Part 22 (2/2)

Made no nevermind that the fuel was almost all gone in The s.h.i.+p's engines. Made no nevermind that through near nine years under solar sails spread round The s.h.i.+p like petals of a great lily to gather the solar winds, that fuel somehow had changed. They still had to get down.

”Fool stuffs clabbered,” said First Granny with total contempt, tapping the toe of her high-topped high-heeled pointy-toed black patent leather shoes.

”Fuel can't clabber,” the Captain told her politely. ”It's not even liquid to start with, ma'am-begging your pardon.” ”Same thing,” said First Granny, sticking out her chin. ”Put it into any frame of circ.u.mstance that suits you, Captain Aaron Dunn McDaniels, I don't mind! It's spoilt-as fuel-and that's the same thing as clabbered.”

”Yes, ma'am,” said the Captain, as was proper. But they still had to get down. They had never thought it would take them nine years to find a new homeworld enough like Earth to live on, and lonely enough to make neighbors an unlikely occurrence, and having no other thinking creatures unwilling and unable to let them share the land.

All the food was gone, and all the stuff for making more, and nothing was left but the food seeds packed away dormant in their sterile tubes waiting for new dirt. All of the clothes they'd brought with them were worn out and raggedy and getting too thin even for the needs of modesty.

And the animals, the live ones, they were getting what First Granny somberly referred to as That Look. What might be happening to the stores of embryos sleeping in their tubes, no one could say till they were decanted; but it was worrisome.

Going on was out of the question, and had been the last seven days.

They had to get down.

First Granny took all the Magicians to the s.h.i.+p's Chapel, and they did what they could do. And Captain Aaron Dunn McDaniels took all the crew to the bridge and the engine room, and they did what they could do.

And n.o.body stinted.But the fuel failed them just as they saw a green land rush up beneath them-just as they saw it!-and The s.h.i.+p went crippled into what we now call the Outward Deeps.

Well, what's meant to be will be, they say, and that appears to be true. For even as the water closed over the dying s.h.i.+p and First Granny told the children to stop their caterwauling and prepare to meet their Maker with their mouths shut and their eyes open, a wonderful thing happened. Just a wonderful thing!

Forty of them there were, shaped like the great whales of Earth, but that their tails split three ways instead of two. And their color was the royal purple, the purple of majestic sovereignty.

They met The s.h.i.+p as it fell, rising up in a circle as it sank toward the bottom. And they bore it up on their backs as easy as a man packs a baby, and laid it out in the shallows, where the Captain and

the crew could get The s.h.i.+p's door open, and everybody could wade right out of there to safety.

They were the Wise Ones, so named by First Granny; and it may be

that they live there still in the Outward Deeps. n.o.body knows, and

n.o.body needs to know.And it was during that glad wading to sh.o.r.e just before First Granny set her foot on the land and cried, ”Well, the Kingdom's come at last, praise be!” that the ancient holy book-its name was BIBLE-was lost to the Twelve Families. First Granny, she thought the Captain had it, it seems. And the Captain, he thought First Grannyhad it. Naturally. And there was a child of three that claimed he'd seen a Wise One swallow it-waterproof, radiationproof, fireproof, crashproof box and all. And for all we know that may be true. For sure it's never washed up on any coast of Ozark, all these many hundred years.

”Botheration,” First Granny said when they realized it was gone.

And the Captain allowed as how he was deeply sorry.

”Well,” said First Granny, ”I suppose we'll just have to Make Do.”

And so we have, ever since.

THE FLYING DULCIMER.

(A TEACHING STORY).

A very long time ago, and much further away than you might think, when the Twelve Families were preparing to leave Earth, there was a young woman named Rozasharn. Now Rozasharn was a Purdy by birth, and it happened that the Purdys had a fine and famous dulcimer. It was of the sweetest fruitwood, and it was cut slim-waisted and curled, and it had inlays of mother-of-pearl in the shapes of hearts and roses and twining vines and little mourning doves. It was purely beautiful, and when they told Rozasharn it had to be left behind, she was outraged. Just outraged!

”Rozasharn,” said First Granny, ”we have on The s.h.i.+p two guitars, two banjos, two dulcimers, two autoharps, two fiddles-which is one too many, if you ask me-two mouth-harps, two mandolins, and a dobro. Each was chosen because the man or woman that played it was the finest player we knew, and it will serve to while away the time, and to be a model for building more such when we land. But that's enough.” And then she gave Rozasharn a curled-lip look and said, ”You can't even carry a tune, Rozasharn, let alone play that dulcimer!”

Rozasharn yes-ma'amed, but she went away bitter and she wasn't about to give in. The Purdy dulcimer was the prettiest she'd ever seen, and she intended it to go on The s.h.i.+p no matter what First Granny said.

So Rozasharn began to plan her magic. There was a Spell of Invisibility, of course, but that took a lot of work to get going and even more to maintain, and Rozasharn wasn't sure she was up to it. A Spell of Distraction, on the other hand, was a simpler matter, and she decided to set one of those on the dulcimer, to make it appear it was only her shawl. Rozasharn went through her motions and cast the Spell, and found herself a bit embarra.s.sed; she had in her hands a truly splendid shawl, covered with hearts and roses and twining vines and little mourning doves, and that was never going to get past First Granny. ”Back up a bit, Rozasharn,” Rozasharn told herself, ”or you'll come out of this blistered.”

What she settled on at last was three Spells. The first was to turn the dulcimer itself plain, and that one worked all right. The second was to make the plain dulcimer appear to be a shawl, and that one seemed to be in good shape to the eye, although it was uncomfortable to her shoulders, since she could still feel the pegs and the strings and the edges of the wood; but she considered it her family duty to put up with it. And the third was to take off the other two, and she tried that out, and it worked. Nothing was left but to calculate the weight she had to leave behind so no one would suspect, and that meant leaving buried in her back yard two pairs of shoes and a half-slip she'd never liked anyway, and she made it onto The s.h.i.+p right under First Granny's nose, the dulcimer draped round her shoulders and looking for all the world like a plain old shawl. Just like it!

Well, she would of been all right, would Rozasharn-if she'd had a little self-control. But when landing time came she just could not resist letting everyone know the trick she'd played, and as she stepped onto the land of Ozark she cast the third Spell and stood there before everybody, holding the famous Purdy dulcimer and looking like b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

First Granny looked her up and she looked her down, and then she looked her up once more to be certain her eyes didn't deceive her, but she said nary a word. The Captain looked sorrowful, but he didn't speak either. And as the days pa.s.sed, and the Purdys settled in and built themselves a homeplace, Rozasharn began to feel comfortable.

And then came the morning when the last stick was in place, and the last curtain hung, and the last dish on the shelf, and Rozasharn looked out her front door and there stood First Granny with Macon Desirard Guthrie the 3rd at her right hand; and young Rozasharn's heart very nearly stopped. Macon Desirard Guthrie was no common person, but a man skilled in Formalisms & Transformations. If there was a more handy Magician on Ozark, Rozasharn didn't know who it might be.

”Stand aside, Rozasharn,” said First Granny, ”and let us come in.”

And Rozasharn did that, most promptly, and there she stood while Macon Desirard Guthrie went through his Structural Descriptions and his Structural Indexes and his Rigorous Specifications of Coreference and his Global Constraints and a lot of other things of

that kind and caliber; and when he got through there were just three things that a person could do with, the Purdys' fancy dulcimer.

You could hang it on a peg on the back wall of a dark closet.

<script>