The Practice Effect (11 page)

“… 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.… I 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.

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.

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 moiré 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 finger 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 and 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.”

“They patrol outside the wall to keep people away,” the small thief said. “After all, a lot of prisoners have family and friends on the outside, and a fair part of Zuslik’s population would help in a jailbreak. Even after thirty years, Kremer’s northmen ain’t too popular hereabouts.”

Dennis nodded. “But do the guards inspect the wall on the outside as carefully as they do inside?”

The escape committee numbered five. They were gathered around a rickety table eating the noon meal. The prisoners sat in flimsy, uncomfortable chairs. It would have been better just to stand, but practicing the chairs was another of their jobs.

Gath Glinn, the youngest member of their group, squatted in the shadows beside the nearby castle wall, huddled over Dennis’s prototype escape device. The sandy-haired youth had been the first to catch on to the Earthman’s idea and had been assigned to try it out. He stopped working and covered the device whenever the others indicated the guards were near.

Right now his hands moved rapidly back and forth, and the little tool he
practiced
made soft “zizzing” sounds.

The short, dark man whom Dennis vaguely remembered yelling at on his first day in jail shook his head and answered Dennis’s question. “Naw, Denniz. Sometimes they take gangs of us out to throw rocks at the wall. But mostly they make us practice it from th’ inside.”

Dennis was still routinely puzzled by things his fellow prisoners told him. His look must have showed it.

Stivyung Sigel looked left and right to make sure no one had approached too close. “What Arth means, Dennis, is that another of our jobs is to practice the wall itself into being a better wall.”

The farmer seemed to have caught on that Dennis came from someplace far away, where things were very different from here. It seemed to puzzle him that civilization could exist in a land where things didn’t get better with use, but he appeared willing to give Dennis the benefit of the doubt.

“I see.” Dennis nodded. “That’s why those men are allowed to chop away at the wall like that, without being stopped by the guards.” He had seen groups of prisoners lackadaisically attacking the palisade, and the wall of the castle itself, with crude mallets. He had wondered why it was permitted.