David Brin - The Practice Effect

Sigel regarded him. “One of the guards claims you are a wizard. Your actions earlier made us think it might be true. Can you truly arrange an escape from this place?”

Dennis smiled. The score so far was Tatir many, Dennis Nuel nothing. It was his turn now. What, he wondered, might not be wrought from the Practice Effect by a Ph.D. in physics, when these people hadn’t even heard of the wheel?

“It’ll be a piece of cake, Stivyung.”

The farmer looked puzzled by the idiom but he smiled hopefully.

A touch of motion caught Dennis’s eye. He turned and looked up at the layered castle to his right, its walls gleaming in the moonlight.

Three levels up, behind a parapet lined with bars, a slender figure stood alone. The breeze blew a diaphanous garment and a cascade of long blond hair.

She was too far away to discern clearly in the night, but Dennis was struck by the young woman’s loveliness. He also felt sure that somehow he had seen her somewhere before.

At that moment she seemed to look toward them. She stood that way, with her face in shadows, perhaps watching them watch her, for a long time.

“Princess Linnora,” Sigel identified her. “She is a prisoner as are we. In fact, she’s the reason I’m here. The Baron wanted to impress her with his property. I’m to help practice his personal things to perfection.” Sigel sounded bitter.

“Is she as beautiful in the daytime as she is by moonlight?” Dennis couldn’t look away.

Sigel shrugged. “She’s comely, I’ll warrant. But I can’t understand what th’ Baron’s thinking. She’s a daughter of the L’Toff. I know them better than most, and it’s hard even for me to imagine one of them ever marraiging to a normal human being.”

“They patrol outside the wall to keep people away,” the small thief said. “After all, a lot of prisoners have family and friends on the outside, and a fair part of Zusiik’s population would help in a jailbreak. Even after thirty years, Kremer’s northmen ain’t too popular hereabouts.”

Dennis nodded. “But do the guards inspect the wall on the outside as carefully as they do inside?”

The escape committee numbered five. They were gathered around a rickety table eating the noon meal. The prisoners sat in flimsy, uncomfortable chairs. It would have been better just to stand, but practicing the chairs was another of their jobs.

Gath Glinn, the youngest member of their group, squatted in the shadows beside the nearby castle wall, huddled over Dennis’s prototype escape device. The sandy-haired youth had been the first to catch on to the Earthman’s idea and had been assigned to try it out. He stopped working and covered the device whenever the others indicated the guards were near.

Right now his hands moved rapidly back and forth, and the little tool he practiced made soft “zizzing” sounds.

The short, dark man whom Dennis vaguely remembered yelling at on his first day in jail shook his head and answered Dennis’s question. “Naw, Denniz. Sometimes they take gangs of us out to throw rocks at the wall. But mostly they make us practice it from th’ inside.”

Dennis was still routinely puzzled by things his fellow prisoners told him. His look must have showed it.

Stivyung Sigel looked left and right to make sure no one had approached too close. “What Arth means, Dennis, is that another of our jobs is to practice the wall itself into being a better wall.”

The farmer seemed to have caught on that Dennis came from someplace far away, where things were very different from here. It seemed to puzzle him that civilization could exist in a land where things didn’t get better with use, but he appeared willing to give Dennis the benefit of the doubt.

“I see.” Dennis nodded. “That’s why those men are allowed to chop away at the wall like that, without being stopped by the guards.” He had seen groups of prisoners lackadaisically attacking the palisade, and the wall of the castle itself, with crude mallets. He had wondered why it was permitted.

“Right, Dennis. The Baron wants the wall stronger, so he has prisoners scratch at it.” Stivyung shrugged at explaining something so basic. “Of course, the guards make sure they don’t use good tools while doing it. This way, in the course of time, the outermost wall will grow more and more like the one behind us, they’ll roof it over then, and the castle will grow that much larger.”

Dennis looked up at the palace. He understood the wedding cake geometry now. When the Coylians built a structure it started out little better than a rude lean-to. When it was finally coverted, after years of practice, into a solid one-story building, another crude structure was built on top. While the second story improved, the first became better at supporting weight on its roof and grew outward as lateral additions were made.

As long as someone lived in it thereafter, the building was practiced at holding together. Only if abandoned would it slowly revert, eventually to collapse into a tumble of sticks and mud and animal hides.

Dennis didn’t imagine there would be much for archaeologists to find on this world, once a great city was abandoned.

“They also check to make sure we practice all the wall,”

Arth added. The diminutive thief claimed to be a leader among the burglars and thieves in the town of Zuslik. From the respect the other prisoners paid him, Dennis didn’t doubt it.

“O’ course, we always try to leave patches of wall to revert to old logs… so’s we could really break through. They patrol looking for such practice gaps. It’s a game o’ wits.” He grinned, as if certain the game could be won sooner or later.

The zizzing sound behind them suddenly ended in a sharp snap. Young Oath held up the severed end of the piece of wood, beaming at Dennis admiringly.

“The flexible saw worked!” he whispered in excitement. He looked around to make sure no guards were near, then handed the tool to Dennis.

The teeth were warm from friction. On Earth they would have shown signs of wear after cutting just that little piece of soft wood. But Gath had been thinking “Cut! Cut!” as he worked. And now, thanks to the gentle practice, the zipper was just a little sharper than before.

Dennis shook his head. It was a helluva purpose to put a zipper to. Those sealing the pockets of his overalls were all of soft plastic. He had had to rip the metal zipper from his pants—his fly was now shut with three crude buttons that he hoped would get better with use: Certainly he wasn’t about to use this zipper in its old purpose again!

“Good work, Gath. We’ll arrange for you to get on sick call so you can practice this saw to perfection. The night it’s finished—”

Arth interrupted quickly with a comment on the weather. In a moment a pair of guards passed nearby. The prisoners developed an interest in their meal until they had gone.

When the coast was clear, Dennis offered to pass the saw around. All but Stivyung Sigel politely refused. Apparently the average person here was a bit superstitious toward those who put “essence” into a tool—the original craftsmen who “made” tools in the first place, rather than practiced them to perfection. They probably saw magic in it because it used a principle they had never seen before.

He handed the zipper back to Gath, who palmed it eagerly.

Then lunch was over. The guards started calling them back to work.

Dennis’s present job was to attack suits of armor with a blunt, hollow spear—while the soldier-owners wore them! It was exacting work. If he hit the soldier hard enough to hurt, he was struck with a whip. If he struck too softly, the guards shouted and threatened to beat him.