Barrington Bayley - Star Winds

The attendant lit the wick, and directed the ensuing flame’s bright glow onto the stone. For nearly a minute nothing happened, and Rachad began to grow impatient. Then, without warning, a dazzling shaft of blue light shot from the pellet and struck the adamant wall opposite, scattering in all directions in a coruscating display.

In seconds the emission ceased. The assistant blew out the lamp and put it back in the cupboard.

“The light projected by this gem has special properties,” Amschel informed Rachad. “A beam of it will travel endlessly without spreading. If focused through a lens, it is able to slice even diamond. I believe the material of the gem achieves this by storing and modifying the light of the lamp in some way. I have tried to duplicate the effect artificially, and have manufactured an inferior variety of Aggryxa gems by impregnating ruby with metallic sublimates.”

Rachad’s eyes smarted from the explosion of blueness. “Can anything else be achieved with it?” he asked.

“Very little, owing to its fleetness,” Amschel said. “As you probably know, visible light combines ether and fire, with ether predominating. There are other radiations composed of ether and air, but these are just as fleet and also are invisible, since the sense of sight responds to fire alone. For practical work I prefer compounds in which ether plays a lesser role, and which are therefore slower and more manipulatable. In infusoration, for instance, ether and fire are nearly equally balanced and mingled with about one-twentieth part water. Do you know it? Some call it galvanism, others the electric fluid. It will flow easily through solid iron or copper.”

“Master Gebeth has an infusorator using zinc, lead, copper and acids.”

“He would be interested to see my own facilities, which I boast are unexampled in the entire galaxy. I have developed new types of infusorator capable of delivering the substance with unprecedented intensity. And yet—it is still not enough.” His voice fell to a mutter. “Still not enough.”

Speaking in a low tone, he unscrewed the gemstone and replaced it in its box. “For fifty years I have studied and worked. But one lifetime is not enough. Given another fifty years, perhaps I could solve all remaining problems and produce the Stone unaided.”

“Have you always worked in the Aegis?”

“For many years I traveled extensively and worked with other adepts, including non-human philosophers. Ten years ago the Duke of Koss sent word that he had a part of The Root of Transformations in his possession, a book thought lost forever. He promised to search for the rest of the text and offered me unlimited resources. So I came into the Aegis.”

“It amazes me that the secret is so inaccessible,” Rachad remarked. “Does no one know it?”

“You would not be amazed if you knew what is entailed,” Amschel replied. “It is the most difficult of all works, the greatest of all treasures.”

“ Someone must know,” Rachad fretted. He brightened.

“What about the alien creature who built the Aegis? He must know all about the transformations of matter. He can make adamant.”

“Oh, I too can make adamant, in small quantities,” Amschel chuckled. “Still, I am glad to see that you have a lively mind. Let me explain adamant to you. It is simply elemental earth, purged of all trace of other elements. Being so purged, and pure, it is impervious to all assaults—impervious even to the alkahest.”

Rachad listened with interest to this new information. “That’s what I don’t understand. Isn’t the alkahest a solvent for everything? ”

“It will dissolve all naturally occurring substances,” Amschel corrected. “But that is because the alkahest is simply water—elemental water, purged and pure, as adamant is, and just as difficult to obtain as adamant is. You see, any natural substance contains all five elements to some extent, though only the major constituents are generally taken into account and the rest are present in negligible quantity. The alkahest, however, will immediately find and blend with whatever water is present, however negligible. It will flood into the substance, overpower it and disperse the other elements. For this reason elemental water is said to carry the qualities of universal dissolution and of like finding like. But it cannot enter adamant, because adamant is the only solid body to contain not the slightest trace of water.”

“I wonder what pure air would be like?” Rachad wondered. “Or pure fire?”

“That I cannot tell you. But perhaps you would like to handle pure earth.” Amschel turned and spoke to the assistant, who then moved to a cupboard, opened it and drew out a small trolley, which he wheeled forward with an effort disproportionate to its size.

The interior of the trolley was yet another felt-lined sample case. In it, Rachad saw a glistening gray brick or slab about four inches by three.

“Flammarion’s secret is that he knows how to make adamant in vast quantities,” Amschel said. “Here is a sample I prepared myself. Pick it up.”

Rachad bent and took the tiny slab in his fingers, but it seemed to be stuck. He pulled harder, then, squatting on his haunches and using both hands, he managed to raise it an inch or two by using the strength of his legs.

Panting, he dropped the brick, then stood up. “How could anything be so heavy?” he asked.

“Ultimate hardness, ultimate rigidity, and extreme weight—those are the qualities of earth, when unmodified by combination.”

“Hmm.” Rachad pondered, then laughed lightly. “I suppose this answers the old riddle of what kind of vessel one would keep the universal solvent in.”

“That’s right. The alkahest must be kept in a vessel made of adamant. Any other vessel it will dissolve.” Amschel pointed to an arched opening. “Come, I will show you to your sleeping quarters. Then we will see how you may best be fitted into our work.”

For the next month Rachad saw little of Amschel, who withdrew into his study with the new knowledge Rachad had brought him. Instead, he began a period of training in the laboratory, at first learning to tend the sublimatories and other furnaces, and later going on to the operations of distillation, congelation and projection—at which Amschel’s assistants were incomparably more learned than Gebeth, even though most of them were but borrowed liegemen of the duke’s.

Every day Amschel would issue fresh orders for the preparation of some strange-sounding substance or other. Even without such instructions there was plenty of work for the laboratory, for there were a number of long-standing operations to attend to—operations which, Rachad was assured, had been in progress for a number of years.

There was, for instance, an hermetically sealed crystal vessel which had been subjected to the gradually increasing heat of an athanor for over five years, and whose contents were inspected daily for the expected color changes. In a complicated pelican, a type of double-reflux alembic, a substance had undergone cohobation—repeatedly recycled distillation—for even longer. And there were other operations, less easy to understand, all pursuant to the alchemical theory that new properties would evolve in a material if a process were continued for long enough.

In this way he learned a great deal he had not known before of practical alchemy. He also had access to the library, where he found hundreds of books and manuscripts, ranging from very ancient tracts such as The Sophic Hydrolith and The Visions of Zosimos —as well, of course, as the Asch Mezareph —to somewhat later works, among them The Secret Art of Plasmas and The Etheric Chariot . Of their texts he could grasp little, but he found great pleasure in poring over their numinous illustrations, especially those which depicted the interior of a flask as a little world, sometimes complete with landscape, in which strange, beguiling acts were taking place.