The Walls of Air Page 0,142

wonder about how the Keep was originally lighted. And there are hydroponic gardens down in the subvaults, room after room of them, with no light source at all -'

'You ever grow marijuana in a closet?' Rudy inquired, apropos of nothing.

'Hey, around my place the only things that grew in closets were mushrooms. But, Ingold, with this kind of light we could get the gardens going again. With hydroponics, we could grow carloads of stuff in almost no space; and down there it's warm enough to do it.'

'You could draw off power from the pumps to heat the tanks,' Rudy added. 'And to heat water, for that matter.'

'Yes, but we never did manage to find the main power source.'

'It would have been magically hidden and sealed,' Ingold said, interrupting a discussion that threatened to become increasingly technical. 'At a guess, the pumps operate on the same principle as the lamps. The wizards of old times could probably alter the essence of materials and enable them to hold something - light, or some other force for incredible periods of time.'

Gil looked thoughtful. 'You mean this whole Keep operates on the principle of a giant footwarmer?

'Essentially.'

'Fantastic,' Rudy said, turning away from them to investigate the bits and pieces of glass and metalwork that strewed the table behind him. Aide reached tentatively around Gil's arm to remove the glowing polyhedron from her hands.

'Do you know what this really means? she asked softly. 'It means no more wandering around the corridors in the dark... or

worry about setting the place on fire...'

'It means I won't have to go blind from reading those goddam books by the light of aspoonful of burning Crisco, is what it means.' Gil was about to take another crystal polyhedron from the table when she froze, her movement arrested halfway. 'What the hell...?'

Rudy turned from the table, his face glowing with pride. Hefted in his hands were four or five of the miscellaneous objects Aide had brought up from the lab, now fitted together, ends and pieces mating to form something very similar to a huge and clumsy rifle.

'What is it? Aide walked around the thing, passing in front of the muzzle with the unconcern of one who had never entertained the concept of a gun in her life. Rudy instinctively raised the muzzle to avoid pointing it at her.

'It's a - a -' There was no word for it in the Wathe. 'It shoots things out of the hole at the end there.'

'Shoots what? Gil demanded, coming over to look. She touched the large glass bubble that fitted into the fluid curve of the stock. 'What kind of firing chamber does it have?

Rudy peered down the hoselike barrel. 'I don't know,' he said, 'but I can guess.' He set the gun upright at his side, like a rifleman on parade. 'My guess is that it shoots fire. What other kind of gun would you use on the Dark?

'It's a flame thrower.' There were words in the Wathe for that.

'Yeah. And my guess is that it worked on magic.'

'You mean,' Aide broke in excitedly, 'that this - flame thrower - could spurt fire out of the end?

'With the barrel to channel it,' Ingold mused, taking the gun and sighting awkwardly along the barrel, his hands competent on the smooth, triggerless stock. 'The flame could go much

farther than a wizard could throw it. But what would fuel such a flame?

'I don't know,' Rudy said eagerly, his voice rising with excitement, 'but if there's a laboratory downstairs, I'm sure as hell gonna find out. Ingold, think about it! You've been telling me all along about a - a third echelon of the mageborn, about people who don't have but maybe one little bit of power. The firebringers and goodwords and finders, people who never developed their skill because the Church frowned on it and there were either trained wizards or just ordinary human civilization to cover for them. But it isn't like that anymore. I bet we could get up a flame thrower corps between the wizards we have here and the firebringers we could round up in the Keep! Ingold, this is it! We didn't have to trek out to Quo at all! The answer was right here all the time!'

'If this is the answer,' Thoth said in his driest voice, Vhy was it not used upon the Dark three thousand years ago?

Brought up short, Rudy looked uncertain and deflated.

The Recorder of Quo folded bony arms, his yellow eyes glittering in the gloom.