Howling Stones Howling Stones by Foster Alan Dean

Author:Foster, Alan Dean [Foster, Alan Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780307531193
Goodreads: 7122111
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Published: 1997-01-28T08:00:00+00:00

11

Back at the station, her colleague and companion listened patiently to her rushed, out-of-breath description of what had taken place on the flank of the mountain above the village. From time to time he had to remind her to pause and catch her breath; not only so that she wouldn’t hyperventilate or fall over in a dead faint, but so that he could understand her.

“I don’t know how it works or what kind of physics are involved. I only know what I saw, and what I saw is impossible.” She leaned back against the couch and chugged half the mug of cold carbosugar drink he’d brought her. “It happened, Pulickel. I didn’t imagine it.”

“No one’s saying that you did.” He indicated the wrist recorder that was lying on the table between them. “I must say that I’ll be more inclined to believe you after I’ve seen it for myself.”

“Can’t blame you. I’d feel the same.” Finishing the last of her drink, she snatched up the recorder and led the way to the lab.

Removing the recording sphere, she popped it in the playback unit. It turned on automatically, filling a corner of the room with light. Reduced in size but fully three-dimensional, the field blessing ceremony played itself back for an audience of two.

The recorder had worked perfectly. It was all there: the snake dancing, the chanting, the music, and, climactically, the melding of the two sacred stones and their consequent astounding effect on the newly planted earth. Pulickel sat up very straight when the green glow suffused the ground, then muttered something under his breath when plant shoots began to erupt from the soil with preternatural celerity. At the conclusion of the recording, he turned unhesitatingly to Seaforth.

“One thing is immediately obvious. The sacred stones are not stones at all. They may look like stones and feel like stones and behave like stones ninety-nine percent of the time, but they are not rock. They are devices, individual components that when joined in specific combinations have remarkable consequences. What is your take on this?”

“I haven’t thought about it much. The whole business is so unbelievable that I’ve spent most of my time working to convince myself that it actually happened. Up to now my main concern has been convincing you.”

“You don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’m convinced.” He indicated the now-empty corner of the room where the recording had played itself out. “Whatever you saw, it wasn’t the result of some clever Parramati sleight-of-hand. It was real. The stones contain some kind of stored energy, or …” His voice trailed away.

“Or what?” she prompted him.

“Or I don’t know.” He spoke to what he did know, or what he thought he knew based on what he’d seen. “It’s clear that single stones have no power to affect their surroundings. They only function in combination. You saw them change shape. The natives don’t even need to know how to fit the stones together. The appropriate adaptive mechanism is inherent in the devices themselves.

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