The Practice Effect

1

The town of Zuslik lay at the bottom of a wide valley, where low hills on both sides crowded close to a broad, sluggish river. The land was heavily wooded, with cultivated fields evenly scattered among thick patches of forest. The riverside town sat at the junction of several roads.

From a slope west of Zuslik, Dennis could see that the walled settlement was built around a hill overlooking a bend in the river. Atop this eminence, towering above the town, stood a dark, squat tower, built in a series of flat layers like a dark, brooding wedding cake.

Through his Sahara Tech monocular, Dennis could make out antlike columns of men marching in the yards surrounding the fortress. Sunlight occasionally flashed from ranks of upheld weapons. Pennants riffled from the high tower, blown by the breeze that swept up the valley.

There was no mistaking the home of the chief honcho. Dennis hoped his search wouldn’t require that he go there. Not after what he had heard about the man.

The evening before last, while Dennis settled into the hayloft of the Sigels’ farm, the little boy Tomosh had come out to the barn. Ostensibly it was to wish the visitor good night, but Dennis realized that the young fellow actually had come for sympathy and comfort. He didn’t imagine Tomosh got much of it from his cool aunt.

Tomosh had wound up staying for a couple of hours, exchanging stories with Dennis. It had been a fair trade.

Dennis had a chance to practice his accent—familiarizing himself with the muddy, strange Coylian version of English— and Tomosh, much to his delight, learned a great deal about the ways of Brer Rabbit and of flying elephants.

Dennis didn’t find out much about Coylian technology—he hadn’t expected to, talking with a small boy. But he listened attentively as Tomosh told “scary” stories about “Bleckers” and other fabled bogeymen, and about ancient, kindly dragons that let people ride them through the sky. Dennis filed away the tales in his memory, for one never knew what would turn out to be useful information.

More relevant, he imagined, were the tidbits Tomosh told about Baron Kremer, whose grandfather had led a tribe of hillmen out of the north to take Zuslik from the old Duke a generation ago. Kremer sounded like a good man to stay away from, according to Tomosh, especially after what the fellow had done to the boy’s family.

Much as he wanted to learn more, Dennis knew Baron Kremer wasn’t the best topic to dwell on. He distracted the boy from his troubles with an old camp song that soon had him laughing and clapping. By the time Tomosh fell asleep on the hay nearby, the boy had forgotten about the day’s traumas.

It left Dennis feeling as if he had done a good deed. He only wished he could have done more for the little tyke.

Aunt Biss, taciturn to the end, gave Dennis a cloth-wrapped lunch of cheese and bread for his departure early the next morning. Tomosh manfully rubbed back tears when he said farewell. It had taken only a day and another morning to hike here from the farmhouse.

On the trek to town Dennis had kept a lookout for a small pinkish creature with bright green eyes. But the pixolet never showed up. It looked like the little creature really had abandoned him this time.

Dennis examined Zuslik from the bluff outside of town. Somewhere in that citadel, the boy’s father was being held for mysterious crimes Dennis still didn’t understand… because he was “built just like” his overlord and was good with tools… Dennis was relieved to find out that he, at least, didn’t resemble the warlord at all.

He decided he wouldn’t learn any more about Zuslik by studying it from a distance. He got up and started putting on his pack.

Just then he caught a flicker of motion in his peripheral vision. He turned to look… and saw something huge, black, and fast come swooping straight down on him over the treetops!

Dennis flung himself to the grassy slope as the giant flying thing shot by just overhead. Its shadow was huge, and a flapping, whistling sound sent chills of expectant disaster up his back as he burrowed into the turf.

The moment of terror passed. When nothing disastrous appeared to happen, he finally raised his head, looking around frantically for the monster. But the thing was gone!

Last night Tomosh had spoken of dragons—great ferocious creatures that had once supposedly defended mankind on Tatir against deadly enemies. But Dennis had been under the impression they were of the distant past, where the fanciful creatures of children’s fairy tales belonged!

He scanned the horizon and finally found the black shape. It was settling down toward the town. His throat was still dry as he pulled out the monocular and managed to focus it on the castle grounds.

Dennis blinked. It took a moment for him to realize— somewhat to his relief—that it was no “dragon” after all. His ebony monster was a flying machine. Small figures ran to the aircraft from a line of sheds in the castle’s yard as the craft drifted to rest, light as a feather. Two small figures—presumably the pilots—dismounted and strode quickly toward the castle without looking back.

Dennis lowered the ocular. He felt a little foolish for coming to overly dramatic conclusions when there was another, simpler explanation. It wasn’t really so surprising the locals had flight, was it? There had been plenty of signs of high technology.

Still, the aircraft had hardly made a sound as it passed overhead. There were no growling engine noises. It was puzzling. Perhaps antigravity merited another consideration.

There was only one way to find out more. He got up and brushed himself off, then shouldered his pack and headed down to town.

2

The market outside the city wall was like almost any small riverfront bazaar on Earth. There were shouts and calls and sudden gangs of running boys obviously up to no good. Shops and warehouses gave off pungent aromas, from rich food to the high musk of the grunting draft animals.

He entered the bazaar with what he hoped was an expression of somebody going confidently about his business. By the variety of clothing he saw, Dennis didn’t feel outlandishly dressed. Boots, shirt, and trousers seemed to be conventional attire here. Some people even carried burdens on their backs, as he did.

He passed men lounging at the tables of a sidewalk cafe and gathered a few looks. But nobody seemed to stare with more than passing curiosity.

Dennis began to breathe more easily. Maybe I can bluff my way all the way to whatever passes for a university in these parts, he thought hopefully. He had a clear idea of the type of individuals he wanted to contact in this culture.

Even in ancient and feudal societies on Earth there had always been patches of enlightenment, and these people clearly enjoyed higher technology and culture than that. The aircraft had definitely raised Dennis’s hopes of finding the kind of help he needed.

The sharp odors of drying fish and tanning hides hit him as he reached the dockyards. The piers were solid-looking structures of dowel and peg construction. They looked almost new, right down to the glossy pilings. The upper surfaces were coated with the same resilient stuff that made up the Coylian roads.

He stopped to look over one of the boats. Dennis had sailed enough to recognize a sophisticated ship design when he saw one. The hull was thin, light, and sleek. Its mast was stepped elegantly and a little rakishly over the center of gravity.

Once again, it was built of beautifully glossy laminated wood.

But if they had the technology to build boats like these, why did they use sails? Did the people of Coylia have some sort of taboo against engines? Perhaps their only machinery was in the factories where they produced these wonderful things.

Dennis wanted very much to find one of those factories and talk to the people who ran them.

Not far away, a workgang carried heavy sacks from a warehouse to the hold of a waiting boat. The sacks must have weighed forty kilos each. The stocky, barrel-chested men hummed as they shuttled along the wharf, stooped under their heavy loads.

Dennis shook his head. Could it be against their religion to use wheelbarrows?

After each stevedore deposited his sack in the hold, he did not return down the narrow ramp but climbed the boat’s gunnels instead. In time with the groaning beat of his comrades, he chanted a brief verse, then dove into the water to make room for the next man.

It did seem like a good idea, taking a dip before swimming around the pier for another of those heavy loads, Dennis made his way around bales of waiting cargo until he was close enough to hear the chant. It seemed to be a repetitious variant of the phrase “Ah Hee Hum!”

The workers shuffled along to the steady beat. Dennis approached as a giant with a blue-black moustache dropped his load into the hold, then leaped lightly onto the railing. With one hand on the shrouds, he slapped his sweat-glistened chest as the men chanted.

“Ah Hee Hum!”

The giant sang:

The last part was drowned out by a hasty “Ah Hee Hum!” from the gang. The big fellow let himself fall into the water with a great splash. As he swam over to a ladder, his place on the gunnels was taken by a tall man with a thin fringe of hair. His voice was curiously deep.

Dennis smiled weakly, like a person who could tell a pretty good joke was being told but who couldn’t quite understand the punch line.

3

A small caravan passed slowly through the main gateway into town. There were pedestrians carrying burdens, lined up for inspection at what appeared to be a customs shed. A few men riding shaggy ponies passed through the gateway, not bothered by tire guards—apparently officials riding on errands.

Teams of hulking, rhinoceroslike quadrupeds chuffed patiently outside the gate. Their harnesses led to giant sledges, apparently of the kind Dennis had glimpsed that night on the highway.

Now we’ll see if it’s antigravity after all! Dennis hurried forward eagerly. The mystery was about to be solved!

A few of the waiting pedestrians complained desultorily as he edged forward to the cargo sleds, but no one stopped him. His excitement rose as he approached one of the gleaming, high-sided vehicles.

As he had suspected, there weren’t any wheels at all. The load was strapped to a tilted platform whose four corners ended in little skids. These fitted precisely into the two perfect grooves that ran down every road Dennis had found in Coylia.

The driver shouted at his beast and snapped the reins. The snuffling, buffalo-like creature strained against its harness, and the sled glided smoothly forward. Dennis followed, crouching for a better look.

Was it magnetic levitation? Did the tiny runners ride on a cushion of electrical force? There were devices like that on Earth, but nothing anywhere near this compact. The system seemed elegantly simple, yet incredibly sophisticated.

Dimly, he was aware that people behind him were making ribald remarks about his behavior. There was laughter, and a series of off-color suggestions in the strange local dialect. But Dennis didn’t care. His mind was filled with schematics and raw mathematics as he tested and discarded explanation after explanation for the wonderful sled-and-road combination.

It was the most fun he had had in weeks!

A detached part of him realized that he had tipped over into a strange state of mind. The tension of the past two weeks had burst, and the persona best able to cope—the eager scientist—had come to the fore, to the exclusion of almost everything else. For well or ill, it was his way of dealing with too much alienness all at once.

Dennis got down on all fours and squinted close to the tiny sled in its trough. As the sled moved slowly forward, he let out a small cry of surprise. A clear liquid oozed from beneath the little ski as it slid along. The fluid disappeared quickly, seeping almost instantly into the bottom of the trough.

He touched the bead of wetness that followed the skid, and rubbed the drop between finger and thumb. Almost at once it spread over them in a glossy sheen. He found he couldn’t press the fingertips together without their slipping aside. They barely even felt each other.

The fluid was the perfect lubricant! After a moment’s delighted stupefaction, Dennis clawed through one of his thigh pouches for a plastic sampling vial. He had to hold the tube in his left hand, while he vainly tried to wipe his right to get rid of the layer of slipperiness. He pulled the stopper with his teeth.

Crawling along behind the slowly moving sled, he pushed the vial up behind the ski, catching some of the slippery, elusive fluid. Soon he had twenty-five milliliters or so, almost enough to analyze…

His head bumped into the sled as it stopped suddenly. A small rain of cherrylike fruits fell over him from the overloaded wagon.

There were new voices from up ahead. Someone spoke loudly, and the crowd began backing away.

In his exalted state of mind, Dennis refused to be distracted. Drunk on the delight of discovery, he stayed crouched over, hoping the sled would start moving again so he could collect just a bit more of the lubricant.

A hand dropped onto his shoulder. Dennis motioned it away. “Just a minute,” he urged. “I’ll be with you in a sec.”

The brawny hand gripped harder, turning him completely around. Dennis looked up, blinking.

A very large man stood over him, dressed unmistakably in some sort of uniform. On the fellow’s face was an expression that strangely combined puzzlement with incipient rage.

Three other soldiers stood nearby, grinning. One laughed, “Tha’s right, Gil’m. Let’m be! Cantcha see he’s busy?” Another guard, who had been drinking from a tall ale-stein, coughed and sputtered brew as he guffawed.

“Gil’m” glowered. He clutched the bunched fabric of Dennis’s bush jacket and lifted him to his feet. In his right hand the big guard held something like a two-meter quarterstaff with a shining halberd blade at one end. Dennis’s gaze was drawn to the gleaming edge. It looked sharp enough to slice paper or bone with equal facility.

Gil’m called to one of the jokesters without turning or taking his eyes from Dennis. “Fed’r,” he rumbled. “Come an’ hold my thenner. I don’ wanna mess up its practice by killin’ nothin’ too mushy. This one I’ll take care of by han’.”

A grinning guard came up and took the tall weapon from Gil’m. The giant flexed fingers like sausages and tightened his grip on Dennis’s jacket.

Uh-oh. Dennis at last shook himself partially free of the bemused trance. He began to recognize the harm he just might have done himself.

For one thing, he might have lost his opportunity to recite the speech he had carefully prepared for his first encounter with authorities. Hurriedly, he sought to correct the mistake.

“Your pardon, esteemed sir! I had no idea I was already at the gate of your lovely city! You see, I am a stranger from a faraway land. I’ve come to meet with your country’s philosophers, and hopefully discuss many things of great importance with them. This marvelous lubricant of yours, for instance. Did you know that… Ak!”

The soldier’s face had begun to purple strangely as Dennis spoke. No doubt that meant this was not the right approach after all. Dennis barely ducked beneath a meaty fist that passed through the spot where his nose had lately been.

The guard’s face was hardly a foot from his. The fellow’s breath was something to write home about.

“Aw, c’mon, Gil’m! Can’t you hit a little Zusliker?” Almost the entire complement of guards had come up to watch the fun, leaving their post at the gate a dozen yards away. They were laughing, and Dennis heard one man offer a bet on how far the Gremmie’s head would travel when Gil’m corrected his aim.

The civilians in the caravan backed away, looking on fearfully.

“Hold still, Gremmie,” Gil’m growled. He cocked his fist back, this time aiming carefully, savoring the moment. His face took on a patient, almost beatific expression of anticipation.

This just may be serious, Dennis thought.

He looked at the guard… at the burly hand clutching his jacket. There wasn’t time to grab his needler—as if it would help any, starting his visit by slaying members of the local constabulary.

But Dennis realized he was holding a small open sample bottle in his left hand.

Hardly thinking, he poured the contents over the meaty paw holding his jacket.

The giant paused and looked at him, amazed by the unprecedented offense. After a moment’s thought, Gil’m decided he didn’t like it much. He growled again and struck out… as Dennis slipped from his hand like a pat of butter The northman’s fist whistled overhead, mussing Dennis’s hair with its wake.

Gil’m stared at his now empty left hand, shimmering with a thin coating of bright fluid. “Hey!” he complained. He turned barely in time to see the gremmie vanish through the gateway into town.

4

Dennis would have decidedly preferred a more leisurely first tour of a Coylian city.

Back at the gate there was a mass of confusion. The initial hilarity of the people in the caravan dissolved into shouts and screams as the guards stepped in with truncheons.

Dennis didn’t hang around to watch the melee. He pounded across a beautiful, ornate bridge that arched over a canal. Pedestrians stared as he wove among gaily painted market stalls, dodging vendors and their customers. The guards’ hue and cry followed only a little behind him as he fled. Luckily, most of the citizens quickly turned away in order not to get involved.

Dennis leaped past a street-corner juggler and ducked the falling pins to dive into an alley behind a pastry stall.

He heard boots pounding on the bridge not far behind him. There were yells as the guards tripped over the hapless juggler and his pins. Dennis continued dodging through the twisting streets and alleys.

The buildings of Zuslik were ziggurat high-rises, some over a dozen stories tall. All had the same wedding cake type of design. The narrow lanes were as serpentine as interdepartmental politics back at Sahara Tech.

In a deserted alley he paused to wait out a stitch in his side. All this running wasn’t easy with a heavy pack on his back. At last he was about to go on when suddenly, just ahead, he heard a newly familiar voice cursing.

“... like to burn this whole damn town to the groun’! You mean none of you saw that gremmie? Or those thieves who snuck in our guardhouse while we weren’t lookin’? Nobody saw nothin’? Damn Zuslikersl You’re all a buncha thieves! It’s funny how a stripe or two can jog a memory!”

Dennis backed into the alley. One thing was certain, he’d have to ditch his pack. He found a dim corner, unbuckled the belt, and let it slide to the ground. He knelt and pulled out his emergency pouch, which he slung onto his Sam Browne belt. Then he looked around for a place to stash the pack.

There was rubbish in the alley, but unfortunately there were no real hiding places.

The first floor of the building next to him was little more than seven feet high. The next level was set back a meter or two, so the roof formed a parapet just overhead. Dennis stepped back and heaved the pack onto the ledge. Then he backed away again and leaped for a handhold.

Dennis swung his right leg to bring it up, but just then he felt his hold begin to slip. He had forgotten the coating of sled oil still on his right hand. His grip was too slick to hold, and he fell to the ground with a painful thump.

Much as he would have liked to have lain there groaning for a little while, there just wasn’t time. Shakily, he got up for another try.

Then he heard footsteps behind him.

He turned and saw Gil’m the Guard enter the alleymouth about ten meters away, grinning happily and holding his weapon high. The halberd blade gleamed menacingly.

Dennis noted that Gil’m wasn’t using his left hand at all and assumed it must still be coated with the sled oil. The stuff was insidious.

Dennis popped the flap of his holster and drew his needler. He pointed it at the guard. “All right,” he said, “hold it right there. I don’t want to have to hurt you, Gil’m.”

The soldier kept coming, grinning happily in anticipation, apparently, of slicing Dennis in twain.

Dennis frowned. Even if no one here had ever seen a hand weapon like the needler before, his own self-assurance at least should have given the fellow pause.

Perhaps Gil’m was unimaginative.

“I don’t think you know what you’re facing here,” he told the guard.

Gil’m came on, holding his weapon high with one hand. Dennis decided he had no choice but to play out his bluff. He felt a brief panic as his oiled thumb slipped over the safety lever twice. Then it clicked. He took aim with the needler and fired.

There was a staccato sound, and several things happened all at once.

The polished wood of the halberd’s handle split into fragments as a stream of high-velocity metal slivers tore into the elevated weapon. Gil’m ducked aside as the glistening blade fell. The guard stared dully at the severed stump of his weapon.

But Dennis couldn’t hold on as the recoil kicked the needler out of his slippery right hand. It bounced off his chest, then went rattling along the ground in front of him.

He and Gil’m stood in a momentary tableau, both of them suddenly disarmed. The guard’s face was blank and the whites of his eyes showed. He didn’t move.

Dennis started to edge forward, hoping the fellow’s daze would last long enough for him to retrieve his weapon. The needler had fetched up against the fallen halberd blade, midway between him and the giant.

Dennis was reaching for it when two more soldiers in high bearskin hats appeared in the alleymouth. They shouted in surprise.

Dennis grabbed the needler and raised it. But in that telescoped moment he found that he just couldn’t bring himself to kill. It was a flaw in his personality, he realized, but there was nothing he could do about it.

He turned to run but only got a dozen paces before the butt of a thrown knife struck him on the side of the head, knocking him forward into the dark shadows.

5

“ ’ere, now. Easy do it. Ye’ll have a bruise like a searchlight in a day or so! A real shiner it’ll be!”

The voice came from somewhere nearby. Bony fingers held his arm as Dennis sat up awkwardly, his head athrob.

“Yep, a real shiner. Practice it good an’ you’ll be able to use it to see in th’ dark with!” The voice cackled in generous self-appreciation.

Dennis could barely focus on the person. He tried to rub his eyes and almost fainted when he touched the bruise on the left side of his face.

Blearily, he saw an elderly man who grinned back at him with only half a mouth of teeth. Dennis nearly fell over sideways in a wave of dizziness, but the old fellow caught him.

“I said easy there, didn’ I? Give it a minute an the worl’ will look a lot better. Here, drink some o’ this.”

Dennis shook his head, then coughed and choked as his would-be nurse grabbed his hair and poured a slug of tepid liquid into his mouth. The stuff tasted vile, but Dennis grabbed the rough mug in both his own hands and gulped greedily until it was taken away.

“Tha’s enough for now. You just sit an’ get yer senses back. You don’t gotta start workin’ ’til second day, not when they bring you in lumped like this.” The man arranged a rough pillow behind his head.

“My name is Dennis.” His voice came out a barely audible croak. “What is this place?”

“I’m Teth, an’ you’re in jail, punky. Don’ you recognize a jail when you see one?”

Dennis looked left and right, able at last to focus his eyes. His bed was part of a long row of rude cots, sheltered by an overhanging wooden canopy. A wattle and daub wall behind him supported the roof. Beyond the open front of the shed was a large courtyard, hemmed in by a tall wooden palisade.

On the right stood a far more impressive wall, one that gleamed seamlessly in the bright sunshine. It was the lowest and widest in a series of tiers that extended up a dozen stories or more. In the center of the shining wall was a small gatehouse. Two bored guards lounged on benches there.

Men in the courtyard, presumably his fellow prisoners, moved about at tasks Dennis couldn’t identify.

“What kind of work are you talking about?” Dennis asked. He felt a little giddy, with a trace of that queer detachment from reality that had come over him before. “Do you make personalized license plates here?”

He didn’t care when the old man looked at him funny.

“They work us hard, but we don’ make nothin’. We’re mostly lower-class riffraff in here—vagrants an’ such. Most of us wouldn’ know how to make anythin’.

“O’ course, there’s some in here for gettin’ in trouble with th guilds. An’ others who served the old Duke long afore Kremer’s father moved into these parts an’ took over. Some o’ them might know a little about makin’ things, I suppose…”

Dennis shook his head. Teth and he didn’t seem to be talking on the same wavelength at all. Or perhaps he just wasn’t hearing the fellow right. His head hurt, and he was all confused.

“We grow some of our own food,” the old man went on. “I take care of new gremmies like you. But mostly we practice for the Baron. How else would we earn our keep?”

There was that word, again…practice. Dennis was getting sick of it. He got a gnawing sensation whenever he heard it, as if his subconscious were trying to tell him something it had already figured out. Something another part of him was just as frantically rejecting.

With some difficulty he sat up and swung his feet over the side of the cot.

“Here, now! You shouldn’ do that for a few hours yet. You lie back down!”

Dennis shook his head. “No! I’ve had it!” He turned to the old man, who looked back with plain concern. “I’m finished being patient with this crazy planet of yours, do you hear? I want to know what’s going on, now! Right now!”

“Easy,” Teth began. Then he squawked as Dennis grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him forward. Their faces were inches apart.

“Let’s get down to basics,” Dennis whispered through gritted teeth. “This shirt, for instance. Where did you get it?”

Teth blinked as if he were in the grip of a lunatic. “It’s bran’ new. They giv’ it to me to break in! Wearin’ it’s one of my jobs!”

Dennis clutched the shirt tighter. “This? New? It’s hardly more than a rag! The weave is so coarse it’s about to fall apart!”

The old man gulped and nodded. “So?”

Dennis snatched at a spot of color at the fellow’s waist. He pulled free a square of filmy, opalescent fabric. It bore delicate patterns and had the feel of fine silk.

“Hey! Tha’s mine!”

Dennis shook the beautful cloth under Tern’s nose. “They dress you in rags and let you keep something like this?”

“Yeah! They let us keep some of our personal stuff, so it won’t go bad wi’out us workin’ on ’it! They may be mean, but they’re not that mean!”

“And this piece isn’t new, I suppose.” The kerchief looked fresh from some expensive shop.

“Palmi no!” Teth looked shocked. “It’s been in my family five generations!” he protested proudly. “An’ we been using it nonstop all that time! I look at it an’ blow my nose in it lots of times every day!”

It was such an unusual protestation that Dennis’s grip slackened. Teth slid to the floor, staring at him.

Shaking his head numbly, Dennis stood up and stumbled outside, blinking against the brightness. He walked unevenly past knots of laboring men—all dressed in prisoners’ garb— until he reached a point where the outer palisade came into contact with the glistening wall of the castle.

With his left hand he touched the rough treetrunks, crudely trimmed and mud-grouted, which comprised the palisade. With his right hand he stroked the castle wall, a slick, metal-hard surface that shone translucently like a massive, light-brown, semiprecious stone…or like the polished trunk of a mammoth petrified tree.

He heard someone approach from behind. He glanced back and saw it was Teth, now accompanied by two more prisoners, who looked over the newcomer curiously.

“When was the war?” Dennis asked softly without turning around.

They looked at each other. A tall, stout man answered, “Uh, what war you talkin’ about, Grem? There’s lots of ’em, all the time. The one when th’ Baron’s dad kicked out the old Duke? Or this trouble Kremer’s havin’ with the King…?”

Dennis turned and shouted, “The Big War, you idiots! The one that destroyed your ancestors! The one that threw you back to living off the dregs of your forefathers… their self-lubricating roads… their indestructible handkerchiefs!”

He brought a hand to his throbbing head as a dizzy spell struck. The others whispered to each other.

Finally a short, dark man with a very black beard shrugged and said, “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, man. We’ve got it better’n our ancestors ever had it. An’ our grandchildren’ll have it better’n us. That’s called progress. Ain’t you heard of progress? You from someplace that has ancestor worship, or somethin’ backward like that?”

He looked genuinely interested. Dennis let out a faint moan of despair and stumbled on, followed by a growing entourage.

He passed prisoners working in a vegetable garden. The neat rows of green seedlings seemed normal enough. But the implements the gardeners used were of the flint and tree-branch variety he had seen at Tomosh Sigel’s house. He pointed to the rakes and hoes.

“Those tools are new, right?” he demanded of Teth.

The old man shrugged.

“Just as I thought! Anything new is crude and, barely better than sticks and stones, while the rich get to hoard all the best remnants of your ancestors’ ancient—”

“Uh,” the small, dark man interrupted, “these tools are for the rich, Gremmie.”

Dennis snatched a flintheaded hoe out of the hands of one of the nearby farmers and waved it under the short fellow’s nose. “These? For the rich? In an obviously hierarchical society like yours? These tools are crude, barbaric, inefficient, clumsy—”

The fat gardener he had taken the tool from protested, “Well, I’m doin’ my best! I just got started on it, fer heaven’s sake! It’ll get better! Won’t it, guys?” He snuffled. The others muttered in agreement, apparently coming to the conclusion that Dennis was somewhat of a bully.

Dennis blinked at the apparent non sequitur. He hadn’t said anything about the farmer at all. Why did he take it personally?

He looked about for another example—anything else to get through to these people. He turned and spotted a group of men at the far end of the courtyard. They were not dressed in crude homespun. Instead they wore finery of the most brilliant and eye-pleasing shades. Their clothing shimmered in the afternoon light.

These men were engaged in a series of mock fencing bouts using wooden dowels instead of swords. A few guards lounged about, watching them.

Dennis had no idea why these aristocrats and their guards were here in the prison yard, but he seized the opportunity. “There!” he said, pointing. “Those clothes those men are wearing are old, aren’t they?”

Although it was now less friendly, the crowd nodded in agreement.

“They were made by your ancestors, then, right?”

The small, dark man shrugged. “I suppose you could say so. So what? It doesn’t matter who makes somethin’. It’s whether you keep it up that counts!”

Were these people blind to history? Had the holocaust that destroyed the marvelous old science of this world so traumatized them that they shied away from the truth? He walked purposefully over to where the dandies fenced by the wall. A bored guard looked up lazily, then returned to his nap.

Dennis had quite lost his head by now. He shouted at the prisoners who had followed him. “You don’t deny that aristocrats get the best, and coincidentally the oldest, of everything?”

“Well, sure…”

“And these aristocrats are wearing only old things. Right?”

The crowd erupted in laughter. Even some of those in the bright clothes stopped their dour mock swordfights and smiled. Old Teth gave Dennis a gap-toothed grin. “They’s not rich people, Denniz. They’s poor prisoners like us. They’s just built like some of the Baron’s cronies. ‘If you can wear a rich man’s clothes, you will wear a rich man’s clothes, whether you want to or not!’ ” It sounded like an aphorism.

Dennis shook his head. His subconscious was spinning and seemed to be trying to tell him something.

“Imprisoned for being ’built just like’ the Baron… that’s what Tomosh Sigel’s aunt said happened to the kid’s dad….” Someone nearby gasped aloud, but Dennis continued talking to himself, faster and faster.

“The rich force the poor to wear their gaudy clothes for them, day in, day out… but that doesn’t fray the clothes, wearing them out. Instead…”

Someone was talking urgently nearby, but Dennis’s mind was completely full. He wandered aimlessly, paying no attention to where he was going. Prisoners made way for him, as men do for the sainted or the mad.

“No,” he mumbled, “the clothing doesn’t wear out—because the rich get someone built like them to wear their clothes all the time, to keep them in…”

“Excuse me, sir. Did you mention the name of…”

“… to keep them in practice!” Dennis’s head hurt. “Practice!” he said it again and pressed his hands to his head at the craziness the word made him feel.

“… did you mention the name of Tomosh Sigel?”

Dennis looked up and saw a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing the finery of a fabulously wealthy magnate—though Dennis now knew him for a prisoner like himself. Something about the man’s face looked familiar. But Dennis’s mind was too cluttered to give it more than an instant’s thought.

“Bernald Brady!” Dennis shouted and struck his palm. “He said there was a subtle difference in physical law here! Something about the robots seeming to get more efficient…”

Dennis patted his jacket and pants. He felt lumpy objects. The guards had taken his belt and pouch but left the contents of his pockets alone.

“Of course. They didn’t even notice them,” he whispered half frantically. “They’ve never seen zippered pockets before! And those zippers have had practice getting to be better and better zippers ever since I got here!”

The crowd suddenly grew hushed as he zipped one pocket open and drew out his journal. Dennis flipped the pages.

“Day One,” he read aloud. “Equipment terrible. Cheapest available. I swear I’ll get even with that S.O.B. Brady someday…” He looked up, smiling grimly. “And I will, too.”

“Sir,” the tall man persisted, “you mentioned the name of...”

Dennis flipped ahead, tearing at the pages. “Day Ten… Equipment much better than I’d thought…1 guess I must have been mistaken, at first.…”

But he hadn’t been mistaken! The stuff had simply improved!

Dennis snapped the notebook shut and looked up. For the first time since arriving on this world, he saw.

He saw a tower that had become, after many generations, a great castle—because it had been practiced at it for so long!

He saw gardening tools that would day by day get better with use, until they were like the marvels he had seen on the steps of Tomosh Sigel’s house.

He turned and looked at the men around him. And saw…

“Cavemen!” he moaned.

“I won’t find any scientists or machinists here, because there aren’t any! You don’t have any technology at all, do you?” he accused one prisoner. The fellow backed away, obviously having no idea what Dennis was talking about.

He whirled and pointed at another. “You! You don’t even know what the wheel is! Deny it!”

The prisoners all stared.

Dennis wavered. Consciousness flickered like a candle going out.

“I should… I should have stayed at the airlock and built my own damn zievatron…Pixolet and the robot would’ve been more help than a bunch of savages who’ll prob’ly eat me for supper…and practice my bones into spoons and forks… my scapulae into fine china…”

His legs buckled and he fell to his knees, then went face-first into the sand.

“It’s my fault,” someone above him said. “I never shoulda’ let him get up with a bump on his head like that.”

Dennis felt strong arms grab his legs and shoulders. The world swayed about him.

Cavemen. They were probably going to put him in a cot so he could practice it into a feather bed just by laying in it.

Dennis laughed dizzily. “Aw, Denze, be fair… they’re a little better’n cavemen. After all, they have learned that practice makes perfect…”

Then he lost consciousness altogether.

6

It was a late-night talk show on the three-vee. The guests were four eminent philosophers.

Desmond Morris, Edwin Hubble, Willard Gibbs, and Seamus Murphy had just been interviewed. After the commercial break the show’s host turned to the holo-cameras, smiling devilishly. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve heard a lot from these four gentlemen about their famous Laws of Thermodynamics. Maybe now it would be a good time to get a word from the other side. It’s a great pleasure, therefore, to bring out tonight’s mystery guest. Please welcome Mr. Pers Peter Mobile!”

The four philosophers stood up as one, protesting.

“That charlatan?” “Faker!” “I won’t share the stage with a con artist!”

But while they fumed, the orchestra struck up a sprightly, irreverent tune. As the fanfare rose, a high-browed chimpanzee rolled out onto the stage, grinning a buck-toothed grin and bowing to the cheering audience.

On his head he wore a little beanie cap with a toy propeller.

The chimp caught a microphone tossed from the wings. He danced to the music, spinning the toy propeller with one finger. Then, with a scratchy but strangely compelling voice, he began to sing.

Why’s it so?

Oh, why’s it so?

The refrain was catchy. Pers Peter Mobile grinned and sang a couple of verses.

The chimp capered to the music, but never stopped spinning the little propeller. The blur at the top of his head became hypnotic, like the meshing and weaving of moire patterns.

The music swelled, accompanied by the growing whine of the propeller. The dancing ape returned to the refrain.

The blur at the top of his head no longer needed a ringer to keep it going. In fact, it wasn’t a toy propeller anymore at all! The beanie cap had become a space helmet and the whirling blades lifted him into the air, much to the dismay of the other guests.

The camera panned close to the chimp’s face. Two rows of big, yellowed buck teeth grinned at the audience. The music soared to a crescendo.

The chimp zoomed about the studio, his cap now a full ornithopter suit. He buzzed the furious philosophers, sending them diving behind their chairs in dismay. Then he swooped about in a sharp turn and streaked straight for the camera, laughing, howling, shrieking in mirth.

“Uh!” Dennis flailed and grabbed the edge of the cot with both hands. He stared into the darkness for a long time, breathing hard. Finally he sank back against the bedding again with a sigh.

So, there was no magical, negentropic chimpanzee after all. But the first part of the dream was true. He was in jail on a strange world. A bunch of cavemen who hadn’t the slightest idea they were cavemen had him prisoner. He was at least fifty miles from the shattered zievatron, on a world where the most basic physical laws he had been brought up to believe were queerly twisted.

It was night. Snores echoed through the prisoners’ shed. Dennis lay unmoving in the dimness until he realized that someone sat on the next cot, watching him. He turned his head arid met the look of a large, well-muscled man with dark, curly hair.

“You had a bad dream,” the prisoner said quietly.

“I was delirious,” Dennis corrected. He peered. “You look familiar. Were you one of the men I shouted at while I was raving? One of the… the clothes practicers?”

The tall man nodded. “Yes. My name is Stivyung Sigel. I heard you say that you had met my son.”

Dennis nodded. “Tomosh. A very good boy. You should be proud.”

Sigel helped Dennis sit up. “Is Tomosh all right?” He asked. His voice was anxious.

“You needn’t worry. He was just fine last I saw.”

Sigel bowed his head in gratitude. “Did you meet my wife, Surah?”

Dennis frowned. He found it hard to remember what he had been told. It all seemed so long ago and had been mentioned only in passing. He didn’t want to distress Sigel.

On the other hand, the man deserved to be told whatever he knew. “Umm, Tomosh is staying with his Aunt Biss. She told me something about your wife going off to ask help... from somebody or something called Latoof? Likoff?”

The other man’s face paled. “The L’Toff” he whispered. “She should not have done so. The wilderness is dangerous, and things are not yet so desperate!”

Sigel stood up and started pacing at the foot of Dennis’s bed. “I must get out of here. I must!”

Dennis had already begun thinking along the same lines. Now that he knew there were no native scientists to help him, he had to be getting back to the zievatron to try putting a new return mechanism together by himself, with or without replacement power buses. Otherwise he would never get off of this crazy world.

Maybe he could turn the Practice Effect to his advantage, though he suspected it would work quite differently for a sophisticated instrument than for an ax or a sled. The very idea was too fresh and disconcerting for the scientist in him to dwell on yet.

All he really knew was that he was getting homesick. And he owed Bernald Brady a punch in the nose.

When he tried to get up, Sigel hurried to his side and helped him. They went to one of the support pillars, where Dennis leaned and looked out at the stockade wall. Two small, bright moons illuminated the grounds.

“I think,” he told the farmer in a low voice, “I might be able to help you get out of here, Stivyung.”

Sigel regarded him. “One of the guards claims you are a wizard. Your actions earlier made us think it might be true. Can you truly arrange an escape from this place?”

Dennis smiled. The score so far was Tatir many, Dennis Nuel nothing. It was his turn now. What, he wondered, might not be wrought from the Practice Effect by a Ph.D. in physics, when these people hadn’t even heard of the wheel?

“It’ll be a piece of cake, Stivyung.”

The farmer looked puzzled by the idiom but he smiled hopefully.

A touch of motion caught Dennis’s eye. He turned and looked up at the layered castle to his right, its walls gleaming in the moonlight.

Three levels up, behind a parapet lined with bars, a slender figure stood alone. The breeze blew a diaphanous garment and a cascade of long blond hair.

She was too far away to discern clearly in the night, but Dennis was struck by the young woman’s loveliness. He also felt sure that somehow he had seen her somewhere before.

At that moment she seemed to look toward them. She stood that way, with her face in shadows, perhaps watching them watch her, for a long time.

“Princess Linnora,” Sigel identified her. “She is a prisoner as are we. In fact, she’s the reason I’m here. The Baron wanted to impress her with his property. I’m to help practice his personal things to perfection.” Sigel sounded bitter.

“Is she as beautiful in the daytime as she is by moonlight?” Dennis couldn’t look away.

Sigel shrugged. “She’s comely, I’ll warrant. But I can’t understand what th’ Baron’s thinking. She’s a daughter of the L’Toff. I know them better than most, and it’s hard even for me to imagine one of them ever marraiging to a normal human being.”