Julian May - The Many-Coloured Land

“Shall we camp here?” the nun suggested. A large cork oak grew beside the brook, shading a flat surface that looked like a good place to set up the cabin. The two women shed their packs, and Amerie extracted the fist-sized inflator from hers and studied it. Their instructor had said that the sealed power supply would be good for about twenty years. “Here are two nozzles, one to blow things up and the other to deflate. It says: IMPERATIVE TO SHEATH UNUSED NOZZLE.”

“Try my cabin-pak.” Felice held out a wad about the size of a sandwich. “I can’t believe it’ll grow into a four-by-four house.”

Sister Roccaro fixed the dangling flat tube of the pak to the inflator, then pressed the activating stud. Compressed air began to spurt into the wad, turning it into a large silvery square. The two women positioned the cabin properly, then watched it grow. The floor thickened to about nine centimeters and became quite rigid as air filled the complex micropore structural web between the layers of film. The walls, somewhat thicker for insulation, grew up, complete with transparent zipable windows and interior screen-curtains. A steeply gabled silvery roof that overhung the doorway inflated last of all.

Felice peered inside the doorless entry. “Look. The floor has sprouted fixed furniture.”

There were bunks for two with semidetached pillows, a table, shelves, and at the rear a silvery box with a pipe leading to the roof. Felice read aloud: “BALLAST STOVE WITH SAND OR UNIT WILL COMPRESS UPON COOLING… This material must be nearly impossible to destroy!” She reached behind her left greave and produced a glittering little gold-handled dirk. “Can’t puncture it, either.”

“What a pity they’ve made it to degrade in twenty year. Still, we should be at one with our environment by then.”

Large bucket-shaped hollows in each comer of the cabin had to be ballasted with stones, earth, water, or whatever else was to hand. A very small pocket near the door yielded up a whole handful of pillsized wads that were to be inflated separately, then weighted with sand or with water. The latter could be injected into the interstitial area by means of a simple collapsible bulb siphon. The pills grew into a cabin door, chairs, cooking gear (with the sand-ballast note), filamentous rugs and blankets, and other miscellany. Less than ten minutes after they had begun to set up camp, the women were relaxing in a fully equipped cabin.

“I can hardly believe it,” Sister Roccaro marveled, rapping on the walls. “It feels quite solid. But if there were any wind, the whole cabin would blow away like a bubble unless you weighted it down.”

“Even wood is mostly thin air and water,” said Felice with a shrug. “This decamole just seems to reproduce the structurally reinforced shell of a thing and lets you add mass. Wonder how the stuff compensates for heat and pressure changes? Some kind of valves, I suppose. You’d obviously have to guy this house in a high wind, though, even if you filled most of the wall hollows with water or dirt. But it sure beats a tent. It even has ventilators!”

“Shall we inflate the boat or the mini-shelter or the bridge sections?”

“They were optional. Now that I’ve seen how decamole works, I’ll take the rest of the equipment on faith.” Felice crossed her legs and pulled off her gauntlets slowly. She was seated at the small table. “Faith. That’s your game, isn’t it?”

The nun sat down. “In a way. Technically, I intend to become an anchoress, a kind of religious hermit. It’s a calling that’s completely obsolete in the Milieu, but it used to have its fans in the Dark Ages.”

“What in the world will you be doing? Just praying up a storm all day long?”

Amerie laughed. “Part of the night, too. I intend to bring back the Latin Divine Office. It’s an ancient cycle of daily prayers. Matins starts it off at midnight. Then there’s Lauds at dawn. During the daytime there are prayers for the old First, Third, Sixth, and Ninth Hours. Then Vespers or Evensong at sunset, and Compline before going to bed. The Office is a collection of psalms and scripture readings and hymns and special prayers that reflected centuries of religious tradition. I think it’s a terrible pity that no one prays it any more in the primitive form.”

“And you just keep saying this Office all the time?”

“Good grief, no. The individual hours aren’t that long. I’ll also celebrate the Mass and do penance and deep meditation with a little Zen. And when I’m hoeing weeds or doing other chores there’s the Rosary. It’s almost like a mantra if you do it the old way. Very calming.”

Felice stared at her with well-deep eyes. “It sounds very strange. And lonely, too. Doesn’t it frighten you, planning to live all alone with nobody but your God?”

“Dear old Claude says he’ll maintain me in style, but I’m not too sure I can take him seriously. If he does supply me with some food, I may be able to handcraft some items in my spare time that we can barter.”

“Claude!” Landry was contemptuous. “He’s been around, that old man. He’s not a complete case like those two machos in fancy dress, but I caught him looking at me in a fishy way.”

“You can’t blame people for looking at you. You’re very beautiful. I’ve heard you were a great sports star on your home world.”

The girl’s lip curled in a grim little smile. “Acadie. I was the best ring-hockey player of all time. But they were afraid of me. In the end, the other players, the men, refused to come up against me. They made all kinds of trouble. Finally, I was barred from the game when two players claimed I had deliberately tried to do them serious injury.”

“Had you?”

Felice lowered her gaze. She was twisting the fingers of her gloves and a flush was rising from her neck into her cheeks. “Maybe. I think I did. They were so hateful.” She raised her pointed chin in defiance, the hoplite helmet pushed to the back of her head giving her the look of a miniature Pallas Athene. “They never wanted me as a woman, you know. All they wanted was to hurt me, to spoil me. They were jealous of my strength, and afraid. People have always been afraid of me, even when I was just a child. Can you imagine what that was like?”

“Oh, Felice.” Amerie hesitated. “How, how did you ever begin playing that brutal game?”

“I was good with animals. My parents were soil scientists and they were always moving around on field expeditions. Newly opened lands, still full of wildlife. When the local kids in the area would snub me, I’d just get myself some pets for friends. Small creatures at first, then larger and more dangerous kinds. And there were some beauties on Acadie, I can tell you. Finally, when I was fifteen, I tamed a verrul. It’s something like a very large Earth rhinoceros. A local animal dealer wanted to buy him for ring-hockey training. I’d never paid much attention to the game before, but I did after I sold the beast. I woke up to the fact that there was a big-money business that might be perfect for my special talents.”

“But to break into a professional sport when you were only a young girl…”

“I told my parents I wanted to become an apprentice verrul trainer and groom. They didn’t mind. I had always been excess baggage. They just made me finish school and let me go. They said, ‘Be happy, baby.’ ”

She paused and stared at Amerie without expression. “I was a groom only until the team manager saw how I could control the animals. That’s the secret of playing the game, you see. The verrul has to make the goals and maneuver to keep you from getting stunned by the short-range weapons the players carry. I played in the preseason as a novelty, to give the Green-hammer box office a hype. The team had been in the cellar for three years running. When they saw that I was more than a publicity gimmick they put me onto the first string in the season opener. I whipped the other clowns on the team into such a froth trying to outdo me that we won the bloody game. And all the rest… and the pennant, too.”