
“About being married, Alain!”
Alain tried to remember every reference to marriage he had heard from other Mages. There were not many, and they were all the same. “The only thing I was ever told about marriage by Mage elders was to avoid it all costs, because it weakened you.”