Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(22)

He touched the power stud, and the laser flared. Nylan could almost feel the power, like a red-tinged white cloud, that swirled from the firin cells into the laser. He released the stud.

"What's the matter, ser?" asked Huldran.

"Nothing major," he lied, thinking that it was certainly major when the ship's engineer imagined he could see actual energy patterns. His head throbbed slightly with his words, and he massaged his temples. The effect was almost like coming out of reflex step-up.

The wind whistled through the branches of the stunted pines farther back and higher in the narrow gorge. He moistened his lips.

"Are you all right, ser?" The stocky blond Huldran bent forward.

"I will be." / will be if I can get my thoughts together, he added to himself. As he looked around the gorge, he wondered whether, if he cut the stones correctly, he could also hollow out spaces so that the area in front of his quarrying could eventually be walled up or bricked up for stables or storage or quarters.

Then he shook his head. He was getting too far ahead of himself. The power swirl-why was it familiar?

"Something . . . but nothing bothers him . . . got nerves like ice ..."

He tried to push away the whispers from Weindre and concentrate on the power flow. Flow-that was it! It was like a neuronet flow. He touched the stud again, briefly, and concentrated, ignoring the sweaty feeling of his hands and fingers within the gauntlets.

The laser flared just for a microinstant, but that was enough.

Nylan squared his shoulders and studied the rock, then aimed the head along the chalked line. The white-red line of invisible fire touched the line. Nothing happened, except that the rock felt warmer, hotter, redder.

"Frig," Nylan muttered under his breath, as he cut off the power again. He'd been certain that the laser would cut through the rock. Lasers cut everything, from cloth to metal. Why wouldn't they cut rock?

Because, his engineering training pointed out, they burned through other substances, and the rock could absorb more heat than cloth or sheet metal, and it didn't accept the heat evenly, either.

"Problems, ser?" Huldran blotted the sweat oozing across her forehead.

"Some basic engineering I need to work out."

He needed to work out more than basic engineering.

After taking another deep breath, he triggered the laser once more and reached out with his thoughts, as though he were still on the neuronet, ignoring the impossibility of the setting, and smoothed the power flow. This time, the rock began to smoke along the focal line of the laser, and a slight line slowly etched itself along the chalk stripe.

Nylan depowered the laser, and checked the power meter-half a percent gone for nothing, nothing but a scratch on black rock.

"Ser?" Huldran stepped forward to look at the black stone.

"We're getting there," he lied, pushing the goggles back and wiping his damp forehead. "It's slow. Everything's slow."

"If you say so, ser."

Could he narrow the focus, somehow use the netlike effect to redirect the heat into a narrower line? If he couldn't, the laser wasn't going to be much good for stone-cutting.

Replacing the goggles, he checked to see that the head was set in the narrowest focus, then triggered the power. As the fields built, he juggled the smoothing of the power flow and his efforts to channel power into the thinnest line of energy possible. For an instant, all he got was more stone-etching, then, abruptly, the lightknife sliced through the black rock.

Nylan's eyes flicked to the power meter-the flow was half what it should be. He stopped his-were they imaginary?-efforts to smooth the flow and felt the red-white swirl and watched the meter needle rise and the slicing stop. Hurriedly, he went back to his not-so-imaginary efforts to reduce the laser power flow fluxes, letting himself drop into the strange pseudonet feeling that eased the energy flows to the laser and reinforced the energy concentrations. Even though he had no scientific explanation for the phenomenon, his efforts reduced the energy draw of the cutter by nearly fifty percent, while cutting stone in a way he wasn't certain was possible, and he wasn't about to turn his back on anything that effective, whether he could explain it or not.

As the tip of the laser reached the end of the chalked line, Nylan eased it back along the second line, then along the third, before releasing the stud. He wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm, then knelt, adjusted the powerhead, and positioned the laser for the undercut.

Still concentrating, he powered the laser, smoothed the flow, and drew it along the line. Then he released the stud, and, using the gauntlets he had pressed into service to protect his hands from rock droplets, he tried to wiggle the stone. The whole line wobbled.

He nodded and began the cross-cuts.

When he finished those, the line of clouds had passed, and the sun was again beating down on him. The first individual building stone came away from the black rock easily, and Nylan smiled and lifted the goggles.

"Take 'em away, Huldran." The stocky blond marine motioned to Berlis and Weindre. "You two-come and help."

Nylan plopped down on a low stone and wiped his forehead, feeling even more drained than when he had ridden the Winterlance's net, more drained than from overuse of reflex boost. His eyes flicked downhill. Through the narrow opening in the gorge he could see most of the field to the east of the tower site. Thin sprigs of green sprouted from the hand-furrowed rows. To the north, where he could not see, there were longer green leaves from the field where the potatoes and other root crops had been planted in hillocks.