The candle was less than half gone. The balloon bobbed within its frame, straining at the tiny gondola’s shrouds. The basket bounced on the floor, then lifted away entirely.
There was a hushed silence, then Maggin laughed out loud and Arth clapped Dennis on the back. Gath crouched beneath the balloon, as if to memorize it from every angle.
Stivyung Sigel sat still, but his pipe poured forth aromatic smoke, and his black eyes seemed to shine.
“But this thing won’t lift a man!” Perth complained.
Arth turned on his subordinate. “How do you know what it’ll eventually be able to do? It’s not even been practiced yet! Weren’t you the one sneering at ‘new-made’ things?”
Perth backed down nervously, licking his lips as he stared superstitiously at the slowly rising balloon.
“Actually,” Dennis said, “Perth’s right. After practice this one will probably lift better than any similar balloon on… in my homeland. But in order to lift several men we’ll still have to make a much bigger balloon in that empty warehouse you told me about, Arth. We’ll practice it there, then Gath and Stivyung and I will use it to escape at night, when the Baron’s flying corps is in its sheds.”
Arth had a mercenary gleam in his eye. “You an’ Gath an’ Stivyung won’t forget about the message to the L’Toff, will you?”
“Of course not.” All three of them had good reasons for heading straight for the mysterious tribe in the mountains once they got out of town. Dennis intended to tell them about their captive Princess and offer suggestions how she might be rescued.
Arth expected to rake off a nice reward from the L’Toff for his part in all this, as well as have the pleasure of giving the Baron tsuris in the process.
The balloon bobbed against the ceiling. “All right,” Dennis said, “you all were going to teach me how to concentrate to get the most out of practice. Why don’t we start?”
They took their seats. Stivyung Sigel was the acknowledged best practicer, so he explained.
“First off, Dennis, you don’t have to concentrate. Just using a tool will make it better. But if you keep your attention on the thing itself, and what you’re using it to accomplish, the practice goes faster. You give the tool tougher and tougher jobs to do, over weeks, months, and think about what it could be when it’s perfect.”
“What about that trance we saw you under in the prison yard? You practiced the saw to perfection in a matter of minutes!”
Stivyung considered. “I have seen the felthesh before, when I dwelled, for a time, among the L’Toff. Even among them, it is rare. It comes after years of training, or under even more rare circumstances. I never imagined I would ever enter that state.
“Perhaps it was some magic of the moment and the desperation of our need.”
Stivyung seemed pensive for a long moment. He shook himself at last and looked at Dennis. “In any event, we cannot count on the ax falling twice in exactly the same spot. We must rely on normal ways as we practice your ‘balloons.’ Why don’t you tell us again just what this example is doing now and how it could gradually come to, do it better. Don’t get too far ahead of what it is, or it won’t work. Just try to describe the next step.”
It sounded like a children’s game to Dennis. But he knew that here “wish and make it so” had a very serious side to it. He squinted as he looked at the balloon…trying to see an ideal. Then he started to describe what none of them had ever before imagined.
2
Two days later, the search for the escapees had finally died down. The guards at the city gates were still diligent, but street patrols went back to normal. Dennis at last got to take a tour of the town of Zuslik.
On his first attempt, when he had arrived almost two weeks ago, Dennis had been full of vague ideas about how to get along in a strange city.
(One made contact with the local association of one’s profession, he imagined, hoping a local colleague would insist you stay at his home—and maybe offer his charming daughter as a tour guide, as well. Wasn’t that the way he had envisioned it just a short while back?)
His plans had gone awry before he passed through the city gates. Still, he had probably acquired a more intimate acquaintance with the local power structures than he would have as a tourist…and without the typical banes of the gawking traveler—beggars, bunions, and muggers.
He and Arth took lunch in an open-air cafe overlooking a busy market street. Dennis washed down his last bite of rickel steak with a heady swallow of the dirt-brown local brew. After a long day and night practicing the balloon, he had built up a hearty appetite.
“More,” he belched, bringing the beer stein down with a thump.
His companion stared at him for a moment, then snapped his fingers to the waiter. Dennis was a bit larger than the average male Coylian, but his appetite was nevertheless causing a bit of a sensation.
“Take it easy,” Arth suggested. “After I’ve paid for all this I won’t be able to afford to take you to a physic for yer upset stomach!”
Dennis grinned and plucked a rough toothpick from a cup by the rail. He watched a heavy cargo sled slide past the restaurant, almost silent on one of the self-lubricating roadways, pulled by a patient, lumbering larbeast.
“Have your boys managed to collect any more slippery oil?” he asked the thief.
Arth shrugged. “Not too much. We use street urchins to do the collectin’, but the drivers have taken to throwin’ rocks at ’em. And the kids waste a lot of the stuff play in ‘greased pig.’ We’ve only got a quarter of a jug or so by now.”
Only a quarter jug! That was almost a liter of the finest lubricant Dennis had ever encountered! Arth had certainly not acted this casually when Dennis first demonstrated the stuff to him. He had gone almost crazy with excitement.
It would make a useful commercial product, of course. It would also greatly facilitate burglary…until shop owners began practicing their doors to resist the stuff. Last night’s paper heist had depended completely on a surprise use of sled oil.
Dennis wondered why these people had never discovered the very substance that made their roads work. Were they that uncurious? Or did it come from operating under a totally different set of assumptions about the way the universe worked?
Of course, history showed that most of Earth’s cultures had been caste-structured, and slow to improve on the way things had been done for centuries. Here, where innovation was less necessary, people had not developed a tradition for it until very recently. The war between Baron Kremer and the King seemed to be part of that change.
This morning he and Arth had rented a warehouse. The growing fear of war had caused a decline in river commerce, and the landlord was desperate to find any tenant at all. Someone had to occupy the place and keep it fit until times improved. Already the walls were showing a creaky roughness, starting to resemble wooden logs again.
Arth was quite a bargainer. The landlord would actually pay a small sum for them to move in for a while!
Last night had come the great felt heist. Arth’s thieves had arrived at the warehouse furtively carrying bolts of the fine cloth. Lady Aren and several assistant seamstresses, all from families that had been brought down in class by Kremer’s father, were soon at work. And young Gath was at this moment constructing a gondola for the big balloon. The lad was ecstatic over the chance to make something new—something that would be of use almost before its first practice.
Arth paid the luncheon bill, muttering over the total. “Now what?” he asked.