The Flying Sorcerers

There was nothing to eat. I lay therein the darkness and listened to the roar of the surf and the rumble of my stomach. Man was not meant to live without bread alone. I was dizzy with hunger. My thoughts didn’t even make sense any more.

Purple had spent the red day wandering dully up and down this landscape of despair. I and my sons waited. There was little else we could do. Shoogar was the only one with a sense of purpose. He had positioned himself patiently at the top of a nearby slope to wait for the moons. He chanted a song of triumph.

Purple muttered incessantly. “When the seas recede, we could walk back. Lant’s people did it before. We can do it again. Yes, we could walk back. The generators are still there, the looms are still there. I could recharge my battery. We could make another flying machine. Yes, of course. And this time, we would know better. I would have my battery fully charged. Fully charged. We wouldn’t have to make the same mistakes again. That’s it, we left before we were fully ready. We weren’t tested or experienced enough. But we came so close, so close. Next time, we’ll do it better and we’ll succeed. Next time, next time. Next time —”

He crunched through the dark, mumbling insanely. He would pick up rocks and examine them, then throw them down again and stumble on.

I stared up into the dark at the twinkling moons. There would be no next time. I was sure of that. Shoogar wasn’t going to let there be a next time. From his hill there was only silence now.

I turned over on my blanket and raised up on my elbows. “Purple,” I called, “you should try to rest”

“I can’t, Lant,” he called back. There was a skidding sound and a thump. “Ow —”

“What’s the matter?” I leapt to my feet, thinking Shoogar had struck in the dark.

But no — Purple’s flashlight went on revealing that he had tripped over a boulder. He lay there in his impact suit, grinning foolishly.

I walked over and helped him up. The night was stale and still; the surf was a distant rumble. We stood in the dark, Purple’s light the only thing in existence, casting an eerie white aura into the chaotic blackness.

Purple switched it off. “I guess I’d better save my power,” he said — and stopped.

There was deathly silence. Not even insects still lived in this accursed land. “Save my power,” Purple repeated quietly. His hands clamped on my shoulders and he screamed, “Power! In my flashlight! In my flashlight, Lant!”

“Let go, curse it!” He was as strong as an old ram.

“Power, Lant! Power!”

“Don’t get your hopes up, Purple. Wait until you get a response from your mother nest.”

He sobered instantly. “Yes, you’re right, Lant,” There was a scraping sound in the dark as he removed the flashlight’s small battery, another sound as he pulled the calling device from his belt, an incomprehensible curse as he tried to attach the wires in the dark. He worked eagerly, impatiently — I could not blame him.

At last he said, “I’m ready.” There was a click as he switched on the device. A dial on its face gave off a soft glow. Before he even pressed the call button, he peered at this dial. “There is power enough, Lant. More than enough. I can call my mother nest ten times, maybe more, with the power in this battery.”

“Is it enough to recharge the windbags too?” I asked hopefully.

His face was a dark blur. “No, not that much. That requires vast amounts of power, Lant. It needs a heavy-duty battery like my other one — but don’t worry. When my mother egg gets here, I’ll see that you and your sons get safely home.

“Home,” he repeated. “I’m going home. No more double shadows. No more furry women. No more black plants —”

“Green, Purple. Plants are green.”

“Green is a bright color where I come from. No more odd food and foul drink. No more scratchy clothing. No more medicine shows for yokels.” He chanted this litany in man’s tongue and demon’s tongue. It was a homegoing spell and he spoke it intensely. “I’ll have books, music, normal weight —”

“You intend to diet?”

He laughed at that and kept laughing from sheer joy. “I’m going home!” he bellowed into the night.

“Why not try your calling device?” I was getting impatient.

He said, “I’m afraid to.”

“Oh.”

He turned the knob. A yellow eye opened brilliantly.

“Hah!” Purple shouted. “And the red eye means that the mother nest has answered.”

“What red eye?”

Purple twiddled the knob impatiently. “Come on,” he whispered. “Come on.”

Nothing happened.

He shook the device. “Come on, damn you! I want to go home!”

The yellow eye burned steadily. There was no red response light.

“We’re far enough north,” said Purple. “Close enough to the equator. The seeing should be good; the curve of the planet isn’t in the way. What could be wrong? It can’t be sending the wrong frequency,” he mumbled. If he was making magic, it wasn’t working.

“Perhaps it’s your battery.” I suggested.

“It’s not my battery. Why doesn’t it answer? Why doesn’t it answer?” He jumped to his feet and went raging off into the dark. After a moment, I followed him.

I found him sitting in ashes and despair. He had his device on the ground in front of him and was banging on it with a rock.

He hadn’t damaged it though — only pounded it deeper into the soft dead earth.

“Purple, stop,” I said softly. “Stop.”

“Why should I?” he said bitterly. “We’ve come all this way for nothing. All of your devices have worked, Lant. None of mine have. Your aircloth got us here, your generators got us here, your airpushers got us here — but my calling device doesn’t work. So why did we bother to come at all. The only one who’s going to get any benefit out of this will be Shoogar.”

“Huh?” Did he know about the duel ? Had he realized?

“Yes, Shoogar,” he answered my questioning look. “He needed to know about the moons. He had to come north.

The rest of us might as well have stayed home.” He started pounding again.

“Perhaps we have not come far enough north,” I suggested.

He made a sound that suggested he thought me a fool.

I was grabbing for ideas now, anything to restore his spirit. “Or perhaps there is still a planet in the way.” Whatever that meant. He had used the word before.

For a moment, there was silence. “What did you say? —”

I opened my mouth to repeat it.

“Never mind. I heard it the first time.” There was a sound of digging in the dirt. A scraping and a crunching. “Damn me. I’m so stupid sometimes —”

“What are you talking about?”

He stood up, a blur in the darkness. He held his device in his hands. “Lant, you are a genius sometimes. And all this time I thought you didn’t understand a thing I was talking about but were only being polite and pretending that you did. Of course there’s a planet in the way,” he stamped his foot. “This one.”

“H’m,” I said, pretending to understand. Who was I to shatter his illusion?

“Don’t you see? My egg hasn’t risen yet. Like the suns, it’s probably on the other side of the world. I will have to wait until it is in sight, before I try calling it again. That’s probably why it didn’t work before.”

When magic doesn’t work, a good magician usually has an explanation ready. Purple was one of the best. I wondered if he understood his own explanation. I asked, “How long will it take before you can call it down?”

“A couple of hours should be all I need. I’ll try calling it every fifteen minutes. Its orbit is only two and a half hours. I couldn’t possibly miss it, no matter how low on the horizon it is.”

I left him mumbling happily to himself, explaining things to no one in particular.