David Brin - The Practice Effect

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.

Unbidden, an image of golden hair in the moonlight came to him. It occurred to him that this world did have its attractions.

Shivering, he reminded himself that he had also received a warning of imminent torture only a couple of hours before. Tatir had its drawbacks, too.

Stivyung Sigel hadn’t called for relief yet. He worked with a fevered intensity that put Dennis a little in awe, Dennis looked up to see what kind of progress the farmer was making.

He stared in amazement. The saw had already cut almost half of the way down! How...?

He looked back at Sigel and rubbed his eyes. It had to be the darkness, but somehow it seemed that the air around the farmer shimmered faintly. It was as if little eddies of air were churning all around him. Dennis turned to Gath to ask if he saw it too.

The young maker did indeed see it. He stared at Sigel, utterly awed, as did Mishwa, the other thief with them.

“What is it?” Dennis whispered urgently. “What’s happening?”

Without taking his eyes away, Gath answered. “It’s a true felthesh trance! They say a person’s lucky to witness one once in a lifetime!”

Dennis looked back at Sigel. The man worked with demoniacal intensity, his arms pumping back and forth a blur. As they watched, the faint luminescence that surrounded him seemed to climb up the narrow thread of floss, like sparkling ionization around a high-voltage line.

Whatever mysterious thing a “felthesh trance” was, he could see that Sigel and the saw were playing havoc with the stockade bindings. A faint rain of dust fell from the growing gaps on either side of the palisade log.

Dennis found it awesome, indeed. But more immediately, he was concerned that the guards would notice this phenomenon!

Dennis decided it was time to hurry things along a bit.

He motioned to the thief, Mishwa Qan. The prisoner was a giant—larger, even, than Gilm the guard. Mishwa grinned and rose to his feet gracefully. At Dennis’s beckoning he crouched at the base of the wall, braced his back against the log, and pushed. The bindings groaned slightly.

Sigel worked on without pause, without asking for relief.

By now the saw had almost descended to man height but was starting to slow down. The stockade had had more wall practice at this level and was tougher.

Mishwa grunted and pushed again. The log complained softly, then tilted outward a little as its own weight began to help.

Dennis motioned for Gath to help Mishwa. Soon both were puffing together as the log groaned again.

It tipped a little farther, and then Dennis suddenly saw something that made him start. Something was moving upon the jagged rim of the palisade!

A dark figure—a little larger than a big bullfrog—bent over the growing opening and looked down at the faintly glowing zipper-saw as it cut. The nimbus of Sigel’s “felthesh trance” seemed to wash over it, enveloping both the creature and the saw in a soft glow.

Green eyes glowed in the dark. Sharp little teeth flashed in amusement.

Dennis shook his head. “Pix, you blasted voyeur. Now you choose to show up! When’ll you ever do anybody any good, hmm?”