Pike awoke coughing and wheezing in a smoke-filled room. He quickly ran over to Paddelack’s bed.
Get up! Paddelack, get up!
Paddelack stirred
slowly at first, rubbed his eyes, and then jumped up as Pike had. He
quickly put on some shoes while Pike knelt to awaken the girl who had been
sleeping beside him. They threw on their robes as fast as possible and
bolted from the room.
Gostum were already running by in neat, orderly files. Commander, come this way!
Pike was pulled through corridors
thick with smoke. His eyes were stinging, and he was coughing so much that
he thought he would rip out his lungs. The girl collapsed beside him and he
halted. Take her!
he ordered, and she was carried
away.
Abruptly, he was shoved into a rock-walled chamber and heavy blankets were
thrust into his hands, as well as a heavy parka. Hopefully you will be safe here, Commander,
said the young
Fairtalian as he disappeared and shut the door behind him. Just then a
blast of cold air hit Pike’s face. He looked about him: the room was
crowded with people huddling together. He saw the glare of a fire that must
have been burning around the corner and rushed over to it. Three fires
occupied a ledge of windows that undoubtedly led almost directly to the
outside world. Pike stood there for many moments, turning frantically this
way and that. The walls began to close in on him. The fires on the ledge
began to envelop the entire room in flames. He would throw himself on the
logs and immolate himself. But no. Pike was keenly aware of the quiet
discipline of the Gostum, the iron-willing discipline that characterized
their every action. He hadn’t shouted, had he? That was not a good thing to
do, not here. Absolutely not. Pike took a deep breath, walked calmly to the
door, and left the chamber.
The corridors were still thick with smoke and cold with the little fresh
air that was being allowed in. Pike was sure that Konndjlan would soon die,
but now was as good a time as any. He put his robe in front of his mouth
and continued walking. Karrxlyn, is that you?
The giant rushed over to him. Commander, you
should be in the emergency chamber.
Pike ignored him. What is wrong?
One of the exhaust shafts in the furnace room
broke. Several of them, perhaps. It was an unforgivable mistake and we will
all pay dearly for it. We are already letting in too much fresh air. You
see, my feet are already numb. We do not have quazzats enough for more than
a handful, so no one can go out. But I must go down again and see what can
be done.
You may die.
One may always die. That is what life is all
about.
I’m coming with you.
But, Commander—
Does a Commander huddle with the children? As you say,
one may always die. That is how Gostum survive, isn’t it? That is how we
survive.
They went below.
Pike doused himself with water on the way down and coughed through wet cloth. When he entered the furnace room, he could see the flames shooting out from the furnace itself. The stockpile of wood had caught on fire and the whole room seemed aflame. The exhaust shafts, which normally took the deadly fumes to the surface, were themselves on fire and now useless. One of the hollow wooden pipes had collapsed and Pike could see the body of an unfortunate Gostum beneath it. Well, he would have paid with his life, anyway.…
Use the drinking water!
Pike shouted as he began
dragging the nearest of the kindling from the room.
But that is reserved!
Karrxlyn shouted back.
There is nothing else! We’ll melt snow and get
more. Use it!
Pike coughed and left the room only long enough to get a
drink and a bit more oxygen. Buckets were being brought now, but that
method clearly was useless. Karrxlyn! Can you block
all the ventilators and exhaust ducts to this room? All of them?
How will we breathe?
We’re not breathing now. Can you do it? Fires can’t
burn without air. Cut it off!
I will see what can be done.
Karrxlyn shook
his head. The ventilators all passed close to the furnaces to heat the
incoming air, and the fresh air for Konndjlan came through this room and
the few others like it. But with the ventilators in flames the air was no
longer fresh. Perhaps from the floor above they could be blocked. He
grabbed three of the nearest men with axes and disappeared.
Pike removed as much of the fuel store and burning logs as he could and sealed the furnace-room door shut behind him, shoving his cape underneath. Karrxlyn returned shortly.
We have done what you commanded. All the incoming
shafts are blocked from above, and water is being poured down them as
well.
Good.
Pike coughed heavily and ran upstairs. Now
they would wait. Upstairs, the air was getting colder from the fresh,
unheated air being admitted simply to keep the Gostum alive. Pike found a
draft, huddled in his robes, and leaned against the wall. He grabbed the
familiar gaunt figure as it walked by aimlessly. Paddelack,
he said, you once mentioned that you saw a steam engine in
the shop downstairs.
Paddelack rubbed his bird-beaked nose and his eyes, then nodded.
Do you think you can do something with it? Convert it
into a heating system? Something?
I’ll see what I can do,
Paddelack wheezed.
After an hour or so, Pike heard from Karrxlyn that fifty had died from smoke poisoning. All around him, Pike could see people sick from near asphyxiation or exposure to cold air. The sound of coughing and sneezing, usually incidental to Pike, now became utterly unbearable to him. He knew that it would go on for weeks. The air would remain foul, hardly breathable. The rugs and furniture would smell of smoke. Konndjlan would be barely habitable. More people would die from the aftereffects of that one mistake. It wasn’t over. But Pike no longer had any doubt in his mind about why the Gostum wanted to leave Patra-Bannk.
Not long after the fire, as Paddelack was on his way to test his first improved steam engine, he found Effrulyn coughing through the halls. Activity had returned to normal, and only the tang in the air and the unusual cold remained as annoyances.
Where are you going so fast?
Paddelack asked,
catching Effrulyn by the arm.
To work,
he answered, spinning around and
jerking away.
Nowhere else? Nothing more important to do?
Paddelack said that just to annoy the mathematician and was glad to see
that it had the desired effect.
What could be more important?
Effrulyn
replied, raising his voice and an eyebrow.
What I wanted to ask you: what do you know about
the stala?
No more or less than anyone else.
Ever use it?
Of course not. Why should I bother with such a
waste of time? But I have heard stories about it. Well do I remember one
event.
What was that?
Paddelack pressed, sitting
down in the nearest archway.
Effrulyn looked off nostalgically into the distance and raised an arm. There I was, sitting peacefully in thought, in the
great hall where that monstrous clock of my own devising now stands. This
was well before the time of the clock, you understand—
I understand.
Paddelack nodded.
In comes running a guard who had just come from an
Elsewhere, evidently a new Elsewhere, and ridden up from the
stala.
Fara-Ny, call the astronomers,
he ordered—
Hold it. Tell me about the astronomers. Didn’t
think there were any around here.
Madmen all. I’m not exactly sure when the first
star was discovered, but it must have been a long time ago, probably during
an emergency when someone was forced to go outside. From what I am told,
the stars were a rage that first Patra and everybody went out—if only for a
few clads—just to see what they looked like. Some started observation, but
the next Patra nothing was the same. Almost all new stars. Why they
expected them to be the same, only a metaphysician could tell you. So the
astronomers got scared. Not only that, but several died from freezing. By
this time they had decided that stars would only get them killed, and the
fools had enough sense to get out of the cold. So astronomy has only had
intermittent followers. Always they reach the conclusion that stars aren’t
good for anything—I could have told them that—and give up after a few
teclads.
So what do they do?
Mostly they are old men, too old to fight or to
think, who sit around and make mindless speculations. They once asked me to
join them, and I said I don’t frame hypotheses. Anyway, where was I?
The stala.
Ah, yes. The guard, who had
so rudely disturbed the silence, explained agitatedly that when he and his
party emerged at the Elsewhere, they had immediately noticed that the sun
had moved. It was in the wrong place.
The astronomers went into a
great debate about this. I suspect that the problem had often been debated
before. The Ex-tal school, the oldest of the old men, had long been
convinced that the Elsewheres were not on Patra-Bannk at all, and this
discovery went to prove it for them. The Al-tal school decided that the sun
had moved of its own free will, but they were contradicted by the In-tal
school, who had always claimed that the sun was just condensed vapor and
couldn’t do what it pleased. The In-tals wanted to know why, if the sun had
moved at an Elsewhere, it hadn’t moved here. This was heresy to the
Al-tals, who answered that the sun had moved where it wanted simply
because, at an Elsewhere, the sun could do whatever it pleased. Then the
Ex-tal school jumped up again, saying that, of course, the answer was that
the Elsewhere was completely off Patra-Bannk and that the sun was being
viewed from a forbidden position and that travels to the Elsewheres must
cease immediately. Then one of the In-tals had the temerity to suggest that
maybe it wasn’t even the sun that was being observed, but a duplicate
traveling on the other side of heaven. This he conjectured as a compromise
to the Ex-tals, who insisted that the Elsewheres were elsewhere. But the
rest of the In-tals wouldn’t have anything to do with this doctrine. The
argument went on mindlessly for a long time.
At the end, even though I
was very young, someone asked me what I thought. I asked the guard whether
he had gone north or south or east or west, but naturally the fool could
only say elsewhere.
Which way was the sun displaced?
I asked
him. To the east,
he replied. Well, the answer was then clear to
me. I said the world was bent in the east-west direction.
You should have seen the uproar!
Effrulyn
laughed heartily. That is a dangerous thing to
say,
one of them told me. You idiots!
I said to them. What do
I care whether the world is flat or bent? That’s for you quibblers to worry
about. Does it make any difference to your lives? Of course it doesn’t. It
makes no difference whatsoever. You’re just obscurantists, that’s all. I
say the world is shaped like a doughnut.
They didn’t understand the
joke, of course, and I have been censured ever since.
At first Paddelack was amused by the intensity of the diatribe, but then he
began to realize that, perhaps, Effrulyn not only didn’t care about the
shape of the world but also didn’t know. What do
you believe?
Paddelack asked seriously.
Believe? I don’t even think about it.
Why not?
Don’t you understand?
Effrulyn scowled. It becomes clearer to me all the time that reality is
simply what people want to believe is real. No more, no less. Therefore, I
content myself with obviously unreal things in order not to fall prey to
those illusions that seem to occupy everyone else around here.
Hmm,
Paddelack murmured. He conceded that
Effrulyn might have a point; certainly some people he knew seemed to create
their own realities. But he still wanted to know something more about the
stala, and suddenly it occurred to him that however the thing operated, it
took people far enough so that a displacement of the sun was noticeable,
even obvious. Do you have idea how far the stala
goes?
For all I know, it goes nowhere and these people
are deluding themselves.
Do you have any idea how big this planet is?
At least as far as the horizon, if I’m to be
forced into metaphysical speculations.
And how far is that?
Too far to walk. As far away as the sun.
What do you mean?
Effrulyn’s wild gesticulations showed that he was on the verge of
leaving. What do you think I mean? The sun sinks
at the horizon, so that’s how far away it is.
Seems to me,
Paddelack said as he creaked up
from his sitting position, that if the world’s
bent, it might be bigger than that.
All illusions!
Effrulyn cried, and both he and
Paddelack walked away in opposite directions.