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They have no true souls either, of course, but they don't know it. Ah. The short man there he's Garm. Sersa Garm, an apprentice to Ser Perth. He's to be your foreman, and he's real." She headed back to the outskirts, then turned to shout back. "Sather Karf says you may have ten days to fix the sky," she called. Her hand waved toward him in friendly good-bye. "Don't worry, Dave Hanson.
Sersa Garm proved to be a glum, fat young man, overly aware of his importance in training for serhood. He led Dave through the big tent, taking pride in the large drafting section under the obvious belief that it was used for designing spells. Maybe it could have been useful for that if there had been a single man who knew anything about draftsmanship. There were four engineers, supposedly.
Whatever had been done to them or perhaps the absence of a true soul, whatever that was left them rigidly bound to their past ideas and totally incapable of doing more than following orders by routine now. Even Sersa Garm was more useful. That young man could offer little information, however. The sky, he explained pompously, was a great mystery that only an adept might communicate to another.
Sometimes they even improve on what he was. But the true mandrake like that one never was human. Just an ugly, filthy simulacrum. It's bad business. I never liked it, even though I was in training for sersa rating." "You're from this world?" Hanson asked in surprise. He'd been assuming that the man was one of the things called back. "A lot of us are.
He has always been the Sather Karf at least ten thousand years or more. To attain the art of a Sather is the work of a score of centuries, usually." That Sather had been in sad shape, it seemed. No one had been able to revive him, though bringing the dead back to life when the body was reasonably intact was routine magic that even a sersa could perform.
Now, if he could get a gang up the thousand miles to the sky with enough torches to melt the cracks, it might recongeal as a perfect sphere. The stuff was strong, but somewhat brittle. He still had no idea of how to get the stars and planets back in the right places. "The mathematician thought of such an idea," Sersa Garm said sourly. "But 'twould never work.
The burns were nasty, but somehow seemed to heal with remarkable speed. Sersa Garm was impressed by the discoveries, and went off to suck his thumbs and brood over the new knowledge, much to Dave's relief. More work established the fact that welding bits of the sky together was not particularly difficult. The liquid sky was perfectly willing to bond onto anything, including other bits of itself.
He meant that he didn't know about it, Dave gathered. Everything, it turned out, was either a mystery or a rumor. He also had a habit of sucking his thumb when pressed too hard for details. "But you must have heard some guesses about what started the cracks in the sky?" Dave suggested. "Oh, indeed, that is common knowledge," Sersa Garm admitted. He changed thumbs while he considered.
They conscripted a lot of the people they didn't need for these jobs. But I was a little special. All right, maybe you don't believe me you think they wouldn't send a student sersa here now. Look, I can prove it. I managed to sneak one of the books I was studying back with me. See?" He drew a thin volume from his breechclout cautiously, then slipped it back again.
There was no electricity here with which to power anything, and their spells could not be made to work now. Even if he could build a computer out of what was obtainable, there would be no way to power it. Overhead, the sky shattered with a roar, and another piece fell, tearing downwards toward the city. Sersa Garm stared upwards in horror. "Mars!" he croaked. "Mars has fallen.
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