David Brin - The Practice Effect

The glider ! If we can only detach it from the cart in time, we might be able to escape on it!

But first the wings would have to be let down. They were being held up—vertically, like sails on a boat—by a stout length of rope. Linnora was going for it with her knife.

It took almost half a second for it to occur to him to remember the amount of tension that was in that cable. He cried out in dismay, “No! Linnora, don’t!”

It was too late. She sliced the rope. The wings snapped down violently, knocking two deadly arrows out of the air.

Perhaps it was a rational decision, but Arth was never able to explain why he let go of the tree and not the cart. But when the little wagon bucked suddenly, like a mad stallion, Arth tumbled into the back of the cart behind the great wings. Linnora and Dennis were whipped around to face forward as their strange vehicle teetered dangerously, rocking unstably on the edge.

The pixolet had hopped onto Dennis’s lap from the floor. The little creature had the expression of one who by this time had had quite enough. This trip was no longer fun.

About to abandon us again? Dennis thought at the thing, unable to do anything else.

The Krenegee shrugged, as if it understood. It flexed its wing membranes in preparation to depart. Then, for the first time, it took a good look over the rim of the cart into the canyon below.

“!!” it peeped out loud and shivered. Its little glider membranes were never meant for true flight. They wouldn’t keep it from being smashed to jelly after a fall like that! Dennis almost laughed as the smug little thing at last showed consternation.

All of this took about one second of telescoped time as the cart rocked, and then slid over the edge. A flight of arrows missed them by inches as their trusty machine toppled over the precipice. The pixolet wailed. Arth cried out. Dennis held on as the canyon opened up below them.

At that moment it was Linnora who saved them.

She started to sing.

The first, high note was of such startling clarity, that it seized their attention away from the hypnotizing view of the onrushing canyon floor. As a practice team, they had worked together for a long time. Her call served as a focus. Out of habit—quicker than volition—the felthesh trance snapped into being all around them.

Dennis felt Linnora’s mind touch brush against his own. Then he felt Arth, and even the Krenegee beast—taking this all seriously for the first time since he had known the smug little thing. Space around them seemed to flash and burn with energy. The power was there, and the desperate will to change reality.

Unfortunately, there was no focus. One had to be using something for the Practice Effect to operate!

Dennis’s conscious mind was in no condition to provide an answer. It was a good thing, then, when his unconscious stepped in and took over. In that instant, with the ground rushing up at them, Dennis seemed to feel time contract all around him. In a haze of chaotic energy that felt strangely like the field around a zievatron, he blinked once, twice, then closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he found himself sitting next to a dark-haired young man with a thick, waxed moustache. The fellow wore a white leather coat that flapped in the stiff breeze, and a pair of old-fashioned flight goggles over his eyes.

They sat together in a strange contraption of white canvas and wooden struts, laced together by piano wire. Although air rushed past them, the hazy-edged reality that surrounded them seemed entirely gray and motionless.

“You know, we had the most bully awful time getting the proper approach to warping the wings,” the fellow explained over the rush and roar. He had to shout to be heard. “Langley never really understood, you see. He rushed ahead without testing his designs in a proper artificial wind tunnel, as Wilbur and I did…”

Dennis blinked in “surprise. And in the time it took to close his eyes and open them, his surroundings changed.

“… so I had to test the X-10 personally, get it? The engine took up over half the damned thing’s length! Busted the first few props we tried to smithereens! They called it a flying bomb! Couldn’t ask anyone else to take it up, see?”

The man with the handlebars and goggles was gone, replaced by a fellow with a thin moustache, a sardonic expression, and a floppy fedora hat. He shook his head and laughed.

“Hard work is what it took. Sure, I had inherited money and got to stand on the shoulders of giants. I admit it! But I sweated blood straight into each of my designs.”

The space around them was still that hazy, half real shimmering, like the boundaries of a dream. But the flimsy array of wood and canvas had been replaced by a thrumming cocoon of riveted metal and glass, vibrating with the power of a thousand horses.

“And don’t think I don’t already feel the shoes of later inventors sometimes,” the pilot of the monoplane grinned, “right here.” He patted his own shoulder and laughed.

The fellow looked familiar, though he couldn’t place him—like someone he had read about in a history book somewhere. Dennis blinked again, and when he reopened his eyes the dreamlike scene had shifted again. The dark-haired man and the cramped cockpit were gone.

It was only a brief glimpse, this time. The engine roar had muted somewhat. There was the scent of chrysanthemums, and for the moment his eyes were open he saw a woman wearing a straw hat and a bright, pink scarf. She smiled at him from her controls, and winked. Through the cockpit window he saw water, all the way to the horizon. Then the transition happened again.

Now he was seated at the copilot’s station in a huge twin-engined airplane—a bomber, from the looks of it. There was the smell of gasoline and rubber. In his hands a wheel vibrated with a powerful rhythm. A balding man in a khaki uniform smiled at him from the other set of controls.

“Progress,” the gangly fellow grinned. “Boy, you sure are doing it the easy way, fella. It took us old-timers years and plenty of sweat to get this far, I’ll tell you!”

For the first time in this crazy dream, Dennis thought he understood what someone was talking about. He recognized this man’s face. “Uh, I know. I guess you really could have used the Practice Effect back in your day, Colonel.”

The officer shook his head. “Naw. It was a whole lot more fun doing it for ourselves, even if it was slower. I only ask that the universe be fair, not that it grant me any special favors.”

“I understand.”

The Colonel nodded. “Well, each of us does what we have to do. Say, do you want to hang around here for a little while? We just took off from the Hornet, and we’re on our way to have a little fun.”

“Uh, I think I’d better be getting back to my friends, sir. But thanks, anyway. It was a pleasure to meet you and the others.”

“Think nothing of it. It’s only a shame you couldn’t stick around to meet some of the jet jockeys and astronauts. Talk about pilots!” The Colonel whistled. “Ah, well. Just remember, my boy. Nothing substitutes for hard work!”

Dennis nodded. He closed his eyes once more as the wind roared and the dream unraveled around him like fog melting in the dawn.

Seconds that had seemed telescoped into years evaporated, and as the crystalline shimmer at last parted, Dennis found himself flying!

He wasn’t exactly sure how much time had passed, but a powerful lot of changes had been made in the cart-and-glider combination—as evidenced by the fact that they were still alive.

Even as he looked around, a pale, shimmering light was leaving the struts and fabric of the wings—now anchored firmly to the wagon-fuselage, sweeping rakishly outward and back like those of a swift. The cart itself seemed to have lengthened and grown a nubby tail. Its narrow nose aimed proudly upward, into the rising thermal in which they slowly climbed.