Barrington Bayley - Star Winds

“And how long did this enterprise take you?”

“Building the Aegis for the Duke of Koss entailed three years of continuous effort on my part. Alas, I wait and wait to receive my due reward.”

“No one’s plans can be guaranteed to go right,” said the king absently. He reflected, then said: “I am glad finally to have met you. Maralia could use more of these constructions, provided they remain in the right hands. I will commission you to build one for me.” Flammarion’s tone became doleful. “Oh, I will build no more for humans. Never, never again!”

The king bristled angrily at this. “You dare to refuse me, alien? I can torture cooperation out of you! What do you say now?”

“You cannot torture me,” Flammarion responded, still in his aggrieved voice. “I am incapable of feeling physical pain. I suffer emotionally only. I suffer when I am cheated, gulled, or made to labor in vain. Therefore, never again will I work for humans.”

“Hmph.” The king fell back in his chair, disgruntled but convinced. “This creature interests me, Sir Goth,” he said. “Allow me to take him off your hands. No doubt he will find my own court a more amusing place than this draughty castle.”

“Liege-lord…” Matello frowned and bit his lip, not liking this turn of events at all.

“My single interest is to enter the Aegis!” Flammarion protested. “I must remain near it!”

Matello nodded in agreement. “Quite so, liege-lord. I in turn need his knowledge and talents if I am to succeed in toppling Koss.”

“But your progress is slow, Sir Goth,” King Lutheron murmured. “At home I have men of great wit and perspicacity, who in conjunction with Flammarion may perhaps hit on the answer. But don’t worry—I won’t forget the part you’ve played in the affair so far. When it comes to choosing a new Duke of Koss, I shall bear you in mind.

“Transfer the creature and his effects to my barge. I shall take him with me when we leave.”

Matello swallowed and fumed inwardly. “Certainly, liege-lord, if it is your will.”

“It is contrary to my will!” Flammarion interjected.

The king shrugged. “We are not all as despicable as Koss, my friend. You will serve your own interests by cooperating with me.”

He paused. “Have you ever seen a space battle, by the way?”

“Hitherto the nature of the primus agens has been the most obscure of all alchemical secrets,” Amschel said as they entered the laboratory one morning. “The text you provided confirmed what I have long suspected, that the first principle is mercury—not common mercury, but azoth , the mercury of the philosophers. Now, at long last, its preparation may be possible.”

While he spoke Amschel was opening the door of an athanor. A blast of heat billowed out; he and Rachad bent to inspect a cucurbit nestling in the ash bath.

“If the subject is to be reduced to prima materia , it must incorporate all five elements in exact and equal balance. This is the chief and unique virtue of azoth: it is the great absorber, receiving all elements in a perfect blend, which may therefore be adjusted accordingly.”

In the cucurbit, there was a continuous seething. Then Amschel frowned. He had discerned a greenish tinge in the pearly fluid.

Suddenly a livid green, shot through with bilious yellow, seized the whole mass. Amschel huffed with exasperation, his face becoming sad.

“We shall have to begin again,” he announced. “The divine water should seethe until it is pure and shining. Green signifies that the operation has misfired.”

He beckoned an assistant, who removed the cucurbit from the ash pan with a pair of tongs, suspending it in a tripod where it was left to cool. The subject, emerald in color now, began to solidify almost immediately, surging slightly as if alive.

“Three months we have spent already on this part of the work, without success,” Amschel muttered. “Still, Nicholas Flamel himself described the preparation of the primus agens as extremely difficult, even when one understands it. It is true that only an experienced and learned adept could divine the process from the book at all, even though its instructions are fairly explicit.”

He turned, a small and stooped figure. Rachad, however, failed to find any real dejection in his face.

“More study is needed,” the artifex decided. “I have misunderstood some small point, perhaps.”

He wandered off. Rachad, guessing that there would be no more work today, also took his leave, back to the living quarters beneath the laboratory. The accommodation, like the laboratory itself, was rambling and many-chambered, but afforded some privacy. Rachad was able to close a door and be alone in his tidy, if spartan, room.

He was glad of this, for the tediousness of lengthy alchemical research bored him to tears, and the laboratory dwellers, Amschel especially, spoke of little else. The Aegis, too, had become depressing to him, with its cloying atmosphere and degenerate way of life. He longed to see the sun—any sun.

Only one aspect of Amschel’s work really fascinated him. On a low table against the wall, opposite Rachad’s bed, were four large glass jars, filled with water.

The homunculi he was growing were now perfectly formed.

Amschel, who it seemed regarded the growing of homunculi as no more than a childish experiment, like growing crystal flowers, had agreed readily to Rachad’s request to do so. He had shown Rachad how to prepare the simple mineral solution required, and had given him leave to take seeds from the drawer where they were kept.

The seeds, he had explained at the same time, contained non-differentiated life—they would grow anything, the end product being determined by the power of thought, by whatever mental image was projected onto the organism by the experimenter.

There was an amusing tradition connected with this, which Amschel had invited Rachad to try. He had given Rachad a group of four playing cards: the King, the Queen, the Priest, and the Knight. One of these placed on top of each jar, he had explained, would automatically focus the mental energy of the experimenter on the growing seed, even if only given a passing glance now and then.

Rachad had followed this procedure, leaning the cards against the wall so that they stood upright over the jars, and he was delighted to see how effective it was. The jars now contained miniature human beings, twelve-inch figures which, though frail-looking, were easily recognizable as corresponding to the crude caricatures painted on the cards above them, mainly because of the regalia which had also grown onto them. The King and Queen were crowned, and wore flowing purple apparel. The Priest, in an orphreyed cope, carried a holy circle, and the Knight, wearing the lightest of armor, was armed with a battle-axe which he held upright before him, after the manner of the playing card overhead.

Since the day before, the creatures had also awakened to consciousness—or whatever passed for consciousness in homunculi; Rachad was vague in his mind on that score. They gazed sadly from their glass jars, as if pathetically aware of their fleeting hold on life.

Amschel had offered two more fascinating facts. The first was that homunculi were telepathically obedient to the will of their creator (giving Rachad a fresh insight into the deployment of space dragons). The other concerned an intriguing piece of behavior resulting from the playing-card technique. It seemed that the King invariably sought to escape from his jar in a vain attempt to join the Queen—a consequence, it was thought, of the alchemical marriage which the pair weakly symbolized.

The King was already enacting this inborn urge as Rachad came into the room, pressing his hands to the lid of the jar and feebly attempting to push it off. When he became aware of Rachad watching him, however, he left off his efforts as though discovered at something clandestine. He stood stiffly in the jar, his paper-like face staring haughtily ahead, his purple cloak waving in the currents his movements had stirred up in the liquid.