Eden's Jester Read Free Page B

glaciers ground mountains of granite into pebbles, leaving them here for men to unearth and refashion into roads and buildings. But all was quiet now. The men left not long after the glaciers, in the grand scheme of things.
    The nearby town, lying just beyond the hills, was made of the same stuff from the pits. But the miners had abandoned the quarry at my feet soon after they started. Less than fifty feet down their equipment struck solid stone—stone so old and hard that it turned back their drills and dynamite. Its white-veined black dome still lay exposed.
    I watched the stone patiently. The rock at the bottom of the quarry was only the tip of the thing. Its core stretched deep into the earth. I had no idea exactly how far, but I knew it was near the mantle. And it was old.
    Engineers gain understanding from one another. Their lore was guarded. Each Discipline was a guild, mastering its own craft and building skills to be passed from member to member.
    I had no Discipline. I had to learn by spying or seeking out other teachers.
    There were others in this world that could teach me; others who were often ignored by Engineers. This rock was one of their places. I waited.  
    Late into the night, the sand began to tingle against my back. It seemed to hum, or maybe sing. It was a subtle change. The stillness deepened as a hush spread out across the gravel pit. Silvery wisps of smoke traced the white veins of the rock. An elemental was passing through. I had no idea what its purpose might be, but it really didn’t matter. Tonight was about observation. Class was in session.
    I couldn’t abandon the matter that made up my body without giving away my presence. Instead, I extended my senses to the rock, descending past the building blocks of the rock’s atoms. An elemental wasn’t a thing of energy or matter. I studied them often over the years, hoping to understand how they interacted with the world. Engineers manipulated ambient energy—as much as they could store—and people to accomplish their evolutionary objectives. Elementals intertwined space, time, energy, and matter to form the universe itself. That skill struck me as useful.  
    I watched the elemental as it wove through the rock, performing some duty I assumed only one of its kind could understand.  
    Hair-thin tendrils of silver spread out from a tangled center as it wove its way along the quartz veins. Wispy fingers darted among small pockets of crystals, then to lumps of ore. It wasn’t following any pattern I could fathom.  
    I decided to gamble. I paced it for a few seconds as it approached a cluster of green copper deposits. I focused my senses on the essence of the copper, hoping to be right there when the elemental did whatever it might do.  
    As it approached the ore it paused for a fraction of a second. Then, before I could react, it darted into the deposit and out again. It retreated slightly, then did what I could only say was a small circular dance before moving along its original course.  
    Did that thing just make fun of me?  
    Being disrespected was something I was used to. But that elemental didn’t even know me. I felt profoundly insulted.
    “Hey. . . thing,” I projected at it, assuming normal lines of communication between immaterial beings would work. “You could at least say ‘excuse me’ or something.”
    I inspected the copper the elemental had touched. It was changed, but only slightly. A small cloud of sub-atomic fireflies buzzed and drifted into the ether. I looked closer and saw what was happening. Some of the copper had been converted to its energy equivalent, which the elemental had used for some obscure purpose. It had used a tiny puff (was the only way to describe it) of the ether to gently unravel the matter, which then reverted to its primordial state.  
    I’d always considered matter a fabric of frozen energy, but now I could see how that weave could be undone and the energy “thawed.” Interesting.
    I pulled my