The Archimage's Fourth Daughter Page 7

  Aping the woman, Briana entered ‘magic’ in the device in front of her. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the illuminated window became alive with activity. One line after another appeared in rapid succession, scrolling upward and vanishing at the top in order to make room for a new one at the bottom.

  She jumped back away from the table as the text kept scrolling. Of course! There were so many books here. There had to be hundreds of them devoted to the craft of magic alone, not only one or two. Apprehension began to bubble again. Briana felt as if she were the disk bobbling up and down on the end of the string on a child’s toy.

  She could not keep doing this she scolded herself. This world was not like Murdina. Accept the fact. Get over it. And she had witnessed only a few of its marvels; there must be many, many more. When the next deluge of the new and unusual happens, she could not hide within a shell for a day before venturing out again. Savagely, she willed the discomfort away.

  The scrolling stopped. She picked one of the book titles at random and wrote down the number by its title on one of the small scraps of parchment placed nearby.

  “Where are the stacks?” she asked

  THE CHOSEN book was not helpful. Only one word in ten did Briana understand. The second and third volume were no better. She gave up trying any other, exited the library, and hastened back down the long steps leading to it.

  When she reached the bottom of the slope, she sat down in the shade of one of the trees lining the staircase. Under another one nearby and up a bit on the left she saw a lordling bending over one of the thin metal boxes she had seen so many of in the library. Next to him, a young ladyling occasionally tossed leaves of grass at the illuminated window and giggled, obviously not interested at all in the books and devices she had brought with her.

  Briana managed a smile. See, she told herself, not everything here was different and complex. Evidently, some things were the same throughout the universe.

  From where she sat, Briana could see the upright window of the lordling and watch him wiggling his fingers on a flat horizontal plate connected at the bottom. She withdrew the sorcerer glasses from her pack and zoomed in on what was happening. After a good part of an hour, as the natives called the time interval, Briana started to understand the pattern.

  The lordling was making notes! Making notes like an initiate magician, recording for his own use some particular content from a scroll somehow crammed into the device before him. Briana watched until she was sure. Yes, although not in a completely repetitive sequence, he performed the same simple steps over and over. She grabbed a quill and some parchment from her backpack and jotted down the motions he was making with his fingers and then described what was happening as a result in the illuminated window.

  Briana felt a shock of discovery. There was no need to search through all of the books about the crafts one by one! Somehow, all of the contents in the massive library must be accessible from the strange devices everyone carried. One could ask exactly what they wanted to know. No need to peruse laboriously text after text. And there was even a dictionary — a definition appeared when you simply entered the spelling of a word.

  Almost as remarkable was that these devices clearly were not magic. Briana had felt no tingle when she had performed similar manipulations in the library. With the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these devices being used and carried by all of the nobility here, they could not be anywhere near priceless.

  Filled with the satisfaction of what she was learning, Briana turned her attention back to the lordling. His search was not continuous. More and more frequently, it was interrupted by the ladyling at his side. Rather than a few leaves of grass, the lass tossed an entire clump that spattered against the illuminated window. When he looked up with a slight smile acknowledging what she was doing, she suddenly stood upright and began running up the slope. The lordling laughed and bolted after. For what Briana judged were several minutes, the young women feinted and turned, just out of the lordling’s grasp, retreating another few steps away from him.

  Briana watched the progress of the chase and concluded the ladyling was the swifter of the two. He would never catch her on his own. The lass finally would have to deduce this and slow herself for anything more to happen. That could take quite a few minutes more, and in the meantime…

  Briana did not think any further. She put away the sorcerer glasses, shouldered her pack, and raced over to where the two thin boxes lay on the grass. The lordling’s stood open and ready for the next manipulation, and the woman’s was closed. She grabbed the lass’s and bolted onto the walkway leading south at the foot of the steps. Now, finally, after two false starts, she could see a way to make some real progress to achieving her goal.

  “Stop! That’s my laptop!” the ladyling yelled from up the slope. “Carl, she is stealing my computer.”

  Briana started to run. Coming downhill, the woman might be able to cut her off before she could be safely away. With a burst of speed, Briana accelerated. Thank the random factors she was not wearing her boots, she thought. She chanced a glance behind. The ladyling had reached the pathway behind her and was in pursuit. The lordling, already panting, struggled to keep up.

  “Stop!” the woman cried again, but her voice was not as loud as before. Evidently, she too was a little winded from her evasions on the hillslope. Curiously, others on the path did not move to block Briana’s progress as she continued running. Instead, they scrambled to get out of the way.

  Briana sucked in the air deeply as she cradled the thin box under her arm. She was suddenly thankful of the running she had done back in Procolon to clear her mind after a long session looking at scrolls in the Grand, well, now perhaps not so Grand, Library. She sped past a cross path lined with tables and short billboards and pushed aside eager lordlings trying to thrust a handbill for her to take. Up ahead she could see the path ended at the entrance to one of the other buildings that were scattered about everywhere. Should she go to the left or right or perhaps go inside? Maybe a place in which she could hide.

  When she reached the building steps, Briana looked back. There was a greater distance now between her and her pursuers. In fact, the woman had stopped running, continuing now only with a walk. Now, she could get away easily, away to a safe place and start using the device. Her exploit was only beginning, and already there were words waiting to be added to the sagas — how she had deduced the value of the thin boxes and managed to take one away almost under the nose of…

  Briana stopped. No, this was not right, she thought suddenly. She was more than a petty thief. Her adventure was important, one she must complete. But not like this, not without the honor that should accomplish the deeds of the true hero. In the Cycloid Guild, her father had used his skills to create deceptions, but never once did he take something that was not rightfully his.

  Briana sighed. Slowly, she held out the thin metal box and began walking back toward her pursuer.

  “Give me my laptop!” the ladyling commanded as she and the lordling drew near.

  “Laptop?” Briana shrugged as she handed it over.

  “Laptop. Computer. Whatever,” the young woman snapped. She glanced over her shoulder as the lordling caught up. “Giving it back is not enough. We should turn you over to the campus police.”

  Police! Briana remembered Slow Eddie talking about them. Her pulse began to race again.

  “Oh, lighten up, Kathy,” the lordling said as he looked at Briana closely for the first time and then smiled. “No harm, no foul.” Unlike most of the young men she had seen, he was tall and thin, like a slender reed growing in a marsh of squat ground cover. Eyes of blue were the best feature on a plain oval face.

  “She can’t run around like this. Someone else’s will be snatched.”

  Carl studied Briana. “If you really want a computer, buy one at the student store,” he said. “They aren’t that much. Use your student ID to get the discount.”

  “Buy my own!” Briana exclaimed. “Of cour
se. That is what I should do. What is the price?”

  “I don’t know. Around five or six hundred, I think. Show your ID and that is all there is to it.”

  Briana scowled. “A quicky, then a social, now a student ID,” she said. “The list gets longer and longer. It looks like everything is open and unguarded here, but there is always a catch, something standing in the way.”

  “You are not a student, are you?” Carl asked. He seemed intrigued. “They are even cheaper at Better Buy. About four miles south of here on Pico. Bottom of the line models; under three hundred, I think.”

  “Three hundred dollars?” Briana’s eyebrows jumped in surprise.

  “Yeah, I think so.” The young man smiled again and stuck out his hand. “My name is Carl. Let’s the three of us go for a coffee so we can end this up by being friends.”

  “Oh, Carl, don’t you get it?” Kathy said. “Let’s turn her in and get back to what we were doing. No student ID and no computer. Sounds very suspicious to me.”

  “She doesn’t need an ID,” Carl said. “Whatever she wants a computer for, she can use ‘UCLA_WEB.’ It’s public access.”

  Briana found herself smiling back at Carl in return. On Procolon, many of the lordlings were smiling and friendly. But that was because she was the daughter of the Archimage. She had long ago stopped reading anything more important into them. And Slammert, she had misread completely. But here — perhaps she might be a bit attractive to the other sex after all. Perhaps…

  She squeezed shut the way her thoughts were going. There were more important things to focus on. Under three hundred dollars. Under three hundred. She could earn that in a little more than a fortnight at the café. Less than three weeks more and she would have the means to do the exploring that was necessary.

  She glanced at Kathy’s growing frown and then smiled back at Carl. “Thank you for the offer. I have other things to do. But perhaps you will tell me the path from here to, what did you call it, the ‘BetterBuy.’“

  Surfing the Net

  BRIANA EXITED the bus at the north entrance to the UCLA campus. It was early morning, and she could stay until a half hour before her shift at the café began. One of the other serving wenches, waitresses, she corrected herself, had told her about the buses. Down La Brea to Sunset and then westbound from there.

  To be sure, she had accumulated more than enough money to buy the computer. The extra paid for the bus fares. In addition, she had ventured into the shops on the boulevard and been able to buy a few sundries and souvenirs of this world as well. Curious little glass jars of red paint that came in a bewildering variety of shades, cylinders of similar colors that one twisted in and out of hiding from small tubes. A little bird that dipped its head into a glass of water repeatedly, never stopping. Useless trinkets called ‘jacks’ and perhaps a half-dozen other toys.

  She shook her head from side to side, feeling her curls bounce with life. Shampoo, glorious shampoo. If anything would be worth taking back to Murdina, it would be shampoo. Also now, in her backpack, a small clock was ticking. Dozing on and off fitfully as dawn approached and worrying about the portal being discovered was no longer a problem. A gentle chime woke her in plenty of time each morning so it could be sent back to Nowhere for another day.

  ‘Plenty of time’, she thought. That certainly was not right. The tension she could not put aside grew stronger each day. Five days until she visited the library, and then sixteen more to buy one of the thin metal boxes. A good fraction of the time before her fate was to be decided was already gone.

  When she reached the grassy slope next to the Janss steps, she started her laptop. The clerk who had sold the computer to her had run through a set of basic instructions very quickly, and some of it she already knew from watching Carl, three weeks before. But other concepts were new. Before she forgot, she had had to write them down hurriedly when she exited the store.

  Getting the Wi-Fi connection to UCLA_WEB working had taken her more than a day. Her first efforts put the machine into strange states, and she had to resort to putting more boots on it and starting over. After a few hours of frustration, she realized she had to make a detailed recording of every click or cursor movement so that after each rebooting she could quickly return to where she had made her last mistake.

  Then another day was spent using the dictionary to find the equivalent for some words of her own tongue that were not in the guide left by Randor, the stranger from yet another world. By starting with a guess from her limited vocabulary and then examining the definition of each similar word appearing in turn, she could follow the trail until she found what she needed.

  Each new definition she dutifully copied into what was called a ‘spreading sheet’ and after some additional trial and error was able to sort her newly defined words into a semblance of order. Finally, she could use the words she had assembled to start her first real search… a search for what was written about the seven laws of the magical crafts.

  ‘Like produces like’ she entered and saw the first of some twenty-eight thousand matches appear. Yes, there was thaumaturgy here!

  This time, she was not immediately dismayed by the large number. She clicked on the first chain link at the top of the window: — ’Sympathetic Magic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.’

  “Ready for that coffee break?” a voice broke through her concentration. Briana looked up. It was Carl, smiling at her as he had done weeks before. Kathy was nowhere to be seen. There could be no doubt about it. He was interested in her, and not because she was the Archimage’s daughter.

  But then, why was the interest there? He knew nothing of her, who she was, where she was from, the reason for her quest. It was only the way she appeared, nothing else. Flattering to be sure, but superficial. She was wiser now. At the bottom of it all, he was no different from Slammert, from the customers at the café.

  “No, this is a bad time,” Briana said. She was anxious he should leave. Now that she had a tool to use, she wanted to continue without someone looking over her shoulder and asking questions about what she was doing. “Perhaps… perhaps later.”

  Carl did not immediately reply. Briana returned her attention to the computer. “All right then, some other time,” he said at last. “See you around.” Like a little boy whose friend could not come outside to play, he slinked off.

  Briana waited a few seconds until Carl was safely away and then returned to her search. “Sympathy and Contagion,” she mumbled to herself as she read the text at the top of the window. But when she tried to read further, as had happened in the library, she bogged down with the vocabulary.

  She opened a new window and copied into it the text being displayed. Then for each word she did not understand, she studied its definition and synonyms until she understood enough to paste over the word in the second window with a simpler substitute or phrase.

  The going was slow. It took her until it was time to catch the bus back to the café to translate only a few paragraphs. More troubling, near the very top, the text attributed to someone named James George Frazer was incorrect. According to him, the laws of sympathy and contagion did not work together. And there was no mention of the necessity of coupling a source of energy in order to perform an incantation. Another day completely gone and only a single step taken of what now was looking to be a long journey.

  THE NEXT week was more of the same. Many pieces of text described the beliefs of primitive cultures, but in every case, those beliefs were treated as mere fantasies with no basis in truth. Search after search lead to discussions of wizardry, magic, alchemy and the rest, but all of them concerned discarded conjectures or the contents of fictional tales meant for amusement.

  On the morning of the ninth day of searching, Briana slammed the laptop shut. She had been staring at a screen and concentrating for so long! Except for one wordsmith who somehow got the statements of all seven of the laws correct, there was no direct evidence that people of this planet knew any of them, any of the laws at
all.

  There had been so many false trails. Like the enchantments of a sadistic sorcerer, each new possibility at first created excitement that was dashed by what was learned after. The sciences of Earth knew about catalysts. But they were more akin to alchemy than thaumaturgy. Transmutation of elements had no alchemy involvement at all. The study of Monster groups discussed nothing about assemblies of djinns and other demons.

  The only mention of anything remotely dealing with natural laws was about the work going on at a place called CERN — something about having found proof of the Higgs boson. But as far as Briana could tell, ‘elementary particles’ had nothing to do with the elementary laws she was looking for.

  She was fatigued. Her brain was numb. Had she overlooked something, something fundamental the next query would reveal? Surprisingly, she felt that, at least for the moment, she did not care. Why had the sagas never recorded something like this? The hero always continued undaunted until he reached his goal. But right now, she could not. As important as her quest was for her own future, she needed a break.

  She put away her laptop, shouldered her backpack, and started walking away eastward, back toward Hollywood Boulevard. The bus ride would be for another time.

  THE SUN was below its zenith when Briana passed Vine Street. She was somewhat surprised that, mingling in the crowd, she now could recognize emblems on bags and shirts identifying some of the lordlings and ladylings as also frequenting UCLA. Perhaps they too needed a break from the burden of study.

  Up ahead she recognized someone. It was Slow Eddie talking to a well-dressed lord while holding out his hand palm up in front of himself. The baron’s garb stood out, even at a distance. The front creases of the slacks were as sharp as knife blades. The shirt of silk was a vibrant red unbuttoned half way down the chest like the revealing blouse of a doxy. Not one but two bracelets of gold circled a thick wrist. He stood next to a sculptured white stele with the word ‘Tesla,’ whatever that was, written on it over a large boxy opening that did not seem to serve any purpose.