Disenchanted by Robert Kroese Page A

if I succeeded, he was going to go to the King of Avaress and try to get funding.”
    “Funding? What do you mean by funding?”
    “Well, I could only create a single prototype, and it didn’t work very well. The idea was to sell the king on the idea, and get him to build us a much bigger laboratory and supply us with the minerals that we needed — ”
    “Milah, slow down,” said Boric. “A prototype of what?”
    Excitement shone in Milah’s eyes. “I’ll show you.” She halted her horse and dismounted, pulling the beast to the side of the road. Boric did the same. Reaching into her pack, she pulled out something, wrapped in cloth and string. She untied the string and unwrapped the cloth. Inside were two discs about the thickness of a coin and the width of Boric’s palm. She handed one to Boric.
    “What is it?” Boric asked.
    “Look at it,” said Milah.
    Boric looked at the disc. One side was dull gray and the other was glossy silver, almost like a mirror, but the image it showed was dark and blurry. “A mirror?” asked Boric. “I can hardly see myself in it.”
    “It’s not you,” said Milah. “It’s me.” She was holding her own mirror in front of her face.
    Boric squinted at the mirror. “If you say so. What’s the point?”
    “It’s a two-way mirror!” Milah exclaimed excitedly. “I can see you and you can see me!”
    “All I see is a blur,” said Boric dubiously, cocking his head. “It looks a little like a monkey.”
    “Well, like I said, this is a prototype. The zelaznium isn’t pure enough to get a good picture. I need a bigger lab and better equipment, and — ”
    “The what?”
    “Oh, it’s what the mirror is made of. A mineral called zelaznium. I named it after my father, Zelaznus. He’s the one who discovered it. The final version will be bigger, of course, and much clearer. And it will have a significantly longer range. These only work over about twenty feet. But with better equipment and purer zelaznium, I could make a pair that can send images up to a hundred feet. Maybe more.”
    Boric frowned. “What’s the point?”
    “Communication over long distances!” Milah exclaimed.
    “I can already communicate over a hundred feet,” replied Boric. “It’s called shouting. Anyway, I can’t talk through the mirror, can I?”
    “No, but you could use hand signals — ”
    “I can use hand signals without a mirror.”
     “Yes, but don’t you see the potential? Maybe eventually we could string a series of mirrors together, or find some way of amplifying or focusing the transmission.”
    “Whatifying the what now?”
    “Think of it this way: what would you do if you wanted to say something to someone on that ridge over there?”
    “I’d yell.”
    “And if they didn’t hear you?”
    “Yell louder.”
    “And if they still didn’t hear you?”
    Boric thought. “Cup my hands around my mouth.”
    “Exactly! So I just need to find a way to make the mirror louder. And find a way to focus the transmission, the way you do when you cup your hands around your mouth. The principles are quite simple; I just need time and equipment and manpower.”
    “In other words, you need money.”
    “Yes.”
    “How much?”
    Milah bit her lip. “A hundred thousand gold pieces would get me started, and say, another forty thousand a year for the next ten years or so. Plus a large supply of zelaznium, which would require — ”
    “ A hundred thousand gold pieces ?” Boric asked, amazed at Milah’s presumption.
    “Yes, well, now you understand why I’ve been going from kingdom to kingdom. Only the monarchs have that kind of money. First my brother went to King Rapelini of Avaress, but Rapelini is a paranoid miser. He turned down my brother’s request but kept the prototypes he had been carrying so that he wouldn’t be able to get funding from any of the other monarchs. My brother, who had no interest in the mirrors himself but knew they were my passion, demanded that King