The Flying Sorcerers

But most of the wailing was in the compound of the unwed women!

These were the women who did most of the spinning — and they were the ones wailing the loudest about names.

But surely, I thought, surely there must be at least one or maybe two of these women who would be willing to forsake her name for the privilege of keeping my house and bearing my children. Surely there would be one who would do the family-making thing with me.

I was mistaken.

Too many other men had had the same idea — too many other men were too eager.

And the women wanted names.

We held another council meeting.

Hinc stood up and said, “I propose that we beat our wives thoroughly. Tell them we will allow them no names and will not permit a strike —”

There was a chorus of cheering. Clearly, it was a popular idea.

But a man of the Lower Village shook his head and said, “It won’t work, Hinc. We have already beaten our wives — and still they won’t work. They want names and no amount of beating will erase that desire.”

“But it’s unthinkable!”

“The women are incapable of thinking!”

“But we are not! Think about it! Beating will only increase their resentment!”

We thought about it.

We went home and beat our wives and thought about it some more.

We held another meeting. At last, we decided that a compromise might be in order. The word was Purple’s — as was the solution.

The women could have names — but names only to be used as identifiers. They would be unconsecrated names with no religious significance at all. Just words, so to speak, that might let us know which woman we were speaking of.

In other words, a woman’s name would be outside the influence of the Gods. . .

Shoogar grumbled at this — something about undermining the foundations of modern magic. He said. “By their very definition names are part of the object which they are the name of. You can’t separate the two. A flower is a flower is a flower.”

“Nonsense, Shoogar; a flower by any other name is still a flower!”

“Wrong, Lant — it’s only a flower because you call it a flower. If it weren’t a flower, it would be something else. It would be whatever you named it!”

“But it would still smell the same!”

“But it wouldn’t be a flower!”

We were getting off the track, “I’m sorry, Shoogar, but these names cannot be retracted. The best thing we can do is deconsecrate them and make the best of a bad situation. Make the women spellproof. Let the names be only meaningless words.”

“That’s just it, Lant. There are no meaningless words. All words have meanings, whether we know them or not. There can be no words that are not also specific symbols of the objects they are names of — and a symbol is a way to manipulate the object. When Purple says we must deconsecrate the names, he is talking foolishness. You cannot deconsecrate a name.

“Unh,” I said, “but Purple thinks so.”

“Purple thinks so! — Who is the magician here? Me or Purple?!”

“Purple,” I said meekly.

That brought him down. He glared at me.

“Well, this is his territory.”

Shoogar harrumphed and started picking through his spell devices.

I said, “Shoogar, you are as smart as he — surely there must be some way —”

He frowned. “H’m yes —” He considered it. “Yes, Lant, there is. I will simply consecrate every woman with the same name. Therefore no one will dare cast a spell on anyone else’s woman, because he will also be casting a spell on his own. And no woman would dare curse another because she would be cursing herself as well!”

“Shoogar — you are brilliant!”

“Yes,” he said modestly. “I am.”

The next day he went out and named all the women Missa. Gone were the Kates and Ursulas and Annes and Judys. Gone were the Karens and Andres, Marions, Leighs, Miriams, Sonyas, Zennas and Joannas. Gone were the Quinns.

Now there were only Missas. Trone’s Missas, Gortik’s Missas, Lant’s Missas.

It was the perfect solution. The men were happy, the women were happy — excuse me, the Missas were happy.

And best of all, they went back to spinning and working and doing the family-making thing.

Purple could call them whatever he wished — it wouldn’t make any difference. Their consecrated names were Missa. That was the only name that had any power.

The men of the village breathed a sigh of relief. Now we could get back to normal — the business of making a flying machine.

In order to disturb the production of the aircloth as little as possible the looms were being separated at the rate of only three a day. New looms were being built on other slopes instead of in the same general area as the first ones.

When Lesta had been told that he would have to separate the looms already built and working, he had groaned in dismay — the thought of moving all forty-five looms was frightening. But Purple had quickly pointed out that he need move only twenty-two; if he removed every other loom from the line, he would leave plenty of working space between the rest.

Shaking his head, Lesta went off to issue the orders.

Half of the new cloth was allocated to Purple’s construction. The rest was divided on a percentage basis. Each weaver was paid in product, the amount determined by his importance and by the labor he had performed.

Purple paid for his cloth with spell tokens. I had carved them, or my assistants had, to meet his needs. The first set of chips was given to Lesta to be distributed to his workers in the same proportion as the cloth.

At first neither Lesta nor the weavers understood their purpose, but when we explained that each was the promise of a future spell, they nodded and accepted them.

Within a few days they were trading them back and forth among themselves in exchange for various labors. One group of the men was found rolling the bones for them: a common game, except that they had thought of exchanging chips according to the way the bones fell! Shoogar decided it was an offence against the Gods to trifle so with magic. They were severely warned, and their chips confiscated.

Still another man was found trading his wives’ family-making privileges for chips. We confiscated his wives.

Because the put-it-together lines were so efficient, the total production of aircloth was more than twenty percent greater than all of the villages’ previous cloth production combined. Of course Purple’s share comprised half of that production, but few of the weavers minded — without Purple, there would have been no aircloth at all. They knew that they would be able to trade it for much more than the old cloth.

For a while Purple considered appropriating all of the cloth for his flying machine, but he let himself be talked out of it. If the weavers felt they were working only for Purple’s benefit, they would be resentful and careless. If they knew they were working for themselves as well, they would treat each piece of cloth as if it were their own — as it might very well be, after the distribution.

Distributions were held every second hand of days. Most of the men received enough of the cloth for their own uses, and enough more for trading. The lesser weavers, the apprentices and novices whose labors did not add up to enough to make even one piece of cloth, were paid with a spell token. If they saved up three of them they could trade them for a piece of cloth.

That the cloth was highly valued was no secret. It soon became a mark of status to wear an aircloth toga,