Anderson, Kevin J - Gamearth 01 (28 page)

"Why don't you tell us how you determine these weighted votes?" Paenar seemed to know the answer already.

Mayer looked at him as if he had asked something obvious. "By the number of inventions a character has contributed, of course. My father Dirac has designed seventy new inventions for the betterment of Sitnalta, and therefore he has seventy votes. I have five, soon to be six."

"But what about the characters who aren't inventors?" Bryl asked.

Mayer snorted. "Useless people
¯
who cares what they think?"

Paenar smiled to himself.

At some unheard signal, dozens of characters emerged from the doorways of buildings around the square and filed toward the fountain. They stared at the travelers, but talked little among themselves. The other characters wore bright clothes similar to the ones Mayer wore, but some were covered with grease or wore work-smocks. One woman's hair looked singed; perhaps a new invention had backfired on her.

Mayer smiled and motioned to a rotund man striding toward them. The man had a bald crown and shaggy reddish hair sticking out around his ears. "This is my father, Dirac, who has designed seventy inventions."

"If she says one more time how many inventions he's done
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" Delrael grumbled.

"You were early, Mayer," Dirac said, still smiling at the travelers.

"Did you run short of things to show our guests?"

"No, Father!" Mayer looked at the water clock for defense, but she said nothing more.

Dirac gazed at them with a distant expression on his face, then he extended his hand to each of them, beaming. "I am pleased you've come to Sitnalta. We'll have time to discuss many things."

Paenar's blindness did not trouble Dirac at all; he reached out, guided the blind man's hand into his own grasp and shook it. Paenar seemed to dislike the Sitnaltan's touch.

Before they could say anything to him, Dirac turned and waved two other men over to join them. "Allow me to introduce the greatest inventors in all of Sitnalta
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Professors Frankenstein and Verne. I cannot begin to tell you the great wonders these men have brought to us."

Frankenstein was a young, haggard-looking man, with dark brown hair and intense, bloodshot eyes. He nodded cursorily to the guests but went back to brood with his ideas, as if incapable of making light conversation.

Verne, on the other hand, blinked in surprise at being personally introduced to the visitors. Verne had a great bushy beard and tangled gray hair hanging over his ears. He scratched his head and extended a hand to each of the four, smiling politely. A peculiar, haunted quality lay behind the eyes of both professors, as if they had the dreams and nightmares of several lifetimes locked within their skulls.

Verne rubbed his hands together. His voice had a strange accented lilt.

"Monsieur Dirac himself is not a trivial personage either. He has
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"

"We know," Delrael interrupted, "seventy inventions to his credit."

Dirac looked pleased, paying no heed to the sarcasm in Delrael's comment. "You must be hungry," he said, interrupting Verne. "We were about to break for our midday meal."

Both professors slipped away and stood back to observe the crowd. Dirac led the travelers over to stone benches ringing the square. Delrael lurched, nearly unable to walk on his
kennok
leg. Vailret helped him, but Delrael acted frustrated at himself.

After watching the water clock, everyone turned to face other sets of doors around the square. Wheeled carts shuttled out of the building, bearing individual plates heaped with steaming food.

Dirac sat down on the bench next to Delrael and Vailret, elbowing his way into a place of honor. Delrael absently rubbed his thigh, at the line where the
kennok
wood joined with flesh. The carts came around, and the Sitnaltans each took a plate and began to eat. As Vailret tried to choose between several different entrees, he noticed how every plate appeared the same, so carefully arranged. But after days of pack food
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They ate in relative silence. The smokestacks of the manufactories had stopped exhaling great gray clouds, and many of the background noises had also fallen silent. Off on another bench and oblivious to the others, Frankenstein and Verne argued over the fine details of some new invention.

Delrael scraped the last remnants of food from his plate into his mouth, finishing well before anyone else. After swallowing his food he spoke to Dirac. "I don't understand one thing. We arrive at your gates as perfect strangers, your daughter invites us in and gives us the grand tour, now you introduce us to all of Sitnalta and give us a good meal. But nobody's even asked us why we're here or where we're going. Isn't that a little strange?"

Dirac wiped his mouth and looked flustered. Mayer watched her father, waiting for him to answer. "We assumed you had heard of our great city and came to see its wonders for yourself. That was Mayer's hypothesis."

Bryl laughed so suddenly that he choked on his remaining food. Delrael also chuckled, while Vailret looked at the Sitnaltans in surprise. Paenar shook his head.

"Your city is marvelous, but we are on our way to the island of Rokanun," Vailret said. "We need a passage across the sea."

The other Sitnaltans muttered. Frankenstein and Verne stopped their discussion to pay attention.

"The dragon Tyros is on Rokanun. You don't want to go there." Dirac placed his hands on the table, then smiled at them again. "But don't worry -you are safe here."

"You don't understand," Bryl said. "We want to find the dragon."

Dirac shook his head as if to dismiss them. "Not another one of those silly treasure quests? I thought they went out of fashion years and years ago."

"We have to rescue someone. We promised," Delrael said.

"But why would you want to go there now?" Dirac frowned, puzzled. "It is only a matter of time before Sitnaltan technology advances enough to destroy Tyros. Why bother risking your lives?"

Paenar stood up, exasperated, and put his fists on his hips. "Are you Sitnaltans so wrapped up in your little world that you see nothing else?" He glared at the gathered characters with his empty eye-sockets.

"All of your inventions will be worthless soon
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the Outsiders have decided to end the Game. Our world is about to be destroyed, and I'll bet you didn't even know!"

He pointed in the general direction of Delrael, Bryl, and Vailret.

"These people are fighting
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they did not give up. They will not surrender.

But Sitnalta is ignoring the danger."

Across the table, Mayer bristled and glared at him. Dirac folded his hands on his paunched belly with patronizing interest. "Oh? Please tell us more of this danger."

Vailret looked at Delrael, who raised his eyebrows and nodded. Vailret set his jaw. "We received a message from the Rulewoman Melanie herself, telling us about some enemy growing in the east. We traveled northward to ask for Sardun's help, and he created the Barrier River that cut us off from the threat. In exchange, we agreed to rescue his daughter Tareah, who has been kidnapped by the dragon on Rokanun. But now we have learned that Scartaris is not just a normal enemy. Not just an army. I doubt that the Barrier River will be enough to stop the destruction."

Someone laughed. Other Sitnaltans muttered about "barbarian superstitions." Professor Verne tugged on his long beard. Professor Frankenstein chewed on his lip.

Mayer rolled her eyes upward. "Do you mean that Sardun, the great Sentinel, could not fight off a dragon?"

"Sitnalta has not been able to destroy Tyros, either," Paenar pointed out.

Mayer fell silent.

"The Outsiders have decided to end the Game. I know, for I have been with them. They blasted away my eyes when I glimpsed them at their work."

Paenar stared at the gathered Sitnaltans, offering his empty eye-sockets as evidence of his story.

Professor Verne stood up, scratching his head. "This great energy force to the east
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what exactly is it? And where, exactly, is it located?"

Paenar turned his head in the direction of the inventor's voice.

"Northeast of here, in the mountains beyond the city of Taire. The Outsiders have named it Scartaris
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it will absorb all the energy on Gamearth, breaking the hexes from the map and sending them to drift as barren chunks in the universe."

Verne scratched his head again and said, "Hmmm." He looked at Frankenstein, and his younger partner shrugged, then nodded. Professor Verne drew a deep breath. His eyes looked distant and watery.

"We did not announce our recent findings because we had insufficient data to form any conclusions. Some of our monitors have detected a powerful energy anomaly in the extreme northeast of the map. Frankenstein and I were at a loss to explain it
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but these travelers offer a hypothesis that fits the data."

He crossed his arms. "In the absence of evidence to the contrary, good scientific practice suggests that we not scoff at the claims of our guests."

Dirac fidgeted, but even he did not dare to disagree with the great Professor Verne.

"Well then," Delrael said, "are you going to help us or not?"

The wind picked up, stretching the tether ropes taut as it tugged at the huge gas-filled balloon. Vailret stood on the ground, looking up at the bottom of the woven basket bobbing in the air. The balloon was constructed of bright red and white cloth, sewn tightly and waterproofed, covered with a mesh of rope that attached to cables leading down to the passenger basket below.

Bright white numerals "VI" had been stenciled on the basket.

Verne had explained how simple the concept was: a giant sack filled with a gas even lighter than air. It would float, allowing them to travel through the air. But Vailret wasn't sure he wanted to trust his life to something so flimsy.

"What does the 'VI' mean?" He pointed at the basket.

Verne smiled sheepishly. Frankenstein said, "Our first five attempts did not have sufficient integrity."

The fighter and the old half-Sorcerer stood in the basket, staring down at the gathered crowd. The basket swayed against the ropes as the two passengers moved about. Even with his uncooperative
kennok
leg, Delrael had hauled himself up the rope ladder, using his arms and moving from one sagging rung to the next. Bryl scrambled up afterward, glancing down too often and looking ill. He appeared frail and spidery as he climbed into the basket.

From the ground, Vailret raised his hand in a farewell wave. Paenar had instinctively turned to face the proper direction. If Verne's intuition was right, the great balloon would take Delrael and Bryl over the hexes of ocean to the island of Rokanun....

"We have sent up test balloons," Verne had said, "small and unmanned, of course. We used detectors in them to measure the prevailing winds, and if you reach the correct altitude, you should be able to go directly to the island. The detectors failed once they'd gone a sufficient distance from Sitnalta, but we did gather enough data to be confident in our results."

"The detectors failed?" Vailret said in alarm.

"Oh yes, but we saw no evidence that the balloons failed," Verne added quickly.

"Now don't get sidetracked, Jules," Frankenstein said. "It's important that they understand this. You see, the winds move in different directions, different
streams
, depending on the altitude." He nodded to Delrael and Bryl. "You will have to control your altitude by releasing some of the ballast in the sandbags strung along the gondola. I suspect that the time of day will also affect your altitude, as the sun heats up the gas in the bag, causing it to expand."

Verne nodded. "As the days pass, some of the gas will leak out of the balloon, too. You will have to drop sandbags just to maintain your flying height." The professor stared up at the colorful balloon. His eyes sparkled.

"I created this balloon for a grand adventure, for a journey of exploration that would change the way Sitnalta thinks." Verne's voice sounded wistful. "I dreamed of all we might see and do, all we might learn from such a quest. But I am too old, and the others are too frightened to go far from Sitnalta, where the Rules of Science do not hold true."

Frankenstein had looked at the four travelers with an intense light in his eyes. "No one would volunteer to test this balloon. We would have no control over its direction of flight, nor could we be sure of getting back. By using data from our regional monitoring devices, we calculated the extent of the technological fringe around our city
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a lower limit, you understand, because once we place monitors near the fringe, we cannot rely on the readings they give."

The younger professor squinted at the balloon. The wind yanked at it, testing the ropes holding it down.

"We do not dare cross the fringe in that balloon. Imagine what would happen if, flying high in the sky, you passed over a hex-line and suddenly the very physical principle that allows the balloon to fly becomes uncertain. The balloon would fall like a stone."