Pathspace: The Space of Paths (26 page)

“
I disagree. The man's a
disgrace. You need to court-martial him.”

He slammed the door,
surprising his son. “
I
need?” He
glared at the boy. “I really hate that way of speaking. When I was
the Runt, I had a tutor who used to tell me 'you need to be quiet
now', when I, in actual fact, was aware of no such need. What
he
really
meant was 'I
want
you to be quiet now; but he couldn't
make himself say that to me.”

Jeffrey's chin jutted. “What I mean is –
“

“
Oh, I know what you
mean,” said the Honcho. “You
want
me to court-martial him, over some farmer family. Like that
will bring them back to life somehow. Grow up.”

Jeffrey reddened. “This isn't about me. It's
about your troops. You need to send them a message, to tell them
that sort of thing is not acceptable. There's no use expanding if
you don't hold onto what you conquer. And you can't hold onto
territory if all the locals hate you, because of how your men
act.”

Peter rounded his desk and dropped into his
chair. “That might be good advice, in some situations,” he said.
“This isn't one of them. You don't arrest your best commander on
the eve of starting a war. Building a house takes more than nails
and wood. You need a hammer, and Brutus Glock is the best hammer I
have at the moment.”

Jeffrey scowled. “From what I've seen, he's
in no shape to lead troops at the moment anyway.”

“
And you are?” He shook
his head.. “Face it, the men don't know you well enough to trust
you and follow you yet. And if you don't drop these charges against
their commanding officer, they won't
want
to know you, either. If you ever want to
accomplish something with your life, son, you're going to have to
learn to pick your battles.”

Jeffrey didn't back down. “What kind of
leader only fights battles that he's sure he can win? Some things
are worth fighting for even if victory isn't guaranteed.”

“
There's more than just
winning,” his father told him.
This is my fault,
he realized.
I've left too much of his
training to others.
“There's what comes after
winning. There's no use punishing one man if it loses you an army.
Brutus is a hero to them.”

“
Not to me.”

“
Take some time to cool
down before we discuss it again.”

But Jeffrey didn't budge. “We have something
else to talk about. Did you know that Pope Enrique's on his way
over here today?”

“
No, but I just got here
myself. Any idea what he wants?”

“
No idea, and I don't
care. I just thought you should know you can't trust
him.”

“
We've already had this
discussion. The TCC is useful to us. They maintain – “

“
Lies. They maintain lies,
Dad. They say they're against any use of the Gifts of the Tourists,
but they use 'em themselves. That's how Pope Rodrigo was
killed.”

“
What are you talking
about? Rodrigo was
shot
.”

“
He sure was. But your
alchemists didn't find any trace of gunpowder on that bullet, did
they? That's because it was fired from a
swizzle
.”

Peter stared at him. “A swizzle?”

“
Yep. Your men should have
brought that wizard's staff back with them. It was a swizzle too.
The first time we met him, he used it to shoot coals from the
campfire at us. The last time, before the banger dropped him with
an arrow, he used his staff to bounce a rock off Brutus's head.
When I saw that, I remembered the hole in Rodrigo's head, and the
whistle we heard just before he dropped dead.”

“
I remember the sound.
More of a hiss than a whistle.”

“
It's the sound a thin
swizzle makes when it's moving a lot of air. Don't you see? It
moves whatever's in it. If there's air or water in it, the swizzle
moves it. If there's a rock or a bullet in there, it moves too.
Make it move fast enough and you've got a gun that doesn't need
gunpowder.”

The Honcho had been about
to stand up, but at this he sat down again. “So someone in the
Church has access to swizzles, and they're using them as guns.” He
thought about that.
What else do they know that they're
not sharing with me?

“
For all we know,” said
Jeffrey, “they have their own wizards who can
make
swizzles.”

“
I thought only the
Tourists could do that,” he objected. “If humans could do things
like that, civilization would never have fallen. Things would have
kept working.”

“
Well,” said Jeffrey,
“maybe some humans can. That wizard's staff, it looked like it was
nothing but a stick until it started shooting red-hot coals at us.
He must have had the swizzle inside it. But who ever heard of a
swizzle covered with wood? From what I've read, they were used
underground, where groundwater would rot the wood, and inside pipes
and ventilation shafts where no one could see them. You know what?
I think he made it himself. It's too bad your banger killed him.
One wizard like that could make you a thousand swizzle
guns.”

Yes,
he
thought.
Too bad. But we do have his apprentice.

There was a knock on the door. “Yes?”

“
Sir, His Holiness is
here.”

“
Already? Very well, show
him into the meeting room. I'll be there in a minute.”

He looked at the Runt, seeing potential for
maybe the first time. “What you've just told me is useful,” he
said. “I think you should sit in on this meeting. But don't say
anything, just listen to what he says and tell me what you think
afterwards.”

For the first time that day, his son
actually smiled. “I can do that,” he said.

He opened his eyes. He was in the doctor's
rooms, not in his own bed.

Aria sat by the bed. “How long was I
asleep?” he asked.

She consulted the hourglass on the table.
“About six hours. It's the middle of the afternoon. How do you
feel?”

“
Beat up. Have you heard
from Lester?”

“
No,” she said. “It looks
like the escaped Texas men took him back with them.”

“
Damn it!” He tried to
rise from the bed.

She pushed him back down flat with one hand.
“Don't even try,” she said. “We're not even finished with the
transfusion yet.”

He craned his neck and saw the IV stand by
the bed. There was a half-full plastic bag of blood there, its
tubing carrying blood into his left arm. “Ah,” he said. He looked
back at Aria. “You look pale.”

“
I'm not surprised,” she
said. “It
is
my blood, after all.
Or was, until I got back a half hour ago. You're lucky the outpost
had a fast horse for couriers. You lost a lot of blood and the
doctor said mine was the only kind in the building that wouldn't
kill you.”

He frowned at that. “I'm sure he could have
found someone else. There's probably – “

“
Shut up,” she said
cheerfully. “And you're welcome. No, there was nobody else. He had
dozens of volunteers, but when he mixed a drop of yours and theirs,
they all clumped. Mine was the only blood that didn't.” Now she
frowned. “It's strange, because mother's clumped too. But mine was
fine. Something about A, B, and O and positive and negative.
Anyway, you should be fine now.”

“
I didn't think I was
bleeding that much,” he said. “I made it all the way back here,
after all. I was just having trouble breathing.”

“
You had a punctured
lung,” she informed him. “The arrow missed your heart but it went
right through a lung. The bandages stopped you from making a mess
but you were still bleeding into the collapsed lung. Doctor Daniels
had to swizzle that blood out of the lung and then reverse the
swizzle to re-inflate the lung for you.”

“
Good thinking,” he said.
“But where did he find a swizzle small enough for that?”

“
We broke the little
fountain you made for me last year. You remember? I only had to add
a little water once every week or so to make up for evaporation.
I'm sorry we had to break it, but I knew there had to be a little
swizzle in there. And there was.”

“
Tell him to keep it,” he
said. “I'll make you another one.”
But what are we going
to do about Lester?
“Ask the doctor to come
in for a moment, will you? I need to speak to him in
private”

“
Fine,” she said. “I guess
you don't need me, now that you have my
blood
.”

Daniels didn't smile. “What do you want?
You're not my only patient, you know.”

“
Has she figured it out
yet?”

To the doctor's credit, he didn't pretend
not to understand. “No,” he said. “But if she gets curious it isn't
that hard to work out from the explanations in the old biology
textbooks. Why haven't you told her?”

“
Only you and I, and of
course the Governor, know this. I'd like to keep it that
way.”

Daniels just looked at him. “Don't you think
she deserves to know who her father is?”

Xander sighed, which was a
mistake, because it hurt to do that now. “But that's just the
point,” he said. “She thinks she already knows. All her life she's
thought the General was her father. How can I take that away from
her? He was a great man. If he'd lived a couple more months,
he
would
have been her
father.”

“
I thought you, of all
people, cared about the truth,” said Daniels.

“
There's nothing I care
about more,” said Xander, “except her happiness. And of course, the
Governor's reputation. A kind and innocent girl's feelings, a
hard-working ruler trying to hold everything together, and the
security of Rado are more important than the paternal pride of an
old wizard, don't you think?”

Daniels looked at him. “I think,” he said,
“that this is an old story with a bad ending. Secrets are like
infected wounds. The sooner you let out the pus, the sooner the
healing can begin. Better to leave her with the memory of a father
who admitted the truth, than to let her recall you as a man who
thought she was dumb enough to be fooled forever. Think about
it.”

“
I will. But in the
meantime, you won't tell her, will you?”

“
I'll leave that to you.
Try not to need any more of her blood.”

After the Honcho left Lester paced the cell,
not knowing what to think. The ruler had not seemed nearly as bad
as he had expected, but then, he wasn't facing him with weapons on
a battlefield. Perhaps he had a decent side, but that didn't change
anything. He still had to find a way out of here before they found
a way to use him against Rado.

What was it Xander had
said? “
A real wizard wouldn't need a key. All ordinary
locks are just collections of moving parts. And anything that can
move can be controlled with pathspace. ”

He'd already justified Xander's choosing him
as an apprentice by learning the invisibility trick. But the wizard
was gone. It was up to him now. He'd have to stake the next step by
himself.

The Honcho had left him a wooden cup, but
taken the metal pitcher with him when he left. He drank the water
remaining in it and set the cup on the floor. Then he tried to
imagine what it was to be that cup. It looked motionless, but
according to Xander, it wasn't. It was spinning with the Earth, as
he was, and orbiting the sun as the Earth was. So it wasn't a
matter of getting it to move. It was already moving. What he needed
to do was to make small changes in the path it was already on.

He concentrated, reaching
out with him mind. This would be a challenge, he knew. This time he
wasn't just trying to deflect the weightless particles of light
that Xander had called
photons
.. He
was trying to deflect the massive particles that made up the wood
in the cup.

Which shouldn't have made
any difference, since he wasn't trying to lift or push them – all
he was trying to do was reshape the path they were following. But
it
was
different. Photons were easy
to guide. They had no rest mass. Once a photon was created, Xander
had once told him, the particle flew away at the speed of light
without needing any time at all to accelerate. No rest mass meant
changing the photon's direction was effortless. Ordinary matter, on
the other hand, was less reasonable. Photons were like little
arrows flying through the air. A wind could blow arrows from their
target, and it was similarly easy to reshape the paths of
photons.

Ordinary matter, however, was move like a
rock rolling across a plain. Mere wind would have little effect on
it. The sun was millions of miles away. Only the fact that it was
also millions of times as heavy as the Earth allowed it to reshape
the pathspace around it enough to keep the Earth's path bending
around it in an orbit.

But that line of thought got him nowhere. He
was not the sun. He did not have the weight that would be necessary
to bend the cup's path by sheer brute force.