The Flying Sorcerers

When the boys were unrolled, they were stiff and dead.

Even Shoogar was shaken. “I had not expected —”

He shook his head slowly. “So that’s what suffocate means.” He circled the bodies. “A strong spell it must be. Look, not a mark on them.”

We looked. Their faces were dark and cold. Their tongues protruded, and their eyes bulged in amazement; but of wounds there were none.

When we told Purple, he made a sound of pain — but as if he had expected it, I thought. He went down to the clearing himself to see. “I shouldn’t have let him,” he said. “I should have stopped him.”

When he saw their stiff forms, he recoiled. He sank down upon a log and buried his head in his hands and sobbed. Even Wilville and Orbur edged away from him.

The fathers of the boys arrived then. They had been summoned from the other side of the island, and it had taken them almost a day to make the journey. When they learned what had happened, they began to wail. They had come to participate in a punishment ceremony, not a funeral.

I myself felt strange, empty, taken with a terrible sense of loss.

Gortik gathered up the thefted cloth, handling it with new respect, and presented it to Purple. Purple raised his head, looked at the offering. He shook his head vehemently, shrinking back. “Take it away. Take it away.”

In the end, we buried the boys in it.

Afterward I found Purple alone. He was sitting morosely on the unfinished airboat frame.

He looked at me, “I told Shoogar. They’ll suffocate. They won’t get enough oxygen.”

“Curse your throw-away gas anyway! They didn’t get any air, Purple! Your aircloth holds air out as well as gas in!”

“Yes, of course.” He looked puzzled.

“You knew? You knew!” I cried wildly. “You knew they would die! If you’d sat on Shoogar and made him listen — or told me! The boys had done nothing so very wrong —”

“Stop it!” he moaned.

“You let them die, Purple! For so small a thing?”

“But that’s the way it is in many savage societies!” he said. He stopped then and looked at me. Speechless.

“Savage societies?” I asked. “Is that what you think of us — that we are savages?”

“No — no, Lant, I —” He flailed about. “I thought that — I have never seen a punishment here. I did not know what | your penalties were. I thought Shoogar knew what he was doing. I — I — I’m sorry, Lant. I didn’t know —” He covered his face.

Suddenly, I was calm. Purple was outside all human experience. We had been assuming things about him just as he had been assuming them about us.

I asked, “Do they kill for theft, where you come from?”

He shook his head. “It is not necessary. When one commits a major crime, our — Advisors can tamper with the thief’s — soul, so that he can never do it again.”

I was impressed. “It is a powerful spell.”

“And a powerful threat,” said Purple. “A killer who has been so treated cannot even defend himself, or his children or his property. A treated thief could not theft water, though his house was burning … But, Lant, I do not understand — how can theft be so rare here? The boys took a thing that | did not — pertain to them; they did not build it or earn it or trade for it. How can this be unusual?”

“It is unheard of, Purple. It has never happened before.”

“But —” He seemed to search for words. “What do you call . it when one takes another’s bread?”

“Hunger.”

He was flustered. “Well, what would you do if someone took your carved bone?”

“Without payment? I would go and get it back. He could not disguise it. No bonemonger ever carves exactly like any other. I never carve even two pieces alike — except for loom-teeth, of course.”

“Uncarved bone, then. You have a good store of uncarved bone. What if someone took it?”

“For what? Who could use it? Only another bonemonger. I would know them all, in any region. I would go and get it back.”

This is nonsense. Lant, surely there must be something for thieves to take. Secrets!” Purple cried wildly. “Lesta guards his weaving secrets as a mother her children.”

“But if one took his secrets, Lesta would still have them. He could still make his cloth, though others could also. One cannot theft a secret without leaving it behind. One cannot theft more food than one can eat before it spoils. One cannot theft a house, or anything too heavy to lift. One cannot theft tools; tools belong to a trade; one would have to learn the trade also. One cannot theft a profession, or standing in a community, or a reputation.”

“But —”

“One cannot theft anything easily recognized, unless one can flee faster than men can follow. In fact, the only things one can theft are things that look exactly like a great many other things.” My mind was searching as I talked, and I was beginning to understand Purple’s confusion. “Things that look like other things. Cloth, or spell chips, or grain —”

Purple was horrified. “Why, you’re right!”

“Cloth and spell chips. Yes. Until your coming, one could not theft enough cloth to be worth the effort. So much cloth did not exist. And how could one theft the services of a magician? The idea was nonsense until you arrived, Purple.”

“I’ve invented a new crime,” said Purple dazedly.

“Congratulations,” I said, and left him.