From: tim@nx40.mik.uky.edu (timothy c huesman)
Subject: [Pan] the Doc examines his prison, remembers...
Keywords: Doc Pan, Prill, Zril, runes
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences
X-Path: nx40.mik.uky.edu!tim
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 05:53:07 GMT

    Concern for Prill and the others had taken a back door now for 
 Doc Pan.  He had been in this prison for untold hours and perhaps
 days with no sign of anyone, so his mind took the less painful route
 of puzzling out the curiosity that was his prison.  It appeared to
 be some sort of opaque glass of immeasurable thickness forming a
 sphere around him.  What's more, it seemed to roll and jostle from
 time to time, and the regular undulations indicated it must be in
 motion(he was being taken somewhere!)  
    Opaque glass, yes, but there were images stretched (and sketched)
 about the surface of the sphere.  Simple images, of symbolic nature
 made up of bold or delicate strokes, carved in the glass with some 
 unknown etching tool of enormous size.  Pan touched the surface of the
 glass prison to determine if the etching was on the outside or inside.
 As he ran his hand across the surface, it was far smoother than he 
 expected.  Rather, there was NO sensation from 'touching' the glass,
 but his hand met a resistance all the same.  The curiosity was further
 compounded by the eldritch energies that made his nerves tingle as he
 ran his hand across some of the symbols.  There was a force at work here,
 and its source, or focus, was the symbols.
    Pan decided to pursue this from all angles and lay on his back to
 meditate on clues from memories and to get an alternate view of his
 'bubble-trouble'.  He thought back to his encounter with the alien
 that had taken him.
----
    Regardless of the 'omen' the night before and the Doc's somber
                       ^^^^ ==> a fireball(shooting star)
 attitude which had clouded the evenmeal, the troupe of botanical 
 explorers was in high spirits.  Very early they had found a farmer
 taking a small load of goods to the market in Generica and were
 quick to unburden their feet and fill his near-empty wagon.  The
 farmer was in exceptional spirits as well, for not only had Pan's
 generosity already made the trip worthwhile, but the youngsters
 in Pan's troupe knew more about 'croppin' than most of the monks
 of the abbey that had told his Grandsire the magic of rotating crops.
    "Youngsters they may be," thought Stoke the farmer, "but they are
 all of them past the age of choice, and that makes 'em adults."
 Stoke listened to anything they would give him, and was quick to 
 question their alternate crop suggestions.  For certainly one could
 grow more of this crop or switch over to growing some of the 'weeds'
 they touted, but was there a MARKET for it?!  
    The 'mercenary view' of Generica had reached to touch all who 
 dealt with the merchant-town.  The merit of choice, lie in what each
 choice paid.  Albeit, the farmers were still by superstition and 
 tradition generous folk, but as the time came for crops to come due,
 concern that a late crop would mean a meager winter, would enter into
 the motivations of each landowner.  Stoke and his ilk nevertheless
 could not be found wanting when neighborly actions overruled the 
 usual shrewdness bred by contact with merchants.  The crops of
 sick neighbors were harvested first, and brought to market along
 with their own at no charge to the ill.  Such bound all those of
 rural Generica into a community, a far-flung community where 
 favors from generations past were heaped upon the kindnesses of this
 generation, to the point that all were so indebted to one-another
 that the most strained of relationships between neighbors would not
 elicit an ill-word spoken.
    Still, generosity to neighbors was all the more possible when one
 beat them to market with one's crops and got the premium price.  And
 Stoke had already decided that there was merit to what the eager
 youngsters had shared.  They had wanted him to grow weeds that take
 no effort in the growin'.  But Stoke knew no market for such could
 spring to life in a season.  Still, Stoke was of an old family and
 he knew some of the odd uses that his forbears had for the wild
 plants of the area.  Such uses fell away as cities sprouted from the
 efforts of the settlers of the land, and survival was no longer a 
 problem.  Still, Stoke had a recipe for a beverage made from two
 of the wild-grown plants, and a visit to the glass-blower would
 seal this idea, if indeed it had value.
    Ideas were scattered as chaff before the wind when the alien and 
 his entourage appeared.  Nearly a dozen beings had appeared on the
 road behind the wagon.  Most were clearly slaves with manacles and
 chains completing the picture.  Eight of them carried upon their
 shoulders a fine platform, elaborate in decoration, with a covered
 framework of posts, roof and curtained-off insides.  "The real finery
 must lie on the inside," was Lek's first thought and it was echoed
 by the other youngsters('Tasha, Alfie, and Beat.)  Doc Pan and Prill
 had other concerns as they noted the features of the slaves.
    Of the twelve slaves, two were obviously from the Theran world.
 Their features were not the same as Pan's since they were of different
 heritage, but the Prill and Pan had travelled to the land from whence
 they were obviously taken, and the ponderous noses and dark eyes
 marked them as Grallish.  The Therans were the foremost of the slaves,
 richly dressed in irridescent finery which contrasted with the long,
 slender chains that extended from the slavebands on their necks to 
 a point inside the curtained litter.  The leading and trailing two
 carrying the litter were of a stout people, muscular and splay-footed.
 The center four bearing the litter were shorter still, and surely had
 been mutated for such work as they had a deep groove in the center of
 their heads, in which the pole of the litter rested.  Prill wondered
 what sort of monstrosity could enslave people to this degree.  Directly
 before the litter was a beautiful specimen of humanoid, with lovely
 features, almost entirely human if not angelic.  This one had no chains
 at all upon it and appeared to be concentrating deeply.  The twelfth
 slave was a curiosity, a humanoid biped, having what appeared to be
 three faces set upon its head.  The greatest of the monstrosities was 
 the total lack of emotion in the faces of the slaves.  They seemed to
 act mindlessly with the exception of a very guarded series of glances
 from the two Therans in chains.  But before the Doc or Prill could act
 or look any farther, the mouth on the leftmost face of the twelfth slave
 called out in booming, bass tones, "f2%4 60v*( $I#FD ^#J #QK@!@DI# *##J$
 #$)FD)#!K!@_".  It was clearly speaking a Theran tongue.  What Doc and
 Prill heard was, "Theran scum, give up your life, your magics will abet
 you not!"
     Neither Pan nor Prill were ones to give up their lives, and they
 acted quickly, Pan drew forth both rapier and main gauche and leaped
 from the wagon(Pan is not nearly as portly as he was when he entered 
 Generica).  Prill began the trilling musical notes that were the 
 beginnings of a spell.  But there were problems.  No one came to 
 confront Pan.  And Prill's warm magics were being slightly hindered by
 the two Theran Psi-Statics who put out far more 'noise' than Pan ever
 had.  Still, a glittering appeared behind Prill, a shield to protect
 the young people and the farmer.  She then trilled something at a deeper
 range and the horses on the farmer's wagon, began plodding forward.
     Among the greatest curiosities of this or any world is that
 in the loveliest of surroundings can be found the most hideous of
 nightmares.  As the gossamer curtains parted on the bejewelled litter,
 this was very much the case.  Some demented being's view of what life
 should be gazed with unshielded contempt on the people before it.
 It stood on thick tree-stump legs, with wide round feet sans toes.
 Five arms seemed to have sprouted from its 4' 10" body completely
 at random locations for no apparent symmetry was evident.  A single
 eye, large and neon red glared at them from a torso with no head.
 Just below the eye, resting like a raw wound amid the pock-marked,
 veinous, red skin, the mouth opened and purred the pleasure of
 the alien at finding its quarry.  The wound of a mouth formed in a 
 smirk and grunted a command.  Prill was already beginning a new
 trilling to shield both her and Pan when the two Theran slaves
 knelt and pulled the irridescant cloaks over themselves, hiding
 them completely. 
     Prill noted the sudden total absence of the 'noise' the Psi-Statics
 had been producing only moments before.  And while Prill was not
 herself a user of the Psi-stream, her magics touched the periphery
 of its sphere of influence.  Prill hastened her spell, taking risks
 at its failure, fearful of some new menace.  As if on cue, the
 angelic being just before the litter touched its head and pain
 like Prill had never known erupted in her head.  Consciousness
 was a thing cursed at that moment when Prill begged the gods to
 let her slip from its torture.  And stumbling backwards at last it
 let her go.  Yet before the stunned bimorph could fall to gravity's
 unwavering demand, the alien Zril flung forth a pea-sized object 
 at a charging Doc Pan and the an explosion engulfed them both.
    The youngsters hastening from the wagon to aid their mentors were 
 knocked to ground from the concussion of the blast.  Prill was thrown to 
 the earth like some forgotten doll, the stumbling having placed her behind
 her own shield and saving her life for the time-being.  The very stones 
 around Doc Pan had been blown in a wide circle from the blast and Lek 
 alone saw a ball, perhaps a foot in diameter rush to the many open arms 
 of the alien slaver.
     Unconscious, Doc still felt a wrenching sensation.  What he didn't
 know is that his troupe didn't even see him vanish, as the alien
 entourage transferred miles distant from the encounter.
---- 
     The memory of what had happened offered no real insight to Pan.
 He had awakened covered with bruises and since had felt some jostling 
 and one major shaking that added to his bruises again.  Whatever was
 transporting the barber was not very stable.  Lately though the
 'ride' had been extremely smooth and if not for an occasional movement
 the Doc would say they were stationary.  
    The Doc resumed his visual analysis of the sphere and noted that
 far over his head lay an aberation in the glass.  A dark black spot
 lay over his head.  Standing, he peered as close as he could at the
 black 'something' in the glass overhead.  Though small, it had far more 
 of the symbols and the etchings were finer than the others.  From the 
 light entering the sphere, the Doc guessed that this was of the same 
 black stone as the meteorite that had landed on the Theran homeworld.  
 The same stone that had allowed magic to work in a world that abhored 
 magic.  There was something to the nature of this black stone, enough
 to have arroused the Doc's curiosity into taking not only a chunk of it
 with him and Prill when they left Thera, but also to take mineral 
 samples from Thera.  Some of the black stone had been worked into
 the metallic amulet about the Doc's neck by Whinlomer the centaur 
 sage to prevent the Doc's Psi-Static noise from disrupting the sage's
 concentration.  Whatever the nature of the stone, the Doc started to
 work on several assumptions, the first being that the crux of escape
 from his glass prison lie in that stone over his head.

--

  Doc  Pan       tim@mik.uky.edu          Tim  Huesman