“All right,” he whispered, “here goes.”
Dennis was glad these people at least understood ropes and lassos. Stivyung Sigel took the saw from Dennis and stepped back to swing it over his head, playing out more and more line as the loop grew.
The guards routinely searched prisoners for weapons, cutting tools, and any sort of twine that might be practiced into a climbing rope. But the floss had been missed completely. For two days he had tugged at it in his spare time, practicing it up for this attempt.
The strand wasn’t going to be used for climbing. Dennis doubted it could be done. Besides, he had a better idea.
Sigel swung one more time and let go. The loop sailed up over the sharpened end of one of the stockade logs. Dennis took the ends of line from him and tugged them straight.
He whispered, “To positions!” The thief Perth scuttled off to watch for patrols and to distract the guards, if necessary. Stivyung, Gath, and Mishwa took to the shadows, leaving Dennis to take the first shift with the saw.
He was sweating before he was even certain he had the teeth facing the right way. He wrapped rough cloth around his hands, then several loops of line, and began pulling gently back and forth—working it like a piece of floss rubbing slowly down the sides of a tooth. If he had oriented it right, the saw should be cutting away at the leather and mud bindings that held the log to its neighbors.
The cutting would begin at the weakest spot—the top, which had had the least “wall practice.” As it worked its way down, the saw should get better, and the weight of the log itself should put stress on the remaining ties.
At least he hoped that much physics still applied in this crazy place. Dennis crouched low to the ground and applied gradually greater pressure as the saw bit into the seams. As he fell into a rhythm he had time to think—to worry about guard patrols, and to wonder about the girl on the parapet.
How had she known he would be there, below in the darkness? What had Stivyung meant when he implied that the Princess of the L’Toff was not quite human?
There were no answers in the still muggy night. Dennis wondered if he would ever have the chance to ask the right questions.
He tried to concentrate on the job at hand, thinking hard about cutting. Although some scoffed at the idea, others claimed that a focused mind tended to make practice go faster.
He sawed until his arms ached and he knew fatigue was making him inefficient. By now he had confidence in the new tensile strength of the floss and was willing to trust someone else with the cutting. He signaled Sigel to take over. The big man hurried forth to help him unwrap his hands.
Dennis grimaced in pain as circulation returned. He envied Stivyung his rough farmer’s calluses. He stumbled over into the deep shadows by the wall, where Gath and Mishwa waited.
They sat together for a time in silence, watching the farmer patiently pull the line back and forth. Sigel looked like a lump in the darkness. It was amazing how well he blended in.
The minutes passed. Once they heard Arth give his warning call—an imitation of a night bird. Sigel flattened, and soon a guard patrol appeared around a corner, carrying a lantern. One cast of its beam would catch them if it were directed this way. Dennis held his breath along with the others.
But they moved on past, having counted the prisoners in the shed—including the lumpy bundles of homespun the gang had stuffed under their bedding.
Apparently routine had made the guards lazy, as Arth predicted.
When the little thief gave the all-clear, Sigel rose and went back to work, indefatigably. A faint zizzing sound could be heard where they waited, as the saw cut deeper with every stroke.
Young Gath moved a little closer to Dennis. “Is it true the Princess dropped a note to you?” the boy whispered.
Dennis nodded.
“Can I see it?”
A little reluctantly, he handed the slip of rough paper over. Gath pored over it, frowning and moving his lips. Literacy wasn’t common in this feudal society. Already Dennis read as well as the youth could.
Gath gave the note back and whispered, “Someday I’d like to visit the L’Toff. There used to be more contact with them, back in the days of the old Duke, I’m told.
“You know they adopt regular humans sometimes?” the boy went on. “The L’Toff would welcome me, I know it! I want to be a maker.”
Gath emparted the remark as if he were trusting Dennis with a tremendous secret.
Dennis shook his head, still confused by the ways the people of Tatir had developed to deal with the Practice Effect. “A maker,” he asked. “Is that someone who puts together a tool for the first time? Someone who makes starters?” A “starter” was what they called a new object or tool that had never been practiced. “I thought making was restricted to certain castes.”
Gath nodded. He accepted Dennis’s naivete as a wizard’s privilege. “Aye. There’s the stonechoppers’ caste, and the woodhewers’ caste, and the tanners and th’ builders and others.” He shook his head. “The castes are closed to newcomers, and they do everything the old ways. Only farmers like Stivyung can make their own starters the way they want and get away with it, ’cause they’re out in the country where nobody could catch ’em at it.”
“What does it matter?” Dennis asked softly. “A starter tool soon adapts to whomever practices it, getting better with use. You could turn a fig leaf into a silk purse if you worked at it long enough.”
The youth smiled. “The orig’nal essence that’s in a starter affects its final form…an ax can only be made from a starter ax, not from a starter broom or a starter sled. A thing doesn’t get practice becoming something unless it’s at least a little bit useful from the very start.”
Dennis nodded. Even here, where technology was nonexistent, people found patterns of cause and effect. “What are you in jail for, Gath?”
“For making sled starters without permission from the castes.” The boy shrugged. “It was stupid of me to get caught. Until you came, I figured when I got out I’d try for the L’Toff. But now I’d rather work for you!”
He beamed at Dennis. “You probably know more about making than the L’Toff and all the castes put together! Maybe you’ll need a ’prentice when you head back to your homeland. I’d work hard! I already know how to chop flint! And I learned how to throw pots by sneaking into th’—”
The boy was getting a bit too excited. Dennis motioned for Gath to keep it down. He shut up obediently, but his eyes still shone.
Dennis thought about what Gath had said. He probably did know more about “making” than everyone else on this world combined. But he knew next to nothing about the Practice Effect. In the here and now, that ignorance could be deadly.
“We’ll see,” he said to the lad. “When we get out of here, I may be in a hurry to get home, and maybe I could use a hand.” He thought about the hills to the northwest…about the zievatron.
He was getting worried about all the time he had spent chasing after a mechanical civilization on this planet. Had Flaster sent anyone else through the machine? It would be just like the fellow to dither and delay and finally start searching about for another “volunteer.”
On the other hand, Flaster might have given up and cut the zievatron loose, setting the Sahara Tech team to work searching once more among the anomaly worlds… using Dennis Nuel’s search algorithm, of course. I might have to spend the rest of my life here, he realized.