The First Protector

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Ma'el Report. Day 112,178…

The advanced instruction in ship handling was completed with the period it took for their moon to circle twice around its parent planet, a learning time that I consider not only satisfactory but impressive. The operating principle governing instantaneous navigation through the dimensional layers of quasireality, while they learned to perform the required hand movements with precision, were difficult for them to grasp. In a gross oversimplification, I finally explained it by spreading out Sinead's white linen burnoose, marking it with a spot of dark liquid, and then fold it so that the stain was copied onto a different part of the garment before spreading it flat again to show the distance that could be traveled instantaneously between the two marked places. The demonstration enabled them to understand how, if not why, interdimensional travel worked.

"This illustrates once again the essential difference between intelligence and education. These people of Earth are uncivilized, technologically backward, and woefully ignorant, but they are highly adaptable and intelligent. With the possession of intelligence, especially where these two are concerned, ignorance is a temporary condition.

"With this purely organic life-form, a prolonged stay in the light gravity of their moon means that muscular deterioration with a consequent loss of physical coordination will gradually take place. This could prove embarrassing and even dangerous for them in the Earth environment, so their return should not be long delayed.

"The lack of a breathable atmosphere on this world means that they have been unable to leave the ship, but this close confinement together does not seem to worry them…"

–

They had come out of orbit over the Mediterranean and were descending toward Alexandria to overfly the course they had been following in the wagon at an altitude at which the vessel's physical shape would be mistaken for that of a high-flying bird, but low enough for them to see clearly the remembered contours until they passed over the caravanserai and new territory began to unroll like an endless carpet below them.

They continued to follow the well-used camel trail that some poetically minded merchant had named the Golden Road to Samarkand and on to the famed Dzungarian Gate in the mountains above Lake Ebi Nor, and thence across central India with its green jungles, lush grassland, deserts, and richly decorated palaces to the Jade Gate that was set in the spectacular and recently completed Great Wall which guarded the eastern flank of the world's most ancient civilization and empire of Cathay. They were staring in awe and wonder at the structure that followed the contours of the mountains and valleys like an endless square worm of stone, when Ma'el broke a lengthy silence.

"This is the surface route I originally intended to follow," he said, looking at Sinead in the control position but addressing both of them, "when it seemed desirable to conceal from you my true nature and that of the work I came to do on this world. You can estimate for yourselves the proportion of your short lives that would have been wasted merely in traveling to visit the far-flung places and people in order to update my report. That wastage, and the secrecy that would have caused it, is no longer necessary because your limited life spans and abilities, especially your timesight, and those of Declan as a protector and emissary, must be put to more effective use. When we pass over the Imperial City of Xian, bear south and cross the coast to the islands of Nippon and thence across the ocean until you pass over the eastern seaboard of a vast, rich, and beautiful land that is as yet unknown to you except in legend. It is a land of great mountain ranges, rich forests, and vast plains teeming with animal life beyond number as well as the life of its hunting tribes that is far above the animal level. There are the beginnings of empires, too, and civilizations built on human sacrifice and unthinking cruelty. We will return to visit all these places, but for now it is only necessary to prove to you that they exist. You will find a desolate and deserted place in this land and alight there…"

'These animals that you say are numerous beyond counting," said Sinead sadly, her eyes seeming to look far into space and time, "so that the thunder of their hooves makes the very land tremble. They are like monstrous, hairy cattle with heavy shoulders, enormous heads, and wide-spreading horns. I see them extinct."

Ma'el was silent for a moment, then he went on as if she had not spoken, "… So that you can both learn how to make this vessel obey you while you are at a distance from it. You will also exercise and strengthen muscles grown weak during your stay on the moon when you are not listening to me explaining more of my magic."

Apart from it having air to breathe, the place where they landed was as lifeless and arid as the Moon they had left. Instead of being surrounded by crater walls there was a strange, flat-topped mountain and several enormous, rocky pinnacles that poked out of the surrounding desert like black, misshapen fingers. They would provide ideal navigational obstacles, Ma'el insisted, while he was showing them how to remotely control their ship.

On the ground outside their tents, Ma'el unfolded and spread before them a new chart. Instead of showing pictures of the land relayed from orbit, this one reproduced in half of the original dimensions all of the control symbols from the surface of the vessel's forward canopy. He explained that the smaller size would require their hand and finger movements across it to be even more precise than those they had learned on the moon, that this was the means by which he had called down the so-called djinn which had ended the attack on the caravans, and that he had every confidence in their ability to perform the task.

Soon they were both able to move the vessel accurately and make it perform complicated maneuvers within their line of sight, and then to send it into orbit and bring it down again. With the other chart to guide them, they learned how to position the vessel during the night at various ground locations specified by their instructor and, in daylight, above different seaports and cities where they were able to remain invisible by interposing it between the sun and would-be observers on the ground When they were able to do that consistently with a placement error of less than twenty paces, they were very pleased with themselves until Ma'el told them gently mat they had passed the first and easiest examination.

"… When we were in the clear and open space around your moon," Ma'el went on to explain, "I introduced you briefly to interdimensional travel. This is a rapid and safe form of travel provided you ensure that you do not materialize the ship inside a planetary body or a sun. In future, however, you will be called on to move through the hyper dimension, not over a distance of thousands of miles but by a few paces. You must learn how to move the vessel with precision into an enclosed space, the inside of a building, for example, or into a buried cavern without having to demolish the intervening walls. This would be necessary if you wished to conceal the vehicle from the local inhabitants or, if they proved to be unfriendly, to call it to your assistance for the purpose of rescue and evacuation.

"When you are ready we will begin…"

They began in the late spring, alternating the lessons between them day by day, but late summer had given way to midwinter and the desert was cold in the daylight hours and frigid at night before the old man pronounced them ready for their final examination for precision of control. Sinead took hers first.

Declan had lost count of the times they had each sent the vessel through the solid masses of the tall, rock pinnacles and the strange, flat-topped mountain that dominated their landscape. Each time the operation had been accompanied by a sharp detonation and an expanding circle of blue light as the vessel entered its self-created fold in space beyond one face of the obstruction and emerged on the other, with a comfortable margin for error on either side. During the final stages of the examination, however, the allowed clearances were gradually reduced to no more than a small fraction of the vessel's overall length, no more than a few paces, beyond the entry and exit positions.

Sinead, her hands and arms moving with such smooth and beautiful precision that her bones might have been made of water, was able to do it. Declan was not.

Avoiding Sinead's eyes and feeling his face hot with shame, Declan said, "Ma'el, I don't think I can do this. I'm afraid of rematerializing the ship inside the rock and damaging it" He held up his hands and then indicated the chart on the ground. "The full-size control screen on the ship is difficult enough for me, but I'm too ham-fisted to operate a half-sized one like this, at least, not with the precision you require, and I do not want to try. I'm sorry, in this matter I am craven."

Ma'el inclined his head. "The effect of one solid body materializing inside another would not only destroy both objects," he said gently, "it would cause a detonation which would remove a large proportion of the crust of your world, allow the core magma to overflow onto the surface and convert the atmosphere and oceans into superheated steam, and destroy all forms of life on the planet…"

He heard Sinead join him in a quick intake of breath, but before they could say anything, Ma'el went on calmly, "…The vessel's systems include a fail-with-safety device that is designed to prevent such a catastrophe from happening, but by its very nature it is as yet untried. And you are in no sense craven. There is a difference between cowardice and caution, which is the recognition and acceptance of your personal limitations. Caution saves many of the lives that unthinking bravery wastes. You are excused this test without blame or reproach, so you should ease your mind.

"Sinead," he added, "return the vessel to us here, then both of you rest and tomorrow you will break camp and prepare for departure…"

–

They flew eastward over the storm-tossed ocean, without seeing any sign of the fabled Adantis after which it had been named, and crossed the west coast of Hibernia to come to a stable hover above the city of Sligo. They had positioned themselves between the late afternoon sun and the gaze of any curious city dwellers and so had been rendered invisible, but they themselves could see far and wide through air washed clear by a recent rain squall. Declan's eyes roved inland and eastward across the gray expanse of Loch Gill to the Lachagh Hills, north to the long ocean rollers that broke white against the base of Roskeragh Point, southward to the Slieve Gamphs, shivering in wonder that he was able to view the land in this godlike fashion. To the west he could clearly see An Leathros, the hill above the strand that the Saxon visitors called Strand Hill, whose gentle, seaward facing slopes bore the tombs of the past kings of Connaught, and above them on the dark mountain of Knocknareagh, the burial chamber of the famed and infamous Queen Maeve herself, whose exploits in war were surpassed only on the scented battleground of her bed. Looking at the burial markers, their westward facing stone surfaces orange-gray in the setting sun, Declan shivered again without knowing why.

"What reason," he said to Ma'el, "have you for coming to this place of the heroic dead?"

"I have already said that it is a place of power for me,"

– the old man replied in his usual inscrutable fashion, "where Iwill be able to renew myself and my magic before we set off again on the journeys that will enable me to complete my work. My buried laboratory is here."

"What is a laboratory?"

'Tonight you will enter one," Ma'el replied, "so that a description in words would be wasteful of our time." He pointed suddenly. "Sinead, your target is a circle thirty paces in diameter that is centered at the intersection of the lines joining those two, pale-colored grave markers, there and there, and a perpendicular line raised to that dark, square rock, just there…"

"It looks like an ordinary stretch of grassy hillside," Sinead said.

"… Our vessel's dock and servicing mechanisms," he continued, "as well as my laboratory are under that intersection point. We will land at night using our dark light system. If anyone should chance to see us, well, this area has witnessed many strange sights over the years. Horseless flying chariots, screaming and hissing banshees crossing the night sky, the flight of the Fairy King to name but a few. The witness would remain silent because his words would not be believed.

"Compared with yesterday's examination in piloting," he ended reassuringly, "your three-dimensional space for maneuver is generous."

Sinead nodded and Declan looked down again at the standing stones, thinking about his unhappy past and of the things that might have been had his father not disowned him, then he shrugged angrily and said, "It is not a place where I shall ever lie."

Sinead turned to look at him for a long moment, her eyes blinking rapidly as if she was feeling a sudden sadness. But before she could speak, Ma'el raised a hand to point through the control canopy and she returned her attention to the scene below.