Fall of Angels

XIV

NYLAN ADJUSTED THE single pair of battered goggles and then lifted the powerhead of the laser in his gauntleted hands. The wind blew through his hair, and the puffy clouds scudded quickly across the sky, casting quick-moving shadowsacross the narrow canyon where the engineer stood. The chilly summer wind carried not only the scent of evergreens, but of flowers, although Nylan could not identify the fragrance. The starflowers had all wilted or dried up, but lower yellow sunflowerlike blooms appeared in places, and long stalks that bore single blood-red blooms jutted from crevices in the rocks at the western edge of the meadow-and from between the rocks in the cairns.

Fifty steps down the dry gorge stood a horse harnessed to a makeshift sledge. Two marines-Berlis and Weindre-waited by the horse for the cut stones that Nylan hoped he could deliver. He also hoped the laser lasted long enough for him to cut a lot of stones.

He touched the power stud, and the laser flared. Nylan could almost feel the power, like a red-tinged white cloud, that swirled from the firin cells into the laser. He released the stud.

“What’s the matter, ser?” asked Huldran.

“Nothing major,” he lied, thinking that it was certainly major when the ship’s engineer imagined he could see actual energy patterns. His head throbbed slightly with his words, and he massaged his temples. The effect was almost like coming out of reflex step-up.

The wind whistled through the branches of the stunted pines farther back and higher in the narrow gorge. He moistened his lips.

“Are you all right, ser?” The stocky blond Huldran bent forward.

“I will be.” I will be if I can get my thoughts together, he added to himself. As he looked around the gorge, he wondered whether, if he cut the stones correctly, he could also hollow out spaces so that the area in front of his quarrying could eventually be walled up or bricked up for stables or storage or quarters.

Then he shook his head. He was getting too far ahead of himself. The power swirl-why was it familiar?

“Something … but nothing bothers him … got nerves like ice …”

He tried to push away the whispers from Weindre and concentrate on the power flow. Flow-that was it! It was like a neuronet flow. He touched the stud again, briefly, and concentrated, ignoring the sweaty feeling of his hands and fingers within the gauntlets.

The laser flared just for a microinstant, but that was enough.

Nylan squared his shoulders and studied the rock, then aimed the head along the chalked line. The white-red line of invisible fire touched the line. Nothing happened, except that the rock felt warmer, hotter, redder.

“Frig,” Nylan muttered under his breath, as he cut off the power again. He’d been certain that the laser would cut through the rock. Lasers cut everything, from cloth to metal. Why wouldn’t they cut rock?

Because, his engineering training pointed out, they burned through other substances, and the rock could absorb more heat than cloth or sheet metal, and it didn’t accept the heat evenly, either.

“Problems, ser?” Huldran blotted the sweat oozing across her forehead.

“Some basic engineering I need to work out.”

He needed to work out more than basic engineering.

After taking another deep breath, he triggered the laser once more and reached out with his thoughts, as though he were still on the neuronet, ignoring the impossibility of the setting, and smoothed the power flow. This time, the rock began to smoke along the focal line of the laser, and a slight line slowly etched itself along the chalk stripe.

Nylan depowered the laser, and checked the power meter-half a percent gone for nothing, nothing but a scratch on black rock.

“Ser?” Huldran stepped forward to look at the black stone.

“We’re getting there,” he lied, pushing the goggles back and wiping his damp forehead. “It’s slow. Everything’s slow.”

“If you say so, ser.”

Could he narrow the focus, somehow use the netlike effect to redirect the heat into a narrower line? If he couldn’t,the laser wasn’t going to be much good for stone-cutting.

Replacing the goggles, he checked to see that the head was set in the narrowest focus, then triggered the power. As the fields built, he juggled the smoothing of the power flow and his efforts to channel power into the thinnest line of energy possible. For an instant, all he got was more stoneetching, then, abruptly, the lightknife sliced through the black rock.

Nylan’s eyes flicked to the power meter-the flow was half what it should be. He stopped his-were they imaginary? — efforts to smooth the flow and felt the red-white swirl and watched the meter needle rise and the slicing stop. Hurriedly, he went back to his not-so-imaginary efforts to reduce the laser power flow fluxes, letting himself drop into the strange pseudonet feeling that eased the energy flows to the laser and reinforced the energy concentrations. Even though he had no scientific explanation for the phenomenon, his efforts reduced the energy draw of the cutter by nearly fifty percent, while cutting stone in a way he wasn’t certain was possible, and he wasn’t about to turn his back on anything that effective, whether he could explain it or not.

As the tip of the laser reached the end of the chalked line, Nylan eased it back along the second line, then along the third, before releasing the stud. He wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm, then knelt, adjusted the powerhead, and positioned the laser for the undercut.

Still concentrating, he powered the laser, smoothed the flow, and drew it along the line. Then he released the stud, and, using the gauntlets he had pressed into service to protect his hands from rock droplets, he tried to wiggle the stone. The whole line wobbled.

He nodded and began the cross-cuts.

When he finished those, the line of clouds had passed, and the sun was again beating down on him. The first individual building stone came away from the black rock easily, and Nylan smiled and lifted the goggles.

“Take’em away, Huldran.”

The stocky blond marine motioned to Berlis and Weindre. “You two-come and help.”

Nylan plopped down on a low stone and wiped his forehead, feeling even more drained than when he had ridden the Winterlance’s net, more drained than from overuse of reflex boost. His eyes flicked downhill. Through the narrow opening in the gorge he could see most of the field to the east of the tower site. Thin sprigs of green sprouted from the hand-furrowed rows. To the north, where he could not see, there were longer green leaves from the field where the potatoes and other root crops had been planted in hillocks.

“These are heavy,” grunted Weindre, staggering down to the sledge with a single block.

“That’s the idea,” said Huldran. “We can’t waste power on small blocks. Besides, bigger blocks are harder to smash with primitive technology. So stop complaining and get on with carrying.”

When the three had cleared out the half-dozen blocks, Nylan stood and chalked more lines, longer ones, and went back to work.

By the time he had finished the next line, his knees were wobbling. He sank onto the stone after he depowered the laser and pushed the goggles onto his forehead.

“Darkness-the engineer’s white like a demon tower.” Huldran looked at Nylan. “Don’t move.” She turned to Berlis and Weindre. “You can still load those blocks on the sledge. Berlis, you can lead the horse down the gorge and out to the tower site.” The stocky blond marine looked at Nylan. “I’ll be right back. Just sit there.”

Nylan couldn’t have taken a step if he’d wanted to, not without falling on his face, not the way the gorge threatened to turn upside down around him.

He sat blankly until Huldran returned and thrust a cup in front of his face. He drank, and the swirling within his head slowly subsided enough for him to take a small mouthful of the concentrate-fortified sawdust called energy bread. He chewed slowly.

Ayrlyn walked up the gorge carrying a medkit, steppingaround Berlis and the slowly descending horse and sledge.

“What happened to you? You look like you stayed on boost too long.”

Nylan finished the mouthful of bread. “I think I overdid it.”

“What do you mean?”

“A variation on the law of conservation of energy and matter, or something like that.” Nylan wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm.

Ayrlyn looked at Huldran, who looked at Weindre. Weindre shrugged.

“This place allows me to operate on something like the neuronet, and I can smooth the power flows to the laser and focus the laser into a tighter beam. That lets me cut with about half the power. It’s not free, though.”

The flame-haired former comm officer nodded. “Heavy labor? Like boost?”

Nylan nodded.

Huldran’s blond eyebrows knitted in puzzlement.

“On the ship’s net,” Nylan tried to explain, “the fusactors supply the power to sustain the net. It’s a small draw compared to the total power expended by the system, but it’s real. This … place … is different. I can replicate the effect of the net-but I have to supply some form of power, energy-and it’s just like working.”

“That local in white …?” began Ayrlyn, her eyes widening.

“Probably something like that, but I don’t know.” Nylan finished off the chunk of energy bread, and took another gulp of the nutrient replacement. “It’s frustrating. I find a way to save power, and it’s limited by my strength.”

“It’s a lot faster than using a sledge and chisel to quarry the rock,” pointed out Ayrlyn.

“It’s slow.”

“Can anyone else do it?”

“I don’t know.” Nylan shrugged. “I’d guess it’s like being an engineer or a pilot or a comm officer. If you have some basic talents, you can learn it, but …”

“Can you use the laser again, and let me try to watch or follow?” Ayrlyn looked around. “You two try also.”

Nylan stood and stretched. “I’ll cut a few.” He used the chalk and roughed out the lines he needed, then picked up the powerhead. “Ready?”

“Go ahead.”

He dropped the goggles in place, touched the stud, and began to smooth the fluxes, trying to be as gentle as possible, and realizing that the gentle efforts were nearly as effective and not quite so draining.

After the first cut, he stopped. “Well?”

“I couldn’t see or feel anything,” said Weindre.

“No,” added Huldran.

“There’s a sort of darkness around you,” said Ayrlyn, “and that darkness seems to focus the whiteness-it has a hint of an ugly red-of the laser.”

Nylan nodded. “That feels right. Do you want to try it?”

“No!” Ayrlyn’s mouth dropped open after her involuntary denial. “I … I don’t quite know why I said that.”

“Something in you feels rather strongly. Do you have any idea why?”

“The white of the laser. It feels wrong … really wrong … disordered … ugly.” Ayrlyn shuddered.

“I couldn’t see anything like that,” said Huldran, “but I watched the power meter, and you’re using a little less than half what’s normal, except for the first few instances. It seems to be cutting better than I ever saw.”

“What is this place, anyway?” asked Weindre.

“Who knows? A different universe, maybe, where the laws of nature, physics, are different. Not a lot different, or we wouldn’t be surviving, but different.” Nylan picked up the laser again. “And if we don’t get enough stone for the tower, we won’t be surviving.” He disliked his own tone, perhaps because it reminded him of Ryba’s attitude. What was happening to him? He was seeing patterns and neuronets that couldn’t be and getting ever more critical of Ryba. And yet he worried about sounding like her.

“You’ll have to take it slowly,” insisted Ayrlyn.

“Unless you can find someone else who can do it,” pointed out Huldran.

“Why don’t I see if I can rotate some of the marines up here, just to see if anyone can do it-or even sense what you’re doing?” asked Ayrlyn.

“Fine. But there’s only so much power here.”

“I’ll send them,” said Ayrlyn firmly. “Take your time.”

“Yes, mother fowl.”

“Cluck, cluck …”

Nylan grinned and readjusted the goggles. “Ready?”

“Yes, ser.”

He lifted the powerhead again.