Impossible Dreamers

Chapter 25 (degtwi-ir): The education of Pritch

Pritch listened to the music. It repeated over and over again, and made him want to move about. There was something familiar about it. What was it? Maybe he would move. It would feel pleasant to move his body about, in time to the music. Maybe some other people would join him. Little Arint – she liked to move about to music. Maybe Pring would join him, and...

The music got louder, and Pritch woke up in a panic. He was in his bed. It was the middle of the night, and somebody was ringing on his door chime, repeating the tune of Tyro the Great over and over again. He got dressed as quickly as he could manage, and went to the door. He opened it, and saw his boss, Mipper Hool, along with a couple of not very friendly looking Guardians. Pritch was seized with a sudden panic.

'What is it? Where...what...how...?' Pritch had heard of people being taken away in the middle of the night, but after all the work he had done, making it possible to cross the Grabble mountains, he thought he was safe. But then again, maybe it was because of that work that he wasn't safe. Maybe now that he'd accomplished his task, he was no longer needed. He looked pleadingly at Hool.

'Nothing to worry about, Mipper Pritch,' Hool said, 'We're going to the Palace.'

Going to the Palace was not 'nothing to worry about'. You either went to the Palace to get some sort of honour, or to be punished. And honours didn't come in the middle of the night.

Of course, you could also go to the Palace to do work. But what work would he have to do right now?

'You're going to meet some Grabblers,' Hool said, answering the question Pritch was thinking.

'But why? What do I have to do?' Pritch said.

'Just find out some information about them,' Hool said.

'What sort of information?'

'Everything,' Hool had said. 'Apparently they know a lot of stuff that we don't understand. Or some stuff, anyway.' Hool suddenly looked as though he wasn't sure he had said the right thing. But he regained his confidence, and continued. 'Anyway, you need to find out what they know.'

'But what can Grabblers tell us? They're savages, aren't they?'

'Yes, of course they are. Tyro says they are "moral savages", and of course he is completely right. But they seem to have stumbled on some things that we don't know about. Aerial bracelets, for example ...'

'But ... but the aerial bracelets were invented by Tyro. What do Grabblers know about them?' Actually, Pritch had suspected that there was more to the story of how aerial bracelets came about. They had appeared so suddenly, and nobody seemed to know where this technology had come from. As far as he understood, they used some strange principle about energy forces flowing through the body, which no scientists had ever come across before, and seemed to him more like what used to be called magic. Pring understood more about it than he did, but Pritch didn't tell anybody this, in case it got Pring into trouble.

'Oh yes, of course the bracelets were invented by Tyro,' Hool said quickly, 'and I have heard that he is an extremely skilful flyer. But apparently, they found some very crude version of Tyro's invention in the Grabble country. Tyro says the Grabblers sent spies into Bartyronis, and stole the idea. Or maybe they just found out about the principles behind the invention by accident. Anyway, you need to talk to this pair. Seems like they were some sort of high-up people in the Grabbler world. They might be able to tell us about where the valuable stuff in Grabble-land is. We've been holding them here for a while, but there's a lot we don't understand about them. And the boss, Himester Sleech, I mean, wants to know more about how the creatures organised themselves.'

'I see,' Pritch said. 'But why don't they just use the ...' Pritch hesitated. People didn't like to talk about the thought-scanner out loud. It seemed impolite. 'Can't they use the machines to find out about those things?'