The Flying Sorcerers

The experiment to see if the women could spin was held the following blue dawn.

Seventeen had been pledged. Fourteen showed up, being herded along by their suddenly nervous and uneasy husbands. In the cold light of morning, suddenly it no longer seemed like such a good idea.

I too was beginning to regret my offer. I could not offer my fist wife for the test because she was on the verge of childbirth. That left only my number two wife, the thin hardworking one with the lightcolored fur. I did not like the idea of losing her to Purple’s experiment, but I had no choice. I was honor-bound.

I could understand why the other men were grumbling. With only one wife foodgathering, meals would be skimpy and uneven — for me the problem would be even more severe. It is bad luck to beat a woman with child.

Ah, well, if worse came to worse, I could always go down to the bachelor’s compound and be served by the unclaimed women. An unappetizing prospect at best, but at least my stomach would be full.

We waited nervously on the hillside, milling about and saying little. The mood of the women ranged from fearful to delighted. All of them were obviously excited or upset at the prospect of a new kind of task. Few of them understood what would be required of them, but any change in their condition, they could only assume, must be for the better.

When Purple arrived, he was flanked by Lesta and several of his weavers. These were the men who would actually teach the spinning. Already several novices were beginning to assemble the spinning devices.

They began by demonstrating what spinning was all about. “You will be making thread — do you understand? Thread — it is very important — we will weave cloth out of it.”

The women nodded their heads, dumbly, mutely.

“I will show you how it is done,” said Lesta. He sat down on a little stool before the spinning device and began to spin, carefully explaining each step of what he was doing. Lesta was a good teacher. As I watched I felt that even I might learn the craft.

But the women — they missed the point entirely. “Look!” they murmured. “He sits! He sits! He works and sits at the same time!”

My wife tugged at my arm, “My husband, my husband, will I be able to sit too?”

“Hush, wife, hush — pay attention.”

All the wives were murmuring now, pointing and whispering excitedly among themselves. “He sits! He sits while he works!”

At last, old Lesta could stand it no longer. He stopped spinning and leapt from his stool. “Yes, dammit, I sit! And you stupid creatures will sit too, if you can learn how!”

Immediately they were quiet.

Lesta surveyed the group, “Now, who wants to try it first?”

“Me! Me!” All of them pressed forward eagerly. “Me first, me!” Each wanted to see what it was like to sit and work at the same time.

Lesta chose one and sat her down on the stool. She giggled hysterically. He put the tools in her hand, and the pieces of combed fiberplant and bade her do as she had seen.

And, Lo! She spun!

She spun the fibers into thread!

The weavers gasped in horror — it was possible! The husbands gasped in shock — could a woman possibly be this smart? I gasped — just because I had never seen such a thing. The women gasped — she sits while she works, she sits!

And Purple? Purple was bouncing with delight. “It works.” he shouted, “it works — she works, she works!”

And all the while, the woman continued to spin.

Of course, her thread was uneven and unusable — she was inexperienced and did not fully understand what she was doing. But it was obvious, even here, that it was possible for a woman to spin.

Purple could build his flying machine.

With experience and training — and careful supervision — all of these women might soon be spinning thread as fine as the best of them.

In fact, as the day progressed, it soon became obvious that a woman was a better spinner than an apprentice boy. An apprentice is smart — he knows that he will soon be a weaver — his heart is not in the spinning. His mind wanders and he pays little attention to it because it is such a mechanical and boring task. Boys will be boys.

On the other hand, to a woman, spinning is an enormously complex task. They must use both hands and one foot simultaneously in three separate and co-ordinated tasks. It requires all their concentration — it is a challenge. And if they fail, they know they will be beaten. Because a woman must continually pay attention to what she is doing, she is always watching the thread, always careful.

By the end of the day, many of them, including my own wife, were spinning thread fine enough to be used for aircloth.

Already, Purple was organizing. We had almost six hundred unwed women in our two villages. There was little work for them to do except for their own foodgathering and grooming.

But now we could make good use of all that wasted labor: we would put them to work spinning. And if that were still not enough women to produce thread for Purple, we would let our wives work as well.

The experiment was definitely a success.

Purple was not one to waste time. Quickly, he appointed the apprentice and novice weavers to a variety of new tasks.

The boys were eager and willing when they found out what their tasks were to be. Purple was creating a new trade — womenherders. These boys would be supervising the work of the women. They were delighted when they realized that finally they would be giving orders instead of taking them.

The herd of unwed women would be split into three groups; one group to spin, one to gather the raw fiberplants and wisptrees, and the third to comb the fibers smooth for spinning. There were approximately two hundred women in each group, but these were split into smaller herds of thirty to fifty each.

Even old Lesta was impressed. “I have never seen such a work force as this. I would not have believed it possible.”

And then realizing that he had just complimented Purple, he added, “I’ll never work, of course.”

But it did. Purple appointed another team of men, this time weavers, to go out into the hills each day and gather housetree blood. They had giant urns which Bellis the Potter had made for us. Once the urns were sealed, the housetree blood would stay fresh until we were ready to use it.

It was no secret that we were going to need it in vast quantities. We would need everything in vast quantities. We had already dispatched runners to the other villages with samples of aircloth and invitations to their weavers and their women. If Lesta had thought Purple’s army of labor was impressive with only six hundred women, he had not seen anything yet.

As the thread was spun, a team of novices would dip it into a vat of seething housetree blood, then slowly, slowly roll it up on a high suspended spool so it would have a chance to dry in the air.

It soon developed that Purple was unhappy with this method. If the thread should happen to touch anything while it was still wet, it would pick up flecks of dirt just barely large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Purple would rave and swear — the gas, he insisted, would leak around the particles of dirt and his flying machine would fall into the sea.

Further, the boys were complaining about the heat from the vats of boiling sap. The season made it all the more stifling.

The solution was to move the spinning wheels and the vats up onto Idiot’s Crag. The boys enjoyed the change, for it was cool and quiet up there in the wind; and the women did not seem to mind the extra half hour’s walk up the slope.

More important, the dipping and drying process was improved. As each thread was soaked, a great loop of it was stretched far down the crag, around a pulley, and back up again to be wound on spools. The wind held it aloft, and the boys pulled it from the housetree blood as fast as they could wind it through the wringers. The thread was clean and dry — and even shinier than before.

I stood up on the ledge with Purple one day. The work was progressing smoothly — with a minimum number of obstacles. Along the cliff edge were nearly two hundred women and spinning devices. There were fifty boys tending the vats of housetree blood. Loops of newly spun thread stretched out before them. Another twenty boys were winding it up on spools.

Wilville and Orbur had built several great spool winding devices. Each consisted of a rack of spools, a set of pulleys and two cranks. Each was powered by four boys, two on each crank, and wound up the thread faster than ten boys could do working alone.

Below, in the villages, there were almost ten looms now, each producing three patches of aircloth every five days. It was still not enough — but we were getting there.

Already, weavers from other villages were arriving, eager to learn this new secret. Many were shocked when they saw we had women spinning or that we had bone teeth on our looms — but most stayed to learn and to work. New looms were going up every day.

Purple and I stood on the edge and surveyed the scene below us. The waters of the sea were already lapping at the Lower Village, and several of the housetrees had already been abandoned.

“How high will the water rise?” I asked. “Will it menace the looms?”

“I hope not. Look below. You see the tree line? That’s where Gortik says the waters rose to last year. Apparently that’s as far as the sea carried the new soil. You are lucky to have a fresh water ocean here, Lant. Where I come from, the seas are salty.”

“That sounds unpleasant,” I said. I looked out over the greasy blue water, remembering how it had been aching desert only a short time ago. “I wonder where all the water comes from.”

Purple said absent-mindedly, “When you pass between the suns, the ice caps melt.”

I looked at him oddly. After all this time, he still spoke gibberish. Probably he would never lose the habit. Abruptly, I realized just how accustomed to Purple’s presence I had become. I no longer thought of his strange ways as being strange — just different. I had stopped thinking of him as something queer and alien — it was only when he said something undecipherable like this that I was reminded that he was not of our people.

Indeed, I had even become used to the sight of his naked and hairless face.

Until, suddenly, I looked again.

“Purple,” I exclaimed. “Did you miscast a spell?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Your chin, Purple — you are starting to grow hair all over your chin and on the sides of your face!”

His hand went to his face. He rubbed — then he started laughing, a deep booming laugh.

I didn’t think it was funny at all. There were many, like Pilg, for instance, who were still bald from head to toe because of a miscast spell.

Still grinning, Purple took a fist-sized thing from his belt and said, “Do you see this, Lant?”

“Of course.”

“It is a — magic razor, moved by a particular kind of magic called electrissy.” I think that was how he said it. “I will need the power in my razor to help make the lighter-than-air gas. So I have stopped removing the hair from my face.”

I peered at him curiously. “You mean you can grow hair?”

He nodded.

“But you have been removing it willfully?”

He nodded again.

Strange. Very strange. I peered again. “But, Purple,” I asked, “if you are going to stop removing the hair from your face, why do you not stop completely?”

“Huh?” he said. Then realizing that I was refering to the rest of his naked face, he started laughing again.

I still did not see what was so funny.