David Brin - The Practice Effect

When they made their break in the balloon, however, it would be a different story. Those gliders might present a problem.

Discretion seemed well advised. He let Arth lead him away from the busy square, resolving though to return to study the statue in more detail later.

The Hall of the Guild of Chairmakers was overrun with children.

The chairmakers’ guild was the poorest of the maker castes. Unlike that of the stonechoppers, the hinge and door builders, and the papermakers, it had no secrets to protect. Anyone could make a chair or table “starter” with twine and sticks. Only the law kept the guild in its monopoly.

Youngsters ran all over the place. The floor was a litter of string and shredded bark. Arth explained that open guilds like the chairmakers’ hired mostly children and old people— unsuited for the high-volume practicing that took place at salons like Fixxel’s.

Under the supervision of a few master chairmakers, boys and girls assembled furniture starters to go into the homes of the needy. After a year or so of using these tables and chairs, the poor would sell the practiced models to somewhat better-off folk and buy another set of crude starters with part of the proceeds. The furniture would slowly work its way along the socioeconomic ladder as it grew older and better—upward mobility for things, if not people.

A red-robed priest moved among the children, accompanied by two master chairmakers, blessing the finished starters. Dennis couldn’t remember which deity the red gown represented, but something about the color seemed almost to remind him of something.

“Another patrol, Dennzz.” Arth pointed out a troop of guards passing by, one street over. “Maybe we better be gettin’ back.”

Dennis nodded reluctantly. “All right,” he told Arth, “let’s go.” It would be at least a week before the escape attempt, and there would be other chances to explore the town.

They ducked down a side alley and emerged on the Avenue of Sweetmeats. Arth bought pastries, and Dennis tried to make sense out of the chaotic but apparently efficient sled-rail traffic pattern as they walked.

Still, he couldn’t shake the image of the red-robed priest from his mind. Somehow it made him feel simultaneously angry and frustrated.

Arth grabbed Dennis’s arm as they were approaching the little thief s neighborhood. He looked up and down the street suspiciously. “Let’s take a shortcut,” he said, and led Dennis between a pair of stalls into another alley.

“What’s the matter?”

Arth shook his head. “Maybe I’m just nervous. But if you sniff a trap five times, and you’re wrong four of ’em, you’re still ahead if you avoid th’ smell.”

Dennis decided to take Arth’s word as the expert. He saw a stack of crates against the wall of one of the wedding cake buildings. “Come on,” he said, “I’ve got a tool that’s super at detecting traps. We can use it up on the roof.”

They climbed to the first parapet, then up a garden trellis to another level. Dennis reached under the robe Arth had lent him and pulled the little camp-watch alarm out of one of his overall pockets.

Arth stared at the flashing lights, entranced. He appeared totally confident in the Earthman’s wizardry ,sure that Dennis would be able to tell, from this magic, whether it was safe to go out onto the streets.

Dennis twiddled with the tiny dials. But the screen remained a chaos of unreadable garbage. The alarm, over a week out of practice, kept trying to go off regardless of what he did.

Dennis sighed and reached into another pocket. The slim, collapsible monocular had been in the packet Linnora had thrown him. Fortunately, it had only been scratched in Kermer’s futile attempts to open it.

Dennis used it to scan the streets below.

There were crowds up and down the main boulevard— farmers come to town to market their produce and purchase starters, aristocrats with their clonelike entourages, an occasional guard or churchman. Dennis looked for suspicious clumps of activity.

He focused on a group of men at the for end of the street. They idled about in front of a pub, apparently lounging.

But the spyglass told a different story. The men were armed, and they glanced intently at passersby. They had the high cheekbones of Kremer’s northmen.

Dennis adjusted the focus. A tall, armed man with the look of an aristocrat emerged from a building behind the toughs. He was followed by a short, stooped fellow with a patch over one eye. They were conversing in an agitated manner. The one-eyed man kept pointing in the direction of the waterfront. The aristocrat just as insistently seemed to indicate that they would wait right where they were.

“Uh, Arth"—Dennis’s mouth felt dry—"I think you’d better look at this.”

“At what, that little box? Are you lookin’ through it, or at somethin’ inside it?”

“Through it. It’s like a sort of magic tube that makes things far away look bigger. It may take you a minute to get used to it, but when you do, I want you to use it to look at that tavern at the end of the street.”

Arth squatted forward and took the monocular Dennis had to show him how to hold it. Arth grew excited.

“Hey! This is great! I can see like th’ proverbial eagle of Crydee!... I can count th’ steins on th’ table over at... Great Palmi ! That’s Perth ! An’ he’s talkin’ to Lord Hern himself!”

Dennis nodded. He felt a hollowness within his chest, as if fragile hope had suddenly turned into something heavy and hard.

“That scum!” Arth cursed. “He’s turnin’ us in! His dad even served with mine under th’ old Duke! Ill have his intestines an’ practice ’em into hawsers! I’ll...”

Dennis slumped back against the wall behind them. He was fresh out of ideas. There didn’t seem to be any way to warn his friends back at Arth’s apartment, or in the waterfront warehouse, where construction of the escape balloon had just begun.

He felt so helpless that, once again, the strange detachment from reality seemed to fall over him. He couldn’t help it.

Arth made a grand art out of cursing. He had quite a vocabulary of invective. For a while it kept him busy while the Earthman simply felt miserable.

Then Dennis blinked. A brief, sharp reflection had caught his eye from one of the neighboring rooftops not too far away.

He sat up and looked. Something small was moving about among the vents and rooftop debris.

“They’ve got somebody!” Arth declared, still staring through the monocular at the scene at the cafe. “They’re draggin’ him down from my place…” Arth whooped. “But they’ve only got one! The others must have got away! Perth don’t look happy at all! He’s tuggin’ at Lord Hern’s arm, pointin’ to th’ waterfront.

“Hah! By th’ time they get there all our people will be gone! Serves ’em right!”

Dennis barely heard Arth. He got up slowly, staring at the shape on the rooftop several blocks away; it glistened and scuttled from hiding place to hiding place.

Arth exclaimed. “It’s Mishwa they’ve caught! And…and he’s broken free and managed to jump Perth! Go get him, Mishwa! They’re tryin’ to get him off before he—Hey! Dennis, give that back!”

Dennis had snatched away the monocular. Ignoring Arth’s protests, he tried not to shake as he focused it on the roof a hundred meters away. Something quick and blurry passed in front of his line of sight.

It took him a few moments to find the exact spot. Then for seconds all he could see was the roof vent the thing had ducked behind.

At last, something rose from behind it—an eye at the end of a slender stalk that swiveled left and right, scanning.