Wilville and Orbur had already begun to mark out the outlines of the boat with stakes and twine. It looked like a large flat-bottomed barge.
“No, no!” screamed Purple, when they explained to him.
“It should be narrower, and it should have a keel, like so!”
Put away the blue-drawings,” I insisted. “We don’t need them.”
After he calmed down, we began again — this time at the beginning. Wilville and Orbur moved the stakes in to form a narrower outline. They shook their heads. “What will keep it from capsizing?” they asked.
“Outriggers, we will have outriggers,” Purple explained that the boat should have narrow pontoons, held out like so from the sides.
Then what will keep the thing level when it is suspended in the air?”
“A keel, of course — a heavier beam of wood at the bottom of the hull.”
“But if it is heavier, won’t it weigh down the boat too much?”
He considered that. “You may be right. If it does, we may have to add another gasbag.”
To tell the truth, I didn’t understand much of the discussion. It began to get too technical for me — but once Wilville and Orbur started to understand what Purple meant they began discussing the project in excited terms. The three of them argued happily back and forth, Wilville and Orbur nodding and gesticulating with every new idea.
Indeed, at one point they began scratching diagrams in the dirt in order to help them understand. When they did this, Purple tried to bring out his blue-drawings again, but they rejected them as having little or no relevance at all to the project. It was the dirt-drawings which were necessary to the construction of the device.
Obviously my sons understood what needed to be built and how to do it. The why of it sometimes eluded them, but Purple was willing to explain. Several times the boys suggested alternative and better ways — especially when the discussion turned to how they would rig the gasbags to the boat frame.
“Why not sew up just one very big bag as large as all the others?” Orbur asked.
Purple held up the hem of his robe of office in two hands and gave it a yank. It did not rip, but the weave parted easily. It looked like a piece of strainer cloth. “If all I have is one bag and this happens,” said Purple, “then I am marooned at sea, or even high in the air! But if I have many bags and this happens, I can only lose one at a time.”
Orbur nodded excitedly. “Yes, yes, I see. I see.” They turned back to the problem of rigging the boat with a variable number of gasbags.
When Shoogar returned from his task two days later, he bore with him a double armful of samples of different kinds of cloth. “I have visited every weaver on the island,” he puffed. “All are eager to supply our needs. This is their finest cloth.”
That evening we met with them — it was a council of all the weavers of both the Upper and Lower Villages, and representative weavers from the four other townships of the peninsula/island. The five of us sat with them and discussed the possibilities of using each type of cloth.
The only jarring note was Hinc — he demanded to know why I was officiating — a mere bonemonger.
I replied that I was here as speaker, and also as organizer of the project.
That failing, he challenged my sons, “And why are they here? I thought this was to be a council of weavers and magicians.”
“It is — but they are helping to build the flying machine. They have as much right to participate in these discussions as you. Perhaps more.”
Chastened, he sat down.
Purple had two simple tests for each type of cloth. First, he would give each one a yank to see how easily the weave would spread. More than half of the samples failed this test. Purple said to the weavers who had submitted them that if they could not do better than that, then there as no point in their staying. Several left, just as glad that they wouldn’t be working with the mad magician.
The second test was just as easy. He formed a sack out of each piece of cloth and poured water into it. He then counted slowly while the water leaked out. Clearly he was searching for the cloth that was tightest and would hold water longest. “If the cloth will hold water,” he explained, “it can be made to hold air. But if none of these cloths work, we will have to find one that will. Even if we must weave it ourselves.”
We went through the finest goods in the region, while Purple shook his head sadly and told them that each was too coarse. None would hold water for more than a minute.
Naturally the weavers bristled. Several more left in a huff. Had they not been facing the two greatest magicians in the world, undoubtedly they would have challenged us all to a battle for the right of survivorship at the following blue dawn.
“Humph,” said white-furred old Lesta; “why do you want to carry water in a clothbag anyway? Why don’t you use a pot like a normal person?”
The spell calls for a bag, you butter-wart!” snapped Shoogar. Lesta hissed back, but said nothing else.
Purple ignored this interchange. He lay down the last piece of cloth sadly and said, “It is as I feared — these are all too coarse for our purposes. Can’t you do better?”
“Those are our best — and if they are the best we can do, then you will not find anyone anywhere who can match them, let alone surpass them.”
Purple opened what he called his “impact suit and peeled it away from his arms and torso. He took off the shirt underneath — revealing (Gods protect us!) his pale, nearly hairless chest. I had known about this already from my number one wife, but the men of the other villages gasped in disbelief. The sight of Purple’s fat paunch was almost too much.
Purple ignored it Instead he handed them the shirt — he pushed it at the man who had spoken. “Here is finer cloth,” he said.
The man took it, he turned it over curiously and examined both sides. He rubbed it between his fingers.
“That should prove to you that finer weaves are possible,” Purple said.
Other weavers were reaching for it now. Quickly, the shirt was passed around the circle. It was sniffed at and tasted, touched and murmured over. The weavers were incredulous at its quality.
At last it reached old Lesta. He held it up to the light and peered. He gave it a yank and peered at it again. He rubbed it between his fingers. He sniffed at it, made a face, and tasted it. He made another face. At last, he folded it into a sack and stepped to the center of the clearing. One of the other weavers, perceiving what he was intending, hefted a clay pot of water and poured it into the sack. It held.
Lesta counted slowly, but only a little water seeped out — and at such a rate that it would take all day to empty the sack. “Humph,” he said and let the water splash to the ground. It glinted wetly in the red light. “You are right,” he said. “This is a fine piece of cloth — why don’t you use this?”
“Because I haven’t got enough of it,” said Purple, retrieving his shirt. He began wringing the water out of it. “I want you to match this.”
“Why should I even bother to try?” grumbled Lesta. “If you want cloth that fine, go where you got that piece.”
“I’m trying to!” Purple exploded. “I want to go home.
I am marooned in a strange land, and I want to go home.”
I pitied him. I couldn’t help it. We too were marooned in an alien land. Even though it was Purple’s fault, I still pitied him.
Purple turned away from the circle of weavers and began shrugging back into his still-damp shirt. Clearly, he was embarrassed at his outburst.
I waited until he had covered his alien pink flesh. Then I turned to Lesta. “You cannot weave cloth like that, can you?”
Lesta muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?”
“No,” he said. “No, I cannot. Nobody can. It is demoncloth.”
“But if you could learn to weave cloth like that,” I suggested, “that would make you the greatest weaver in the land, wouldn’t it?”
