David Brin - The Practice Effect

Linnora caught sight of it first, when the small figure appeared clambering over the ledge. She gasped and stared to the left. Dennis swiveled quickly and saw a tiny face—a pair of small green eyes and two rows of grinning, sharp teeth.

“A Krenegee!” Linnora said with a sigh.

The pixolet grinned. It scrambled onto the roof, then launched itself into the breeze. With outspread wing membranes it sailed lazily to Dennis and landed on his shoulder. Tiny claws bit into his cloak and jabbed his skin underneath.

Dennis had to struggle with his skidding feet, grappling with the bucking glider, cursing the wind and the stupid, irritating creature purring by his ear.

But Arth stared with superstitious awe, and when Linnora spoke, Dennis could barely hear her over the wind.

“The Krenegee chooses whom it will—and those whom it chooses make the world…” she said.

It sounded like a litany. Perhaps the pixolet’s species was some sort of totem for her people. Maybe Pix might do some good for somebody after all!

He held out his hand to Linnora, and this time she stepped forward and took it readily, as if in a daze. He guided her into the rear saddle, in front of Arth, and told the thief to hold on to her as he would his life.

There came a series of screams and loud crashes from below as another group assaulted the head of the stairs.

He felt a little guilty leaving the robot to face all that alone. It was only a machine, of course. But here on Tatir, that only wasn’t as easy an excuse as on Earth.

The soldiers were getting organized. Dennis heard officers shouting and what had to be entire platoons trooping quickly up the stairs. It wouldn’t be long now.

The wind rose again. Dennis had to fight down a wave of uncertainty as he looked out upon the rough, dimly perceived terrain. The spires of Zuslik town lurked against the hulking mountains beyond. The twisting, moonlit river glistened. Jagged outlines told of ship masts by the docks.

He looked back at his passengers. The pixolet purred and Linnora’s eyes now shone with a confidence he could not understand, though it felt good.

Somewhere below, a captain with a shrill voice was haranguing his men for a charge. It was definitely time to go.

“All right,” he told Arth and Linnora, “now I want you all to think up very hard, lean the way I lean, and jump with me when I say the magic word—’Geronimo!’”

The very instant they were airborne, Dennis was filled with a not unreasonable wish he could go back and try to think of something else.

“DennizzI Watch out for that spire!”

A high tower appeared out of the darkness, directly in their path. Dennis swung his weight leftward in the hanging saddle. “Lean hard!” he shouted, hoping Arth and Linnora would try to mimic his actions.

The glider tipped slowly. The top story of one of Zuslik’s higher buildings passed a scant two meters to their right. Through a brightly lit window Dennis glimpsed a scene of merriment. Some sort of celebration was in progress. There was a brief sound of high laughter. None of the partiers noticed a dark, swift shape whistle past their window.

Dennis fought to realign the glider. The bank had dropped them into a layer of turbulence. The craft bucked and fluttered as it followed the hillside down to the city proper.

Behind them the castle was in an uproar. Searchlamps cast sharp beams from every peak and parapet. Dennis didn’t dare look back, but he did hope the robot had managed to scuttle away at the end.

Zuslik’s wedding cake towers passed swiftly below them. The outer wall of the town lay less than a mile ahead, and beyond it the river. They were still losing altitude. It would be close.

Behind him Dennis could hear Arth’s teeth chattering. But Linnora’s grip on his waist was firm. Good girl. She wasn’t even trembling!

The glider surged as they passed through a pocket of warm air rising from a chimney. By the time Dennis regained control the town’s outer wall was coming toward them fast.

“Come on!” he urged the glider. “Come on, baby! Lift!”

He was talking to his craft, as almost every other pilot had.

But in this case the entreaties might actually do some good. Any additional practice the glider got couldn’t hurt.

The pixolet gripped his shoulder with its front claws and spread its wing membranes wide so its hind legs trailed behind. Was the darned thing actually trying to help for a change? It grinned, watching Dennis’s every move as the neophyte glider pilot threaded the higher towers toward the wall.

Hey! I’m not so bad at this! Dennis thought, grinning as the glider swooped around the steeple of a Coylian temple. A fellow could get to enjoy this.

A minute later he changed his mind. Were not going to make it.

Zuslik was a maze of twisting streets and pointed structures. In the darkness there was no way he could pilot the glider to a safe landing down there. He had brought them all to this predicament. Now it looked as if only the pixolet, with its built-in parachute, would escape catastrophe.

Suddenly the streets opened up, and the city wall loomed. It was at least a couple hundred yards ahead and now only a few meters below, waiting to flick them out of the air.

He glanced at Arth and Linnora. The little thief grinned back. In his adrenaline rush he looked like he was having the time of his life, totally confident in Dennis’s magical abilities.

Linnora’s eyes were closed, a peaceful expression on her face as she whispered quietly. Though her face was hardly a foot from his own, Dennis could not make out the words over the rushing wind.

Her chant seemed to resonate with the purring of the tiny animal on Dennis’s shoulder. For an instant she opened her eyes. She smiled at Dennis happily.

The pixolet purred louder.

Dennis piloted the glider past the last obstacle, and the stretch before the wall was ahead.

“Come on!” he urged the flying machine.

The ground swept past. Linnora’s chant and Pixolet’s purring seemed to meld with Dennis’s concentration. Reality seemed to shimmer around him. The struts and cables shuddered with a faint, musical thrill, almost as if the glider were changing under his very fingers. It felt familiar, somehow.

Dennis blinked. The wall was only twenty yards away now. Soldiers walked along the parapet carrying torches, their attention on the ground below.

Maybe… Dennis began to hope.

The glider seemed to hum excitedly. From the L’Toff Princess there streamed a feeling of power. And a great amplified echo seemed to come from the creature on his shoulder!

The glider felt electric under his hands, and the faintest shimmering light seemed to run along its cables. The taut fabric rippled with only the faintest luffing as the wall passed a bare man’s height below them. One guard stared up, slack-jawed. Then the wall was behind them, swallowed by the night.

Suddenly they were over the river. Faint starlight reflected from its surface.

The brief felthesh trance was fading. It had gotten them over the wall alive, But Dennis realized that no miracle of practice could get them across the water. Limited to a glider’s essence, their craft could only fall in the cool air, no matter how efficient it became.

To the left were the cluttered masts of the docks. He doubted they could clear them and get to the farmland beyond.

“Can everybody swim?” he asked. “I sure hope so, ’cause we’re going in.”

The wharves were dark. Only a rare light gleamed through a window here and there. “Cut loose your straps!” he told Arth. “Drop when I tell you to!”