Pathspace: The Space of Paths (8 page)

“
And when they saw that
the alien technology wasn't just different, but actually better,
cleaner, and safer, well, it broke them. Some of them just gave up,
like children who have seen adults do things in a better way than
they can. When they saw that the aliens had a way of magicking a
wheel so that it turned without a power source, they stopped
learning how to make motors and engines.”

Xander reached into a pocket and held out
something for his inspection. It was a gold coin, recently struck,
with the image of the General on one side and the words “ONE
DOLLAR” on the other. “Do you know what the value of this is?”

Les frowned at him. “Everyone knows that.
It's worth a dollar. A dollar's worth of food, or leather, or
wood.”

Xander shook his head. “You're wrong,” he
said. “Some ancients would agree with you, and say because it is
gold, a precious metal, that it has intrinsic value. But suppose
you were out in the wilderness, with no food or water, no animals
or streams, and had this. What would it be worth, when there is no
one who will trade you food for it?”

Les shrugged. “In that case, I guess it
wouldn't be worth much, then.”

“Wrong again. You have to learn to think of
it as not just a lump of metal. All matter is made of whizzing bits
of energy, and can be used to interact with energy. Especially good
conductors like gold.” The wizard placed the coin on the table top
and leaned forward. “Now pay attention. I'm about to make it more
useful, more valuable than just a shiny lump.”

Les wasn't sure what he expected. Perhaps
some magical words, or else mystic passes over it. But Xander did
none of that. He closed his eyes. “I want you to try to feel what I
do to it,” he said. “Close your eyes and open your mind.”

“I know how to close my eyes, but how do I
open my mind?”

“That's something I can't teach you. You'll
have to find your own way. Try to imagine something in your head
expanding outside your own skull, and reaching toward the coin as I
work the change upon the space around it.”

He tried. But he didn't seem to feel much of
anything, and told the old man as much.

Xander opened his eyes. “No matter. It was
only your first attempt. You would have to be quick, anyway. I've
done it so many times that I can almost do it in my sleep by
now.”

“Do what?” said Les, although he was
beginning to suspect.

Xander slid the coin under the bowl of water
on its stubby tripod legs and regarded it.. “Make it an everflame,”
he said.

His hand reached out to stroke the side of
the coin. A reddish mote of light appeared in the air above the
coin and grew in intensity as he stroked the edge of the coin
clockwise, until it was a hot point of blue-white radiance. “What
I've done,” he said, it to affect a change in the space near the
metal that makes it able to concentrate free energy to a point. It
releases heat and light without needing to burn wood or oil, and
you can turn the power, the rate at which energy is released into
3-space, up or down by stroking the side. It's just like the one
your mother uses to cook back at the inn in Inverness.”

Les supposed he ought to be impressed, but
he was used to seeing the everflame back home. “And how would this
make it more useful out in the wilderness?” he challenged. “I'd
still have no food or water.”

“No,” Xander agreed. “But you could use this
to stay warm and keep wolves away. A simple coin couldn't do that.”
He drew for a handful of something from the little pouch and
sprinkled it on the surface of the water. It appeared to be dried
leaves of some kind. Gradually, they began to soak up the water,
and waterlogged, to sink down into the warming liquid as he
continued to speak.

“Do you remember the trick with the
soup?”

“The what?” Les looked up from the water to
the wizard's eyes, but the old man was still intent on the
submerging fragments.

“When we first met, you wanted to know how I
did it. It was in the nature of a test, you know. I'd sensed that
someone with the potential to learn magic was in that village.”

Lester's brow compressed. “A soup test?” But
he remembered now. The bits of cracker had been drifting around the
soup. No, he thought. Not just drifting. They were circling, and
going in opposite directions. At the time it had seemed
strange.

“Most people are too caught up in the eddies
of fate, too absorbed in their own muddled lives to notice the
truly peculiar, even when it is right in front of them,” said
Xander. “We are every day, all of us, surrounded by wonders our
entire lives. Sunlight lifts water into clouds that snow upon the
distant hills, so rivers don't run out of water. Most life slows to
a tiny pace in winter, only to explode into growth again in the
Spring in time to save us from starving. We walk on sand that used
to be mountains. And most of us are blind to such mysteries. To
wonders. But to become a wizard, you must not be blind to
them.”

Les quirked a smile. “You're saying the
reason I'm here is because I wasn't blind to the wonder of circling
soup crackers?”

“In times not long from now,” the wizard
predicted, “you will remember that the course of your life was
changed forever by two bits of cracker in a bowl of soup.”

“Whatever,” said Les. “So how
did
you
do do it?”

“With magic,” thee old man answered. “Not
the sort from storybooks, with flaming swords and summoned demons.
The magic of psionics, the effect of the mind upon space.”

Now Les frowned. “You mean, on the crackers.
There's nothing to affect in space. It's empty, or else we couldn't
move through it.”

“I mean what I say. I affected the space
around them, and the crackers just followed where the space wanted
them to go. I call it
pathspace
. I don't know what the
Tourists called it. I didn't push the crackers. I set up the paths
that they followed.”

“But how? How did you do it? Now he found
that he really
did
want to know. The old man said he had the
seeds of greatness in him. Him! Useless Lester! Could it be true?
Could he ignore the chance?
Father
, he prayed,
help me
become what is required to avenge you
.

“Your mind,” said Xander, “is mapped onto
the world. Projected upon it. Written upon it. While we live, while
we live in this space, we are affected by it. We can perceive
events that take place within it, aided by our senses born of flesh
and wired to our very souls. And this goes both ways. We are
affected, AND we can affect. You can see and draw, be touched and
sculpt, hear
and
speak.”

“But how?” he begged the old man. “I can
touch the table with my hand. I can speak with my tongue and the
wind of my lungs. But how do I touch
space
? ”

“A man with eyes, kept forever in dark, will
never learn to see, or to paint what he sees,” answered Xander.
“But you were fortunate. The Gifts of the Tourists are fading, but
you, unlike many of your fellow humans, grew up exposed to the
magic, to the altered paths of space and energy that make your
inn's coldbox and everflame work. You have been exposed to light,
and your sense is growing.”

“But I felt
nothing
!” he insisted.
“Whatever you think, I'm still blind, still deaf to it!”

“No,” said the wizard. “I'm not wrong, not
about this. The process has begun in you, and it never stops, never
goes backwards. Stick with me me. lad, and you'll flower yet, trust
me. Every day we'll expose you to more, and more kinds, and before
you know it you'll see that I'm right.”

Then there was a knock at the door, and for
a time Les forgot his frustration, forgot his hopes and despair,
when the most beautiful girl in the world brought in their
breakfast.

Aria:
“A pool among the rock”

There was almost no sound as pale feet in
golden sandals trod the ancient concrete of the stairwell. Aria
moved without haste, but still had to work to keep the tray
balanced as she descended. Lucky for her that the Governor kept her
court wizard near her, else she surely would have spilled the
contents of the tray ere she reached the old man's quarters.

Hugging the tray to her with one arm, she
pushed the door open at the thirtieth floor and headed down the
corridor. Jon and Edgar slouched against the wall outside the door
she sought. They straightened as she approached, and not entirely
from military reflex. She smiled inwardly.

“
Try not to strain
yourselves, boys.”

An echo of her mother's
clucked its tongue inside her. Y
ou should not address
your future troops so familiarly.
But she
ignored it, or tried to, as she always did. She knew from
experience that even grizzled veterans took no offense to smiling
words from her.
Men are such simple things, so easily
charmed.

Edgar gave her a lopsided grin that spoke of
groundless optimism. “We didn't expect to see you here, Miss.
Where's Doris? Doesn't she usually bring the food for him?”

Aria narrowed her eyes in feigned
irritation. “She's not well,” she lied. “Do you really wish she had
come, instead of me?”

The two men eyed each other. “No, no, I'm
just … surprised, is all.”

“Then let me in, will you? Or do you want to
explain to him why his breakfast is cold today?

Edgar saluted and slid back the bolt and
swung the door open for her. She sniffed and pretended not to
notice the wink he gave to Jon as they both enjoyed the view of the
back of her trousers entering the wizard's rooms.

They were at the table gazing at a steaming
bowl of water. Then they looked up at her entrance and her
heartbeat quickened, as it always did when she came into Xander's
presence.

It was hard to imagine how there could be a
greater contrast than the one she saw between the two of them. The
apprentice was confused, wary, surprised, and clearly ill at ease
as he ran a hand self-consciously through blonde hair. His features
were pleasant enough, but his clothes were coarse and patched here
and there. Clearly from a poor family. His hands were large and
calloused with years of chores, and his boots had seen better days
– probably from long-gone years on someone else's feet.

Xander, also was frugal in his attire. His
robe and the cloak thrown over a chair were gray and free of
ornamentation, serviceable though they were. But the rest of him
was so different from the boy that the apprentice might have been
his shadow rather than an entity in his own light. Xander's face
was lined with decades of character. His beard marked him for an
elder. His boots probably cost more than the rest of his outfit put
together. And his eyes! Light like the boy's, though gray like her
own, rather than blue. Unlike the boy's eyes, those of the wizard
were as far from confused as a man's eyes could be. They gazed upon
her with calm recognition, without the interest she saw the boy
quickly suppress.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Doris fell sick
and you volunteered to bring our breakfast.” But his eyes twinkled,
and she saw that he knew this was a lie even before she agreed with
him. Suddenly her face felt warm, and she felt an unaccustomed
irritation with those eyes, his eyes that seemed hardly to look at
anything, yet saw everything – saw right through her own subterfuge
that she was sure fooled everyone else.

“Something like that,” she muttered.

“In any event,” he said, “you're here. Meet
my new apprentice Lester. Les, this is Aria, a young lady who knows
less than she should but far more than she admits.”

Instantly, she saw the boy drop a mask of
courtesy across his face. He stood and sketched a quick bow. Which
would have been a bit more flattering had his eyes not fastened
upon the breakfast tray she discovered she was still holding. She
set it down next to the steaming bow and straightened, a tad more
stiffly than she intended.

“Well, there you are. Sorry about the
interruption,” she said, turning to leave.

“We are never so busy that an interruption
bearing food is unwelcome,” said Xander with a smile that was
dangerously close to a smirk.

She hurried out the door, cursing herself
for acting the fool in front of the new apprentice. How was it that
the old wizard could make her do that – could so easily make her
lose control of her reactions? It was not as if she was in love
with the old fool, which from the books she read might have
explained it. But no, that wasn't it. It was, rather, as if they
shared a bond that went beyond any attraction. As if he were … she
didn't know, an older brother, or an uncle seen so often that the
only awkwardness between them was the fact that he could always
tell when she was lying, or hiding something. Like today.

“So how's the old man doing?” said Jon. Is
it true he's got a new apprentice?”

“None of your business,” she snapped. “Just
make sure he's not disturbed.”

And that last was as unnecessary as telling
the sun to rise, she realized. Gritting her teeth, she stalked away
vowing to ignore Xander and the boy the next time their paths
crossed.

She darted up the stairwell and tried to
stop growling in her mind. This distracted her enough that she
collided with Miss Gerloch. Only the closeness of the stairwell's
walls kept the two of them from tumbling to certain injury.

Miss Gerloch put a hand behind her head and
patted her bun back into shape, as she glared at Aria. “Where have
you been? We were supposed to resume your training in Geopolitics
over twenty minutes ago!”

“I'm sorry, Miss Gerloch. I had to take care
of something first.”

The older woman shook her head in
exasperation. “I swear, hardly a day goes by that I don't wonder
why I even bother. And then I remember.” She fixed Aria with a
brown-eyed glare. “Do you know what it is that I remember?” she
grated, as she straightened her stiff and unflattering black
dress.