“So what is it, exactly?” he asked her, eyeing the silvery sphere with its crank handle, pistol grip, and three hatches. One hid the cone-shaped muzzle, the other hid the dials and buttons that activated its uses, and a third sat at the back, awaiting a fresh thonite cube. “Your gizmo-thing.”
“I don’t know.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged expressively. “I honestly, truly do not know, Mister Kiers. Aside from what little I’ve observed, that is. Whatever purpose for which the Ancients made it, they didn’t exactly leave any instruction pamphlets lying around.”
“Well, I know it can dissolve the membrane of the Vull, and restore it,” he muttered, eyeing the strange machine. “I observed that much for myself when we escaped from the Skylands. And a good thing, too, since our pursuers haven’t hesitated to fire their pistols. But it has four sets of buttons and dials, and I think I saw you using the first two during our escape . . .”
“I don’t really know what the other two buttons do,” Vee told him. “Except that they all spew different colored mists. Greenish, we both know dissolves the membrane separating the continent from the hexisles lofted into the sky. And golden creates fresh Vull. But there are also a reddish and a purplish pair, and I have no idea what those two do.”
“Wait, back up,” Kiers interrupted, frowning in confusion. He pointed up at the ceiling of the kitchen . . . or rather at the thin, translucent gold barrier rippling somewhere over the tallest mountain peaks around them. “You said it creates fresh Vull membrane. All I saw was it repairing the Vull after the greenish mist dissolved a hole we could slip through.”
Picking up the gun-gizmo, Vee checked the fuel compartment, the hatch at the back. “Plenty of thonite left in the cube, so let me crank it up and show you what I know.”
She spun the side handle a good twenty or thirty times, then gripped the haft and aimed it at the floor beyond the end of the table. Using a small lever he hadn’t noticed before, she tightened the cone of the muzzle, then pushed the first button and twisted the dial. Pulling the trigger, she sprayed a stream of golden, mist-like sparks at the floor.
A ring formed on the floorboards, as broad as his leg was long. It rapidly squeezed up into a dome, then started to grow into a bulging bubble as she continued to feed the mist into the membrane. Cutting off the flow, she nodded at it.
“That’s the first button.” Fiddling with the controls, she depressed the second button and tightened the cone aperture. Greenish mist dissolved a hole in the miniature Vull when she briefly pulsed the trigger. “And that’s the second.”
As the ex-prince watched, the chest-sized hole started to close in on itself, shrinking the overall bubble back down toward its former, modest dome size. She pushed the first button and aimed the golden mist. Holding it steady, she repaired the hole and more, restoring the membrane to a bulging, rounded form.
“Astonishing,” he murmured, staring at it. “This . . . this solves so many questions I’ve always had about the Vull! We know that the aetherometer can be powered by thonite because it converts the crystallized gas back into an Air-attuned format, converting sound waves into invisible aether rays and back again. But the Vull is solid, like a . . . like a shield. It must attune itself to the Earth element somehow. Or perhaps somewhere between Earth and Water . . .
“Correction,” he amended himself wryly. “It also raises many more questions. What technology the Ancients must have had, to be able to build something like this!”
“I don’t think it’s an aspect of any one element, myself,” Vee stated. She stretched out her leg and nudged the bubble with her boot for several long seconds, then pulled her foot back again. The sphere tried to cling to her toe before popping free. It wobbled and rippled, not unlike the real one outside. “We know it allows pure thonite gas to escape, because the Skylands are rich with the stuff. And that people who fall onto it from an airship or a floating hexisle eventually sink through the membrane. So it’s not a complete barrier.
“But I honestly don’t know if it’s made of any one aspect of thon, or if it’s something new. There is a lot more surface area to that bubble than a mere portion of a single one-inch cube of thonite could account for.” Vee nudged it again with her boot, then shrugged. “I don’t know what it is.”
She had a point. Kiers shrugged. “Maybe it thickens the air? That could account for some of the reports of vast windstorms every turn of the century when the hexisles lift off and drift down. To be honest, if thonite gas can make an entire mountain float up into the sky, I wouldn’t at all doubt its capacity to thicken the air into a protective dome. In fact, if I were to design such a system, I’d pick a combination of thonite gas and natural air, because then it’d be self-healing. Which it does after the hexisles have pierced through on their way up or down.
“Maybe that’s why my sister was in a panic over the thought of someone being able to create a fresh membrane at will,” he suggested, thinking it through. “Maybe she was worried someone would encase Jade Mountain in one, leaving it cut off from the rest of civilization. Like the floating hexisles used to be, before the advent of airships—I mean, aside from those strong enough to fly themselves from hexisle to hexisle, which you’ll admit is pretty rare. Even you have to stop and rest once in a while.”
“I don’t think these little guns can seal up an entire hexisle,” she pointed out, wiggling the one in her hand with the muzzle opening pointed up. “Those are roughly a hundred miles across, on average. This thing can only make a couple bubbles the size of a house before I run out of thonite cube.”
“Well, all exaggeration aside, it’s the only reason I can think of for her panicking,” Kiereseth countered. “Even if all they can do is open a small hole, if you position it right, by logic that should help a hexisle pierce the Vull at the turnover points. And when the isles push through, if you could manufacture these on a large scale and reverse it with the golden spark stuff, they could be used to seal the rifts, cutting off the pressurization differentials and putting an end to the massive windstorms that happen while the world waits for the Vull to naturally but slowly repair itself. None of which should panic my sister. . . . unless she knows something about what the other two buttons do.
“So, what do they do?” he finished, gesturing at her and her gizmo.
“I told you, I don’t know. I do know they produce a reddish mist, and a purplish mist, both of which have no effect on the Vull bubble.” Aiming the gun, she pushed the appropriate buttons one after the other. Mist-sparks spat out, first in crimson, then in violet. Neither had any noticeable impact on the surface of the gently rippling bubble. “See? Absolutely nothing.”
Bracing his elbows on the table, Kiers rubbed his chin, trying to think of what it could mean. The rasp of his stubble-covered jaw made him remember he had promised both of them a bath today. Sighing, he stood and shook his head. “We’re going in circles. We need to take a break and let our minds cogitate. Help me pull out the largest washtub from the stack under the stairs, will you? If we fill it with water from the pump, I can heat it in a trice with my thon, and then we can each enjoy a nice hot bath, and maybe scrub our clothes.”
Vee nodded eagerly, rising from her stool as well. “That does sound heavenly. We can also pull out a second tub and set everything we have to soak. Even the woolens can be washed if the water’s tepid and we don’t scrub too hard. A bit of gentle Air work should dry it all in a trice, too.”