of course, was the perfect symbol, and hence the true whole. There was
the simple ritual of giving a secret name. Apparently any man who
discovered a principle or device could use a name for it, just as
parents could give one to their children. And there were the laws for
using the name. Unfortunately, just when Hanson was beginning to make
some sense of it, the book ended. Obviously, there was a lot more to be
covered in later courses.
He tossed the book aside, shivering as he realized that his secret name
was common knowledge. The wonder was that he could exist at all. And
while there was supposed to be a ritual for relinquishing one name and
taking another, that was one of the higher mysteries not given.
In the morning, he stopped to magic up some more food and the clothing
he would need if he ever found the trace of civilized people again. The
food was edible, though he'd never particularly liked cereal. He seemed
to be getting the hang of abracadabraing up what was in his mind. But
the clothing was a problem. Everything he got turned out to be the right
size, but he couldn't see himself in hauberk and greaves, nor in a filmy
nightgown. Finally, he managed something that was adequate, if the
brilliant floral sportshirt could be said to go with levi pants and a
morning frock. But he felt somewhat better in it. He finally left the
frock behind, however. It was still too hot for that.
He walked on briskly, watching for signs of life and speculating on the
principles of applied semantics, name magic and similarity. He could
begin to understand how an Einstein might read through one of the
advanced books here and make leaps in theory beyond what the Satheri had
developed. They'd had it too easy. Magic that worked tended to overcome
the drive for the discipline needed to get the most out of it. Any good
theoretician from Hanson's world could probably make fools of these
people. Maybe that was why the Satheri had gone scrounging back through
other worlds to find men who had the necessary drive to get things done
when the going was tough.
Twice he passed abandoned villages, but there was nothing there for him.
He was coming toward forested ground now, something like the country in
which the Sons of the Egg had found refuge. The thought of that made him
go slower. But for a long time, there was no further sign of life. The
woods thinned out to grasslands, and he went on for hours more before he
spotted a cluster of lights ahead.
As he drew nearer, he saw that the lights seemed to be fluorescents.
They were coming from corrugated iron sheds that looked like aircraft
hangars strung together. There was a woven-wire fence around the
structures, and a sign that said simply: _Project Eighty-Five_. In the
half-light from the sky, he could see a well-kept lawn, and there were a
few groups of men standing about idly. Most wore white coveralls, though
two were dressed in simple business suits.
Hanson moved forward purposefully, acting as if he had urgent business.
If he stopped, there would be questions, he suspected; he wanted to find
answers, not to answer idle questions.
There was no one at the desk in the little reception alcove, but he
heard the sound of voices through a side door leading out. He went
through it, to find a larger yard with more men idling. There should be
someone here who knew more of what was going on in this world than he
did now.
His choice, in the long run, seemed to lie between Bork and the Satheri,
unless he could find some way of hiding himself from both sides. At the
moment, he was relatively free for the first time since they had brought
him here, and he wanted to make sure that he could make the most use of
the fact.
Nobody asked anything. He slowed, drifting along the perimeter of the
group of men, and still nobody paid him any attention. Finally, he
dropped onto the ground near a group of half a dozen men who looked more
alert than the rest. They seemed to be reminiscing over old times.
"--two thirty-eight an hour with overtime--and double time for
the swing shift. We really had it made then! And every
Saturday, never fail, the general would come out from Muroc and
tell us we were the heros of the home front--with overtime pay
while we listened to him!"
"Yeah, but what if you wanted to quit? Suppose you didn't like
your shift boss or somebody? You go down and get your time, and
they hand you your draft notice. Me, I liked it better in '46.
Not so much pay, but--"
Hanson pricked up his ears. The conversation told him more than he
needed to know. He stood up and peered through the windows of the shed.
There, unattended under banks of lights, stood half-finished aircraft
shapes.
He wouldn't get much information here, it seemed. These were obviously
reanimates, men who'd been pulled from his own world and set to work.
They could do their duties and their memories were complete, but they
were lacking some essential thing that had gone out of them before they
were brought here. Unless he could find one among them who was either a
mandrake-man housing a soul or one of the few reanimates who seemed
almost fully human, he'd get little information. But he was curious as
to what the Satheri had expected to do with aircraft. The rocs had
better range and altitude than any planes of equal hauling power.
He located one man who seemed a little brighter than the others. The
fellow was lying on the ground, staring at the sky with his hands
clasped behind his head. From time to time, he frowned, as if the sight
of the sky was making him wonder. The man nodded as Hanson dropped down
beside him. "Hi. Just get here, Mac?"
"Yeah," Hanson assented. "What's the score?"
The man sat up and made a disgusted noise. "Who knows?" he answered.
There was more emotion in his voice than might be expected from a
reanimate; in real life on his own world, he must have had an amazing
potential for even that much to carry over. "We're dead. We're dead, and
we're here, and they tell us to make helicopters. So we make them,
working like dogs to make a deadline. Then, just as the first one comes
off the line, the power fails. No more juice. The head engineer took off
in the one we finished. He was going to find out what gives, but he
never came back. So we sit." He spat on the ground. "I wish they'd left
me dead after the plant blew up. I'm not myself since then."
"What in hell would they need with helicopters?" Hanson asked.
The man shrugged. "Beats me. But I'm beginning to figure some things
out. They've got some kind of trouble with the sky. I figure they got
confused in bringing us here. This shop is one that made those big cargo
copters they call 'Sky Hooks' and maybe they thought the things were
just what they're called. All I know is they kept us working five solid
weeks for nothing. I knew the power was going to fail; they had the
craziest damn generating plant you ever saw, and it couldn't last. The
boilers kept sizzling and popping their safety valves with no fire in
the box! Just some little old man sitting in a corner, practicing the
Masonic grip or something over a smudgepot."
Hanson gestured back to the sheds. "If there's no power, what are those
lights?"
"Witch lights, they told us," the man explained. "Saved a lot of wiring,
or something. They--hey, what's that?"
He was looking up, and Hanson followed his gaze. There was something
whizzing overhead at jet-plane speed. "A piece of the sky falling?" he
said.
The man snorted. "Falling sidewise? Not likely, even here. I tell you,
pal, I don't like this place. Nothing works right. There was no fuel for
the 'copter we finished--the one we called Betsy Ann. But the little
geezer who worked the smudgepot just walked up to it and wiggled his
finger. 'Start your motor going, Betsy Ann,' he ordered with some other
mumbo-jumbo. Then the motor roared and he and the engineer, took off at
double the speed she could make on high-test gas. Hey, there it is
again! Doesn't look like the Betsy Ann coming back, either."
The something whizzed by again, in the other direction, but lower and
slower. It made a gigantic but erratic circle beyond the sheds and
swooped back. It looked nothing like a helicopter. It looked like a
Hallowe'en decoration of a woman on a broomstick. As it came nearer,
Hanson saw that it _was_ a woman on a broomstick, flying erratically.
She straightened out in a flat glide.
She came in for a one-point landing a couple of yards away. The tip of
the broom handle hit the ground, and she went sailing over it, to land
on her hands and knees. She got up, facing the shed.
The woman was Nema. Her face was masklike, her eyes tortured. She was
staring searchingly around her, looking at every man.
"Nema!" Hanson cried.
She spun to face him, and gasped. Her skin seemed to turn gray, and her
eyes opened to double their normal size. She took one tottering step
toward him and halted.
"Illusion!" she whispered hoarsely, and slumped to the ground in a
faint.
She was reviving before he could raise her from the ground. She swayed a
moment, staring at him. "You're not dead!"
"What's so wonderful about that around here?" he asked, but not with
much interest. With the world going to pot and only a few days left, the
girl's face and the slim young body under it were about all the reality
left worth thinking about. He grabbed for her, pulling her to him.
Bertha had never made him feel like that.
She managed to avoid his lips and slid away from him. "But they used the
snetha-knife! Dave Hanson, you never died! It was only induced illusion
by that--that Bork! And to think that I nearly died of grief while you
were enjoying yourself here! You ... you mandrake-man!"
He grunted. He'd almost managed to forget what he was, and he didn't
enjoy having the aircraft worker find out. He turned to see what the
reaction was, and then stared open-mouthed at his surroundings.
There were no lights from the plane factory. In fact, there was no plane
factory. In the half-light of the sky, he saw that the plant was gone.
No men were left. There was only barren earth, with a tiny, limp sapling
in the middle of empty acres.
"What happened?"
Nema glanced around briefly and sighed. "It's happening all over. They
created the plane plant by the law of identities from that little plane
tree sapling, I suppose; it is a plane plant, after all. But with the
conjunctions and signs failing, all such creations are returning to
their original form, unless a spell is used continually over them. Even
then, sometimes, we fail. Most of the projects vanished after the sun
fell."
Hanson remembered the man with whom he'd been talking before Nema
appeared. He'd have liked to know such a man before death and
revivification had ruined him. It wasn't fair that anyone with character
enough to be that human even as a zombie should be wiped out without
even a moment's consideration. Then he remembered the man's own estimate
of his current situation. Maybe he was better off returned to the death
that had claimed him.
Reluctantly, he returned to his own problems. "All right, then, if you
thought I was dead, what are you doing here, Nema?"
"I felt the compulsion begin even before I returned to the city. I
thought I was going mad. I tried to forget you, but the compulsion grew
until I could fight it no longer." She shuddered. "It was a terrible
flight. The carpets will not work at all now, and I could hardly control
the broom. Sometimes it wouldn't lift. Twice it sailed so high I could
hardly breathe. And I had no hope of finding you, yet I went on. I've
been flying when I could for three days now."
Bork, of course, hadn't known of her spell with which she'd forced
herself to want him "well and truly." Apparently it had gone on
operating even when she thought he was dead, and with a built-in sense
of his direction. Well, she was here--and he wasn't sorry.
Hanson took another look across the plains toward the glowing hell of
the horizon. He reached for her and pulled her to him. She was firm and
sweet against him, and she was trembling in response to his urging.
At the last moment she pulled back. "You forget yourself, Dave Hanson!
I'm a registered and certified virgin. My blood is needed for--"
"For spells that won't work anyhow," he told her harshly. "The sky isn't
falling now, kid. It's down--or most of it."
"But--" She hesitated and then let herself come a trifle closer. Her
voice was doubtful. "It's true that our spells are failing. Not even the
surest magic is reliable. The world has gone mad, and even magic is no
longer trustworthy. But--"
He was just pulling her close enough again and feeling her arms lift to
his neck when the ground shook behind them and there was a sound of
great, jarring, thudding steps.
Hanson jerked around to see a great roc making its landing run, heading
straight for them. The huge bird braked savagely, barely stopping before
they were under its feet.
From its back, a ladder of some flexible material snaked down and men
began descending. The first were mandrakes in the uniform of the
Satheri, all carrying weapons with evil-looking blades or sharp
stickers.
The last man off was Bork. He came toward Hanson and Nema with a broad
grin on his face. "Greetings, Dave Hanson. You do manage to survive,
don't you? And my little virgin sister, without whose flight I might not
have found you. Well, come along. The roc's growing impatient!"
VIII
The great roc's hard-drumming wings set up a constant sound of rushing
air and the distance flowed behind them. There was the rush of wind all
around them, but on the bird's back they were in an area where
everything seemed calm. Only when Hanson looked over toward the ground
was he fully conscious of the speed they were making. From the height,
he could see where the sun had landed. It was sinking slowly into the
earth, lying in a great fused hole. For miles around, smaller drops of
the three-mile-diameter sun had spattered and were etching deeper holes
in the pitted landscape.
Then they began passing over desolate country, scoured by winds, gloomy
from the angry, glaring clouds above. Once, two bodies went hurtling
upwards toward the great gaps in the sky.
"Those risings were from men who were no worshippers of the egg's
hatching," Bork commented. "It's spreading. Something is drawing them up
from all over the planet."
Later, half a square mile of the shell cracked off. The roc squawked
harshly, but it had learned and had been watching above. By a frantic
effort of the great wings, it missed the hurtling chunk. They dropped a
few thousand feet in the winds that followed the piece of sky, but their
altitude was still safe.
Then they passed over a town, flying low. The sights below were out of a
ghoul's bacchanalia. As the roc swept over, the people stopped their
frenzied pursuit of sensation and ran for weapons. A cloud of arrows
hissed upwards, all fortunately too late.
"They blame all their troubles on the magicians," Bork explained.
"They've been shooting at everything that flies. Not a happy time to
associate with the Satheri, is it?"
Nema drew further back from him. "We're not all cowards like you! Only
rats desert a sinking ship."
"Nobody thought it was sinking when I deserted," Bork reminded her.
"Anyhow, if you'd been using your eyes and seen the way we are
traveling, you'd know I've rejoined the crew. I've made up with the
Sather Karf--and at a time like this, our great grandfather was glad to
have me back!"
Nema rushed toward him in delight, but Hanson wasn't convinced. "Why?"
he asked.
Bork sobered. "One of the corpses that fell back from the risings added
a word to what the others had said. No, I'll bear the weight of it
myself, and not burden you with it. But I'm convinced now that his egg
should not hatch. I had doubts before, unlike our friend Malok, who also
heard the words but is doubly the fanatic now. Perhaps the hatching
cannot be stopped--but I've decided that I am a man and must fight like
one against the fates. So, though I still oppose much that the Satheri
have done, I've gone back to them. We'll be at the camp of the Sather
Karf shortly."
That sewed everything up neatly, Hanson thought. Before, he had been
torn between two alternatives. Now there was only one and he had no
choice; he could never trust the Sons of the Egg with Bork turned
against them. He stared up at the sky, realizing that more than half of
it had already fallen. The rest seemed too weak to last much longer. It
probably didn't make much difference what he did now or who had him;
time was running out for this world.
The light was dimmer by the time they reached the great capital city--or
what was left of it. They had left the sun pyre far to the south. The
air was growing cold already.
The roc flew low over the city. The few people on the streets looked up
and made threatening gestures, but there was no flight of arrows from
the ground. Probably the men below had lost even the strength to hate.
It was hard to see, since there was no electric lighting system now. But
it seemed to Hanson that only the oldest and ugliest buildings were
still standing. Honest stone and metal could survive, but the work of
magic was no longer safe.
One of the remaining buildings seemed to be a hospital, and the empty
space in front of it was crammed with people. Most of them seemed to be
dead or unconscious. Squat mandrakes were carrying off bodies toward a
great fire that was burning in another square. Plague and pestilence had
apparently gotten out of hand.
They flew on, beyond the city toward the construction camp that had been
Hanson's headquarters. The roc was beginning to drop into a long landing
glide, and details below were easier to see. Along the beach beyond the
city, a crowd had collected. They had a fire going and were preparing to
cook one of the mermaids. A fight was already going on over the prey.
Food must have been exhausted days before.
The camp was a mess when they reached it. One section had been ripped
down by the lash of wind from a huge piece of the sky, which now lay
among the ruins with a few stars glowing inside it. There was a
brighter glow beyond. Apparently one blob of material from the sun had
been tossed all the way here and had landed against a huge rock to
spatter into fragments. The heat from those fragments cut through the
chill in the air, and the glow furnished light for most of the camp.
The tents had been burned, but there was a new building where the main
tent had been. This was obviously a hasty construction job, thrown
together of rocks and tree trunks, without the use of magic. It was more
of an enormous lean-to than a true building, but it was the best
protection now available. Hanson could see Sather Karf and Sersa Garm
waiting outside, together with less than a hundred other warlocks.
The mandrakes prodded Hanson down from the roc and toward the new
building, then left at a wave of the Sather Karf's hand. The old man
stared at Hanson intently, but his expression was unreadable. He seemed
to have aged a thousand years. Finally he lifted his hand in faint
greeting, sighed and dropped slowly to a seat. His face seemed to
collapse, with the iron running out of it. He looked like a beaten, sick
old man. His voice was toneless. "Fix the sky, Dave Hanson!"
There were angry murmurs from other warlocks in the background, but
Sather Karf shook his head slowly, still facing Hanson. "No--what good
to threaten dire punishments or to torture you when another day or week
will see the end of everything? What good to demand your reasons for
desertion when time is so short? Fix the sky and claim what reward you
will afterwards. We have few powers now that the basis of astrology is
ruined. But repair our sky and we can reward you beyond your dreams. We
can find ways to return you to your own world intact. You have near
immortality now. We can fill that entire lifetime with pleasures. We'll
give you jewels to buy an empire. Or if it is vengeance against whatever
you feel we are, you shall know my secret name and the name of everyone
here. Do with us then what you like. _But fix the sky!_"
It shook Hanson. He had been prepared to face fury, or to try lying his
way out if there was a chance with some story of having needed to study
Menes's methods. Or of being lost. But he had no defense prepared
against such an appeal.
It was utterly mad. He could do nothing, and their demands were
impossible. But before the picture of the world dying and the decay of
the old Sather's pride, even Hanson's own probable death with the dying
world seemed unimportant. He might at least give them something to hope
for while the end came.
"Maybe," he said slowly. "Maybe, if all of the men you brought here to
work on the problem were to pool their knowledge, we might still find
the answer. How long will it take to get them here for a council?"
Ser Perth appeared from the group. Hanson had thought the man dead in
the ruins of the pyramid, but somehow he had survived. The fat was going
from his face, and his mustache was untrimmed, but he was uninjured. He
shook his head sadly. "Most have disappeared with their projects. Two
escaped us. Menes is dead. Cagliostro tricked us successfully. You are
all we have left. And we can't even supply labor beyond those you see
here. The people no longer obey us, since we have no food to give them."
"You're the only hope," Bork agreed. "They've saved what they could of
the tools from the camp and what magical instruments are still useful.
They've held on only for your return."
Hanson stared at them and around at the collection of bric-a-brac and
machinery they had assembled for him. He opened his mouth, and his
laughter was a mockery of their hopes and of himself.
"Dave Hanson, world saver! You got the right name but the wrong man,
Sather Karf," he said bitterly. He'd been a pretender long enough, and
what punitive action they took now didn't seem to matter. "You wanted my
uncle, David Arnold Hanson. But because his friends called him Dave and
cut that name on his monument, and because I was christened by the name
you called, you got me instead. He'd have been helpless here, probably,
but with me you have no chance. I couldn't even build a doghouse. I
wasn't even a construction engineer. Just a computer operator and
repairman."
He regretted ruining their hopes, almost as he said it. But he could see
no change on the old Sather's face. It seemed to stiffen slightly and
become more thoughtful, but there was no disappointment.
"My grandson Bork told me all that," he said. "Yet your name was on the
monument, and we drew you back by its use. Our ancient prophecy declared
that we should find omnipotence carved on stone in a pool of water, as
we found your name. Therefore, by the laws of rational magic, it is
_you_ to whom nothing is impossible. We may have mistaken the direction
of your talent, but nonetheless it is you who must fix the sky. What
form of wonder is a computer?"
Dave shook his head at the old man's monomania. "Just a tool. It's a
little hard to explain, and it couldn't help."
"Humor my curiosity, then. What is a computer, Dave Hanson?"
Nema's hand rested on Hanson's arm pleadingly, and he shrugged. He
groped about for some answer that could be phrased in their language,
letting his mind flicker from the modern electronic gadgets back to the
old-time tide predicter.
"An analogue computer is a machine that ... that sets up conditions
mathematically similar to the conditions in some problem and then lets
all the operations proceed while it draws a graph--a prediction--of how
the real conditions would turn out. If the tides change with the
position of some heavenly body, then we can build cams that have shapes
like the effect of the moon's orbit, and gear them together in the right
order. If there are many factors, we have a cam for each factor, shaped
like the periodic rise and fall of that factor. They're all geared to
let the various factors operate at the proper relative rate. With such a
machine, we can run off a graph of the tides for years ahead. Oh,
hell--it's a lot more complicated than that, but it takes the basic
facts and draws a picture of the results. We use electronic ones now,
but the results are the same."